EVE General Discussion

By the time you finish reading this Manifesto II, you will understand why the highsec miners--the ones who don't bot--are the biggest problem facing EVE today. You will learn about the damage they have already caused and gotten away with, you will learn how they almost shut down EVE, and you will learn what the miners are not-so-secretly doing right now to ruin your game--unless we stop them before it's too late.

I'll explain what the carebears are trying to do to highsec. For those of you who live in nullsec and think these issues don't matter to you, read on, because I'll also explain how the highsec miners are destroying nullsec.

Time is of the essence, so let's dive right in, shall we?

Given forum readers' complaints about the length of my previous manifesto, I opted to keep it short and sweet this time. My motto is that you should never use 20,000 words when 15,000 will do. Nevertheless, as this post will be the longest in the history of the EVE forums, I decided to provide some headings and a table of contents to help keep things organized.

1. THE ACCUSATION
2. THE CAREBEARS KILLED NULLSEC PVP
3. THE CAREBEARS ALMOST SHUT DOWN EVE COMPLETELY
4. THE ENDLESS HISTORY OF NERF DEMANDS
5. THE END OF ALL DANGER IN HIGHSEC
6. THE CULTURE OF THE NEW CAREBEAR
7. LESSONS FROM AN ORCA HUNT
8. THE CONFLICT OF VISIONS
9. HOW WE CAN STOP THE CAREBEARS
10. A CALL TO ACTION

Several months ago, I wrote a brief manifesto outlining for the carebears why so many people wish them harm and launch suicide attacks against them. I described how highsec mining was rife with bots, and that even the human miners aspired to become as much like bots as possible. Miners weren't interested in playing EVE; they just wanted to make a bunch of isk while AFK. At the same time, they were sheltering the botters and legitimizing bot behavior.

When I wrote the original manifesto, I believed that the bots were the most disgraceful thing in EVE, and that the human miners merely harbored them. But I have come to understand that I was wrong. In fact, it is the bots who are being used to deflect attention away from the real threat to EVE, a threat posed by the human miners in highsec.

The bots, while doubtless a hideous feature in EVE, are being dealt with by CCP. Everyone hates the bots, and they get periodically permabanned en masse. Meanwhile, they silently go about their work and do little to disturb the fabric of EVE society as a whole, piling up their ore and ice until they get banned.

By contrast, the human miners are anything but mute. They are constantly in communication with CCP, begging the Devs to nerf PvP in highsec. They are not content to play the game on Easy Mode. They want to eliminate all forms of violence whatsoever from highsec. What makes the miners so dangerous is that while the bots are being actively hunted and terminated by CCP, these whiny carebears wield tremendous power over the future of EVE's game mechanics.

Here's the other part of the problem: When I say that the carebears want to remove PvP from highsec, most people read that and think I really mean "the carebears want to limit the PvP in highsec." Most EVE players assume that the carebears simply want to nerf it a little, to make it more difficult to gank them. Real EVE players know that PvP is the very essence of EVE, and that there is no such thing as safe space in the game. They know that a total removal of non-consensual PvP from any area of the game would be anathema, going against the fundamental principles upon which EVE operates and attracts its players. So when I criticize the carebears for attempting to get rid of PvP, these good-natured readers think it's hyperbole, and that the carebears are only trying to rebalance the playing field a little more in their favor.

But no. That's not what I'm saying. Not even close.

Let me be clear. I am accusing the carebears of attempting to completely eliminate all PvP from highsec. I am saying that what the carebears actually intend to do is make their mining ships completely invincible in highsec. At the same time, they are also lobbying CCP to drain resources from nullsec and redistribute it to highsec, where it will be completely safe. If successful, the carebears would convert EVE from a game of risk and consequential PvP--the only one like it--into a game of carebears PvE'ing their way to wealth, all while AFK. In doing so, they would also be killing EVE, for it would not long survive in such a state.

I realize these are serious charges. I am essentially accusing the carebears of an attempt to kill EVE. There can be only one penalty for such a crime: The death of highsec mining, with the execution to be carried out by the EVE populace at large.

Serious charges require serious evidence, I know. That is why I am writing this Manifesto II. I am going to prove that the carebears are guilty. And once the EVE playerbase is convinced of the miners' guilt--convinced that the miners are actively working to destroy everything the EVE players have built--there will be war.

