A Modest Proposal

There exists a blight that is crippling New Eden. Even under the watchful eyes of Concord, there is a darkness creeping into the Empire space that threatens to break the foundation of the cluster. I speak of course of the non-consensual player versus player activities, popularly known as ganking. Let us look at the plight of the wide eyed carebear, the victim of such slaughter.

Here we see Sara, a hard working miner. She’s putting laser to asteroid and supplying the masses of New Eden with its lifeblood, namely ores and minerals. The work is long and often tedious but Sara soldiers through all obstacles, knowing that she is providing the mean of freedom for every capsuleer. Unfortunately, there lurks a predator in Sara’s midst. His hunger is insatiable. His aptitude for violence and destruction has led him to this backwater in search of tears. Not just any tears, though. This predator is after a special variety, the sort that only can be stolen from the fresh corpse of a previously unmolested miner.

And so our faceless fiend strikes. Sara is blindsided by the assault. The villain restrains Sara by means of his warp scrambler, making escape all but impossible for our persecuted carebear. The slaughter then begins. The attack cycles up his Hurricane’s weapons, thrusting shards of fiery death deep in through Sara’s shield. Alas, Sara’s Retriever is minimally tanked and leaving her naked hull exposed. Our scoundrel now fires of a snide remark in local before plunging through Sara’s last bit of hit points and reduces her to a battered wreck on the New Eden landscape.

Sadly, Sara’s ordeal is not an uncommon story. There are many miners and mission runners that suffer the same non-consensual combat, nay butchery at the hands of these tear pillagers. And thus comes into play my modest proposal. Carebears have neither the ISK nor the combat skills to bring the fight to these criminals, thus my proposal is of a different sort. The one possession bears have in abundance is other carebears. Whether because of financial incentive or a baser instinct of survival, carebears often band together. Using their numbers to their advantage, I propose that the few be sacrificed to save the many. That is to say, a few carebears would be indentured to a ganker in order to sate his lust for tears, leaving the other bears out of harm’s way. It would be hoped that with a fresh supply of the sweetest tears, the likes of which can only be produced by the most innocent and naïve of carebears, ganker’s appetites would be satisfied, thus allowing other carebears to go about their business as the backbone of the New Eden economy.

Let it not be said that there other solutions, for such a great dilemma requires an equally great solution. The talk of creating more lasting consequences for ganking or establishing legitimate markets for bears to find mercenaries to defend them is simply nonsense. They simply do not address the source of the solution. Thus I put forward a modest proposal, so that the many may go about New Eden unfettered.

Author’s Note: In case you were unaware of the implications of the title, this was satire. In the midst of the current debate in the Eve blogosphere over ganking and other high sec PVP, I saw the opportunity to pay homage to the Jonathan Smith essay of the same name while also expressing my opinion on the matter.