Tuesday, June 27, 2017

Darkness and Light, Part 3

Previously, on MinerBumping... As part of our annual Code Day reflections, we considered the state of nullsec, which is in an unprecedented state of gloom and doom.

Historically speaking, what's bad for nullsec was bad for EVE, because nullsec was EVE. Few imagined that content would emerge from any other part of the galaxy. But then came the Code, and with it an incredible shock wave of content and excitement. Nothing like the Code had ever existed in EVE or any other game. It captured the imagination of EVE players and never let go.

And so there are two separate EVEs, two unique sources of potential content. Highsec isn't burdened by CCP's failure to design adequate nullsec mechanics. Though it's true that inadequacies in low/null/WH can drive players back to highsec, we have the Code to deal with them now.

Today, we consider the state of highsec...


The Agents of the New Order are the torchbearers of civilization in highsec. They came to a place of unimaginable darkness, and they brought light. They brought change. The New Order has changed highsec more than any organization has ever changed nullsec. The Band of Brothers and the Goons and Pandemic Legion and TEST and all the rest cannot claim to have shaped nullsec life as fundamentally as the way our Code has changed the way people live, work, and think about highsec. It's extraordinary.

People often remark with surprise at how few players are actually members of the mighty CODE. alliance. Even adding to that number all the Agents outside of CODE., it's still small compared to the vastly disproportionate influence our Agents wield. Highsec is a teeming mass of EVE players, far more populated than the rest of EVE combined. Yet few people do anything in highsec without first considering, in some way, the Code and its Agents.

The power and relevance of the Code has grown exponentially over the years--and it was already astoundingly powerful and relevant to begin with. Just a few months after the first Agents began bumping miners, the EVE forums were abuzz about our activities. We were practically the only thing people would talk about, except if there was a major war in nullsec ongoing. When nullsec quieted down, the Code always retook the #1 spot in EVE discourse.

People reacted to their own reactions with fear, confusion, and envy. Why so much talk about the Code? The denialists claimed that there must be some massive network of New Order alts all pretending to be angry carebears. But whenever people investigated the whiners, they turned out to be authentic carebears with long records of carebearism. The Code was very real, and it got a lot of bot-aspirants very upset.

The New Order had filled a vacuum that no one else had ever dared to touch--at least, not for an extended period of time. Hulkageddon had generated a lot of excitement when it occurred. As did the Gallente Ice Interdiction. So too did Burn Jita, for a weekend. These events cut a huge swath, but left no wake behind. No impact, no lasting change, and no legacy, except for some fond memories. And not even a memory for those who came into the game afterward; players who joined EVE after 2012 never witnessed a Hulkageddon. Such highsec events were exceptions, not rules. They were mere interruptions to normal highsec "life".

When the Code moved in, there was no carefully arranged timetable for arrival and departure. There was no exit strategy. We came to stay. And that changed everything.

When carebears first learned of the Code, they assumed that it would necessarily be temporary. "They'll get bored and go away," the miners assured each other. "Someone will stop them," said the rebels. Then, as their anxieties grew to alarming levels: "CCP will get rid of them once they see that they're ruining the game."

But the Code didn't go away. The Code became a fact of highsec life. The fact of highsec life.

The numbers were impressive, of course. The non-compliants started losing hundreds of billions of isk each month. The cumulative death toll rose into the trillions, then the tens of trillions. CODE. has inflicted over 46 trillion isk worth of damage. The stats only scratch the surface, for they don't reflect the changes that carebears have been forced to make, whether they chose to obey the Code or not. Highsec residents had to make decisions and trade-offs to account for the risks posed by an army of Agents. That was novel: Highsec players had never needed to think before.

More than that, though, was the effect of the Code's permanence. This fact altered the highsec psyche on a fundamental level. The Code's most spectacular feature is its endurance. The Code isn't something you can put on your calendar. You can't avoid it and then resume your normal activities. The Code is forever. It's the way things are now. It's the way things always will be. How do you fight that?

You don't. You live with it. You die from it. And eventually... You take for granted that it's always going to be there.