The reason PvP largely went extinct in nullsec is that the nullsec miner went extinct. The nullsec miner went extinct because it no longer made economic sense to mine there. It's just a standard risk vs. reward calculation. Nullsec ore is more valuable than highsec ore, but not by a big enough margin. When you consider the added risk of nullsec, not to mention the logistical needs, there's no reason why a miner shouldn't just sit in the safety of highsec and mine his heart out. So that's exactly what the carebears do.

Why do I blame the carebears for obeying economic reality? Because they created it for themselves. The carebears are at the root of an even greater problem plaguing EVE at the moment. You want to know why the risk/reward calculus is so out of whack? The carebears demand it. For years, they have continually lobbied CCP to transfer wealth from nullsec to highsec. If it weren't for the influence of the carebears, nullsec ore would be a hundred times more valuable than highsec ore. But if CCP tries to fix that, the carebears are in an uproar. They insist they would rather quit the game than play a properly-balanced version of it. Fearing the loss of subscriptions, CCP bends to their will.

This has been going on for a very long time. As one ganker put it, the reason why he attacks the highsec miners is that highsec is where the real wealth in EVE is. Right or wrong, it's certainly where the miners are. By all accounts, those highsec miners should be out in nullsec, where they can be attacked and defended by PvP'ers. Because they're hiding away in highsec, it was only a matter of time before people started taking a greater interest in killing highsec miners. In other words, miner, if you won't come to nullsec, nullsec will come to you.

In an attempt to correct this problem and resuscitate nullsec mining, The Mittani lobbied for the removal of alloy drops from the drone regions, thereby buffing nullsec ore. But will the highsec miners--the ones who spend all day begging for buffs to exhumers--relocate to nullsec as they should, or will they initiate a new series of demands for valuable ore to be placed in highsec? I guess we'll find out.

Before today, you may have been a nullsec player who ignored what was going on in highsec. Believe me, I get it. When I lived in nullsec, nothing made me lose interest faster than people talking about highsec. To my eyes, the carebears were basically scenery for the belts, like NPCs: If you were curious, you could stop by and have at look at them, but otherwise they may as well not exist. As it's become increasingly clear, however, everything in EVE is connected. What happens in highsec influences nullsec.

This is an ongoing process, and there are no signs that it will end. As the carebears continue to suck wealth into highsec, and as they continue to fortify highsec with nerfs to non-consensual PvP, it's no mystery where things are headed. Unless something is done to reverse the trend, EVE will, in fact, become a PvE game.

We know this is true because to a large extent, it already happened. Miners migrated from nullsec to highsec, and the PvP that once existed there disappeared. If it's already been happening, what's to stop it from continuing? It's an inconvenient truth, but as the carebear population continues to grow, the transition from PvP to PvE becomes all the more likely, since greater numbers exert greater influence.

As bleak a picture as I've just presented, it gets a whole lot worse. Let's consider what happens if and when the carebears get what they want.

Do the carebears really wield enough influence to succeed in their quest to remove PvP from EVE? The past, they say, is prologue. For many years now, the carebears have demanded that CCP nerf all forms of PvP in highsec, whether it be suicide ganking, wardecs, corp infiltration, can-flipping, or anything else that could pose a threat to the miners. Their whining would be nothing more than an annoyance, were it not for the fact that CCP has often granted their wishes.

Before I continue, I would like to present a short list of just some of the nerfs with which CCP has indulged the carebears over the last few years. This list is not meant to be all-inclusive by any means; it's only the nerfs I can recall off the top of my head, without doing any research. Before the carebears start whining about the next nerf they want, I'd like them to review the list of what they've already been given and answer, "Why weren't these nerfs enough?"

