This is a transcription of Morning Maniac's lecture about the Past, 
Present, and Future of Eve University. This transcription is by no means 
perfect. Several speakers are unidentified, some statements are garbled, 
and so on. I have tried to stay as true to MM's speech and message as 
best as I can. It is not my job to interpret, just to translate into 
text; I think the below is satisfactory, but could certainly be 
improved. - Boniface Vachon 

===== 

MM: This lecture will focus on how Eve University and Ivy League came to 
be, how we stand in the current political structure of Eve, and where we 
are going. 

???: I can answer all that in three sentences: it seemed like a good 
idea at the time, we're neutral, and we hope to survive. 

MM: Not quite. 

???2: I expect Morning Maniac to stretch it out a bit. 

MM: Yeah, I tend to be good at that. If I drag on too long, just push me 
along. 

???: Get on with it. 

MM: I hope Miraki will join us, he is our most senior member, next to 
myself at least. 

???2: And he's a wicken miner. 

MM: Oh, and a great guy. Don't know why he's in a pod at the moment 
though. I just looked at my overview and there he is in a pod. Hehe. 
Just as I ????? 

???2: How many people have we got in the room, at the moment? 

???: 28 

MM: Right well Pluto when you want to start or if you want to wait for 
others. 

Pluto: You're the big boss, so you make the call. I'd say we have a ton 
of people. 

MM: Yeah, not time like the present to start. Well, let me start by 
introducing myself: I am Morning Maniac, I'm the CEO and founder of Eve 
University and I also started the Ivy League alliance. If you happen to 
be in the game at the moment, you can right click me in chat and do a 
"Show Info" and that will basically show you who I am, also my 
employment history. 

I am sorry to be talking about myself, but how Eve University started 
was basically just me. I started out being a solo player. I joined 
Caldari Steel, which is an NPC corporation, because back in the day you 
could actually join those. I thought it sounded cool to join an NPC 
corporation, with a cool name, so I did. I think I was a member for 
almost a year, it felt long anyway, and never never had I seen anyone in 
corp chat. I was the only member all the time. So basically what I did, 
socially, was hanging out in the help channel. First just asking 
questions and listening in just trying to learn about this complex game, 
even then. And then later on, start answering questions and basically 
thats how I came to enjoy helping new people and other people. 

Obviously I had big dreams and visions of killing people and big 
explosions and earning loads of money. So I started the corporation 
called Foreign Legion which was a mercenary corporation. Basically this 
mercenary corporation started with a lot of new pilots, some experienced 
-- and you have to realize that experienced in those days was a couple 
months and you could call yourself a veteran basically. So I got some 
guys, started shooting some people, killed some people, we were killed 
by some others. But I found that after a couple engagements that I 
really didn't enjoy it. I suppose I enjoyed the heroics, but I felt 
really bad for the people I shot. Not so bad for the people who shot us, 
because then they just asked for it and then it was just to kill them, 
but I felt really bad if I just attacked someone out of the blue and 
killed his ship that he might have worked for forever. So basically, 
that's why the mercenary lifestyle never appealed to me. 

Then, after some thinking, and more hanging around the help channel, I 
started Eve University to give this helping idea some more structure. 

Any questions so far? 

Amiable, I see you're flashing, you're light in Teamspeak. 

Amiable: Is Foreign Legion still alive? 

MM: No, I think it died with me leaving. It sounds dramatic, but I left 
quite early because I found it wasn't my thing. I think the other guys 
just jumped ship. I still run into some of those guys once in a while, 
they are all established PvPers now in big alliances or mercenary 
corporations. 

Pluto: Just a note, I have asked people to ask their questions in 
alliance chat so that it doesn't interfere too badly. 

MM: Yeah, I think the current member of- 

I'm Dutch, Dierdra. 

The current member is a guy who is inactive. He just got stuck with the 
CEO title. 

In any case, I founded Eve University on the 15th of March the day 
before my real life birthday. That's actually tomorrow, the Eve 
University birthday that is, and hence we have all these excelent events 
that Pluto has been organizing. Including those light shows and rallies 
and whatever. 

In any case, I founded Eve University. I had some vision of doing 
classes and lectures, basically just running a help channel that was 
just a bit more helpful than the actual help channel, which even then 
was getting a bit smacky and lots of bad jokes. Part of it had good 
atmosphere, but some people there were just beating their own chests to 
the newb chat. In any case, that was the idea. 

The main heart of the corporation and the whole idea was the Eve 
University chat channel, which still exists today but it's not used as 
much as it should and as much as it should be. These days a lot of the 
chat is in corp chat, but all that used to be in the Eve University 
chat. It also enabled out of corp friends and teachers to help out. We 
had some experienced people teaching who didn't want to be part of the 
corporation, because they were already inside a corporation and was 
happy there. 

<Interruption with some sound. Vaughn<?>: "I'm sorry, my mum's being 
annoying, do carry on" MM:"That's what they're there for"> 

MM: Right, I think I got dragged into this chat someone else with SA can 
do the registration at the moment. 

Plutonium, I didn't really have expectations about the size. Obviously, 
sometimes you have these visions of everyone who starts Eve to get 
through Eve University and get some official way. The funny thing is, 
CCP -- just after I started Eve University -- started playing with this 
idea of the in-game adoption of new people, even get some ISK for that, 
but that never happened. A lot of people actually thought I started Eve 
University because of that: because I wanted to get a few million per 
new player we would hire, because even then there some skill point 
requirements from a lot of corporations and we never had that. 

Sounds like you're beating up your mum, heh. 

Vaughn<?>: No, that was my even more annoying brother. 

MM: Right, you should start to act with the Eve Radio idols, really 
funny with this joking duck. Anyway, that's another thing altogether. 

Miraki just mentioned that perhaps you should use the push to talk 
option instead of the voice activation. 

Vaughn<?>: Yeah, seeing as I'm going to be listening to you for a while, 
I'm going to switch just to normal headphones to listen. 

MM: Yeah, whatever works for you. 

Plutonium, yes I'm really happy with the reputation we've got. I'll get 
to it later when I start talking about the wars, where this reputation 
comes from. Because obviously we didn't start out being well known, but 
we are still, I think, the only neutral institution that helps new 
players and then allows them -- maybe not the right word, but for lack 
of a better one -- allows them to move up to another corporation 
regardless. There's a lot of alliances and larger corporations that used 
to have a training corporation that they would really try to push you to 
their main corporation once they felt you were ready for that. We're not 
like that. I always hope that our students can go anywhere in the 
universe and actually do, and sometimes that happens and sometimes it 
doesn't because obviously people become friends inside Eve University 
and then move on together to another corporation or start their own 
corporation. For example, TGRADS is mainly a bunch of Eve University 
students moving together, obviously wanting to move on to do some other 
things and doing this together. And this is fine, but obviously if we 
had hundreds and hundreds of students all go towards TGRADS making Eve 
University the TGRAD basic training corp that would be bad. That would 
basically destroy our neutrality which is a key part of our image. 

The instructors bit. It's basically still like it is today, the main 
form of recruitment are the forums. I have used the recruitment channel 
in the first year or so of Eve University, but I don't know if you've 
ever been there but it's all spam. It's just a bunch of people spamming 
their ads all the time, and you can't do that for hours and hours on 
end. I've done it, but it's really exhausting. It's, I mean, it's 
worthwhile if you're really desperate. 

No, I won't stop because of your dinner Vaughn. 

Seems Miraki heard of us through the recruitment channel, it's just one 
of those things thats lacking in the Eve Universe at the moment and in 
the past as well. It's very difficult to advertise. It would be great if 
we could get our name out to all the new people starting, and the ones 
that do get on the forums and search for us they can find us. Also, 
because of our reputation we get a lot of referrals from other more 
experienced players who know about us and push new players towards us. 
But most new players will never find out about us until they've played 
this game for months. 

If I stop talking it means that I'm either having some sort of a hiccup 
or having a drink. 

Anyway, guys, with your questions, sidetracked me enormously. 

How many teachers there are? That's a good question. At the moment, 
Fenrir is our training manager. I think Beastie Boy is taking over from 
him while Fenrir has a little Eve holiday. 

Don't know if Beastie Boy is here. Yeah he is. 

<Hubbub> 

MM: Yeah. The great thing about these referrals, a lot of people they 
got referred to us. 

Fenrir?: We have 13 instructors. 

MM: Thirteen or thirty? One-three or three-zero? 

Fenrir?: Thirteen, one-three. 

