CCP Hints No One Gives a Fuck About Faction Warfare

After years of neglect from EVE journalists and some benign scorn from nullsec alliances CCP has confirmed what we've all been wondering. CCP DickNose gave Eve Onion this exclusive interview while LP farming:

First of all, it’s called god damn Factional Warfare! Anyway, we've been just crushed with work trying to get those CSM8 meeting minutes together so we thought we’d give Factional Warfare a bit of attention since it’s been quiet on that front for a while: Nobody gives a fuck about it. There. We said it. Plus, we’re kinda busy dangling a carrot in front of L4 runners and then bludgeoning them with the throbbing erection of hi-sec gankers.

Here’s some behind the scenes info. At first we were like, ‘Yeah, I think we found a great place for old null alliances to go to die.’ But then we saw the potential to further popularize the first person shooting juggernaut known as DUST and we couldn't resist. We worked tirelessly to integrate EVE and DUST into one seamless universe. In DUST, you and your team muddle through some gameplay and take over some sector, or area, or base or something. Then, in EVE, there’s a planet icon with a percentage underneath it that changes how much a white bar fills in your HUD. That's some revolutionary cross-genre shit right there!"

At this point in the discussion CCP DickNose noticed an Atron on short outside his novice complex and promptly warped to a safe. He wisely fitted every available low slot with a warp stab and didn't bother bringing any drones or weapons – but you never can be too careful…

"Whoa that was close. Anyway, while we’re pleased to see that Caldari/Gallente space is nothing but an ATM for some of the *cough* null alliances, we’re equally amused to stroll through Amarr/Minmatar space where literally nothing ever happens. It’s an impressive feat, I think, to so accurately model the vast nothingness of space like we did in Amarr/Minmatar lo-sec."

My conversation with CCP DickNose continued for some time. At one point in the conversation he idled at a gate in 1.0 space where he was blapped unceremoniously by a war target. “Damn you, CONCORD!!” he cried whilst vigorously squeezing his empty Mountain Dew bottle. “I had a shitload of tags from Destroyer rats!”

Looking defeated, he concluded our interview with a sigh of relief saying “I can’t wait until the next expansion comes out and we ban PVP in hi-sec. Undocking a faction-fit Rifter with 10 PLEXes in the hold free of worry is every capsuleer’s God-given right.”

Hisec Nidhoggur Loss Ruled Suicide

A Nidhoggur was recently killed in Amarr by capsuleer Billy Hardcore  on the 23rd December. Hisec capitals, rare exceptions to a mechanic which has stood since 2007, are heavily constrained by GM-set rules on what they can do. In this case, it was not lasers, bombs, nor even raw cunning that sealed the ship’s fate: it was simply bullied to death by various capsuleers in local.

This reporter spoke to several of those involved in the fall of the ship. One random local denizen said, “It was hilarious. I called him a ‘Minmatard’ and he broke down and started crying. His space-tears were delicious.” Another, one of those in the cap chain which supported Mr. Hardcore, responded differently, “It was really funny until one of the guys in the cap chain shot [the carrier] and got us all Concordokken’d.” Speaking to killer, he was proud of the accomplishment. “These hisec capitals, they’re abominations” said Mr. Hardcore, “I think he accepted the duel after I called his ship a ‘nidder’, which is perfectly accurate. Those dirty Minmatar should know not to fly their trash in glorious Amarr space.”

I was lucky enough to get ahold of Chribba, meeting him in his office. After snorting a mountain of Veldspar dust in a way that was remarkably similar to the infamous cocaine scene in Scarface, he spoke to me:

“These... scrubs who are losing capitals in Hisec. I give them the option to join the glorious Veldfleet, and they refuse. What do they expect? To use capitals with impunity in MY SYSTEM? They are fools. I promise to crush all those who dare go up against the mighty Veldfleet!”

There is no word from CCP as to whether the tactic of bullying targets to death will be reevaluated and - given Eve’s reputation - there likely will be no changes in the future. In other news, players with expensive ships and clumsy fingers are urged to check the option to “automatically refuse duel requests” to prevent embarrassing lossmails.

Mobile Tractor Unit Turns on Owner and Violently Beats Him to Death

Highsec carebear Melvin Earl received a nasty surprise today when a Mobile Tractor Unit turned on him, destroying both his Rattlesnake and Tengu. This is an escalation of shenanigans involving Mobile Tractor Units which have come to light in the past few days.

It's believed Melvin's collection of Mobile Tractor Units were disgusted by his bad posting on the Eve Online forums, and waited for their chance to kill him. The opportunity arose when Melvin started his daily mission running in Osmon. He began to notice something was wrong when three of his missile launchers disappeared from his ship. He returned to the station to refit the Dread Guristas Torpedo Launchers, only to have them disappear again after several minutes.

At this point Melvin started to Fraps his activities. After all, modules don't simply disappear into thin air. 10 minutes went by and all his modules were still there. Breathing a sigh of relief, he got on with his mission. Suddenly the Rattlesnake's tank had started to fail. Its pilot remained unaware of this as he had gone AFK and left his drones behind to do his work for him. He returned to his keyboard at the last minute as the Rattlesnake entered armour. "Why is this happen!" he shouted in local. He looked to the right of his HUD, and saw his Caldari Navy Invulnerability Fields were no longer there.

