Greedy Goblin

Monday, November 19, 2012

The shocking truth: TEST is a mining alliance

TEST alliance is called many things by its members/allies and also by our enemies. From the "most newbie-friendly PvP alliance" to "zero-skill blobbers" there are various opinions mentioned. But the truth is much more darker. TEST is all about mining. I digged trough the forums and found more than 30 people who mentioned mining in the sense of he is mining in TEST or seriously considers joining mining. That's some serious mining fleet. TEST alliance was surely formed to support this carebear activity.

What the hell is this nonsense? 30 people are 0.3% of the 10000 members of TEST. 30 miners or even 300 miners wouldn't make TEST a mining alliance. Strike that, these 30 people are not exclusively mining, they do other things. Just because you spend some time mining it won't make you "a miner" (the opposite is true too, running missions all week in highsec and then going to a single roam in Saturday makes no one a lowsec pirate). All this "research" proves is that there are miners in TEST. You probably guessed that on your own.

OK, what this post is about? It's about the widespread opinion that TEST is a hive of horrible people who post disgusting and offensive things. They must be awful and joining them needs you to be similarly a horrible. Those who claim this have "evidence": screenshots of forums, chatlogs and such. Let me add some more:
These lovely statements are all sent to me over something completely in-game (I switched to another corp within TEST). You can find some more if you register on the TEST forums. Isn't these prove that TEST is a hive of mentally unstable horrible people? No! These prove that there is a tiny group of mentally unstable people in TEST. I counted the authors of these and similar vomits. They are less than the miners who posted about mining. If thirty-something (0.3%) miners don't make TEST a mining alliance, why do half amount of clearly troubled young men make TEST a horrible place?

Because social people are extremely focused on social messages, the ones about their person. 200 people who professionally participated in a fleet makes smaller impression in a social person than a single should-be-mental-patient calling them names. This is another ape-subroutine, a remnant of the prehistoric age. Back then raging madmen were dangerous. No, I'm not going to say that they are just trolls who don't mean it and would apologize blushed if called out in real life. You can't know that. There are madmen who just go out and kill people for no sane reasons.

I'm saying that we are separated by hundreds of miles, there are policemen patrolling the streets and the physical strength of a raging madman is nothing compared to our self-defense weapons. (Funny but true: what would I feel if one of them would show up at my house with a knife? Recoil.) The chance of being murdered is 2-5/100000 people per year. Dying in road accident is 4-8x more likely. Running away from various activities because of them is dumber than never leaving our home in fear of killed by car crash.

Sure, they could be censored. That would handle the trolls, but wouldn't do anything with the ones the troll mimic: the madmen. This case at least everyone can know whose closer groups shall be avoided. Also, censoring them from a gaming forum won't make them disappear from real life. The writers of these are countrymen of some of you. Maybe even living in the same cities as you. Should you lock the door and hide in the corner?

I'm not saying that you should be some kind of hero who stands his ground in various internet spaces and not running away from them. I'm saying that you don't need to be a "hero" as they aren't a real danger. They are an annoyance. A tiny minority that pollutes every community, visible or not. TEST is different only in not bothering to make them invisible by forum moderation. If I'd turn off moderation on this blog, the comment section would be similar.

If you don't want to be exposed to these people, your only option is locking the door and turning off all communication systems. If you don't want that, if you accept that sometimes you are exposed to obnoxious idiots, TEST isn't at all worse place than any other internet community. Take it this way: 99.8% are decent, normal people who play a video game, fly in fleets properly and engaged in intelligent discussions in various forum topics.

PS: a hint to those who might wrote such things while not being a madman, just drunk or stupid troll, there is a way to fix it.



Meanwhile in nullsec, C9N-CC, a station system in Esoteria was attacked by our fleet to push the IHUB into armor reinforce. It was a Rokh fleet which needed lot of Scimitars because the locals were busy with bombers. We only lost frigs, destroyers and zero-tank BC, the battleships were all topped up between bombing runs. When the system was secured, dreads, titans and supercarriers arrived to clean up the IHUB:
In the fleet there wasn't a bit of the behavior mentioned above, everyone was nice and did his job. They are the true TEST, not that tiny group of trolls/madmen.