MM: Right, yep, so that's one thing that we're always trying to improve: 
both the number of instructors and the amount of instructing they 
actually do. That's probably the key problem of Eve University as we run 
it today, is it's a game, people play it for fun obviously, and people 
find it very hard to pin themselves down to "Friday evening 7 o'clock 
I'm going to be there, I'm going to be playing Eve and teaching a 
class." Not a lot of people are willing to do that. This includes 
myself, because real life usually takes priority over Eve, for most 
people including myself, so planning Eve stuff is really difficult. 
That's why the people in Eve University who can say that, who can make 
that comittment, are people we treasure most and more than anything. And 
that doesn't really matter if you're particularly knowledgeable or not, 
because someone who says "we're going to mine in this belt then and 
then" is as much an asset to us as someone who knows the game and can 
actually teach. Because, these lectures are great and everything, but a 
key element is also to keep people entertained because that's obviously 
what the game is all about. 

Talking about the firs year of Eve University, we didn't actually have 
that many lectures. I don't think we had Teamspeak at all so everything 
went through chat. I think our main form of teaching was the Eve 
University chat channel, the in-game chat channel as I explained before, 
and events. A lot more than today, we had frigate tournaments, 
free-for-alls, and some ladder knockout system. I think that in the 
first year was the one and only event that I won myself, which I'm very 
proud of, was the industrial free-for-all combat which I mainly won 
because of my ECM Burst and my Nosferatu. I think it took an hour. 
Miraki maybe was there, I'm not sure. 

He must be asleep by now. 

Miraki: Heh, no. I wasn't there. 

MM: Ah, but you must have heard the story many times. Miraki is actually 
our oldest surviving member, who is still a part of Eve University. And 
Miraki just embodies the perfect Eve University student, he's been 
lurking in the channel so long -- and in the corp chat -- and being very 
active, taking part, joining in, being very chatty, and helpful. He for, 
I think for at least two years, he managed to escape any form of 
responsibility and then all of a sudden he started doing the website. 
He's a fully fledged director now doing lots of stuff, really being a 
mainstay for this corporation along with all the other directors and 
instructors and people like Pluto (who is quite new to game but 
obviously organizing all these events is very important to the 
University). 

Anything to say about that? 

And the people who are in 0.0 with me: there is an unknown chappy in 
local. 

???: Yeah, I was wondering about that. 

MM: Fivethousand bounties, not worth killing him. Someone else maybe can 
start running some scans on him. 

Yeah, I'm sorry if I called Pluto new and you feel you are really 
experienced. To me, experienced doesn't mean much at all. I have been in 
this game for four years and success to me is not the amount of 
skillpoints. If you look at the big names in Eve and the people with the 
big wallets and the big reputations, they are not earned because they 
were particularly good at firing guns or missiles. It's because they're 
good at dealing with people, have good ideas that make them work either 
in industry or PvP with strategic or tactical dealings. That's what 
makes you successful, it's really the guy behind the computer. That's 
one of the reasons I started Eve University, and I'm still involved. I'm 
interested in the guy behind the PC, I don't really care about your 
skillpoints. If you have a good idea and you have a million skillpoints, 
that's cool. Organize it, go for it. I'll give you a budget, go go go! 

That's what Eve University is about: the word of a guy who just joined 
and his ideas are just as important or more important than mine. 

Dierdra, about CCP. Nope, never heard from them. As people read my bio, 
I always have a joking relationship with some of the ISD people who are 
now actually GMs. That's my only dealings with CCP, sometimes I run into 
them in space we wave, they say "good job" and "take care." 

Uhm, I don't know if we've got devs in Eve University. 

???5: If there are devs out there, they cannot acknowledge it due to 
contract. That's something that's for sure. 

MM: Yeah, of course, so it really doesn't matter. That's another great 
thing about online games, it doesn't really matter what you do in real 
life: we're all equals here. 

???5: The great thing about Eve in particular is there are only adults 
or and adult thinking people out here. 

???6: It's a very mature thing, that's for sure. 

MM: Yeah, Eve is boring as hell. And, you need some stamina. It's not 
instant gratification. Anyway, that's not what we're talking about. 

Let me talk a bit about the wars that Eve University has had, those were 
very defining moments and also defined our reputation. That will also 
take us to the "what happened to 0.0" question. 

Basically, our first ever war was after almost a year after we started 
to get somewhat big a name for ourselves. That was against Serial 
Warfare, that was a small corporation made of very much at-that-time 
veteran PvP pilots. What happened was they started camping our 
headquarters and killing the odd pilot that undocked. Basically, we were 
camped in our headquarters and it was quite desparate at first. Then we 
got a bit organized and managed to scare them off in groups, but it 
really wasnt doing that well. 

Just reading that one of our pilots was blown up in 0.0 where I am, 
while I was ignoring his request. I'm very sorry aout that, I will 
refund. 

Anyway, Serial Warfare. We were on the ropes a bit to be honest, so we 
called out to the community. Because we already had a name and with that 
callout we even got more into the public eye. We got a lot of support 
both in ships, in isk, and in people either in people who helped us with 
intel and advice and also we had some people who actually joined us to 
help fight. 

It was a small war, it only lasted a couple weeks. When we finally got 
organized I managed to kill two battleships in the same day of their 
CEO, and then they basically abandoned their corporation. You have to 
remember that back then a battleship was a bit more expensive compared 
to people's wealth than they are now. So it would be almost, well it 
wouldn't be like losing a capital ship, I wouldnt go that far. 

Escona<?>, I really hope you are in here because chat in game is really 
not the best time to talk to me at the moment. Just shout here if you 
need assistance. 

Okay, I'm very sorry about all this, gentlemen. 

The really big war that defines Eve University's corporation was against 
a corporation called Huff Technologies. Serial Warfare had about 5 or 6 
members, Huff had about 50. That was a big difference, that was also a 
really bad time for Eve University when the war started. They caught a 
lot of our pilots off-guard and a lot of people were just being camped 
inside stations, not being able to get out at all or they would just get 
killed instantly. 

That was quite a bad time, so we started posting on the forum and 
because of our reputation, basically half of the Eve Online community 
started flaming Huff Technologies. They got a lot of pressure in the 
public eye, they were the bad guys, no doubt about it, and everyone knew 
about them. They would get sworn at in local chat just by random 
passerby people. Again, we got a lot of support from the community in 
many many ways, a hundred fold the support we got in the first war. 

The thing was, the public pressured Huff so much that they couldn't 
withdraw without losing face, so they had to fight on. At first they 
were shooting us left and right, but we got organized. We got some of 
the best fleet commanders in the game to join us with their alts, we had 
the best BoB fleet commanders joining us and helping us out. 

That really made all the difference. Those guys learned us a lot and our 
reputation just grew and grew. The problem was Huff still couldn't back 
down. Then the very wise Irrilian -- who just left Eve University to 
persue his own corporation -- showed me this bit from Sun Tzu's Art of 
War: if you can't destroy someone, you should always leave and exit for 
him on the battlefield so he can step out and save his face. And that's 
what we did, we let forum posts die so Huff could retreat and still have 
some face, not be the guys who got owned by a noob corp and just forget 
about the whole thing. Forget about the pressure, let them bow out 
gracefully. We know what we did, we know we killed a lot of their 
pilots, and we really showed them that we are not a corp to mess with. 

That basically, after about two months of war, was the end of that war. 
It learned us a lot: not only that if we organize we can fight well, but 
also about how to deal with your enemies. You can put some pressure on, 
but dont overdo it. It's a game, and people don't like to lose face. 
They'd rather keep this wardec going and not log on at all or just sit 
there in their stations, keeping you occupied camping the station, than 
actually withdraw. 

Okay, let me read some questions now, because I completely ignored. 

Yes, I said BoB. Yes, m0o as well. Frankenator, one of the people in 
Bob, has been a long-time supporter of Eve University. Omberzombie, who 
is also a former member of BoB, was even a member and a director for a 
long time. 

Okay, next. I think... 

Jesus Christ, we're having a situation in the local where I am at and I 
am completely ignoring it. 

???: If you need to handle that situation, I'm sure we can all reconvene 
here. 

???: No no, we'll take care of it Morning. Keep on. 

???: We'll scream. 

MM: Yeah, he left local so there's not much I can do now. 

Anyway, I hope these pods I see flying left and right past me are not an 
indicator of bad tidings. 

