I'm sorry, this is just one of my worst pet peeves in EVE and I desperately need to voice it.
FW corporations are NOT pirates.
FW corps are privateers .
There's a goddamn difference. They do a pirate's job, legally.
Nitpicking; I'm not entirely sure any of these terms can apply to anyone in EVE. Piracy - attacking and commandeering vessels for the sake of material gain at the expense of the victim. In EVE, that would translate to forcing players to eject and stealing the ship/cargo, but in practical sense this nearly never happens - mostly it's ransoms, or destruction of ship for loot, in place of/despite ransom payment.
Privateering is merely the above with 'legal right' from one entity towards another.
IIRC a letter of marque allowed a privateer to pirate faction X on behalf of Y - in EVE, basic militia membership is as close to privateering as you get, but I do wonder if not the term sanctioned para-military force is closer. After all, the empires don't tell you to fight the other's merchant traffic, but to fight their militias. Do the terms pirate, privateer or even militia apply properly to FW? This may be a subject for another time and place.
/Nitpicking.
On a more on-topic subject, I'll say this again, in a simplified and 90% less rant-filled way, this time.
- Piracy has no proper counter and the play-style of opposing them is woefully lacking to the point of effectively not existing. This leads to no serious opposition in general and makes low-sec more boring because the only real counter to pirates are what eventually becomes pirates themselves, at the very least in game-play terms.
- The militias are not an effective counter because they too suffer under the same conditions as any non-militia anti-pies, this gives pirates an edge over any militia members concerned over their sec-rating and thier access to high-sec. The basic problem with low-sec persists.
- Alliances joining FW will eventually not fix any of FW's problems on their own and make the problem* of low-sec worse - quantity of people changes nothing in general, not the underlying issues with FW and not the low-sec problem, it merely boosts the quantity of actions; more militia people, more piracy etc. etc. There is also the concern of any 0.0 power-blocks leaving 0.0 for FW, joining whatever faction and severely unbalancing the entire thing. Far more than has already happened, at least.
*The low-sec 'problem' as such is the balance of people in it - if there were no way to pirate or aggressively engage with non-war targets things would be horribly stale and boring, as only null-sec would be a viable don't-need-a-dec-to-fight place to be. On the other hand, there is little to no reason NOT to pirate because in it's basic form 'piracy' - or merely aggressive, non-WT/sanctioned attacks - are a means to removing potential dangers to your self/corp/alliance. Anti-pies have a major problem; while perma-flashers are ever-legit targets its easy to tap-dance on the flashy-line or simply use alts or friends who are not flashy to stage ambushes, recon and logistical help to the perma-flashers. Pirates have the upper hand in pretty much every situation simply because the anti-pies limit themselves and practically offer openings for their foes to exploit. Thanks to the ability to use multiple characters and/or allied players who can access high-sec there really are no reason not to pirate in low-sec, much the same as NRDS is a very impractical, if noble and 'ehonor' idea in null - not so much in low-sec.
Several ideas have been offered in the past to try and fix this underlying issue or make it less severe, but it remains to be seen if CCP ever tackles this problem. In the meantime, FW will soon see alliances with the option of joining and it's extremely likely that this will reinforce the problem quite badly. well, from my point of view, at least.
In short, to clarify my stance; I'm not asking for or seeking the end of piracy or whatnot, I'd like there to be viable, functional options in low-sec to pirating. I don't care for piracy myself but that don't mean I've some kind of agenda vs pirate players or anything, I am not out to go all 'your doing it wrong' or disagree with the play-style. I simply want an alternative, and I'm disappointed that FW was a broken 'alternative' to it, especially now when it will likely stop functioning entirely.
