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I have to call you out on this - your blog does not contain "apologies" (plural). The word "sorry" appears exactly one time, in reference only to the specific issue of many participants not being able to reach the end goal due to the event being ended while they were still stuck in transit. The words apology, apologize, or any other synonyms do not appear in the blog even once.

There was no apology for wasting hours of your players' time.

There was no apology for failing to communicate properly.

There was no apology for leading players blindly into a hot zone, and (either deliberately or through incompetence) getting the vast majority of them slaughtered.

There was no apology for failing to plan properly by reinforcing the correct nodes.

There was no apology for the colossal screw up that the event was as a whole.

Instead, what you have done is a lot of "PR speak.'" By that, I mean that you make a few admissions to mistakes, then downplay the importance of those mistakes, trying to pass them off as if they were almost inevitable or that you could not have forseen them. You then try to emphasize the points you consider to be successes, ignoring how those debatable successes pale in magnitude to the failures. And the whole time, you carefully avoid actually apologizing for much of anything. This kind of response is just an insult to our intelligence, and only serves to further the divide between you and your audience.

You may feel that such apologies do not accomplish anything, but you would be wrong. You would be surprised how much good will a few simple words will get you, if they are given in a believable manner. They show that you actually have some level of respect for your customers. They help to restore faith and trust, and show that you did not intend things to go as badly as they did. They show that you truly acknowledge that you have done something wrong, and that you are committed to improvement. Without an apology, all of the "we could do this better" comments are pretty much meaningless.

The sad part is that you have probably lost the opportunity for a real apology. Since you have already stated that you do not believe they are neccesary or helpful, it will be very difficult to make anything you say sound sincere. At this point, any apology would seem forced and would likely not be believed. Because of this, a little more damage has been done to the dev-player relationship, and both CCP and the playerbase will be poorer for it.

That's what your dislike of apolgies has earned you; I hope you are satisfied with the results.

Get over yourself.

We have a few CCP staff members looking to get Live Events active again, and when they make mistakes you lot just dump on them. The least you could do is accept that part of the problem is the players with unreasonable expectations of what can be accomplished: "we're heading into null sec, but it's okay because we're with CCP and nothing will go wrong"? That's muddle-headed thinking.

There is more need for players to recognise the dangers of lowsec and nullsec than there is for CCP to apologise for leading players into lowsec and null sec.

Did you understand the risks of entering lowsec and null sec?

Do you have previous experience operating in those theatres?

Did you take precautions such as "don't fly what you can't afford to lose", insuring your ship, using a naked clone and having an up-to-date medical clone contract?

Did you pay attention to the actors and read their stories?

Were you able to distinguish between orders from actors and misinformation from gankers?

Many of the lessons that you need to learn will come from the school of hard knocks, and cannot be imparted to you by even the most experienced, best intentioned dungeon master.

20 mins typing and forum ate my post.
Ah well for the best.

Short précis

Thousands of people streamed from hisec to null, admittedly many of us were frozen in time trying, But;-

I believe the numbers trying were estimated at around 3000+

People who expected to lose their ships.
They expected to lose their pods.
They hoped that somehow some would make it through.

And still they accepted the risk.

These people are criticised and dismissed and called carebears.

They went to do and see something awesome.

The loss of these ships and time were worth it, a price worth paying.

Because it proves these people are not, and have never been carebears.

That lie can never be spoken again, without being drowned out by laughter and ridicule.

I've done the nullsec alliance thing and found it tedious and boring. Currently, I live in low sec; I know how to get by there. I take precautions, and I'm fine with losing multiple ships/clones a day if need be.

None of that has any bearing on how badly CCP screwed this up. I'll "get over [my]self" just as soon as CCP devs get over their own stubborn pride, treat their players as paying customers and human beings worthy of some basic respect, and start giving us real responses instead of this half-hearted and sanitized corporate PR crap.

When a CCP dev makes claims that are blatantly untrue, I wiill not hesitate to call them on it. No matter how you spin it, "we could have done better," is not an apology; it is merely a statement that things did not go as well as they could have. An apology requires an admission of wrongdoing, and an intent to set things right. Anything else is hollow and meaningless, and that's exactly what this dev blog amounts to.

