[This article was submitted to EN24 by Cinnamon Rage in the hopes of discovering what has caused the blight of Minmatar Faction Warfare. It does not reflect the views of EN24 but only those of the writer]
If you will cast your minds back to the 6th of July 2014 with me some of you may remember a post on the Warfare and Tactics section of the EVE Forums:
“Starting tomorrow the siege of Huola begins. We’ve waited long enough for good fights from the farmatar farmlitia, and since the gud fites have not been forthcoming…we will be coming to them.
The goal is system control. Many ships will be lost. Much fun will be had.
We come for your people.”
Templar Dane
Amarrian Vengeance
What was to follow was a conflict that rocked the Amarr/Minmatar warzone. Unlike a standard system siege this conflict proved so bloody that articles began to appear on all the major EVE news outlets with the militias of Faction Warfare competing for prime time in New Eden, whilst the community outside of Low Sec suffered under the oppression of the ‘Blue Donought’.
This conflict lasted from the 7th July 2014 to the eventual official surrender of the Amarr Militia on the 22nd of August. In the first 10 days alone over 9000 ships and 1000 pods were destroyed totalling an estimate of over 250 Billion ISK worth of destruction in what was mostly cruiser hull and below in scale. The conflict saw the involvement of representatives of all 4 militias plus many neutral entities declaring for one side or the other and even just third partying. In the first couple of weeks of the conflict each side had a 23/7 fleet in operation ensuring almost constant carnage with TIDI being a rare sight.
Following the surrender the Amarr looked in terrible condition, the corp that co-ordinated the assault imploded, one of the Amarr militias most notorious FC’s Flyinghotpocket quit the game and the Minmatar traitor Alliance, WINMATAR. [WMTR], were once again driven from the warzone. However skip forward to the present day and the Minmatar are trying to recover from losing the whole Warzone to the dominating Amarr Militia. This can be at least partially attributed to the fates of the Minmatar hero’s who won the battle but lost the warzone.
The author set out to discover the fate of some of the veteran groups of the Minmatar Militia and what drove the mass exodus from faction warfare.
Representatives of Ice Fire Warriors [IFW], Smile ‘n’ Wave [WAVE], Global ISK Network, Iron Oxide. [FEO] and Angry Mustellid [WEAZL] were approached with the following questions and what follows is a transcript of their responses. [The author has edited some responses for spelling and clarity]. It is worth noting that Zen Guerrilla’s responses are his own views and are not an official response by Iron Oxide. alliance.
1) What made your members choose to leave faction warfare?
Annah Kitheran [CEO of WEAZL]
“We left FW as we felt we had outgrown the content that seemed to satisfy most of the pilots who stayed there. It is my fond (and well backed up by WEAZL’s combat record back when we were in FEO) belief that FW does not have to mean low end comps zerged around in an artless blob. We have always been fond of the well segued fleet comps more commonly associated with the more established pirate groups.”
Gritz1 [Representative of IFW]
“We chose to leave FW as a collected group. Faction war had become stale. It was the same enemies, the same fleet comps, the same scenery. I still consider myself a noob to Eve and I wouldn’t dare consider myself a “bitter vet” but even when I first joined FW a few years ago with IFW, the Warzone seemed much more lively. It was not the same static battle ‘who can pile the most destroyers/cruisers into a plex – and make them as cheap as possible.’ There are some great groups on both sides of the war, but it was time to move on and get into an unfamiliar territory.”
Lorenso [CEO of I-NET]
“We left FW to join a project of an “Italian Alliance”… we are all Italians and we smiled to join this transversal project that unites Italians in Eve Online, but the hearts of our older corpmates remained in Lulm.”