• In multiple instances, CCP has sped up CONCORD response time, giving suicide gankers less time to kill their targets and requiring them to use more and more firepower.
• In response to the infamous jihadswarm attacks on miners, CCP buffed CONCORD and greatly increased the penalties to security status for gankers. This was intended to force gankers to either spend a lot more time grinding security status, or quit the practice.
• On at least one occasion, CCP granted an across-the-board buff to hitpoints on all ships, for the purpose of "increasing the length of fights." This measure did little to affect ordinary combat but increased the difficulty of killing miners before CONCORD's arrival.
• After the Privateers wardec'd everything in sight, CCP released a series of nerfs which they openly admitted were aimed at putting the Privateers out of business. They set an arbitrary 3-wardec limit for corporations and exponentially increased the cost of running multiple wardecs at the alliance level.
• When carebears still had to deal with wardecs, CCP reversed a longstanding exploit ruling on dissolving corps. In a matter of minutes, carebears can simply dissolve and reform the exact same corp with the exact same members--even keeping their old name and corp ticker--solely for the purpose of evading wardecs.
• Still not satisfied with wardec nerfs, CCP endorsed a plan by miners to use so-called "dec shield alliances." This rendered miner-owned POSes completely invulnerable.
• In an attempt to curb can-flipping and other "griefer" tricks, CCP has written and re-written rules on aggression flags for can-flipping, remote-repping, fleets, etc. countless times.
• In yet another "nerf to end all nerfs," CCP removed insurance payouts for CONCORDed ships, thereby tripling ship costs for suicide gankers--and that after a previous insurance nerf had already reduced payouts on all ships.
• After gankers adapted to the insurance nerf by using more agile ships to launch multiple strikes before being CONCORDed, CCP quickly moved to declare this "boomerang" tactic a bannable exploit and added instant response warp-jammers.

My point is not simply that there have been a lot of nerfs to highsec PvP. It's that even after all this, the next item on the agenda is yet another round of nerfs. It's the "one more nerf" syndrome. I was there for the wardec nerf on the Privateers. Every carebear was trumpeting this as their salvation. It was the last word on wardecs, they said. But what happened? Over the years, more nerfs to wardecs. Coming down the pike for the next big expansion? They're currently working on another set of major nerfs to wardecs--with the aid and advice of the very same carebears who do nothing but evade wardecs.

Pirates have been stealing from cargo containers forever, and you would think there's no way to break any new ground on the topic. But somehow a new nerf to can-flipping made it to the top of the list of "features" being planned for the next expansion. How? Who asked for that?

And the insurance nerf, of course. Just a few months ago, the miners were telling everyone who would listen that it was the end of suicide ganking. I heard it directly from miners in local who gloated about the new present they were being given. I mocked the miners' arrogance in the first manifesto for that very reason. They predicted total safety for carebears, and I predicted more ganking. I was right. But what happened next? Because gankings still occurred, carebears begged CCP for "one more nerf," to eliminate boomerang gankers.

Were the highsec miners satisfied with the elimination of boomerang gankers? No. Within days after boomeranging was declared an exploit, the carebears were back at it, begging for hitpoint buffs to their exhumers.

Is it over? Not by a long shot. The carebears got their "one more nerf" many times over, but you can bet another series of nerfs to suicide gankings is in the works, even as we speak. Judging by this pattern, what can we predict for the future? My guess is, the nerfs will continue to pile up...until the carebears get what they really want.

Actually, the idea of warping away after a suicide gank had been around for a long time. Occasionally a ganker might warp out to a safe spot to be killed, in the hopes of keeping his wreck from being looted by nearby miners. However, the tactic became far more valuable with the introduction of the smaller ganking ships, as their agility enabled them to align for warp more quickly. Still, these enterprising gankers had to refine the technique, discover which rigs/modules were best for the tactic--and they had to execute the technique with perfect timing to pull it off.

It was a classic case of skilled, creative players in the EVE sandbox doing what they do best. They had been handed a lemon with the insurance nerf, but they were determined to make the best of things. They adapted and overcame. It's the way EVE is supposed to work. The carebears, too, could have innovated. It would have been a simple matter to equip mining ships with a warp disruptor to prevent the boomerang warp-outs. Perhaps the gankers would have figured out some way to adapt again, but I suppose we'll never know, because that's not what the carebears did. Instead, the carebears figured out something new was happening, so they shrieked at CCP to save them. Because that's what carebears do.

At that point, CCP had a choice. They could have declined to implement another nerf. They could have advised the carebears to find some way of dealing with their new problem. They could have reminded the carebears that only a couple months earlier they had given them a big Christmas present with the insurance nerf. CCP could and should have done any of those things. Instead, CCP decided to overturn a longstanding rule--almost as old as CONCORD itself--and announced that warping away before CONCORD arrives is an exploit no matter what.

I don't want to get too focused on this particular nerf, but there are a few things about the way CCP handled this situation that bear mentioning, because they are so revealing of the thought process at work. First is the speed with which CCP took action. Once they learned what was happening, CCP was practically tripping over itself to put a stop to the boomerang. Not only did they immediately declare it an exploit, they had a brand-new "fix" for it in a patch within a couple days. The anti-boomerang patch has to be in some kind of record book for CCP's fastest response time ever. By way of comparison, it took them most of a decade to add implants to pod killmails, and that's something a lot of people had been asking about for a very, very long time.

