You can’t fire me I quit! [Drops mic]

Oh fresh, sweet air of freedom.

I resigned from all alliance leadership last night, in what was a tough decision but also turned out to be a huge relief for me. Frankly, I was a bit of a relic of previous times, increasingly at odds with the current direction of the alliance, so I’ll skip the e/n details (moderate betrayal, some scenes of backstabbing unsuitable for younger children) and just say that I hope to get to join (and even badly FC) more Bat Country roams again.

I debated not even posting about this – it is hardly huge news beyond corp chat since pretty much all I did in alliance leadership recently was to say “I think that’s a bad idea” and be tolerated in my dissent.

I’m not quitting the CSM (I got nominated by alliance leadership but elected by a huge range of people inside and outside of the Imperium) nor Eve and certainly not Bat Country.  I intend to stay committed and active and to keep interacting with the community.

I also don’t intend to get into a bunch of he said she said stuff about what went wrong.  I’m still a filthy, freeborn goon and have huge numbers of friends in the alliance.

Dammit, since I have your attention, here is some of the Stuff I Did. This post is about me so I get to do this introspective boasting shit, even if it is alien to every bone in my Scottish body.

  • Got Deklein for Goons. We were homeless, fucked, and about to reset the NC and move to Venal to die, shortly after being unable to get two squads in fleet in Syndicate and losing Cloud Ring to Ev0ke.
  • Served as Chief Diplo whenever VR was burned out, with important successes like the Curse deployment where we went from 15 man fleets to killing alliances: our first post-Delve success and a huge gamble at the time
  • Took over the GIA when it had literally zero agents left and used it to win several whole wars (White Noise/NCdot in particular, Fountain vs Test to a large extent), and ran it for four years
  • Made Bat Country, a tiny corp which at one point had more supers than all but three *alliances* in the CFC, which has created and ran the Ministry of Love, rebuilt the GIA (three directors), has repeatedly came top for participation in wars above every corp in the Imperium (including the last war) and which I believe has the best posters in Eve.
  • Very unpopular this one: nearly stopped the Goons vs Test conflict. These days, Goons hate Test, and Test hates Goons in general and me in particular, but I came within an ace of peace in our time on this one, to be stymied by the staggering misjudgement of some guy called Viktor Villiance or something. Talk about might-have-beens.
  • Cut the resulting war far shorter by running it for the first week while Mittens was away, and stopping the then-Skymarshal (this was before Blawrf) pulling back to a single system in Fountain, which we would have lost at once, and instead using the indefensible outlying systems to buy time using our spy access to hostile command channels (both N3 and Test).
  • Launched the mittani dot com and spent six hours a day for months on end editing awful, unreadable articles into content that won the news wars in Eve, all for free because my friend needed a hand (and I am a sucker)
  • Created European Goonion and put it under the care of a week-old newbie called Dominionix who I thought had what it took. I was told I was stupid.  He’s still there and EG has decided wars
  • I have played the game hard but fair, and have friends across just about every group in Eve.

And so on.

Stuff I came up with that proved influential but which I kinda regret:

  • Participation. I put tables of kills-based corp performance as a fun  competition thing in war updates for the eight or nine tight-knit corps then in the alliance, but then came up with the paplinks idea based on stuff Mynas had done in Mostly Harmless in the old NC. In my defence, I argued against actually doing it, on cultural grounds. It’s a brilliant tool but I think on it not without some regrets.
  • Plex for [whatever] It seems natural now but when we were having difficulty getting FCs, logisticians etc (the best part of five years ago) I suggested that in Bat Country we paid corp FCs a plex for every four fleets per month they advertised that anyone in corp could join. Now everyone in the Imperium gets paid for everything. I never accepted payment though, because I was a weirdo amateur that did stuff out of love of my fellow-goon. Awwww.
  • callduron

    End of an era for the CFC/Imperium. I remember during the Fountain War you telling us Mittens’ job was to make sure the FCs didn’t burn out and your job was to make sure he didn’t burn out.

