THE FORMIDINE RIFT MYSTERY (Part 4)
- Thread starter Cmdr Zach
- Start date
I might do this as well. There's no evidence that there are surviving Mega Ships out there just because we found one in the Rift, but it's the closest we've got to something actionable.
Figuring out the very best way to collectively blow their own horns, all the while completely oblivious of the way the SDC got played as well in this entire saga, lol.
Hats-off to the puppet-masters, well played indeed!
No salt intended as I fully expected her to last 5 mins.... but having instanced with her the jump before her death and more importantly seen she'd started outrunning some of her more dubious entourage I thought she might go down in a blaze of glory in the destination system, rather than the anticlimactic and obvious demise
I now think that having Salome (a former Imperial lady, trained in the art of politics, subterfuge, combat, tactics and many other skills needed to survive in Imperial society) killed in such an obvious and pointless way (and suggested would happen in almost every online forum prior to the event) is ultimately an incredible let down story wise.
Who ever thought the individual involved would not follow follow their modus operandi is naive beyond belief, which doesn't equate to the character of Salome, otherwise she would have died long before.
I look forward to reading the chapter on how the great hope for truth was defeated by a grotesque (I've seen the avatar) for "s**ts & giggles"
Get the creative writing going!
P.S. really enjoyed the event (and really need more of them!!!!) but no kudos to the killer whatsoever in my view as it was far too obvious and actually extremely boring... "Please slow down so I can kill you..... I can't keep up".... Lol.
Onwards with the actual mystery....
OK ENOUGH!
I'm tired of the whinging
....[whinging removed
Said earlier perhaps we need a few days to get this out of our systems then part 5 needed where, if Zack would be so kind, we can start with what we know, what has been found and go from there.
But other than continuing to map 3 large chunks of the galaxy in case something is there which isn't in a permit locked system, I'm a bit lacking in any clues to follow at the mo myself. So a bit of a whinge that we haven't had a full reveal seems not inappropriate.
But I do think this is wider than just the rift and while the name should remain, it needs that wider perspective now and other areas looked into.
I've slept and had some time to reflect so will offer some thoughts. This will be nothing groundbreaking. I think most people who frequent this thread know I am a fan of Drew, his books and good friends with CoR. So I could do the TL.DR right here:
There where clear problems on both a technical front and an organisation front. But me and my co-pilot had a fun few hours. And that's the whole point.
For anyone caring to read a long version I'll start with just saying what I did and move onto to some thoughts about the whole thing. First off though as far as I am concerned CoR and PAC are completely different entities. CoR have made it quite clear they handed off the whole Discord thing to others and that's when it started going south.
The event from my point of view
During the build up I was becoming more and more negative. The more rhetoric that came out of PAC and less and less I wanted to be involved. That miffed me, as I have followed this story for years, been friends with CoR (thought not actively involved with them) for some time. Bought Reclamation as an audio book and listened to it a good few times. Went on to read Drew's (excellent) Shadeward saga, Journeyed out past the Formidine Rift myself. Joined in with the CoR community goal to explore the three regions and got my friends in my own player group to help out too. So I had invested a lot of time into this, now it felt like, at the big climax the whole event was being hijacked by people who were making stupid rules, that actively excluded people.
To that end I was sat, eating tea on a visit to the folks, watching the Snooker (dammit Ding!) and looking at the clock thinking sod it. On the way home I popped to the super market as milk and beer where more important to me at that time that this big climax. So it was not until about 7:40 local that I logged into 46 Eridani. Unsurprisingly it was very quiet. However both Raan and Salome where both online and on my friends list, 14 jumps ahead, still so the case was on.
Despite the PAC threats, I was in one of my fully engineered, fully armed Pythons. I'd brought my one from the Pleiades down. The down side was the limited 26Ly jump range. However that did not prove and issue. Soon after leaving 46 Eridani I was interdicted by one of the PAC interdiction sheep. That was slightly funny. That toothless Commander said something about 'Catch me if you can', whilst I spooled up for my next jump. I was laughing to myself thinking, haven't you got that the wrong way round? And left them in my wake. The fact that they were also over a dozen jumps from the action meant it was an utterly pointless action. Plus the obvious irony that we were on the same side. I don't blame them though. It was them taking part and doing something to be involved I guess. However I do blame the PAC for talking people into being pointless sheep in the first place.