The final thing I want to point out about the way the boomerang situation was handled is this: CCP called the tactic an outright exploit. They didn't admit that they were changing the rules or implementing a new nerf. Instead, they behaved as though warping out before CONCORD's arrival had always been against the rules. In doing so, they cast the people who developed and used the tactic in a negative light--one normally reserved for cheaters (e.g., Band of Brothers). Suicide gankers oppose the carebears, but they love EVE. CCP was wrong to treat them this way.

Why did the situation unfold in this manner? Classifying the boomerang tactic as an exploit enabled them to implement a new nerf without needing to pair it with a new buff. Clearly, the expansion with the insurance nerf and new ships was intended to have the net effect of limiting suicide ganking. When the opposite occurred, it rankled the powers that be. That's why CCP was so quick to put an end to the boomerang tactic. While it's possible that some in CCP could have been under the mistaken impression that boomeranging was against preexisting rules, it's unlikely: The speed with which they acted and designed the "fix" would have involved enough personnel to ensure somebody involved understood the situation. More probably, CCP was frustrated by the fact that their nerfs did not have the desired effect, and were determined to clean up the mess.

The trouble here is that too often, CCP acts as though highsec violence is a problem that they need to solve. PvP is not a problem with the game, it is the game.

If you are still unconvinced of the bias against PvP, consider the following thought experiment: Do you think CCP will ever buff suicide ganking? And I don't mean one of those "buffs" that gets balanced with a nerf, or gets declared an exploit later. I'm talking about an honest-to-goodness, no-nonsense buff. For instance, an expansion in which CONCORD's response time gets slowed down, or the ganker's security status loss is reduced, all without any nerf counterweight. Do you think it will happen? If not, why not? If ganking has been nerfed a dozen times, why isn't it due for a buff--just like anything else that has been nerfed so many times? (That's a hypothetical, since nothing else has been nerfed nearly as often.)

As EVE players, there are certain basic truths by which we live and die. Among these are that you don't fly what you can't afford to lose, that there is no safe space in the EVE galaxy, that everything in EVE is PvP, and so on. We hold these truths to be self-evident, but we also take them for granted. We assume that everyone else who plays EVE agrees with and accepts them. No matter how many ways you can play this game, no matter what country another group of players is from, no matter how different the alliance on the other end of the map may be, no matter how much you may hate the alliance on the other side of the border...everyone agrees with these core values. It's the shared culture of EVE.

It's not surprising that in the face of EVE's incredible diversity, there would still be some shared values. After all, we were all drawn into EVE for similar reasons. You might have discovered EVE after reading the article about the Guiding Hand Social Club's infamous corp infiltration. Or maybe you learned about EVE from one of the articles about the great scams and banking schemes, like the Eve Intergalactic Bank. Perhaps it was a tale from the vast front-lines of the Great War, or The Mittani's spies, or the BoB cheating scandal, or the death of a titan, or some other story about cunning and treachery.

Odds are good that you didn't come to EVE because you heard about how great the PvE is. Imagine the kind of stories people would read about EVE if the carebears got their wish. "In EVE Online, some people mined. They arranged their mining lasers, and then they did something else for several minutes. Sign up for your free 14 day trial now!"

Years ago, even the carebears who wiled away their days in the belts understood that EVE is, and should be, a cutthroat game. Today, that's no longer the case. Over the last few years, a new presence has crept into the EVE community. Their ideology is so utterly foreign to our own that it defies belief. It wasn't until these last few months that I was willing to accept the truth of their existence.

The "new" carebears don't want even the remove possibility of PvP to exist in highsec. They want to ban suicide ganking, can-flipping, corp infiltration, wardecs, all of it. I know this because they told me. In fact, they've become rather open about it, if you ask them. In years past, the carebears at least claimed to believe there should be some violence in highsec, though they wanted to limit it. Now they're calling for an outright ban to anything that disturbs their AFK little mining ships.

If you don't believe me--and until recently I wouldn't have believed it myself--then simply go to a chatty highsec mining system and ask them yourself. Miners told me the insurance nerf would end the suicide gankings, and they were terribly wrong, but they're still just as confident that things will change in their favor. Now the conventional wisdom among these carebears is that the Sony tie-in with Dust 514 will result in Sony pressuring CCP to end non-consensual PvP. It's also popular in these circles to claim that after the unpleasantness with The Mittani at Fanfest, CCP will finally classify non-consensual PvP as "cyber-bullying."

