Fireside Chat Transcript 2025 12 13
Asher Elias:
All right. Hello hello, hello, hello. My voice is already kind of going. I did a lot of talking last night and then a lot of talking in meetings today. So if my voice breaks, it's either second puberty or I just talk too much.
Apple Pear:
You for sure talk too much.
Asher Elias:
Thank you, Apple. Appreciate that. That was a good one. I really did open myself up for that one. Why did I kill Horde?
Ranger Gama:
Yeah. Just so you guys know, today has been a day of like directors, like top roping each other in Illum, like the past hour and you just kind of.
Asher Elias:
Yeah. I started on the Merkelchen show last night, and it's really carried over. We've been really going at each other. It's been crazy.
Apple Pear:
Yeah, I saw important information from Ceema about that on Reddit.
Asher Elias:
Yeah. Dictator, sorry. I'm Asher Elias. I'm the leader of Goonswarm Federation in the Imperium. I understand that you have forgotten me. It's okay. Guys make sure you're buying Christmas gifts for your family if you haven't yet. Don't forget your grandparents. This is my good, healthy advice for you. Joining initiative? That's a good one. The state of the alliance is strong indeed.
All right, so I want to first shout out Incursion Squad. That's two Incursions headshot, correct? Two in one week. Pretty crazy. Good job. Well done Incursion Squad. We, if you guys have not joined Incursion Squad is a good way to make money with friends. If you're looking for a way to meet people as well. That's a good one.
This is something I'd like to just address quickly. If you're a newer player and you are like, Hey, I'm having a hard time meeting up. Obviously your corp is a good resource, but join groups. That's how you meet friends in EVE Online. It's also how you meet friends everywhere. Just join groups. Just hop in groups and you will end up being friends with people. The most quiet person, as long as you put yourself out there a little bit, you will become friends. Incursions, friends with benefits (isk). I love that. Well done. But yeah, go ahead and join groups like I can't encourage you enough to do that. Cursed extrovert advice. Put yourself out there.
Alright, friends, just also another update. So over the next two weeks for Firesides, I will not be here next week. The Miami Hurricanes, my college football team made the college football playoff and they are playing during the fireside next week. The only chance I am here is if Initiative and Fraternity on that day declare joint invasion and start rolling in here. That is about the only way I will be here for that time. So we'll have other directors doing that.
And the week after, which is two days after Christmas. We will have an extended director Fireside, come meet your directors. It's always very fun. Ranger is placing it here. Very timely. Quick one for that Ranger. Good job. So that was, that's was really cool the last few years and I recommend you come and join it yourself.
Okay. I have a lot of interesting to talk about this week. We've got the Horde stuff which we're gonna hit on. And then we have some other really cool programs. First thing I wanna do is I wanna talk about, we have a huge SOV update that's incoming. We have basically, I wanna credit Brodog and Snipereagle. They have rejiggered our SOV, we're gonna increase our mining capacity by about 40%, which is insane amounts. I'm gonna let Brodog talk about it. He set his alarm clock to come and tell you guys about it. They've done great work. So I'm gonna throw the conch to him now.
Brodog827:
Thanks Asher. Yeah, so as we said, there's gonna be a huge change to the SOV stuff and you know it's gonna make a couple people unhappy. One thing I want everyone to keep in mind about Equinox is that this is a fluid SOV system. It means that at any time things can be changing and we don't want to get married to the idea of, there was this site in this system. With that being said, we have had roughly 67 tier three upgrades for the last little while, and it's been going pretty well. And then, CCP buffed mining, and you guys have been going insane with it.
Asher Elias:
Elysium, stop right now. Stop it. Go ahead, Brodog.
Brodog827:
Oh, geez. Fucking. What generation is that like from? Fucking, I don't want it around.
Asher Elias:
It's guys role playing as Zoomers. They're not even alpha. Even worse.
Brodog827:
Oh geez. Anyway.
Ranger Gama:
It's your generation. I should point that out.
Brodog827:
Fuck off. No, it isn't. I'm only 30. Up to 95 tier three minings. Now I did, I don't like pissing in my own boot too much. But this is a tremendous effort with the SOV system and we are pushing it to the absolute hardest that it could possibly be pushed here.
Asher Elias:
I'll glaze you, don't worry about it.
Brodog827:
Yeah. Finally, with ratting. There is still over 380 ratting systems in GSF space, not the imperium, GSF space. You will not have a fucking problem finding ratting systems. There is ratting that has been removed in place of mining that can only be done under our umbrella. I understand that this is frustrating, but we need to optimize our space. Also minor jump bridge changes. You're barely gonna notice them. Thank you.
Asher Elias:
Alright, so I just want to shout out, especially Sniper and Brodog, these two especially have like mastered the new SOV system. I'm of the strong belief that we are far ahead of any other alliance in understanding and implementing this. We are doing just incredible work there and like, shout out to those two guys. So what, say I'm not gonna piss in my own boot. I will piss in his boot for him. He and Sniper have been doing amazing work on this, and I think this is a huge change. Like we have really increased the mining. I know a lot of you guys are going crazy for mining. It'll be even easier now with more things to mine.
