Internal Revenue Service Now Offering Tax Deductions on Eve Losses

In a shocking move that had stocks rocketing to a new record precipice, the United States Internal Revenue Service announced today that the federal government will now accept tax deductions on losses incurred while running corporations inside the virtual universe of Eve Online.

Cheers would have been heard throughout all of nullsec at the announcement, but alas, in space no one can hear you scream, so you’ll just have to take my word for it that people were very happy.

“When I heard the leader of the TEST alliance was black, I just had to help”, proclaimed United States president Barack Obama at a press conference in the White House rose garden, “being the first and only brother to run America, I felt bad for Boodabooda’s troubles as CEO.  Being the only powerful black man in an entire galaxy can be very challenging, and I can definitely relate.”

The bean counters in the economic division have been crunching the numbers, and have concluded that they don’t have nearly enough beans to calculate how much money alliances such as TEST and CFC will receive in refunds next April for the fiscal year of 2013, so they just made up some numbers instead:

·         According to our calculations TEST has lost, (and can write-off up to) nearly eleven trillion dollars in financial losses for the year, and will receive two hundreds solar systems of real space as compensation. Goonswarm have complained to the CSM concerning the sovereignty mechanics these systems will use, but CCP say it is out of their control.

·         Pandemic Legion will be reimbursed for their Revenant loss by receiving the decommissioned Soviet military nuclear supercarrier Ulyanovsk, complete with fighter jets and a full complement of three thousand meth-addicted Russian Eve players.

·         Black Legion is the only alliance that will still have to pay taxes this year, being that they have lost literally nothing, and have taken everyone else’s shit.

·         CFC, who have posted the most significant loss of the year so far, eleventy-quadrillion dollars, will be owed so much money that The Mittani will be elected Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank and given his own printing press to devalue everyone’s currency, and fun, around him.

And these losses just don’t cover giant alliances – even you can get a piece of the action. 

Starting October 24^th, American taxpayers can download or request form EVE544-B, and itemize losses incurred while playing Eve Online during the year of 2013.  Depending on the going rate for PLEX, taxpayers will calculate their returns by dividing their losses by the cost of a single PLEX. 

For example, if your Amarr Providence freighter was suicide ganked in hi-sec, you would take the value of the ship, approximately 1.4 billion isk, and divide it by the average price of a 30-Day Pilot’s License Extension (520 million), and then convert the result to a dollar amount.  Your return would look something like this:

1,400,000,000.00 (Providence)/520,000,000.00 (average PLEX cost)

 = 2.69 (PLEX) * $17.00 (cost) = 34 + 11.73 =

$45.73 that you can deduct on next year’s tax return! 

So the next time you are besieged in a station in low sec, don’t be afraid or hesitant to take that shiny new T3 Tengu out for a ride on the town.  Even if you get blown up, you’ll be saving yourself, and your country money!  In fact, you’ll be a downright red-blooded, eagle hugging American taxpaying patriot.

 BoB bless the U.S.!

6VDT-H Battle Report

6VDT-H recently hosted the largest battle in Eve's 10 year history, with the CFC and N3ST forces fighting over the station that was home to Test for two years. The CFC dealt what appears to be the death blow to Fountain, expanding their vast empire and their revenue as they gain control of one of the richest regions in the game.

The battle was centred around the station, which came out of shield reinforcement at 19:44, the CFC armies were in system around an hour before this time. Their flotilla was composed of seven Baltec fleets, one AHAC fleet, one Fuckyou fleet and two bomber wings, with around 2000 people surrounding the station. Test only bridged into the system minutes before the timer expired. A Test line member told me "the FCs thought the station would come out at 20:44, it was only when they watched the CFC forces on Madani's twitch channel that they realised they were wrong. An All Hands on Dick ping was sent out to bridging titans, and they managed to log on in time to send the fleet in."

Many of the CFC ships were equipped with warp scramblers to prevent the station from escaping. One goon newbro told me "after the station came out of reinforce, we were told there was a very real danger that they station could warp away. We'd been ordered by some guy with a loud dog to stop the station from retreating."

Over the next few minutes, Test fleets slowly trickled onto the station grid. The Admiral Squad, Test's squad/SiG for people who like making money, took the opportunity to run some Serpentis sites. One member proudly told me he made 5mil isk in half an hour, then proceeded to criticise CCP for the TiDi that had prevented him from making 100mil isk an hour. Finally the Admiral Squad's Nagas trundled onto the field.

The CFC's bombers were under the command on Kcolor and Dabigredboat. Dabigredboat was streaming the fight on themittani.com's twitch stream, and appeared to be extremely enthusiastic about his slightly miscoordinated bombing runs. He encouraged fleet members to 'throw bombs over there' and 'throw a bomb at that bunch of pods'. During the battle, I asked him how many R64 moons he had been promised for leading the fleet, he replied "5, 5 I think". There was also some feeling among members of the CFC bombing wing that Test had paid for their fleet using RMT. A bomber who boasted 15 Prophecy kills told me "Test are completely broke, so they can't have paid for this fleet by themselves. They're even too poor to afford Rokhs now, so they have to use battlecruisers instead. I fucking hate poor alliances."

During the middle of the battle a small group of BNI salvagers attempted to enter the system and steal modules from wrecks as well as salvage them. Unfortunately, they were killed before they could enter the system. As the battle continued to grind on, the CFC brought 200 Dreadnoughts into the system, and although they came late they still had a huge impact on the battle. Test FCs ordered their pilots to stay on field, the they disregarded the order and fled the station grid. BoodaBooda managed to rally the troops around by threatening to kick any members that left the system, and led 200 more ships to their death, killing a CFC Naglfar. They claimed it was an op success and were podkilled home.