You may think I'm joking or exaggerating. I wish I were, but I'm not. Just last week, after killing some highsec miners and informing them of my protection fee, I got petitioned. The miner told me that the GM explained to him that ransoms and protection schemes are not against the EULA. That's right, ladies and gentlemen. There are highsec miners out there right now who need to be told piracy is allowed in EVE. When you shoot them, they petition to ban you for griefing. That's the new carebear. I'm sorry to say that they do exist.

...And they're everywhere.

Like it or not, these are the kind of people with whom CCP interacts on a daily basis. Who do you think is sending in all the petitions the GMs have to read? It's not the nullsec alliances who lose their fleet or territory in a war, it's the carebear who doesn't understand why his ship is allowed to go boom. This necessarily warps the perspective of the people who run the game. That's why they think what the players really want from the next expansion is another round of nerfs to PvP.

To be sure, there are still some carebears who claim e-honour and dress up their whining with a facade of EVE-ness. They make their arguments for why the hulk and mackinaw ships need to be buffed. At the end of the day, it all boils down to, "Another ship shouldn't be able to blow up my ship. Even if I'm alone, defenseless, un-tanked, and AFK."

That kind of carebear has been around for a long time, but the new carebears don't even bother with the pretense. They call for an outright ban of hostile activity. And there are thousands of them lobbying CCP each and every day.

Evading wardecs has become part of the popular culture among highsec miners today. Years ago, it was considered a humiliation, something even most carebears were too proud to do. Sure, they might stay docked up for a week, but abandoning their corp was considered undignified. Dissolving and re-forming the same corp would get you banned. Things are different now. In this Manifesto II, I have been attempting to raise awareness of how "new" carebears view things in a manner unfamiliar to most of us in EVE. As I went about highsec wardec'ing the carebears, I was surprised by how often the "description" label of the corp, or even the bio of the pilots themselves, would proclaim their willingness to evade wardecs. One miner corp's description even said that the corp was "founded on the principle" that highsec should not have PvP, and warned would-be wardec'ers that the corp would dissolve. Some might suppose that they were all bluffing in order to discourage wardecs. In my experience, they were simply being honest.

Finally, some miners couldn't be bothered to alter their routines, and they went out into the belts to mine as usual. I don't know what they were thinking. Maybe they were so used to years of peaceful mining in highsec that they didn't believe they could be attacked. If so, they were mistaken.

After scouting a miner corp with an alt, I sent their bookmarked locations to my main, who joined the appropriate war corp if he wasn't already a member. Then my main went to the target system and did what every good EVE pilot does to war targets. My ship of choice was the Ishtar, a drone-wielding heavy assault cruiser. I chose the Ishtar for a couple of reasons. First, I could stuff the midslots with a bunch of warp disruptors and tackle as many of the Orca's mackinaw/hulk alts as possible. Second, the Ishtar's drones allow for a decent amount of DPS while leaving the highslots free for something special that I'll explain later.

I soon discovered the real reason why many of these miners chose to continue mining, defenseless, during an active wardec. They used bots and/or proximity alerts that enabled them to immediately warp back to a station if a war target entered local. At first, I was puzzled by their ability to react so quickly. I was able to eliminate the possibility they were using watchlists--my main joined the warring corp shortly before entering the system. Nor were they scouting the gates, since there were usually multiple gates, no one present at them, and/or all of their corp members accounted for in the belt during the initial scouting. And it couldn't have been that they were merely monitoring local for people with the war target tag, since the systems often had as many as 100-200 pilots. Yet some miners were able to immediately initiate warp from the moment I entered the system. The conclusion was obvious: Highsec miners were using cheats to protect themselves during wardecs.

It's another fitting demonstration of the hypocrisy of the carebears. They defend themselves using the "sandbox" excuse, all while trying to get the rules changed so other people can't do what they want. Having successfully lobbied CCP to bend the rules in their favor, they're still not satisfied. They'll use any bot, cheat, or exploit that they can get their hands on, breaking the very rules over which they exert so much influence.

They only had one problem. Orcas take a long, long time to align for warp.