Things started to get more fun at this point. I could see a whole pack of friends ahead and starting brief chats with a number of them, getting myself up to speed. I was also joined in the Dominion Dart by my good friend, Commander Civility Marks, another SMAC member and fairly new player to Elite. It was clear that despite my average jump range that we were gaining on Salome. If I had the option, I would have followed and protected Tsu due to the Alliance connection. But she was not on my friends list, I had no wake scanner (or interdictor for the record; the plan being to catch up with the pack, locate any vip and shadow them, ready to drop into the instance manually if they got in trouble, if the instance gods allowed it... sort of like everyone else I guess). I was still a bit cold on Raan Corson, having seen him in the PAC discord and so associated him with their exclusive strategy. That might have been a bit harsh, but I considered him a secondary objective to try protect. So that left Salome herself, who was always going to have the lions share of people Benny Hilling with her.
By the time we where passing the Pleiades, we where only five jumps behind Salome and Eisen, who it was pretty clear was in a wing with her. Every time we got to one jump away from my next waypoint I re-plotted. Slowly the gap was coming down, four jumps later, replotted. Three jumps later, replotted, two jumps later etc. Soon we were in the same system and had reached the edge of the bubble proper. Civility and I took the tactical decision to speed to an outpost to make a 'save point' if you will, in case we hit a wall of PAC 'whitelisters' now that we were in the pack. Given the speed had dropped off a lot, it seemed it would be easy to catch up again. Very much so in fact, we were only one jump back once I had refuelled, sole a million of ping data and undocked again.
We kept with the pack now. I could see many friends in the system with us, and well as many unknown pilots. But everyone seemed very civil. I saw very few signs of interdiction and my fears of PAC private security goons proved unfounded... oh and pointless, at one point we where flying along in super cruse right next to Salome, with a gap of 9Ls between us. And remember we were in a full combat fit Python.
Eisen was ahead it seemed and we were looking at the gal map to see where we where headed. The Old Worlds. We guessed at Tionisla. Sure enough Raan was there already. So we plotted a route. We moved ahead of the pack when it seemed to have slowed dramatically. We did not know that this was when the most blatantly obvious threat was making his move. Can't blame him or his people. I don't have much time for folks like him, but at the end of the day, he is playing the game, that he spent his money on, his way. We were still talking to friends. Commander Hyford asked me if she was dead as she had vanished from the game and his friends list. We checked, yes, she had vanished. I fired off a message to Commander Eisen. The message came back. 'Yes. Potter. The 'redacted'" staying in character I gave a stilted Hollywood comment about Raan being alive, stick to the mission, mourn later etc.
Raan had moved to Teorge. Unfortunately due to the nature of trying to do these sorts of things (I'll talk about this later) we already knew what was there, so now it was clear that was the end point. We arrived, hit a few beacons, saw lots of Commanders, who were all happy to leave everyone else be. There was much conversation as the ripple of news spread. After a while Eisen confirmed the evert was effectively over. I passed that message to friends in the system who, like us were just in a holding pattern waiting to see what would happen next.
And that was that. The mission was complete, but the main champion had been killed, aided, at least in part, by the tactical stupidity of PAC and the inevitable lag.
Thoughts about the event
Instancing and lag
Before the event, Drew and CoR where keen to stress that this had not been tried before (on ED). They could not know how successful or unsuccessful it would be. No-one can claim they are surprised that there were instancing and lag issues. Anyone who does, must be brand new to online gaming. So I am going to kick that into touch now. Of course there were instancing and lag issues. And I am sure FDEV are constantly working on that. But I also guess it is a very, very hard battle to win. I'm not a dev. I don't know those issues. So I am not stupid enough to bad mouth them or point the finger. It's a online game event with hundreds if not thousands of players trying to take part. This is absolutely par for the course. As far lag playing part in Salome's death, well, it was the same lag and instancing situation for her killer, he just made his move at the right moment.
Doing the event in the first place
This one is easy. Drew wanted to do something in game, live, that anyone could try to get involved with. So well done Drew. I'm sure you will be bad mouthed from here to hell and back, but I would rather have done this than just had a galnet story and read it in a book. Yes at the end of the day Civility and I where no more effective than that Eagle pilot. But just having that point were we where in the right instance and flying along parallel with Salome was enough. We felt part of it. We where there, right at the focal point of the story, even if we where just another of the hundreds flying along with it. And just like connection issues, three thousand people, or however many took part, can't all be the hero. Of course only a few would ever have impact. Some CoR pilots got to be in the VIP wings. Of course they did. They are the ones who have put in masses of time and effort into making this story come alive. So good for CoR too. Back to that point of being a hairs breath from the lead character, this really found weight when my brother logged on, five minuets after Salome was killed. He had just driven his family home for five hours and was hoping to be part of the event. He was down in the Pleiades and effectively missed it. He said, I would have loved to read Premonition, to read that last chapter and known I was there at that point, one of that armada of pilots flying with Salome. And he was right. I will get to think that when I read, and listen to Drew's book. And if the event had not been done, I would never get that extra level of connection with it.