Our numbers have been..
Brodog827:
Skill. Expression matters a lot with this SOV system. You can have space be equal and have the same amount of resources or workforce power. How you manipulate that matters so much more in this SOV system.
Asher Elias:
I'll tell you guys something funny. So Hippojaxx, who's been playing for a long time, started Ishtar writing for the first time ever this week. And he is been like, Asher, I never knew this was so easy. I'm making so much money. I'm like, yeah, it's really easy. It's a really good way to make money. So I just thought that was really funny that the guy who's been around for so many years just kind of figured out, oh yeah, Ishtars are a nice way to spin and make money. Ha, well done.
Okay, so we are starting up a new program. We are calling it Titan Credits, better name TBD, potentially, but it is a new system that, we have basically noticed that a lot of people have. You know, you're gonna go AFK, you've got your Titan, and you're worried about, oh, what might happen to it? What, what will we do. So what we're gonna do is if you go AFK if you're gonna go away for a while. If you are going to take a leave from the game and plan to come back. What you can do is get a Titan credit from, Yeah, it's Goonloons, where you get a Titan credit from the Alliance. You hand your Titan to the Alliance. We will then, if we move, we'll move it for you. Whenever you come back, you will get express reentry into the alliance and we will hand you back your Titan. So yes, Sulli, we have no plan to move right now, but this is EVE Online. Things can happen. So. This is for people going AFK who are going away, you'll get a Titan Credit and when you return, you will have the Titan return to you. It will not be your Titan. I want to be clear about that by the way. This is a fungible titan. So if you get, if you give a Rag, you will get a Rag back. If you give us an Avatar, you'll get an Avatar back, et cetera, et cetera. So say the Alliance goes to Cloud Ring for some reason, and you go AFK, you will return, turn in your credit, be re-accepted, guaranteed re-accepted and then a Avatar or whatever it is you gave away will be given to you. It is hull what we are doing. Actually, I haven't like, but I, yeah, I think hull would be the only way we could do that. So yeah. So this is only for players who are like looking to take time away. We'll just be running it sort of in the background as a thing and then we will, you know. We're gonna be splitting up the Titans into, you know, different groups so that there's no sort of, one guy has 40 titans that he can walk off with factor either. Basically yes. A Titan Fungible token, the TFT.
So someone asked a question in Elysium. I'm sorry, not in Elysium, in mumble. Please go to Elysium on Jabber. That is where all questions are asked.
Can you give away the token? We have not talked about making it a form of, credit that you can trade around. They believe it is tied to one person.
Ranger Gama:
It's just tied to one person.
Asher Elias:
Yeah. So.
Brodog827:
The key reason for that is because you can get back into GSF, so like this is a, your token to get back into the subway, so to speak, and not have any problems, no questions asked, get back in.
Asher Elias:
Yeah. You can't give a blacklisted member your token so they can get back in. It doesn't work that way.
Also wanna talk about the blacklist. On top of that, we are changing the blacklist. We are getting so many frivolous unban requests for terrible cases, and these things take a long time to review. So we are going to implement a fee for non purchase requests. So this is a non purchase request. So like if you're, if you bought a character and it's blacklisted, you can still make that. If you are making an unban request, we are now going to require a 5 billion ISK payment because this takes many hours for one person to do and they're very, very unfun, and so we are hoping this will lower the amount of frivolous requests that we get. If you believe that a person should be un blacklisted, a lot of people are requesting on behalf of other people. If you believe it, put your money where your mouth is. I had a case come to me recently.
Just gonna give you guys an example. This person came to me and they made a really impassioned request that I take their buddy off the blacklist and they laid out all the reasons, they sent me, like, I saw them typing, like, you know, you ever see on discord where the person is typing? I get this a lot, like, hi, and then this person is typing. This person typed for two hours before they actually sent it. Two hours. And gave me like 20 paragraphs. It was like 20 paragraphs. They probably added, it was a lot of work for them. And so they sent me this really passionate, heartfelt request for their buddy to be unbanned. And I looked into it, you know, obviously they put all this effort into it. I'm gonna spend a couple minutes checking it out. I normally don't do unban requests, but they put their time and effort into it. I can give them five minutes of my time to at least give it a once over. The unban request person had stolen 500 billion to a trillion ISK from Goons and had not paid it back and had the opportunity, and they had just lied to the other person. They had just lied to the other person and, so I laid it out to them and the person who had spent two hours was like, wow. I feel kind of betrayed. I feel kind of upset that they did this to me and you know, so what I'm trying, I'm giving you guys this whole story to understand that we get a lot of these requests and the people who are asking their buddies to unban are often the people who are acting in bad faith. So we're introducing this as a measure to lower some of those bad faith requests that people do their own groundwork and legwork and try to figure out if this person is BSing me? Because, you know, asking is free. And so there's been a lot of asking. Like I said, this is one of the least, enjoyable things to do is do the research on this thing kind of thing. So that'll be a nice thing, 5 billion isk to pay in for this. And, but like I said, if you bought a character, that's a really easy thing to check. We can do characters for free.
