"GoonsFall" via Ga'len
No.
They took a big hit in assets. Not only the estimated 1.6 trillion isk Kartoon confiscated but a lot of players have stuff trapped in hostile systems or lost stuff to pirates and hostiles during the evac. On the other hand assets are not the most important element in Eve, players are.
They will lose some disappointed players and have expelled some of the corps that made up the former alliance. The Goons value their identity as Something Awful posters. Something Awful is a very strictly moderated forum. This fiasco has caused Eve goons to re-evaluate themselves, they are now less willing to tolerate people who would be mocked as bad posters on the SA forums simply because those guys are good at Eve. In addition some genuine SA people who were heavily into the POS-shooting side of the game will quietly stop playing.
On the flip side they will gain a lot of new and returning members who will come in the hope of seeing interesting drama.
I think that while they may not take much of a numbers hit they will become less effective per capita as POS-shooters get replaced by forum warriors. Less effective at conquering space at any rate, they should as an alliance become more effective at posting without grammatical errors and mocking other forum-goers.
Where are they going?
Cloud Ring according to leaks on the SA forum. I think they'll be able to take it and I think they'll be able to hold it. I think once they get it they will stick there for a while. In the long run I'm sure they'll be hoping to launch a campaign against their nemesis in Delve, if for no other reason than that it will be an interesting story.
Who's in charge?
I think they have a pretty competent bunch, certainly better leadership than the lackluster Karttoon and the burnt out Niart Epar.
Darius Johnson will reprise his role as "loud shouty man". He's an extrovert who is very entertaining and persuasive and the Goons will be pretty effective while he runs the show. He quite recently became a father though and gave up being CEO because of that so his real life will probably require him to pass on the reins fairly soon.
Here he is giving a presentation at Fanfest 2009: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9BjwNmdn6U
Here he is recently snorting cheese and putting mustard in his eye: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3j58C8Q4DVU
As you can see he makes an excellent chief goon.
Kalrand, quoted extensively in my previous blog post, will be CFO and is certainly a very sharp individual with an excellent grasp of the financial side of the game.
The Mittani will continue to lurk behind the scenes and react to crises. Here's audio of him explaining the BoB disband: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nvwk4QncSG4
Drakban Solo is administrator of the Eve Goons' forum and wiki servers. They have an extensive and by all accounts excellent wiki and of course being a community brought together by forum posting they cherish their forums. He seems to be doing a solid job and the new Goon alliance is named in his honour. (No harm stroking the ego of the man who far more than the CEO could bring Eve goons down).
So the current leadership will be pretty effective. Of course if the goon rabble get bored of them again and want someone else put in it becomes a crapshoot once more.
No matter what happens (short of a complete ban on Eve on the SA forums) goons will continue to entertain the rest of the Eve community and to make CCP money by keeping their sandbox drama-filled.
I'm going to do another cut and paste job for most of the rest of this post, partly because the story is well-told from an inside source and partly because it's in a post in the Eve Official markets forums which most people won't find.
The teller is the Goons' new Chief Finance Officer a thankless task if ever there was one, posting as Kalrand from the Charles Ponzi School of Business. And that in itself is a contender for the best corp name Eve has ever seen once you read more about Charles Ponzi.
The thread is a Goons scam and is in itself a fascinating example of how a team of players can use clever arguments from various perspectives to enhance the scam.
Here's what Kalrand has to say about recent events in Goonswarm:
28.1.10
Do you want to know what happened?
28.1.10
Background:
One of the things that Goonswarm has been good at for the last few years is getting high level spies into various alliances, or turning high level directors of warring corporations to our side.
Because of this, our directorate is structured in a way that any one director would minimize the damage to the alliance.
Example: Karttoon has the big giant reserve of all the money, and the only guy who can push the button to nuke the alliance. (Incidentally, this is why Yih's scheme was so hilarious to anyone in GS).
Our CFO, gets a large portion of the money, and any of the income, but isn't a "director" in game mechanics, so he can't just take more. This is then dolled out by him to the various projects and titular directors to spend on things. Any income is returned to him, and if there is an excess, it's kicked back up to the wallet controlled by the CEO.
Also, we have an independent auditor, who apparently didn't have roles to audit the alliance wallet.
Karttoon goes on his honeymoon, promising his wife no internet spaceships for a few weeks, and leaves with all the isk locked up.
Our CFO doesn't log into the game for a month, since he's (as we now know) burned out.
The auto-pay system continues to take isk from the designated wallet slot. The CFO is not monitoring this. The auditor can't. No one else should/does have roles to monitor this.
