EVE Alliance Tournament Discussion

I was going to post this in the appropriate thread but CCP Loxy decided to lock it without any good reason. I still want to make a public statement since I believe I have the right to have my voice heard considering how much this has affected me. I represent only myself here.

To give you little background, I started eve same day Apocrypha was launched and Genos is the only corp I have ever been in. This year I had the opportunity to fly to Iceland for the 2012 fanfest and I won the eve pvp tournament there. I talked briefly with Sreegs, Loxy, Soundwave and other devs there. I also met Zastrow, Michael Bolton, Raivi and other players. This was the highlight of my EVE experience so far and I had a great time in Iceland.

When I saw CCP Sreegs post about excluding HYDRA from the tournament I felt sick, my face went pale and I felt dizzy. I'd say I have already worked roughly 100 hours during the past 3 weeks theorycrafting setups and fittings in addition to coordinating and participating in numerous practices we have had. AT is the best thing in EVE for me and now I find out I can't participate in it.

The reason Sreegs gave for excluding HYDRA and OB was that he thinks HYDRA and OB are a "single entity" who are "practicing together in a single corporation on the test server in a single wormhole" while "masquerading as two units".

Here are the facts:

- HYDRA and OB are not a single entity. They are 2 different entities on TQ with their own history. CCP knows this very well. We worked together closely in AT9 but with the new rules we were only planning to test together(unless told we can't do it) before the tournament begins.

- CCP never defined in the rules how B-team is determined so we sent CCP email asking if it is ok we practice with OB. We told them we only plan to test together since we are a small entity that doesn't have enough players to do it on its own, and in the tournament we act separately under separate leadership. We never got a reply from CCP so we sent them another email and made a petition. Again, the email was never answered while petition was answered by Senior GM saying that training together is allowed. Later when asked again in the public forums, CCP replied that they would deal with our situation after the sign ups.

- Reason we joined the same corp in the TEST server was because of wormhole logistics. No one considered that a logistic technicality in the TEST server would suddenly be bannable when training together was not. And I don't understand Raivis comments when he says we made a mistake doing it, as we had been very open with CCP and told them we would practice together unless being told that we can't.

- This leads me to wonder what Sreegs means when he talks about HYDRA and OB "masquerading as two units". We told them our intentions regarding the tournament, we told them we practice with each other, they know we are separate unit on TQ etc. I simply don't see what he is referring to.

Conclusion

It is obvious to me that CCP banned us because of AT9 final (Which we had not planned for since the chance of that happening seemed so small, which is why it looked so bad. We had intention to make it entertaining but ****** up due to mix of euphoria and fatigue and made a long post after the final saying how sorry we are). We followed all the rules last year and had every intention to follow them this year. CCP made the B team rule vague on purpose, so they could make whatever call they wanted. We did our best to get the rule specified but they never gave us the chance and stayed quiet so they could ban us.

This is how I feel and the hate I feel towards CCP staff makes it impossible for me to continue playing EVE. You really messed things up CCP.


PS. It would be nice if CCP would send me and other members of my team the Alienware computers that we won 2 months ago in the Fanfest pvp tournament. I don't know how many more emails I have to send to you regarding this matter.

Solid advice right there.

you entered your teams when you submitted names to hat

Hydra don't get to tell Outbreak what they should do. Outbreak don't get to tell Hydra what they should do.
The key point is, you're talking about two entirely separate entities, the key issue that so many people refuse to understand no matter how clear it is.
In fact you could get all of hydra and outbreak onto a Tennis Court and put all of hydra on one side of the net and all of outbreak on the other side of the net and notice that it's two groups of different people and still not get the point at all.

If this point is completely lost on you, if you refuse to understand that Hydra and Outbreak are two alliances of no common purpose but just respect each other's power and value in an alliance tournament format, if it's just so convenient to completely ignore that Hydra or Outbreak would literally work with any alliance that they believed were worth working with and feel they could trust, then your opinions and thoughts on the whole subject are your own but have no basis in reality and are therefore pointless thoughts based on a fictional world that exists in your mind only.

It's fine if people want to be forum warriors because it's the only place they can really feel any power, but it's not fine if they work at CCP and are put in charge of making decisions that affect hundreds of people.
People put in those positions should be able to distinguish between reality and the fictional world in their mind where the situation is moulded to fit the evidence they're never expecting to see go public.

Just remember, if you're in the tournament, next time, it could be you.

After AT9 finals I would say this rule was almost written personally for Hydra and Outbreak:

To ensure that all Alliances get a fair opportunity to participate we will be checking on team entries and will disqualify teams who we consider to be 'B' or 'C' teams for bigger Alliances.

Seriously, what did you expect?

you don't need a secured spot to get investigated, you just need a potential one (i.e. you sent in the 10 plex)

We got banned before securing a spot. But yes we did register as 0utbreak.

1) We had shared some setups, you absolutely need this when you train together, there's no way you can do it without letting your partner know what setup you're using. It doesn't imply that we won't fight each other for real.
2) Right, teams had mix of pilots, sometimes we had to do this to ensure we have necessary pilots for conclusive tests
3) Some intel was shared but not all (so-called decoy intel, but who cares about it)
4) & 5) We had no intention to do this

i dont get it is this not EVE? so what two corps got in the finals metagamed and fixed the match? is this not what eve is about?
you make ships that cost half a billion isk that can be killed by a destroyer...

oh i get it ... you can get ****** over in eve just as long as you dont make ccp look stupid in the process...

If these two groups were not colluding they would be in different corps/alliances in different wormholes with different ship setups, different ideas, different spying, different mentality on privacy and different ideas on winning

and most of all if you cant field enough players without cheating and getting a "hostile ringer" you should GTFO of the tourney

dont cry that you got caught being greasy