Sadly the Rattlesnake could not be saved. When the lossmail was opened Melvin noticed there were no midslots save for two Shield Boost Amplifiers. Melvin immediately petitioned this and whined in local. He then boarded his Tengu to finish the mission off. Having smote the rats in the name of the Sisters of Eve, he looked to see what goodies his Mobile Tractor Unit had collected for him. He looked in the structure's cargobay and saw the modules that should have been in his Rattlesnake's midslots.

He sent his petition in at once under the 'stuck' category; this was clearly some kind of Goon magic. By the time he had finished writing his carefully thought out petition he returned to the game to find his Tengu had been stripped naked of modules. A block of red was creeping from the right of the hull bar to the left, despite him having no shield or armour damage, with a visual red beam running from the Mobile Tractor Unit to his ship.

Then he was in a pod. He looked in the Mobile Tractor Unit to find a Tengu hull, five subsystems and the ship's modules. It was time to write a new petition, one greater and more persuasive than ever before. Melvin kindly shared the text with us:

"Hello CCP, I am writing to complain about your massively multiplied online game eve online. Today I was running missions as normal when my rattlesnake was destroyed because my tractor took my tanking modules. Someone is behind this, possibly the mittani or some other goon, but probably the mittani. I heard dabigblueboat can also hack shit so could you please check him as well. Im going to tell everyone I see in your stupid game to play WoW because its better than this shit. Also, im going to have to make another forum post warning people about how shit goons are, could you please tell the police to arrest them."

This is only the second recorded incident of a mobile structure killing the person who dropped it, the first being a Small Mobile Siphon Unit which was dropped in Providence and tried to run away to richer areas of space.

CSM Minutes Could Be Out By 2015

Several people breathed a collective sigh of relief earlier today when it was announced by Eve Community Manager CCP Dolan that the minutes would 'defiantly almost probably maybe' be out by 2015.

The minutes were originally expected to be released around a month after the actual summit, which took place in early August 2013. In a statement posted in a dev blog today CCP Dolan said this:

"I'd like to start off by apologising on behalf of the CSM and CCP for the delay in your months... I mean minutes. There are several people we can blame this on.

First off, I'm going to blame the CSM for not doing their minutes earlier. Ali Aras, that fucker Ripard and some other dude did something like 70% of the preparation for the minutes. Christ knows what the rest of them were doing in that time, probably furiously masturbating or something.

Secondly it's your fault, you with your Somergate. I understand Somer Blink are pricks and I understand why you were so angry, but I had to mop up your tears on the forum instead of working on the minutes. 

Thirdly it's CCP's fault. If they didn't sign me up to that paintballing for charity thing I wouldn't be in terrible pain now and the minutes would have been done before Christmas. CCP literally signed me up for that, I said I'd be down for helping charity but I didn't know it was going to hurt that much. 

So anyway, I'm going on strike now till the end of next year so we're looking at a date of around 2nd January 2015. Even if we don't meet that, there's a 78% chance they'll be out sometime in that year."

Some people are speculating that CCP are stalling for time so that things that would have been censored under the NDA would no longer need to be censored under the NDA so they wouldn't have to do any work. Others no longer give a flying fuck, while more senile people have already forgotten what minutes are. A couple of people who actually care about the minutes are angry, but their calls to 'sink Iceland' have gone unheeded by the majority of other players. In other news many people still hate CCP Dolan.

New Eve-Dust Tie-In Game 'Wheelspin 249' Announced

Following their realisation that Dust 514 was a complete flop, CCP have announced they will be announcing another game which may actually be developed within the next decade.

In the game you take the role of a mortal pilot whose ship has crashed into the planet below. To survive you must drive some form of jet-powered buggy to the finish line. It's a race against time; which is where the integration with Eve and Dust comes in. The Dust players, who will start off about 500 metres away from you, will constantly try to shoot you and kill you. They can utilise a variety of vehicles, including the new 'extremely fast plane', which can keep up with the racers of Wheelspin 249 with ease.

That's not all the Wheelspin players will have to compete with though, they'll also have to dodge orbital strikes from Eve players above the planet. The opportunity to slaughter defenceless people is something that's hyped most Eve players, but not all of them. Helpless miner Huricane Maulerant told us how he feels about the mass genocide of unarmed people:

"It's just plain wrong, that's what it is! I'll tell you right now if CCP go ahead with this game they're going to have a human rights travesty on their hands. The United Nations won't like it if I tell them what they're doing, so I'm going to tell them.

 Huricane has not been heard from since. We sat down with CCP to discuss their new game:

Eve Onion: So what was going through your head when you announced this game?

Well, we were brainstorming ideas to save Dust when Hilmar burst into the room and said "hey guys, look at this! You can drive on the moon on GT6!" before leaving again. Then someone said "let's make a racing game!"

EO: What will be unique about Wheelspin?