Many CFC participants still had their ships and were bridged home, but this was interrupted when a jumping Titan was pushed out of an insecure POS and killed by NC. supercapitals. The titan pilot, who belonged to Li3, claimed that his alliance was competing with FCON for the prize of losing the most titans.

After the smoke had cleared, Test have decided they didn't want that system anyway and are now preparing to defend Delve. The CFC have tauntingly said that the money from R64s in Delve will be used to give a PLEX a day to the newbro who asks the cutest question. BoodaBooda replied with another poor quality Lord of the Rings quote.

Most non-CFC members of the Eve galaxy have not taken the news of the expanding Goonswarm empire well. One perhaps slightly misinformed Highsec miner told me "now GEWN will try to conquer highsec, but GEWN cannot conquer highsec because it is already own! CCCP should add new mecahnic to ban GEWN from highsec because they do not belong and they only make other player sad!" One philosophical lowsec pilot named Gorski Car suggested that SOLAR were all CFC alts, and that they invaded the east to deliberately distract N3 from the war.

"The only thing known for certain is that the unstoppable Goon warmachine is now in motion and it cannot be stopped! Unless every single alliance and player in Eve unites against The Mittani everyone is doomed to WoW!" - Riverini, EN24 article on the battle

Several Corps Abandon Test and Join Brave Collective

Due to the loss of 24 systems last week and the internal strife that has been afflicting Test, several corps, including Di-Tron Heavy Industries and Enlightened Industries have either been kicked from or left Test. Statements from four of the five exiled corps announced that they would be joining the Brave Collective, an alliance mainly composed of Brave Newbies Inc.

The CEO of Di-Tron Heavy Industries said "No one seems to care about Fountain any more, no one bothers shooting those fucking bees. We've tried to participate in the war, but we're completely unsupported. With Beffah stepping down from mildir and someone stealing enough stuff to completely bankrupt us again, Test is completely fucked and fuck them. Fuckers." There certainly have been a multitude of alarming events that have struck Test this week. Without N3's support, Goonswarm Federation have managed to take hold of 24 systems this week, and are now attacking 6VDT-H (also known as Jerusalem), the capital of Fountain.

They were also shaken by Beffah's departure from Test, who accused BoodaBooda of betraying her by replacing her with a new military director. In the controversial forum thread, someone jestingly commented "Kick ENL-I", which is often thrown around by members of Test. It seems that a director in Upvote, the holding corporation for Test, took this comment seriously and proceeded to give them the boot from the alliance. Once the director realised his mistake, he tried to rectify it by inviting them back to the alliance, but the damage had been done. A couple of bump Stabbers slowly moved an ENL-I bridge titan out of its shields, but no Test members answered the ping to kill it. The Titan logged out two hours later unharmed.

Enlightened Industries, Di-tron Heavy Industries and two other smaller corps have announced they will be joining Brave Collective within the next day. The CEO of Enlightened Industries said "Perhaps it's time we stopped tryharding and actually had fun. Well, we weren't tryharding before, only pretending to, but it's time we stepped out of the closet and admit we don't give any fucks about anything. All of our population that cared about making money in Fountain left when the CFC declared war anyway, so the members that remain are quite content to be completely broke but blow stuff up all day."

Ponywaffe, the one departed corp that did not join the Brave Collective, say they are going to start a guild on WoW because they are 'tried of all the violence in Fountain', and commented "can't we all just be bros and not care about isk?"

Leaked diplomatic logs also indicate that Dreddit, the biggest corporation in Test, may also be leaving the alliance soon. The conversation shows BoodaBooda and Jinli Mei, speaking with Codo Yagari, head of one of the weaker alliances in the ProviBlock; Yulai Federation. The logs show that Dreddit would be allowed to join the alliance if they paid the 1bil joining fee for corps that were KOS to CVA. Unfortunately, it seems they had to postpone the move because they didn't have enough money to pay the fee; according to PacketNinja's estimates it will take around 2 months to raise that sum of money.

200mm Plates Become Popular After ATXI Loss

The opening weekend of the 11th Alliance Tournament saw a lot of action and hundreds of explosions. Those that go onto win the Alliance Tournament become revered and admired in Eve society, and even those who actually compete gain respect amongst its players. One of these competitors, Scrutt5, has become a role model for carebears trying to PVP, and his usage of 200mm Reinforced Steel Plates on a Bhaalgorn has been imitated many times since the match on Saturday.

This new way of thinking has gone down well with members of the incursioning community. Gideon Tyler, executor of a reputable incursioning alliance, recently treated his members to a '200mm roam'. The FC himself was flying a Vindicator with six 200mm Reinforced Steel Plates II, which went down in seconds to three gate camping Tornados. He took the loss relatively well, saying it was in the spirit of the 200mm roam. A bystander named Key Dett commented in local "Damn they need to nerf incursions, you silly fucks have more isk than you know what to do with."

Many people believe that in terms of combat practicality, 200mm plates are far superior to their 1600mm cousins. One EFT warrior told me that although they gave 4000 less armour hitpoints than 1600mm Rolled Tungsten plates, they have less mass and therefore make the ship go faster. He commented that with a microwarpdrive running the difference in speed would be a massive 7m/s, which to an EFT warrior makes a world of difference. They also take up less powergrid, meaning that it is easier to fit a full rack of them to a ship, as some people have been doing.

There were other inspiring losses in the first round of matches, such as the Goonswarm Federation Incursus with but two blasters and nothing else equipped. Allegedly said frigate also had no ammo, was was restricted to trying to stay alive for as long as possible. It looked like this fit had been copied straight from Brave Newbies' doctrine, and was in common use before the Tournament rather than after it.