    I’d love to know more about this: “Took over the GIA when it had literally zero agents left and used it to win several whole wars.”

    The Sins of the Solar Spymaster column was great but Eve players have stopped talking about high end spycraft and it’s made for a duller game.

  • Seraph IX Basarab

    “Launched the mittani dot com and spent six hours a day for months on end editing awful, unreadable articles into content that /won the news wars in Eve/, all for free because my friend needed a hand (and I am a sucker)”

    You sure about this little part?… be honest

    “He who needs to declare his victory has no victory to declare.”

  • Aryndel Vyst

    There was a period of time when it launched that tmc.com was *the* news site for EVE news and en24 was but just a fart in the wind of that fat latino manatee. Now everything shows up on reddit.

  • Seraph IX Basarab

    There were a few months where TMC was doing some pretty good stuff. But then they purged most of their talent for *reasons* and hit the whole “this is actually an advertisement but no really it’s also an article” crack pipe even harder. Then the layout went to shit, and it’s still there.But hey at least we got Mittens to ramble for an hour about how people that don’t like the layout must still use MS-DOS to check their e mail or whatever.

  • Montolio

    You were always a joy to deal with Endie.

  • http://dredditisrecruiting.com YoloSwagtron9000

    :(

    I just want you to know, we’re always recruiting.

    http://www.dredditisrecruiting.com

  • http://ReverendMak.com/ Reverend Mak

    That was a good run indeed.

    And I also am very curious about the low point of the GIA and what was involved in rebuilding the network. I can never get enough of that kind of story. :)

  • Stu Pendisdick

    …and at the end of the day, you are just another basement dwelling, neck bearded gobbler of Gianturco’s knob.

    Pitiful and pathetic.

  • Clearly Stupid

    Wow, a little harsh I think, at least he seems not to be a angry basement dweller like yourself, one day he will be so bitter but until then I’ll enjoy his good posting.

  • cloaky sniper raven

    Wow, you are the king of content! How did you pack so much meaning into that post? So well thought out. So thought provoking. So many facts and other useful information. How do you manage it?

  • Scar Tripitaka

    Endie. Far from Glasgow? I would buy you a round mate. For all you said above and more.

  • Endie

    I live in Fife, work in Edinburgh but I keep meaning to go to one of the Glasgow eve meets.

  • Endie

    Oh yeah, persuading Mittens to grab some sleep and take a couple of days off just before the weekend of the attack on VFK turned out to be important, although I didn’t really realise that at the time.

  • Endie

    I miss our good-natured-but-always-on-guard skypery.

  • Endie

    On reading figures it went past en24 by a wide margin by the time I handed it over. That’s all I can claim. As to whether the content was better is in the eye of the beholder.

  • Endie

    What happened after I left, whether you love or hate it, isn’t something I can claim the credit for nor take the blame for.

  • Endie

    wow rude

    PLUS I don’t even have a basement. Check and mate.

  • Scar Tripitaka

    Nice. If you decide to go to one, contact me and I’ll go to the same. I hear they’re usually in the west end. Fun part of town. I’ll drop you an eve mail.

  • Marsha Mallow

    There’s nothing wrong with oral sex between consenting adults. Except when you have to shout instructions, and they get it wrong, and then you ask them to be quiet for a minute or two while you do it yourself, and then they start talking about something retarded. Then turn the TV on to watch cricket or something. Seriously, I don’t know what your problem is, but goddayum want to talk about pathetic?

  • Seraph IX Basarab

    In any case why did you leave? Both then and now with this? The real reason, not the politically correct one.

  • Vio Geraci

    Most critically to me: you were the sole redeeming characteristic of director chat or even-more-secret director chat for a solid year or two.

  • Vio Geraci

    Also: as far as I can tell you never stole anything except our hearts.

  • Endie

    There’s no need for me to leak anything – and I won’t – because the thing about disagreeing with plans for the future is that, when they happen, everyone will just say “aahhhh, that will have been it.”