The Warr is over, but the fires Burn on.
On July 16th, Warr Akini, head of the Imperium’s Ministry of Love high-sec operations group, and mastermind of three years of Burn Jita as well as this year’s Burn Amarr, announced his retirement. The announcement came at the tail end of the Burn Amarr results and analysis post on the Goonfleet forums, and ran as follows:
A Life’s Work, and Miniluv Turns Three
I have been ganking freighters and jump freighters most every day for nearly three years now – starting not long after the day that I brought Miniluv into existence with a Mittanical blessing (trivia: I wanted to call it Zero Squad). The ease and the fluid nature of killing freighters during Burn Amarr that you may have experienced in my fleets by no means accurately reflects the intense amount of skill and preparation required in lining up such a gank.
Since Miniluv was brought into the world, we’ve refined the ganking process and exacted the kind of killboard damage that is unparalleled by any other SIG or organization within the Imperium, with the exception of gigantic capital fights that occur once every other lifetime. It is very much the truth that highsec is the endgame; it is the place where you wreck your enemies, cause significant economic damage, and bring about some of the best tears that Catalysts can buy.
EVE is a place where we sit around in our ratting ships in order to get into our other ships and fly around for a little while until something usually fairly disappointing happens (this is much moreso true outside of the Imperium). Or, we simply sit in our ratting ships, accumulating wealth and titans and ships that we will never, ever use. Miniluv is the exact opposite – we have the highest asset turnover of any group in EVE Online, and we have some of the best action you will find in EVE Online. I mean, Christ, we actually train up and basically give you Talos pilots for free.
We are entropy. And that is what makes Miniluv and running it day-to-day great, and that is why you should be joining Miniluv.
But, as they say, all good things must come to an end.
And so, I am stepping back from active day-to-day management of Miniluv.
It’s hard to win EVE much harder than Miniluv has won EVE. Much like in real life, EVE makes defining ‘victory’ an amorphous, undefinable task – like in the ramblings of a certain Grr Goons blogger, you may manipulate statistics and facts to support your cause, despite any evidence to the contrary. And, let me be clear, Miniluv has not always succeeded in its goals. We live to kill, we live to get tears, and sometimes we don’t get that. Sometimes that bulkheaded Anshar in an unprepped 0.7 is just too much for us to kill, and I rage a little and we all log off for a little bit until some scanner guy finds another 20b whale. But, in sheer numbers killed and in its self-sufficiency, Miniluv has created a model and a success that is unparalleled (and now being employed by our friends in CODE). That is the legacy I want to leave EVE with – as the creator of the killingest group in all of EVE.
And there is so much more to do in real life. Despite my significant attention to EVE Online and blowing up shit, I consider myself extremely successful out there beyond the spacepixels. There’s lots of room to grow there, too, and that’s what I’m going to do, faster than I already had been. I’ll be around, administrating Miniluv and keeping an eye on people, but that hands-on everyday thing is just too much time commitment for me.
So, let’s have a fucking party. Next fucking weekend.
**BURN (out) WARR AKINI: JULY 24-26**
It’s just like Burn Jita/Amarr! Except it’s my mini-retirement party.
And the party was on. The Miniluv activity focused on the trade routes between Amarr, Dodixie, and Jita. With scouts keeping watch along the routes, most of the killing took place in Niarja and Uedama, with some“chasing big stuff around if we see it”, according to Warr.
Over the course of the weekend, the party fleets destroyed in excess of 585 billion ISK in ships and cargo, greater than the Imperium’s totals during Burn Amarr. But this was Warr’s party, I’ll let him tell it:
Burn Warr Akini – Postmortem
Addendum to Burn Amarr Results
(If you haven’t read them, read them now, they’re below)
-tl;dr-
For my personal retirement party, it was pretty fucking sweet.
This is a legacy I can be proud of.
Some people play videogames to relax. They often play games like Minecraft, World of Warcraft, or some other game with the word ‘craft’ in it (but probably not Starcraft, at least not if you were playing the Korean kids in the dorm like I was – I mean, god damn). Some of them even play EVE, often in the lower-stress fields of mining or hauling. They don’t understand that EVE is a game made for people like me – ultra-competitive over-achievers who polish a skill such that everyone who isn’t part of their tribe is mangled and beaten in an open grave. It is a vicious, vindictive game that takes everything away from the people who make the wrong mistake. Mittens and I designed the Ministry of Love to embody that aspect of EVE Online, and I am in no way exaggerating when I say it has done that better than any other organization in EVE, past or present.