Okay. Let's talk about the big news of the week, which is Horde has now joined Initiative. All the core Horde groups are joining Initiative. Shines sent out a ping at the time saying that like, it's going to be reviewed one by one. Horde at their town hall said that all the groups are already accepted so you can, you know, decide what the truth is there. But it appears that every Horde corporation that was left, which is like basically all the shitters like vanguard are joining Initiative. I definitely would like you guys if you can come up with a good like Horde initiative nickname now. There was Panini, which people have been doing. I dunno. I'm not super good on that one. I'm not super, I don't think that's the greatest one, but, you know, if you guys can't come up with a better one, we can stick with Panini.
Regalan says HordeInitiative, which is just, that's just lazy. Yeah. Making a port manto word out of it is not really a good one either.
Ranger Gama:
Regalan, I expect better from you, man. We've known each other a long time. You can do better than that.
Snipereagle1:
Hinit it or Horde.
Is that just how he talks.
Asher Elias:
Yeah. Yeah. That's basically how he rolls, so.
Apple Pear:
The question of course now is like, should we name it something about running away, that culture now gets to Init, et cetera, that it's Init that runs away instead of Horde? Like all kinds of things to think about.
Asher Elias:
So basically for those of you guys who sort of missed the overall meta nerd appear, we, we've all seen the Horde collapse. We were part of the hell camp that went on and you guys all participated in that, but behind the scenes you had Shines saying, well, you know, Horde came to me and said that they're going to collapse and I'm anti coalition and I want what's good for the game, so I'm gonna give them the space and let them run away because that's good for the game. And now it turned out that letting them rest in the space and what was good for the game and being anti coalition was that all the remainder of Horde and all the shitters join Initiative is actually that it turned out to be what was really good for the game.
Ranger Gama:
I kinda like Zoe's there. Initial lies. That's good.
Asher Elias:
Doesn't roll off the tongue, but it is pretty good.
Ranger Gama:
No, it doesn't. Yeah. But I still.
Asher Elias:
Yeah. Pinit. Pinit is actually kind of funny. I just do, it's simple and it's fun to say Pinit is actually pretty good. So yeah, it is like a guy tapping head meme, you know, if you keep everyone in the same alliance, it's not a coalition. True. Technically correct is the best kind of correct. So we expect to see all the Horde shitters go to Initiative over the next week or so, and that is the end of Pandemic Horde as a going concern. This is an insane moment in EVE online. There has never been a collapse like this ever in the history of EVE online. Groups that have been run by like one guy are culpable to collapse. Like your Bobby Atlases, your ELO Knights, that's just one person. And so those groups have collapsed before, but they have never been this size, this sprawling. Bob took 10 years to die, Weather Oracle, they took 10 years to die. You guys saying hyperbolic, no, like these groups that you're talking about, they did die, but they didn't die. They didn't die in a few weeks. That never has happened before, ever. A group of this size, a mega coalition, has never happened. They go somewhere, they try to survive. You gotta remember, the remnants of Bob were living in Venal in like the late 2010s. So like Bob, Bob lived almost a decade beyond the disband of brothers. Exactly.
Apple Pear:
Horde didn't even join faction warfare.
Asher Elias:
Right? Yeah. That's the time tested is go live in a soda factory. Right? So, these new Horde leaders said they wanted to be elite PVPers and they tried it for a few weeks and then decided it was really quite hard for them and that they're actually gonna join in a big mega alliance. Not a coalition though, for the good of the game. They're doing it for the good of the game guys, I just want you guys to understand. Us bad evil goons, really bad for the game. Over there though, that's where the good of the game happens. The greater good.
Ranger Gama:
So you guys remember this happened on five November? It's been five weeks.
Asher Elias:
Yeah. Here's a really important point, like there are a lot of people who are, you know, meta fart sniffers that have seen this happen before, but some of you guys are just new players. It was actually pretty funny. A guy who's been around for about five years just said to me like, I think we're the strongest group in the game, which is debatable with winter coalition, but he said, I've never experienced where Imperium is number one. And I thought that was very interesting for some old heads to, you know, who have lived through that. I think it's a debatable whether we are number one, but we know it's close with winter coalition. So, for those of you who are not meta fart sniffers, which I will not define, it's, you see this over and over and over again. It's people who want the game to be something that it isn't. And they think that if they strongly desire it to be that way, that it will somehow conform to their wishes and human nature will cease to function and they want it to be one way. But it is the other way, right? That's what they want. But it's not that way. And these guys fart sniffed themselves to death. They literally, they didn't fail cascade. They fart sniffed. And they killed themselves by believing this nonsense. And you, it is amazing to see, like if you want a lesson when you're reading the EVE subreddit and these people are going on. These pie in the sky ideas. Just remember you saw it live right in front of your own eyes. You saw it live. What happens when you start believing your own idiocy? And these people killed themselves by doing it, and they became irrelevant and they didn't do anything good for the game, which is the craziest part about it. You know, they went and they tilted at windmills and nothing happened. Nothing happened. So, I want you guys to take special note of this from a meta perspective, a lot of things have gone on in the last five weeks that we will be talking about for a long time. But if you are forming your understanding of how EVE works, this will be one of the most important times in understanding how this game functions. Because as long as I played, there have been people who want the game to happen in a certain way. And there might be some of you here who's like, I really wish it was another way, but it doesn't exist that way. And the way you win this game, the way you succeed and the way you have fun is by understanding the rules. And these people wanted to play by different rules and they failed. Yes. They Olmeca'd themselves.
