Three Years of the Code

Happy Code Day to you all! It was three years ago, on June 24, 2012, that the New Halaima Code of Conduct was birthed into this world, by way of the official EVE forums. Although the EVE-O moderators quickly banished the thread into the obscurity of the Sell Orders subforum--in contravention of their own rules--the Code could not be censored or buried. For that forum thread was a Forum Thread of Destiny. It was different from all the other threads on EVE-O. It had power.

Even as a mere forum thread, the Code had a way of captivating the imagination of EVE players. It was read by thousands of players. In time, the Code ascended to its present, exalted position on MinerBumping.com, where it has been read over 200,000 times and counting. People seem to instinctively understand that the Code is relevant.

Yet there have always been denialists and skeptics. They were already there from the very first moment another EVE player joined the cause, called himself an Agent, and began bumping miners in Halaima. The opponents of the Code accused him of being my alt. Surely no one else would get involved with such madness. The skeptics were present even before then, when there were no Agents at all and I had only a few posts on the Market Discussions subforum in which to describe my activities. The denialists accused me of fabricating my tales of bumping miners. It wasn't happening, they said. The Code was not a thing, and it never would be.

The New Order only grew in power and influence. Thousands of mining permits were sold. Over a thousand shareholders purchased over 600 billion isk worth of shares. Trillions of isk worth of ships and modules and implants were destroyed. The denialists faded away into a laughable fringe group. If you look, you can still find them, here or there. When a gank recipient starts a thread on EVE-O, the pitiable skeptic will accuse the author of being a CODE. alt trying to gain publicity for the Code. In the mind of the denialist, there is never any shortage of New Order alts--they're everywhere--but the tens of thousands of gank recipients would never post anything.

Over the years, as the denialists died out, they were replaced by angry carebears of a variety of breeds. Some said the New Order would bring about the end of EVE, ruining highsec and driving subscribers (especially new ones) away from the game. They urged CCP to nerf highsec PvP into oblivion, or to ban the Code. Other carebears took the opposite approach, claiming that the New Order caused suffering, but a meaningless suffering. They said the New Order was engaged in sociopathic behavior that would harm many individual players but have no impact on the game as a whole. Still others foresaw a day when someone--that is, someone else--would rise up and put an end to the Code.

The rebels failed. No one was able to stop the New Order, but plenty were able to join us. Despite a pool of a hundred thousand carebears from which to recruit, the Anti-Gankers could never sustain a real movement. They preferred to spend their days complaining, petitioning, and shifting blame. The few who did attempt to stop the New Order wilted in the face of the Code-driven onslaught. The rebels, like their denialist predecessors, faded into irrelevance. No one who is familiar with the New Order's operations still believes it is possible for us to be defeated.

The rise of the Code has been a sight to behold. Nothing like it has ever taken place in any video game. The New Order's mission to bring highsec into compliance seemed like an impossible task. Even those who embraced the Code from the beginning had little to pin their hopes on; they never imagined the New Order's slow march to victory unfolding as it has. The impossible dream is becoming a reality, and now everyone with eyes can see it for themselves.

What can stop the Code? From time to time, our enemies still engage in wishful thinking. Just a few months ago, some were reading the tea leaves of CODE.'s kill stats to find evidence of the New Order's decline. They were soon disappointed. Even excluding the Burn Amarr kill-assists, this month is already the biggest ever, by far, for isk destruction. There are still several days left in June. The number of CODE. members, too, has steadily risen over the past several weeks. No matter what straws our enemies try to grasp at, the Code only endures. In spite of everything that has been thrown at us, the Code remains. Indeed, each day it extends and deepens its roots into highsec.

After three years of seemingly miraculous victories and awe-inspiring accomplishments, the banner of the Code stands proudly at the pinnacle of EVE. The Agents of the New Order are truly the center of the EVE galaxy. No other group affects so many players or to such a great extent. No one else in EVE is talked about, written about, raged about, or applauded as much as we are. Most players are in highsec, and we command highsec. For the vast majority of EVE players today, the New Order is the only group that occupies their thoughts. They must adapt themselves to us, and our Code--or they must die. And they know it. Or, again, they die.

I would like to conclude the day's remarks by presenting you with a simple image. It is 550px700p, the 385,000 pixels representing a very rough approximation of the number of EVE subscribers in 2012, at the time the Code was drafted.

As you can see--if your screen has enough clarity--the image contains a single pixel of light. That pixel represents the one EVE player who, at the dawn of June 24, 2012, had the Code: The Saviour of Highsec. He was surrounded by a ceaseless, uniform darkness. No one else had the Code. Not pictured is the history of EVE players in all the years before 2012. They, too, would be a blank, black field, for there had never been a Code before. Thus, the Saviour of Highsec stood alone in the darkness--but the darkness did not consume him.

Take another look at that image. The light is not overshadowed by the hundreds of thousands of pixels which, all alike, outnumber it so greatly. Rather, the opposite is true. The light of the singular pixel commands one's attention. The eye cannot help but be drawn to it. Its small size, and the unanimity of the rest of the image, fail to matter at all. If anything, the scale of the darkness compared to the light only heightens the effect. The light is the focus of everything, and it is the entire purpose of the image. Such is the Code.

One more glance at the image, if you please. Consider the Code and everything that has come from it: Every gank that contributed to the some 15 trillion isk of damage inflicted by CODE. Every miner or hauler or autopiloter or mission-runner who has been forced to break his endless, tedious routine. Every petition that has been filed, every tearmail that has been shed, every in-game or out-of-game threat that has been uttered. Every player who has joined EVE for the purpose of enforcing the Code; every player who heard about EVE because of us, and every player who biomassed and quit the game for the same reason. Every news article or forum post or SoundCloud recording or YouTube video or conversation in local that has been centered on the Code.

Every player who stopped doing whatever it was that he was doing before he became an Agent. Every miner who gave up mining, every nullsec player who rolled a highsec gank alt. Every industrial corp that suffered an awox or a corp theft or was forced to dissolve, every alliance that suffered a wardec, every miner and freighter who didn't know what bumping was until his ship went careening off into space. Every carebear who received a crash course in the exotic mechanics of aggression and duels and can-flipping and salvage-stealing and remote-repping. Everyone who learned about scamming and isk-doubling and corp roles. Every post, every view, every comment on MinerBumping and all of the Agent blogs and rebel blogs that spun off from it. Everyone who tried to gank for the first time, or who organized into an Anti-Ganker fleet, and every skill trained for ganking or anti-ganking. Everyone who cried to CCP and begged them for nerfs; every nerf proposal that has been analyzed, discussed, tested, accepted, and rejected.

Everyone who remained at their keyboard, or checked for reds in local, or swapped out yield in favor of tank, or traded in their Hulk in favor of a Skiff, or put bulkheads on their freighter, or limited their cargo value, or brought an escort, or a web alt, or scouted out a gate, or viewed an intel channel, or checked a killboard for activity; everyone who took an alternate route or traveled at an alternate time, or mined or ran missions in a more remote location.

All of it arose from that tiny little dot, the Code. The rest of the EVE community has told us that what we're doing can't be done. That the odds are against us. But in three years we have seen what that little dot can do. That's why we know that the Code always wins.

Always.