Other popular set-ups included Mildly Sober's battle industrial team. Unlike the other two fits, this one wasn't intentional and was thrown together because they didn't have enough people to field an actual team. This one has caught on particularly well with new players; one miner reported six Badger Mark IIs and four Iteron Vs surrounded his Retriever and tried to execute it, managing to bring it down to half its shields by using five Magnetic Field Stabilisers on each ship.

 This weekend's action has bought about a lot of interesting kills, bringing about new trends that will last until next Tuesday. It's hoped that things will get even more interesting towards the end of the tournament when things begin to heat up and fits get increasingly exotic. We may even start seeing recent innovations such as BattleSkiffs, thanks to their now hugely buffed EHP reservoirs. 

In other Alliance Tournament related news, Test Alliance Please Ignore have internally announced that they will be fielding 12 Blackbirds in their match against Late Night Alliance on Saturday, citing financial difficulties as the reason behind it.

CFC Opens Deklein and Tenal to Renters

Spymaster The Mittani has announced in a State of the Goonion update that the Clusterfuck Coalition will finally be starting a renter programme. Although in the past his alliance and coalition have been hostile to the idea which has been a primary income source to eastern alliances, the change in stance is said to have been bought about by the need for another income source during the Fountain war.

Although the decision was surprising, it is logical given the circumstances. The CFC is invading Fountain to gain Test's R64s following the Technetium nerf that came with Odyssey. However until they can gain control of the moons and start mining them they will not have access to that revenue and it will not be able to support their extensive reimbursement system. Although the CFC has a reasonable source of income in their current moons in the north, it is drastically less than it was prior to the summer, as this graph taken from the K162 blog illustrates.

Even though trillions of isk is stored deep within Goonswarm Federation's obese wallet from those prosperous days, as the Fountain war continues to drag on it will continue to empty. An inside source revealed that the war machine would run dry in October if the war continued at its current pace, which is a somewhat probable event. Things could also get a lot worse for the CFC and they could be pushed back into Cloud Ring, in which case it's likely the war would become even more bloody.

A new renter alliance will be formed, named 'Tiny Bees', and will function in a similar way to alliances such as S2N citizens and the Honey Badger Coalition. Goonswarm seem to be looking to undercut other rental services which charge a base of 3 billion isk per month per system, and will instead charge only 2 billion isk for a system with poor truesec, going up to 4 billion isk for a good truesec system. In total, around 200 systems will be up for rental. The Mittani also hinted that they would offer discounts if renter corporations were active in the Fountain war; although they will not be allowed to join CFC fleets they are highly encouraged to kill 'testicles'.

The space communists of the east have taken the opportunity to point upwards and laugh. One member of a Russian speaking N3 alliance said "Mittani has slurred off socialism to noobs for long time but now he is realise that you can make lot of isk from peasants on farm. Is good idea for him to do, but he will try to double it in Jita and he will get scammed haha))))." Many eastern alliances do indeed heavily lean on their renter programmes because of the lack of valuable moons there. Time will tell whether it will complement the CFC's income to the extent they are hoping it will.

Goonswarm Federation Acquires 10 Enigma Ships

A character in an NPC corporation has fallen victim to a Goonswarm suicide ganking alt. However, this measly untanked Badger was carrying no ordinary cargo. He wasn't even carrying PLEX. He was instead carrying a batch of ten ships that until this gank were only flyable by CCP. The ships and the accompanying skillbooks are estimated to be worth trillions, most of which is likely to go into Goonswarm's wallet.

It was a quiet day along the Dodixe-Jita trade route. The Iteron Mark Vs were merrily going about their business, the Marmitive Collective's numerous gangs were keeping carebears away, and some Mackinaws were hapilly chipping away at some veldspar. But something disturbed this. Vite4ek Birka's untanked Badger jumped into Suroken, and its priceless cargohold was spotted by niqii. Mr. Birka was completely oblivious to the fate that awaited his Badger, as he was autopiloting. It's not quite known how he came to be in possession of the ships in the first place. Although efforts have been made to find out how he did acquire these ships, killmail searches have been fruitless and the man himself speaks too little English to communicate anything.

The Tornado destroyed that Badger in one shot, and niqii's alt was able to scoop the loot without incident. He then logged onto his Goonswarm main, who having been in the organisation for 5 years is quite high ranking, being just short of a director. According to The Mittani's announcement on his site, niqii generously offered to donate 9 Enigmas and 9 skillbooks. He had kept one for person use, and said that the paradoxical conundrum of Polaris requiring Polaris V to train did not hinder him, as it seems to have been listed as a requirement rather than being coded as one.

The leader of Goonswarm went on to say they would be selling Enigmas at 2 trillion isk and the Polaris skillbook at 3 trillion. The price seems to be justified given their rarity and the fact that they are actually relatively powerful ships. CCP have said they will not interfere in the affair for an unknown reason, which could increase the number of prospective buyers who were worried they would be stripped of their purchases. Should all the loot be sold, the CFC will be granted a windfall of 45 trillion isk, which far eclipses the donations received by Test. This will be enough money to reimburse around 25,000 Rokh losses at current rates, but there's no telling whether all the money will be used on payouts in the Fountain war.

This uncertainty has worried many highsec dwellers who are somewhat irrationally bitter to Goonswarm Federation. One veteran miner, who owns 15 accounts, told me about his concern. "I have been mining for 8 years now, and every one of those years the G00Ns have come up with a new way to cheat. Hulkageddon 1, Hulkagedoon 2, Hulkageddon 3, Hulkageddon 4, Hulkageddon 5, Oxytope market cheating, Jita market cheating 1, Jita market cheating 2. Every one of these events I have lost a ship to those dicks despite trying my hardest. By Jita market cheating 2, I actually put an invul on my Iteron, but they still ganked it! no wonder eve is dying."