On PAC
My opinion on PAC and the whole discord thing is pretty clear. One person put in a way that had me laughing out loud, on Reddit, which I will paraphrase here minus the expletives. "They strutted around wearing the big boy pants but ended up leaving a 'redacted' stain a light-year long". The tactical choice to have a white list of 'approved' pvp players and threaten anyone else if they refused to be a toothless sheep was the wrong move. And the fact that they got suckered in by the most obvious griefers in the game is unforgivable. They should have been KOS from second one. And that is not hindsight speaking. Anyone could have seen this coming. They even said they were ready for it. Were you PAC... where you really. I don't do open that much. And I don't do pvp that much, so I don't really know who these people were. And I still don't. But are now the laughing stock, not just of ED but I dare say soon enough, the wider gaming world. Have a golf clap.
But I will say this for the PAC people. They did put the time and effort in. Managing thousands of players, trying to come up with a strategy (even if there chosen one was wrong), keeping people informed must have been hard work. Regardless of how I feel about there choices, their big boys attitude, and there tactical blindness, I can't take those organisation efforts away from them. They get a solid 10 for effort. If I play devil's advocate and say "Well what would you have done if it had have been your responsibility to organise 3000 players? I'm not so sure. That said I did 600 regularly in EvE. But that is not the point. The point is that it is easy to criticise afterwards from the comfort of not having any responsibility myself. So I may be being hard on PAC. I'll thank them as well for trying to do their part. It is after all, as much there game as it is everyone else's.
As for CoR's involvement, well, this was not CoR. If anything CoR's mistake was letting others take over that part of the event. But I don't blame CoR. They never asked to do that, they set up the channel at Drew's request. And they had a mountain on their plate already, knowing they would be flying with the VIPs. AS they have said, we have no idea how mush stress and effort that have had to put in. Just as is it easy to sit back and criticise PAC, it is easy to sit back and throw mud at CoR. Not me. I think CoR have been exemplary throughout. I deeply regret messaging TheTick and Erimus to complain about the discord and PAC, so I will apologies to those two here and now.
On the pre event scoop and the story from here
FDEV are not perfect. But who is? Me? (ha!) You? They have underestimated the players enthusiasm and eagerness to look under stones and find things they were not supposed to find yet, again and again. Some people are saying that happened again yesterday. But what where FDEV and Drew to do? Take down the whole server prior to the event? Maybe? But what about the many thousands of player who might not have been interested in this? I don't see there is an ideal way to do this. They are dammed if they do and dammed if they don't. It was chance that someone happen to be playing attention to there scanners in that system. But I don't see who that changes anything. Salome found out about these beacons. She could have just told people. But we don't know what in game world stuff was going on. Where she was (Col 70?) if all transmissions where being blocked. The fact that someone else stumbled upon them changes nothing. She still wanted to get there and make a point and deliver some more info.
Also people are saying she could have passed on that into Raan, Tsu and Co. And pointing the finger at Drew and suggesting he changed the narrative. So what? He is the guy putting in max effort to give you a damned narrative in the first place. Roll with it and enjoy it. If anything this lets the story and mystery carry on. I want more! I don't want to get the end of this as there might not be other Drew's waiting in the wings to hand us more fantastic story and content.
Multi-crew
I was joined last night be a friend who is pretty new to the game. His character Civility Marks was co-piloting my Python. He enjoyed the experience and so did I, but as he said on our Slack channel, the multi-crew needs more options. He could have been plotting the routes whist I was flying the ship. As it happened, I was doing everything and he was along for the ride. But he said he could see so much potential for this. And yes, there are many threads already about this, but if anything this event, for us hammered that home. Options for navigation for the co-pilot please FDEV.
Last words (well for now anyway)
I enjoyed last night. Despite being on the brink of giving it the cold shoulder. But you know, now and again I have to get over myself. It had lag issues. It had instancing issues. It had the unfortunate scoop. It had a less then idea outcome due to some very poor tactics by others.
But it was fun. End of.
There where clear problems on both a technical front and an organisation front. But me and my co-pilot had a fun few hours. And that's the whole point.
