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As mentioned, you've reading out of wishful thinking. They never said anything like that. They said EVENTS will be for everyone and EVENTS will not cater to one specifical group. How you got from this to "EVE's going to be fixed" I can't fathom.
(Not that I think it needs being fixed, mind you)


EVE is a lot sturdier, and lot more rotten, than you give it credit to be.

A scandal like T20 would have killed any other game. EVE survived to face several others. But not unscathed.

EVE has been helped by the fact they are in a clean market niche - there's nothing like it, anywhere. There hasn't been for 10 years. Beyond Protocol started with the intent of being an alternative to eve, but it was shortsighted, even more elitist - don't even know if it's still around. The one good thing it did is prompt me to start playing eve.

People are not light-switches. it's not like play/ragequit. Every month we make a decision to pay or not pay for a game. This is related to how much fun we had and how much we look forward to the time we fire up the client. It depends on the relative value that this game has against the "opportunity cost" (all other games, learning to play an instrument, get drunk...).
It relates to our outlook on the time we spend on it - will it mean something? When you get 10 nights of adrenaline and fun in a month, those 15 euros are really a measly amount. Start to feel your time in eve is just wasted, or that it's a pointless grind, then those 15eu start to look a lot more valuable.
So when you've got another space-based game which caters to your playstile, costs less, and isn't riddled by the seasonal shitstorm.... then you're going to spend the money on that.

HTFU is a perfectly fine marketing tool. It worked wonders while EVE was a small niche market catering to those tired of WOW clones. Just like every other marketing lie, you must not believe it yourself though.
The bottom line is I don't need to HTFU. This is a game, and if I don't enjoy it, there's plenty of others.

As I said, proper organisation and doctrine can and will narrow the gap between hi-sec and null in an engagement that is fought within certain parameters under a gentlemen's agreement but, should the power blocs of null be allowed to use all their toys or be forced into a situation where they had to call on their toys to reverse a losing position, high sec would not have a hope. The standard hi-sec guy that would join a public fleet has neither the experience nor the wealth to field what would be needed to roll over an organised null sec fleet. Yes 500 identically fitted talwars is a nasty thing but factor in smart bombing BS, bubbles, bombers, slow cats, capitals, ahacs, logi, ECM and all the rest of it and your public fleet will eventually hit a wall of more experience better organisation and superior assets.

RVB Ganked shows time and again that a public fleet can go into null, have great fun, get tons of kills (including multiple carrier kills recently) and give a great account of themselves but at some point the hammer usually drops and when it drops you get the pod express home but no one cares because great fun is had by all. This is a model that I think works really well and could be adopted by future live events.

Is it possible to have a worldwide news broadcast in some way? Speaking personally, I have never even heard of an event until far after it's been concluded. The in-game channels ("Real Estate") are 99% of the time worthless and thus the average player probably does not use them, even if they are intensely interested in Events.

My thought was to have a way to get the information across. Ideally this would be a "breaking news" article that pops up on your screen with a sound clip, but I understand the practicality of this is not viable. How about some sort of flashy billboard clue(not necessarily a news article like the normal links)? There's a billboard on every stargate... This is one way of getting information out there but not in a way that would attract EVERYONE.

I'm really stuck on the idea of a voice clip of some kind, as a better means to convey an urgency or theme for an Event.

Rewards (even token ones) go a long way toward drawing in participation, and more specifically, intelligent participation(although that could be a group of griefers, too... ;). I agree with keeping [most of] the events in hi-sec so as not to 'lead 600 carebears to the slaughter' as this is just bad PR, but I also like that some are based in Null, as not only are they fundaments of the evolving story but nullbears need some love too. Honestly I'd be quite fine with events being 33% each sec as long as the word could get out there a bit better. There's a ton of us drooling to get a little RP-storyline action.

it's not even that, you give me any kitchen sink fleet and a decent number of logi hulls for its size and I can tell them how to fit each one to fight well in null against a bloc.

high sec has access to everything it needs it's simply a question of how much time the fleet commanders have to educate their pilots as to the situation and what to do - much of my fleet commanding in eve has been centered around either faction war or live events (2010) I'm well versed in the operating condition PUG (pick up group) fleets face and function in.

after the first few instances having had the time to explain consistently to my pilots what I would need of them for the ship class they wanted to use i received it - in the two hours prep time we had i was only able to get the message through (and them have time to fit) to about a third of my ships along with helping to establish command lines and everything else associated with fleets that don't have pre defined resources to use - oddly enough it was this third that made it into RMOC-W (or most of it :P)

(this was a fleet formed out of thin air - such was my level of intent to participate originally that i'd jumped into high sec to a 6Bn isk pod just to see what CCP planned to do, saw the level of player interest and at the request of my friend decided to do what i could to support them. We were all gravely disappointed by the reasoning and effort CCP used/made, we'd have been better off ignoring CCP's presence entirely and just having fun on the gate camp rather than bother to try do what they asked of us - which we can do any day of the week, any pilot with a mind for the circumstances saw what CCP's moves were leading to in terms of their requests and information dispersal, but to endure all of that to see nothing of worth at the end was just insulting.)

Fozzie was FC-ing the Machariels, Foxfour was FC-ing the Vindis, in total over 40 developers volunteered their free time to get involved! I don't disagree that double that would have been great though

Have you considered opening up a new ISD program to enlist a pool of event actors?