Saturday morning report: 173.8B No idea what happened, didn't find misclicks in logs. (8.6 spent on main accounts, 7.1 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.8 on Ragnarok, 5.5 on Rorqual, 3.4 on Nyx, 3.4 on Dread, 57.4 sent as gift)
Sunday morning report: 175.4B (8.6 spent on main accounts, 7.1 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.8 on Ragnarok, 5.5 on Rorqual, 3.4 on Nyx, 3.4 on Dread, 57.4 sent as gift)
Monday morning report: 177.1B (8.6 spent on main accounts, 7.1 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.8 on Ragnarok, 5.5 on Rorqual, 3.4 on Nyx, 3.4 on Dread, 57.4 sent as gift)

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I can't really decide whether to agree or disagree with you on this one.

Yes, there are some mouthbreathers in TEST who spew bullshit all day and are best ignored entirely.

On the other hand you have Zulu squad who can look a lot like a small group of mouthbreathers spewing bullshit to someone who doesn't know them but who *will* get you removed from TEST once they have set their eyes on you.
One day you might brag about being able to ignore their antics because Montolio and rob3r are backing you up, the next day DHD might be camping you with an 80 man "shoot blues" fleet into station while maniacally pinging for capitals to remove any in-space assets you own (and even if Montolio should disagree after the fact DHD won't get anymore than a slight slap on the wrist).

It really doesn't depend on the number of people that hate you but on *who* these people are.




Gevlon said...

Actually not. But thanks for your comment, it deserves not a reply but a whole post, incoming in Wednesday.

Bristal said...

Playing EVE has given you such perspective, Gevlon. Back when you played WoW, a screenshot of someone you baited to say something stupid was all it took to proclaim the game full of M&S who needed to be schooled by your wisdom.

Now you realize that a loud minority doesn't define a group? Especially when that group is "yours", I suppose.

Anonymous said...

Might I ask what you said that spawned so much hate Gevlon? Seems like it would be quite entertaining to know what you said that made them all go "full retard".

Far said...

As cute and occasionally interesting as it was to see you on our forums Gevlon, most of your stay was like watching a wall street economist extol the virtues the free market to a bunch of starving Africans.

Keeping with that analogy, do you wonder why you might not have seen the kind of response you were looking for?

As a sociological entity, TEST has a certain number of unconquerable personalities. Like the hollywood actor caught with hookers and blow, their extreme social capital lets them get away with almost anything.

Your encounter with the most ADHD man in Canada, the infamous DurrHurrDurr, was inevitable. It might seem like the act of a raging mental patient, but he's a far shrewder customer than you might think.
The man is our Cerberus, he is the weather vane of public opinion (check your rep) and he devours the culturally incompatible. Individuals, groups, and whole alliances have fallen to him. Sociologists refer to this sort of thing as normative maintenance and discipline.

You seem to think this is all without reason. But you would be wrong. The forum adage of lurk before posting has come about for a reason. You failed to learn your audience, their interests; their goals; their game.

Just like McLuhan said, the medium is the message. The substance of good communication is half the speaker and half who they're speaking to. For better or worse, we just don't seem to care about the same things you do.

Darkwolfi said...

"In the fleet there wasn't a bit of the behavior mentioned above, everyone was nice and did his job. They are the true TEST, not that tiny group of trolls/madmen."

You do know that this "tiny group" is a subset of test that also joins fleets? Not everyone boasts every time they joined a fleet, because.. they don't have to. I find it sad that you use your fleet participation to justify your presence at all.

Hagu said...

I sort of agree with this post and yet upon reflection do not.

You are correct that during our lifetime encountering patently obvious idiots behaving rudely is far from the worst thing that will ever happen to us.

Still, there is no reason to accept avoidable stupidity. If there is only one bar/restaurant near me, then some loud/rude patrons won't deter me. But when there are dozens of choices, it may.

EVE is playable; but for me, there are enough alternatives that I don't.



Anonymous said...

On the other hand you have Zulu squad who can look a lot like a small group of mouthbreathers spewing bullshit to someone who doesn't know them but who *will* get you removed from TEST once they have set their eyes on you.

How realistic is this? We're renting from Test, and the number of coalition "partners" blowing our ships up is a bit much.

I thought the "never not shoot blues" in the forums was a joke. Or is it?