Every empire falls.

It’s not a question of if; only of why, how, and when.

CEO Chance Ravinne, the visionary founder of the famous munitions delivery corporation, WINGSPAN Delivery Services (http://www.torpedodelivery.com/), left the corporation in the hands of experienced directors to focus on deliveries of another sort. He nonetheless remained active, and the imitable icon of the corporation for many months. Sadly, having accepted delivery of a second clone, Chance has failed to deliver a satisfying loss to zKillboard for nearly nine months. This blow to the psyche of WINGSPAN agents, previously encouraged by Chance’s example to take huge risks and shrug off embarrassing losses, put the corporation on unstable footing.

The ability to opt out of wardecs set up WINGSPAN for the final(?) blow. For years, WINGSPAN pilots were forced to the J-Space side of B274 wormholes by war declarations. Some even speculate that trillionaire Reed Icculus sponsored these war declarations to accomplish exactly that effect. Sadly, with WINGSPAN now free to roam High Security space by virtue of owning no structures, and despite encouragement from the directorship, as from Grimm Horizon:

Why did you want to join WINGSPAN in the first place?

   
Was it to:

1. Fly cloaky ships in WORMHOLE SPACE?
2. Actively hunt in WORMHOLE SPACE in search of content?
3. Deliver munitions and Drone Parties to unsuspecting customers in scary WORMHOLE SPACE?
4. Have fun with a cheeky humorous way of dealing with the aftermath of said PvP?

• if yes, WINGSPAN is the place for you to be.
• if no, why are you here?

Despite these words of wisdom, and clear expression of the WINGSPAN philosophy, WINGSP pilots began to engage in HS Ganking, LS PvP, Mission Running, and even…mining. Low Class J-Space pilots unsubscribed, overwhelmed by having to manage their own munition deliveries, and unsatisfied by exotic dancers without a drone party to establish the right ambiance.

News of Chewbacca’s demise sent the corporation into what may well be its death spiral. Han Solo and Chewbacca Long were long admired as a, perhaps the, preeminent pair of “Delivery Agents.” The two made delivery of munitions and robots to far away corners of the galactic cluster, using wormholes to facilitate a Kessel run in under 12 parsecs, and doing everything in a garbage scow of a ship. Flying completely without caution, utterly committed to delivering precious cargo, and yet finding plenty of time to be well known in every cantina in the galaxy, the pair represented all that a WINGSPAN Delivery Agent aspired to become.

Grief stricken, veteran Director Reed Icculus stepped down and out with a few words of thanks and an inspirational reminder he died 4 times in “Going South.” With Reed no longer leading the “Clean up New Eden” MTU-removal project, and Chance no longer losing blingy ships, to what standard can agents aspire? With Chewbacca’s passing, to whom will Delivery Agents look for inspiration when deciding whether to tear off someone’s arms? gigx?.

The numbers speak for themselves.

evewho.com

dotlan – WINGSPAN

WINGSPAN is flatlined.

Clearly, an EVE Online corporation cannot survive on tropes, memes, or a philosophy. Clearly, it is high profile CEOs, stable leadership, and injected Rorquals that are key to survival in today’s EVE. The era where lighthearted and countercultural corporations such as WINGSPAN, Signal Cartel (likewise utterly gutted after CEO Mynxee stepped down), and CODE. is ended. Give up, inject another Rorqual pilot, and find a new show on Netflix.

Amarr VIII (Oris) Emperor Family Academy—A Black Frog Logistics pilot has surprised not only themselves but their corporation upon a successful completion of an autopilot route from Jita to Amarr. Crowds flocked to the Amarr undock to greet the pilot of a Rhea-class Jump Freighter as it made its final 14-km approach—at a snail’s pace—to the station docking radius. Local denizens of Amarr such as Market Tycoon saluted the Jump Freighter, with some greeting the vessel in a dazzling spectacle of fireworks.

