I think he also played League of Legends? But I may be mis-remembering lol

This is definitely true and I think it's even more explanatory than EVE.

yeah he's referenced it a few times in tweets at the bad place, can't find them right now.

Wait you played EVE

Something Awful is the progenitor of Online

May be

Yes

Vienna coffeehouse patrons

are we sure this whole thing isn't a plot to get the trust of a rival EVE corp's VIPs and then steal all their starships

IIRC as part of Goonswarm.

It explains so much

From Vile Rat to Stancil, Goons with surprisingly prominent political interactions...

oh my god

So many things just clicked into place for me

It’s such an “oh THATS where I know you from” moment.

not just that but he was a somethingawful forums poster

Those are the same picture

lol fair (and he was actually in goonfleet when it was largely on SA instead of predominantly on reddit at that)

This explains so much.

(laudatory

this is a lightbulb moment for everyone

Need to know if he was Goon Squad or not I was in a fraternity with a high ranking Goon Squadder back in the day, surprisingly down to earth people

Omg he was

He was an og goon in that he even started on Something Awful.

Proposal for EVE players to have to register in a database online and inform all posters in advance upon coming to a new social media neighborhood

If for no other reason than to protect vulnerable poster ecosystems. They're apex predators walking into places that have no comparable threats

as a former EVE player: this is acceptable.

Honestly, just seems prudent.

Oh my god it all makes sense now Do we know what faction he was a part of

Oh my GOD Will if you were that active of a Goon in the late 00s/early 10s that means we actually have a person in common Smallest of worlds, what the fuck

o7

which squad were you in? (I started out in Pi, ended up shuffling over to Rho around the time SamHandwich was working on getting their mothership built)

OH MY GOD OF COURSE YOU WOULD BE, TOO I was with the Goons. Most I got into null was when wormholes came out and I messed around with a gang of IRL friends, roving.

Now I find myself wondering if we ever crossed paths in game. Were you around at the right time to tangle with [BRUCE] (didn't last very long as a sov alliance - kinda fell apart shortly after I left)?

Hahahahaha holy fucking shit this tracks so perfectly. Will, which was your favorite BoB pet campaign? (RISE, imo) Also, be honest, did you ever post on COAD?

You know, I'd *say* that, but we were red with BoB when we were in Fountain at the same time they and the Goons were at war, so we were more-or-less friendly with the Goons for a bit, so I suppose I'm not that surprised?

I was World War Bee era on the side of Pandemic Horde so that was more stark, but, the empire divided must unite, the empire united must divide, etc etc

The EVE goons all turned out to be the worst sorts of scumbags in real life and the SA goons banned them from the forum.

Wait you were a goon!

Ohhhh nooo willllllll

It’s almost poetic You were born from the very group of 4chan trolls that you are now locked into eternal battle with

Do a barrel roll.

Of course you believe posting can shape reality! You’ve been reading the Mittani’s propaganda Oh my god it’s all coming together

Nerds, nerds, none of you are free from being nerds with spreadsheets

Some of us have the dignity and self respect to limit our spreadsheet gaming to sports simulators

I own it proudly.

...as anyone who has read your blog knows. (complimentary)

I’m even worse than that. I watched a 6 hour video explaining the history of gaming spreadsheet nerds without even being one youtu.be/BCSeISYcoyI?...

This is what Bluesky labelers were built for.

Does that include people who played for *checks Steam* not enough time for Steam to even remember it but did indeed install, launch, play, and get bored of EVE in less time than it takes to boil an egg?

What's EVE?

I once watched at least four hours of a single YouTube video (in the background as I did stuff anyhow) about some extreme long-building Drama in EVE, starting with the game's creation, never having seen the game; don't remember much but it was impressive how much it mattered to the people involved.

Start here: (It's actually a pretty good read)

A Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game (MMORPG) in which people who enjoy doing spreadsheets occasionally go to war with each other.

It's my understanding that top level players didn't even log in that much. They literally worked spreadsheets and battle plans and gave orders to commanders who carried them out in game.

Now I want to play. Is that bad?

Some outlet (Wired?) did a story years ago about how one alliance spent months recruiting a spy inside their biggest rival, stole all their resources, and crushed them. I'm hesitant about jumping into a game years after release, but that was the closest I was to joining.

That was probably GoonSwarm taking down BoB (Band of Brothers).

Some? In our alliance, at least, our spreadsheet coordinators also wanted to be in the big fleet battles, but there they were one pilot among many. Most alliances, in my experience, had basically parallel 'military' and 'industrial' leadership teams, sometimes with a third 'political' set.

