EVE Online/YMMV

"We're CCP! We march on fearlessly!
 * Acceptable Religious Targets: The Amarrians are essentially megalomaniac Catholics who want to rule the galaxy.
 * Acceptable Targets: Players who avoid PvP, not-so-affectionately dubbed "carebears".
 * Roleplayers, despite the game in theory being an RPG. While dulled with the collapse of the last roleplayer-held space in 0.0, as they are no longer conveniently located to attack, it still comes up.
 * And the Fandom Rejoiced: Opinions were split over the disbandment of BoB and Goonswarm. A massive segment of 0.0 players belonged to Goonswarm, BoB, or their respective allies and vassals. Both have bounced back fairly quickly under different names, after lots of land changing hands.
 * Most players rejoiced at the removal of Learning skills, which were largely cited as making new characters not-fun.
 * Time dilation, which finally fixed the massive lag that accompanies giant battles.
 * Author's Saving Throw: The response to Aurum was so vitriolic that CCP has essentially started to slowly back away and pretend it never existed.
 * Canon Sue: Jamyl Sarum, an odd mix of God Mode and Purity Sues. Beautiful? Check. Popular? Check. Wise? Check. Respected by almost everyone? Check. Has command of the most powerful of the four empires? Check. Destroys an entire Republic armada by herself? Check. Has mystical super-powers in an otherwise non-fantasy world? Check. Got away with subverting one of the most sacred laws of the Empire's religion when the entire Empire is based on religion? More than once, and nobody openly called her on it. She also reunited the Amarr Empire and the Khanid Kingdom, which had been separate for centuries prior, in about a month. There's even rumors that the last Emperor, the one chosen in an event the players participated in and had influence, was deliberately killed off because he was not Jamyl Sarum, to open the path for her return. The Amarr Empire as a whole seems to have deprived themselves of the Idiot Ball they'd been carrying for years (for the most part) since her return; everybody's acting smarter.
 * Complete Monster: Any Capsuleer (player character) that isn't a Heroic Sociopath.
 * Sansha.
 * Also, the leader and upper management of any larger player corporation is essentially forced to become one of these just to survive. Of course if there are no other viable options, are they really monsters?
 * Crowning Moment of Awesome: Not so much individual characters (though they exist if you read the literature) but the game itself. Not just the aforementioned player-generated ones, but also stuff like this in the wake of a huge doomsday prophesy.
 * Crowning Moment of Magnificent Bastardry - Goonswarm disbanding BoB.
 * And Kartoon, Goon's CEO, freezing all of Goons' dreadnaught cache, removing all director roles, kicking every corp from the Goonswarm alliance except the wallet corp and the supercapital corp, and put the "Goonfleet" corp into the Band of Brothers alliance whose name they stole almost exactly a year before. The new Goon corporation is Goonwaffe and their alliance is "SOLODRAKBANSOLODRAKBANSO[LODRA]" Over all, he stole more then a trillion in ISK.
 * Kartoon also self-destructed some of the Goon dreadnaughts, though in his defense some of them were named names that when put together, read "seriously, fuck you kartoon, and niart too." Niart being the guy who forgot to pay the bills. Here's a pic of the destruction.
 * Crowning Moment of Funny: This gem from Fanfest 2009.

Excellent is what we strive to be!

If you're going to follow us to the top

HARDEN THE FUCK UP!"

""A TEST freighter flew unescorted and unscouted to deliver critical aid in the form of exotic dancers.""
 * TEST Alliance's aid flotilla to the members of OWN, in which TEST stirred up a ton of drama by providing reimbursement to OWN pilots who were being underpaid and overtaxed by OWN leadership (despite the alliance controlling 6 undisclosed tech moons) and had to overpay for rifters. OWN imposed a no contact policy between its pilots and TEST pilots and blamed Goonswarm, despite the fact the the goons had nothing to do with the drama and remain neutral.


