Once, we had a war with Andy's corp. This war only amounted to one battle. We had to fly halfway across highsec space to get that battle because he was too lazy to meet us halfway. He used TWO neutral logistics cruisers to support his two Domis vs. our BC gang. It was an unwinnable engagement from the outset. And of course, he twists the knife about this every chance he gets, IC and OOC.
However, pvp happened, fun was had, and from now until the servers shut down, Havohej must bear the disgust of having been defeated by someone he despises so much. He must also bear the shame of having to admit to it should it ever come up IC, and it has a couple of times. (OOC, I don't care that he won any more than I care that Ayallah killed my Firetail with her Wolf... it's pixels).
I recall this happening, thought not all the details. The Two logi's were two IRL friends of mine who happened to be around, and I, IIRC was in Andy's corp at the time. At least I think that's how it went. Just like it up to you to provide your fun, it's up to others to do what they can to win their fights. You decced, a fight was had. Why rush off to face you on your turf, after all you decced Andreus and he as well as me were elsewhere doing other things. We waited for you to show in what was our turf at that time. And you did.
You weren't involved, unless it was under some name other than BloodBird.
You weren't in MXD in 2010.Curse, Myrm, Hurricane vs. 3x RR Domi, two of them neutral, one of them Andy, plus neutral Logi cruisers.
Despite your having had absolutely nothing to do with it, I will address your bullshit about "why should [he] rush off to fight [me]" - the answer is, because he ran his mouth on the IGS about what a great warrior he was and how he was going to teach us a lesson and hurr durr this and hurr durr that, but turned out to be either too cheap or too much of a bitch to push the wardec button. So we added his insignificant little non-content-generating FW corp to our list of decs expecting him to actually follow through on the threats and smacktalk. Didn't expect him to hide 30 jumps away in highsec (not even in the FW warzone, mind you) and exploit shitty game mechanics. More fool us (Du'uma Fiisi) for trying to go and have gud fites.
Beyond this I agree with your reasoning for the most part. I don't want to get involved with non-entities either - by that I mean, if the toon I'm interacting with is just a cheap mouth-piece practically smacking from the safety of a station or such, then what's the point? Block, mute, ignore, move on and find more legit players to interact with. If at all possible, if I'm having any kind of RP relationship with anyone, it should be someone that actively plays the game, and though you can technically play the game from inside the station, I'd hazard a guess that some 90% + of the game's content require you to undock and do something, somewhere, for some reason.
Run your mouth from in station all you like. If nothing is happening in space your coms will be muted and BB will go on with his stuff as if nothing had happened.
Or this would happen, if I still played the game at this point.
Finally, I would like to point out a separate but similar issue:
It goes a little something like this:
Do something that others don't like.
Receive criticism for this action and get called out on it.
Claim that the criticism is irrelevant and worthless unless the critics - who are in groups you vastly outnumber and outgun - declares war on you to 'legitimize their opinions'.
Now, there is a difference between hollow mouth-pieces spewing stuff from a position that will never be endangered because it's all on the forums or in-game chat and the opponent never leaves their dock and have no intention of doing so - and flaunting your higher power around at others who are actively doing other things, and then claiming that anything they may have to say about you that is not positive needs war-decs to be "legit".
Especially jarring when you know full well that these characters may have vastly different goals and desires, or are already busy with other things, and thus would not deck you from an IC stand-point.
I point this out to clarify that I agree that blatant no-substance characters that never do anything don't deserve to get interacted with because, frankly, if the toon's whole existence is angry words on EVE-O etc. it's not much to interact with, it's just forum drama, but on the flip-side not everyone will be interested in interacting with you in space even if they can, because in some cases the balance of relative power is vastly different and from an IC and OOC point of view it's foolish to engage in battle with this vastly more powerful entity, even if your character is one who would IC make their opinion regarding your IC actions clear.
All that words is all good and well. Characters that do stuff have their own things going on, aye. They should focus on the things they have going on. If they want to say "oh ur so bad for do dis things u do" that's fine. If they want to start smack talking about kills and combat skillz (which was the provocation for deccing Mixed Metaphor in 2010), they should either a: be prepared to do things in space or b: keep their ever loving mouth shut.