In any case, this reminds me of the Big Blue episode, which happened 
quite a bit after the Huff War. There were some smallish wars in 
between, but I won't mention them. The Big Blue was a former alliance. 
Basically it started out with N.A.G.A. Corporation (they are probably 
one of the biggest T2 producers in the game) and ourselves. This is 
quite a unique combination because both of us were and are neutral 
entities. They needed manpower, which we had; we could use their 
expertise in industry and marketing, as well. They are not the biggest 
and the best because they build stuff -- anyone can do that -- they are 
the biggest and best because of their name. They build a brand, and 
basically that's what they showed me: it's not the character in the game 
that makes you successful, it's the guy behind the computer and his 
ideas. Their ideas with the marketing and how they built their shop 
really showed me how people with a good idea can be successful. 

Anyway, we got together with them and they pulled in some other 
corporation. The idea starts gaining momentum with this alliance, and 
first of all it was going to be us and an industrial superpower 
basically. We had N.A.G.A., we had three or four industrial corporations 
that later formed Trust Alliance<?> and are now the industrial backbone 
of the D2 alliance. Those corporations mainly a megacorporation, they 
joined up. This lasted a couple weeks, but there was a -- well, I 
wouldn't say a huge row, but it was edging on that, between N.A.G.A. and 
those other corporations and then us in between. We were given a choice 
to go either with N.A.G.A. or the now-D2 corporations. It was difficult, 
basically the D2 corporations were all about a democratic model and 
N.A.G.A. was like "okay, this is our show, whatever N.A.G.A. does that's 
how it works." And maybe to your surprise, I went with that. 

<"Okay, I just need to do something in the game... Okay Escona, done."> 

Anyway, we went with Naga basically because with these corporations from 
the D2 alliance, we had meetings that lasted and lasted and lasted for 
many hours because of this whole democracy thing and it just didn't work 
for me, it was just too complicated. So we stuck with N.A.G.A., but no 
there is no bad blood between D2 and Eve University. We parted as 
friends. I have a lot of respect for these mega guys, mega industries, 
mega enterprise. They are brilliant at what they do, it's just that 
their leadership style that they chose was too timeconsuming really. 
It's okay if it's your real life job to discus everything, every detail. 
But I went for the N.A.G.A. approach which was just good guidelines and 
go with that. That was the basic idea, not how it turned out, but I'll 
get to that. 

N.A.G.A. also invited at that time LIH, which is the short form of The 
Four Horsemen, they are basically an American military corporation. They 
were a decent PvP force when they joined, and they started clearing out 
the IPS constellation in Geminate which you can loo up on the map. It's 
very close to Korsiki and it's actually the reason our headquarters are 
in Korsiki. 

So, LIH cleared this constellation and the vision of N.A.G.A. was that 
we were gonna make it like a free trade zone. Everyone would be able to 
do their thing in 0.0. Eve Eniversity and N.A.G.A. as partners, LIH as a 
PvP force to police the area, and it all would be great. And I have to 
say, at times it was. Most of the time, though, it was pirate heaven. 
Pirates were flying left and right, mainly the Burn Eden corporation. 
You can ask Sabre A about them, Sabre A has been a member of them as 
well after the whole TBB. And Burn Eden taught our more experienced 
pilots and LIH how to PvP. If people tell you you can't PvP in a missile 
ship, ask them about Burn Eden. Burn Eden does it and they are probably 
the best in the game at what they do, small gang warfare. Some people 
say their tricks are cheap, I could agree with that to be honest, but 
they do it very very well and all inside the game mechanics. They use 
what they got and are very very good at it. Anyway, them being very good 
meant that a lot of us and our visitors got killed all the time. Left 
and right. Most of the time it was very difficult to mine. 

In any case, there were times when it was great. You could mine Crokite, 
hunt battleship rats that gave you like 1-2 million bounty each and cash 
was flowing like anything. The problem for Eve University was that a 
bunch of, well let's call them freeloaders joined Eve University. They 
weren't real new characters, but they pretended either to be a new 
character or instructor and just joined so that they could mine there 
under our flag, even though at first anyone could mine there. Later on 
we changed this so that only the people with a positive standing could 
go there, because it turned out we had a lot of spies and some people 
pretended to mine but as soon as they saw a soft target (another miner 
or whatever) they started killing it. So, basically, it was a mess a lot 
of the time. 

It also turned out when things got really exciting our PvPers were happy 
and chased people around, when this happened people were chased off 
quite easily. Then at times when nothing was happening our PvPers got 
really bored so one after the other, they left. This was mainly a 
problem with the LIH corporation. People were leaving left and right. 
Then, also, in secret (even to us) N.A.G.A. built a capital shipyard, 
which was at that time even more rare than it is now. It is a shipyard 
where you can build Titans and Motherships. You can't do that anywhere 
else, and they built it. This obviously sparked interest with some of 
the powers that be, we still don't know who was the power that hired MC 
to kill it, but we are almost sure it was BoB. 

???: Yeah, because BoB had been hunting actively against those people 
before with motherships, and that was basically what N.A.G.A. was 
building. 

MM: Yeah, so what they did was they hired, or they told, MC to attack 
us. Obviously it wasn't particularly popular towards the community but 
other people say "it's 0.0 you can get attack" and to be honest I agree 
with those other people. If you go to 0.0, expect to be attacked and be 
ready to defend yourself. Unfortunately, due to our particularly boring 
way of treating our PvPers, by only being defensive and not allowing 
them to go after people who attacked us a million times before... 

<Ah, Lucas, I'll get to that. People should know about that.> 

MC came after us. At that time, Eve University was the main PvP of The 
Big Blue. That's funny in itself although not as funny as theKiller8's 
flash animation which is hilarious. If you want to know, I'm sure if you 
Google it you'll find it: thekiller8. Read about it in alliance chat, 
and maybe someone can post a link. There we go. It's hilarious, and all 
it says about The Big Blue is true. The thing about a lockdown is true, 
it all happened. Basically whenever a hostile came into local, the 
police force would say "LOCKDOWN LOCKDOWN" and everyone would run away 
screaming to a POS or station or whatever. It was hilarious. 

???: Yeah, but that was in the later days of Big Blue. When the pirates 
really became annoying. 

MM: Yeah, Miraki, they stole my wind talking about thekiller8 before I 
got to talking about the big battle with MC; I think the largest fleet 
we've ever been in as Eve University was on the first day that MC 
attacked us. I think we had about 120 man fleet of friends and The Big 
Blue and I think 80 of the 120, about 80, were Eve University mainly in 
frigates but also in some larger ships. Those who were there couldn't 
tell you because it was so laggy. I was sitting at a POS with my 
carrier, assigning fighters. I think I got some decent kills because 
fighters do their work regardless of lag anyway. 

MC jumped in their 80 man fleet of experienced pilots and started 
killing us. We couldn't do much because of lag. Also, our fleet 
commander was inexperienced in fleets this size and fighting in lag; I 
think he did well. ISK-damage wise we came about even. A number of 
kills- they got alot more kills than us because of all the frigates they 
managed to kill easily, but we gained a lot of respect from MC an the 
entire community just for being there and fighting hard and keep 
fighting. What then followed, a few -- I think one or two -- fights with 
MC but never as big as the first one. 

Yep, that's also the time that Silentbrick came to rise as an awesome 
fleet commander. He was actually one of those people that wasn't great 
because of his skillpoints but he was just great because he logged on 
and said "who have we got? Let's get some people together and let's 
start fighting." While with most other people we just sit and wait at a 
POS, including myself I'm not a great PvP leader. So that's a great 
quality that Silentbrick has and some other fleet commanders have as 
well. But that's what it takes to be fleet commander, that you are able 
to assess what you've got and make the most of that. By the way that's 
also the difference between fleet commanders and great fleet commanders, 
a great fleet commander looks at what he's got and makes the most of 
that rather than "okay, they got this, we can't that." 

Yeah, and as Miraki says, MC credits us for a much better fight than the 
so-called real PvP alliances. 

Anyway, wrapping up this Big Blue chapter. MC got their kill on the Big 
Blue- 

???: One sec, I got screenshots of that. 

MM: Ooh, please post them. 

???: Yeah, I got screenshots of not the MC war but screenshots and also 
video of us taking back a station that MC captured in AMG<?>. That's 
basically just the E Uni taking out the station. And I've got 
screenshots of the intruder that never came, there was like a warning a 
week or three MC left, there was this warning that came down the spy 
network with no idea where it came from because I was a pretty damn 
lowbie back then. It said that one of the bigger alliances was gonna 
come in, and I have a screenshot of a 320-man gatecamp. That's our 
defending force and all our friends. We sent our scouts through and they 
realized "what the fuck?" and never came. 