How do I know we’ve been successful? Maybe in the utter decrease in frivolous wealth being shifted around the universe – back in 2012, when Miniluv was new to freighter ganking, our then-limited scanning crew would spot freighters worth twenty billion and above on several occasions over the course of a single day. Now, with more than double the number of scanners out, we are lucky if we see a 10b+ more than twice in a single day. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that Miniluv has policed that frivolous wealth movement, making haulers more responsible with their cargoholds (though not everyone, naturally). And yet, despite this reduced movement of whales through highsec, is there not some clear conclusion you can make by noticing that in an active month, Miniluv kills more than one trillion ISK? Please point me to an organization that can achieve such mayhem in a single month in EVE and remain financially stable (did you know that Miniluv is entirely self-sufficient even though it has the highest asset turnover of any other group in the Imperium?).
I also count our success by the talent we have had over the years. My most obvious talent story is of Boneytooth Thompkins ISK-Chip, my successor to the Miniluv throne and a young upstart who won my heart at Christmas of 2013 with the best-targeted Secret Santa gift I have ever seen. Another is that of Globby, the prodigal son who robbed me blind, of 250 billion ISK, and then paid me back and came back to ganking because it is the endgame (I want to be on record saying that I called that, by the way). Then you have your Powers SA’s, the guys who get out and administrate killboards, pimp the group out on public channels, and otherwise get the Ministry image solidified. Then you have your Noah Johansens, the people who create street-legal tools that make being a Minister far easier than it was back in 2012.
Still, it isn’t just about the few superstars, despite what you may be thinking. It’s about the giant swath of superstars we saw come out this weekend. From the Vexor pilot who wiped out a certain anti-ganker’s wreck-popper so we could get 8b in loot to the CODE agent in a Machariel (holdmybeer) tag-teaming with an Imperium Machariel pilot (shorttee) to hold a target in Suroken for two and a half hours whilst anti-gankers swarmed that target and missed out on four other freighter kills we got without any interference. Bumpers, scanners, and looters made this weekend spectacular – both from the CODE and Imperium sides. Very special shoutouts to our most committed scanners for the weekend: Synthiagreey, Cheesetoast, and Kachiko Sama (weeaboo),
And, of course, the FCs. Vanilla Mooses, Boneytooth, He Who Shall Not Be Named But Has Already Been In This Post Lol, (a drunk) Siegfried Cohenberg, Loyalanon of CODE (the prince of highsec ganking), and a touch of Jay Amazingness. You guys are superb, but I’m calling you all out. You’ve seen the destructive power we have – don’t let it go to waste just because I’m not logging in 12 Talos per day to gank stuff. EVE is your fucking game when you have the Ministry.
With all that said (join Miniluv today – and commit to owning the shit out of this game), then let us move on to the juicy figures.
Burn Warr Results (in Brief)
Total Damage: 585 billion ISK, across 112 Freighters, 10 Jump Freighters, and 17 Orcas
Total Loot Scooped: 85 billion ISK
Compare Damage to Burn Amarr: 476B (Imperium only), 335B (CODE only), 811B (joint)**
Compare Damage to Burn Jita 3: 586.7Bn, across 163 Freighters, 17 Jump Freighters, and 12 Orcas
Biggest Loser: Mya Bird, 19 billion Obelisk – https://zkillboard.com/kill/48095533/
**This is ever so poignant in that Burn Warr fleets never filled two whole DPS wings, while Burn Amarr had at least two full wings at any time. Burn Warr was Miniluv-style – absolute surgical precision and utter ass-whooping.
A Final Word
To the non-Ministers: Miniluv is the most destructive force out there. You’ve seen it with your own eyes, and we’ve proven it time and time again with events like Burn Jita/Amarr/Akini. If you can commit even four hours of skill training to an alt, you can be a useful Minister. If you’re logging into EVE and you’re not getting the most out of it that you can, then you’re wasting precious time in your life that could be spent elsewhere. Miniluv is love. Miniluv is life. (And a whole fucking lot of death.) So join today.
To the Ministers (past and present): Thank you for three great years. Keep it the fuck up.
So if you were a freighter pilot this weekend, wondering what the hell was going on…now you know. Warr Akini, the Minister of Love, has stepped down. What’s next for the Ministry he established and guided has yet to be seen. It may well endure and hold to the tradition of being a massive, efficient, self-financing organization that lines the pockets of its pilots with ill-gotten gains. Or maybe it will slowly decay, winding down and losing steam until the haulers forget all about it. Maybe everything will go back to how it was. But if so…
“Nature has an order. A power to restore balance.” – Dr. Ichiro Serizawa (Ken Watanabe)
UPDATE: When asked for comment, Warr Akini remembered several hours later to say:
“I’ve got one thing to say! It’s better to burn out than fade away!”
This article originally appeared on TheMittani.com.