If you guys don't know about Olmeca. He was a guy who became, he was so anti crab that he believed like religiously that crabs were bad people, which is a hilarious, like aside, but he got himself elected to the CSM and literally killed his old place, his own play style, and then quit. He quit because he killed his own play style. It was like, you know, a coyote eating the last rabbit and then starving himself to death.
The lesson here is be realistic about what this game is, what is possible. And understand that you can't wish cast yourself into, you know, a different game. And that's what people try to do. And so when people are like, oh yeah, everything should be 10 V 10. Brother, you wanna play a shooter? Go play a shooter. By the way, just a genuinely better game experience. Like everything will, the controls are much better. We play on a one tick a second server. You know, do play Hictor Ball though.
So in scene, exciting week as far as meta times, one that we will remember. When I took over almost three years ago now, maybe it's more than three. A while ago, I told you guys that I would help you tell your story, and this is going to be part of the story in EVE. You know, reporters have been reaching out to me to talk about this. We've been part of the history of EVE and if you stick around and you're here next year or three years from now, or five years from now, or a decade from now, people will still be talking about this. This is going to be a big part of the game and a part of EVE online, and you've gotta be part of something. Whatever effort you put into this. You get to be part of, you get to take that back on being part of a story that will be remembered for as long as EVE is remembered. And I believe that'll be a very, very, very long time. I think that EVE is sort of a really, really early experience, experiment in persistent universes that will have a strong foundational effect. I think we are basically americans in 1920s playing football in leather helmets and calling yourself the Green Bay Packers 'cause you were sponsored by a packing company and not realizing that you would become one of the greatest sports teams of all time. Sorry. People hate the Packers. It's an analogy. I think that we are basically in that version of proto history. I think EVE is going to be a very important aspect of that. Now, maybe I'm being pie in the sky. I am, I can be sentimental. I did tell you we would help you tell your stories, and that is a story that we have told.
Now here's the next question. What's the next story? That's an awesome question. You guys keep asking me that and I say, wait till January. We've told you ever since then, we are chilling till January. So I'm not a Packers fan. No.
Ranger Gama:
Symbiotes, don't lean into that beam.
Apple Pear:
And then, and if I can add on this a bit, Asher, like talking about the stories and do you want to be part of the next part of the story or like have insight information, what's going on there and like to play a bit in the meta, et cetera. Then joining the Black Hand is a great thing to do that. We love agents everywhere. And with all that's going on, there is no better time. No better time to become a Black Hand agent and infiltrate all the organizations that are now existing in drones or if all the new alliances in Winter Co, Initiative, like there's a lot of information we'd love to have. So please come and join us.
Asher Elias:
I hate when I install adblock on my browser and they somehow still get through. Very, very frustrating.
Ranger Gama:
Oh my. So somebody asked before, what was the top rope? Right there. That was the top rope right there.
Asher Elias:
Yeah. So to get back on track here, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna bloviate for just a minute or two more on the subject, then I'll open it up to questions. I know you guys have a lot of things you wanna ask. Like we just lived through an incredibly interesting period of EVE. And effort that you put into it goes, you know, that's the reward, is the story. I've told you this many times that you don't remember a League of Legends or a Call of Duty or a Street Fighter match or whatever. You don't remember it a week after it happened. It is, you know, the sugar cookie of gaming and the thing that you remember about a meal is the company. And that's what EVE is, it's who you meet. The experience you had is the memories. And so we're in the business of making memories and that is what we will keep trying to do. I am very, very keen on that topic and it's something that I focus on a lot in our leadership meetings and helping you tell stories. I think that is the biggest differentiator of EVE online with any other thing is that the stories that you tell in EVE online are remembered and go down in history and I think that is so cool about this game and it's why we put up with so much of the nonsense and the bullshit.
With that, I will go and throw questions. Go ahead and throw 'em in Elysium on Jabber and I'll try to answer your questions now.
Okay, so good questions please elaborate on how they wanted the game to be, that it isn't, maybe I'm dumb, but I don't know what they wanted. Okay. It's good because I didn't really define that and I think that's a great question. So. There are people who, in their opinion, the game should be this size of fight, right? The most noble fight is the one vs one, okay? Or the most noble fight is the small gang, eight vs eight. Or the most noble fight is the 30 vs 30 or the 50 50 or whatever it is. It doesn't matter. They just have some imaginary number where the game is good and where it isn't. And the Horde people, the Vanguard people especially, were super toxic.
