RP Welped a Fleet, and I Didn't Write An Article

Being an Eve blogger can be hard work sometimes.  Not only do you get pummeled for the things you write, but apparently you also get pummeled for the things you don't write, as well.

Three weeks ago, Repercussus lost a capital fleet in a wormhole.  It was billed as "Goonswarm loses capital fleet," but this was solely an RP thing.  "GSF corp loses capital fleet" would be more accurate.  We've done WH farming ops for quite some time, and this time we were a little lazy watching the connections and got dunked.  It's worth noting, in the TheMittani.com article, that "Repercussus didn't give up without a fight," and that one of our Chimera pilots "really seemed to know what he was doing".  That'd be either ExOmega or AdamHernandez.  These points are worth mentioning.  No one panicked, and even though the fight was over before it began, they fought to the end.  But, it was still a huge kick the the gonads.

I'm going to dispense with the common "already replaced" and "didn't want that fleet anyways" comments, since I don't know if it was already replaced, and we most certainly DID want that fleet.

In the associated Reddit post, I mentioned I wasn't going to write an article.  Well, looks like I will after all, but not an article about the welp.

Instead, this is an article about choices.

Today, I received an Evemail from a friend who claimed I was editorializing to propagandize RP by not writing a blog post about this loss.  I was honestly floored by this accusation.  I have a perspective, of course, but saving face for RP has never been my goal.  My perspecitve and bias is to encourage people to PvP, particularly in small-gang and solo situations, because I believe those experiences are most likely to result in you learning something and growing as a player.  I'm somewhat neglectful of fleet battles except for their implications and what insights they provide about players' psychologies and experiences (ie. how it affects people, more so than the mundane experience of pressing F1 during tidi).

I've written about corp and personal losses in the past, and will continue to do so.  With every loss, you should be able to learn something - even if it's as simple as recognizing what went wrong.  In this case, RP should have kept a better watch on its incoming WH connections so they weren't surprised by a fleet like they were.  It was an expensive lesson.

But it wasn't my lesson, nor my expense to bear.  I wasn't there.  I didn't feel the adenaline rush as hostiles landed on grid and tackled my dread.  I didn't have to fight through panic to take order my mind and take appropriate actions.  I didn't have to stream intel and my status to my FC to keep him appraised of the situation.  I didn't have to make decisions about cutting losses, sacrificing part of the fleet, etc., etc.

So why would I write about it?  This blog is about lessons, reflection, and growth.  It's hard to fill a post with that when I wasn't there and didn't participate.

In the Evemail, I was told I should "Have some backbone and try to be objective when 'praising' one thing and 'daming' other groups".  In my response to a reddit comment asking whether I'd post, I replied, "No, I wasn't there.  But yeah, this was my corp.  What can I say?  We do everything gloriously."

I'm not in the business of writing a chronicle of everything that happens to Repercussus.  I write about my game, lessons I take out of my experiences, and news and happenings that I feel would affect myself and other players.

If I would have written an article about this welp, I'd be basing any lessons or comments on other peoples' recollections and opinions of what happened.  They wouldn't be my thoughts on the event, they'd be my thoughts on other people's memories of the event.  Or, in other words, my opinion on heresay.  And that's not very genuine.

I could have covered this battle, promoted it on Reddit, and probably gotten it picked up by EveNews24, all of which would have gotten me extra visits (which, as a reminder, I don't monetize in any ways; it's just a satisfaction thing telling me someone out there is taking value from what I write),  But it would have done it the wrong way, hanging on an event I didn't experience myself.

So, I made a choice not to cover it.  It wasn't a choice made to hide an RP loss, but rather to keep these thoughts my own, and avoid becoming an RP advocate or apologist.  It's a tough line to tow sometimes.  Other times, readers challenge you weeks later on decisions easily made at the time.

I sent a nice long Evemail responding to this reader about an hour after I received it.  He spent the time to write, and I spent the time to respond.  I'm not in the business if turning from a fight or hiding losses.

But I do work very hard to keep this blog genuine by rooting it firmly in my experiences, perspective, and opinions on what I do, what I see, and what I predict.  Giving lessons or battle reports for events I didn't participate in is preachy and arrogant when done by someone other than a reporter providing facts.

And I don't hold to that.