MM: Yes, I remember that, because we killed their scouts and they just 
thought "what the hell is this?" and never showed up again. 

Anyway, that was after MC left. MC killed their capital shipyard, 
N.A.G.A.'s capital shipyard. I think they lost about 20-30 billion worth 
of stuff in that attack on the capital shipyard. Basically, MC left us 
thinking "well we just take out this POS and that's it" but it really 
turned out to be a house of cards. The whole structure of The Big Blue 
was gone, the good PvPers that were left outside Eve University left, a 
lot of Eve University members were quite frustrated as well, and there 
was a huge case of leadership burnout. It was really difficult to get 
the N.A.G.A. guys online and all the diplomatics and the decision making 
running through them. I was in the dark and I was getting burned out 
with the whole situation as well. 

So it was a difficult time, and when we were down, people were kicking 
us left and right. Burn Eden was there, also SAS, which had a doubtful 
reputation with the MC war, because they kinda took a piggy back ride on 
MC's back started fighting with them against us even though they were 
having positive standing towards us. It was really the swansong of The 
Big Blue. We did manage to counter some attacks by some people, by 
today's standards we got loads and loads of kills every day, but it was 
a difficult time. All we would do was negotiate our way out of there, 
because we were just a sinking ship. Pirates were coming every day, 
people were complaining, "oh why can't we go mining like we used to? Why 
can't you incometent guys protect us in this space?" Things like that, 
it was not pleasant to be a leader at that time. 

???:Morning Maniac said there were plenty of kills and that, I thought 
of something. "Wait a minute, the old killboard, it's still alive!" Yep, 
the old Big Blue killboard is still online, I'm going to link it right 
now. Link you guys in alliance chat, and well the last kill on it was 
September 2006 and it has billions of kills on it. 

MM: Yeah, I mean, PvP wise it was our main time. I mean we were fighting 
every day, but it turned out to be a bad thing for the Eve University as 
a university to be in this role. Because the newer guys didn't get time 
to get a grip on things. Everyone who was in a leadership position or in 
a position to teach was more either burnt out or trying to fight and not 
having proper quality time to do anything with the newer guys. 

So basically, we felt that this wasn't helping Eve University. We joined 
The Big Blue first of all to work with N.A.G.A. and second of all to 
have 0.0 access which is great for newer people. You can learn PvP in a 
handson environment, you can make some ISK, you can learn about lowsec 
mining, all of that. Great opportunity, but it just wasn't worth it 
anymore, what it cost us. So we started to withdrawing, which took I 
think almost a month. We kept postponing pulling the plug because of 
issues with assets that needed removing and diplomatics, great argument 
of who we should hand the stations to or whatever. In the end they were 
just taken by whoever, I think it was Forsaken Empire or some other 
idiot corp. ER even, like I said another idiot corp that used to hang 
around and kick us when we were down. 

So that was the end of Big Blue. We thought that we'd just withdraw to 
Empire and just rebuild. 

Any questions about the Big Blue? 

<Someone spoke up but cut out continuously.> 

MM: I'm sorry Dooka. 

???: What is the relationship between N.A.G.A. and Eve Uni at the 
moment? 

???: The relationship is as it was in the Big Blue was instituted as far 
as I know. There is still a 10% discount. 

MM: Yeah, that's because we're part of the Stepstone program which is a 
whole other thing. 

In any case, our relationship with N.A.G.A. is still very good. If 
you're interested in Tech 1 production, Miraki runs the Tech 1 
production of Eve University. I don't know if you guys know anything 
about Tech 2 production, but it requires the Tech 1 item of that item, 
so if you want to build a Cap Recharger II you need some building parts 
including a Cap Recharger I. We build most of those items for them, and 
we get a very very good price for that. It's a very good moneymaker and 
if you're interested in that check out corp mails and forum posts from 
Miraki. 

Anyway, let me see some other questions. 

Pluto, yes we found it very very difficult to stay neutral in 0.0. You 
have to make allies, obviously, if you ally one camp you automatically 
alienate yourself from the other side. So let's say we would ally with 
BoB now, that would put us against D2, RA, Goons, etc etc. It's not 
really a problem of neutrality but it's people's idea of neutrality. A 
lot of people think, "well you have a pact with them, so therefore you 
can't be our friend anymore, even though you don't fight with your 
allies you just agree not to attack each other." A lot of people have 
issues with the idea, and I know Kelduum and I and Sabre and whatever 
had huge discussions about this problem. 

Yes, people are very paranoid in 0.0, and they don't trust anyone. 

Our relation with BoB at the moment, Colonel Vaughn <?>, is completely 
neutral. I know some people in their leadership because their alts 
helped us with the Huff war like I said previously -- great job, good 
fun -- and we exchange the occasional politeness but we have no 
relations whatsoever. 

Obviously I'm not happy with their cheating and metagaming that's been 
going on from their said, also not from any side to be honest but I 
can't dislike the entire player group, and I definitely can't say we're 
going to war with BoB, or anyone, because of it. That would mean that we 
would go down to their level. We're neutral, we worked and faught hard 
for that reputation. That's entirely deserved, because it's what we are 
and what we're trying to be. We're a very positive corporation, probably 
the most positive in the entire Eve universe and then to throw that away 
because some idiots cheat, that wouldn't help us whatsoever. We did talk 
about going to war, but a majority of the leadership decided it was a 
bad idea. 

About neutrality in 0.0, basically people don't allow it because you 
have the pirates, so you start killing people, then you may have to 
start chasing them etc etc. It's very hard to live in 0.0 because of all 
the politics involved. PvP wise it's not that difficult, trading, 
mining, it's all pretty easy. It's the politics that makes it difficult 
and as most of you know, we are active in 0.0 as a very small piece -- 
only 3 systems -- and for our diplomat Kelduum this is a fulltime job 
keeping everyone around us happy in those three systems. It's a bit 
ridiculous. 

Okay, yes, as Kraw<?> mentions, BWF (which is the entry system of the 
constellation that we held with The Big Blue) is a deathtrap for anyone 
who tries to live there. It's on the entry of Empire. It's the main door 
to Geminate and the regions behind it, and it's plagued with pirates and 
etc etc. It's just a bad system and you really don't want to live there 
if you can help it. 

Okay, anyway, this Big Blue ended. Finally we managed to move out. We 
still have loads of assets in their stations, but nevermind those, in 
the grand scheme of things a few billion isn't that much. So we thought 
we could just sit in Empire, do our thing, mine some Veldspar, finally 
get back to teaching, and really focus on that, and I was really looking 
forward to that. 

But a lot of people didn't forget about us. The people who had been 
pirating us in BWF also wardecced us when we pulled from the Big Blue, 
so after the Big Blue we had many many war declarations, one after the 
other, and it was getting really exhausting. War can be fun when you're 
organized and things, but sometimes when you don't really feel like it, 
it can be exhausting if it just keeps going and going and going. Kraw is 
right, Exotic Dancers Club is the main corporation that just kept 
attacking us, and I still feel it was an old corporation for SAS, the 
corp that had been bothering us when we were in the Big Blue. 

Again, it was a trying time when we couldn't really focus on what we 
wanted to do which is teaching new players and making them feel welcome. 
War can be really good fun when you're somewhat experienced, you have 
some clue of how to target a ship and activate your modules and 
whatever, make a difference, that doesn't require much skills but it 
does require some skills especially from the guy behind the screen. When 
you are not quite in that stage, you just unduck and before you even 
figured out where the guy is on the overview, "what does this red star 
mean?" you are already dead, and that's not fun. People quit the game 
and quit Eve University and that's bad, it causes bad morale and that's 
why prolonged wars are bad for Eve University and why I try to stay 
neutral in any situation. 

Yeah, like Travian said, it requires wealth. For those of you who do 
worry about that, when we are at war Eve University provides you with 
frigates, destroyers, I also want to expand this to cruisers. As long as 
you lose those ships in a proper PvP engagement, that was organized or 
had some structure behind it, and post your killmails we will provide 
you with a new cruiser, destroyer, or frigate and you are good to go 
again. So there is no financial loss, and hopefully you insure your ship 
so you actually make a financial gain from your loss. 

