Rebranding - Reloaded

As mentioned in my last blog, the alliance formerly known as Band of Brothers (BoB) and then briefly as KenZoku (or Kenny to its many detractors) has had its name formally changed to Band of Brothers Reloaded. This follows the incident when a Band of Brothers Director switched allegiance to Goonswarm and in the process disbanded the old BoB alliance. In the immediate aftermath Goons created an 'alt' alliance with the Band of Brother's name, preventing Band of Brother's from officially reclaiming the name.

The Band of Brothers Reloaded rebrand has caused quite an uproar in the world of EVE as GM's have in the past been extremely reticent in allowing alliances to change name (or even change parts of their names). In this particular case a number of the rules which have been applied to prevent name changes in the past were apparently put aside by the GM's. This has led to calls for the alliance to be disbanded!

Now as followers of the world of EVE may recall CCP (the game's developer) was embroiled in a bit of a scandal a few years ago when it turned out one of the development team (who was playing the game) spawned a number of rare items for his alliance at the time - which just so happened to be Band of Brothers.

This latest incident of apparent official support/favouritism for an ingame alliance has therefore stirred gigantic emotions - even if the ingame consequences of the alliance name change has no significant ingame effect on anyone playing EVE.

CCP did issue a statement:

GM Grimmi

Yesterday we changed the name of the alliance KenZoku to Band of Brothers Reloaded as the result of a petition by their leadership. It has come to our attention that this was not a popular decision among some of our players and we’d like to take this opportunity to address those issues.

We have previously changed names provided a petition was created within a reasonable timeframe and the situation warranted such action. The leadership of KenZoku/Band of Brothers did petition us immediately after they were disbanded and their name was taken. While we worked on the petition for about two months we do not feel that they should suffer because of that. Having them disband and lose sovereignty again was not deemed appropriate in this case.

This action was limited to changing their name, as we have done before for others - we did not assist them in regaining their sovereignty after the Band of Brothers alliance was disbanded, nor did we assist with that now. Any other corporation or alliance finding themselves in the same situation would get the same treatment.

GM Grimmi
Lead Game Master

Many are disputing this CCP statement and have quoted historical examples where other alliances have not enjoyed the same treatment that BoBR seem to have received in this instance. Clearly the accusations that CCP favours BoBR over other ingame alliances has only been strengthened by this latest incident!

Less seriously, it turns out that when Band of Brothers Reloaded is turned into an acronym it becomes BOBR. While this may not seem that amusing to English speakers it turns out that bobr = beaver in Russian (and EVE has a large Russian player base). As a result Band of Brothers Reloaded is already being called the 'Beaver' alliance by many of its numerous detractors.

Others have also pointed out that the 'Reloaded' in the name is a clear reference to the Matrix sequels - sequels which have been widely condemned as being a lot worse than the original!

I don't think this 'rebrand' is likely to win any marketing awards in the near future!

For more commentary on this check out the following two blogs:

Casiella's - Controversy Reloaded

Kirith Kodachi’s - What’s In A Name