For anyone caring to read a long version I'll start with just saying what I did and move onto to some thoughts about the whole thing. First off though as far as I am concerned CoR and PAC are completely different entities. CoR have made it quite clear they handed off the whole Discord thing to others and that's when it started going south.
The event from my point of view
During the build up I was becoming more and more negative. The more rhetoric that came out of PAC and less and less I wanted to be involved. That miffed me, as I have followed this story for years, been friends with CoR (thought not actively involved with them) for some time. Bought Reclamation as an audio book and listened to it a good few times. Went on to read Drew's (excellent) Shadeward saga, Journeyed out past the Formidine Rift myself. Joined in with the CoR community goal to explore the three regions and got my friends in my own player group to help out too. So I had invested a lot of time into this, now it felt like, at the big climax the whole event was being hijacked by people who were making stupid rules, that actively excluded people.
To that end I was sat, eating tea on a visit to the folks, watching the Snooker (dammit Ding!) and looking at the clock thinking sod it. On the way home I popped to the super market as milk and beer where more important to me at that time that this big climax. So it was not until about 7:40 local that I logged into 46 Eridani. Unsurprisingly it was very quiet. However both Raan and Salome where both online and on my friends list, 14 jumps ahead, still so the case was on.
Despite the PAC threats, I was in one of my fully engineered, fully armed Pythons. I'd brought my one from the Pleiades down. The down side was the limited 26Ly jump range. However that did not prove and issue. Soon after leaving 46 Eridani I was interdicted by one of the PAC interdiction sheep. That was slightly funny. That toothless Commander said something about 'Catch me if you can', whilst I spooled up for my next jump. I was laughing to myself thinking, haven't you got that the wrong way round? And left them in my wake. The fact that they were also over a dozen jumps from the action meant it was an utterly pointless action. Plus the obvious irony that we were on the same side. I don't blame them though. It was them taking part and doing something to be involved I guess. However I do blame the PAC for talking people into being pointless sheep in the first place.
Things started to get more fun at this point. I could see a whole pack of friends ahead and starting brief chats with a number of them, getting myself up to speed. I was also joined in the Dominion Dart by my good friend, Commander Civility Marks, another SMAC member and fairly new player to Elite. It was clear that despite my average jump range that we were gaining on Salome. If I had the option, I would have followed and protected Tsu due to the Alliance connection. But she was not on my friends list, I had no wake scanner (or interdictor for the record; the plan being to catch up with the pack, locate any vip and shadow them, ready to drop into the instance manually if they got in trouble, if the instance gods allowed it... sort of like everyone else I guess). I was still a bit cold on Raan Corson, having seen him in the PAC discord and so associated him with their exclusive strategy. That might have been a bit harsh, but I considered him a secondary objective to try protect. So that left Salome herself, who was always going to have the lions share of people Benny Hilling with her.
By the time we where passing the Pleiades, we where only five jumps behind Salome and Eisen, who it was pretty clear was in a wing with her. Every time we got to one jump away from my next waypoint I re-plotted. Slowly the gap was coming down, four jumps later, replotted. Three jumps later, replotted, two jumps later etc. Soon we were in the same system and had reached the edge of the bubble proper. Civility and I took the tactical decision to speed to an outpost to make a 'save point' if you will, in case we hit a wall of PAC 'whitelisters' now that we were in the pack. Given the speed had dropped off a lot, it seemed it would be easy to catch up again. Very much so in fact, we were only one jump back once I had refuelled, sole a million of ping data and undocked again.
We kept with the pack now. I could see many friends in the system with us, and well as many unknown pilots. But everyone seemed very civil. I saw very few signs of interdiction and my fears of PAC private security goons proved unfounded... oh and pointless, at one point we where flying along in super cruse right next to Salome, with a gap of 9Ls between us. And remember we were in a full combat fit Python.
Eisen was ahead it seemed and we were looking at the gal map to see where we where headed. The Old Worlds. We guessed at Tionisla. Sure enough Raan was there already. So we plotted a route. We moved ahead of the pack when it seemed to have slowed dramatically. We did not know that this was when the most blatantly obvious threat was making his move. Can't blame him or his people. I don't have much time for folks like him, but at the end of the day, he is playing the game, that he spent his money on, his way. We were still talking to friends. Commander Hyford asked me if she was dead as she had vanished from the game and his friends list. We checked, yes, she had vanished. I fired off a message to Commander Eisen. The message came back. 'Yes. Potter. The 'redacted'" staying in character I gave a stilted Hollywood comment about Raan being alive, stick to the mission, mourn later etc.