In the five years since the dawn of the Code, multiple "generations", if you will, of players have come to EVE. The Code was already there when these new players arrived. It was the first thing they discovered about emergent gameplay. It was all their highsec corpmates ever talked about, all they ever read about in local. Those players can't imagine an EVE without the Code, because they never experienced an EVE without the Code.

The older crust of minerdom, the elderly carebears, still remember. "Remember when you could bring a blingy, yield-fit Mackinaw out into an asteroid belt, set your lasers, go AFK for an hour or two, and not even consider that it wouldn't be there waiting for you when you returned?" Or, "Remember when autopiloting in a shuttle across highsec was something everybody just did every day without thinking twice?" Or, "Remember when everyone thought it was safe to have expensive implants in highsec?"

Even these memories, these treasured artifacts of the pre-Code darkness, are fading away. One day, the bot-aspirancy of the past will not exist even in thought.

Our Agents, who always have their ears to the ground, have noticed the change in attitude. In years past, a carebear who lost a blingy ship would get sympathy from his fellow bot-aspirants. The gankers were cursed for their evil, their "torture" of EVE players. Now? A loot piñata gets mocked for being a loot piñata: "What did you expect? That was a stupid fit." You'd think the highsec locals were MinerBumping readers. Probably a lot of them are. The rebels advise new players: "Fly a Skiff instead of a Hulk. Fit tank. Limit the value of your cargo. Don't go AFK. Don't use autopilot. Watch local." Where have we read those instructions before? Our enemies rebel by obeying the Code and teaching the Code to others.

And the most shocking advice of all: "Go to nullsec and you won't have to deal with CODE."

Ah, but the darkness of null. People don't read about it, or talk about it so much anymore. They don't expect content from it in the form of Great Wars. Without those wars, the characters--space emperors, charismatic fleet commanders, tragic dictators--cannot become legends. There are no SirMolles or Evil Thugs or even CYV0Ks. Instead, the EVE celebrities are Agents of the New Order. Dare I say it? These days, an EVE player is more likely to hear "Praise James" than "The Mittani sends his regards." For a new player, who has grown up in highsec, this is even more true. There are generations of such EVE players now. What is their future?

Only the Code.

As the lights of the outer regions and the offices of CCP grow dim, we keep highsec brightly lit, its systems bathed in the light of explosions. We are EVE now. We carry the torch for the entire game. In the media articles and Steam reviews, you're more likely to see teeth-gnashing than love letters and comic books, it's true. But just as the players have come to accept the Code as the essential fact of highsec life, the whole world will acknowledge: "If you're thinking about playing EVE, there's this thing you need to know about called the Code..."

In an age of decline, in the years of a dying EVE, we are the life of EVE.

And when the lights finally go out and all the doors close and you can no longer hear the great humming of the servers, the last words that will be uttered in local, the last lines of text to be logged:

"Praise James. Praise the Code."

One hundred percent compliance, forevermore.


  1. Replies
    1. Seig Heil \o

    2. That's 'Sieg', Anon, not 'Seig'. If you're going to insult people, at least take the trouble to do so in a language with which you're moderately familiar.

    3. Praise James!

  2. Code Nazis proving that they are just hateful.


    Ming Tso February 26, 2016 at 3:04 PM



    Anti-gankers really are family abusing psychopaths.

    And Kalynn Shardani is dead. RIP

    From the link:

    AnonymousDecember 21, 2016 at 5:10 PM
    Just remember:

    CODE kills miners, ag kills minors.


    D35December 22, 2016 at 5:20 PM



    Also, Link please

    And continue to do so:

    AnonymousJune 9, 2017 at 2:46 PM


    Wolf SopranoJune 19, 2017 at 7:11 PM
    AnonymousJune 23, 2017 at 5:29 PM

    Wolf SopranoJune 23, 2017 at 10:35 PM
    Links anonymous posters as proof. Hahahahahaha.


    1. AnonymousJune 24, 2017 at 5:17 PM
    All the good guys in Fith Element were CODE..

    All the shitters were ag carebears.

