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For those who haven't heard of eve-online, it's a space based sandbox MMO where you "level up" in real time regardless of whether you are playing or not. Because of it's sandbox nature the entire game is essentially PvP. Even if you avoid combat pvp you're still combating against others through the player-driven economy. The content is basically all player driven and eve-online is the only MMO that I know of that has consistently improved since release.

It's hard for me to not talk about all the good things eve does, but I'll stop and let someone else pimp it if they want. Also anyone with an active eve account can give unlimited 14day free trials to people.

Interstellar Trade is my specialty!

You should try EVE Online then. It's a space MMO with a single server (you play on the same server as every other player in the world) where your characters level while you're not even logged in.*

*I am not affiliated with CCP beyond playing their game.

People are already planning this.

You can absolutely guarantee that the game will become ESRB rated "M" in VERY short order, with a full writeup in games magazines, and pointless ranting by Jack Thompson.

What about Eve Online? http://www.eve-online.com/ That is getting closer to your description above.

BoB actually got cut down a little recently. Their (allegedly) tame mercenary allies recently carved a region out of BoB's territory and other alliances are battering away at their defenses. My alliance (the SMASHKILL group) spent the winter holidays in BoB space taking a whack at the system that links Delve to Fountain. They held it, but it took two titans and four motherships to do it.

Here's a current territory map, this updates daily to show gains and losses in sovereignty. As you can see, BoB no longer controls half of 0.0. In fact, Goonswarm seems to be the big guys right now.

And Red Alliance (the Ruskies) may farm a lot, but they're vicious pvpers too. In EVE you can grind or farm your way to riches, but successful pvpers can make money off of their kills, and contribute to an actual change in the political map. Screw raiding WoW-style, I like my raids to mess up somebody's starbase.

Lastly, like WoW EVE is a free download and has a 21-day trial. It'll even be on Steam soon.

CCP is releasing their new update patch for Trinity next week. I don't think I've ever seen a software release patch notes that end with the disclaimer "Please note: No Windows System files were harmed during the creation or deployment of this patch."

While it's nice to know the technical reasons for problem, it still does not answer why they failed to take note of this problem when it was originally reported and discussed on the beta server's message board two days before the expansion hit the live servers.

It's in the eight post of this thread.

Don't believe everything you hear from profiteering companies.
From CCP'S forums...

http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=658000

Cosmo Raata "quote"

"Only question I have, is WHY THE F do you put up a phone# for someone in the US to call, ask them to leave a message and never call them back????!!! I needed assistance and ended up relying on help from someone else after waiting too long, as I had filed I needed and just couldn't wait for you. Kind of pathetic if you ask me. I was impressed that you'd offer to take calls, but you proved that it was only a fake gesture to cover your asses.

P.S. You still haven't called (6 days later)."

UPDATE ON BOOT.INI PREMIUM UPGRADE ISSUE reported by CCP kieron | 2007.12.06 18:48:22 | NEW Shortly after the Trinity upgrade went public, an issue was discovered concerning the premium graphics update, an optional feature available to those with compatible hardware and software. Apparently this resulted in a number of users experienced difficulty loading some programs on their PCs. We immediately took action to prevent this problem from spreading and took every measure available to ensure that all users became aware of the issue and the simple steps needed to correct it. Despite the actions taken on our part to guarantee a playable experience for all users, certain individuals began posting thousands of complaints on the official Eve Online discussion board. This deluge also happened to coincide with the December 6th holiday, ensuring minimal presence of an already overworked staff that looked forward to a well-earned break. I want to express my appreciation and gratitude to all CCP employees who spent their morning dealing with these complaints, whatever their merit. In addition to the software complaints, many players have unfortunately made statements regarding the necessity of disciplinary action toward the developers responsible for the boot.ini oversight. I want to make one thing clear. No one is going to be fired in response to these glitches. The developer who signed off on the premium upgrade installer received a stern talking-to in the summer of 2006, and it has always been our policy not to punish an employee more than once. However, he has asked me to allow him to directly address the concerned customers and will do so in the devblog here: http://myeve.eve-online.com/news.asp?a=single&nid=1689&tid=1&sid=1059215547

Pretty standard PR speak, however the dev responsible, T20, posted a response which in many ways is downright scary in its hubris. For those who don't know, this is the same dev that was caught cheating and set off the huge scandal a couple months ago.

