I just played a Skirm match that for me was possibly the best match I've played to date. We won, and I managed to score 1353 WP, 9084 SP and my share in the pot was 259,250 ISK. My k/a/d was 9/1/2 and I was second on the killboard, to someone with 1417 WP and 15/4 k/d. I played the whole game as a fast scout, hacking objectives, and surprise killing. Yes, I felt dirty. :)

So much for the good stuff. The disturbing part was that when I finally died one of my two deaths, I noticed that I was fighting for the Federal Marines against the State Peacekeepers. For all intents and purposes, I was in a FW match, fighting for the wrong side. I wondered if somehow I had managed to select a FW match rather than pubs, and ended up on the wrong side of the match! I debated leaving the match as I was clearly on the wrong side, if in fact this was a FW match. It had all the hallmarks - my side (Gallente) was stomping the other (Caldari), which is what's happening at the moment, due to all the turncoats (me?), and it was clear that there was significantly less experience in the other side. But I didn't want to give up on what for me was such a good match, so I played to the end, hoping my Caldari standing wouldn't take too much of a hit.

Imagine my surprise and relief then, to discover at the end of the match that it was just a normal pub - no faction standings change, no Gallente LP, just the normal pubs payout. But then I got to thinking. (Never a good thing with me... :) )

What if this was another of CCP's ways of filling matches? Let me be frank. The naive concept some people have that all games are fair goes out the window in an environment where lobby groups and politics are allowed to influence the nature of the game.

So, could this be CCP simply stacking the deck? Putting pubs players into FW games to pad them wouldn't be out of character. I've been told previously that when you choose to fight CFW you fight CFW. But we only know that because the game tells us we do. Why would two FW factions be fighting pubs matches?

Don't misunderstand me - I got a real thrill out of my high scores in this match and I would certainly be happy for them to continue, but I get suspicious when I see that I'm apparently fighting for the other (winning) team. It was clear why we were winning - the other side was pretty ineffectual. But why was I even on the winning side in the first place?

Any ideas?