I will say it up front that I like the event. While CCP ran events such as The Battle of Caldari Prime do see good player turn out, the fact that they are planned by CCP makes them staged and no different than an event in any other MMO. Burn Jita is not staged, as a player ran event anything can happen. It is EVE Online at its best, a group of players creating chaos in the game. So why do they complain when an they lose a ship in Burn Jita and not for a CCP event? I feel that it is cause they fail to understand the culture of EVE (that CCP promotes) and the "Evil" Goonswarm.
Destroy to Create
First lets look at the culture of EVE that CPP wants. This culture of EVE is that of harsh harsh universe. While World or Warcarft and Guildwars tries to convince us that we are living in a harsh worlds we don't feel it. I was part of a primer Guildwars Guild. We did Elite Mission only and held the record for the world the fastest time completing Fissure of Woei in the world, yet something was missing. If I was with my group I never died as we had the best monk in the game. If I was solo I could use the 3 necro system and agian never died. As much as NPCs were telling me about how harsh and dangerous the world was I didn't see it.EVE Online is not like that. It is always a harsh world. From the first time you undock your ship to when you log off it is a harsh world. CCP created it that way. Even in a High-Security system such as Jita there is risk to fly around in. That is the point, there is no space where you should feel safe to undock your ship. It is when people forget this and the get comfortable they lose ships. The design of EVE is that to create a culture of harsh players for a harsh world. People that in the real world will have a drink with you at bar and make sure that you get home safe, but when they undock they have the intent of blowing up ships, yours, theirs, or NPCs, they don't care as long as it explodes and they were there. I contend that everyone who plays EVE Online does with the intent to blowing up spaceships. Even miners are guilty as it is the materials that they mine build the ships.
Thus the culture of EVE Online is shown to us. It is a harsh culture of destruction and creation. With out destruction there would be no new creation in EVE. There is not part occupation in EVE does not lend its self to it. Miners and Mission-Runners who cry and rage about gankers and griefers fail to see that they are in fact creating them. It is the miner the supplies the materials for the ship and the Mission-Runner who give the ganker his cheap meta level weapons. This is just a fact of the life in New Eden.
"Not here to ruin the game, just here to ruin your game."~Goonswarm
The second culture here is Goonswarm. Unlike most alliances in EVE they did not form in EVE. They came together on a forum called Something Awful. Like most forums this one was created for people with like minded ideas. Their liked minded idea is that everything in the world is a joke and should be made fun of. They them selves will admit that they are nerds, who are actively involved other MMOs, olds school computer games, and Dungeons and Dragons. I will admit that Something Awful is not for everyone, but as there is a place on the internet for everyone, Goonswarm found theirs at Something Awful. So Something Awful became home to the biggest group of trolls on the Internet.It was here that they created a subculture of the forums, The Goons. A Goon's post tend to be a more vile than a typical post on Something Awful, but that is really it. Again it is all a joke. While people try to paint members of Goonswarm as vile, homophobic, racist children, they are in fact more like the average netcizen around the world that uses the Internet to say things that normal they wouldn't say not truly believing things they post, but more for shock value and laughs. They are also on other sites such as Reddit, or Imgur. If you spend a couple minutes on the forum though and don't mind reading more than a couple vulgar post, you will find the most Goons are well read and educated about what they are talking about. Why then to they act the way the do you ask? The simplest answer is that they're trolls. That is the nature of their culture.
Inside EVE the Goons created the same culture, Goonswarm. Why, because they could and the very nature of EVE allows it and encourages it. They created an empire out of being trolls and "being bad" at the game. Groups like Band of Brothers and IT Alliance called them a plague to the game and tried to kill them off, but instead to hiding from it and saying,"we're good," they said, "you right, we are." In many ways Goonswarm is the biggest Roleplaying alliance in EVE, as they all love to RP the bad guy. The more tears and cries on forums only makes them want to do it more.
So even in Goonswarm we can see how the culture of EVE helped to shape their own. People calling them the bad guys, in fact encourages them to be bad, and if I was honest I would say that if Goonswarm didn't do events like Burn Jita or Hulkagaddon I would be more concerned.
As for ruining the game, I laugh. Many Third-party programs such as EVEmon was created by Goonswarm members to help their members but also to help the players of EVE. Because of their huge player base they a strong voice in on the EVE-O forums in terms of ship changes. They also have been leaders on the CSM in trying to make the game better. One thing about having a lot of people is in your alliance and corporation is you are bound to get quite a few that are good. In many ways Goonswarm has helped make EVE-Online a more enjoyable place to live. While people scream Goon conspiracy at any action they do, they are simply choosing the ignore many of the good things that Goonswarm has done for New Eden.
Taking off the Tinfoil Hat
At some point you just have to look around and take off your tinfoil hat. I will admit that when I first started playing I feared Goonswarm. I saw them as the most evil thing in the game and thought that they were trying to ruin the game. But as I watched and developed my own style of game play I saw I needed more help. I looked for better tools, guides, and advice in how to run a corporation in the game. I found that many were created by Goonswarm members. I talked to former members and even have made several Goon friends and they are not bad people. Do I say, "F@%! Goonswarm." sure I do, but it is a troll as much as anything. In fact the saying came from a one on Goonswarm's on FCs.Events like Burn Jita and Hulkagaddon are in fact good for the game and are not ruining it. Goonswarm in not using some different game mechanics than everyone. They are not cheating, instead they are using the tools given to them to create an event in the game that truly player based and shows the "real" dangers of New Eden. How is ganking freighters good for the game? Simple it reminds people that nowhere in New Eden is safe. It shows what a committed group of people can do. Do they make a profit of it, sure I imagine that they do. Is the wrong? No its not, even in the real world you would be hard pressed to find a job that didn't make a profit off at the expense of another person.
The truth is while CCP is getting better at Live-Events, for the sandbox of New Eden to survive for ten more years then it still needs player driven events. While some groups have tried, many times they are simply not big enough to pull them off. Small groups of roleplayers get in game items created every now and then that has no real value accept a trophy that you get to have in your item holders. Other events like Frigate Fridays in Ammuke burnt the people doing it out so it fade away. The Great EVE Deathrace was another event that was good for the game but only a few hundred people did it.
You need large alliances like Goonswarm and TEST to do these types of things. Null Sec alliance are the only groups that can bring large numbers of people to gather and make play events felt by nearly every player in the game. While I venture to say that some people quit cause of events like Burn Jita, many more people will read about it and join the game cause they want to be part of events like it. It is one major thing that separates EVE Online from other MMOs is that player events can change the course of the game.
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