 * To be honest, TEST Alliance in and of itself are like a walking (flying?) fleet of CMOF's waiting to happen; during a patch update sometime in November 2010, they put up TCU's over the long downtime, gaining sov in something like 14 systems with no effort at all. To clarify for non-EVE players, the TCU's require time to come online (8 hours, to be exact), and that means a fleet usually has to defend the TCU for those 8 hours lest someone else comes in with their own fleet to destroy it. However, by onlining over downtime, nobody was able to log on to destroy them, and CCP deemed this an exploit and removed all the units, causing cries of favoritism and whatnot. TEST claims this was all a massive troll aimed at getting that exact reaction. Hilarity Ensued.
 * Crowning Moment of Heartwarming: When Curatores Veritatis Alliance was disbanded by a hacker, fleets from all over came to their home region to protect it, even their sworn enemies, Ushra'Khan. On the forums, people from UK hoped that CCP would reverse the disbanding (which they did) because, although they want to win and see CVA gone, they want to do it fairly: by beating the snot out of them.
 * Crowning Music of Awesome: Eve has an impressive soundtrack to help along jumping, 'rat killing, ship management, and etc. A few standout examples are below.
 * This track and the other four uploaded by the user.
 * I Saw Your Ship Slow start, but then it turns into a great skirmish track 50 seconds in.
 * Below the Asteroids is a player favorite.
 * As is Nouvelle Rouvenor Hero.
 * Andafewmoreawesomesongs.
 * Little Bees, the Goonswarm Newbee Ballad. Now with live version, to boot.
 * We Fight Proud For The Holder
 * HARDEN! THE! FUCK! UP!
 * Demonic Spiders: The Sleepers. They automatically switch targets to any ship emitting assistance beams for armor/shield/energy/hull, their frigates will switch targets to attack any drones launched. They even metagame, staging the NPC equivalent of a logon trap for capital ships.
 * On a more meta level -- other players. Just ask anyone who has ever been surprised by Suddenly, Ninjas or a surprise gate camp.
 * Dork Age: For many people, Crucible marks the end of EVE's Dork Age as CCP refocuses on Internet Spaceships while simultaneously removing many players from their rusted claustrophobic Minmatar quarters. Depending on who you ask, it began as far back as Apocrypha. Other popular answers are that the Dork Age began with Tyrannis or that Incarna was not a climax but the entirety of the Dork Age.
 * Fan Dumb: Typically averted in the long term since EVE has high entry-level demands on a player's intelligence. Accusations often fly in regards to unpopular mechanics/lag but of late CCP has been forced by the Council of Stellar Management to admit that they have problems. If you really want Fan Dumb in EVE, however, check out the politics game. Alliances will have dedicated supporters who claim that all is well right up until the point they dissolve. Individual major players in alliances will usually have an array of apologists for their boneheaded decisions. Sometimes, it stretches down to small corps.
 * Freud Was Right: The Phobos class heavy interdictor, while all ships based off the Thorax hull look like "Marital Aids", the Phobos stands out because it's pink!
 * The Gallenteans are generally suggested to be quite libidinous.
 * Also this picture. Nothing more need be said.
 * Goddamned Bats: NPCs have the Spider Drone. Players have the infinitely more frustrating ECM drones.
 * The player ones are flimsy. The Spider Drone is Made of Iron.
 * Good Bad Bugs: Capital ships warp at an angle.
 * Internet Backdraft: Their were in-game protests—which ended up locking down major market hubs on the busiest day of the week—during the Incarna expansion, over a leaked internal newsletter.
 * This came on the heels of fury over CCP's plans to begin licensing their API. Only developers who wanted to monetize their work would be charged a fee ($99 US), but the community reacted as if CCP was about to drain their bank accounts, burn their houses, and suck their children's blood.
 * An official reaction from CCP Zulu devblog pretty much crossed the line, admonishing players and making a very dubious analogy with a $1000 pair of Japanese designer jeans... Cue the uproar of the community and account cancellations.
 * Magnificent Bastard (Everyone involved in doing this.)
 * Although there is a strong contender in the Goonswarm spy who got director control of Band of Brothers, collapsing the largest and oldest alliance in EVE and unleashing a Critical Existence Failure on their sovereign holdings in space.
 * This one?
 * A player made off with 300 million isk (archive link, since the original is off the net), using a set of Sock Puppets and one well-timed phone call, and the What Have I Done moment at the end makes it even better.
 * A user named Cally created a full blown bank in the game, ran it for MONTHS, then finally stole ALL of his clients hard earned money (790 BILLION ISK)...then spent it on a massive warship, put a huge bounty on himself and dared the rest of the game to take him down. And then made a 15 minute long video of Evil Gloating. Basically he became the EVE equivalent of a Bond villain, albeit a successful one.
 * Memetic Mutation:
 * That's a Templar!
 * Because of FALCON!
 * Concordokken!
 * Honour-tank.
 * Real men Hull Tank.
 * Poitot! It's the only named system in syndicate!
 * Hero Tank!
 * MY RAVEN WAS EQUIPPED WITH THE FOLLOWING:
 * A really bad fitting on a ship not particularly suited for the mission, then he kept repeating that post over and over again (the latter not actually being his fault -- he got up from the computer and came back to find his son banging on the keyboard).
 * SOON? (When referring to if promised content will ever be released/bugs fixed).
 * HAVE A BIG GLASS OF PEPSI
 * Harden. The. Fuck. Up.
 * Military experts are calling this a Memetic Mutation example
 * It Makes Sense in Context (the Scope is a civilian news channel in-universe after all), but since the players are familiar with it, well...
 * The meme has now Ascended with a login ad about soaring PLEX prices saying "Market experts are calling this an opportunity."