BoodaBooda has taken the news better than the residents of highsec. He said "We've had a lot of luck thanks to CCP in the past, so the CFC deserves some luck too. It's just a shame they haven't got it yet. This 'fortunate drop' will only distract them from the war and make them too rich to care about fighting. Meanwhile it will motivate the average infuriated Test line member to show up to more fleets. This will be the turning point in the war.

Although The Mittani himself did not mention what they would be spending the isk on, many Goonswarm seniors have been dropping very strong hints they will be burning Highsec. There has also been a strange rise in the price of security tags; one trader said on Twitter their 340 tags had been bought by an hour old alt named "Jimmy Bee". Speculation has suggested the CFC will hire The Retirement Club and Black Legion to deal with the remainder of Delve's defensive force. Commentators have said increasing reimbursements would be a good idea, as well as giving away carriers to every character that can fly one.

For now, Goons seem most interested in filling the forums with smug. It will be a short while before the impact can be seen in space, and how many people it will enrage. The only thing known for certain is that The Mittani has been laughing for the past 98 minutes at the killmail alone.

The Mittani and BoodaBooda to Have 1v1 Duel, Winner Takes Fountain

The iconic leader of the Clusterfuck Coalition and his opposite number have agreed to participate in a duel which will seal the fate of the Fountain war. The one on one fight will take place in RP2-OQ on Sunday 21st July, and is expected to be watched by tens of thousands of players. The winner of this event will take over the region of Fountain, the stakes of a 1v1 duel have never been higher.

Initially suggested as a joke during the early days of the way, the idea gained popularity with Test's directorate after it became clear how protracted the war would be. Although Test's wallet has managed to keep its head above water thanks to donations, it's likely that avenue of funding will soon dry up. With Pizza attacking and destroying R64 moons in Delve and the CFC occupying them in Fountain, it seems unlikely Test will be self-sustainable while the war lasts. It appears that BoodaBooda accepted the idea after realising that the odds were not in Test's favour, hoping to bring the war to a close sooner rather than later.

The CFC had a different reason to accept it. Test does not stand alone in the war- assistance has slowly been pouring in throughout its duration. Major powers such as N3, Pandemic Legion and Northern Coalition. have joined Test in their fight against the CFC, and the recent expiry of their agreement with Black Legion to not attack structures also seems to have been a contributing factor in The Mittani's decision to accept.

The CFC and Test have agreed that should either side fail to honour the agreement, any future diplomatic agreement should be considered forfeit. Thinking of trying to interfere in the fight? Think again. Hundreds Test and CFC bubblers will be working to create a safe arena for the two parties to do battle, which will be around 500km in radius and will consist of hundreds of large bubbles. The ring will be guarded by 50 Tornados from each team, ready to alpha anything that tries to enter the arena.

This is the first time a major nullsec war will be decided in the manner, with the stakes higher than in any other single battle in Eve's history. The entire war will be decided by just one fight, which could last for mere minutes. The fight itself is likely to be watched by thousands of people in person, who ideally will be gathered peacefully around the arena. To ensure fairness, the only people in fleet shall be The Mittani, BoodaBooda and Chribba, who has agreed to referee the match. This will prevent the use of off-grid boosting. Although it's not known what ships will be used to duel, it's expected that only T1 frigates will be used. There will be no fitting restrictions, meaning implants and any modules may be used in the fight.

Battle will commence at 20:00, and if you can't make it to RP2-OQ in person there will be other places where you can watch the most decisive duel in Eve's history. This five minute long engagement will determine the fate of thousands of players and leave an imprint on nullsec politics for years to come.

Eve to be Merged With WoW

Blizzard and CCP have announced a partnership that will involve the merging of Eve, Dust 514, and Bliizard's flagship product World of Warcraft. It appears that although this joint game will be developed by both companies, CCP and Blizzard will not join to become a new corporate entity. The merger is due to take place around December 2013, suiting Eve and WoW's natural expansion cycle.

The mechanics were detailed quite thoroughly on Blizzard's website, and although some of them will not affect either of the games, some of them will completely revolutionise them. Firstly, a new planet will be added in Jita called Azeroth. This is where the WoW characters will be stationed regardless of their level. However, the Jita Azeroth will only contain the highest population realm, with the second largest realm being housed in the Azeroth in the Perimeter system, the third in Urlen, the fourth in Amarr and so on until all realms will have their own version of Azeroth in 983 of Eve's systems. There will also be 983 versions of Outland, but this time the least popular realm will have its Outland in Jita, and so on.

On any one of these 983 versions of Azeroth, a level 90 World of Warcraft character will be able to board a rocket and fly into a station in the planet's orbit. Once there, they will be free to purchase a new space mount using gold. The entirety of the Eve Universe will become the level 90-95 zone that players who wish to grind to the new level cap will visit, with the main areas of space being separated by the level of the new NPCs (more below) that will inhabit them. Empire space will be used by characters who are level 90-91, nullsec by people that are level 92-93, and finally wormhole space is level 94-95.

The WoW characters will be able to fly a spaceship mount (resembling a shuttle) to locations where specific quest givers are. These new quest givers will either be situated in Data Centres that already exist within highsec, or they will be added as agents in space in lowsec, nullsec and wormhole space.

The quests that these agents give will be similar in format to the ones that already exist in WoW, and will feature tasks that involve killing ships, collecting items and going to different places, with gold and experience being rewarded as is the current system now. It seems that PVE will involve attacking several new types of primitive alien species which will attack an unprotected WoW player when they enter an asteroid belt, but will leave Eve players alone. Eve ships won't be able to attack WoW characters directly with weapons, but will be able to ram them to death, or fry them if they get too close to the engines.