By the way, I saw this incredible graph, but it was like tracking where all the Horde FCs and leadership went. And every single person, basically, every single person not in Vanguard, went to another alliance and every person in Vanguard stayed.
https://i.imgur.com/VaVkg7v.png
And that is the most toxic graph I've ever seen. It explains a huge, a huge part of the problem. I don't have the graph with me, I just, someone sent it to me, but if I can find it, I'll ping it out for you guys. It was so interesting. And it was just showed one part the problem with Horde. Now the Vanguard guys did the BFL thing and that was basically putting the entire alliance in front of them and then sitting back in Barghests or Nightmares or something and doing no risk kill farming. And they wanted to do that, but they didn't want to have the downside of having to run an alliance of idiots to sit in front of them and eat the shit, right. And so they want the shit eaters, but they don't want to deal with the problem of organizing shit eaters. And then they realize, wait, oh wait, wait. Someone, there's someone to tank for us. We can't just sit in Barghests at, you know, 280 kilometers and just get free kill mills with no risk. Yes, BOB was like that and it's such a BOB attitude and we've called this out the entire time.
One thing that I'm sure many of you guys have been extremely pleased with has been how much the, what you guys have said in public on Reddit, wherever you guys talk about Eve online, like how much of that has been proven true and how vindicated you guys have been. So I think that's been, it's been nice for me too. It's been, how much what we told people, we were crying it out. We were giving the advice for free and we were telling them how it was, and they just said, oh, you're idiots because they're motivated to lie. And being proven right is just a great feeling. It's a great feeling.
Someone asks, what does fart sniffing mean? And that's what it is. It's thinking that's a good way to play the game. It's believing your own lies and, you know, huffing your own nonsense.
Snipereagle1:
I just got a DM and you know who you are and I'm gonna read it out. Somebody that joined us recently, 90 mining anoms is cool at all, but can we get more ansis to run out of gas regularly? I need that nostalgic Horde feeling again.
Asher Elias:
That's so good. Oh man, they were so much worse with that.
Someone asked if Arkadios is FCing. He's been really sick. He gets the flu or something the last week or two and he's just taking a break. He is not checked out or anything. He is happy to come back in January. Yeah. Like I told everyone, take a break and then what we're gonna roll back in January. Most of you, we've been looking at the tax numbers. A lot of you guys are making a lot of ISK, which is good.
All right. Let see, some other questions. It's getting high on your own supply. Yeah, indeed. That is one.
Do you think this is all part of Shine's plan or do you think he's as surprised as we are? I think, I think that's a really good question. I think Shines was doing more of what we were talking about where he wants it to be one way, but it's the other way. I don't think this was a machiavellian scheme. That's just my personal opinion. You guys can form your own and I won't tell you you're wrong, but that's would be my guess.
Request for Tiger Claws to be put in the skill planner. I will pass that along.
Kazanir:
You gotta admit though, it's a pretty good machiavellian scheme if it is one. Right?
Asher Elias:
It's a great narrative. Like I don't
Kazanir:
How many thousands of players does he get?
Asher Elias:
I think he's gonna add like 20,000 people by doing this. Yeah. It's something we would talk about for sure, right? Like, yeah. It's pretty crazy.
Will the blacklist 5 billion be refundable? I actually don't know, Andrew. It's a good question. I don't think we discussed that. We were just doing it as a fee. We can consider it being refundable. I'll look into it, but it is, it's to compensate for the effort we are going to be paying that ISK to the people doing the unban request. So probably no, because it's a lot of, yeah, maybe a 50% refund. I mean, I'm worried about incentivizing denials like that does sort of incentivize, you know, I trust the people who are doing it, but also, you know, human nature. So I don't like to build systems that encourage negative externalities. We'll discuss it. We'll discuss it. I don't think it's gonna be a huge issue. If it is, we'll figure it out.
Lemme just say that, by the way, 97% of unban requests are failures. Just so you guys understand. There have been some past mistakes, but the system was pretty good. And there have been some people where you've just said, Hey, like, we don't really think this was like a reason that needs to stand because it was sort of in the heat of the moment, but that was pretty rare. So I don't expect there to be a ton of successes. Unban requests are by nature, often frivolous, so we expect there to be a lot less.
Oh, getting a, buying a bot character, getting a character from the market that was blacklisted is a free service.
Yeah, Lord Jason is, it is kind of a fun scam angle that they could run, you know, social engineer their buddy to pay 5 billion, but that's probably part of the reason they were on the Blacklist and hopefully it's a good lesson for that person.
Apparently Vily wants to return to coalition game pay who will pony up the 5 billion. I think..
Kazanir:
If I'm wrong, but he is in noted corporation, in Pandemic Legion that I will not name. He has every opportunity to get as involved in coalition politics as he desires.