At the onset of Dominion, our logistics teams determined that they are able to save the alliance more ISK per month by taking down fuel burning towers (set up pre dominion to maintain sov) as compared to turning off sov in systems, though they do that in many of them.
Many of the goon member corporations take over the sov payments for their own constellation, with Goonfleet only having leftover to-be-removed systems, logistics systems, and important station systems.
War starts and logistics are diverted to fighting off three invading alliances, which with current Dominion mechanics, and Goonswarm's US timezone dominance, is actually going pretty well, though it's 100% defensive.
Dominion 1.1 changed the TCU online time from 12 hours to 8, meaning that, if there is no sov, an alliance can take sov in a single timezone. This is not a problem for Goonswarm since we're fighting a defensive war, and still have sov just about everywhere.
Two Days Before Sov Drops:
Dominion mechanics have autopay fail on many sov payments two days before they are due, and for the next two days send DED mails to various directors that sov is about to fall. Directors receive hundreds of these each day, and their mailboxes are eternally full, so no one sees them and raises the alarm.
The Day Before Sov Drops:
The CFO pops back in, tells people that he is kind of burned out, and tries to sell his cap ship manufacturing business. No one notices the "kind of burned out" part.
The Day:
IT happened to be going on some kind of a r64 reinforcement op, and are up later than normal, in force, but out in the middle of nowhere querious. Goons are harassing them, but IT had better numbers at that point. Goons had just finished some other major fight the day or two before, and were in the middle of moving combat ships to NPC Delve in expectation that IT would try to siege NOL, the Goon market capital soon.
The bill comes due. There's not enough isk in the wallet.
Sovereignty drops suddenly in most of the major station systems in Delve at 11pm EST, in the last third of the US time zone. Member corps are unaffected.
Our CEO is still out, and no one can reach him. The CFO is offline, no one has heard from him in two weeks, except for him trying to sell his cap ship business.
I figure out what happened, and post in the current op thread. At first most people think it is a billing bug, not a billing mistake.
The Mittani takes control and tells everyone to get everything they can haul out of stations to safety. Phrease raises a huge fleet and attempts to defend everywhere at one. Logistics starts onlining TCU's across all of delve.
IT realizes what happens about as fast as the rest of the game, and makes a beeline for any important system, especially NOL & J-L. Their numbers swell, as word gets out.
Goons log in in huge numbers. AAA invades station systems in Querious.
The fight/evacuation continues deep into the night, but IT/AAA/Stain has superior numbers. Random pirates come into querious to try to gank evacuating people in industrial ships.
Goons have been outnumbered for weeks, and were able to defend under Dominion mechanics. The only thing needed to defend a system, is to have dominance for one timezone, only once over a four day period.
Since sov has dropped, the first alliance to drop a TCU gains sov. IT destroys several goon TCUs all over delve, and replace them with their own. AAA does as well. Sys-K then joins the party and invades TPAR in Period Basis.
The Next Day:
Many of the Goon TCUs are saved, and online early in the morning the next day. Several of the most important systems were camped and controlled by IT, particularly NOL, the market hub, and J-L, the capital ship staging system. These then become IT systems later that morning after two large battles for control in early Euro prime.
Other systems are taken at leisure as the Euro prime goon numbers are not going to be dominant, and by the time Goons regain dominance in the evening US time, several other important, but less key, stations are lost.
The CFO pops back online and realizes what happened. The CEO still has no idea.
Epilogue:
The CFO is known to you as "Sophie Daigneau".
His cap ship venture was CAIDS.
3.2.10
Would you like to know what happened?
3.2.10
One Week before the disbanding
When we last left the story, Karttoon was happily away on vacation, Delve was on fire, and the CFO had just been sent to the pillory on the goon forum.
Over the next twenty four hours word trickled down from the remaining directors that we were abandoning any defense of Delve, and moving out as quickly as possible. The same game mechanics that allowed us to defend against a much larger hostile fleet outside our prime, would doom us to never taking back any of the fallen stations.
At this point The Mittani gave a State of the Goonion address which summed up the above points, and gave us a destination: Syndicate, the original home of GoonFleet.
Three days before the disbanding
Continuing on into the week, Goons evacuated Delve as best they could given the circumstances, first for NPC Delve, then Lowsec, then dumping their assets somewhere in Highsec space, and usually hopping back into Delve to help other people evacuate, and shoot at random IT people. People began to stage in Orville for the eventual push into Syndicate. Delve continued to get worse every day, and personal assets that weren't evacuated by day four would need a fleet to break the station camps.
