EVE Community Spotlight: Helicity Boson page 2
What was involved with organizing the Hulkageddon events?
Time. Lots of it. Since I ended up doing all the legwork (and shameless attention grabbing) by myself, I didn't actually get to blow stuff up myself. I answered some 1000 or so emails, Evemails and private convos over the course of the event, not to mention having to deal with the less-intelligent amongst the player base that think the best way to react to an ingame event is to make threats to my person, post spam to the webpage and other completely childish and stupid things.
I find it ironic that they do this, yet apparently I am not right in the head. It's hilarious.
The event was wildly popular, but also controversial. How would you describe the response to Hulkageddon II from the playerbase?
Well, as is ever the case, what you will see on forums is the vocal minority of loud and obnoxious people that do not rank in any nation's top 5 percentile, those were naturally pretty negative and cried to the heavens above for CCP to save them so they could continue to not-play-the-game in peace. What you don't see are the nice people that sent me Evemails or left positive comments on my blogs or talked to me in various channels. Overall the reactions were quite positive, most of the more well-balanced individuals recognize that EVE is meant to be dangerous and applauded the effort that went into this, and enjoyed the spice it brought to their favorite MMO dish.
Do you feel that the critics of Hulkageddon have some valid points?
Hardly. Or at least I've not really seen anyone that could muster up a valid argument. You see, most of the critics are people that live under the mistaken impression that either:
High sec is supposed to be safe (it's not).
They are entitled to do something in EVE in complete safety (you're not).
I can see where this misunderstanding comes from, many MMOs have symmetrical and consensual PvP paradigms unless you specifically choose to go onto a PvP server. In EVE this is not the case, nowhere except the inside of the station is truly safe. And there is only one server; the PvP one. There is a set of rules governing the sandbox and a number of toys in it. After that, all bets are off, you can use them however you like, and we have. People who are unable to deal with/accept this fact are not understanding the nature of the game, and it will cause them to come to harm. Those that embrace it, revel in the uncertainty and risk this brings, it's what sets EVE apart from other games; it is, in fact, its main selling point.
I'm also particularly amused by critics that seem to imply that people participating in this event are not capable PVPers beyond ganking defenseless barges. It's funny because the guy putting up the first prize (Garmon AKA El'Tar) is currently the top ranked PvPer on Battleclinic, and most of the top-scoring corporations in the event are highly competent PvP outfits. Basically it's a lot of hogwash. You want to prosper in EVE? Then you fight for it.
I was hoping that a "counter" event would evolve where the so-called "carebears" would use the tools and mechanics of the game to mount a defense, which is entirely feasible, but instead they elected to just moan a lot and do nothing to improve their plight. Oh well, maybe next time.
Did you notice much cooperation between players in otherwise opposed corps? What kind of connections did players make through the event that might not have happened otherwise?
Not so much between opposing corporations, though there seemed to be an unspoken rule not to interfere with each other's efforts. But I did get to see a bewildering variety of players meet up, hook up and play together in ways they otherwise would not have. The tiny corporation I set up for alts to join if they had no one to play with ended up having 50 people in it and they teamed up with each other and other groups around New Eden in a spectacular display of ad-hoc self-organization. Some of them have continued to play together since the event. I think that is a very positive development; people made a lot of friends during Hulkageddon II.
Given the success of Hulkageddon II, is it likely we'll see the event return in the future?
I actually have several different things cooking right now, all of them are PVP-centric of course, but not all of them (actually none of them) involve suicide ganking runs. I'm not sure which of the projects I will get around to first, but it will either be another strike at the sleeping masses of high sec, or an all out brawl in NPC 0.0 in a contest format (Garmon is of course helping me with the latter as one might expect).
Hulkageddon itself will return, I don't know when yet, but it certainly will. Maybe it will be even more massive this time, heh heh.
Thanks for speaking with Massively.
Thank you for having me, it's been a pleasure!
