The Blob

Bold Pilot Log, Entry #5

Today's topic is another often misused word in the EVE universe. It is a fairly hot topic everywhere, but ties well to the last post, Tiny Empires. So. Blob. It exists anywhere where there's no limit how many people can play together. It's what other games call zerging and constitutes a tactic of obtaining victory over other groups of players by reliance on numbers.

To blob, or not to blob, that is the question? Apparently, it's not. But as it stands, EVE players use the word for two meanings, and they might even not be aware. The first meaning is aforementioned tactic, where you get fight with uneven numbers, thus throwing all odds against you. An then there's the other. The so called 'blob warfare'. This will refer to another aspect of the game, the large scale battles. Because what's really a blob?


blob  (blb)

n.

1. A soft, amorphous mass.

2. A daub, as of color.

Let's go with soft, amorphous mass. Because spacehips are like liquid, just more shooty. So there's this mass of people wo want to achieve certain objective. Ideally they move as one, act as one. They are a blob. When you see a hundred drakes warp on the same grid, the word really gets meaning. The thing is, there's power in numbers.

First of all, there's the safety thing. Because you're blobbing, the only thing that dares to attack you is a bigger blob, or a counter blob of nearly the same size.

Then, there's time. Yeah, if you think of sov warfare, time's definitely a factor. We have these timers that cause the dreaded metagaming of alarm clocking another alliance. Tactics of setting the 24 hour timers off at the lowest activity times for the enemy. It's so EVE, yet it borders on crime to force people wake up early or stay at night just because your alliance must protect system lol-tac-shit. Otherwise good communities fall apart on this.

With the right kind of blob, everything is possible in 0.0

Now let's think about this a little more. What do you think happened if there were artificial limitations in place so that the fight may be 'fair'? Nothing, really. Everyone would travel with maximum numbers allowed and maximum strength allowed. In other words, there would be no place for newbies in really good alliances throughout the game. Is that what you want? I'd rather be blobbed all the time than have only a few places to learn. And yeah, if you look carefully you will see blobs that lost to a much smaller group. Lag and counterfits and all that.

Sessym out.