White Drop [CEO of Smile ‘n’ Wave]
“There really was quiet a lot of reasons for us to leave FW, we have been doing it for a rather long time, more than 2 years of constant offensive and defensive engagements. First problem we faced was the continuing stagnation. People coming to us at the beginning of our way, and than visiting us at the late FW period noticed that we are literally the same, same numbers, fleets, ship types, FW was much of a distraction and we couldn’t really focus on bigger pirate engagements. From the very start an idea of becoming fully pirate alliance was on the agenda, but at that time we were not ready to such a radical step. You should keep in mind that in Russian community FW has a long-standing reputation of noob carebears and condors under links and HG snake set. Worst thing is that they are mostly right. So it was rather hard to keep and recruit experienced pvp players that way. This and ingame limitations makes it hard to cooperate with someone out of FW.”
“Of course, the final chord was the massive exodus of Huola coalition, Sadly there really wasn’t ever a good level of cooperation between us. We still remember Annah helping us out in Dal campaign against Fweddit and Amarrian Commandos. Such commonwealth worked only twice: when the Biohazard POS awoxing happened and during Huola defence. Later on everyone in the coalition was like “game complete”. people, corporations and alliances leaving. We saw the coalition crumble and not really able to do anything. At leadership meeting we agreed to do a final operation like the old times, So the Siege of Amammake started, We really hoped for help from remaining Minmatar Alliances, but it turned out to be senseless. We managed to get the system to 100% contested a few times, but at the iHub we met a massive BS fleet with carriers and supers on standby. Not something we can take without being able to dock. Meanwhile Iron Oxide was rapidly loosing Kourmonen and Huola. Long story short we became fully pirates. There are a lot of new challenges and difficulties, but in summary I am really glad with that decision. We gathered a lot of new friends, goals, possibilities, and thank god we can dock everywhere!”
Zen Guerrilla [FEO Veteran]
“While Burn Huola was crazy fun, things got pretty boring after that. Quite a few of the US based Minnies decided to move on which lead to a serious problem with our timezone coverage. Farmers noticed, things got worse with even more people leaving or taking breaks.
We debated to stay and give it another proper fight until Huola finally fell but being seriously outnumbered (in 2 out of 3 major timezones) there was nothing we could do but delay the inevitable so we just moon walked out of Huola and called it a day.”
2) Do you still have any involvement in the warzone?
Annah Kitheran
“We pirate in the area but we don’t really get involved in the FW politics anymore. Alliance contains people from both sides of the FW divide who were dissatisfied with militia content no one is too keen on strategically fucking their old friends (shooting them however is generally fine 😉 )”
Lorenso
“Now we are more involved in the region of Querious and in the colonization of the near Khanid low sec, previously held by alliances ‘Don’t tell me odds’ and ‘Darwinism.’. ‘Marmite’ are killing our noobs on high sec, but they die without dignity when they encounter true fleets. Huola is too far to fly every day, but we’ll fly there sometimes, and we don’t go there to kill everything we meet, but we want Amarrian ships on our killboard.”
Gritz1
“As a whole group, no. Everyone has their own alts on every side of faction war (come on, it seems every Amarr main had their Minnie alt, and vice y versa) but in general we are not doing anything with FW atm.”
White Drop
“There is a corporation of FW Ideologists which have separated from our alliance – Nomads Of Republic. They are constantly PVPing in Kourmonen and we always join each other fleets. But they are not really up to taking systems or anything. It might be rough, but In my personal opinion FW is dead. It is just a pendulum for PVE and ideological people. The whole system needs some revision from CCP.”
Zen Guerrilla
“We still have lots of friends in the area and are maintaining our standings with quite a few of the Minnies. We had a few run ins with some Amarr gangs up in Metropolis but that was about it.”
3) How do you think the current Minmatar militia are doing? Do you have any message for those still in the militia? Or any advice?
Annah Kitheran
“Poorly. My advice as always is that plexing doesn’t win the war what wins the war is making your opponent not plex. The moment you become fixated upon orbiting buttons over the overall state of play is the moment you doom yourself to a long mediocre tail off towards failcascade.”