 * eBay. Mentioned anytime a player obviously has more ISK than brains. (Even though he likely funded it with the legal GTC market.)
 * We didn't want that starbase/system/titan/alliance anyway.
 * I TOO FEEL COMPELLED TO TROLL THE FORUMS
 * I TOO ROLEPLAY THAT I SUCK DICK
 * Failguns and Roflockets.
 * Recent changes to mechanics, proposed or implemented, by force this meme to change.
 * The $70 monocle in Eve's cash shop, which has been adopted by many as the symbol of the Noble Exchange controversy, to the point of the issue being termed the "Monoclepocalypse" by the playerbase. Expect to see it shopped into a lot of image macros in any Eve forum, blog, or news article until (and possibly long after) the madness dies down a bit.
 * The Dr. Evil picture, used whenever someone is accusing The Mittani of a conspiracy to RUIN THE GAME.
 * Moral Event Horizon: A major spaceholding alliance will always be on the far side of the Moral Event Horizon by capsuleer standards, or about to die to someone who is. Individual capsuleers make it to the far side by normal standards just by completing the tutorial.
 * Scams and other griefer tactics which dissuade people from participating in charity fundraising events held in-game are one of the few things CCP will never tolerate.
 * Most Annoying Sound: "Warp Drive Active". "Those items are not stackable". "You cannot warp because you are warp scrambled"
 * Your capacitor is empty.
 * *BZZZZZ* The klaxon that sounds when your hull falls below a set % of health.
 * Most Wonderful Sound: "Skill training completed." This is the closest equivalent to the "ding!" of level-based MMORPGs, thanks to Eve's time-based skill-leveling system. Can cross over to Most Annoying Sound if you're training a lot of level 1 skills (which typically only take a few minutes to a bit more than a half-hour to train), though.
 * Nightmare Fuel: The Blood Raiders, the "Methods of Torture" chronicles...
 * "Mindlock", which is what happens when someone who is incapable of using capsule technology (ie 99.9999% of the population) tries to do so - they go into a vegetative state, totally aware of their surroundings, but incapable of any sort of movement or communication.
 * Actually ANY of the methods of torture chronicles are this the Caldari one seems to be the most insidious.
 * When you want to delete a character, you will be asked to confirm with "Are you sure you want to convert this character to biomass?" If you select yes, you will be treated to sounds of heavy machinery, followed by screaming.
 * Try not to think too hard about what the Amarr Empire did to Aritcio Kor-Azor at the end of the Speaker of Truths chronicle. What they tell you is nightmare fuel enough. He got better, though, and became a better ruler for it.
 * Ruined FOREVER: Every single patch, expansion pack, dev blog, new payment option, spat of alliance drama, influx of new players, or minor fluctuation in the average temperature of Iceland is heralded as the death of EVE.
 * The latest would be Dust 514, an online FPS that will be designed to interact directly with Eve itself. That means victories and defeats in Dust 514 having a real impact on things going on up in capsuleer space. Cue some capsuleers lamenting that their space sovereignty might soon depend on mouth-breathing Halo fanboys, as this would be how they view any potential FPS community.
 * And to be completely honest, what really got up a lot of EVE players' noses was the announcement that Dust 514 would be a console exclusive game, when EVE is about as PC as games can get.
 * Incarna added vastly overpriced vanity items buyable for real money. Cue players trying to shut down the Jita system in protest.
 * Scrappy Mechanic: The Apocrypha probing system has drawn criticism both for "scrubbing down" probing and for adding Fake Difficulty in sorting through scan results. Some of these concerns, especially about Fake Difficulty, have been addressed in patches since then, however.
 * Prior to Apocrypha, the challenge wasn't in button-pressing. It was in creating an efficient set of bookmarks that properly covered every planet in every system that you wanted to scan... without the ability to place one probe inside of another's scan radius. Depending on skills, you also had a long and boring wait for results. And the incarnation of scanning before that was also Scrappy.
 * Faction Warfare has been getting a lot of Scrappy hate lately. It started out promising, but after two years of almost no mechanics changes, some half-broken fixes, a rather boring capture mechanic and a few Game Breaker issues, the players who want to like it are getting fed up and the players who don't snipe at others to go play the real game in 0.0.
 * Generally, almost every major update, one or more new Scrappy Mechanics will emerge as old ones get fixed or nerfed and new things are introduced. Nano Tanking, Black Ops, Blasters, Warp Stabalizers...
 * Scrub: Some alliances think that spying on their enemies is a cheap move; they don't do it, and they complain when they get beaten by alliances that do use spies.
 * Squick: . He's not healthy, you know.
 * "Stop Having Fun!" Guys: Alliance warfare is Serious Business. This led to Band of Brothers's undoing. A senior BoB member grew so tired of its overly serious mentality he betrayed them to a rival group, Goonswarm, stealing over 20 billion isk in assets and dissolving the BoB alliance.
 * That One Level: Jita, the largest trade hub which is often so overcrowded that death by lag is commonplace there.
 * Jita has the dubious honour of being the only high-security system marked in the player-made sovereignty maps displaying who owns territory - with a gigantic, ominous black cloud.
 * Wham Day: The Day The Cluster Stood Still. GoonSwarm, the largest and most notorious alliance in EVE, spontaneously collapsed on 3rd February, 2010.
 * What an Idiot!: KenZoku, formerly Band of Brothers, was dealt a serious blow during the war in Delve, when they docked the entire cap fleet in the same station and logged off, whereupon Goonswarm promptly locked it down for nearly the entire month of February 2009. This happened.