AN APOLOGY CONCERNING THE BOOT.INI CONFUSION reported by CCP t20 | 2007.12.06 19:01:08 | NEW The last several hours have been difficult for me, as I was required at the last moment to cancel a vacation that I have been planning for several weeks. But I feel it is important to address the problems that have arisen, regardless of whose fault they may ultimately turn out to be. I also want to express my sincerest regrets for the inconvenience associated with these events, although the glitch only affected a small minority of systems and even those which were affected could be fixed with no permanent damage in a matter of minutes with a quick fix familiar to all those who routinely maintain their systems. I am particularly disappointed by the effect this has had on users who, for reasons of their own, neglected to keep their Windows XP recovery CD with their equipment. I know that there are many of you who did not purchase a pirated copy of Windows but still had trouble of this nature. It is unfortunate that all of these factors combined to form a "perfect storm" of difficulties. Most of all, I want

UPDATE ON BOOT.INI PREMIUM UPGRADE ISSUE reported by CCP kieron | 2007.12.06 18:48:22 | NEW Shortly after the Trinity upgrade went public, an issue was discovered concerning the premium graphics update, an optional feature available to those with compatible hardware and software. Apparently this resulted in a number of users experienced difficulty loading some programs on their PCs. We immediately took action to prevent this problem from spreading and took every measure available to ensure that all users became aware of the issue and the simple steps needed to correct it. Despite the actions taken on our part to guarantee a playable experience for all users, certain individuals began posting thousands of complaints on the official Eve Online discussion board. This deluge also happened to coincide with the December 6th holiday, ensuring minimal presence of an already overworked staff that looked forward to a well-earned break. I want to express my appreciation and gratitude to all CCP employees who spent their morning dealing with these complaints, whatever their merit. In addition to the software complaints, many players have unfortunately made statements regarding the necessity of disciplinary action toward the developers responsible for the boot.ini oversight. I want to make one thing clear. No one is going to be fired in response to these glitches. The developer who signed off on the premium upgrade installer received a stern talking-to in the summer of 2006, and it has always been our policy not to punish an employee more than once. However, he has asked me to allow him to directly address the concerned customers and will do so in the devblog here: http://myeve.eve-online.com/news.asp?a=single&nid=1689&tid=1&sid=1059215547

Pretty standard PR speak, however the dev responsible, T20, posted a response which in many ways is downright scary in its hubris. For those who don't know, this is the same dev that was caught cheating and set off the huge scandal a couple months ago.

AN APOLOGY CONCERNING THE BOOT.INI CONFUSION reported by CCP t20 | 2007.12.06 19:01:08 | NEW The last several hours have been difficult for me, as I was required at the last moment to cancel a vacation that I have been planning for several weeks. But I feel it is important to address the problems that have arisen, regardless of whose fault they may ultimately turn out to be. I also want to express my sincerest regrets for the inconvenience associated with these events, although the glitch only affected a small minority of systems and even those which were affected could be fixed with no permanent damage in a matter of minutes with a quick fix familiar to all those who routinely maintain their systems. I am particularly disappointed by the effect this has had on users who, for reasons of their own, neglected to keep their Windows XP recovery CD with their equipment. I know that there are many of you who did not purchase a pirated copy of Windows but still had trouble of this nature. It is unfortunate that all of these factors combined to form a "perfect storm" of difficulties. Most of all, I want

Actually, one of the EVE Players caught the BOOT.INI deletion on the test server on december 3rd and reported it in a forum:

http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=648131&page=1#8

Posted - 2007.12.03 16:57:00 - [8]
One thing I noticed yesterday was that the content upgrade install blew away C:\boot.ini. I'm sure that the intention is to actually delete \boot.ini. Might need to fix that! Shocked

I sort of wonder whether he filed a bug report, like he should have done. Messaged on that forum aren't the best way to contact CCP.

During testing (that is, player testing "beta"), this bug was posted on the beta forum. This just goes to show how much attention the person responsible was actually paying to player testing bug reports.

OK I ment to post something useful
http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=651473

If you wade through that thread there are some answers there.

I wasn't running as admin, and had some trouble installing the patch.

http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=646084&page=1#19

SO that is why it needed admin Hurrrrr

MMORPGs such as WoW are generally designed to be relatively undemanding, to maximise the player-base

Gonna' have to disagree with you there. EVE Online is pretty hard on the resources, especially with the expansion patch that is being rolled out today. The creators of EVE realize that their player-base isn't going to come close to WOW (I think they have only 200,000 registered accounts right now), so the experience is what they go in for. The release going out today, called Trinity, is a completely revemped graphics engine.