Still, we all know that some people have implants, sometimes people are 
mining where they shouldn't or when they shouldn't during a war, and 
they lose a lot more than they should. It's very demotivating when 
everything you own is in one ship and it gets blown up and you forgot to 
insure or it just ran out yesterday. 

Vaughn, when it's wartime. Sometimes for events we also hand out 
frigates, usually not cruisers. The problem with cruiser handouts for 
events is that a cruiser is 6 or 7 million, which is cool for Eve 
University we have some money because you guys are all so nice to pay 
taxes but if we hand out 500 cruisers we're broke. We're beyond broke, 
we're in serious debt. So we can't afford that. 

If anyone could register the unregistered that would be great, I see a 
lot of SAs. I know some of you are lurking around trying to kill people 
in 0.0, but those of you who are not please register those members. 

Anyway, moving on. After The Big Blue, we got lots of wardecs, mainly 
Exotic Dancers and all related corps. All these corporations were 
buddies: Cruel Intentions, ER, SAS. All buddies buddies. That was a bad 
time, but after a while they forgot about us. It wasn't interesting 
anymore to fight us. They had other worries, or whatever.So we could 
move on, finally, and started doing stuff. 

Kraw, no the CI hadn't deced us but they were people related to CI, 
people friends with CI, and alts of CI. It all kind of evolved around 
that group, that corner of players. You'll find out if you run around 
Eve for a while, there's certain sides of the fence: there's the 
Russians, there's the BoB crowd which is the ex-m0o crowd basically, 
there's a group organized around German people which is D2, there's the 
CI crowd, etc etc. There's different groups of players that always seem 
to part and come together again, both friends and alts. 

In any case, moving on. We finally got into teaching, got some 
organization going again. That's when Eve University is when it's best, 
when we finally get organized and teachers and keen and the recruitment 
officers are buried in work like they always are to be honest. That's 
when Eve University thrives, when we get lots of events, the calender 
fills up, that's really why we run this corporation. 

We still got some wardecs once in a while, which is the main reason why 
we started the Ivy League alliance. I'm sorry to say this to the LOLS 
guys and TGRADS guys here, but we really started the alliance just for 
ourselves to make it more expensive to wardec us because it's much more 
expensive to wardec an alliance than a corporation. So that's why we did 
it. I invested 1 billion, which is the money it takes to create an 
alliance, and you have to have Empire Control level 5 which I already 
had anyway. So we made the Ivy League name, which our director Irrilian 
came up with. 

Ivy League alliance then shortly joined after by LOLS, a lot of them are 
ex-Eve University or people who used to help out in any case. 

<Someone with loud Teamspeak sounds and Eve background music started 
transmitting; echo and garbleness.> 

Lucas, good question. Lucas just asked, how does Eve University finance 
itself? 

I think for the first year and a half, it was just me basically. I paid 
all the bills, I paid for frigates and whatever. These days it's a bit 
of a combination of tax, there's definitely an element of Kodell's crazy 
ISK-making schemes that we never know about but always seem to bring in 
money, and some events I pay for myself because I personally thing they 
are worthwhile so I fund them because I think it's the best use of my 
ISK. For instance, the things that Pluto organizes, the budget for that 
comes from my personal wallet which is, I think, the best money I can 
spend. I'd much rather have some good events than a dreadnaught, which I 
already own anyway. 

Yep, questions? Nope, yes, yes? 

???: I have a question, and I'm not complaining because I'm European 
myself, but I noticed a lot of events are schedules very neatly for 
European timezones. Are most of Eve University's students European? 

???: Actually, most of Eve is European.<?????> you see that most people 
are European that play Eve, but America is joining the band, let's just 
say that. And Asia got their own server. 

???: They're not happy about it, but. 

MM: Yeah, basically, if you feel that in your timezone there's not a lot 
of events or classes going on, then talk to the people in your timezone, 
to people who are on when you are on and see if you can organize 
something or one of them is keen to organize a class. Obviously, you're 
not going to get a teacher to get out of bed at 3 AM just to sit on 
Teamspeak and talk about mining, well I don't think you can anyway. 
Mining events, PvP events, that's all great, you don't need a lot of Eve 
knowledge to organize group mining or to organize a PvP competition or 
free-for-all. We can easily finance frigates if you want to use 
frigates, that's not a problem whatsoever. All you need is someone to 
say, "alright, there and then we're gonna do this event." You can keep 
it really simple, make it up on the fly. Like you can start using 
electronic warfare and if you find that doesn't work, then well don't 
use it on the second round. That's easy. 

I think our weakest timezone is Eve's weakest timezone which is the 
Australian contingent. Kodell is Australian so he's always there, not 
sure what he does with his real life. 

Let me see, sorry, just have to see what Miraki is on about in local. 
See one unknown in local that we don't have standings with, shoot to 
kill, and I see two of our own guys in pods. Hmm. 

So, basically that's where we are now. TGRADS joined Ivy League as well. 
TGRADS are obviously made from a core of Eve University players, they 
obviously have their own recruitment going, but their core leadership is 
former Eve University directors and membrs. They wanted to move on into 
0.0. That worked, to a great extent, for them to be honest, they did a 
great job in a very difficult system, but the odds were against them in 
the end and they moved out and now they are with us to regroup and 
refocus their minds on their new project. 

???: Holy cow! 

MM: Plutonium, that's a good question. Plutonium asks if Eve University 
will expand from Korsiki to other areas of space; Gallente, Amarr, 
Minmatar? 

We have offices everywhere, anywhere really. Our office bills are not 
pretty to be honest. We pay hundreds of millions a month to have office 
space, for instance in all the starter stations. The thing is just 
organization; having a stocked corp hanger with people we can trust, 
which is a very big issue at Eve University because when we started we 
were robbed blind left and right. As soon as you dropped something in 
the hangar someone would steal it and sell it or whatever. It was quite 
bad, so now we have this quite restrictive system of progressive hangars 
with progressively expensive stuff. Mind you, by the time you get access 
to all the hangar, you still would have made much more money mining 
Veldspar than stealing from Eve University because we dont have many 
assets in the corp hangar worth stealing. 

Vaughn, yes all those titles are separate. 

Anyone I lost my track, what was I on about, before I went on to corp 
security? 

Pluto, we are the largest we've ever been on paper, because we haven't 
cleaned out our membership. We've done this once where everon had to 
respond to a certain Eve Mail and Omberzombie started chopping out 
members that resigned or that weren't active anymore I should say. This 
is a very annoying job. It takes hours and hours and hours, don't wish 
that on anyone to be honest, so that's why it hasn't happened. Part of 
why it hasn't happened is that 1000+ members tends to keep the wardecs 
away as well. 

Lucas, the core thing is still that I like to see Ivy have more wardecs- 
ugghf, sorry, heh I ready the next question. Sorry. Ivy should have more 
classes and events going on and more teamwork. At the moment, it's all 
there. We've got the ISK to do stuff, really, we got a research facility 
in Kortisi. We're starting up our own 0.0, we've been in there for 
months but we're still starting up because of logistical issues. So 
there's lots of opportunities, but still if I look in corp chat, there 
are a lot of people who are not participating, they are not making full 
use of the University. And this is fine, if you don't want to go on a 
mining expedition that's planned then don't. It's a free world, but I 
always as though we are not quite reaching everyone as a member and 
that's a shame really that people join Eve University and not get the 
most out of it because stuff isn't scheduled on their hours or because 
they are not particularly chatty or don't have a great command of the 
English language. All those issues I'd like to smooth them out, but this 
depends on the good people who want to teach and help others and 
actually make that move of responsibility and say "right, we're gonna 
have this mining operation there and then and we're gonna mine each 
other a battleship" (which is a program that we used to have). 

Right, well about the second campus, we've been talking about this a 
lot. Wherever you are, you are always going to be a long way away from 
some people. So if you want to be closer to people you have to 
decentralize, which is an option. But if you look at how few people are 
sometimes involved in group events, this is gonna make it harder. So 
when you have organized mining events, for instance, no one is going to 
travel 40 jumps in a Covetor just to mine a different kind of Veldspar 
or Scordite somewhere. That means that all your mining groups, your 
hunting groups, your PvP groups will be split in half between one place 
and the other. I'm not sure if this is a big problem or not, that's for 
people to decide, but all it takes -- and that's for everything in Eve 
University, and in Ivy -- is that it's up to you guys. Don't sit around 
and wait for me or any director to say, right let's open up this campus. 
If you say, well this place where I am has great roids has good agents, 
got factory slots available, it's got a cloning facility, then you come 
to me or one of the directors and say "okay, I want an office here, and 
I want some guys together, I'll schedule some events for group mining 
(or whatever, whatever your cup of tea may be) and this will be our 
headquarters" and if it works well, more people will come and it will be 
our new headquarters. Don't worry about it! You can take as much 
responsibility as I can, or as any other director or any other member. 
If you got a good idea, then run with it. I think that's the key to Eve 
University, you're just as important as I am, so go for it. 