Ok please do not shoot me down.

I am not getting where some are thinking there is no apology.
there is a clear apology and regret in the DEV blog and there have been additional apologies in this forum together with extra clarifications. Basically all the concerns I raised have been answered between the two.

I looked at it very closely, sure it contained some in character stuff, but in the FAQ section they made a number of points really clear. The forum posts even went beyond that. Whatever your feelings This would have been cleared with legal, NO business could do otherwise.

I know a sort of letter with all the points raised one by one with the answers next to them would seem very easy but CCP is a business.

There is no way they can bring out all their internal discussions and proposed fixes.It is not pride it is business.

I raised a number of points and demanded answers,they answered others as well, but I only expected them to answer them and promise to take them forward and make things better for the future.

They simply cannot get on their knees and beg for forgiveness, It just cannot happen, no matter how bad some of the people feel both the devs and the players.

They have tried to give a clear idea of what happened, but we really cannot expect the contents of their root cause analysis and their internal actions to correct and prevent.

In terms of an explanation, that is all we can expect to get, and quite honestly better than I expected.

we need to give them encouragement now to get better at things and encourage them to provide fun events.

They did say sorry, telling them it is not a good enough apology, apologize some more is just going to leave you disappointed and dissatisfied and make them regret being this open.

I gave them a really rough ride (and that's the understatement of the century) in these forums and they came through with the answers accepting they made real errors.

As such I believe, they now deserve the right to step back and fix things for the future.

Of course If there are individual issues that cause you concern tell them those clearly there is so much here they may have missed them, If they can answer those they have shown that they will try. But if you ask them about their internal processes and staff relations you will be disappointed.

The problem with this is that the nature of most EVE players makes giving them event tools a terrible, terrible idea.
However, I would also be ready to give out time, ideas and/or advice concerning running events.

The bad event elements could easily have been avoided by having real players to through the script under a NDA in under 5 minutes, really.

There is no shame in asking for help, CCP. The playerbase is the lifeblood of this game and you should play it as a strength.
CCP employees need not be the sole FCs, nor the only writers, actors or coordinators in these live events

Many of us would even be willing to provide our own ink, props and pyrotechnics if need be just to make an oft neglected player class, Roleplayers, and everyone else feel more immersed in the capsuleer experience. EVE shouldn't be just a sandbox, it's a theater of Sahara-shaming proportions!

You don't have to give them event tools. Eve players can learn the lore, plan the events, do a lot of the back story design, perhaps even play as the actors themselves.

Here is a run through of how this could work:
1. CCP would need to provide the direction. An example would be: There are pirate research stations that CONCORD called upon highsec fleets will try to destroy. Those fleets will form in highsec. Pirate fleets and their sympathizers will try to prevent this from happening. Those fleets will form nearby the stations. We want to try to run this event two locations simultaneously.

2. Give the community group goals: Choose the two pirate factions. Choose station locations. Choose highsec/nullsec form up location. Create the actors and their back stories. etc.

3. The community group creates a plan to present to CCP:
Notes: Form up/station/pirate faction: Stacmon, 8V-, Serpentis. Ihal, Hemin, Angel Cartel. (Potential issue: Organized nullsec alliances are currently deployed heavily to Curse Region. Perhaps a Gurrista, Sansha, or Blood Raider location should be chosen)
Event time: 2 hours.
Actors info/roles: (names, back stories, what they will do in the event, if they are played by community team)
1830: Actors arrive in start systems to prepare for live event. Actors are NPC CONCORD and pirate faction actors played by community group members. Fleet forms ups are by ship size. Frig/dessy fleet with frig logi, cruiser/BC/BS fleet with T1 and t2 logi. Do both shield and armor versions. The actors are community group FCs capable of commanding fleets. (Note: Have form up systems at the edge of highsec instead of 8 jumps from lowsec. RF the node.)
1900-1930: Actors begin forming fleets in start systems. Actors post several fleets in local for CONCORD forces to join. Back up FC chain is established. Eve voice is used unless a CCP TS server is available.
1925: Actors pirate fleets arrive at the stations. Fleets consist of X pirate BS with fit Y. Most pirate sympathizers will form their own fleets. Perhaps have a single actor run fleet open to random people who are pirate sympathizers but don't belong to an organized group.
1930: Fleets are fully formed and ready to go. Begin moving to desto. (Issue: Tidi is likely if you go by gate. Workaround: WH, titan bridge, dev hack move. Also, disrupts attempts to gatecamp entrance gates.)
1945: Fleets are in system. RF the node.
1945-2100: Fleets fight.
2100: If station destroyed CONCORD wins (Won't ever happen but still.) If station is still standing Pirates win. More likely as better organized nullsec alliances are more likely to side with pirates. Actors RP in local.

