But let's be honest here, in eve "unorthodox" gameplay generally meant ruining the game for 99.99% of the players apart from a tiny few who were in leadership positions. Eve is about fantasising about what you could do, rather than enjoying what you actually do.
Unless you spend an extremely sad and unhealthy amount of time playing the game you will never, ever get to do anything polyfractal describes.
A good example is the end of the BoB/Goonswarm war (the latter being polyfractal's alliance). Not that I ever had anything to do with either.
Basically a single guy from Goonswarm infiltrated BoB and got granted privileges to delete the BoB alliance. That meant they lost all their territory. OK, the game mechanics sucked at the time with too much advantage given to BoB's defence, but after the alliance got deleted, game over for BoB. And CCP didn't know what to do so just kinda went 'um, yeah, that's a real mechanic, not a bug/exploit'. Game over. No epic spaceship war. No amazing tactical genius. Just some guy lying about who he was with zero consequences and smarming BoB leadership until he could click the iwin button. Just a single click.
And that's the essence of end-game eve, find the exploit, click it, laugh, then wonder why the hell you were even playing the game in the first place.
polyfractal sounds very much like he's in the bright-eyed bushy tailed phase of eve before you realise, hang on a sec, I was supposed to be playing a spaceship game...
Hmm, well, I'm not really sure if you are attacking me personally or the game. If you've read my other posts in this thread, it's pretty obvious I'm not in that "bright-eyed bushy tailed phase". I quit because of time and the fact that it's internet spreadsheets in space. If anything, I can proudly wear the "bitter vet" badge who will probably never play Eve again.
I would argue that the alliance you are a part of is more important than the amount of time spent. I got to do some really cool stuff because I was part of Goonfleet - which was very well organized and interested in playing all the parts of the game...not just the shooty parts.
You are also leaving out all the history that happened after that single "disband alliance" event. Did it suck for their alliance? Sure. What happened after that? They rallied and led an impressive one-year campaign to retake their homeland.
What other games allow for a year-long campaign against other players, keeping everyone involved actively engaged and interested? There were battles so large that the servers crashed, because there were several thousand people playing in the same system at the same time.
Hilariously enough, the same thing happened to Goonfleet (our CEO went rogue, deleted alliance, LOL). We were booted from our homeland as BoB took it back over. Guess what happened? Player engagement rates went through the roof. The alliance had been stagnating and people were quitting...after the exodus many players rejoined and started being active again.
My point in all of this is that the people who gravitate towards EVE are the ones that find this kind of gameplay enticing. It makes it so much more interesting than WoW or any other fluffy MMO where there is nothing to lose.
Unless you spend an extremely sad and unhealthy amount of time playing the game you will never, ever get to do anything polyfractal describes.
A good example is the end of the BoB/Goonswarm war (the latter being polyfractal's alliance). Not that I ever had anything to do with either.
Basically a single guy from Goonswarm infiltrated BoB and got granted privileges to delete the BoB alliance. That meant they lost all their territory. OK, the game mechanics sucked at the time with too much advantage given to BoB's defence, but after the alliance got deleted, game over for BoB. And CCP didn't know what to do so just kinda went 'um, yeah, that's a real mechanic, not a bug/exploit'. Game over. No epic spaceship war. No amazing tactical genius. Just some guy lying about who he was with zero consequences and smarming BoB leadership until he could click the iwin button. Just a single click.
And that's the essence of end-game eve, find the exploit, click it, laugh, then wonder why the hell you were even playing the game in the first place.
polyfractal sounds very much like he's in the bright-eyed bushy tailed phase of eve before you realise, hang on a sec, I was supposed to be playing a spaceship game...