Doom and Gloom

I've heard a lot of belly aching on the Eve Online forums about how epically Factional Warfare is going to suck. It bugs me that people take a cynical point of view on something when they have limited facts and depend solely on their "towering intellect" for their opinions. I'm going to address a few issues people throw out like religious parrots.

1) Caldari faction is going to dominate.

This opinion is based on the fact that a large portion of the Eve Online playerbase is Caldari, hence more pilots, more victories, and no point for other faction pilots.

Hogwash! First off all, this opinion hinges on the premise that players of each race will sign up in their respective militias in the same ratio, completely ignoring the vast number of macro-missioners and casual players who won't risk their hard earnings in something as PvP and loss-oriented as Factional Warfare. In addition many Caldari pilots are of the Archura bloodline and are used for Science and Industry alts.

Furthermore, it assumes that all races will see sign ups primarily from their own race's pool of pilots. Its possible that the distribution of pilots to each faction could be arbitrary based on what veteran pilots liked at some point. Take myself for example, with high standings to Gallente and Minmatar and yet a Caldari pilot at launch.

Lastly, even if Caldari gets many more pilots in the militia of comparable quality, it merely means that Gallente (and Minmatar) have Target Rich Enviroments and can run a guerrilla campaign to take down the Caldari fleets one at a time.

2) One side will get the upper hand and prevent the other side from ever rising against them.

This one often goes in hand with the "Caldari will dominate" issue. Basically it assumes that if say Caldari take control of all contestable systems then Gallente will never be able to strike back because the Caldari will smash any new resistance. No one will sign up to the Gallente Militia and the release will be unused.

My god, have you idiots learned nothing from the market? Its a basic supply and demand equation: if Caldari corner the "market" (aka Warzone), Gallente supply will dry up, Caldari profit will follow, Caldari pilots will leave factional warfare thus breaking its control of the "market" as its demand drops allowing Gallente to resurge with new pilots coming in and older pilots returning.

In other words, the more successful one faction is, the more likely it is to be a victim of its own success. And because the war is happening over several regions and with large disorganized militias, I sincerely doubt one faction will ever gain complete control to force the other out. Its not like 0.0 space with no NPC stations to hide in and fight around.

3) No Rewards Means No Pilots.

Because Factional Warfare doesn't heap gobs of ISK and faction ships/mods on its pilots, people won't bother. This of course ignores the vast number of pilots like myself who get their ISK from non-combat pilot alts and who fight for the fun of PvP. Rest assurred, there is many of us and we don't whine on the forums.

4) Pirates will kill all in Low Sec.

Well, how is that different from now? The warzones spread over three regions each and the number of choke points is no lower than it used to be. I doubt there will be many more pirates than before but even if there is, players will adapt. If all FW pilots give up, the pirates will have nothing to shoot at and leave. At which point the number of FW pilots will increase again. See? Its that market balance thing.

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Ultimately, Factional Warfare is big enough and attractive to enough people to work somehow. And if it does turn out to be not as good as intended, the developers are prepared to modify the risk versus reward to make it worth it. Running around like a chicken with its head cut off even before its released is pointless and non-constructive. Don't judge a book by its cover and don't judge a release by its press notes. Its a sandbox, let's see what the kids do with it first.