style="font-style: italic;">From an outsider's perspective,
one might think that this would be easy. EVE is a game, and games are
fun, right? But this is EVE, and the bleeding-edge of alliance warfare
is often deadly boring if not an exercise in outright masochism. The
core mechanic of conquerable space, which is to say placing, defending,
or destroying player-owned starbase (POS, 'pos warfare') is widely
acknowledged - even by its aficionados - as being about as entertaining
as engaging in a little 'freestyle dentistry' on oneself with a claw
hammer. Due to the magic of strontium clathrates, players get to enjoy
this delightful hobby at a time chosen by their enemy - usually at an
ungodly hour in another timezone requiring that players set an alarm
clock before having the privilege of applying hammer to tooth.