After I realized the miners were cheating, I did everything possible to shorten the time between my entry into the system and my arrival at the target. You see, while mackinaws and hulks could easily get to warp in time, Orcas take 40-50 seconds to align, depending on skills. So by the time their cheats had warned them--or in the case of bots, simply initiated warp on their own--the clock was ticking, and I was hurtling toward the Orca. If you're familiar with a ship type, you can tell by its speed whether it's almost done aligning. On more than one occasion, I came out of warp and tackled an Orca the very moment before he was able to escape.

And when I tackled these cheaters in their Orcas, do you think I showed them any mercy?

I began with the assumption that the conventional wisdom about unkillable pods in highsec was wrong. I had no factual basis for this; I simply wanted to believe that I could smash the Orca pilots' implants. I took a close look at a video I made back in 2007 in which I smartbombed a bunch of Band of Brothers ships to death. I usually killed their pods, but that was because I was operating in nullsec with a bubble. From the video, I knew it was possible to activate smartbombs too soon: If you activate 7 large smartbombs within range of a shuttle, the first couple bombs will kill the shuttle, but the subsequent bombs will not kill the pod. Thus, there is some time during which the ship is dead, but the pod doesn't yet exist to be hit.

Going frame by frame through the old video, I saw that the destruction of a ship and the emergence of a pod takes place in several steps. First, the locked target pop-up window (showing the hitpoints of the ship) disappears. Next, the overview shows the ship listed as the ship type, rather than the name of the pilot. This is when the ship is deemed to be empty, but not yet a wreck. Afterward, the pilot's pod appears on the overview along with the empty ship. Finally, the ship disappears from the overview and become a wreck.

I determined that pods become vulnerable when they first appear alongside the dead ship. At the next opportunity, I fired smartbombs the instant I saw an Orca's pod emerge. The bombs glowed green while the pod was still on the overview, but then the pod casually warped off, unharmed. Perhaps the conventional wisdom was correct.

It was the power of lag. I found it easy to see why people couldn't lock pods: By the time you are allowed to try locking them client-side, they're already in warp server-side. But unlike locking a ship--and like pressing the "warp" button--it's possible to fire smartbombs whenever you want. I decided to try using the smartbombs at the earliest visual indicator that the ship was dead: The disappearance of the locked target pop-up window. The pod would not be vulnerable--it would not even be on the overview yet--but with lag, maybe the timing would work itself out.

A few days later, an Orca pilot gathered his exhumer crew and went to work abusing a highsec belt. In doing so, he unwittingly presented himself to me as a test subject. As the Orca's structure ticked down, the furious pilot logged off, guaranteeing his pod's safety. Normally I would have been annoyed, but I recognized that if I succeeded in killing his pod anyway, the results would be incontrovertible. Otherwise a podkill could be the result of a slow pilot who didn't properly use the "mash warp" technique.

As soon as the locked target window disappeared, I jammed my fingers on the F-keys. After the briefest pause, my smartbombs glowed green, seemingly at the very moment the pod appeared on the overview. Then the pod dimmed, like ships do when they warp off grid. But the pod's speed didn't change. I looked for it, and there it was.

A corpse.

Pods do have lag on their side. And it's true, they have an align time of zero, sending them immediately to warp if the pilot does things right. But as it turns out, they also take a second--perhaps a fraction of a second--to actually warp away. If the smartbomber times it right, he can fire his bombs during that incredibly small window of time and vaporize the contents of a highsec miner's pod.

From that point forward, an Orca pilot's chance of escaping with his pod intact went from about 100% down to about 0%.

Killing the pods changed everything. The ships were expensive; the pods were often much more expensive. There were Orca pilots with well over a billion isk worth of implants. Even implants in their exhumer alts' pods contained absurdly expensive stuff.

In one strike, I killed an Orca, his three mackinaw alts, and all four of their pods. Curious, I went over the killmails and researched the prices on everything to tally up the cost. In a matter of minutes, I had set back the highsec miner over 8 billion isk.

At the heart of the ideological battle between the carebears and the rest of us, is a conflict of visions. There are two completely different visions about the way EVE should be. There is no room for compromise. Maybe you believe there is a middle ground. Through an endless series of nerfs, those favoring PvP (or "grief") have indeed been forced to compromise. But if the carebears were interested in compromise, they would have stopped bleating for nerfs long ago, as they already received more than their fair share of favors. The carebears continue in their efforts--accelerating them, actually--because they are not interested in compromise or middle ground. They, too, understand that you can only have one vision or the other: Either a ship in highsec can be killed, or it can't. As long as the mining ships aren't invincible while AFK, the carebear is not satisfied. Thus, you either have a PvP game, or a pure PvE game.

