Scope Works, The Scope Project, and CAS

I continue to keep my eyes open for interesting organizations that look to nurture fun without the griefing and tear collecting BS that has been all too visible in Eve this last year.  It is part of what my version of Ganker Bumping is all about -- enjoying Eve while countering and/or avoiding the negativity provoked by some of the more dubious Eve ganksters.

I'd thus like to take a moment to mention a few organizations that have popped up into my field of vision recently.  Information on these organizations is not the easiest to find, and I actually had to hunt around the Internet and on various forums to collect some of the details, and I'm still missing a lot.  For whatever reason, most Eve organizations/corporations seem to lack a central public home on the web like you would find for most guilds in other MMOs, requiring much more effort to find and assess them.

The Scope Project

The other day, a curious character named Vapor Ventrillian mentioned The Scope Project in the Anti-ganking channel.  Vapor leads The Scope Project and has an interesting flair to him.  Some seem to find him offputting while others enjoy his whimsical nature.  The Scope Project has no corporation; instead, it is an organization of people with a common interest and a shared set of chat channels whose members may be in non-player corporations, one man corporations, or other player corporations.  In Vapor's words, "its about having the freedom while benefitting from a collective. So you can succeed where normally you could not against a strong collective.  it is finding the balance between the two..." (1) .  I have also heard him talk in game that it is about bringing together people from all walks in Eve to go have fun while avoiding unsavory politics.  As far as what they have up and running, I found this (2) :

we have lowsec roams in place NPSI
we have mining ops in place-highsec atm
we recruit explorers to gain us intell on pilot movements as the see it
we recruited awoxers to disrupt corps that attempt to undermine the project
we have more spias then anyone else because hell...its the Scope

All told, I find this organization intriguing but I do have some concerns about it.  In particular, it appears as though they are not opposed to destroying other corporations by awoxing from within.  While I am willing to let spying slide, I have a personal opposition to awoxing that defaces a corporation or steals it's assets.  I know some people believe this is acceptable in the world of Eve, but I do not agree, and I would not want to be associated with an organization that engages in such activity.  It is far too close to just hacking people's accounts to steal their assets.  It is unclear exactly how far The Scope Project takes this activity.

Scope Works

This is a rather interesting organization led by a seemingly angry character named Anslo.  If you look through his forum posts on the Eve forums, you will find a link to https://proveldtariat.wordpress.com/.  But stop there, as that site does not appear to be what Scope Works currently is, and it hasn't had a blog post in a very long time.  But it appears to be where the Scope Works got it's start, from what I can tell.  The Proveldtariat seemed oriented primarily towards miners and casual gamers who wanted to organize against bumpers and gankers and was another organization that did not have an in-game alliance or corporation.  But they appear to have evolved over the last couple of years.

What are they now?  A fairly recent recruiting post by Anskek (probably an alias of Anslo) on eve-inpiracy.com had this to say (3) :

WHAT WE DO:
-Medium+ gang sized pvp
-PvE fleets for SHEKELS
-Capital/BLOPS
-SRP
-Professional Haberdashery lessons
-Shenanigan Ops

WHAT WE NEED
-5 mil SP minimum
-Members who love GOOOOOOOOOOOOLD
-Proactive Nerds (be an expert in something in Eve, Teach Nerds, Lead Nerds, talk with Corp, don't just be solo all the time)
-Willingness to Learn (If you welp a thing and learn from it, good. If you welp a thing and don't learn, stop being bad)
-Thick skin

That seems pretty far removed from The Proveldtariat.  And they now have a corporation, Scope Works, and an alliance, Psychotic Tendencies..  The killboards show mostly low sec and some null sec activity.  The alliance has what could only be described as a spam-ish description and web site.  But the corporation seems okay from what I can tell, and if they have stayed true to their origins, it could be a great organization.

CAS

Finally, a quick mention of CAS.  I've seen people mention it, but I still have no idea what it is.  I just know it's sometimes mentioned as related when talking about Scope Works and/or The Scope Project. 

It might be this (4) :  Center for Advanced Studies' nullsec NPSI fleet

Or it might be this (5) :  CAS Corporation, some kind of new player organization.

Could those be the same thing?  Hell if I know.  All I know is, they need better advertising, as I can't figure out who or what they are even when I'm trying to.