Win Conditions

For all the talk you hear around the Eve community about how much like real wars "Eve Wars" can be, and they do share many similarities, there is one major problem with these kind of analogies. Inside of New Eden people just don't die. As we all know, out here in the real world, when you kill your enemy they tend to stay dead. At least individually. Put enough of those individuals together and sooner or later all the enemies are kaputski. Or the rest lose the will to fight. Or they move to Europe.

I fought two wars on the side of CVA in Providence and one war against CVA in Providence with Co2 back in the day. In all of those cases the losers did the exact same thing, they consolidated and moved their forces and assets into Low Sec and waited. Every single time I heard the winners say the same thing, "Well that's the end of CVA." Or, "I doubt -A- can recover from that loss." And those people were wrong every time. If there is any Alliance in this game that SHOULD be dead by now, it is CVA. And yet, there they are. Still around.

There is a lot of yelling about "win conditions" in the current war. Mostly from the imperium's side. As if those aggressing OWE them an explanation of their intentions. I find this mildly amusing. Talk to anyone higher up in the GSF ranks long enough and you begin to realize just how warped their perspective has become. It is as if they expect, or demand, that the rest of Eve act the way they do. "Where is your leader!!?" they often shout. "Where are your win conditions!!" they often demand. As if all of us out here in the rest of New Eden couldn't possibly operate without some pimple faced trust-fund maniac yelling orders at us. I get it. Reality is what you become used to. I don't blame anyone here.

As I've said many times before. (And I grow tired of saying it) I am not Anti-Goon. What I am against is giant blue donuts. I was just as opposed to that giant blue northern NCdot donut as I am the one built by The Imporium. I prefer chaos. I prefer action, wars, fighting, and lots and lots of red standings. (As we can all see from the last few weeks, Eve is much more exciting when we all fight each other!)  But that's me. Others on the side of the MBC are not as kind. There are those that want to see the whole shebang eat the dust of time. That's because we don't have a single leader shouting at us or leaking EULA breaking emails. We are not a cohesive unit. Heck, most of us refuse to set each other blue - even when we are in the same fleet!

This isn't a Coalition. This is a movement.

This has become a War of Eradication. A war whose win conditions vary from Alliance to Alliance. But generally speaking they amount to an effective dissolution of the word "The Imperium" and a removal of it as a thing. If The Imperium holds no Sov it is no longer The Imperium. Certainly the GSF will survive and run off to Low Sec to bide their time. What happens after that is anyone's guess. Can they hold together? Will the loyalists hang on, but log-out? Will there be those inside the MBC who will continue to hunt them and persecute the War long after it is effectively over? I have no idea.

Only time will tell. I suspect GSF will survive, just like CVA did. Smaller. Less influential for a time. Slowly bidding their time until they can strike back. Because this is Eve. And in Eve you can't really kill anyone. Only they can do that. By becoming bored. By logging off. Or by quitting.

Or by setting themselves up to get banned so they can blame CCP for it.

Either way, wars in Eve never end. And it is foolish to think they do.