A Farewell to Awox

 [this is mostly rambling and barely coherent, but I felt the need to give my proverbial five groschen on the issue]

Much has been said (and written) in the last few weeks about the changes to intra-corp agression coming with the Tiamat release in less than a week from now. If you want to read what much smarter and more significant people than me have said on this issue, go ahead and read this great piece by Haedonism Bot or this article by James 315. If you don't want to read their stuff, just man up and do it anyway, it's worth it.

The fact of the matter is that I am one of those players that started out after the game received mainstream media attention. My oldest character was born a scant year ago and I  too, like so many other players, started out longing for epic space battles and getting stuck in what I like to call “PvE Hell”. I ran missions, I chewed on asteroids, I went exploring (the latter activity being the most interesting by a wide margin as it included at least a certain element of danger and player interaction).

And then I quit the game. 

Because I realized after a few months that I found all that stuff mind-numbingly boring.

And then I fell in love with Psychotic Monk, Haedonism Bot and the New Order. I spent days reading their blogs, enjoying their stories of Code Agents, Haedonism’s Wardeccs and the Belligerent Undesirables and wishing that I too could live such a life in Eve. I realized that there was nothing keeping me from doing so, because Eve is (and will be, albeit to a lesser degree) a huge sandbox that hands players a huge array of tools to do with as they please.  Those people and their stories of mischief, mayhem and anarchy rekindled my interest in the game.

So I began my career as semi-competent ninjalooter, dreamed of one day awoxing the crap out of people and blowing up blingy Orcas and missionboats left and right. Today I am little more than a Code scrub, but I have blown up a fair share of miners and even pulled off my first (and likely last) awox, which I will write about another time (spoiler: an Orca dies horribly, I derp around a lot). 

I am having fun in Eve and I hate the thought that this great game is heading into a direction that will make it harder for me to have this kind of experience. I don’t want awoxing to go away, I don’t want a dumbed-down carebeary version of this game, I want the whole Eve experience. 

Many people argue that awoxing is a dirty tactic, a fight without honor and puts corps in constant danger. Hell yes is it and hell yes it does. It’s an act of betrayal and backstabbing with the potential of destroying billions of ISK in assets and ruining a whole bunch of peoples’ days. And it is glorious. 

I do not believe that awoxing drives players away from the game, nor do I believe that this attempt of removing (or at least heavily nerfing) this aspect of the game will somehow raise subscription numbers. What I do know for a fact, however, is that the stories of guys like Monk and Bot made me a permanent subscriber to the game.