For example, instead of directly FCing some Vindis, Foxfour could have instead been supervising 6 or 7 volunteers each FCing their own fleet of Vindis.

Yes, some development time would be needed to get the appropriate tools into the hands of these volunteers, with appropriate limits and logging in place to prevent abuse... But had each of your 40 volunteer devs instructed and monitored just 5 players each, you would have been sitting on a team of 200 event actors instead. The potential gains in unpaid labour would be likely to far outstrip the cost of development.

Also, there is no shortage of writing or roleplaying talent out there in the community. Recruit the right people, and you could start bringing some serious NPC dialogue to these events.

We're not at a place yet where we are looking to start what effectively would be AURORA again. As has been said earlier though, we might look into getting non-IC FCs from the community.

If your running a large event you have to plan it out and spending some time just figuring out where you are assembling and who you are going to attack doest do it because you run into the problems that you encountered; and for that matter you will run into again if you take the cavalier approach that was taken in operation specter.
I’m not being critical of CCP I just want them to be successful, and it would have been enjoyable to take place in the battle regardless of the outcome. As it was getting all worked up for a fight and ending up with a long walk home because everyone left was very dissatisfying. In any event the point is the correct the issues that you encountered and resolve them with the knowledge that you gained and move forward.
In simple terms if you want CCP to run these engagements then it’s important to know what you’re doing and how you’re going to do it and then communicate that effectively to the fleets in the field. First and foremost CCP should be the command center and the
If you’re going to take the time to employ story line and fleet engagements you have to:
1. plan out what the objective is
a. Have a clear idea what you are trying to accomplish in the mission.
b. It’s critical to develop a back out plan, or an option B or C so you have some counter to the changing battle field. Don’t just make plan A and stick with it, you will get your @ss waxed every time because your plan no longer fits the situation.
2. define communication channels
a. Communicate those objectives to the fleet commanders, let them figure out how they will achieve those results, CCP just gives the order to take location A, destroy target B, etc.
b. If you are using CCP and the highest command structure your job is to relay those instructions to FC’s so they can determine the best course of action on the battlefield. The next time you are doing this maybe have interested FC’s email their interest in the event with the number of players that will in their fleet and what they are best at (ECM, BLACK OPS, PvP, etc.) In that way you can determine which staging area they go to and when to incorporate that staging fleet. Even if you are not getting that specific as to actual roles in the fleet you start to get an idea as to how many pilots you have at a stating fleet and assign them so you don’t have a massive overload of pilots in one area that you have to try and effectively communicate with to jump at a specific time.
3. define the resources you will implement in the engagement
a. First off you never create one large fleet and move it en mass. You create divisions to optimize your resources so you can move them and communicate their objectives in an easy and controllable fashion.
b. Create stating fleets (Sarum Prime fleet, Derelik fleet, etc) thus all you have to do is command Sarum Prime fleet jump to A engage at will, Derelil fleet warp to B attack and hold main complex XYZ, etc. These orders could be given to FC of those fleets and thus trickle down to through the fleet via the fleets command structure. Thus more resistance in specified areas could cause other specified staging area fleets to be engaged if resistance is too high or moved to other areas that need the military resources.
4. means/routes of transportation of those resources to the desired targets
a. Multiple staging areas must be used to control the number and size of the fleet. It benefits in better control of the fleet and also allows for the mitigation of time distortion effects due to smaller numbers of fleet members jumping through warp gates.
b. As noted in 3.b breaking the horde into staging fleets would allow for better control on time dilation as you don’t have thousands of players jumping through the same gate at the same time. You spread the load out and thus allow you to move your fleets in a more efficient manner and have better results in them arriving at the location on time.
5. Intelligence
a. Get some intell on where the enemy is so you can start implementing your plan! If they are all gathered in one system, switch to plan C! Use your staging fleets to initiate an attack where they are thin, then bring in your other fleets!
6. Counter intelligence
a. You never come up with one plan and say what you are doing, you come up with multiple plans and air them out so the enemy doesn’t have any idea which one to believe. If you are attacking the point is to spread the defender so that you can optimize your resources and achieve a better result in your attack. You know when and where you are attacking make that your advantage and keep them guessing.
b. Use the multi staging fleets to make the enemy think that’s where you are attacking and bring the real strength when they are either engaged or where they are not.

All in all I like the idea of these CCP operations and would love to see and be a part of more, it adds depth to the story line. Also there are other players in EVE and we all don’t live in the EU, staging events that always takes place at 10am on a weekday in the US or midnight somewhere else is impossible to take part of. Possibly holding other times might be nice rather than everything taking place in the morning, or even having the events on a weekend when it would be more likely that others who aren’t as luc

I hope there are special gates installed that don't require probing.

You really should have opened with that.

It makes a lot more sense now. If most of the CCP guys were tied up flying all the ships on the sites, we can understand why so few were part of the rest of the event.

From a player perspective it looked like 4-5 people were involved maximum.

Next time you just need to remember this isn't just a story, you are limited by your own game mechanics and hardware. Don't ask thousands of people to fly half way across the universe at once. The High Sec guys n girls might have been able to put up a better fight if they had been allowed to fly in their fleets. We had a lot of organised fleets made up of experienced FCs and groups. RvB, incursion fleets etc. Yes we would have died, but there wouldn't have been the rage