Silvy<?>, I think I have 5 or 6 characters in Eve University. We're not 
that keen on having lots of alts in Eve University, but if you have good 
reason and managed to convince the recruiters that there's a good 
reason, then by all means. 

Vaughn, that's up to the person. In any mining operation, or in 
anything, if you make a great discovery, find a secret complex or 
anything, then it's up to you if you wish to share that with others: 
your in-corp friends, or your out-of-corp friends, or the entire 
corporation, or the entire installation, or alliance, whatever, up to 
you. Same for a mining operation. If you organize a mining operation, 
beforehand you say "we're going to divide the ore like this," or "we're 
going to have even splits," or "we're going to do splits based on who 
takes which ship," or "we're gonna split it actually by who mined what 
and a certain percentage for people who haul." Up to you. 

Talk about the Multiversal and Privateers war. I'm not quite sure how we 
got in the list of Privateers of people to kill. Those of you who don't 
know, Privateers is a corporation that just aims to -- it's an alliance 
actually now sorry -- that aims to have as many wardeclarations as 
possible. They are PvPers who just want to shoot people. So they need 
many targets. If we are at war, often, you have to go look for your 
targets. It takes forever. Before you actually get to shoot someone, it 
takes an hour. If that, then you're lucky, that's very quick. 

In any case, with the Privateers, they don't want to start looking for 
people, they just want to be somewhere and everyone's a target. They 
declare war on all the major alliances, and because we got a lot of 
members they thought they'd wardec us as well. They are also 
mercenaries, so you can hire them. Basically all you have to do, if you 
dont like someone, you just pay the fee for the war declaration to the 
Privateer Alliance and they will wardec them. Because they want more 
targets, you pay for it, great. Win win situation by the Privateers' 
account. 

We think someone paid them, we're not quite sure who did but we got our 
suspicions. So the Privateers thought they'd attack us. Mainly what 
happens is, Privateers would declare war on D2. D2 is a 0.0 alliance 
that's fighting wars on many fronts and couldn't care less about 
Privateers, so the Privateers get free reign in empire space to kill 
lots of D2 haulers and hisec miners and AFK traveling idiots, all that. 
The thing is, Ivy is very different. We're empire based mainly, so when 
we'd get a war declaration in empire, we'd get gangs together we'd start 
hunting them. Privateers wasn't quite ready for that, so we steamrolled 
the Privateer Alliance. Especially when they were still a corporation, 
they were a lot smaller then. They were all pretty much solo players, 
and we chased them around the universe, and they were hiding from us. So 
that made them think twice about wardecing us again. 

Once they were an alliance, though, they wardeced us again. I have to 
say we got some kills on them, but they got some kills on us as well. 
Now they were an alliance, sometimes some pretty decent PvP corps joined 
them as well. Yeah, they got some kills on us, and we got some kills on 
them. All-in-all, they were quite impressed with us because we fight 
organized in Empire, which is not something most of their targets do. 
Because that's how they look at us, they see us as targets, and they are 
basically not really looking for people who fight back. If you want to 
do that you can just go into 0.0 and you'll find plenty of people who 
will fight back. 

Yeah, Lucas is right, we killed on that second war with the Privateers, 
we killed a faction-fitted Battleship. And by we, I mean the Ivy League 
alliance, I wasn't there. Basically, if you got me in your PvP gang, 
you're doomed. You're not going to meet any hostiles until I log off. 
It's pretty much a rule of thumb. 

???: Wow, you should lead the trip across the pirates. 

MM: Yeah, I travel by jumpdrive most of the time now. There's not many 
people to run into when you travel like that. 

Pluto, "what changes?" Well, I still think we should stay true to what 
we're doing. It's very tempting, it's always very tempting, to use the 
power of Eve University to build something up something great in 0.0 
ourselves, because we are a power. We have maybe not the 1000+ members 
that's on our sheet, but we have several hundreds of active pilots. That 
makes us a power to reckon with, if we would want to wield that power. 
But we shouldn't, and that's one of the things that's always important 
for me to remember as a CEO that what we are here to do is to create a 
friendly environment for new people where everyone is valued and 
respected, not for their skillpoints but because they're people <?> and 
therefore they're all equal. And that's what the key is to this 
corporation. If we start attacking a corporation, kicking them out of 
their space then we just become another corporation and our ideals die. 
If we get attacked, though, obviously we kill them. I think my first PvP 
kill was against a pirate who was attacking me, he was scrambling me, 
jamming me, webbing me, but he forgot to look at his own shields and 
armor and he forgot that my drones were killing him at the time. 

Pluto, your question is "what can we do to make the Uni stronger in 
Empire?" 

You have to define stronger, in that question. 

Pluto: Larger, stronger, more respected, make it become the cornerstone 
of learning Eve. 

MM: I think in a large degree we already are. To my shame I have to say 
because of the lack of competition. There's no other serious 
corporations that welcome complete new players. One of the things I 
envisioned when I started Eve University was to have some sort of 
atheltic league with other similar corporations and do like either mock 
wars or have some sort of PvP events in 0.0 where we would have like 
games with set rules against them, and have some sort of competition. To 
use that as a way to learn Eve, and I think that would be good also 
within the University itself, I know we've had some fight clubs, I know 
we've had some Red vs Blue. I think initiatives like that will help us. 
Our reputation is a difficult one because there is no proper way of 
advertising inside the game. 

Ah yeah, the question about having a sister corp for PvP. There's always 
ideas, but there's still no one has been able to explain to me how we 
are going to be neutral if we have a sister PvP corp that kicks the shit 
out of everyone basically. If we are a sister to a corporation that 
actively wardecs people, runs around shooting people, then that's 
probably- I mean if you guys, when you decide to leave Eve University, 
want to be a pirate or a PvPer or just hang together and PvP or start 
your own PvP corporation or alliance, that's fine, and we are proud of 
our alumni who do well in pirating and in PvP and in inndustry. We're 
very proud of them. But we can't have an official relationship with 
anyone in the game, not as their official supplier of anything really. 
Obviously we build stuff for the market, our members do basically, Eve 
University as a corporation doesn't do that much to generate ISK. Our 
neutrality is everything, if we start training people for one 
corporation, that starts wardecing people then that's our neutrality out 
of the window really and our reputation and all the referrals we get, 
because no one is going to refer new people to a corporation that kicks 
their ass. 

Ah, Pluto. Yes if you look at Eve University, if you do a corp search, 
you'll come across two corporations: Eve University and Eve University 
Fight Academy. The idea when I started it was to have these two 
corporations at constant war with each other. In the grand scheme of 
things, even now, as an alliance that wouldn't be that expensive. 

The reason why it never happened was the complicated logistics of it 
all. Basically the same with a second or decentralized headquarter 
system, that you have to have people to manage the hangars of that 
second corporation, also you have to do the whole application process, 
people expose make sure there is no abuse of those systems. It becomes 
like a job, and running Eve University sometimes does become like a job 
for the people in charge, for instance in the recruiting team, who do a 
lot of work. Having two corporations would double that work. It's a good 
idea, but since people within the corporation can shoot eachother, it's 
quite easy to organize events within the corporation to shoot each 
other. 

Colonel Vaughn, "when people create a new corp, am I happy to accept 
them into the alliance?" 

No. Basically, the more corporations we get, the more complicated it's 
going to be. You'll find that in Eve, the corporations that run best are 
communist style or dictatorship style. It sounds a bit harsh and 
unpleasant and it probably is, but having hour long meetings for how 
you're going to run stuff in a game is likely to burn people out. I am 
very open to discussions, my leadership style is basically like I 
described. If you've got a good idea, I'm more than happy to support 
that, to cheer for you, to help fund it, but you'll have to make it 
happen. 

In an alliance with several corporations, as those of you who are here 
who are in leadership positions in the other corporations or in Eve 
University found out, requires some fine tuning with all the diplomatic 
stuff and organizational things and the more corporations the more 
complicated, whatever. It's just something I'm not particularly happy 
with it. 