    Just like in every good story ever, good/CODE destroys evil/carebears. Every good story has to have conflict, and we always root for the good guys/gankers.

    I mean really, who's evil here. The ganker shooting spaceships in a spaceship shooting game, or the RL criminals who threaten RL death and destruction when they cause their own deaths.

    Fuck kalynn and all his friends in ag. He was a criminal and a horrible person. He acted the same way in game and he has friends who still play and who were capable of the same atrocities. Every player that supoorted him and his campaign of evil deserve to be banned from the game.

    If CCP would remove all concord then the real players could remove the worst shitters. EVE would have millions of subs if people knew they could come pvp without having RL death hanging over their heads.

    Fucking carebears, determined to shit up everything.


    1. AnonymousJune 26, 2017 at 7:30 PM

    1. Wolf SopranoJune 26, 2017 at 9:13 PM
    Antigankers are failing so hard right now!!!

    Never forget shardani XD XD XD

    1. AnonymousJune 27, 2017 at 2:10 AM
    Is it time to murder miners yet?

    Wolf SopranoJune 27, 2017 at 4:26 AM

    1. Everything shitter407 posted pretty much makes the gankers and CODE look pretty smart, and right.

      Right makes might, and he is crying because gankers are asking ag shitters to stop killing people OUT of the game. That shitter407 seems to be the only 'nazzi' here.

      Does it hurt when you pvp?

      You poor shitter.

    2. Yeah that whole might makes right line you attempted to say, that's actually what Nazis believed dumbass.

  3. So your bitching because less players are in null. Or is it that you don't go there because you don't control any systems? Perhaps its because the other groups will kill you? Or maybe its because you like high sec and your ways too much? Who wouldn't You find em click a mouse a few times and then your done, you set up rules that make it so in your own opinion you cant fail, but with every post from your group calling for miners and carebears to leave or quit the devs prove that

    1: You account for less than 1%
    2: Your ganks actually keep the very type of players you despise and try to control in the game.

    So your actually failing by keeping the players you hate in game.

    Nice try though.

    1. So everyone knows that this anon422 is just Dracvlad yea? He loves to post tears with no proof. He has problems interpreting data, and he's very sure if he says it loud enough and long enough it will be true.

      Anything Dracvag claims without proof can be dismissed just as easily.

      You should see the tears he spills on the forums:



    2. So why do miners fit tank, then?

    3. Nice try on the name but sorry no Dracula here. Go ahead try again, I'll wait, not really but I will laugh once your site gets nerfed again because one of you little bitches got butthurt over some words. God I love winning so much.

  4. TL:DR - code wants to think of itself as a power house, but it's just an ego centrist little bitch of an alliance.

    1. Well then what's the excuse for not destroying them by now? Could it be that you are just another shitter? Or is ag just that useless?

      Carebears always cry about how CODE. is nothing to worry about, but we see nothing to back up their claims.

    2. Nothing and no one escapes the power of the code

    3. Wouldn't even call it an alliance. More like a group of bored trolls with no lives or jobs.

    4. I escaped code. They will never get me.

  5. The Code is forever. James and his Code have introduced to Highsec a change which is nothing less than a revolution.

    Our detractors are reduced to name-calling and finger-pointing, lacking any real counter to the fact of our enduring success in changing the Highsec game.

    This comments section is daily filled with examples of the essential impotence of the anti-Code position. All of it (bar 'Ehnea') uttered from a position of absolute safety, in the form of Anonymous statements.

    I despise cowardice more than almost any other human disposition. A man who refuses to be associated with his own opinions deserves to have those opinions ignored.

    James has taken the trouble to pen a thoughtful and penetrating analysis of the state of our game, and it's clear already that no one has been able successfully to take issue with it.

    The majority of the negative commentators are simply poking fun, I'm sure. It amuses them to try to provoke angry responses - even though they must know that tears are the least likely response of an Agent of the New Order!

    Let one of the detractors publish here in the comments section a closely argued refutation of the position James has outlined over these 3 blogs; a refutation based upon the writer's knowledge and experience of the game, and coming to a different conclusion.