4. 21 days out a plan is presented to CCP. Issues with the plan are fixed and plan is presented again to CCP 14 days out. Additional issues are fixed by 10 days out.

5. Test server run through is executed 7-10 days prior to event. NPC actors played by community group practice roles. Additional issues that pop up are fixed. CCP handles all of the things that need special tools to make happen (spawn the WH, spawn pirate fleets, spawn stations, etc)

6. Live event is executed. Feedback threads are posted. Feedback is collected and respond to. News articles about the events, created by community group, are posted within 24-48 hours after being proofread by CCP.

Now do it all again with a new event. This takes a lot of the pressure off CCP who are frequently busy working on other things. I imagine quality of events goes up and Eve players are more happy with CCP and the community group.

So what we can all take home from this event and this thread is that it's pointless to try to arrange any fun activity to hiseccers. They don't have the capacity to participate in normal EVE Online gameplay, they are have massive entitlement issues and afterwards behave rudely and ungratefully.

We went down to 8V in an organized armor cruiser fleet, dealt with the issues of hisec (some of us are not... welcome in hisec), TiDi and gate camps, in the end the HAC fleet at the event site was too strong for us to engage. It was still a fun trip, we got some opportunity kills on the way and pretty much all of us got back to our bases alive.

it is entirely possible for a high sec based fleet to oppose and overcome a null sec fleet, all that is required is time and the proper information regarding deployment.

we (high sec fleets) cannot oppose months of preparation on just 2 hours with no prior warning as to our engagement zone, with two hours and knowledge most will field a powerful fleet that is poorly suited for the task, those with knowledgeable FC's will field a fleet that is at half standard capable of the task and will stand a fighting chance and at five hours a full fleet could be fielded.

as it was, fleet commanders had approximately 2 hours with no clear engagement context in which to form a fleet and educate its pilots as to the doctrine they would need, organise communications and intel lines - without actually knowing what it is they would need, where they would be operating or who would be there when they arrived.

your comment and suggestion i find insulting to the competence of many of the pilots who made the attempt to lead and fly in the empire fleets during this event, we're more than capable of standing on our own feet without such petty 'training wheels' and in many ways are capable of doing more with far less organisational tools more established entities have - but we are only capable of so much in any length of time with any amount of information.

it is not to a lack of skill or competence but information and time that the empire fleets could not mount significant resistance on the scale asked of them.

in terms of actors, they have no role leading player fleets. Their purpose is simply to provide lore and location for the players to use and nothing else.

Goliath was more likely referring to the fact that they were trying to FC their own pirate actor fleet while playing the role of pirate, if they were referring to trying to FC player fleets for them then I must again express disgust at the mere mention - that is not their job, it falls to us to lead our own fleets not to them - they need to stay the hell away from it and as Goliath said, focus on doing the task they are responsible for performing.

one day i'd like to see people stop believing that the game needs to be played for them.

To be perfectly honest, given the popularity (yes popularity) of live events when they occur, I think you need a bigger team regardless. If you want to be able to keep up with the sheer number of people who want to be part of these things and still provide content, based on the description of what happened with this event, you will need maybe double the number of people you had. However, a lot of those people don't need to be storyline actors, if you could sell some members of other teams to come in and do logistical wrangling or FCing or launching enemy attacks and things like that...I bet you Dolan and Fozzie would be down for it.