EVE General Discussion

EVE players and developers alike tend to praise the game for its emergent social structures and frequently express the hope that EVE as a "social experiment" can help us understand how similar structures came to be in real-life.

With this background in mind, I'd like to raise the question "How come there are no priests in EVE?"
(or if there are "priests", who are they?)

One feature of many real-life societies seems to be the division into a clerical class, a warrior class and a producing class.

And while the warrior class and the producing class are clearly separated in EVE (admittedly more clearly on the character level than on the player level), the metagame has not brought forth anything resembling an actual clerical class from my point of view.

The closest we have come to the development of a priest class is probably some 0.0 alliances that keep political leadership and (tactical) military leadership carefully separated - but even alliance leaders that never log into the game itself lack any association with the sacred (and the authority this creates).

How come we do just fine without priests in EVE (without even noticing their absence) when we apparently can't do entirely without them in our (enlightened, 21st century) real life societies?

What? There are no set careers in EVE. Guys from warrior tribes are traders, people from trading ancestry are soldiers and my background say Mercenary for what that is worth.

If you want to be a priest start preaching, not like they have magical powers or anything, it is a voice and an idea. That is what is great about EVE, your background means less then your goals.

No set classes in EVE.

I have never heard anyone say they hope they could use EVE as a comparison for how RL develops. Usually it's that EVE is where people show their "true colors" or lets people be douches more easily.

As for priests in EVE...

Our Guardians who art in space, hallowed be thy vessel,
thy energy come,
thy remote repair be done, on armor that protects me.
Give us today our daily repair.
Forgive us our damages,
as we also have damaged our enemies.
And lead us not into structure,
but deliver us from the loss of our ship.

Amen.

Priests are for other people. Pod pilots are the gods.
* Immortality. Check.
* Meddling. Check.
* Omniscience, aka local. Check.
* Entire populations doing your bidding (PI, alliances, corps.) Check.
* Wrath of God, aka Orbital Bombardment. Check.
* Too busy doing Important Stuff to be Concerned About Little Timmy's Incurable Illness. Check.

Well sure, they call themselves Gods.... But so did the Goa'uld! >:)

Every corp CEO, diplomat, spy, PR person and general shiptoaster fills the clerical function in EVE. There are more of them than of any of the other two classes, so I'm kind of wondering how you missed them…

Try reading the eve books... Amarr are mad for religion.

Now just create an Amarrian character and roleplay a God botherer.

Oh, OP you need to think more outside the box.

Eve is like medieval times, I agree...you have a warrior class and a producer class....I also agree.

However, the priest class exists in Eve. It is not religious because who needs relgion in a game. If Eve was real, then we would probably see it. However, it is a game.

The 'priest' class exists in Eve just not in a form you recognise. The 'priest' class are the builders of alliances. The diplomats, the making sure the Infrastructure is there for the alliance people. The warrior class may or may not do this much...but there ARE people out there that devote insane amount of time to this.

Yup...the priest class are the logistics people

I think I get the question.

The political meta game is the societal priest caste. Striking deals to avoid the warriors and an exchange of goods to keep the commoners busy.
Unless its high/low sec. Then the game mechanics are the moral leadership in what can and cant be accomplished. There are similar actions to be bartered but not to the scale you are asking about.

It's not clearly defined in the game as it is player content. Not everything in EVE can be represented with spaceships.

what the f*ck? your OP is confusing is hell.

it seems to be predicated on a view of society that might have been prevelant prior to the 20th century. i'll sum things up for you: the priests and religion were proto-scientists. They asked and answered the quetions how did we get here, what are we doing, how do we do it, and why. Science and religion diverge with the introduction of the scientific method. One is grounded in the provable, the other in the currently unprovable, but both concern themselves with how the universe and existence work and how we can work within that framework. In EVE, the scientists (and i don't mean the character role) and priests, the "thinkers" as it were, are all around you.