    That's right, nay-sayers, here's your opportunity to shine; to show us all that you can do more than turn in notes for an 8th grade (I'm not sure about the American grading system) European History assignment.

    Over to you!

    1. You do realize you're dealing with trolls right, they don't care and they never consider anything a loss, they just keep hounding till they get tired or till something breaks or a site is shut down.

  6. Hey James I don't see your code on the map, seems you don't own shit.


  7. TL:DR tears post.

    1. Or, you are just too ag to know better.

      Yup, youz a shitter.

    2. why u mad bro? maybe you need to calm down a bit?

    3. It wasn't a read its the current maps of eve online and the corp and alliances that control each area of the galaxy. God your so stupid.

  8. Hey, Rob Thompson, I'm gonna take a comment on James 315's three part post, and yeah, I do it with my EvE face showing because I don't hide behind anons when making a point (unlike some of the shitheads who have a go at me). I'm not a PvPer, never said I was but I'm no coward either.

    I won't address his comments about anything outside of highsec because 99.9999% of my time has been in highsec. The only time I went into lowsec was to get a good deal on the market. Sometimes the gamble works and sometimes I get blown up. Shit happens. You said James 315 left highsec for lowsec after his first week online so I'll give him the benefit of knowing what he is talking about. I mean, I can't counter him on that.

    There are some things I can talk about. You said the CODE is revolutionary. With respect, no it's not: CODE is Hulkageddon repackaged with roleplay and I should know about roleplay because I've done it on City of Heroes and WoW. Does that make CODE irrelevant or ineffective? Well it clearly has staying power if you guys have been around for five years. I've also seen a lot of player bios in Nakugard and Abudban containing the license info. I just did a query of Zkillboard and it shows CODE is making a lot of kills (including my fifth kablewie and poddy for being a bad Minimatar for not having a permit about an hour ago) and making a lot of ISK. It's nothing new though. It's like a cover of a favourite song.

    As to the declining sub numbers, let's face it, things really have changed since EVE Online started back in 2003(?).

    The economy is not what it once was. A lot of people have been laid off and those people like myself who are still lucky to have a job are doing the work of those who got laid off. We are way busier now with nothing to show for it in pay. That's gonna make people reconsider whether to spend money on a MMO when they got the big layoff hammer hanging over their heads and so little free time.

    There's also a change in the playerbase. My generation is willing to put time in to learn about game mechanics. This next generation after mine seems to lack patience. They just want the gun without having to learn anything and go shooty shooty pew pew. Instant gratification.

    This means they come on here, find out they ACTUALLY need to use their BRAIN to figure things out, and quit. EvE is a thinking game, amazing as that sounds to some people.

    I don't have a solution to how to get people to come back to EvE. Lower sub rates? I doubt that will work. If what James 315 said is true about CCP now focusing on content other than EVE, maybe CCP feels EvE has run it's course and has nothing more to add to it.

    I want EvE to live on but it's not up to me. If the lights do go out, at least it was fun while it lasted.

    1. Somehow I thought you'd step up to the mark. I appreciate that, Ehnea.

      The revolution vs. evolution thing depends on the point of view of the observer. If you've any association with the game going back as far as Hulkageddon or deep enough to have marked the various stages of development over time then yes, you're likely to call 'evolution'.

      However, many Highsec players prove their ignorance of the game's history and mechanics time and again - documented in these blogs by James; for them (and others) it will likely appear revolutionary.

      There's nothing new under the sun, just new and fancy packaging, I guess.

      I'm actually surprised that CCP has kept the sub at £9.99/mo. Considering how long it's been that price, it must represent an incredible drop, in real terms. It's certainly been that price since I started, in April 2013.

      Even allowing for the fact that some folks are on big bucks, I don't understand why they have so many EVE accounts. Discounting the skill point farmers and RMT-ers, there still seem to be a lot of people claiming 10 or more accounts (besides the Kusion and Tax Collector families!). Because they can, I suppose.