“I’m not actually sure how I did it,” the flabbergasted pilot shared with reporters on the scene, “I had to go AFK so I hit the autopilot button. When I got back to my seat, I was in Amarr. I just want to thank everyone who believed in me, Bob, and ORE for making excellent Expanded Cargoholds.”

After linking the fit in local, the pilot added that the cargo for his journey consisted primarily of Black Ops battleships, “I saw a contract assigned to us filled with Redeemers made by a one-day old character. Everything seemed to check out so I picked it up and just started hauling like I normally do. Since the cargo was pretty valuable, I knew I needed a ship with stronger resists, so the Rhea was the obvious choice.”

The CEO of Black Frog Logistics declined to comment, but a statement released later in the day by the Red-Frog Alliance read, “Wow.” It is unclear if disciplinary action will be taken by the Red-Frog Alliance, or if the pilot will be presented with an award and special medal for accomplishing the impossible.

The response from the wider EVE Online community has been mixed. Various CCP developers have praised the autopilot function and its ability to safely navigate through the most treacherous Highsec corridors in the game. CODE. has been surprisingly silent on the matter, though Highsec experts believe that the recent lull in ganking activity is designed to place autopiloting pilots into a false sense of security. Conspiracy theorists on the r/EVE subreddit are calling this event a “black frog operation” and point to various tinfoil indicators relating the pilot to possible CODE. activity.

The event has catapulted Black Frog Logistics into the limelight, much to the chagrin of PushX. As both major logistics alliances are vying for the open seat on the CSM as a permanent representative, the atmosphere is increasingly contentious. Rumors from within the PushX hierarchy point to leadership preparing to announce an ambitious plan to provide free ground transportation for all EVE players journeying to EVE World Tour meetup locations in a bid to unseat Black Frog Logistics new claim to fame.

As for the pilot? After taking a brief break for several days to buy PLEX for his account from the Amarr station, he undocked his Rhea and proceeded to autopilot back to Jita.

“Who needs scouts, webbers, or out cynos when you have autopilot?” The player typed in the local channel as he landed on the Ashab gate, “Anyway AFK.”

Reykjavik is beautiful in the springtime, as cherry blossoms waft through the air, accompanied by the delicate chords of a lute. Here, in a small dinghy warehouse, CCP maintains its galactic headquarters. CCP Falcon was smiling and sipping his warm morning brennivín, as he logged into the EVE forums. However, this smile soon dissipated, when he received numerous urgent messages.

“CCP_Falcon I understnad what you are saying yo, but suspect timers remain permanant until the individul is caught?? Why would suspicoins fade after just 15 minute?!!!1!”
“@CCP_Falcon WTF HALP PLEX ME NOW ALLIANCE GANK ME FOR PLEX AND LOW SECURITY ZONE SHOULD BE SAFE ZONE FOR NEW PLAYER TRY PVE.”
“@CCP_Falcon I just want to state that market intervention is absolutely required in order to address this ridiculous situation, which many are comparing to the great Tulip Mania of 1637, although more accurately it is akin to the South Seas Bubble of 1720. In this sense, EVE Mogul plays the villian Nicholas Biddle, but where is Old Hickory?”

Normally, Falcon would spend the morning quietly contemplating how to leverage his inside knowledge of CCP development, advancing his portfolio in Hek. However, today, he needed to speak with corporate leadership: Hilmar. As Falcon explained, “My research indicates that within a few months, the price of a single PLEX will reach one billion isk. In fact, this is inevitable, and I recently used my entire paycheck to fund massive regional buy orders in Heimatar and Kador. By December, I will be able to RMT the assets with considerable profit. However, my fear is that PLEX may be the next Bitcoin, with the power to destabilize the international economy and facilitate criminal enterprise.”