The Dust integration comes into play in the PVP aspect of the expansion, where 20v20 teams consisting of both mercs and WoW players will fight on one of Eve's many planets. It's not quite clear how this will be balanced due to WoW players having hundreds of times more health than Dust mercs,  some change would be necessary to prevent an even larger fail cascade of Dust players. At the end of the round, honour points will be given to players which can be redeemed at a station in Rancer. These points can be used to purchase monocules for WoW characters, or traditional WoW equipment for Dust characters.

Eve players will now be able to enter the atmosphere of an Azeroth and shoot people on the planet, regardless of their race or level. Thanks to the speed and power of ships, a handful of frigates will be able to ravage an entire continent. A new 'local channel' will also be added to ensure that the WoW players can communicate their frustration to their space comrades. It has also been speculated that the planet collision models won't be fixed, and players will be able to drive massive ships through a capital city which will kill everyone inside.

The backstory will tell the saga by saying the 983 versions of Azeroth were pulled from a parallel universe, and ended up in the same galaxy. The Eve factions descended onto all of these Azeroths and gave them the knowledge of space flight, allowing them to construct rockets and 'breathe' in space, thus allowing them to move around without a ship. The primitive NPC 'monsters' are said to have followed their low-IQ prey to New Eden by utilising portals developed by tracing the scent of the character's locations. Although Eve's NPC factions are amicable towards the WoW world due to its cuteness, capsuleers do not feel the same way and Concord allows them to persecute them at their will.

Thanks to the relatively low impact on the Eve universe and the opportunities it offers Eve players, some capsuleers are in favour of the move. One said "I can't wait to find some WoW fucks ratting in belts, I'm going to stick my Phantasm's spikes so far up their arse they'll be permadeathed." Another commented "Can't wait to see those inbred bastards whine about being dragged from Stormwind to the centre of the planet by a Leviathan."

Dust players generally agreed that if the stats stayed the same- and they most likely will- they would get one-shotted by every single character, and the game would be dominated by WoW players. It looks like the new battlegrounds will only be a change in scenery for WoW players, despite having the same mechanics as Dust matches do now. The WoW members themselves say they're looking forward to the next expansion as much as any other one, and they can't wait to throw their money at Blizzard even if they don't have a reason to do so.

CCP Adds New PLEX Hold to Industrials

In the wake of an increased number of incidents involving players hauling PLEX around highsec and even lowsec, CCP have annouced that they will be adding a dedicated bay to all T1 and T2 industrials which will only accept PLEX. The hold will be 5m³ in size, allowing for 500 PLEXes to be carried at a time.

The mechanics of this new bay will be slightly different to cargoholds and other speciality bays. The key difference between them is the drop mechanics when the ship is destroyed. Regular drop mechanics dictate that a stack of items or module will have around a 50% chance of living on in the wreck of the ship after death. However with PLEXes in the PLEX bay, this figure is just 10%, meaning that only 1 in 10 stacks of PLEX will live on after their host's destruction.

This news has been greeted warmly by many highsec haulers who wish to ferry PLEX around the Eve universe. Most of them firmly believe that now their precious cargo has less of a chance of dropping, gankers will find it less attractive to gank them and therefore they will be more safe than they would be when carrying nothing. Skeptics of the move do not share this view and would still term anyone who carries PLEX a dumbfuck.

However it has produced a mixed reaction from the highsec ganking community. Some of them are worried that they will now see their income margins slashed when ganking haulers, as there will now have to be a minimum of 2 PLEX in a ship for it to be worth suiciding their Tornados. On the other hand, many more people are likely to be brave enough to carry multiple PLEX around with them, and it should therefore more likely that a PLEX carrying ship will be encountered. We asked one experienced Industrial killer to sum the change up for us. He said "Ever since I've been ganking in 2009, PLEX carrying incidents have been on the rise. Back when I started, PLEX kills only came at a rate of 50 regular ganks, similar to the rate of faction rat spawns in asteroid belts, but today every tenth hauler I scan has got at least one PLEX in it. If we had let this continue at its natural rate, within a couple of years PLEX would be as common in Iterons as ammo is in ships, but CCP had to go and ruin it for everyone."

Of course the biggest winner in this is CCP. Every time a PLEX is lost in space, it can't be redeemed for a subscription and therefore they profit. This kill alone allowed them to rake in thousands of real life Icelandic Kronas, and the annual figure from lost PLEX is probably enough to pay an employees salary. Some players have speculated that CCP have purely done this to pay several employees they have recently hired. One of these tinfoil speculators told me "Every time someone undocks PLEX from Jita, an alarm goes off at CCP HQ, and CCP generate a Tornado character(s) to gank the PLEXer. Then they shoot the wreck to make sure noone gets the PLEX."

CCP Minchip has also hinted on the official Dust forums that the Dust 514 team are working on implementing the ability to transfer PLEX from Eve characters to Dust characters. She said 1 PLEX would be able to be equipped in a soldier's midslot, and although it would not serve any practical function it would be visually noticeable to other characters as a 'badge' on the wearer's head. She also included a helpful image of what this would look like. Upon the character's first death in a game, the PLEX will be destroyed and no longer visible to other players.

Wardeced Corp Station Camped for 11 Months

Tritanium Industries [TRT.I] recently celebrated 11 months of being camped into a station by wardecers. The entirety of the corp had been stationed in camped into the Veisto V - Caldari Steel Factory station since 12/08/13, when the war against Activated Artilleries [AAART] went live.

TRT.I was founded in 2008 by a small group of veterans who had been playing since 2004. Although they have now been playing the game for 9 years, none of them have ever been to lowsec, and this wardec was their first experience of war. They now have over 97 members, which should give them far more power than AAART, who have but 11 members, however TRI.I have been showing a lack of willingness to engage in the war.