Like Eve and Dust we have a progressive system where you can learn skillpoints while you're offline. What's unique about it is the fact that as your pilot is mortal, him dying once in a game will yield the same result as an Eve character being biomassed - all skillpoints, money, and personal information such as mails will be completely wiped.

EO: Do you have any plans to actually release the game?

We're not sure at the moment, we'll review the situation in a couple of days and decide whether it will be worth it. 

EO: What genre of people are you trying to attract with Wheelspin?

Anyone really, right the way through from teenage girls to old age pensioners. We think the name 'wheelspin' leads to a variety of interpretations from our customers.  Anyway, I've got to get a coffee now so bye.

Environmental hazards are also expected to feature in the game, as players have to dodge 'lava which tracks them' on volcanic planets, dinosaurs on temperate planets and ultraviolet radiation on barren planets thanks to a business deal with skincare company Nivea. More information will be released in a press conference on the 32^nd December.

State of the Onion

'Six months ago to this day Tubrug the First did look on to the horizon of Eve news sites and he did see chaos. On there one hand there was themittani.com, which provided reliability and accuracy - but it was too serious. Then Tubrug did cast his eye towards EN24, and he did see a shambles - an N3 propaganda site writing in some unknown language. The people called for a hybrid, and Tubrug did found the Eve Onion.'

The extract from the fictional book 'The History of the Eve Onion' does not lie. On the 27th of June we published our first article: "Exclusive: Why the CFC Invaded Fountain". In retrospect it was shit, but it was a start - a new age of satire space stories had begun. Since then we have come far. Fewer and fewer people now say we're crap and should kill ourselves, and having increased the site's activity to news levels in December the Eve Onion is on track to become Eve's number two news site.

In case you didn't see the new page links following our site redesign in November I shall inform you of what they say here. The first one, Do You Want to Write for Us?, contains information on what you need to do to become a satire spacejournalist. We barely require any activity at all - you can write one article a month or ten a month. If you only come up with one good idea a year you can send it to the said email address below and we will publish it as a submission under your name and you won't have the hassle of becoming a staff member.

Should you wish to do either of those things send your application in to onioneve@gmail.com (NOT eveonion@gmail.com, that was taken and christ knows why) and I will answer within a day or two informing you of your success or faliure.

Then we have something for the rich people among us. I'm a poor fucker who relies on TMC payments for a living so I can't spare any of my hard-earned cash paying other people. With that in mind we'd highly appreciate it if you gave us your money, which will allow us to pay our honest and hardworking staff. As an incentive to do so and a thank you for you kindness we'll display your portrait on the sidebar of the site for a calendar month. We'll also count any donations for the rest of December as January donations, because we're nice guys. Send your donation to Tubrug1 with the reason 'Eve Onion' and your name will be on the site within 24 hours.

And now I'll outline the future of the Eve Onion. We promise to deliver even more accurate and reliable news (compared to our main competitors in the field of badly spun/fake news, EN24) than we have done these past six months, with even more articles and content. I'm considering starting an Eve Onion podcast so we can reach into your ears as well as your eyes, expect that to be coming sometime in the next month.

Lastly I'd like to thank you, reader of the Eve Onion, for your reading ability. Without you my humble site would be read by no one.

Structure Shoots Causing EMP Members to Become Insane

After deploying to Vale of the Silent to hit GENTS jump bridges and POSes, Insidious Empire have reported that their members are developing some kind of allergic reaction to shooting structures, with the lack of attacking players mentally harming some.

The first report of insanity happened on a jump bridge-bashing fleet yesterday, when one member tried to kill the FC of the op.

"So last night, after we reinforced 3 structures without a break, I heard the jump bridge talking to me. It was whispering at me, like it wanted me to help it. It said "please help me, I am being shot and it is causing me great pain". I asked it what I could do and it told me to kill the FC. I shot the FC but he got repped quickly, then my fleet turned on me. I asked the jump bridge what I should do but it just ignored me. I'd like to apologise to all members of EMP who I have offended."

There were several more instances of this today. One member was reportedly threatened with death by a Moon Harvesting Array and consequently self-destructed his stealth bomber. Another allegedly shouted "WHY ARE THERE NO NEUTS" several times in IPAY-2 and began to drop hundreds of cargo containers that were arranged to spell 'HELP'.

With nearly no GENTS members remaining in Vale following their deployment to Curse, it seems EMP's madness will continue for the foreseeable future. Test have not yet reported any signs of the structure-shooting disease in their membership, although it is hard to distinguish this from normal Test behaviour.

Phreeze, leader of EMP, is desperately trying to work on a solution to the problem before his alliance descends into anarchy. He plans to organise thunderdomes for his members before everyone turns on each other in a perpetual thunderdome. Lychton Kondur of the Brave Collective reported Phreeze tried to hire his alliance to provide entertainment and kills for his members. "He was pretty desperate, he kept sending me contact notifications with me set to excellent, then he said he'd let us rent space at a 10% discount."

It appears the CFC's latest ally is Starbase & Sovereignty Structures. With these new friends helping to resist the Testicle Empire it seems Vale will be able to hold out for several months, removing the need for the CFC to return to the north. N3 leadership are now considering sending more semi-irrelevant alliances to attack different parts of the CFC empire.