Sunday, May 13, 2012

Yeah, Eve is just a game . .

     Contrary to the thoughts of the minority of any MMO playerbase, it's only a small percentage of players that bother looking outside the game itself for news and information about a game.  An even smaller portion of that minority is actually interested in doing more than just lurking, in other words posting.  I wonder what the numbers stack up like for the like even smaller portion of the "active" minority, that further go on and do things like blogs, articles, videos, etc?

     At any rate, the small minds of the minority seem to always be so amazed that some player they run across, in-game, isn't aware that some event is going on.  Obviously, the vast majority have something that the self proclaimed "hard core", or the "informed", don't have.  A life and/or they are new players and have more than enough on their hands learning all the little nooks and crannies of the Eve interface let alone worrying about finding all the different fora where all the little external community sheep like to congregate.  Quite likely, also a clue about more important things, and probably a little something called "moderation".  For those lacking real social skills or even a little life experience, their world consists of electrons lined up in convenient patterns in side computers, and they are short sighted and narrow minded enough to assume that every one is as cloistered as they are.  That's not to say that all fora members, bloggers, pod casters, etc, are vapid electronic game junkies, but many fora, and most posts add little to enhance anything except a post count.

     Whilst I'm out and about, if the conversation goes that way, or right now, for example, with the goon-derps rampaging for a month, I make sure I pose a friendly question to the asteroid belt neighbors as to whether they know about hulkageddon or not.  I'm not surprised that they don't know nor do I assume they are dullards.  It's just a game, and in time, like me, they'll likely find that most community and fora posts are little more than white noise generated be little herdlets trying hard to fit and be cool with their TLDR/hurr-durr/HTFU/pubbie parroting.

2 comments:

  1. Your argument falls down to one simple point. If I want to pilot a Hulk to earn ISK I need to dedicate significant time to the game. I need to grind the ISK (300-350m ISK atm) and I need to put the time into investigating the correct skills to be learned in the correct order. I need to understand where to mine, I probably need to find a corp to mine with and I need to understand what mining is about.

    Xander
    www.crossingzebras.com

    Simply put, there is a HUGE amount of personal time investment that needs to be put into flying a Hulk in EVE over a number of months. Investing a proportionally tiny amount of time into protecting that initial investment doesn't strike me as being 'hardcore' or 'informed'. It is simple common sense.

    As an alternate example, if I spend billions of ISK on a ratting Vindicator, I sure as hell am going to do a little invesitgation before I blindly fly it solo into Ammamake (PL HQ) or whatever.

    It's not even as if these people need to go out of game for this intel. Are you telling me people who spend huge amounts of time getting into a Hulk can't even join some of the public mining channels where intel on Hulkageddon is a 24/7 thing atm?

    It may just be a game but it's a game with consequences which can be very easily avoided in the case of Hulkageddon. If people think they can just sit in-game, avoid the multitude of intel channels available to them and be ok, they deserve to have their ships killed.

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  2. Hmm. If by most people I'm left to assume most highsec people. (The one's that aren't nullsec alts at least.) They are ignorant of the larger game for sure, but that ignorance bears a price in the long run. If they haven't figured it out yet, they will, hopefully not by staring at the wreck of their favorite Exhumer.

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