Asher Elias:
Well, isn't he? Isn't he joining Not a coalition? Isn't that what's happening? Anyway, I dunno. He, you know, if Vily wants to rejoin, he can message me and we can figure it out. I don't actually hold a lot of animosity to Vily. He was the one who said the stupid extermination comment, but I think everyone here has said something dumb. But you know, I also, I don't have any particular love for him. So it's sort of half a dozen or six of one half dozen of the other, I think we have a fine history of taking in enemy FCs who used to fight against us. I mean, look at Arkadios real fan favorite in here and fought against us for many years. Right? And by the way, a guy who said like, Hey, this is my, like, last alliance. Like, I really like it here. So. Yeah, I mean, PGL basically just retired here. He only, he's only ran like five fleets, but he's still, he still, you know, you can talk to him behind the scenes and he is been, probably the most interesting thing has been, he's basically been like a PL historian, sorry, PH historian, like mostly PAPI. I mean, he obviously was never involved with those people, but the PAPI part of the World War Bee, you know, he's come in and talked to Illum and just basically answered all of our questions about what was going on. You know, a lot of the information that I've passed to you about PAPI over the years has come from PGL relaying it, so. I got a lot of heat. But honestly, when I allowed him to join us, there were a lot of people who were unhappy about that. I understood why, but you know, that has been actually all upside for us. It's been, you know, nothing negative happened. Like, yeah, he hasnt FC'd a lot, but he's actually been a real positive behind the scenes. And then, you know, he's basically, he retired anyway. ELO, I take ELO in a second. I love ELO.
Tell us more about the, for some reason we could go to cloud ring. Cloud ring is just like the opposite side of the galaxy. That's why I chose it as a potential very uncomfortable place to go to where a Titan ticket would be a useful thing to have.
Yeah, and I think I really want to be clear about this. Like, generally people joining us from other orgs, it rarely goes wrong. I mean, I can think of Jeremy, right? He was doing a spy thing, but he's the only example I can think of about a walk-in that really went poorly. Almost always, they've gone well. And the reason that is, is because it's the same reason that we flip spies to us. Like we have had walk-ins from people who were sent to Spy on Goons, and they just like it here better. And there are people in this channel who were in Horde, you know, weeks and or months ago and can X up and be like, Hey, the experience is a lot different than what I was told. And I wish I'd come here sooner. Yeah, we're getting someX's right now, so, that is the thing that happens. Generally, I honestly generally think that your real vector for people who are going to attempt to harm you is those who think of themselves as an important person and don't get put in the place that they think is appropriate to their level of importantness. There's a fellow, this is a perfect example, but I won't even name him. He was an FC from 10 years ago. And he just wasn't a very good FC. He was an older guy. He was ex-military, which is often a tell that things could go wrong. But for some reason, when ex-military FCs, oftentimes they have a pretty high opinion of themselves. And he came in here and he was basically skirmish commander. Jim, I'm not, I'm not shitting on ex-military. I'm shitting on, or I'm noticing the pattern of this has happened more times than it would be than you would think from just random chance. So this guy came in and he wanted to be a top FC. He saw himself, he was like, I was in the military and I am of all the classifications and qualities of a top FC, and so I'm going to be that. And then he did it. And he was not good. He was just bad. He was just bad. And he eventually left in a huff and he tried to do some nonsense and didn't, nothing really happened, but. He's like, I'm leaving. Who's going with me? I'm taking everyone in in the squad, and one other guy went. And he went to another alliance and he became a skirmish commander there, and he never made top FC. And then he went to another one and then another one. And as far as I know, before I stopped tracking him, he'd gone to five and he never became anything more than a skirmish commander anywhere.
My point is that the people who betray you are usually those people. Usually it's the people who think that they are a important person or that they should be an important person, and that your spaceship bureaucracy in EVE online is not recognizing how important they are because of nepotism or lack of care, or just being generally indifferent to the great qualities that they have. So. That's actually who to look out for as a spy.
All right. I've talked for a one time about that and I've missed a lot of questions, so just throw 'em again if you missed it.
Can we try titans outside of C-J, are they in our space or are they in like, asset safety somewhere? Because I think those would be two different stories.
I've not joined the GSF Secret Santa. I think I'm in three this year, but I haven't joined the main one.
How angry is this mustache? Like reality is often disappointing.
Who's the number one goon enemy right now? We had a vote before the not-a-coalition, PINIT thing happened, so the vote was heavily towards FRT. I don't know if that would change right now. We do want to do the survey, so I think maybe that'd be a good question for the survey and ask you guys the answer now or we'll get a survey answer.
Hey Asher, what do you think Johnny Trousersnake meant about the political, is that political landscape as a reason he decided to shit can PH? I mean, then I think, yeah, so you're talking about the political landscape. He is talking about, it's the same, it's the same stuff that you are that we were just talking about, sniffing your own farts, wanting the game to be another, a way that it isn't, and not living in the reality of the situation. Like you can want things to be one way as much as you want. It doesn't change reality. This applies to EVE online and real life, and some people just can never get their heads around that. And I think everyone knows someone in their own life, that lives in their own world and thinks that reality is one way when it very clearly isn't. I think we've all been, you know, familiar with a person like that. And so that, that was definitely a prime example of that.
People asking about, you know, future plans, I'm just not gonna hit future plans. I've told you guys so many times, just wait till January.