Darius JOHNSON was pulled out of retirement to lead us until someone could locate the CEO.
Darius gave a second address to rally people ops focused on breaking ships and materials out of Delve. This continued for several days, with each day being slightly less successful.
A large number of mercenary corporations and assorted other wardecs were issued against GoonSwarm and, given the average goon's skill at this game, a huge number of ships were blown up across all of high sec.
Eventually Goons made it to Orvolle, which is right on the entrance to Syndicate. Whereupon the immediately got camped into the station by the area residents. Whenever a op was called to clear the undock, the hostiles would dock, and this has repeated for a few days.
Two days before the disbanding
Karttoon returns! He gets back from his vacation and promptly doesn't log in or post. He eventually shows up on Jabber, and tells everyone that he's not resigning. I have no idea what was going on behind the scenes. The capfleet hulls are transferred to him, to do reimbursements for everything over the last three weeks.
The day before
Karttoon logs into the forums and makes a handful of posts, half dealing with his vacation, and half trying to downplay how bad everything is. Almost every response is a post telling him to resign.
The Mittani begins to run interference to quell the angry Goons, and it tampers down on the forum, a bit. A poll is posted, and Goons are about two to one on the resign or not resign question, not that they have any say in the matter.
The day
Karttoon doesn't post. He logs into jabber, and I have no idea what he was up to.
Some guy named Kalrand gets appointed to the position held by the old CFO.
Around 11pm eastern time, the end of the US prime that most of goonswarm plays in, Karttoon logs in, and kicks out every corporation in goonswarm. Karttoon then takes away hanger rights from anyone he can in GoonFleet.
Any sovereignty still held in Delve is lost. Goons are suddenly not subject to wardecs and take the opportunity to fly around and move things.
Any titan/capship/whatever in space, at a pos, is bounced out of the shields as soon as the pilot logs in.
Hostiles decent on the North syndicate area and attack goons. Some goons attack other goons because standings aren't immediately correct between the member corporations. This is largely fixed pretty quickly.
Various directors use hidden alts to steal as much as they can from Goonfleet, but one of them announces this in the corporate local chat, which Karttoon sees, comments on, and continues to remove standings.
A mothership is lost to a hostile fleet.
A capship producers begins to insurance scam his existing stock that he hasn't been able to sell in a few weeks. Rumors abound that it's Karttoon destroying the cap fleet hulls that had been returned to him.
Karttoon starts to post on eve-online.com. He is stripped of access to goonfleet.com.
Now
Karttoon has the GoonSwarm alliance, the GoonFleet corporation, several wallet corporations, and the Band of Brothers corporation. Along with hundreds of billions in isk and assets.
Goons are dropping Goonswarm, and joining Goonwaffe, an old goon corporation from before the increase in the number of members that could be in a single corporation.
Darius JOHNSON is in control.
IT Alliances Reclaims Delve
Last week, you might recall that Goonswarm failed to pay their sovereignty bills and essentially lost control of their sovereign space in Delve. I posted the “State of the Goon” speech which outlined their plans for the future. All did not go according to that plan.
As reported by Massively, “in the early hours of February 3rd, 2010 the GoonSwarm CEO karttoon kicked out almost every corp from the alliance, effectively disbanding it.” This was really the end of the story, not the beginning. You might recall that Karttoon had been on vacation, which is part of what triggered the Goons’ loss of territory. Regardless of whether or not Goonswarm had disbanded, their role on the political stage in EVE was essentially over with the loss of territory. The loss of resources, income, morale, and easily defendable space combined to be a nearly insurmountable obstacle to future progress. At that point, the status of the alliance itself is somewhat of an afterthought; any serious new Goon-affiliated alliance was going to have to rebuild itself nearly from scratch anyway, and it was pretty clear that Karttoon couldn’t be in a leadership position after triggering a failscade of this magnitude.
The goons are exceedingly adept at stirring up drama and generating lulz, and their current misfortune is no exception. There’s quite a bit we still don’t really know about what happened. Apparently Karttoon stole quite a bit of money from the corporation wallets (which some are suggesting he should donate to Haiti), as well as invaluable blueprints from corporation hangers before he disbanded the organization. Some people are claiming that the whole thing was intentional – staged because the goons had become complacent and needed more wide-ranging lulz than owning Delve gave them. Pilots from IT Alliance (the goons’ mortal enemies) have claimed that this was a way to avoid losing a proper fight for Delve, denying their enemies the pleasure of winning in battle. Even within the Goons, there is confusion about what happened and why. Karttoon claimed on the alliance forums that “this was the only real way to get rid of the pubbies” – lower-tier “public” corporations that had latched onto the Goonswarm alliance but which were reviled by some members of the core Goon corporations GoonFleet and GoonWaffe.