Raan had moved to Teorge. Unfortunately due to the nature of trying to do these sorts of things (I'll talk about this later) we already knew what was there, so now it was clear that was the end point. We arrived, hit a few beacons, saw lots of Commanders, who were all happy to leave everyone else be. There was much conversation as the ripple of news spread. After a while Eisen confirmed the evert was effectively over. I passed that message to friends in the system who, like us were just in a holding pattern waiting to see what would happen next.
And that was that. The mission was complete, but the main champion had been killed, aided, at least in part, by the tactical stupidity of PAC and the inevitable lag.
Thoughts about the event
Instancing and lag
Before the event, Drew and CoR where keen to stress that this had not been tried before (on ED). They could not know how successful or unsuccessful it would be. No-one can claim they are surprised that there were instancing and lag issues. Anyone who does, must be brand new to online gaming. So I am going to kick that into touch now. Of course there were instancing and lag issues. And I am sure FDEV are constantly working on that. But I also guess it is a very, very hard battle to win. I'm not a dev. I don't know those issues. So I am not stupid enough to bad mouth them or point the finger. It's a online game event with hundreds if not thousands of players trying to take part. This is absolutely par for the course. As far lag playing part in Salome's death, well, it was the same lag and instancing situation for her killer, he just made his move at the right moment.
Doing the event in the first place
This one is easy. Drew wanted to do something in game, live, that anyone could try to get involved with. So well done Drew. I'm sure you will be bad mouthed from here to hell and back, but I would rather have done this than just had a galnet story and read it in a book. Yes at the end of the day Civility and I where no more effective than that Eagle pilot. But just having that point were we where in the right instance and flying along parallel with Salome was enough. We felt part of it. We where there, right at the focal point of the story, even if we where just another of the hundreds flying along with it. And just like connection issues, three thousand people, or however many took part, can't all be the hero. Of course only a few would ever have impact. Some CoR pilots got to be in the VIP wings. Of course they did. They are the ones who have put in masses of time and effort into making this story come alive. So good for CoR too. Back to that point of being a hairs breath from the lead character, this really found weight when my brother logged on, five minuets after Salome was killed. He had just driven his family home for five hours and was hoping to be part of the event. He was down in the Pleiades and effectively missed it. He said, I would have loved to read Premonition, to read that last chapter and known I was there at that point, one of that armada of pilots flying with Salome. And he was right. I will get to think that when I read, and listen to Drew's book. And if the event had not been done, I would never get that extra level of connection with it.
On PAC
My opinion on PAC and the whole discord thing is pretty clear. One person put in a way that had me laughing out loud, on Reddit, which I will paraphrase here minus the expletives. "They strutted around wearing the big boy pants but ended up leaving a 'redacted' stain a light-year long". The tactical choice to have a white list of 'approved' pvp players and threaten anyone else if they refused to be a toothless sheep was the wrong move. And the fact that they got suckered in by the most obvious griefers in the game is unforgivable. They should have been KOS from second one. And that is not hindsight speaking. Anyone could have seen this coming. They even said they were ready for it. Were you PAC... where you really. I don't do open that much. And I don't do pvp that much, so I don't really know who these people were. And I still don't. But are now the laughing stock, not just of ED but I dare say soon enough, the wider gaming world. Have a golf clap.
But I will say this for the PAC people. They did put the time and effort in. Managing thousands of players, trying to come up with a strategy (even if there chosen one was wrong), keeping people informed must have been hard work. Regardless of how I feel about there choices, their big boys attitude, and there tactical blindness, I can't take those organisation efforts away from them. They get a solid 10 for effort. If I play devil's advocate and say "Well what would you have done if it had have been your responsibility to organise 3000 players? I'm not so sure. That said I did 600 regularly in EvE. But that is not the point. The point is that it is easy to criticise afterwards from the comfort of not having any responsibility myself. So I may be being hard on PAC. I'll thank them as well for trying to do their part. It is after all, as much there game as it is everyone else's.
As for CoR's involvement, well, this was not CoR. If anything CoR's mistake was letting others take over that part of the event. But I don't blame CoR. They never asked to do that, they set up the channel at Drew's request. And they had a mountain on their plate already, knowing they would be flying with the VIPs. AS they have said, we have no idea how mush stress and effort that have had to put in. Just as is it easy to sit back and criticise PAC, it is easy to sit back and throw mud at CoR. Not me. I think CoR have been exemplary throughout. I deeply regret messaging TheTick and Erimus to complain about the discord and PAC, so I will apologies to those two here and now.
