I've left EVE online after my last project was complete and the game devs were so openly hostile that I interpreted the economy changes as another trick to help their favorites (in retrospect it was probably simple incompetence). The results of GRR seem to speak for themselves, but there are always those who want the glory for nothing. Soon after the Goons were gone and done, those who did absolutely nothing shown up to take credit. Now they posted a convoluted conspiracy theory to somehow prove how them doing absolutely nothing was actually a "fog of war" and how everything clicked in some glorious master plan.
At first, let me give my version in a nutshell.
Well, truth is simple. Rewriting history needs complicated jumps that are in large numbers in that PR article. First thing first: I don't question that Lenny paid 7T. But he paid for only one thing: for the various posters and opinion leaders to give him the credit. The main loophole in the story is Mercenary Coalition itself. It's a non-entity. I couldn't find them on the 2015 GSF killboard. Neither on the CO2 or any other Imperium killboards. The Scope literally killed more CFC than MC. Being a non existent makes them perfect actor for the non-existent master plan of Lenny. They started calling other allies, "Omega Security Syndicate (OSS) was an early joiner", which was a perfect move, since OSS also couldn't be found on the Imperium killboard above Science and Trade Institute (hey, they've beaten The Scope).
But brute force wasn't the only thing our masterminds did. With extreme amount of intelligence gathering (reading my 12 months killboard analysis) they determined that CO2 is the strongest PvP alliance in the CFC after GSF. Also the one the most away from Saranen. Our geniuses did awesome job in "making Imperium believing the coming attacks were nothing more serious than routine harassment by random opportunists". This wasn't that hard as the truth was that the coming attacks were nothing more than routine harassment from random opportunists save for MoA and TISHU. "Individual MBC alliances – from line members to FCs and even to alliance leaders – were no more aware of the overall strategic plans than their opponents" - mostly because there were no plans at all. At this time Lenny was probably not even aware of anything happening. Everything happened because it must have happened: the CFC was weak and collapsed as soon as someone kicked the door.
Their only evidence that they even existed is "The Mittani revealed the Boson leaks to the rest of the GSF directorate (leaks within leaks! Leakception!)". Please note that the irony didn't even miss the author. Please also note that this "evidence" comes from the same Mittani who is so "detached from reality" that he called his coalition to arms against a Gobbins ruse. The most interesting thing is why didn't he defeat this plan right then: by a hostile takeover or kicking of SMA, the CFC could cauterize the bleeding wound and save themselves from the snowball. The truth is that at this point the Imperium was so deteriorated that they couldn't even do that.
The article continues with a bunch of totally unrelated references full of buzzwords and abbreviations to look more scientific. Then it concludes "By the end of November the strategic leadership of the preMBC had sounded out the alliances it would need to conduct a campaign of total war against the Imperium and gained tentative support, pending a demonstration that success was possible." Which is funny because there wasn't a total war against the CFC at any point. There were no invasion fleets, no hellcamps, no grand declarations. The whole WWB was conducted by individual actors. It was like Rome - oh the irony - defeated by various barbarian tribes and not Nazi Germany defeated by the coalition of US+UK+SU. WWB wasn't really a war - as evidenced by the fact that Goons didn't even fight back - it was a mop-up done by everyone and his mother against a hollow shell that was staying afloat only by propaganda and dev corruption.
The really interesting question is why this PR stunt is done? Lenny and IWI were content being invisible for years and one day they woke up and felt the need to destroy the Imperium. Or at least to claim credit for it. Why? Because they are RMT-ers who can only stay in business if they are too big to be banned. Not me saying this, the CCP team security head does. Most "bankers" of IWI were found guilty of RMT, banned for it, but the decision of team security was overruled from above. CCP Bugartist was so sure that they are guilty, that - instead of parroting the party line as Bobmon expected - he flat out called his bosses supporters of RMT-ers, either because he was so upset by their decision, or because he wanted to cover his ass in case the authorities knock at the door of CCP (I'm sure that running an online casino without any permits is illegal. I'm also sure IWI never paid a dime of tax). Anyway, the IWI team must upkeep the appearance that they are so important content creators that they can't be just banned. They literally aspire to the position of The Mittani who made scandal after scandal but survived everything because he was "the space emperor".
