CCP Hates Me

There is a theory which states that if anyone discovers exactly what the universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarrely inexplicable. There is another theory which states this has already happened.
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If you're reading this blog, I have to assume you read other blogs.  I mean, I hope my writing is good, but it's not that good.  If you read other blogs, it's inevitable that you've been alerted to recent Dev Blogs from CCP.  Like anyone, I have my opinions on that blog and what it means as a player for the future of EVE, but I don't think I have a lot to add to the discussion and usually steer away from posts in which I try to tell other people what to think.  What I offer instead is a brief post today concerning what those Dev Blogs meant to this blog that I hope can shed some light on blogging about EVE in general.

Let me say first that I hope I make this look easy.  If when you read a post here on EVE FNG it seems that the words simply leaped to the page because the truths revealed by them were so utterly intrinsic to the game that there was no other way for them to be presented, then I'm doing something right.  Of course, I doubt that's what you thought, but I will say that sometimes it is that easy, other times it is not.  When I'm feeling inspired, I can sit down and start-to-finish crank out some rant in under an hour.  If I have some particularly good fight that I believe can be used to illustrate a good lesson learned, it will be ready to post by the end of the day.  As an example, this is certainly one of those ranting posts that just falls onto the pages of the interwebs.

Then there are the other posts.  The ones that actually add something to the vast knowledge out there concerning the game of EVE Online.  Those are the guides, the how-to posts, the detailed analysis of something that I do both to enhance my own understanding, and then to share it with the community at large.  The best example that springs to mind outside of this blog is The Altruist's Know Your Enemy series.  If you read those and think, "Damn, Azual knows an awful lot about every single ship in the game," then he's doing a very good job.  The bubble may burst for you when I say that he's certainly not just opening the flood gates of his mind and putting words on the page.

Those posts, the genuinely good ones, require a lot of research and time to prepare.  They're also the ones that turn out to be extremely rewarding to write.  Not only do you learn a lot in the process, but they tend to be, in my experience at least, the posts that take on a voice of their own and spread across the various forums and blogs of EVE.  They're the ones that cause people to read them and think, "Wow!  I've got to share this with other people," and when they do share them, people come pouring in to read them by the thousands.  It's a good feeling at the end of the day knowing you've done your part to heighten the gameplay experience for thousands of others.

What does any of this have to do with the recent Dev Blogs by CCP?  Well, as of late I've been hard at work on two aspects of EVE.  The first, has been a long in the making Pirates Guide to Faction Warfare.  It's been a couple of months now since I joined the Militia as a Flashy Red Outlaw, and it's still got a bit of tweaking and fine-tuning as there are some aspects of FW I've yet to experience and understand well enough to explain them to others.  The second is a more recent addition, continuing the analysis offered of Turrets in EVE.  Spreadsheets are done, but there's still quite a lot of work to do on the actual textual comparison parts of the blog post.  Then CCP Zulu's blog came out.

As excited and hopeful as I was when I read that CCP would finally be taking a second look at what many considered to be some long overdue areas of gameplay, a little selfish voice in the back of my head had a different opinion.  "That sucks.  They're about to make your upcoming posts obsolete," and the voices in my head may be right for once.  It's left me with some lingering thoughts on whether I want to push those posts out before the changes are made, or wait and see what happens so that I don't have a put a big disclaimer at the top of a post that's two months old stating that the information within is outdated and incorrect.   I was honestly leaning towards the wait and see response, because it also provided me an excuse to be lazy and I oh-so-enjoy being lazy, until a comment was left yesterday by Serpentinelogic, "Any updates? CCP Zulu needs your input! No, really, he does need it. Badly."

Now the guilt has set in for my laziness.  I'm trying to figure out the best way to approach all this.  Should I do the posts now, and then do them again after the changes?  Will having them up add some value for future generations able to see what Hybrids used to be like before they were changed?  Will it instead just add to the confusion and lead to more half-remembered impressions of the way turrets work confused with the way they used to work?  So, I ask you, the reader, what are your thoughts on it?  I'm lazy remember, and part of being lazy is not wanting to make the decision myself.  Because I know that if I make it, it will involve the path of least work for me, which may not be the most useful to the community at large.  So feel free to guilt away, as guilt is a great motivator.

Regarrrds,

FNG