Monday, January 26, 2015

The Butterfly Effect, Part 1

Several years ago, CCP created a trailer for EVE called EVE Online: The Butterfly Effect. It highlights the way a player's choices can have an impact on many other EVE players. The residents of highsec know this lesson well: Many wonderful things have happened to them due to the influence of a single heroic individual. I am, of course, referring to myself. But although the transformation of highsec began with the intervention of its Saviour, it doesn't end there.


Each individual Agent of the New Order has the power to start a chain-reaction that echoes across highsec. If you recruit another Agent, for instance, and that Agent recruits other Agents, you can potentially affect the gameplay of thousands of players. Consider the gank of Charlie Jacobson. He was flying a Retriever which was semi-tanked, but he lacked a permit. Agents Brain Less and Euel Perne killed him.


Charlie was too gallant to whine about being ganked. Instead, he did what a ganked miner should do: He paid it forward by ganking another miner. In this case, the miner he ganked was a fellow named stephen Kalkoken.


stephen went to the in-game "Mining" channel and requested help from his fellow miners. He told everyone that he had been wardecced by a CODEdot "nut job" named Murdoch Luther. You might be asking yourself, "Who's Murdoch? He didn't gank stephen. Nor is Murdoch even a member of the CODEdot alliance. What gives?" To find out what gives, we need to ask Murdoch for the rest of the story.


After stephen was ganked by the former gank victim, stephen made a scene in local chat. This attracted the attention of Murdoch, a neutral party. Murdoch didn't appreciate the undignified manner in which stephen was comporting himself, so he wardecced the miner. stephen got confused and assumed the wardeccer was the same guy who'd ganked him. He also assumed Murdoch must be tied to the CODEdot alliance because, well, the New Order is responsible for all who live in highsec.

Got everything straight? Long story short, this sequence of events led stephen Kalkoken to the Mining channel, where he thought he would find someone to rescue him from the wardec.


...Because highsec miners are such helpful people.


Unfortunately for stephen, he discovered in a few minutes why the carebears don't "rise up" against the New Order.


stephen's cry for help then attracted the attention of Agent Tisiphone Dira, an actual member of CODEdot (and part-time calendar model). As soon as Tisiphone appeared, miners in the channel expressed their support for the New Order. Pro-Code sentiment in the Mining channel? Further evidence that we're winning hearts and minds.


stephen explained that he didn't want the miners to do all the work; he was willing to fly a PvP ship. He just needed some help.


And at the very moment stephen was winding up the clichéd "I've been playing for years but I took time off so I'm a noob" routine, he interrupted himself to report a spy in the channel. It's a good thing Tisiphone announced her presence a few moments before, or else she might never have gotten caught.


stephen hadn't been ganked by an actual member of CODEdot, but seeing Tisiphone sent him into a rage. This alienated the Mining channel population, sending them another step toward the New Order camp.


However, some pockets of anti-Order resistance remained.


stephen saw a kindred spirit in Mike the Miner. Before the two could become better acquainted, Agent loyalanon arrived. He sized up the situation and immediately invited stephen into a private chat.


Now stephen was in a welcoming, safe environment. But would it be enough to set him on the right path? Would he turn from mining to ganking as his own ganker, Charlie Jacobson, had done? Or would stephen prove to be too much of a Goofus?

To be continued...

31 comments:

  1. What vile creatures these miners are. Thank goodness for the civilizing force of the New Order.

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  2. The mining channel looks so much better than it did two years ago... Looks like the Code is having a positive effect on the galaxy!

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    Replies
    1. Mining channel huh? I had no idea. So it is like a channel full of miners? That must be hell on the senses.

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    2. gee dj entrophy, since the mining channel was that bad you must have frequented it quite often huh?

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  3. Is there a public Minerbumping channel? Minerbumping itself seems to be password protected to my great chagrin.

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    Replies
    1. You should try to enter a super secret 3-digit password that may or may not have something to do with our Saviour.

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    2. This is where it gets quite embarassing for me because, to the best of my knowledge, I had already tried a number of secret combinations based on our glorious Saviour before, but had somehow managed to miss that really obvious three-digit one.

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    3. You will feel really silly once you work it out.

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  4. C'mon, stephen! I believe in you!

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  5. Hey more proof the miners are the well adjusted, non-sociopaths! nice!