As long as everyone is talking about them, they can't be banned for something so lowly as selling ISK. This is how you can beat them: just don't buy their ridiculous narrative that they secretly moved alliances with no killboard to destroy the Imperium. You don't have to believe my narrative either. The objective truth is that the Imperium was a weak collection of ratters and miners who were to die at the moment someone start throwing stones. I really hope and believe it was me and MoA with our 2014-15 campaign. But maybe it was Gobbins with his ruse. Or Stunt Flores slaying them like sheep. Maybe the leaks of the defactors. Maybe even IWI and TISHU. But definitely, absolutely not Lenny and MC.
At first, let me give my version in a nutshell.
- I've recognized that "Imperium’s leader might be losing the situational awareness" when they took highsec POCOs, so I hired some highsec mercs to take it from them in early 2014.
- I was surprised how easy it was and completed from zero in 3 months.
- I kept hiring highsec mercs for random killing and gathered killboard data.
- I realized that CFC loses only peanuts in big battles and they are vulnerable only to ratter/hauler hunters. I also found that the group killing them the most is not NC. or PL, but the barely known Mordus Angels, followed by Out of Sight.
- I started supporting MoA financially, with 700B spent overall and their numbers went up, being #1 CFC killer in 2015
- Seeing the utter inability to fight back, we got bold and took their systems in 2015 August. At this point CFC was functionally dead. I love MoA, but if MoA takes your sov, you have no real military power. MoA is (self-identified) as hunter-killer, not a line warrior. From this point anyone with more power than MoA could safely and surely defeat CFC.
- This didn't happen immediately as they got strong and open support from the corrupted dev Falcon and the push died out.
- SMA had a disagreement with IWI who wanted to punch them in the face (and not to defeat them, not to mention the whole Imperium). He did exactly what I preached, hired "no name ratter killers": TISHU
- TISHU absolutely massacred SMA who received no Imperium help and also made a huge publicity drive on Reddit
- Seeing blood in the water more and more groups arrived for easy kills
- CO2 jumped the sinking ship.
- The rest were just useless ratters and couldn't form anything over interceptors. CFC died without putting up a fight.
Well, truth is simple. Rewriting history needs complicated jumps that are in large numbers in that PR article. First thing first: I don't question that Lenny paid 7T. But he paid for only one thing: for the various posters and opinion leaders to give him the credit. The main loophole in the story is Mercenary Coalition itself. It's a non-entity. I couldn't find them on the 2015 GSF killboard. Neither on the CO2 or any other Imperium killboards. The Scope literally killed more CFC than MC. Being a non existent makes them perfect actor for the non-existent master plan of Lenny. They started calling other allies, "Omega Security Syndicate (OSS) was an early joiner", which was a perfect move, since OSS also couldn't be found on the Imperium killboard above Science and Trade Institute (hey, they've beaten The Scope).
But brute force wasn't the only thing our masterminds did. With extreme amount of intelligence gathering (reading my 12 months killboard analysis) they determined that CO2 is the strongest PvP alliance in the CFC after GSF. Also the one the most away from Saranen. Our geniuses did awesome job in "making Imperium believing the coming attacks were nothing more serious than routine harassment by random opportunists". This wasn't that hard as the truth was that the coming attacks were nothing more than routine harassment from random opportunists save for MoA and TISHU. "Individual MBC alliances – from line members to FCs and even to alliance leaders – were no more aware of the overall strategic plans than their opponents" - mostly because there were no plans at all. At this time Lenny was probably not even aware of anything happening. Everything happened because it must have happened: the CFC was weak and collapsed as soon as someone kicked the door.
Their only evidence that they even existed is "The Mittani revealed the Boson leaks to the rest of the GSF directorate (leaks within leaks! Leakception!)". Please note that the irony didn't even miss the author. Please also note that this "evidence" comes from the same Mittani who is so "detached from reality" that he called his coalition to arms against a Gobbins ruse. The most interesting thing is why didn't he defeat this plan right then: by a hostile takeover or kicking of SMA, the CFC could cauterize the bleeding wound and save themselves from the snowball. The truth is that at this point the Imperium was so deteriorated that they couldn't even do that.
The article continues with a bunch of totally unrelated references full of buzzwords and abbreviations to look more scientific. Then it concludes "By the end of November the strategic leadership of the preMBC had sounded out the alliances it would need to conduct a campaign of total war against the Imperium and gained tentative support, pending a demonstration that success was possible." Which is funny because there wasn't a total war against the CFC at any point. There were no invasion fleets, no hellcamps, no grand declarations. The whole WWB was conducted by individual actors. It was like Rome - oh the irony - defeated by various barbarian tribes and not Nazi Germany defeated by the coalition of US+UK+SU. WWB wasn't really a war - as evidenced by the fact that Goons didn't even fight back - it was a mop-up done by everyone and his mother against a hollow shell that was staying afloat only by propaganda and dev corruption.