Lorenso
“I understand alliances Minmatar that left the militia for technical reasons, but I do not share this choice. They are looking for fun, battles without drama. But FW is a game to play, drama increases the value of the game and if you lose it is also nice to start over again. We would have never left the militia, our alliance takes us away from the warzone but our hearts beat for Huola to be free. I am sad that the Amarr took Huola and I’m not ashamed to say it because this also makes Eve online more beautiful.”
Gritz1
“I can not comment really on how the Minnies are doing. Kind of lost a reason to follow the happenings on each side. I very much do miss some parts of FW and being a part of it, it was a fun community to be involved with and really has been the majority of my time playing Eve. There is a lot of enthusiasm, at least on the Amarr/Minnie front that people brought into the game which really made for some fun times in and out of game.”
White Drop
“Well… Neither Amarr nor Minmatar has powers the FW had earlier, I know there is another Russian speaking corp taking some systems in Metropolis, but it is hard for me to look on it with a serious face.”
Zen Guerrilla
“It seems that it’s slowly picking up and more important, a lot of new and motivated guys have joined and are really having fun there. They’re still learning but it’s looking good for the future. It’s kind of a fresh start which is great.”
4) Is your (Corp/Alliance) planning a return to Minmatar Militia in the future?
Annah Kitheran
“No.”
Gritz1
“We held onto LNA and could possibly return one day, but as of now we are having fun not being tied into one faction. I know I would love to go back one day but right now we are having a lot of fun doing what we are doing.”
Lorenso
“Once Aslon (Alliance CEO Winmatar) asked me to betray our Minmatar comrades to join in Winmatar Amarr. Today I-Net is faithful to the project in which it is involved SYS-K, but if one day the conditions of union will fail, I-Net will return in FW”
Zen Guerrilla
“I sincerely doubt it. We really needed that break and are now looking for something else to do.”
5) Anything else you would like to say?
Annah Kitheran
“FW has some very, interesting mechanics in places that are for the most part overshadowed by poor oversight at a strategic level. I truly hope that at some point there will be a situation again where both sides have competent well respected commanders and a proper sov war re-commences. This hasn’t happened since Inferno. There has always been a dominant militia and an opposing militia crying about unfair mechanics or blobbing. Basically HTFU and organise you have a decent manpower base, look what Brave did.”
Gritz1
“Thank you sending me a message. As a matter of fact a few days ago I was looking through my screen shots folder for Eve and I came across a picture I took, LNA was one of the top alliances in Eve for some time and we were published in the EON Magazine, which I promptly went and bought a copy of when I found this out. We had a lot of fun in Faction War and I hope we will get back into it one day. Thank you for your time! Fly dangerously.”
Zen Guerrilla
“It was a great time and I have enjoyed pretty much all of it. Props to everyone involved; present, past and future. The great FCs from way back when, the pirates that kept things interesting, the hilarious civil war, Burn Huola, LNA, our Gallente buddies that helped us out in times of need, TMFED, Terpene, PL for all the hotdrops, ROSS, UK, Weazls, Fweddit for polishing my killboard and so much content, Agony Empire, Nulli Secunda for being the worst alliance to ever grace FW, the Sahtogas crew, my first home Auga and many more places, events and people who I just can’t remember right now.”
There are two things that perhaps can be taken from these interviews; the first is that the remaining and new Minmatar Militia are not without some friends but they should not hold their breath for the hero’s of old returning to help them. The second thing that perhaps any political body in New Eden should heed – that a community is held together by an intricate network of personal relationships and shared goals. A number of the above respondents cited the fact that the other groups intended to leave as to why they in turn left, turning what should have been a crippling blow to their mortal enemies into the final blaze of glory of a potent Low Sec Coalition.
Personally the author wishes all the departed Minmatar well and looks forward to seeing if their heirs can pick up the torch and carry it to the heart of the Amarr Militia and set Huola on fire once more.
