Late last night, Capri Sun Kraft Foods, Black Legion’s Chief Diplomat announced on Reddit that Black Legion are officially pulling out of Fountain, and moving to B-DBYQ in Cloud Ring in order to have access to low-sec fights in Placid and Black Rise. The Google Doc that was linked in the Reddit thread reads as follows:
Fuck Fozzie
Not long before I started playing EVE, Starcraft II was the hill upon which I dumped my free time. Starcraft was always a great game supported by an even better community, and that community built the modern foundations for Esports as you see it manifest in LoL, Dota 2, CS:GO, etc. However the one insurmountable problem it suffered was even closer to home: Blizzard. I remember pondering back then if it was possible for a game designer to misunderstand their playerbase more deeply than Dustin Bowder did.4 years later, I think I’ve finally found the answer to that question in the form of Fozzie and the team surrounding him at CCP. EVE is a special game with a community that is totally unique, for better or for worse. It takes a special approach to design and balance a game like that. Whatever systems you design, players will go to incredible lengths to exploit every inch of them to their own benefit, with absolutely zero regard for other players, and whether or not it’s good for the game in general. The last year or so of changes to Null Sec in EVE will go down for me personally as textbook examples of what can go wrong when you don’t understand the community you are catering too.
The bottom line is that content we as an alliance pay our subs for no longer exists in Null Sec. Will that always be the case? I don’t know, I hope not, but for now the answer is no. As of Monday, Black Legion will no longer hold the region of Fountain. I have no doubt it’ll sit there on Dotlan for quite some time since there’s no way to actually drop it, but we’ll be turning off IHUB payments with no intention of coming back. I stopped accepting new renters to our rental programs 2 weeks ago and let our current renters know the program would be discontinued at the end of the month. Some of them will be staying in a pocket of the region as a new alliance and I wish them the best of luck, but this is where we part ways.
The fact is that sov isn’t fun anymore. We tried it, but wanding isn’t fun, chasing interceptors isn’t fun, and worst of all, being unable to leave your space in your prime timezone for just 2 hours without half the region getting RF’d is certainly not fun. I don’t blame anyone for taking advantage of this system, I blame CCP for creating it. With that in mind, we’ll be closing this chapter in the alliance’s history and moving on. There’s no reason to go down with the ship.
Low-Sec Legion
Instead, we’re going to go try out the lowsec lifestyle. BL has never shyed away from fights on account of the security status of the venue, but if you make lowsec your focus, that has wider implications on your doctrines, your FCs and your content sources. By getting that stuff right, you open yourself up to a class of fights that doesn’t really exist in null sec.For the minute, we’re going to keep staging in B-DBYQ. The reason for this is simply that it gives us quick and easy access to both Placid and Black Rise rather than having to choose, while also being able to jump on the odd fight in Cloud Ring. If you have caps or supers, speak to your corp leadership. Things are a little different there.
I know this is practically a cliché of BL alliance updates too, but please buy dreads. We’re going to be using them a good chunk here and our numbers right now are not where they need to be to do what we want to do. In terms of preference, anything besides Revelations are great. Make sure you have blap refits/drugs ready to go at all times too. Armor triage will also be a priority.
Doctrines
We’re going to be making some big changes. Usually these updates I’ll tell you about a new doctrine and take one off the table as a necessity. That’s not how this is going to work. Any doctrine not on this list is shelved, if you own one, sell it and get that ISK liquid.Machariels and Cynabals are staying with no changes
Legions are going to be switched to Proteus’s for brawling (fit still TBD, train subs immediately, Engineering 5 > Offensive 5 > rest 5)
We’re also going to be introducing a Bhaalgorn fleet as our all-in support doctrine.If it’s not on the above list, sell it. Gilas, Petes, Tengus, Ishtars, Maelstroms, Muninns, all of it. Get yourself liquid and take some of the load off moving.
Awox Policy
In less interesting news, we’ve had a number of silly incidences the last month or so. The foot is being put down on these issues, and this is the policy:If you awox within a corp, it’s up to your corp leadership what happens
If you awox a member of another corp within alliance, every BL member on the mail must pay the zkillboard value of the loss to the holding corp
Those members then have 24hrs to pay that money to the holding corp, their corp can pay it on their behalf if they decide to
The holding corp will then reimburse the awoxee
If it doesn’t get paid within that window of time, their corp has 48hrs to boot that member
If the corp still hasn’t kicked the member after 72hrs, they will be removed from the allianceIt’s pretty harsh, but this was proposed at our leadership meeting and every corp’s leadership agreed with it. The idea is to prevent future issues, not punish for ones that happen. Don’t be dumb and you’ll be fine.
Footnote
Eve’s not in a good place right now and it would be daft of me to insult your intelligence by telling you it is. What I can tell you though is that everyone I respect in this alliance is here for one reason: interesting fights. That hasn’t changed, and that will always be the case. If for one reason or another you decide that drifting into a period of inactivity is in your future, I respect that. However BL is an alliance built on actually logging into and playing the game. We’re all trying our best to make this game as fun as possible day in and day out, and the more people we have actively scouting, FCing, bridging, etc,,, the easier that is. CCP may not respect your time, but we certainly do and we’d really appreciate it if you were willing to give us just a little more of it for the next month or so and we’ll see what we can do.
It would appear that Black Legion want no part in Aegis sovreighnty, and believe that Low-Sec, particularly in the Gallente-Caldari warzone offer the best content at the current time. With this announcement, the next question is, which other corps are going to follow suit and move from Null-Sec to Low-Sec in search of more content.
With Black Legion pulling out of Fountain, who will move in to fill the power vacuum in what is undoubtedly the richest region in New Eden?
