CSM Campaigns

"DUST is Dead" and "Walking in Stations is Dead" as vote match answers pretty much guarantees you would never get my vote or my support. Not that you need it, from the looks of things. However, it not only demonstrates to me you have no concept of how badly EVE will continue to fail in gaining subscriptions without new content, but your stubborn adherence to "x is dead" indicates you will not be open-minded about the sorts of things CCP will need to work on in an era where space sim competition is becoming more and more prevalent.

I spend about eight hours a day with the DUST community. Very possibly more. I can't support the notion that "DUST is dead", or place any credibility in someone who believes that's the case.

Quite a few candidates are at least open-minded to further integration with DUST 514. WiS support is a bit lighter, but it's there. I'm actually not opposed to voting for anti-WiS and anti-DUST candidates, but there's an incredible amount of communication in calling them "dead" in how open-minded you are to things you may not directly play or want personally. I haven't actually decided my vote ticket, though I'll be consulting expert advice, the vote match against my own beliefs, as well as people's individual candidacy threads.

WiS didn't kill the game. Mismanaged expectations, a horrible macro-transaction pricing scheme, and a very misunderstood internal leak almost killed the game. WiS is something that will be the standard norm for this genre's games in the next two years. If you want to see almost killed become actually killed, elect a CSM that doesn't back WiS.

DUST 514's community is easily a solid 10% of EVE's. Sure, CCP has bungled a large amount of it's handling, but it's there, and it's alive. A lot of them spend more time on the forums than the game, because the community is the part of the game that keeps us there. But with politicans and warriors, scammers and soldiers, DUST players have every single right to the New Eden universe as you do. And while ignoring that community would be okay if EVE's subscribers numbered in the millions, the reality is, it's a sizeable percentage of CCP's customer base. One you've written off as dead outright.

EVE's subscription numbers have been poor of late, at least, in terms of new players. There have been a lot of initiatives to push the creation of new alts, and you've definitely seen that in sub numbers. Given how few new players have joined, I'd actually go so far as to suggest the majority of new EVE players may actually be from DUST. Between the situation that you have to get an EVE account to manage high-level DUST stuff (poor DUST UIs, no API, etc.) and the number of people introduced to New Eden through DUST, I see a lot of people joining EVE because of DUST, even in the state it is now. Some end up as highsec miner pubbies, some I push to PvP academies, and some are just looking to get out and provide orbital support in Molden Heath, but they're there.

In fairness Crasniya, DUST has their own council and Xander is not running for it. The CSM gets essentially an update twice a year at the summits, sessions which are traditionally totally NDA'd and during which the CSM is mainly concerned with any upcoming DUST impact to EVE or CCP's brand generally.

In that capacity I think Xander would do quite well.

PS: given this [past year has had Brave Newbies explode in growth and a general uptick in new player oriented groups I'm not sure where you're getting the idea EVE has unusually poor subscription or new player numbers. Seems to be a pretty good year, or at worst average.

gratz Xander

Congrats Xander!

I'm one of the non-CFC block that had you in the number 1 slot. I know several others that did as well.

That all said - I really hope the NDA ball gag doesn't ruin your podcast or drive you nuts (well, nuttier anyways)...