The really interesting question is why this PR stunt is done? Lenny and IWI were content being invisible for years and one day they woke up and felt the need to destroy the Imperium. Or at least to claim credit for it. Why? Because they are RMT-ers who can only stay in business if they are too big to be banned. Not me saying this, the CCP team security head does. Most "bankers" of IWI were found guilty of RMT, banned for it, but the decision of team security was overruled from above. CCP Bugartist was so sure that they are guilty, that - instead of parroting the party line as Bobmon expected - he flat out called his bosses supporters of RMT-ers, either because he was so upset by their decision, or because he wanted to cover his ass in case the authorities knock at the door of CCP (I'm sure that running an online casino without any permits is illegal. I'm also sure IWI never paid a dime of tax). Anyway, the IWI team must upkeep the appearance that they are so important content creators that they can't be just banned. They literally aspire to the position of The Mittani who made scandal after scandal but survived everything because he was "the space emperor".
As long as everyone is talking about them, they can't be banned for something so lowly as selling ISK. This is how you can beat them: just don't buy their ridiculous narrative that they secretly moved alliances with no killboard to destroy the Imperium. You don't have to believe my narrative either. The objective truth is that the Imperium was a weak collection of ratters and miners who were to die at the moment someone start throwing stones. I really hope and believe it was me and MoA with our 2014-15 campaign. But maybe it was Gobbins with his ruse. Or Stunt Flores slaying them like sheep. Maybe the leaks of the defactors. Maybe even IWI and TISHU. But definitely, absolutely not Lenny and MC.
20 comments:
And the sad part is that in the future, the plebs are going to read CZ articles not your blog.
And the fact that your blog is impossible to navigate doesn't help either, because it has no table of contents, where we could look for posts, separated to Years-Months-Post Titles. It is just a wall of posts, and if I want to send one of your articels to a friend I have to remember it's title or put words in google and hope the engine finds the one I'm looking for.
I'll make a table of contents for the ideology posts. For the rest there is no point as they were only relevant back then. No one cares about the 2015 March CFC killboard data.
My blogging goal is spreading the business idea. If people see that money destroyed Goons, I'm happy. If they believe that it was the money of Lenny, that obviously bothers me, but is irrelevant for the big picture. What matters is that they learn that "money = power" and friendship is not.
" What matters is that they learn that "money = power" and friendship is not."
Money = power, sure, but, who you know is more power.
There is a reason that diplomats IRL spend most of their time just making contacts. Being able to make that call to someone, and having them take your call and help you out is something money cannot buy. Sure, you can try, and, everyone allegedly has their price, but, I doubt many people turn down the Dalai Lama when he calls.
Actually awful lot of people turn down the Dalai Lama because they don't want to make China angry because China is a good place to trade (getting money)
Showcasing the difference between popular opinion and reality with your killboard analysis was maybe the most important thing you ever did. Don't let this effort rot. It's very unfortunate that nobody else has started doing this after you stopped. The semi-official killboards are worse than useless.
@Anonymous
>Money = power, sure, but, who you know is more power.
Proof?
Your friends aren't helping you "for free." The obligation lies in your future repayment of time, and Time = Money. Paying for moving service might be cheaper after all, and real friends don't let friends be ignorant of opportunity cost.
I can understand where you are coming from but in all honesty, I had only read your blog a few times. I knew who you were and you were financing the fight on Goons for years.
The biggest thing is that when I looked at this problem, I probably came to the same conclusion you did but in a different manner. I would give you credit for seeing things first but sadly, you were not spark that got this rolling.
Also, I will give MOA and you a lot of credit for keeping up with hitting Goons. The biggest problem though is that the damage was not enough for Goons to really care. If you get bit by a mosquito, even a few times every day, it will still be an annoyance. However, when you get hit by a pack of wolves from all directions, each taking a chunk out of you....you probably wont make it.
@Lenny: you have no evidence that you financed a "pack of wolves". Can you link alliance leaders saying "we joined the MBC because Lenny paid us?" Currently only MC and OSS are mentioned and they are the weakest performers of MBC, much below MoA. While I don't question that you hired some low performers, most participants just joined because there was blood in the water. So who are those "pack of wolves"?
Note, I'm not questioning that you hired some guys and they killed some Goons AND that it contributed to their death, but not more than Stunt Flores alone.
