I Ain't Givin' You No Tree-Fitty: STFU

No seriously. STFU.

Keeping your mouth shut and your fingers still can be your best weapon again those engaging you in unwilling PvP or uPVP as I’ll call it. Cussing pilots out in local and posting scathing threads about evil-doers in the forums does not help your cause. In fact, it usually only makes your problems worse. How do I know? Some of my closest friends are the people you love to hate.

Allow me to introduce to you Wrecking Shots [WSHOT]. They are greifing, shit talking, mood killing, monocle demanding assholes, liers, scammers and nere-do-wells lead by a delightful CEO by the name of ‘I’m Hostile.’ They also happen one of my former corps and remain good friends of mine. Recently one of the pilots in the corp, esquimo leviticus, sent me this tweet keeping me up to date with the corps happenings:

#tweetfleet WSHOT love [Short Link] @Arydanika Your missing out on the monocles x

Now that you’ve read that; back to my main point… STFU.

Do note that I’m not trying to be mean or troll you, but I do want to be harsh if only to engrain this method of survival into your heads; STFU.

Often times when pilots lose a ship by means which they think are “unfair”, “uncouth”, non-epic pvpzors or whatever; they feel the need to tell the world about the offending party. The victims of these events will resort to posting in local or (like in this case) on the forums. What these victims parties usually is realize is that more often then not; the offending party doesn’t care. What worse is that your act of out-rage can possibly make your situation worse.

How do I know? Well, after weeks of mandatory overtime, some real life bad news and spending the last few days running around like a chicken with my head cut off; I decided that I would log in to EVE and have some fun. I cloned down to Gallante space, fitted up a pirating hurricane and joined these evil horrible people in Oulley to obliterate my sec status. I needed this. I really did and I had a freaking blast.

Blast #1
Blast #2

But Dani! How could you do such terrible things?

That mind frame right there is part of the problem. If it was a “terrible thing” it would be against EULA and those doing it would be hit with the ban hammer so hard they’d go cross-eyed. Yes it’s horribly rude and inconsiderate, it inconveniences pilots, it costs the offended party ISKies, but it’s also perfectly legitimate game play. Once “victims” recognize that then they can start to develop ways to combat this type of uPvP which brings us back to our main point. STFU.

WSHOT is enjoying their time in Oulley and I had a great time with them. We spent our time in TS3 laughing at the above mentioned forum post that others thought would serve to mock, troll and de-moralize them. I read Lord Ashur’s blog post that highlighted the threaded and added a few additional lulz and then decided to write one of my own about it. Then of course there was holding pods for monocle ransoms while spamming local with pedo-monocle bear and bouncing between gate perches trying to catch any poor bastard that picked those the wrong time jump though. They also taught me the finer points of surprise buttsecks and prepped me for the possibility of hulk gank should a fitting target be found.

Hopefully that description illustrates the point I’m making here. The cries in local, the flaming forum posts, the angry tweets and the mails of outrage that are frequently made by PvP offended parties have only made their zeal for this activity stronger. The behavior of the pilots being targeted only served make their blip on WSHOTS radar that much brighter and caused the targets on the sides of the ships to grow larger and sweeter. The wailing, moaning, protesting, calls for revenge, offers of white-knightery and gnashing of teeth only caused WSHOTs resolution to stay in Oulley and “kill everything that moves” to grow stronger.

Of course there is an exception to every rule. Everyone once in a while a pilot may feel a flush of embarrassment as they are public called out for “low brow tactics”, but most PvPers have no shame. Then there are cases of those that use their communication skills in this situation for a higher purpose. One of those exceptions happens to be a plucky little hulk pilot named Theos Cragen.

After getting ganked by a surprise horde of thrashers, he opened up a convo with one of the pilots. That pilot then invited the entire fleet, including me, into the convo to troll the guy. In the convo he explained that he was a new player to the game and that he spent all his ISK on that Hulk. He also said that he understand that it was part of the game and that he wanted to eventually join up with WSHOT once he had enough SP and ISK because he was interested in PvP. The guy still ended up get trolled and scammed out of 25 Mil*, but I provided him with an invite to the Project Halibut channel where he could get some help with a new Hulk. Plus, he did make a positive impression on the corp which may help him out down the line.

So I implore you pilots of New Eden. Please. For the love of your own sanity. STFU.

*Yes, he got scammed too. One of the WSHOT’s pilots told him that he could by back his corpse and if he salvaged it, he might get his implants back… poor fool. I’ll also mention that one of the WSHOT’s guys felt bad since he really had no ISK and sent the guy 5 Mil, which he ended up giving to the other WSHOT guy that scammed him. At least they tried right?