I spoke to their CEO concerning the reasons as to why they had failed to undock for nearly a year. He said "We are but a peaceful mining corp, and when we got the wardec notification I had to make a tough decision. With great regret, I announced to my members that we would have to suspend mining operations indefinitely. At first, they were slightly downbeat about the news, but we found a new way to fight the wardeccers."

What was this secret weapon? Mercenaries? Joining a Nullsec alliance? Faction fitted faction battleships?  Nope. Instead, TRT.I decided to draw inspiration from thousands of wardecced corps before them, and sought to smacktalk their way to victory. On the first night of the war, Veisto local came alive with the abuse of 15 TRT.I members. The valiant members of Activated Artilleries were outnumbered, but weathered the barrage of banter. However, after 3 hours of station games, something went badly wrong.

Flux Weld, a member of defending corp, was playing cowardly docking games on the undock of the Veisto station. Unfortunately for him, the station had a rather narrow docking radius, meaning that if he wasn't careful he could find himself being unable to dock after his 30 second invulnerability timer had expired. As misfortune would have it, this was just the fate that befell his Dramiel. Having previously used his Orca to taunt his attackers, he wasn't prepared for the Frigate's speed and drifted off the station before he knew what was happening.

This terrible event traumatised the corp, and the smacktalk turned to threats. AAART had dealt with their fair share of rage before, and rather than lowering themselves to the miners level they simply countinued the wardec for the next 47 weeks, while gently taunting them in local. 2.56 billion isk later, all the members of AAART can say their investment has been worth it, despite the fact they haven't got a single kill on the corp since that fateful night on the opening day of the wardec. Although to a this may seem perplexing to a confused onlooker, it seems the aggressors have received more than enough payment in tears, which have been leaking out of the Caldari station for 335 consecutive days.

Some people may ask why the members of Tritanium Industries don't simply leave the corp. One of their members explained to us that they have transitioned into being a thriving WoW guild. They say that most of their members have kept up their subscriptions in the past few months so they can alt+tab out of WoW and hurl abuse at their campers. They then say they will sell the characters and real money transfer the isk they get from doing it to pay for new WoW gear.

The prestigious CEO of Activated Artilleries said that he has no plans to drop the war anytime soon, and has set aside 10 billion isk to pay for a decade of war fees. Even if they all stop playing, he says, I will look at the war report and fondly remember our 11 months of fun.

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If you'd like to apply send a sample article to onioneve@gmail.com preferably along with your Eve character name. This article should be around 500-800 words and should be satirous in nature and topic. If you're of high enough quality you shall join the prestigious news agency that is the Eve Onion.

Riverini Scammed by The Mittani

riverini, the well known chief editor and writer of Eve News 24 has been scammed by the leader of the CFC and executive overlord of themittani.com. riverini has posted an article on Eve News 24 detailing the plot with vivid detail. We tried to unbias the article and find out what really happened.

It seems the event started with riverini asking The Mittani to act as a third party broker in a deal involving the purchase of a titan from a Goonswarm Federation pilot. In his own words, riverini said "altough [sic] there has been a lot of bad blood between me and Mittani I decided to give him another chance and let him act as a 3rd party broker. I wasn't to concerned about being scammed because I could easily afford to replace the isk that I would lose."

However, 80 billion isk was not the only thing he would lose on that fateful night. After both the Titan pilot and riverini were in the same system and the isk had been transferred, The Mittani came up with an interesting proposition that was too good to turn down. Also present in the conversation was Mister Vee, the owner of the titan in question.

The Mittani > There is another thing I would like to offer you, as a sign that our friendship has been repaired
riverini > whats that?
The Mittani > If you send me any amount of isk I will double it
riverini > im not that stupid
The Mittani > You can start off with small amounts if you want
riverini > fine, ive sent you 5bil
The Mittani > 10bil isk sent
riverini > oh my god your legit! how much isk do you have?
The Mittani > As much as Goonswarm has, friend
riverini > your so kind! ive sent you 523bil
The Mittani > Are you going to play again?
riverini > no, thats all my isk
The Mittani > If you contract any personal assets you have to me, I will quadruple their value in isk
riverini > okay, give me a second to contract all my incursion ships
riverini > I think theres about 30bil worth of ships their
The Mittani > Death2allisk
Mister Vee > Would you be interested in joining Goonswarm
riverini > well i would but where did mittani go?
riverini > he hasnt scammed me has he
Mister Vee > He's been called to a very important diplomatic meeting, I'm sure he'll be back with your                                      isk soon
riverini > k fine ill join you on my alt
Mister Vee > Then there's only the small matter of the 5 billion isk security deposit
Mister Vee > This is standard procedure and will be returned after 60 days without incident
Mister Vee > We also run a free freighter service to VFK, if you contract me your stuff I'll ensure it arrives there quickly and safely
riverini > ok ive given you 5bil, contracted you my stuff and applied to goonwaffe
Mister Vee > death2allEN24editors
riverini > shitdicks

riverini has clearly been enraged by the event, and in a public statement he said he will continue his life's work of diminishing the good name of The Mittani on the increasingly biased Eve News 24. When asked for a comment, he told me "I havent got time for this fucking fucked fucker anymore, im going to put his stupid website out of business, than once he cant spin anymore news to make a tornado im going to come to VFK with my supporters and pod him."

In total, riverini lost over 600 billion isk, most of which went straight into The Mittani's wallet, and by extension the CFC's war fund. The leader of the coalition has stated that the isk will be put to good use by giving out random gifts of 2 billion isk to new Goons who ask cute questions.