Hilmar listened carefully, and together they went to see Hilmar’s alt, the alliance CEO: Birgir. Birgir was quiet, as Paul outlined a catastrophic scenario, with enslaved children forced to farm gold in World of Warcraft, so gold could be traded for Standup XL Cruise Missiles, which would then be traded for a nuclear bomb which terrorists might use to threaten CCP to offer a PLEX firesale. Paul became frantic, his voice reaching a shrill pitch, “Real life! I’m talking about real life terrorists, not fucking Pithior Nihilists!”

Birgir stood up, pacing back and forth. “Here’s what we will do. We will wait until the price of PLEX increases to one billion isk, then we will create a new currency. We will call this PPLEX, and value it at one thousandth of a PLEX. So it will cost 5000 PPLEX to purchase a month of Omega time. Does that solve your problem?”

Falcon was satisfied, glad that another disaster was averted, “Yes, thank you. If you don’t mind, there is another issue. For some time now, player activity has been declining, and even the Rorqual has failed to motivate multiboxers. Pearl Abyss is threatening to liquidate the entire corporation, unless we show them that we can actually get players to log in.”

Birgir and Hilmar both laughed in unison, “Don’t worry about that! This isn’t our first scam, you know?” They then explained the truth about Bonus Training Weekend, “Those idiots don’t check the logs! They don’t know if the player is paying, or even undocking a ship. If we can show them that X number of accounts are currently active, then they will continue to think that people are actually playing. We will continue to apply Bonus weekends on a regular basis, and may even create a Bonus Room on Teamspeak, where capsuleers can learn how to trade their skill points for double skill points!”

Falcon nodded, but deep inside he was already calculating the future of PPLEX, once the Bonus program was converted into skill injectors. As the supply of injectors increased, the relative purchasing value of PPLEX would increase. Inflation would turn into deflation, and that could only mean one thing: It was time to sell the tritanium in Rens; all of it.

After an extended hiatus, the long-awaited Episode 12 of “A Game of Holes” has finally been released but under a rebranded name of “The Hole Story”—is it what loyal fans were hoping for? The first noticeable disappointment is that despite all of the free publicity generated by EVE Onion News, “The Hole Story” has joined up with TalkingInStations. In an exclusive interview conducted in the The Dark Space Initiative’s public channel, ExookiZ revealed that a rebranding was required because TalkingInStations is a CCP partner. EVE Onion News can only surmise that the delay in episode production is the result of the standard processing time for name-change requests.

Onto the episode!

In a stunningly executed introduction, ExookiZ begins by discussing the history of the “The Hole Story,” then by asking the chat if they can hear him. “We upped the production quality since my last one [GOH ep 11: Beheading Hydra Part 2 Defenders POV, July 4, 2018], so we’re going to, um, we’re gonna see what we can do. And uh, there might be a couple technical difficulties, so uh, bear with me but, you know, I promise they’ll get better. We’re already better than what my first episodes were last time, so we’ll, um, take it from there.” Loyal listeners and viewers of “A Game of Holes” would remember the static background that characterized previous episodes, but the modern “The Hole Story” now features not only a moving wormhole but a pulsar as well. This is obviously a significant departure from the podcast’s roots and it will be interesting to see what new additions are brought to the table by ExookiZ, in partnership with TalkingInStations.

At this point, the screen fades in and the audience—which can follow along as the original podcast took place on the TalkingInStations Twitch page—can finally put a face to the names of several spooky wormhole personalities. That is, as long as those faces either belong to ExookiZ or the in-game/zkillboard portraits of the spooky wormholers. Panelists included: ExookiZ, host of “The Hole Story,” and who prefers to be referred to as “Exooki”; Zolka Lando, Director, Epicentre Syndicate [EPSYN] and Cyclone enthusiast, Rahne Sentro, small gang CODE. pilot who flies with Goryn Clade [GORYN], potentially only female panelist; Yan Skshetuski, impossible-to-pronounce last name aficionado, 2011 wormhole pilot, and now with The Kronos Ritual [-K -R]; King Creator, runner of Out of Focus [OFOC].