Ranger Gama:
Locusti's question, who had a longer reign? Louis the 19th or Johnny Trousersnake.
Asher Elias:
Yeah. So someone was calling him Johnny Truss, which I think is an trenchant political analysis for those of you who follow British Prime Ministers.
Secret Santa to secret Sansha is good. I have, the characters Sansha Claus, and I'm very pleased to own that character.
Lack of PVP at the moment, Asher, what are we gonna do about that? Sun, I've just like I just said, please wait till January. I've told you guys that December is going to be an off month and it's gonna be an off month.
I reject your reality and substitute my own.
Exactly. What's your opinion about moving to Newcastle? I said once in my life that I will want to move to Newcastle and I will never say it again.
Can we rig our Titans for PVE? What a wonderful question. Thank you. No. I mean, I do think there's literally a chance that CCP does make a Titan focused PVE site. It should be really cool and at that point we would discuss it but obviously there's no reason to do it now.
Some people have been telling me about roaming around and defending our ESS and how much fun it is. So I think that if you can get involved in that like it, it is really enjoyable.
Someone said, but thank you at the executive leadership team. Only been back for a month-ish now and it's something I wish I did far sooner. Appreciate that. I will convey that to our leadership team. We have a little over 50 directors in Illum, less than 60, more than 50. It's a lot of people who put a lot of effort in to make this game fun for everyone. And I appreciate them and they're happy to hear that you appreciate them as well.
Ranger Gama:
Shameless plug, come see the meet the, the directors who are doing all this stuff. We'll do that in two weeks. Two weeks from now.
Asher Elias:
Bumper says there's a Goon meetup in Tron time. Am I coming? So far it's just him. I'll not be there unfortunately, but I hope some people go. Tron time is a little far from me.
Are you working on your Horde that wins equivalent for goons. That was like, do you know the gift of Boromir going it is a gift. That was that moment right there. That ping was the greatest thing. And I genuinely believe that there is, if you could apply percentages to the reasons Horde collapsed, that there is some percentage that you can apply to that very ping. You know, just spitting in the face of the gods is never a good idea and my goodness, my goodness was that spitting in the face of the gods. The hubris was off the charts.
So there's gonna be more mining systems after the changes, correct? We are going from six seven to nine five.
The goons that can't tackle or read, that is indeed us. Brodog and Sniper are goated, not gonna lie. Yeah, those guys do great work. They're awesome.
I hate you all. Generally, a lot of us feel that way.
Can we two groups and PVP each other, but keep the SRP LOL. So, you have just proposed red versus blue, which was a thing, but not anymore.
What do you think will happen to the $5,000 that IT, that Horde had accumulated? I, they have claimed that it will be sent to a charity, whatever is left. And presumably that charity will be, someone needs a new pc, but I dunno, let's hope they actually follow up with that.
Ranger Gama:
Totally not gonna be called something like the Horde that wins.
Asher Elias:
Imperium actually gave 50% off the nullsec. What's your opinion on that? I don't actually know what that question is, remy. If you guys had to take a look at the map, Dronelands have a lot of people in them right now, so it's cool to see. I expect to be like a lot of those groups have like four people. They're just trying to put their name on the map so that their part of the story exists for a minute, but I expect there to be a lot of consolidation over the next month or two. 50% of nullsec, I don't think that's anywhere near accurate. Like we're nowhere close to 50% of Nullsec. Also please do not look at like the influence map and then just count the pixels in your brain. That's not how Nullsec works at all. We, the systems are super dense, super dense in the drones for instance, and not particularly dense in a lot of our space. So the map is not a good example of like how much percentage people control.
Can we do rental space but rent out stuff for like a 150 exotic dancers? I don't think that even playing with that would be fun. But yeah, there's always the chance I guess.
Kazanir:
We could call it Slaver's Bay.
Asher Elias:
That's a great idea there. There's no problems. I shouldnt. No, no Kaz, no. No Kaz. Yeah. This, this is a really good one. 2025 really loves that suggestion.
Incursion spawn in Insmother. I mean, I don't know. I'll, we'll talk to GSOL and see if we need to do it, but that would be funny if we need another headshot.
Renting is bad slaving is good. All right, cool. I would love to get canceled before the year end. Awesome.
Ranger Gama:
Yeah. That was click bait on that one Asher.
Asher Elias:
Yeah, it really was.
Can we help Sigma War in Curse. Yeah. I mean, they can ask us and, but you know, there's only so much to actually do.
Yeah. I did have an, a really unfortunate like clip where I said something like, no cock perfect. And I wasn't talking about what you think I was talking about, but the people in Illum screenshotted it and are passing it around like it's a legitimate statement and I'm kind of upset about it, to be honest.
Ranger Gama:
It's called keeping you level.
Asher Elias:
Yeah. I do need someone to whisper in my ear. Remember thou are but mortal.
Snipereagle1:
I'll say it here first. We're fucking farming this incursion.
Asher Elias:
Excellent, excellent.