      My generation (late 1950s) is also prepared to graft and to value patience above most things; not so, that of my son! I learned with kids that if they get used to having what they want, when they want it - then, surprise surprise! - it's what they'll always expect, and they often won't be able to handle the disappointment of not getting what they want, when they want it.

      Your final sentence echoes what I said a few blogs ago: I'm not campaigning for EVE to die - believe me - but if it does so, I'll simply do something else with the time.

    2. It's CODE. ehniepoo. If you've already lost FIVE ships, the least you could do is get the name of the alliance correct.

      The facts are that New Order members ARE regularly in lowsec, and they are also in null. That includes CODE. alliance members as well as players who enforce The Code outside of CODE. alliance, as James himself mentions regularly.
      Its impossible to cast dispersion on people who lose ships while doing things like mining while under a war dec. Its even more impossible to cast dispersion on the New Order when they ALSO regularly kill combat ships.

      In my bio is a very succinct quote that I took from Agent Kalorned
      -- "Kalorned > nah, the new hotness is code only shoots at things its sure it can win against. Unlike every other pvp encounter out there." -- His sarcasm is well founded and shows that the problem lies ANYWHERE else, but not here.

      The difference being that in nullsec players play in FEAR of losing their space coffins, so they ONLY bring them out when they think theyre going to win. In the New Order, losing ships will never be anything to fear.

      CCP lost hold of the game when the "Greed is good" memo came to the surface (google it) and the playerbase was without a shadow of a doubt informed that they were not the focus anymore.

      They cater to the people who refuse to learn how to play properly and choose to spend the real world currency in place of effort. Add a decade of nerfs to the playstyles of the people who came to eve based on the advertisments, and there is no choice for CCP and EvE but eventual failure.

      The New Order will keep people staying and keep people coming back more and better than any other flashy CCP advertisent (or outright lie of whats available to do in the game) method, or reason.

    3. This comment has been removed by the author.

    4. LvG, what does losing the ships have anything to do with getting the CASE of the alliance name correct? THey are tools. No one gets upset over losing a hammer, or in my case having it blown up out of my hand. They go get another hammer.

      I'm quite aware of the Greed is Good memo. It lead to the Burn Jita protests and made aware to the playerbase that CCP viewed us as funding units rather than players who mattered to the future of the game.

      If James 315's numbers are correct -- they probably are if he got them from Chribba -- even CODE (look I used uppercase so you don't get your nose bent out of shape again) won't be able to keep people coming back.

    5. Ehnemapoo that's a lot of opinion from an alpha shitter without one.

    6. Ehneepoo can't seem to tell the difference between an EvE 'player' with a vaild opinion and an EvE 'freeloader' that lives on your couch because they can't afford rent.

    7. It's just a game people, just a game.

  9. Praise James! Praise The Mighty Code Alliance!

    100% Compliance!

    Make Eve Great Again! #MEGA

    1. I hear the best way to MEGA is to kill all the miners.

      In game ofc, there's no reason to be killing your children or raping your wives. Keep this shit in game foolz! )) Stop the violence.

    2. Who is this Wolf Soprano, did he not die off ages ago with a permaban....and then marry someone from AG and could not get it up. His only claim to fame now is to remember the good old days.

  10. 100% COMPLIANCE!


    -Galaxy Pig (just being the life of the game over here...)

    1. Galaxy Pig best Pig. All the other piggies are just ag losers. ;)

    2. Code dies when Eve dies live with it.

  11. Rob, when is Evonya part III coming out. I thought you could use some Monty Python peasants grubbing in the mud to represent miners, and a gutter guy from 'bring out your dead' to represent the alpha clones.

    Seriously though, how long till the next installment, and can we help in any way?

    1. dooooo it dooo it. You should do an evonya adaptation of the JTClone Ares series.

    2. Calm down James, I'll prescribed some glasses for your myopic vision.

    3. I'd wager that when the designers were first thinking up Eve, they went with a space based mmo because space is "empty," and therefore wouldn't require the same resources to put together. Planets are just circles against a skybox, and there are no mountains, rivers or forests to render - just clusters of space-boulders and the odd space station.