So, Colonel Vaughn, yes you can be allied buy not in the alliance. We're 
allied with- well we have a Non-Agression Pact with several 
corporations, and that's fine. 

If people want to know where we stand, for instance, we have a 
Non-Agression pact with GoonSwarm but we have Red Alliance set at 
negative. So those of you who are aware of global Eve politics know 
that's an interesting proposition. I know there are people who seriously 
dislike GoonSwarm, but I actually like them because in the deepst 
darkest moments of The Big Blue when a lot of our so-called friends 
bailed out, GoonSwarm at the same time was having a really bad time -- 
they were getting kicked out of their space -- but they still spared a 
few pilots to come over and try to help us. And that's something that 
stuck to me, and also now that we moved into 0.0, GoonSwarm was one of 
the first to agree with positive settings to us, and say "yey you guys 
are welcome here, do your thing and don't cut into our thing and we're 
all cool." That's the kind of people I want to work with. 

Lucas. Lucas's question is, "what sort of new features could CCP 
implement that would improve E Uni's success?" 

Well one of the things I would like to see is (this sounds really silly 
but) corp wallet data export. Those of you who are not in a director 
position perhaps don't notice but all the directors can see a 
corporation wallet next to their own wallet. Every time you guys kill a 
rat that's about 30k bounty or when you finish a mission or anything 
that includes tax, we get an entry in the corp wallet. It's very 
difficult to make any sense of how much money is actually coming in from 
where and where it's all going. In my mind it would be great to have a 
financial statement, because you guys are the tax payers, and I would 
like to show you where the money is, where it goes, how much we've got 
in the bank -- which is 3.2 billion at the moment -- and say, "okay this 
is what we've got, let's have it, let's come here with these great ideas 
to increase our wealth, increase our assets to serve our students even 
better." For example I would love for the University to build its own 
interceptors, for instance, that would be great for our fleets, and a 
great and cheap way to make our fighting force even more effective in 
wars and also introduce you guys to tech 2 ships in an affordable 
fashion, for instance. A lot of other things we could do with the money 
we have, but because it's not transparent -- even to me -- where our 
money comes from and where it goes, I think corp wallet datas is 
essential. 

Why is there a guy in my screen flying in an Ibis? Anyone wants to talk 
about that? 

???: Heh! 

???: It's okay. 

MM: Okay, no problem. I have this thing with my overview, it shows ships 
on some people and names on other people. It's very annoying. 

???: That's actually a POS thing. If you board a ship that's been in a 
POS hangar then it comes up with the ship type instead of the name of 
the pilot. 

MM: Yeah, I've found that, but somehow everyone seems to have that in my 
problem- in my overview, sorry. 

Sounded like a diplomat at the moment. 

Let me talk about this 0.0 operation that we have going with Ivy at the 
moment. Anyone who can look on the map can see where we are, which is 
the SR-9J2 system. We have one large tower there with some defensive 
capabilities and very small production and refining capabilities. LOLS 
used to have a POS out here as well, but they've withdrawn because of 
the logistical issues. The problem there is not so much mining the great 
ore, because the ore is wonderful anything you can imagine is there, the 
problem is getting it all out in one piece because it's a long trip from 
Empire to there and especially safe Empire. They lost a lot of ships, 
which means a lot of hours of mining went boom because someone killed 
their hauler. At the moment, we are using carriers to jump stuff in and 
out. Basically fuel and minerals and loot and whatever, out. 

That's all great, but we don't have many carriers. Yes, we don't have 
many carrier pilots, that's the problem. So at the moment, lots of 
people are training like crazy to get into a carrier and once we have 5 
or 6 people in a carrier we could get more people to this operation and 
make fuel trips and have you guys mine and rat here (By the way it's all 
rogue drones here so there's no bounty on them.) and basically harvest 
the systems that we occupy at this moment. 

That's basically the whole story there's to it. Kelduum is doing a great 
job in being friendly (Kelduum is a diplomat by the way) making 
friendship with most of the people around us. Like I said on Teamspeak 
earlier, some of our guys have been shot earlier, so it's not 100% safe, 
but it's fairly safe at the moment. There's no stations here, so you 
cant dock or anything. It's quite a hostile environment, by any means. 
The logistics of it is all quite difficult, so once we get things sorted 
a bit more Dooka (who is running this all, 0.0 operation) will invite 
more people over. Please don't go there by your own means, because it's 
a dangerous trip as well going there and then when you get there you'll 
find that you run out of ammo pretty soon because there's no stations to 
buy stuff or use a reusable source like your cap if you're Amarr or your 
drones if you're Gallente. 

Just wait, we're working hard to develop this place and sort out the 
logistics but the main wait is for people to finish their carrier 
training. 

Dooka: Yeah we are basically waiting for the logistics to come online 
and Kodell who is sort of also my sort-pilot out here. We are basically 
handling this thing together because we find for one person it's too 
much. Kodell is going to make a post on the forums for the Uni people, 
when they can come out and how it's going to be set and stuff because, 
face it, we have 500 something people in the Uni and -- or 1100 
something -- and we are not able to fit them all into one system. So 
there's going to be rotation base so it's going to be fair to every 
player basically, from the high tenth to the low tenth you should get 
your share. But that's in the future, basically once one or two more 
carrier pilots complete their training. 

For TGRADS guys, I noticed a few new things, TGRADS lay claim to one of 
the systems out here, one of the three systems. RIU is claimed by LOLS 
(they are not out here but it's still claimed) and TGRADS is going to 
claim the other system and you guys are waiting for Menace<?> to return 
from his honeymoon before the operation starts for you guys. That's all 
I know. 

MM: Yeah, so at the moment there's just one tower, it's not that big of 
a deal to be honest. We hope to get more of you guys out there as soon 
as we can, we're really working hard on that, so that you guys can mine 
the high end ore and get your own Megacyte and stuff as well. Because 
obviously if you're a miner, if you're interested in that then that's 
what you live for. I noticed red roids. 

???9: Yeah, then I want talk to you about that. This is Croby1<?>, 
Neefster<?>, Agon<?>, whatever you know me best as. 

Dooka: Yeah, also nice thing to all you miners out there, the Uni- two 
people in the Uni, Kodell and Miraki are current busy with a large ass 
project. They are working currently on their capital ship project and 
that means minerals, minerals, minerals, minerals. They need like a 
billion of each. So talk to either one of them so you can find out where 
to mine and what to mine, and start mining. 

Miraki: I'm not part of that capital ship project, at least not that I 
know of. 

Krystal<?>: That would be me Dooka, Krystal<?>, and the LOLS, too. 

Dooka: Yeah, Kodell and Krystal<?>. 

Krystal<?>: And Croby1<?> as well. And I'll touch on that really 
briefly, if you want. Once we get to full production, Kodell is going to 
have to procure from Korsiki about 2.25 billion ISK worth of minerals 
per week and I'm going to have to procure about 2.25 billion minerals 
per week in our system, in the home system of the LOLS, as well. So if 
you guys are looking for fulltime mining jobs, I'm sure we can hook you 
up. 

???10: Yes, and as far as the 0.0 operations going. MM, I'm currently 
building a mothership on the test server. I've heard that the cloning 
vat bay is a little buggy, however I'm going to build one for myself and 
test it on the test server to see if that might be at some point down 
the road a viable option to make it a little easier for people to get 
down there and get back to Empire safely. 

???: May I touch on that briefly? Apparently -- this is a rumor, I 
haven't confirmed it at all -- Amarr carrier has this awesome capability 
if you fit it out with anything that increases its cap. Apparently it 
can fit one clone bay. 

???10: Well I have an Amarr and Gallente carrier pilot so I can play 
around with that on the test server and see if it's viable. 

???: What I have heard is that once you fit a clone vat, that thing 
isn't going anywhere. So it's basically stationary. 

???: When it's activated, yes. When it's activated it works almost 
identically to the cynosural field generator that pretty much renders 
you unable to move or dock or activate any modules or do anything other 
than just sit there for the duration that it is on. 

MM: You can refit in 0.0 space. We have a ship maintanance array there. 
For those of you not familiar with POSs, you can refit ships in space at 
a POS or next to a carrier. So, if that actually works, we have an Amarr 
carrier coming up soon, so if you could fit it. 

???9: Sorry to interrupt, yeah I just delivered it to him this morning 
actually. So it's already here. 

MM: Ah so you're the mystery man. 