If Asher takes a CCP job, what protocol for an imperium CEO change? John, this is a interesting question. I won't be taking any CCP job. They certainly have not offered me a job. So the answer there is that right now I believe we are the only alliance in the game who.. I love that. I love that dude. I might just do it now just for that reason. I believe the only alliance in the game that essentially has a bus protocol for the director corporation. So if my hard living catches up to me and I just dropped dead 'cause my heart stops working. There is a method that all the directors can, you know, put their earth, wind, fire, water, heart rings together and take over the corp, the executor corp. So that there would be essentially no point of failure there. I do suppose if like several of the directors and myself are on a plane and it crashes, that is the only way that that could happen because that would be less than 50%. But the, we're the only ones that have that kind of thing, so. The succession plan would be pretty simple, is that, you know, I would just name a successor. They would take over and we'd pass it on. It's really not that hard. So, really not much at all to, to worry about, you know? And like I said, I'm not in this role forever. I don't plan to be the forever executor, but whenever that time comes, there will just be an orderly change. And I think from your perspective, almost nothing will change. We have, we were just talking about this on the Merk show last night. We have a lot of systems in place to keep this thing rolling and we have a lot of redundancy and it's a good thing for us. Yeah, we'll be doing it on a random Wednesday afternoon via Ping. I won't name who the successor is, and also if you don't get out in the next 30 minutes, you will lose everything. Other than that, it's gonna go super well. It's gonna go super well.
Ranger Gama:
I was saying if you guys haven't seen CCPs put in an item for the Christmas. Giveaway stuff. The holiday giveaway right now, which has Gobbins complete evacuation plan on it. You should read the description. It's quite entertaining.
Asher Elias:
Yeah. We got the bubble bath one and the Horde leadership plan, which we can put along with our sort dragons guide to diplomacy. Various things that we have helped make. That's, I was really, it was really cool to see that stuff.
I actually don't have one and I haven't been doing my login rewards. I've been playing a lot of EVE and I have not logged into EVE for probably three weeks and I, but I've probably been playing six hours of EVE a day. Right. It's funny how that goes. Thanks. Beyond.
I don't have the Kirkland bubble bath. I'm not a bubble bath kind of guy so I can't give you a recommendation, but Kirkland usually does well.
If Asher gets hit by a bus, we throw Ranger Gamma under the bus for the next alliance CEO. That's a possibility and that man would be bused.
Snipereagle1:
I'm sorry, he's disqualified. You have to have 10 toes to be thrown under a bus.
Asher Elias:
Yeah. Executors have to count to 20 and that's the only way to do it.
Oh, good. A general election democracy in my EVE online autocracy. Yeah. No mayhem. That would never happen. That would never happen. That's the worst idea ever. It is really funny. I'd like to riff on that for a little bit, just for a minute how interesting it is that democracy has been tried in EVE many times and always fails. It always fails. And my reasoning that I think that is that because you have essentially low friction, almost perfect mobility in EVE online. And this is something I told you guys, for those of you who are here, when I took over, I said, vote with your feet. If you're unhappy with the way I'm leading. Just leave. Just leave. And since that time, we have added, like we've doubled our size, right? So people have voted with their feet, but they voted the other way. I think that it's, but it's important that if you are in a country, a random country here, let's say you live in Kazakhstan, you can't just go to another country in real life, it's really hard to do that. But in EVE online, the friction for leaving and voting with your feet is much lower. Like, yeah, you have to move some stuff, but it is much less painful. People do it pretty frequently. So the real democracy in EVE Online is who you choose to put, to tilt your banner to, right?
And so thank you guys for staying and flying under me and under our leadership, we will continue to do our best to make sure that this is a very exciting experience. You have the ultimate power. There will never be a dumb democracy. You always be under autocracy here. If you don't like it, go somewhere else. It is, that is your power. And we can never stop you. So you actually have the ultimate power in EVE online and we are here to service you. If we do a bad job, you can vote anytime you like. I thank you guys for putting the trust in the rest of us, though. We'll continue to do our best. We work very hard and very passionately to make this an exciting experience for you guys.
With that, I am out of here until the end of the year as far as firesides go. So I wanna say thank you guys for showing up to this one. It's been a long one. I hope I answered all your questions. My voice is really going now. Merry Christmas to you guys. Happy New Year's. I hope you have a happy holidays. Be nice to your family, even the assholes. Be nice to your grandparents. Have a wonderful time. I am very pleased to know all of you, and I'm very happy to have flown with many of you for so long. Thank you guys so much. Merry Christmas.
Ranger Gama:
One final note before you guys all jump out. Again, we're gonna do the come hang out with the directors thing in two weeks. I put up in the war room, we linked it a whole bunch, so it'll be there. We've got a whole bunch of people from different parts of the org that don't talk on these very much because it's usually me and Kaz and Sniper and Asher doing it. So we'll do that.
Kazanir:
In two minutes, the meta show has multiple returning guests who are all ex horde because well everyone is ex horde now. We'll be interviewing multiple people who used to be in Horde. Hopefully have another good hour or maybe longer of talking to them and getting their thoughts. Should be entertaining
