Nashh Kadavr for CSM

I've been aware of Nashh Kadavr in EVE for longer than I have been blogging. I used to read his blog a long time ago and was fortunate enough to head to his leaving party in 2012. At some point after that he came back to New Eden and took control of The Bastards, a corp which another friend of mine had close connections with. In the past 18 months events conspired to draw The Bastards and Illusion of Solitude closer together. I had the luck to get to know Nashh, first on Teamspeak as we agreed on some joint operations with both our alliances, followed by in person at Fanfest 2015. Nashh is running for CSM on the platform of Lowsec, eSports and Community Meetings.

As long as I've been aware of Nashh he's been a dirty pirate. Lowsec is often seen as an area left forgotten by the developers. Nullsec is seen considered the be-all and end-all of the game with all the development time focussed there. Given the length of time Nashh has in lowsec it's pretty clear he'll push the lowsec opinion across with the force it deserves. Why do I care? Well my alt, Geo, is a dirty pirate who flew with Nashh for over a year. Wormholes are my first love but I do like a bit of lowsec piratey shenanigans too you know. I definitely prefer that to the politicking metagame of nullsec.

The eSports aspect of EVE is something Nashh has been putting good time and effort into. In other games eSports is big business, you only have to look at the spectacle of some League of Legends tournaments to see that. EVE is sorely lagging behind in this aspect with only the annual Alliance Tournament well known. People also know that tournament has a high bar to gain entry with alliances spending tens of billions of ISK. This year we also had the Amarr succession trials and Nashh is part of a team which organises the successful #EVE_NT Collides tournament. If EVE is to make headway into the eSports arena properly we need more of these tournaments and this needs CCPs help to make happen.

The Community side of things is also something close to Nashh as he organises the twice-yearly #EVE_NT meetup in Nottingham. I went in November last year and had a great time. I was rather wasted by the end and spent a slightly sobering night trying to remember where my hotel was. In my opinion CCP are pretty good at supporting these events. I tried, unsuccessfully, to start a regular pub gathering in Edinburgh and CCP advertised my event and sent down some swag. Nashh is looking to push this further and make it even simpler for players to organise their own events. As far as I know EVE is pretty unique in the level of out of game gatherings players organise. Encouraging and facilitating people to start more of them can only lead to great things for all of us.

His platform aside, Nashh is a mental bag of energy who probably needs a term on the CSM to crush that energy from him. Everyone seems to come out the other side of a term serving in the CSM destroyed. If you vote for Nashh he should have the energy to last most, if not all, of the year without burning out. Hell, if this outgoing CSM is anything to go by he could be the only one left on it by 2017!