Some carebears still claim to be moderates, expressing a wish for "more limited" or "balanced" PvP in highsec. That argument may have flown years ago, but since the demand for nerfs has never ended, it's fair to say that they can only have one aim in mind. The "new" carebear, as earlier described, offers no such pretense, openly crying for a guaranteed safety zone.

Therefore, everyone has a choice to make. Either you stand with the carebear vision of a PvE game, or you support the vision of EVE as it has always been, a PvP game. Which is better?

If EVE has value, it isn't because of its mining interface. EVE is valuable because it is unique: It is the only game with consequential, non-consensual PvP. That means you can blow up someone else's ship and it matters. Destroying or defending assets in EVE makes a difference. The assets have worth because they can be lost.

EVE's success in the video game market has always come from the fact that people can find something in EVE that they can't get anywhere else. Because actions have consequences in EVE, players become motivated. In an intense battle, players on both sides find their hearts racing. When a pirate chases down a hauler carrying expensive loot, both the chaser and the chased experience a surge of adrenaline. In their desire both to build and to destroy, EVE players have gone to great lengths, committing acts of extraordinary courage, deception, creativity, leadership, brutality, and perseverance.

My Orca-flying victims only wanted to be left to play EVE in peace. I contend that they weren't playing EVE in the first place. They may have spent years logged in, but did they ever experience anything? The first time the game evoked a genuine human emotion from the miner is when he saw me kill his ship. When he was spending his years carting around ore, it was not EVE--it was a joke. When I arrived in his ice field, having carefully crafted a way to destroy his supposedly invincible ship, and having painstakingly calculated the means to kill his supposedly unkillable pod--that was the first time he ever played EVE. He would say it was an act of griefing. I would call it a masterpiece. He should be, if not grateful for being killed, at least appreciative of the art.

And what about the carebear's vision? What do carebears want to do in their fantasy EVE, a sterilized PvE game? For the most part, nothing. They wish to be AFK, occupied elsewhere. I must say that for my part, I don't see much financial success for a game where people need to be so disengaged. It's not much better when they are at their keyboards, for the carebear vision of EVE involves logging in, shooting some rocks, hauling them, and logging out. The same thing, day after day, month after month, year after year. Carebears call that "relaxing." Yeah, and I guess coffins are relaxing, too.

On occasion, a carebear requests some distraction from his undead playing style. Incarna was the epitome of this, focused as it was on pants and monocles. Recently, one of the major carebear candidates for CSM was asked point-blank what he would do if he could add anything to EVE. His answer? The ability to take off his pants while in station.

The contrast between the two visions of EVE could not be more clear. On the one hand, you have the "grief" of a game where both victory and defeat are possible. Its culture is represented by the great wars of EVE, the sweeping epics of powerful alliances rising and falling, the grandeur of capital fleets, the sophistication and technical brilliance of trans-galactic logistics, and the striking displays of every aspect of human nature.

On the other hand, you have the carebear vision of a safe EVE. Its culture is represented by the last few weirdos dropping trou in Jita 4-4 before the servers slip into a permanent darkness.

My point, ladies and gentlemen, is that grief, for lack of a better word, is good.

It is not my intention to bring to light a problem without also providing a solution. I'm not here to spread a message of hopelessness. I believe that as serious a threat as the EVE community faces today, we are fully capable of meeting the challenge. I know that we can defeat the carebears, because we have done it before. When the carebears pushed Incarna and drove EVE to the brink of death, the EVE community fought back. As I said, the cancer is only in remission. We haven't much time. We need to move quickly, and with purpose.

If we chose, we could stand idly by and wait in silence for the carebears to destroy EVE. If you want an alternative to that, you've come to the right place. Having made the decision to fight back against the carebears, what weapons and tactics should we employ? All of them.

First thing's first. We cannot win this fight unless the people of EVE realize there is a fight. Most EVE players haven't the slightest idea what the carebears have been up to, and they don't see them as worth thinking about. That's the carebears' greatest strength at the moment. As long as the carebears' efforts to destroy EVE remain invisible, it will be impossible to defeat them. So to begin with, we need to wake people up.