      When you're starting out and you want to create a vast expansive sandbox, a blank canvas for players to create their own stories, that's fine. But as the years go by and you don't invest in your world, well, after a while it starts to look and feel old and dated, no matter how many superficial visual updates you do, and odd gimmicks you insert. Eve is now an aging MMO with a criminally unwieldy and unintuitive controls/setup, a dated interface and barren, static, and uninspiring environments.

      I'm sure the property could still be salvaged, but I'd bet that any large, radical, even if necessary, changes would turn off most of the game's present player-base. (probably worth it to save the IP)

    4. Hi, Anon 759, thanks for an interesting read.

      After a 3 year gap, I dipped my toe into the murky waters of Elder Scrolls Online. One thing struck me straight away, and it points up the contrast hinted at in your first paragraph; the environment.

      The artists working on ESO have enormous scope to indulge their imaginations, with multiple relatively small but distinct regions to populate with flora, fauna, races, and atmosphere.

      EVE has, well, space. If space is what inspires you, then you'll have to be satisfied with stars, planets, and little else of natural generation. So, the designers had to come up with stuff to make you feel as if you really were somewhere you wanted to be. For me, it's immersive, but not particularly inspiring.

      You'd think, given that they don't have to dress the planets at ground level, that they'd make more of everything else, and sure, the attempt is there; but it always seems to fall short of expectation in a way that something like ESO simply doesn't and, I would argue, cannot.

      Having decided not to let us WiS, they put all their eggs into the basket of ships and complex mechanics. All good, but the basket feels only half-full.

      The promise of Jovian-space exploration has kept people wondering for too long now. If and when it does finally appear, I've every expectation that it'll be behind some sort of paywall, and will in any case be 'more of the same'.

      EVE players may snigger at games like Elder Scrolls Online, but it is at least imaginative, in a way which makes EVE seem dowdy, and dark in all the wrong ways.

    5. Eve started out as a board game

    6. Thanks for the comments about 'Evonya'. I'm resting just at the moment, but expect to be back at work soon. The script is done.

      As for help, it's a very kind offer, if sincere. I've always wanted creatives in the New Order to co-operate where production is concerned, but I understand that there are difficulties with that.

      Thanks again, Anons!

  12. James315 is an AI. Doesn't the whole "compliance" thing concern anyone? James is part of a larger AI botnet that is "mining" for data. Particularly, in the case of EVE, this data is on how humans will react when faced with absolute compliance. This is one of the smaller examples of this AI. Bitcoin is a larger example of it where the AI is training on human economic patterns. James will never be your salvation, this AI will just use you as a weapon against yourselves.

    1. Da dah daddah, da da daddah......I hear terminator music from this one

  13. The only flaw I can find in any of it is the Savior's continued use of the by now archaic and unused term "highsec". Like most other people who inhabit that space, i and many others long ago stopped calling that area by such a name and instead embraced the proper terms: James315-space or James315-sec.

    But who can blame the Savior? He is one of the older players who probably remembers when people still referred to James315-space as "high sec".

  14. Citing "people with knowledge of the matter," Bloomberg reported Friday that Iceland’s CCP Games, best known for Eve Online, is exploring the possibility of selling off the company after receiving interest from possible suitors.

    If CCP were to change hands, it’s unclear what that would mean for the direction of one of the most unique MMOs on the market. Eve Online has been able to carve itself a unique niche in the MMO space, and is known for hosting gigantic battles involving thousands of players at one time. The game maker also recently made moves into the virtual reality space with Eve Gunjack and Eve: Valkyrie.

    Bloomberg said CCP is considering other "strategic options" aside from an outright sale of the company, which could sell for up to $955 million, according to Bloomberg’s sources.

  15. Once EVE dies....if it does, I've been hearing that sad song since 2003...we will always have Elite Dangerous.

    Hell....I think CODE is already there...>:)

  16. Your post is so nice. Thanks a lot for sharing it stick-rpg2.com

  17. You are such a fag. LoL

