The Most Powerful Reputation in Highsec, Part 3

Previously, on MinerBumping... Agent Australian Excellence witnessed the awesome power of the CODE. ticker when he spoke in local and was immediately accosted by Nexeroff Severasse, who went on an epic rant about the alliance. Nexeroff condemned anyone who would even consider joining CODE.

Like so many other carebears, Nexeroff dressed up his irrational hatred of the New Order as some kind of pro-newbie stance.

With only minimal encouragement from our endlessly patient Agent, Nexeroff continued to fill local chat. By this point, his anti-Code lecture had already gone on for more than half an hour.

Agent Australian briefly interrupted the speech to inject a little common sense. Obviously freighters without permits are going to be ganked when they jump into Uedama. That's been the case for years. But Nexeroff couldn't accept it.

Nexeroff felt he had some special insight into the New Order. Strangely, though, this seems to have been his first recorded interaction with one of our Agents. It's possible that he's been ganked and lost ships on an alt, much like the anonymous commenters who say, "I've never lost a ship to CODE., but I hate them."

Then Nexeroff revealed his secret: He was an expert psychologist. And he'd found psychology--right there in the Code itself.

Nexeroff's credentials grew more impressive by the minute. He'd used his psychological expertise to analyze hackers. He was good at it, too! On Nexeroff's watch, the Gibsons had been safe. It's unclear why he quit, but whatever the reason, he had plenty of time now to rage in random highsec systems about CODE.

The Code itself fell under the sharp gaze of Nexeroff. Employing his own special methods, he tested the Code to see if it held any value.

Nexeroff discovered flaws in the Code. For instance, our Agents police highsec and tell Code violators to stay out, but our Agents don't stay out of highsec themselves. This made no sense to Nexeroff. It would be like security guards telling someone to leave a building, but the security guards often stay in the building. What a bunch of hypocrites!

The anti-Code activist couldn't be persuaded to embrace the Code. Australian's ability to continue screencapping the conversation was becoming severely taxed.

Then things took an interesting turn: Nexeroff proposed that the Code should be judged based on empirical evidence: Data, math, numbers.

Nexeroff was absolutely certain that the empirical evidence would back up his claims. He didn't actually present any data, math, or numbers, but still.

In any case, Nexeroff had set the terms. His argument with Australian would be decided by the empirical evidence. It was the moment our Agent had been waiting for.

The result was devastating. After nearly an hour of listening to Nexeroff beat the drum about new players quitting EVE, Australian finally played his trump card, citing CCP's own studies which proved ganking improves new player retention. Ironically, it was carebear theme park advocates who had encouraged CCP to conduct such studies in the first place. They've regretted it ever since. All the empirical evidence has supported the New Order's position on ganking, not the carebears'.

Nexeroff had a sudden and unexpected change of heart about the value of empirical evidence. He summarized his earlier remarks and promptly terminated the conversation. Another victory for the Code! Nexeroff had been humiliated in local chat, but there was a silver lining to it: At least now he had a reason for his grudge against CODE.