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  6. This odious anti-semitic creep Stephen is in university? I can only hope he's a toilet cleaner. In Tel Aviv.

    More proof, if any needed, of why non-compliant miners must be killed.

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  7. I wish a miner would someday make a "CODE. are NAZIS!" video in the style of Goons' old "Evoke are Nazis" video... I would actually give mad propellers to any angry miner that wanted to put together a video like that.

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    Replies
    1. That'd be creating content, which is sociopathic. You're much more likely to see miners vaguely say that "somebody" should make anti-CODE propaganda, than you are to ever see them actually making any.

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    2. Sometimes it's hard being an Agent of the New Order... I mean.. I wish the miners could just come out and surprise us sometimes, you know? .. A cool video... maybe a "thank you" every now and then? But it seems the life of an Agent is kind of stoic. I just wish that making carebears code-compliant could be easier sometimes.

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    3. The problem is that in a setting where people are free to change sides with no real penalties (no worries about loss of citizenship or property like in the real world), and where the sides are differentiated strictly by ideology (Miners being "I just want to be left alone", New Order being "We must all acknowledge that we have a society in-game and take part in it"), you're going to get a very lopsided distribution of active people. By temperament and principle, anyone likely to go to the trouble of making propaganda (which after all, does not correspond to an in-game mechanism and does not give in-game money) is going to be a Code-supporter. It's nice from a narrative and cultural victory point of view, since we can always point to the cultural and moral wastelands that are our opposition movements as reasons why people should support the Code instead. But I agree, it can get a bit depressing sometimes.

      Fighting against carebears is fighting against...nothing. It's essentially fighting against bots, with a "spew profanity in local" subroutine. For people who tend to want to interact with people, even with our enemies, it's disheartening that the miner/carebear/antiganker side produces essentially nothing in terms of content or socialization. But then, that's why they're the bad guys. Try to cake comfort in what your fellow Agents say and do, and use the dearth of humanity among the carebear crowd as a reminder of what it is we're fighting for, and what we're fighting against.

      Carebears make nothing
      This is central to their creed
      That's why we fight them

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    4. Thank you Maria, that was very well put :)

      Trudging together
      Defeating Nihilism
      We go arm in arm

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    5. You're welcome, glad I could help out. It's so discouraging being constantly confronted with the greed and base impulses of the carebear, but that's why the ganker community is so important. We can help cheer each other up and remind each other that not everyone is like them; some people do care about fun and social interaction.

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    6. A concerned MinmatarJanuary 27, 2015 at 4:51 PM

      Maria, thanks for writing that. It's an understandable and compelling outline of the situation.

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    7. Fully.

      -Galaxy Pig

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    8. Sorry, ment to type full of crap, as in Maria is full of crap.
      I hit enter to soon.

      -Galaxy Pig

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    9. You can always tell a carebear by their inability to spell. Gives them away every time.

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    10. Thank you, Galaxy Pig, for providing such an effective example of what I described. An Agent will carefully write a thought-out summation of the philosophy and temperament of the opposing sides, and end that summation with poetry. A carebear will call it "crap" and leave in a huff, except they're so unwilling to spend the time to speak with another human being that they won't even finish the message calling something crap.

      I can think of no better demonstration of the validity of my words.

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    11. Sure thing, any time Maria ;)

      (I have my very own immitator! squee!)


      -Oink

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    12. Lord, all of the fake-name stuff gets confusing. I'd like it better if the only person who got fake-named was our dear Veers.

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    13. Maria, if you look closely, you can see that this is our dear friend WinkyAnon.

      Many carebears hide
      Behind fake aliases
      But the little things...

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  8. I wonder if Code. will say gf when they get raped too?
    Or they are not true to their own fake Code ;)

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    Replies
    1. They are only true to it when it suits their purposes.
      When someone manages to mess up their plans and goals they slink off to a station and cry for a while. Sometimes in the worst cases they drag someone into a chat channel (so its not public) and abuse said person, all in the name of fun.
      Course james dosent do posts about that stuff, wouldent look good after all.

      -=M=-

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    2. Proof that you liken having your retriever destroyed to a sexual assault, thanks for that.

      -Oink

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    3. CockAnon, otherwise known as -=M=-, does have a penchant for using sexual innuendo in its posts.

      Delete

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