I really wish there was an easy way to traverse your blog. Some of us DO want to go back and see your earlier posts. I like you and your blog for your economic insights, and there was a lot of that back in early 2013/2012 when you first got into eve. I understand if it's too much effort for too little reward but don't say "nobody" wants to go back to your earlier posts because that's not true.
My understanding is that the article will form the basis of a novelization of the war, to be funded via a Kickstarter, just to completely close the circle on events.
It's pretty patently obvious that money was the diplomatic catalyst that smoothed things over enough for this endeavor to succeed in the first place. I can attest to the goon perspective regarding MoA (it's L-O-L). A common target, however big or tasty, doesn't precipitate the sort of coordination, infrastructure, or activity-level that the MBC brought to bear. That was the fruit of economic incentive, different social climates, and a lot of hard work.
I'm no fan of the notion of ridiculously wealthy people funding a war effort, but insinuating the efforts and contributions of persons such as Lenny were no more effective than a (badass, tbh) solo-pvp ninja warrior is remarkably petty. Not to mention the indefatigable wellspring of money (whether real or perceived) propping up the MBC precipitated a massive paradigm shift in how our side has to operate...
@Gevlon If you want I can pull the transaction history off of Nigerian Banker Prince (my IWI banker alt). You will see that I did indeed pay all of them, every week for 5-6 months (give or take a few alliances as some came on earlier than other and some left earlier than others).
Or you can ask Vince Draken, Killah Bee, Progodlegend, Gobbins, Nync, or any of the others. Actually, ask Gen Eve from MOA. I am currently helping them too.
As to your comment about MC and OSS. What you may not have known was the MC helped organize the lowsec Voltron into what it was and led them to fight in Lonetrek and the Tribute front. Because of them, there a lowsec Voltron throughout the majority of the war and because of them, the lowsec Voltron actually fought in Sov Null (something that had never happened before).
OSS contributed by being a major logistics backbone. They transported 100s of billions of isk constantly to Venal, Cloud Ring (which supplied Fade and Pure Blind), and other fronts. With them we had established strong supply routes and were able to keep the fronts running without a hitch. Not to mention establishing dread cache's all over the place.
There was literally sooo much stuff going on in the background that made this war happen. No one or even two groups can claim more of the victory than the others. Everyone had an important part that made this whole thing happen. So I would appreciate it if you would not try to downplay anyone's role in this. I would never downplay MOA's role and have thanked them for all of their hard work, just like I have thanked everyone else.
Shame gevlon did not fund stunts new account sooner. Looks like goons hired him.
Gevlon and Lenny arguing over who caused the downfall of Goons is like the various barbarian tribes arguing over who defeated Rome.
Fan fiction, with them as the stars, either way Goons are "dead", PL is extricating from Saranen, to go farm TEST, PH is getting farmed by everybody including Goons http://evf-eve.com/services/brcat/?s=3686&b=7083360&e=1439&t=rfvuqb I'd say another month of the MBC being blue but not blue to each other and Goons will come back from playing other games and the MBC won't be able to form Voltron again, and get curbstomped.
I can tell you for certain that my relatively small Alliance (600-900 members) did not move from one side of New Eden to the other without Lenny's support. I believe a clear difference here is that he got a lot of the smaller alliance's support to join in the band wagon rather than just a few big ones.
I too wish I could view pasts posts in a less haphazard way. Even a place where I can view all the tags, as well as view posts by year and month, would be great.
Several helpful sites appear searching google for: blogspot table of contents
Two months from now, it will be almost impossible for anyone to find this post about Lenny except if they search for it, unless you have some sort of table of contents. Two months from now everyone forgets this post, can't find it, and Lenny wins.
I don't mind RMTers much and really dislike Goons, but I don't think it matters whose narrative I buy. What matters is what CCP buys into.
I think TMC recruiting for Eve competitors like H1Z1 & PS2 may cause even CCP to rethink their support more than goons actions. Well, it's CCP so probably not.
Asking for a table of content is a very non-goblin mindset. A goblin would build a ToC and have Gevlon pay pixel-gold for it if it's good enough. Or, even more goblin, hire someone to make a ToC for you and sell it to Gevlon for a profit.
Gob's I tried to point that out on day one of the article I know history when I see it and I know what a re-write looks like. The huge difference is I don't think lenny had any idea how weak I think his narrative is true its all the other stuff I don't believe.
This sounds like Stalin trying to remove Lenin and Trotsky from the history books. Lenny and Stalin may be remembered as heroes, but enough people will remember what really happened.
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