TEST Gains All Sov Thanks to Typo

After a typo from CCP on Thursday caused a battle in Z9PP-H to be cut drastically short, another blunder from our overlords granted Test Alliance Please Ignore sovereignty over all 3294 nullsec systems. The Eve community is still reacting to the shock caused by this event, and to add to the effect CCP have indicated they won't interfere with events and therefore will not return sovereignty to anyone.

It's not quite clear what enabled this to happen, the official statement barely seems plausible. CCP Falcon explained what happened in a stickied thread in the General Discussion subforum. According to his recount, a system in CCP's private constellation was having its sovereignty changed from Jove to CCP as part of a test of sovereignty bills. However, the employee who was doing the transfer was drunk at the time, which caused his finger to slip several times until Test Alliance was auto filled in as being on the receiving end of the move, and all the nullsec systems in Eve were selected as being transferred. This changed the ownership of every active Territorial Claim Unit in the game to Test. Even more controversially CCP will not give the taken sovereignty back to its former owners.

This news has been greeted to a mostly negative reception. Of course there were some winners in this, including Test, Tribal Band (Whom Test have now restored sov to) and riverini. They filled the forum thread that was otherwise full of hatred with their congratulations, gfs and light trolling. BoodaBooda, leader of Test, has said that although his conquest over all of nullsec was completely unfair, it's happened so everyone should HTFU. Fellow Test members have echoed this message, causing many a tear and over 700 pages of comments.

Test are keen to see that their advantage remains for as long as possible, and have allowed many exiled corporations to join them. They include elements from all kinds of background, ranging from Spacemonkey's Alliance to Brothers of Tangra. It's estimated that after the joining period for alliances has elapsed, Test will contain over 30,000 members. BoodaBooda and his directorate have announced the OCCCDHMNPPSTTTTVEC (Organisation of Cadmium, Caesium, Chromium, Cobalt, Dysprosium, Hafnium, Mercury, Neodymium, Platinum, Promethium, Scandium, Technetium, Thulium, Titanium, Tungsten and Vanadium Exporting Corporations) will be fixing T2 prices, which has caused the price of a Buzzard to rise to 500mil isk in speculation. With no logistics and no motivation to refuel POSes, Test is expected to own every moon with moon materials within the next month.

The alliances on the losing side of this vicissitude have already drawn up plans of what to do next. Although they could try to fight Test together, most of them say they'd rather do something else due to the agony involved in grinding over 3000 TCUs and I-Hubs. The CFC, and in particular Goonswarm Federation, have said they will burn Jita until every CFC affiliated alliance ceases to exist. After this announcement was made Jita reached its population cap 9 minutes after downtime ended. Many systems along the Jita-Amarr trade lane have been population capped themselves and thousands of Freighters have descended upon 4-4 to evacuate every asset they have.

N3 will be transitioning into wormhole space, and have laid claim to every Class 6 wormhole. At the present moment they have managed to trap around 12 capitals in Class 5 wormholes that appeared in lowsec, and are said to be confused as to the reason why they collapse after three capitals pass through them.

Pandemic Legion has joined Factional Warfare on the Amarr/Caldari side, and have already pushed both of the factions to T4 control. They have come up with an original idea to thrawt the menace of warp core stabilised site running frigates. Their method involves bridging heavy interdictors to a cloaky cyno ship, then jumping in at least 10 capitals for good measure. Shadoo said that while this is not a very efficient tactic, it is a comical one. "Sometimes we leave the target for a few minutes to bridge in every supercapital we have online, there's nothing funnier than watching 50 titans bumping a Condor. I don't know why we even fought the CFC in the first place, it was nowhere near as hillarious as this."

Members of the Providence block, composed mainly of CVA, Severance and the Yulai Federation, have adapted to this sudden change by playing World of Warcraft. A spokesperson for the new joint guild founded on a PVE server said that "wow is so much more friendly than eve!!! lol! )))))"

Despite the initial shock, Eve seems to be adapting to the change quite well. Despite the hundreds of trillions of isk that has been lost to factors such as baby supercapitals and the contents of POSes, all major organisations have found something else to do and are quite content with doing it.

Eve to Become F2P

CCP announced today that they will be removing subscription fees from Eve Online. Although the CCP team had been deliberating for months over whether Eve should be made Free to Play, and whether it should be made Pay to Win, a decision was finally made after the appointment of Sean Decker, who is a passionate believer in F2P games and pioneered many free EA titles.

The former Electronic Arts executive appeared to be somewhat delusional in the comments he gave the Huffington Post. He said he viewed the world as one 'giant microtransaction'. This is a rather odd view to have on the world, as a transaction involving it would not be micro. Nonetheless, in his first day of work at CCP he was able to convince CCP Hellmar that it was the right move for Eve.

Hellmar then stepped onto the balcony of CCP headquarters Reykjavik to issue the following speech to his staff and perplexed bystanders. "My friends, today it is time for Eve to step on another glorious stepping stone. Me, myself and Sean Decker have decided we know what is best for Eve and Dust. With immediate effect, subscription fees have been abolished, and any existing gametime you have on them will be transferred to Sean Decker's premium account, since he bagsied it. You will now have the option to buy either a Premium Account, an XL Premium Account, or a Super Duper XL Premium Account. Of course, you can still use your crappy standard account if you're poor LOL." With that, Hellmar retreated into his office, the sound of hundreds of cheering CCP employees carried to the centre of Reykjavik.

About an hour later, a dev blog was released by the new 'CCP F2Pmaster". It was brief and to the point, as copy and pasted below.

Hi spacebros!
I'm CCCP's new employee Sean Decker, and I'm here today to talk to you about the changes that are going to affect Eve Online.
Thanks to CCCP Hellmar's willingness to accept that Eve must adapt or die, the game has been adapted to an F2P model. I'm hope you're all as excited about this as we are here at CCCP headquarters in Reykjavik! Every single account in the game is active again, but there are some limitations as to what non-bonuses accounts can do. I'll list every type of account here and the pros and cons of it.