???9: Yes. As I said I'm Neefster<?>, Agon<?>, Targarian<?> in the 
University. So I can fly Amarr carriers and dreadnaughts and Gallente 
carriers and soon Gallente dreadnaughts, but yeah I went ahead and got 
that done this morning. 

???: <short and garbled, something about "you broke the surprise"> 

MM: Lucas and the others, about the ore, there is -- perhaps I must say 
"there was" -- an Eve University program of people, basically Kodell, 
buying minerals and salvage parts for production and paying a fair price 
for it. I don't know if that's still going, because Kodell had some 
issues he had to attend to first, so I don't know if he's still buying 
minerals or if that's happening again. If that's not happening at this 
moment it's something we should look to start again. 

I must say, these projects about capital ship building and also rig 
production and such are mainly envisual projects -- or projects with 
those who run them -- which is cool, which is the way I want it, Eve 
University is not an institution that should make billions and billions 
because we don't have use for it. I'd much rather see you guys have a 
good time and making money for yourselves, which is as it should be. So 
if you guys mine, make sure you get a fair price for your minerals, same 
for your salvage stuff, same if you produce for that matter. So that's 
basically how we work, we're not a communist corp where everything goes 
to the corporation. 

If we are actually desperate for money we'll ask you guys. We've done 
this in the past where we've done corporation mining programs. If you 
guys find a worthy goal for our money, if loads of people say "yes, we 
really want this or that and it's going to cost us 5 billion." We can 
raise 5 billion swift with 500 people easily, we just go out and do it. 
Just go out and mine or rat or mission or whatever, and say "okay, on 
this day we donate everything to Eve University." That's cool, but as 
long as we don't have a purpose for our money, make sure you guys 
benefit. 

???: MM, do you think it's better if people mine in gangs for safety? 

MM: Yes, it never hurts, because then obviously in a gang it's quite 
easy to go towards each other, to warp to someone who is in need. Also, 
it's a good habit if you have mining bonuses obviously -- or is it boni? 
-- and it's also convenient with the chat sometimes when it gets busy in 
corp chat and people are throwing around mining terminology, it all gets 
a bit confusing and lost. 

Okay, well we already did the promised 3 hours or whatever. Are there 
any questions, or any remarks, or any suggestions? Because you guys are 
Eve University, it's not me, it's not the directorship, it's you the 
student body that decides where we're going. 

???: <Can't make out this sentance, ended in "Megathron."> 

???: Yeah that was good. 

Colonel Vaughn<?>: Do you think people if they lost a ship, do you think 
some people if they want to should try and get a program up and running 
that gets minerals and helps provide the ship back? 

???: There's insurance for that. 

Colonel Vaughn<?>: Well sometimes fools don't insure their ships. 

???: Great way to learn then. 

MM: Yeah, in wars we replace ships. In the last war against the 
Privateers we managed to cover pretty much all the losses of the ships. 
But if you fit faction modules on a faction battleship and go down in a 
really stupid way, not in a PvP gang or anything, it's tough. To be 
honest, if you can afford a really expensive ship with really expensive 
modules, you also have the knowledge in the game to earn that over 
again. It sucks when you lose your battleship or whatever, but it's also 
slightly stupid when you lose something when you lose something you 
can't afford to lose. 

If you fly an organized gang, hunting our wartime enemies, we'll do 
anything we can to help you recover from this loss. If you do something 
foolish, against instructions, if it's well-published that we're at war 
or if you're in 0.0 or lowsec and you get shot then I'm afraid that's 
learning money. 

???: You're responsible for your own actions and inactions. 

MM: If you lose the ship you spent everything on, just because of a lack 
of knowledge, we're always happy to support if we can. But it's not a 
program and you shouldn't rely on it. Insurance is there for a reason. 

???: The golden rule of Eve is "don't fly anything you can't afford to 
lose," because Eve is hard when you lose shit. Like like World of 
Warcraft where you get killed and walk to your corpse and you're going 
again. 

MM: If you want to see my carrier- once you get to 0.0 space, once we 
get it all sorted you'll see plenty of carriers I hope. I used to have a 
dreadnaught in Korsiki actually. That was our big little secret if one 
of our enemies camped us again, I could kill them in my dreadnaught. It 
would be funny, but good opportunities, gaps in production lines, 
whatever, so Kodell persuaded me that I sell it through him. Once the 
dust settles after these wars in production capacity, I'm sure I'll get 
a new one. 

???: That's also nice thing to note, we are capable to build for you 
dreadnaught or a carrier, so if you really want to go for those 
things... but you have to pay for them yourself. 

MM: Yeah those kinds of ships we definitely can't afford to support you 
when you lose it. So it's a big decision if you want to go to the 
capital ship route. 

???: Indeed it is. 

Krystal<?>: Well if you want just a quick overview of that, I believe 
the three of us collectively are going to have roughtly 18 billion 
invested in blueprints just to build them. The actual cost of building 
one, not counting freighter time to move the modules is pretty close to 
about a billion per ship, if you take into account that you have to fuel 
the POS to be able to build them. And that's before we make any profit 
on them at all. 

???: It's definitely a big decision. I'm glad I did it, but the price 
Krystal<?> just quoted is for the ship itself, that's not counting the 
almost 1 billion ISK you'll need to get all the skills necessary to 
effectively fly a capital ship. 

Krystal<?>: Yeah, that's for an unfitted ship with no modules. 

<Silence, with one short message I can't make out.> 

Krystal<?>: I mean, capital ship piloting is not something a three month 
old Eve character can do. You really need to be skilling towards a 
carrier for the better part of a year before you are going to be 
effective in a carrier, and that's with no learning curve from actually 
being out- because a carrier is not an Empire ship, it can't jump around 
in Empire. You can build them in Empire under very specific 
circumstances, but you can't do anything in them in Empire except the 
system that they're built in, unless you jump them out. But once they're 
out, they're out, they can never come back. 

???: Is the lecture officially over now? 

Krystal<?>: I believe MM said he was going AFK. 

???: You're wrong about the Archon there Dook. 

Dooka: I thought it was something, maybe it was a mothership.. no 
because a mothership are normally capable. 

???: What circumstances? 

Krystal<?>: What circumstances are you speaking of` 

???: You said you could build a carrier or capital ship in high sec 
space? 

Krystal<?>: When the Revelations patch was put into place, I guess that 
was about three months ago, there was a new change to the rules there 
that now you can no longer anchor Large Ship Assembly Array in a POS in 
a .5 system or higher. Those that already had those in place were sort 
of grandfathered in, they didn't take those assets away from us, and to 
build a carrier or dreadnaught you build them in a Large Ship Assembly 
Array, not a Capital Shipyard. So Kodell has a POS in space that has the 
modules on it that he can use to build capital ships, as well as I do 
here in the LOLS to build those same modules, but you can't reproduce 
that. I couldn't put another POS up and hang another Large Ship Assembly 
Array. To be able to do it now, you would have to go to a .4 system or 
lower. 

???: Those things are unreplaceable. They were placed on before a bug 
was fixed and they are not removing them, so they can never be replaced. 

Krystal<?>: Yeah, they are a one-time-shot deal, if something were to go 
wrong or somebody was to accidentally unachor that module out there on 
the POS, then it would be gone forever and never replaced. 

That would be one of the reasons that -- I'm sure E Uni does it too -- 
there's this specific role, a grantable role, called Starbase 
Configuration that allows starbase configuration that allows people to 
do that. And leadership of corps tend to be very very stingy with that 
because it can happen by accident and not even realize it and click 
unanchor and it will offline itself and start the unanchor process and 
then it will be gone forever. 

To give you just an idea of how valuable that asset that Kodell has 
there in his research corp and that we have in the LOLS, I have 
personally entertained offers of over 50 billion for the LOLS because of 
its POS and its Large Ship Assembly Array in Empire. 

???: I believe it. 

???: Oooh. 

???: The ground rules in Eve about buying rare shit is the amount of 
money you can make in half a year, I think? 

???: A year, but that's on tech 2 BPOs. They usually sell for about 8 
months to 1 year ROI on net profit. 

???: You can make much more. 

???: Yeah, well some BPOs will go for a lot more than that. Depends on 
the demand and overall profitability of them. 

MM: Okay, sorry to break in. I've got to go, I've got my girlfriend on 
the telephone and I have to get up really early. I thank you all for 
coming and your input and your questions. If you've got any more 
questions just post them on the forum, I'm sure there will an 
appropriate thread to do so. And I'll see you guys around, probably 
tomorrow. 

Take care! 

<"Bye MM" rabble rabble>