Moving forward, there are two big questions: what’s going to happen to the goons? what’s going to happen to the geopolitics of the south?
The Goons are by no means gone. The core corporations are still alive, the question is now what their goals are and can they rebuild a large-scale alliance. Two organizations have emerged. GoonFleet is now a member of the Band of Brothers alliance, and GoonWaffe is now part of the newly-created SOLODRAKBANSOLODRAKBANSO alliance. The “Band of Brothers” name was historically owned by the Goons’ long time enemies – the people from whom they stole Delve before (and who now has Delve back again) but was stolen during what was essentially the biggest espionage coup of EVE history. (You can hear GoonSwarm’s The Mittani explain how it happened here – audio NSFW.) Resurrecting this old name is a slap in the face to the organization now known as IT Alliance, which would really like to have that name back. The other alliance name is an allusion to some Goon in-joke that I don’t know, but its members seem to take particular glee that the name is so long that it messes with width of the tables in the forums which have to grow to fit it. These two organizations have declared war on each other, but it’s almost certainly just for show, since it means they can post threads like this where they can talk about how great it is that Band of Brothers is back and fighting goons again.
The larger issue is how this will change the political landscape of EVE. Traditionally, Goonswarm has been the punching bag of the big southern alliances – IT Alliance (née Band of Brothers), and Against All Authorities, among others. With Goonswarm out of the picture, what’s going to happen to the alliances who were allied against Goonswarm? A big part of what keeps alliances from staying allied for too long is that their pilots hunger for conflict. If there is ever too much peace in the south, alliances may well turn on each other just to have something to do. In the north, (where I live), it seems like the Northern Coalition has survived for quite a while by being just about the perfect size – everyone can find enemies relatively close to their home space, so no one gets bored. But it may well be the case in the south that too much peace is what kills them. On the other hand, IT Alliance may try to start pushing up against the Northern Coalition who were historically allied with Goonswarm and are the nearest (although still pretty far away) obvious enemies. Only time will tell! In any event, it’s going to take a while for all of this to unravel.
Filed under: Sci-fi, EVE Online, Culture, Interviews, Lore, PvP, Endgame, Hands-on, Politics
As we've been watching the EVE galaxy performing its Darwinian reshuffle, it came to our surprise that GoonSwarm, the game's biggest territorial alliance, had been disbanded. In the early hours of Wednesday 3rd February 2010, GoonSwarm CEO "karttoon" kicked almost every corp from the alliance, effectively disbanding it. There's more to this story than meets the eye and in this investigative piece, I delve into the thick of it to discover just what's going on with this troubled alliance.
Continue reading GoonSwarm alliance disbanded in EVE Online political drama
GoonSwarm alliance disbanded in EVE Online political drama originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 04 Feb 2010 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
18:36:19 Notify FinFleet has claimed sovereignty in 1-SMEB on behalf of IT Alliance
We can only believe that this is the first in a failcascade of Delve. I can only encourage you to all eat your hearts out on this thread in COAD.
NOL is burning...
Updated as I left for work IT TCU was onlining in NOL, with 10 min left on the timer.
First the sov eff up, now a CEO ragequitdisband. Goons never stop being goons. Walking off with 300B liquid isk and as much as 1T in assets though, wow. That’s like $50-75 thousand dollars or more, based on PLEX rates.
But it does remind me of why I love EVE. I think there was a blog banter recently about this topic – why do you love EVE. This stuff is why. There is no other game that I know of that is so entertaining on a grand scale. You’re really part of a large world, a community, when you play EVE.
All but two corporations from the GoonSwarm alliance are currently flying under no alliance ticker. The Goony Hand Social Club banking corporation remains in the shell of the alliance after trouble accessing it in the absence of GoonFleet CEO Karttoon led to the loss of sovereignty over key GoonFleet systems in Delve.
Reasons for the move are not yet known; given the recent decision to abandon the alliance's conquered space in Delve and Querious and return to their roots in Syndicate, coupled with the recent return of former alliance leader Darius JOHNSON, a restructure of the alliance seems possible, but no statement has been made at this time.
More news on the dissolution of GoonSwarm will follow as it comes in.
Next up on the chopping block NC and Pets.
