Crayzkinux has posted a response to our questions, but I am simply in shock. Rather than continue to speak to a brick wall, I posted one comment on his post which of course, may or may not show up.  Yes, there is a deleted comment from me already there, I wanted to correct for typos.

CK,

I have never asked you to help me “get in” with CCP nor do I have that desire. I have asked you one, simple question, over a year ago, and you refused to answer.

Did CCP initiate contact and ask you to run the contests?

You are the ONLY person who refuses to disclose that relationship. I applaud you for taking the time to respond, but yet again, you refuse to disclose the nature of your relationship with CCP.

It’s not a hard question to answer. Heck, Roc of Roc’s Ramblings could answer it as well as everyone who has run a contest. Why can’t him? I leave this up to you.

ADDITIONAL THOUGHT ADDED AFTER POST WAS PUBLISHED:

One final thought. If I am this power hungry person CK makes me out to be in his post, ask yourself, why did I turn over the OPML download work to Mandrill?

Mandrill drops me a line one day, says he’s working on a concept on how to maintain an OPML listing and shares with me what he would like to do. I told him I thought it was awesome and asked how I could help him. I sent him my current listing, introduced him to Black Claw at EVEBloggers.com and shared with him both how we kept each other updated on changes to the listings

After a few weeks I handed over the OPML to Mandrill, he was and still is doing one hell of a job. Do be sure to thank him for his hard work.

I don’t see myself as a leader of this community CK, I see myself as a member. Always have and always will. I don’t want to control everyone nor do I have any aspirations to “be you” nor to be the news breaking journalist of all things CCP. I want to write and to be able to have faith in those who do lead this community. I will always be the first person to say you have done a lot of hard work for us all, but you refused to answer my simple question over a year ago and with this public now, you still refuse.

I had faith in you, trust that you had this communities best interests at heart.  I still feel that at heart you do have everyone’s best interests at heart, but I do question your honesty at times.

I know, it seems that my question seems a bit small in the grand scheme of things and perhaps it is, but to me, knowing the answer removes any doubt in my mind of your intentions and motivations.  The fact that you continue to refuse, for over a year, to put this question to rest, doesn’t instill fury in me.  It disappoints me.  Your the “blog father”, fathers  are, as you well know, honest with their children.

On to more interesting items.

Many of you have asked, am I back?  In a word yes.  I am back from my break.  I will be spending more time once again playing EVE Online and blogging about EVE.  Non-game related topics will continue on my other blog.

Since I have come back to EVE, I will be doing a few things differently.  Before I left, Mandrill had begun work on maintaining an OPML file for the community. Many of you have asked me if I would be picking up those activities if I returned.  Honestly, I don’t see a need to.  Mandrill is doing a wonderful job, he wanted to work the OPML for some time prior to my taking a break and being an IT person, I usually like to not fix things that are not broken.

Our community has a history of stepping up and taking care of itself.  Mandrill has done just that.  Of course, as I come across new blogs, I’m sending both him and Black Claw of EVEBloggers.com messages with new blogs as we had been exchanging in the past.

It’s been a long while we have had a podcast from Winterblink and the Warp Drive Active crew. One of the segments that used to tickle my funny bone was the Fail Mail segment. Urban and Winterblink would both exchange a kill mail that displayed errors in fitting selections and they would decide between the two which was the worst.

I’d like to start that sort of thing up again here. So, this is how it will work. You canl email a link to the kill you think is worthy of a Fail Mail title to me in game.  For clarification, the in game name is spelled Ga’len with the subject Fail Mail. Each Friday I will share with everyone one of the fail mails that will be randomly selected. As your prize for your efforts in addition to receiving name recognition on this blog will be the in game isk value of the cheapest low slot module. Prize isk is provided by me and me alone as this is my gig for now

Eligible kills will only include kills from the month of June 2010 onwards. Kills that were part of Hulkageddon will not be eligible this year as many of those fail mails have already made it out there on various forums. Future Hulkageddons will be eligible.

To kick things off, here’s our first fail mail kill: http://druid.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=6999890

UPDATE: CK finally answered the question. Below is my comment on his blog showing his answer.

Ahh, I see a ninja edit.

As for his accusations that I’m being used by CCP to put forth contests on my blog I’ll say this: in some cases CCP came to me, in others I came to them. But it always been about pointing the spotlight at other EVE Bloggers. Letting “them” win cool EVE swag and having a great time doing so. Is that a crime? How is this malicious on my part?

CK, this is a cool ninja edit, one that was long over due. If only you had answered this a year ago, all this drama could have been avoided.

Thank you for finally answering this question. To answer your two questions, no, it’s not a crime and no, it’s not malicious.

I would suggest that in the future when you run a contest, just let us know if you are doing it on your own or if CCP asks you, okay? If CCP is shelling free prizes, they should get credit for throwing that money at us, right?

Heck, if you are running it on your own and need help with prizes, let us know. I’ll gladly chip in because as you say, it’s about the community.

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Anyway, since I was very busy with the holidays and having been sick, It’s been a while since I’ve done my Friday post.  There was a lot of cool stuff that wanted to share!

• EVE Online broke is Peak Concurrent User (PCU) record! The new record stands at 56, 021!
• Winterblink reported the lovely news that EVE Online was named the Game of the Year by MMORPG.com.
• Ten Ton Hammer named the EVE Online Gaming Community the Best Community for 2009.
• Blog Banter 14 went live, lots to read.  Catch up with the posts.
• Morning Maniac has stepped down as CEO of EVE Univertisy.
• Alexia Morgan’s O.U.C.H. project is coming along quite nicely.  A few of his new corp mates have been blogging about their experiences.  You can catch all the news on this nice little Google Feed.
• Luminus Aardokay and Quivering Palm over at The Planet Risk Show have been posting some good articles for those who are new to the EVE Universe.  They are worth a read for all us vets too.  Always, always read the guides people write.  You never know what new things you can learn from them.
• Hulkageddon II went into full swing and was a great success!  Helicity Boson did a great job this year.  Over 275 billion isk in hulks and related kills occurred this time around.   You can read all about the kills, smacktalk and even some videos at his second blog, aptly named Hulkageddon!

See you out there!

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Ahem, I know, I should lay off the sugar.  After a long hiatus, Winterblink and the Warp Drive Active podcast have returned to the land of the living.  Things are a bit different now as Urban is taking a break.  URBAN!!!!  WE MISS YOU!!!!

This latest podcast is really worth listening to.  I won’t spoil the surprise of the new format, you simply must listen to the show.

Warp Drive Active Podcast Episode #50

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Congrats Winterblink, it’s about time they interviewed you!!!!

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