Standard Account

• Can Undock
• Can move
• Can activate modules
• Can use market at 50% tax rate
• Can't warp
• Can't jump

Premium Account ($30/9000 aurum a month)

• Can do everything a subscribed account used to be able to do

XL Premium Account (60$/20000 aurum a month)

• +300% accelerated training rate
• 50mil isk paid per day
• +5 attribute implants redeemable at the start of every billing period
• 500K free skillpoints everyday

Super Duper XL Account (100$/45000 aurum a month)

• +750% accelerated training rate
• +100% to all isk payments
• 150mil isk paid per day
• New +20 attribute implants redeemable at the start of every billing period
• Free Titan of your choice at the start of every billing period
• 2mil free skillpoints everyday

The Eve community have reacted in a predictable manner at the changes. The forums were full of happiness, joy and admiration for CCP F2Pmaster. One happy customer, named 'Anslo', said on the forums "I'm so happy CCP has finally done what we've wanted them to do for years. Now I don't have to buy hundreds of PLEX every month to fund what the scammers and The Mittani drain from me. I've already bought a Super Duper XL Account for the next 5 years, and I love it already! I just doomsdayed a station in lowsec, I've never been in anything so intense before!"

CCP have also considered that they will consider adding a fith tier of account, for those who would like to use ships that previously could only be used by developers, such as the Polaris Inspector Frigate. The comment on the forum received 965 likes, and is likely to be implemented on Sunday.

Sleepers Change Strategy, Occupy Lower Class Wormholes

The NPC race known as the 'sleepers' have abandoned their sites in Class 5 and Class 6 wormholes and appear to have travelled to Class 1 and Class 2 wormholes. The change was first noticed straight after downtime on Sunday. During said downtime a minor patch was deployed that fixed a few visual bugs, however it also seems to have caused the migration of sleepers.

Although there has been less than a day since the migration started, it has already had drastic effects. One C5 resident described their exodus. "I was sitting cloaked scanning on the wormhole and waiting for a flare, when I saw my cloak had been deactivated. I minimised the map and saw hundreds, if not thousands of sleeper ships coming towards me. They were a variety of sizes, from frigate to battleship, which stretched out in a line that went off-grid. Before I had time to take this fact in, my deadspace fitted Proteus was destroyed in one volley from around 300 of the ships."

Although losing a 2 billion isk Proteus isn't a great way to start your day, lower class residents would have it much worse. The foreign sleepers have consolidated the numbers of the drones already there, making taking them on in a C1 site much more risky than a C6 escalated site. Although these sites are just over a day old, reports of them are being uploaded to the Wormhole sub-forum. On of the easier ones is detailed below:

Perimeter Super Citadel Bastion 
Initial Group
50x Frigates (Emergent Swarmer) [rr, neut, scram, web]
20x Frigates (Emergent Fastackle) [scram, web, net, rr]
25x Frigates (Emergent Rifter) [scram, web, neut, rr]

10x Interdictor (Emergent Bubbler) [bubble]
40x Cruisers (Awakened Heavytackle) [scram, web, neut, rr]
30x Cruisers (Awakened Missilespammer) [rr, scram, web, neut]
10x Battleships (Sleepless Annoyance) [scram, TD, SD, TP]
20x Battleships (Sleepless Permajammer) [ECM, ECM, ECM, ECM, ECM]

3x Dreadnought (Insomniac Hotdropper) [AoE Doomsday???]
1x Battleships (Sleepless Idiot) trigger

Second wave unknown

Third wave unknown

It also seems that the sleepers have not confined themselves to anomalies and sites, of which there are now hundreds per system. A POS owner in a C1 wormhole reported a force of around 500 sleepers put his POS into reinforced within minutes of warping. After taunting the terrified residents of the system, the force appeared to jump out. The free capsuleers breathed a sigh of relief, only to see their overviews were contracting. The sleepers were now killing every POCO they could find.

A wave of anger has surged across the thirty regions of wormhole space at the migration. CCP is yet to officially acknowledge the problem, though CCP Fozzie tweeted "We're aware of a bug that is causing high end sites to spawn in low WHs" he continued onto the next tweet: "We expect to have it fixed by the release of the next expansion, around Christmas." In response, a member of a well known C6 corporation tweeted "I am entitled to make billions of isk per day running wormhole sites. This five month delay to my isk making is completely unacceptable. To top it off I won't be able to kill C2 scrubs any more, because they'll all have been wiped out by the pathetic groups of sleepers." 

C1 corps have been affected even more, as stated by the terrifying recount of one CEO. "I was idling at the POS when I heard the unmistakable sound of XL guns screeching. I quickly looked in the tower fuel bay, only to find there were no strontium clathrates. I had left them in an Corporate Hangar Array! I quickly checked the shield level, which read to be 75%. Plenty of time, I thought. I flew the 3000 metres to the Hanger Array in my Iteron, scooped the Strontium, and tried to put it in the fuel bay. But I could not. The shield level was now at 45%. For some reason we had built 5 Carriers and 10 Dreadnoughts in the wormhole, so we had to get them out. But then I remembered we couldn't get them out because we lived in a C1 for some reason. Minutes later everything in the POS, including the capitals, was dead."

Since sleepers have somehow being granted with interdictor ships, they can now camp wormholes and have been doing so quite effectively, bubbling everything within a 100KM radius of a wormhole. Although some nullified T3s have been able to get through, everything else stands no chance of ever seeing k-space again. Many poorly equipped players have either pod jumped out or biomassed themselves.