Apparently there are a multitude of corporations and alliances in Wormhole space. The panelists discuss the “attempted eviction” of Holesale <HOLES>, who apparently evicted themselves at one point and moved to a C2 Wormhole. A faction fortizar died. King Creator declares that the associated Raven fleet was “thicc.”

Other points of discussion:

• Inner Hell [-INHE] is described as the “baddy” of wormhole space.
• Reddit is endorsed as a truthful platform. In the words of ExookiZ, “I read on Reddit that HK was evicting all the wormhole content. You can’t lie on Reddit. It’s against the rules, I’m pretty sure.” Some panelists agree that would be 100% illegal or in violation of the NDA.
• According to ExookiZ, some theorists believe cloaked dreads make sounds in Wormhole space.
• Back towards the end of December, J-Space, like the rest of EVE, had a “broken chat server,” though astute listeners will remember this was a totally-intended CCP feature to add local to J-Space. Nonetheless, this resulted in an Inner Hell seeded dreadnought fleet being discovered ahead of an eviction attempt against Stranger Danger. <CANDY>.  
• It is further revealed that carriers do not really counter dreadnoughts. According to ExookiZ, Stranger Danger. <CANDY> had estimated losses of 420 billion ISK, a number that checks out with Zolka Lando’s declaration that the eviction defense was a “blaze of glory.”
• At the forty-six minute mark, we finally hear from Rahne Sentro. Her answers are succinct. She reveals that <CODE.> has a wormhole division. Out of all of the people on the panel, Rahne Sentro speaks on three occasions: introductions, briefly explaining what she does in CODE’s wormhole division, then saying “thank you” and exiting the panel towards the end.   
• For those not in the know, C2 wormholes with Nullsec/C5 statics are the way to go for content.
• The Kronos Ritual violated a bushido code of conduct by using capitals against Fraternity <FRT>. Yan Skshetuski defended the action, implying the code did not apply to a wormhole group using capitals against “nullbears.”
• ExookiZ is not entirely sure how TDSIN will fare without Gilas following the April 9th update. “Can you even PVP without Gilas?”
• Regarding other patch changes, King Creator believes beams “are still trash.” The panel is somewhat divided about the Rorqual, Carrier, and Supercarrier changes. Could CCP’s nerfs be too much to sustain content?
• To end on a strong note, ExookiZ asks King Creator to talk about an Erebus that dropped from a X-Large Ship Maintenance Array. The story about seizing the Erebus is pretty straightforward, but it does provide yet more evidence that Large Skill Injectors are overpowered.

Loyal listeners and new viewers alike will certainly enjoy ExookiZ’s revamped wormhole podcast series. Aside from the uneven distribution of speaking time featuring various panelists, small updates—like the inclusion of a Discord overlay to help the audience keep track of which guest is speaking—help keep the content organized and clear. Even the live broadcast eked out a healthy viewership of roughly a hundred viewers while the rest of the EVE community has Brisc Rubal’s ban from EVE Online on their minds.

ExookiZ returns to fill a gap in wormhole-specific coverage by interviewing players and leaders who live in wormholes, talking about wormhole current events, and even discussing patch changes from the prism of J-Space. ExookiZ is open to feedback and has announced the next episode should be ready in two weeks “to keep the content train rolling.” However, although ExookiZ has weathered the media storm surrounding Brisc Rubal’s fall from grace, he will face an even bigger form of media competition in the coming weeks: the final season of “Game of Thrones.” But if you want your wormhole experiences to not be so “dark and full of terrors”, you may want to tune into the next episode of “The Hole Story.”

EVE is the people who play it, and there’s nothing typical about them. They are why EVE is one of a kind. In EVE there is a citadel that is literally one of a kind: The Palatine Keepstar. There can only ever be one anchored at a time. It was impressive enough when the first Keepstar was anchored, in wormhole space no less, by Hard Knocks. But the Palatine requires the resources of a massive organization to mine massive amounts of resources from massive amounts of asteroids and planets.

