Saturday 23 March 2013

Eve: The HBC - now under new management

Yesterday the leader of the largest coalition of players in Eve stepped down and Sort Dragon from Pandemic Legion took over. Sort is a veteran player from the start of the game, flew with BoB back in their heyday and has a chance of being the next CSM chair, so quite the heavy hitter.

This opens up a few interesting questions.

First, was this some kind of meta-gaming coup by puppetmaster extraordinaire, The Mittani? Mittens certainly had it in for Montolio, our former leader, trashing him both in public and in private. But Occam's Razor suggests that the very plausible statements made by Monty as he exited were true - a mix of frustration that he couldn't drag the HBC into an epic conflict with the other big coalition and the sheer frustration of dealing with highly invested obstinate players all politicking against rival friendly alliances. It's a weakness of the patronage system of people management, all your underlings fall over to impress you, wail about being marginalised and complain about someone else being too favoured. So not really down to Mittens although his "Madness of Montolio" piece certainly framed the debate with even Montolio using the language of someone who was being mad in this State of the Coalition address ("I was talked back from the ledge.")

The next question is how will the HBC change and move forward under new management? We just saw some of that today when a clearly frustrated Sort Dragon had to turn a large fleet around and return to base, unable to challenge a Darkness. fleet in Stain as planned.

Part of the issue was that not all of our doctrines match or coordinate across our coalition and Sort was firm that we would be standardising. He was also impatient with people claiming they've no money to buy battleships and will be expecting people to make enough isk to fly the proper ships. The days of morale Drakes on any and every fleet may be numbered.

Montolio was a leader like The Mittani, an excellent speaker, diplomatic well organised but not a highly active Eve pvper. Sort is the other way around. not as polished or smooth as the others but a first rate large fleet commander of many years experience. It's also significant that Pandemic Legion, the last great elite pvp null sec alliance is running the show instead of Test.

I think we're going to see a more militaristic more disciplined coalition with a fair amount of drama and outrage on our way there. For people in the HBC we can definitely expect to be living in interesting times.

1 comment:

  1. coming from a doctor, Occams Razor doesn't really ever mean anything, its just a reminder not to always read into things too much. The reverse is also just as likely to be true. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hickam%27s_dictum Not crticising, I love your blog and you obviously know your shit, but too many Evers invoke Occam's razor like its some kind of infallible tool of logic which actually tells you the right answer. Both of them are more sort of a little joke to stop us from getting carried away thinking like detectives, than anything else.

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