People going to solo has nothing to do with the Lave area piracy being dead or player piracy in general. The Lave area piracy died because of a post Ben Ryder made on these forums (that I don't care to look up) saying how he was "smuggling" by having his friend drop him rares, then buy more, then drop for him again, etc. as this allowed him to sell rares for max price at the time at any station other than where they were bought instead of having to make the 160 LY trip...and it bypassed the max allotment of rares from a station. THAT is what made the rare piracy profitable...pirated rares lost the distance price modifier. When word spread around FD of this guy's abuse, they patched out the rare distance modifier on dropped cargo, and claimed it was never supposed to be that way...pirates making money off of them at the time assumed it was this way FOR piracy to make money. THAT is what ended rare piracy as it was now pointless to rob near worthless cargo to then make the 160 LY trip.
Player piracy died with that patch for all intents and purposes...people kept it up in a for fun/RP fashion for a while where people still congregated such as trade CG, but it was no longer a possible Cr maker in any noticeable amounts. You could 3rd party tool search some good palladium/gold trade routes and hope someone would come through eventually, but without a hub that a very large amount of people came through often with cargo that cost them next to nothing to give up, and was worth 15+k cr a piece to the pirate, player piracy was an essentially dead profession.
Traders all going to solo as some like to claim has NOTHING at all to do with player piracy being dead. Anyone who claims it does was not pirating players through the different patches to see what actually caused it.