This isn’t about that.

Or, rather, it is, but about what comes next. You see, during one of CPP Guard’s “pub located exit interviews” with fans and well-wishers, he let his guard down. It turns out the Palatine Keepstar, once constructed, has a special hangar. The alliance responsible for erecting their citadel will become unexpectedly very pleased with their erection. For that hangar is the only hangar that can hold the ship produced by the BPC they will find in that hangar: an Iapetan-class Titan called the Kawa.

The little bonus is a mixed blessing. It is built entirely from PI, and a lot of it. The formerly useless Shattered planets are the only things that can produce this PI. Further, all of the materials must come from one planet. The resources must be extracted correctly with no cycles missed or there will not be enough to construct the ship. Because, when all the resources are collected, the planet will be destroyed. If you miss any cycle or produce too much of a raw material for processing and not enough of another, it is your dreams that will be shattered for you must start anew. It must be manufactured in the Palatine Keepstar and will be delivered to the special hangar.

The titan may be launched and flown by anybody with titan skills. However, it is no normal titan. Its drive system is a cross between wormhole, warp, and jump drive. You point it toward a massive body, like a sun, and you jump. The titan will land randomly in the solar system at which point you can warp more precisely to your destination. When you are done, it must be returned to the Palatine hangar. You cannot safe log or simply disconnect, it will just sit in space. The return trip always puts you in tether range of the Keepstar as the titan is quantum entangled with the citadel—which is another catch. If the one-of-a-kind citadel is destroyed, it takes the titan with it…and the pilot. There will be a corpse, but the pilot will not be revived and will, indeed, go down with their ship.

Of course, we’ll never see such a thing. As noted above, it requires a lot of focused resource gathering over months. There hasn’t been any focused resource gathering lately in any region beginning with a “D”; has there, CCP Guard?

Many people still remember the events that transpired a month ago. Burn Jita 2019 was a cacophony of exploding freighters and their angered pilots, strangely juxtaposed with the laughter and cheers of their destroyers. The event was horrendous for some, and joyous for others. Some people lost their entire net worth in a fiery explosion, but others, like the topic of today’s article, were inspired.

Meet Johnny Henderson, or that was the name he formally went by. A name that he said in court was, “Unfairly assigned at birth” and only existed to hamper his true self. Today marks the culmination of weeks of unrelenting prosecution, defense, and other courtroom drama. Johnny emerged from the courthouse to the applause and cheers of the waiting crowd outside—Johnny no more, but in his place was BeepBoop 10101. He was brought to tears to see the unrelenting support of those that cared about him, and even local residents that had taken to the street to see what the commotion was all about.

This isn’t the first court trial that has occurred over the situation. Years ago, Johnny attempted to change his name to “BjBee 420”, however due to the harshness of Texas law, and a hostile environment, the case was ruled unfavorably against him. Rumors were there were over two hundred lawyers sitting in a room willing to act against him. Discouraged, Johnny returned home, and had almost lost all hope of ever having a proper name to reflect his love of Eve, and burning Jita.

After moving to California, Johnny’s hopes were renewed as he saw the more progressive laws and regulations of the golden state. “It’s like a modern day Gallente Federation”, Johnny was quoted in saying about Cali. Years passed, but his hope of changing names lived on. Burn Jita 2019 was the tipping point; he could wait no longer.

I decided to poll the newly named BeepBoop 10101 after his trial, asking him a few questions such as his plans for the future. Unsurprisingly for someone that just changed his name to BeepBoop 10101, his ideas were off the wall. “I might be 18 years old, but I want to start creating an impact with this legacy I’ve just created,” he says, confidently. “I plan on having a child, and naming them BeepBoop 10111.”  When asked what his missus thought about the idea, he said “I’d have to find one, first.”