Yup Many such cases in persistent shared world large faction MMOs I used to play Naval Action and our nation (The Dutch) had players who were battle commanders, and a whole other set of commanders who were just interested in securing materials and building top tier ships to replace the lost ones

Thanks

Somewhat more advanced: rather than scripted quests most of the in game actions were created by the interaction of players.

Yeah I only know it by reputation because it was/is the nerdiest of nerd pursuits but it SOUNDS like if you were that kind of obsessive it would be really fun. People got REAL into it.

They have a staff economist just to study what the players get up to

There were like massive in-game conflicts with real money involved and real-world implications for players’ lives. Which sounds insane when you just write it out but

people got hired at the company that made it and then got fired for using their power to cheat, and said afterwards that they’d do it again it was worth losing their job

For, truly, what is a “job” compared to GALACTIC HEGEMONY and all that entails

Yeah, when I say "go to war," I don't mean like, "everyone logs in for 30 minutes after work, has a good time with the lads and lasses, then logs off, helps the kid with homework and makes supper." I mean they go to war.

Like kill all of the other faction’s little guys and blow up their spaceships and take all their hard-won stuff. With lasting consequences. (Again, or so I hear.)

Goonswarm was the Something Awful guild on there (which Will was in iirc) and there are documented stories of them blowing up actual real-life fortunes worth of stuff. (Eve let you directly convert in-game cash to more subscription time so it has actual monetary value that most MMO cash does not)

Hell yeah Goonswarm was the only way to play that game correctly I wish I knew what name he flew under, I probably called him a dork there too

and requiring absurd levels of coordination and communications, large battles lasting hours (up to like an entire day for the largest) and wars lasting months, actual espionage, logistics necessary to build and deploy all that hard-won stuff

My favorite was the one that cost something like a quarter million dollars worth of human effort en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_...

Yeah. I love reading about insane shit like this. I'd never have the patience or attention span or bank account to take part. But this kind of wild-ass human folly is why we're all here.

There was another one that got written up in like normal-person media (which I think is what brought the whole culture to my attention) where there an absolutely massive heist involving treason and betrayal at the highest levels

which sounds real fun and Game of Thrones-y but also like maybe something your real-world physical body might get murdered over for real.

I tried for a good six months and got nowhere near the action. It is a grind and a second job. A waste of your time, but it creates incredible stories to read.

As the kind of casual gamer who finds grinding soothing I would probably have gotten into that. Maybe not if it's TOO many spreadsheets.

I opened this Wikipedia article and took something like 4,000 points of psychic damage. I’m clearly like two standard deviations to the right of the midpoint of the nerdiness bell curve and yet I cannot deal with people in the 3-4 range

you think YOU'RE scarred? people who were in the Halloween War came back changed, man. where's THEIR parade?

I’m picturing a rewrite of “The Things They Carried” that’s just a litany of precisely described containers of Baja Blast, hentai, and Excel macros. I woke up this morning with PLANS for my day, man.

That's not hyperbole there is/was a spreadsheet program in the vanilla game. Or was when I tried it aeons ago

Do spreadsheets and post bad about the other groups. It has a way of hardening poasters.

Fundamentally Unpleasant Bureaucrats the Game pretty much

Master of Orion has entered the chat.

and goons were there too (the SA kind)

This is not a place of honor. Turn back now

Spreadsheets.... in..... spaaaaace.

A game where the biggest villain in the game's history is a guy who started an in game bank, ran it for a while, then stole all the money

sometimes you see a butterfly flap its wings and know that it has much more than the usual chance of causing a hurricane

I’m pretty certain my introduction to EVE was asking a coworker about the spreadsheets on their computer. They’re just built different.

you think those moon mining spreadsheets were "good"? oh my sweet summer child

No I do not that’s why I never played eve lol

I need them to make my little drawings

(Not trying to throw any shade at you Bret)

In my defense, I was not part of the alliance's spreadsheet team (bless those guys, they kept us in ships), but rather was a fleet commander.

I have repeatedly told people this and every single time, you can hear the switch clicking.

It is simultaneously a villain and hero origin story

I mean playing a spreadsheet sounds like him.

I mean EVE is that but it is extremely not just that

When you die in the spreadsheet you die in real life

Also full disclosure i have played a lot of spreadsheet games, and have been told id enjoy eve but i have bounced off of every mmo styled thingy so... shrug. Plus i just dont have that kind of time anymore.

It wouldnt surprise me if he doesnt do anything other than stay on base larping as a wealth management company and just places bets on the eve online stock market and write monthly investment newsletters to his eve online clients.

Me learning that Will Stancil knew the Mittani

I believe he was also a Something Awful poster

Oh my god that makes so much sense