Many of you reading this will immediately come to the conclusion that it is a bitter, jealous, perhaps even spiteful rant. So be it. If you come into a conversation with your minds already made up, then very little I can say will sway you.
The recent "Champions of Low Sec" event has concluded and, as expected, the top three Alliances are essentially Null Sec groups - Snuff, Pen Is Out, and Test Alliance. I got the order wrong, I thought Pen Is Out would be first. Otherwise I nailed the top three. And while I have nothing against any of these three Alliances personally, they are not Low Sec Alliances. Not really.
And while I have no opinion regarding the 0-1 character that was flying a Titan with festival launchers who has now been biomassed being added to Snuff's total, I do know for a fact that all this event managed to achieve was to turn Low Sec into a carnival playground for five days. Groups that were determined to win simply set up perma-camps, engaged in Cap brawls, and did what they always do. Without regard to Low Sec itself.
We made the decision early on to ignore the event for the most part. We ran some extra fleets and had a blast trying to get as many kills as we could - but that's what we always do. I even considered sacrificing a few of my rare collectors ships to our guns, just to make things interesting. But, in the end, we wanted to honor the place where we play - more than win a contest. And to do that we just went about our regular business as usual. Trying to get good fights and treating our space like home.
In May Stay Frosty will celebrate 7 years of solo and small gang piracy in Low Sec. During that time we've AVERAGED 1,500+ kills a month primarily in Low Sec. We have an almost even split between solo and small gang (49% solo and 50% small gang as of today), with a total of 128, 388 kills at an almost 70% efficiency rate. That my friends, is what hard looks like. That is what makes Low Sec incredible. Do you have any concept of how difficult it is to keep a corporation/alliance like ours going strong for seven straight years? Even more difficult is the fact that our best years remain ahead of us.
Am I mad we didn't win? Nope. I never expected we would. Even without large null sec alliances setting up shop in our space we might not have won. We're just not into doing what it takes to generate large numbers or volume isk kills. That isn't our nature.
What I am mad about is something else entirely. I'm mad that it took so long for CCP to address even small changes to FW and Low Sec. I'm mad that we still don't have something special to call our own, to drive content and conflict in our space. I'm mad that no one seems to care how difficult it is to be -10 in this game, how wonked the gate mechanics are (and how easily they are manipulated against us), how empty ships can still run plexes, why fully loaded warp core stabbed ships are still a thing... I could go on and on. There is a lot that needs addressed in our space and I care about it because my friends and I play there. Every day.
Not just during special events.