LateNight®: A Look at the Minmatar Elite, and the Minmatar Militia Caste System

I know I have been talking a lot about faction war lately. It’s kind of hard not to, since I actively participate in faction war. I find it funny that a lot of null-sec pvpers I talk to instantly go “ewwww” when I say I’m in faction war. “Faction war is for nooby carebears trying to pretend to be pvpers.”

Though it is true that there are a lot of noobs in faction war (I’ve admitted this before) not every fw corporation is created equal. This is true anywhere. In all honesty, a lot of my faction war friends go “ewwww” when they hear of someone being in a big 0.0 alliance. To them, null sec pvp is long, boring, laggy fights with huge fleets of mindless lemmings who can’t tie their shoes without the FC’s sayso.

On either side, you have conjecture and major generalization. However, when push comes to shove, it really depends on the corporation you are in as to what kind of pvp you generally do. Every alliance, region, group, etc has its scrubs and its good pvpers. Sometimes to new comers, it can be difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff.



In Minmatar militia, we have a group affectionately called LateNight®. These are a group of pilots that generally segregate themselves from general militia. Though they fight at all times of the day, they are primarily active during the late night/early morning hours of USTZ.

I have flown both against and with LateNight. Back when I was in Amarr militia, we regularly engaged LateNight fleets and grew a sort of friendship with many LateNight members. (One of the best ways to tell about people and their pvp abilities is to fight with them over and over again.) Now that I fly in Minmatar, I fly with a lot of the LateNight members I used to shoot, though not always during their later hours.

There is no official LateNight ‘roster,’ or any official procedure for getting ‘in.’ In general LateNight members keep to separate chat channels, and do not open fleet to general militia members joining.  It is basically a natural defense against the general scrubbiness of general militia, as well as to keep out the Amarr alts and other riffraff.

Inner Minmatar militia politics are kind of interesting to observe, though I’m no expert after being in the militia for less than a month. They have a very definite caste system, which is very different then what I experienced in Amarr. (Amarr tends to be more open toward general militia.) You have your peons and low-lifers, the spy alts, non communicative carebears and general riffraff; your middle of the roaders, the ones who are upcommers, active pvpers, but not really very good; and your LateNight. The major difference between this Minmatar caste system and caste systems in real life social systems is that moving between the different caste levels is a lot easier. If you prove yourself as a pvper, you will generally be accepted by others with the same ability. If you get into one of the higher level corporations and prove to be ridiculous, you’ll probably be banned to scrubhood. (And most likely trolled out of militia altogether. ;)