You can't metagame in highsec (and the creation of RvB)

Goons surely spent lot of resources to create and upkeep their highsec arm, RvB to protect them from highsec wardeccers. It's strange. Why don't they bribe wardeccers off, like they did with Black Legion. I'm sure that would be easier than upkeeping RvB.

Because it's impossible. To understand why "metagame" doesn't work in highsec, you have to understand the fundamental difference in the zones of EVE. It's not bubbles. It's not even actual gameplay of the owners (shoot the red cross). The difference lies in your options when you are not blue to the owners:

Can you travel in non-blue space?

• WH: no. Owners can close or camp entrances. Every invasion starts with hole control.
• Sov-null: partially. You can use gates and covert cynos, while the owners can also use Jump bridges and control the cyno jammer.
• NPC-null: yes.
• Lowsec: yes.
• Highsec: yes.

Can you safekeep your assets in non-blue space?

• WH: no. There aren't any stations to safekeep.
• Sov-null: no. Owners can lock you out of the station.
• NPC-null: yes.
• Lowsec: yes.
• Highsec: yes.

Can you use local channel to be safe in non-blue space?

• WH: no. Local channel doesn't work.
• Sov-null: no. Practically everyone is neut/red to you, you can't tell quickly who is after you and who ratting or sitting on the station. For owners everyone is blue except you, so they recognize hostiles.
• NPC-null: no. Everyone vs everyone.
• Lowsec: partially. You can see war targets while gateguns and security status loss give some protection against neutrals.
• Highsec: yes. You can see wartargets, neuts can't attack you (unless you have enough cargo to deserve suicide ganks).

As you can see, the cost of not being blue is higher and higher as you go up in the list. This is the cost of leaving your current corp/alliance without having a new one lined up. As soon as you quit, you become non-blue to them. Until you find another home, you are non-blue to everyone. Finding a new home isn't easy. You can't just show up at PL's door telling "I got fed up with The Mittani, hire me". Abandoning your corp means abandoning sov-null for a longer period. You lose your way of life. No more ratting and no more fleets for you.

With the increased cost of leaving comes increased power of the leaders over the members. Someone must be really disappointed in his leader to abandon his current life and go back to Empire. This increased power allows metagaming. It didn't matter what the average BL pilot thought about letting the Goon carriers go, abandoning their successful campaign and start working for Goons. As soon as BL leadership made the deal, they were stuck with it. Their only alternative was giving up their lifestyle and go back to Empire all alone.

Since in highsec you can do anything on your own, the leaders barely have any power over their members. They only lead because the members are happy with their leadership. "This is a benign dictatorship here!" doesn't work in highsec. If your member is slightly annoyed with you, he'll likely leave, because he can both run missions and hit suspects just like in your corp. He can even declare the same wars to have the same wartargets. A highsec corp can only offer social atmosphere and shared war costs. This means that if Goons would "metagame" a highsec wardeccer leader to do their bidding, his members would quit instantly and join/form a new corp.

Of course Goons have an option left: they can openly approach the corp and offer something to the membership for stopping shooting Goons. However, as they are PvP-ers, they want kills, and for that, they need a good wartarget. Goons are literally the best highsec wartargets in EVE:

• They come to highsec in large numbers. Other nullsec players don't, so you can't kill them in highsec.
• They are absolutely horrible in PvP. PvP-ers can fight back and kill you.
• They undock and fly carelessly as they consider themselves gods. Carebears are hard to kill as they stay docked or watch local constantly.

Well, the Goons solved the impossible task. As they could't find a better wartarget, they created one. One that is even more numerous in highsec, even more likely to undock, and - if that's possible - even worse in PvP. So RvB was born: two sets of clueless noobs constantly fighting each other. Their offer to good highsec PvP-ers is simple: "join us and you can massacre noobs day and night. Once or twice in a year we will ask something from you, but after that's done, you can go back to your 99% ISK ratio." These players are Morlocks, constantly fed with kills of the other corp, so they are happy between CTAs. But to have happy Morlocks, you must have Eloi, the newbies whose job is to be massacred. The RvB rules, especially the "no podding" is there to protect the Eloi from extinction.

This is why I don't care about RvB-ers posting "we are having fun and love this war". They are all Morlocks. They do have fun and and do love this war. The Eloi aren't posting nor having fun, as they fall left and right with their expensive pods. When they leave, the Morlocks will be hungry and leave too, probably to Lemmings as we can offer them not only the remaining Eloi in the other corp (red for blue), but the Eloi in his current corp (red for red) and dumb Goons, FCON, SMA, Li3... Please note how Lemmings are different from all other highsec PvP corp: we are in permawar with these easy targets. Others had periods of lull or periods when they had hard campaigns with bad ISK ratio. In RvB (and now in Lemmings) a good PvP-er could constantly slay easy targets, upkeeping 95%+ ISK ratio.


Finally, some "metagaming" fun: here is my cross-vote table from CSM8: The numbers mean "% of people who voted for the guy on the left also voted for the guy on top in their first half of the ballot". So the first line means "who did Mynnna voters supported too", the first column means "whose voters supported Mynnna too". What is interesting for us is Mangala, leader of RvB. He was mentioned on 12176 ballots in the first 7 spots, much more than the size of RvB. Where did he get external support? From other unaligned voters, from WH voters and from Progodlegend voters. He barely got votes from the CFC/HBC voters, which is obvious as random CFC guys didn't consider him friendly. Now that RvB was outed as the highsec Goon arm, I doubt if too many N3 (Progodlegend) or highsec carebear (Mike Azariah) voters would support him. From the blue boxes you can see that non-aligned voters supported all non-aligned candidates. Losing the "non-aligned" status will cost him even more votes. Will it be replaced by CFC votes? Only if the CFC members are instructed so by their leadership, because they don't believe that RvB is a Goon highsec arm.

So dear Mangala, I suggest you to wait for the CSM9 results next to a Goon POCO, so you can comfort yourself with "I still have this".


PS: Arrendis, I hope this wasn't you.