If you've made it this far, you know what the carebears are all about. But your friends and allies don't. Odds are, you have access to a lot of people: Corp members, alliance members, coalition members. Players you do business with or see in local every day, players on forums. Get the word out. Tell them in your own words what's going on, and direct them to this Manifesto II. If you've got access to an outside forum, it wouldn't be a bad idea to copy & paste it, or link the eve-search version; I cannot guarantee this thread will not be censored, deleted, or locked at the carebears' request.

In short, we must make the activities of the carebears famous--not to praise them, but so that we can raise the awareness needed to stop them.

Since the struggle against the highsec miners is primarily an ideological one, we must focus as much on ideas as actions. To survive, EVE must undergo a cultural revolution. Today, the profession of highsec mining is seen as pitiable, but tolerable. This can no longer be the case. We must make highsec mining utterly unacceptable as a practice going forward. The carebears' "sandbox" rationale cannot be allowed to stand any longer. Not while they're busy emptying the sand from the box and trying to ban the very PvP that makes EVE worth playing.

Henceforth, the carebear should be viewed as a corrupting, intolerable influence in EVE. They should be held in the same low regard as furries, bronies, and former BoB members. Ideally, social pressure should persuade miners to change careers, and for new players to avoid taking up the profession altogether.

Carebears use every tool at their disposal to spread their hateful vision of a neutered, PvE-based EVE. We outnumber them, but we must make the effort to combat them. Don't let them dominate forum threads either here or elsewhere. Don't allow CCP to think the carebears represent the playerbase of EVE. If the highsec miners flood the forums whining for "one more nerf" to PvP, then flood the forums right back.

If you have a position of influence in a corp or alliance, it's time to set new rules. Not only should you tell your membership that highsec mining is no longer allowed, you should explain why it's not permitted. To drive home the point, you might want to make the announcement with a demonstration: Schedule a mining op, and when everybody arrives in their mining ships, have them killed.

In the same vein, if you are an ordinary member of a corporation, take advantage of the fact that you are permitted by CONCORD to kill corpmates in highsec. Attend your next corp mining op in a "defense ship" and blast the friendly Orca. Make sure to get the pod, too--you know my methods.

Alliances can do this on an even greater scale. Invite some highsec mining corporations to join your alliance. They may be eager, since this provides them greater protection from wardecs. Once they're on board, crash their mining op with your own miner-killing op. Your op will probably be the more successful one.

There's one final group of players who can do their part to stop the carebears--the highsec miners themselves. If you are a miner, then you need to recognize that what you're doing is incredibly destructive. You need to stop mining and find something else to do in EVE. It could be anything: Scamming, suicide ganking, anything. But you cannot remain a carebear. If you won't stop, someone will be along shortly to make you stop. Did you really think you could go on like this forever, killing EVE? Didn't you think we would eventually find out, and that there would be consequences? The party's over.

As for everyone else, continue to use suicide ganking, wardecs, and corp-infiltration as long as they're still permitted. Find the carebears and kill them. And let everyone in local know the reasons behind your actions.

What is the alternative? Nullsec alliances, when someone enters your territory and attempts to take everything away from you, what is your response? Do you not defend yourselves? Do you not fight back? If possible, do you not kill them so they won't try it again?

Some believe that EVE's transition to a PvE game cannot be stopped. They say that by fighting the miners openly, we only accelerate the process, intensifying the whines of the carebears and triggering more nerfs. I do not believe it, but suppose it's true. If the death of EVE is inevitable, I say let it come now, on our terms. Should we let it be said that we allowed EVE to go down without a fight?

The people of EVE had to fight once before, to save the game from the Band of Brothers. Now we must fight to save it again. Not from tyranny, oppression, or persecution--but from annihilation. We're fighting for the EVE community's right to live, to exist. We can't be consumed by our petty differences any longer. We will be united in our common interests, against our common enemy.

It's not enough to know the truth; you have to act upon it. Some say the EVE community is too divided, diverse, and disinterested to act. I'm not worried. I am confident that each of you will do what is necessary. Once you feed upon the highsec miner's blood and drink of his tears, you will be a changed man or woman. You will never again doubt the righteousness of our cause or the rapture found in its methods.

And even if you are completely focused on your own alliance, your own ships and assets--even if you have never so much as suicide ganked a retriever before--I know that when the day comes, when you log your character into a carebear zoo that a few months before was your favorite PvP game...

...You'll know what to do.



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