On the pre event scoop and the story from here
FDEV are not perfect. But who is? Me? (ha!) You? They have underestimated the players enthusiasm and eagerness to look under stones and find things they were not supposed to find yet, again and again. Some people are saying that happened again yesterday. But what where FDEV and Drew to do? Take down the whole server prior to the event? Maybe? But what about the many thousands of player who might not have been interested in this? I don't see there is an ideal way to do this. They are dammed if they do and dammed if they don't. It was chance that someone happen to be playing attention to there scanners in that system. But I don't see who that changes anything. Salome found out about these beacons. She could have just told people. But we don't know what in game world stuff was going on. Where she was (Col 70?) if all transmissions where being blocked. The fact that someone else stumbled upon them changes nothing. She still wanted to get there and make a point and deliver some more info.
Also people are saying she could have passed on that into Raan, Tsu and Co. And pointing the finger at Drew and suggesting he changed the narrative. So what? He is the guy putting in max effort to give you a damned narrative in the first place. Roll with it and enjoy it. If anything this lets the story and mystery carry on. I want more! I don't want to get the end of this as there might not be other Drew's waiting in the wings to hand us more fantastic story and content.
Multi-crew
I was joined last night be a friend who is pretty new to the game. His character Civility Marks was co-piloting my Python. He enjoyed the experience and so did I, but as he said on our Slack channel, the multi-crew needs more options. He could have been plotting the routes whist I was flying the ship. As it happened, I was doing everything and he was along for the ride. But he said he could see so much potential for this. And yes, there are many threads already about this, but if anything this event, for us hammered that home. Options for navigation for the co-pilot please FDEV.
Last words (well for now anyway)
I enjoyed last night. Despite being on the brink of giving it the cold shoulder. But you know, now and again I have to get over myself. It had lag issues. It had instancing issues. It had the unfortunate scoop. It had a less then idea outcome due to some very poor tactics by others.
But it was fun. End of.
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No salt intended as I fully expected her to last 5 mins.... but having instanced with her the jump before her death and more importantly seen she'd started outrunning some of her more dubious entourage I thought she might go down in a blaze of glory in the destination system, rather than the anticlimactic and obvious demise
I now think that having Salome (a former Imperial lady, trained in the art of politics, subterfuge, combat, tactics and many other skills needed to survive in Imperial society) killed in such an obvious and pointless way (and suggested would happen in almost every online forum prior to the event) is ultimately an incredible let down story wise.
Who ever thought the individual involved would not follow follow their modus operandi is naive beyond belief, which doesn't equate to the character of Salome, otherwise she would have died long before.
I look forward to reading the chapter on how the great hope for truth was defeated by a grotesque (I've seen the avatar) for "s**ts & giggles"
Get the creative writing going!
P.S. really enjoyed the event (and really need more of them!!!!) but no kudos to the killer whatsoever in my view as it was far too obvious and actually extremely boring... "Please slow down so I can kill you..... I can't keep up".... Lol.
Onwards with the actual mystery....
Yeah. Morons.
Assume a rep +1 please. 07
He is a bit preocupied with RL at the moment. He lurks a bit and says hi on the UA thread, from time to time.
Mary Poppins apparently, but I haven't seen her in game yet.
Only practically perfect.
Sorry...what? We were repeatedly told that only one VIP had to make it to deliver the message. Given the forces arrayed against us, the odds were astronomical that even ONE VIP was going to make it. Hundreds of us organized and fought tooth and nail to try to keep Salome alive. ...And for our efforts (and success! in keeping the other VIPs alive) we get...nothing? I can only say, feeling angry and betrayed, that you never intended her to make it.
But still, what does it mean...
Seems obvious to me. Sirius is behind the advances in technology (mostly because they have access to discovered alien tech) and funded the Dynasty Ships.
Smiling Dog Group is just their not so subtly named covert military arm.
Change that to "a message" and you'll be happier. There were multiple possible outcomes. The alternate universes where Salome made it through are over there ---->.
Edit: And I view this as on topic, I'd actually posted the above thought minus the SDC reference a few days ago. I didn't bother reading the 11 pages of commentary since I went to bed last night. I'd be happy if either the Rift discussion moved to a new thread or the event discussion moved. Either way.
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Ah, come on, you're not surprised though are you? Loads of moaning on the forums was the one outcome of this that could be predicted with 100% accuracy. Happens all the time!
Let's face it, there's only one sensible way to deal with this - I'll PM you with details of the sweepstake and how to get involved!