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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.