Trinity Homepage: http://www.eve-online.com/trinity/index.html.

Now I know somebody's gonna' say "EVE is nothing like WOW or LOTRO!". True, is caters to the Sci-Fi fan and not the fantasy fan, it is an incredibly beautiful game, requires a lot of patience, has the biggest virtual universe of any other MMO and the average player-age is 27. Not 15.

But it's still an MMO and the creators still rely on the monthly subscriptions from their player-base. So they make the game player-friendly, while at the same time push the limits of many machines vid cards & ram.

Eve now has a Linux client.

Already, most software works or "mostly works" with Wine. I routinely run IE with Flash on my Fedora Core 6 laptop in Wine. How long before Wine becomes a "target platform" for software vendors who are otherwise locked into the Win32 API?

Not long at all, infact there was an article less than a month ago about Eve Online's linux and max osx support via wine (Cadega). Personally I can't decide if it's a good thing (because it's now a supported platform) or a bad thing (because there's little motivation to create native ports if running it through wine is "good enough").

Interesting that they are staying with DX and doing a port. They just re-wrote the client because the graphics were getting dated. http://myeve.eve-online.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=493

In the summary it says "they're free to play" as in the game is free too. Game's website

So you didn't pay for the game. Therefore, what things should they have given you when you "paid" for a free game?

It's kind of a neat concept. Imagine WoW where you could pay a dollar to get a good sword.

Speaking of WoW, why should I have to pay every month to play a game that I paid for. Guild Wars is free once you buy the game. And Eve-Online is free for the game, but you pay every month. WoW skrews(sic) you instead.

Laugh all you want, but EVE online runs mighty fine in either Wine (or still a bit better) Cedega. And what does one really want in life besides freaking big spaceships with overpowered laser cannons? Maybe just play WOW ?

And I can't even switch to XP because then the kids will complain that the NFS server is down ;-)

Well, it is official, about the volunteers getting the boot.

Their forums are fun for a read and keeping up with the game's goings-on. Though you're right, not really designed very well -- they only just came off the "main" servers so that they dissapeared when the game went down. Kinda funny when the game's whole website died when there was a nodecrash, the first few times.

Kind of ironic they make such a fuss about their economics now, considering today they've announced the closure of their official moderated Trade forums. Their suggestion? For everyone to use a third-party site.

The most likely reason? Because they're terminating their volunteer service departments who did most of the forum moderations. While this might be an effort to try and erase their image as having players cheating at these levels, it doesn't mean much for those who still trusted CCP and EVE to maintain a fair and effective way to trade in an out-of-game setting (say, from at work). Now who's to trust?

It's a sad day for CCP.

Heh. Really, really funny you shoud say that. I mean, seriously funny. Because... THEY ARE doing that :)
Check out http://myeve.eve-online.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid =401
They call it "ambulation", everybody else just calls it "walking in stations".

They do have a free trial on the EVE Online homepage.

a "skill" based approach where a player learns each skill independently of the avatar's level. In fact, the avatar may have no level associated with it

Funny, you just described how Eve Online works.

See you in low sec!

When you hear about a realitivly small experiment in time and scope in the media before it is done and the results have been reviewed history has shown me anyway its ususally a safe bet such an experiment is the result of crackpot science without genuine motivation and simply won't work.

Having said that anyone who is willing to perform experiments to validate their ideas are not beyond saving.

But for crying out loud entanglement can not be used to transmit information. I know thats a bit counterintuitive however this whole theme is getting old.

People who should know better are failing to see the underlying issues with entanglement for information transfer... No matter how creativly you arrange permanent magnets you simply will not create a perpetual motion machine.

On the other hand anyone serious about building an interstellar FTL communications network should see this article:

http://www.eve-online.com/background/communication /comm_02.asp

On the topic of the leadership skills that kid is gaining, this is a consideration I've come across recently and that might actually be a very valuable aspect of these computer games, in contrast to the ''they're turning your brain to mush!'' hyperbolae. My EVE-Online alliance has a 14-year old (well, he was fifteen the other week) pilot, and he is one of our fleet-commanders. While not as mature as those older than him, he is a great leader with a cool and level head, and I think his experience here is going to value him greatly when he is older, whether he is managing in business or joins the military.

Considering that a goonfleet CEO was PROVEN to have lied to the public through screenshots, (He said no petition was ever filed, which sparked this whole debacle)

http://myeve.eve-online.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid =472

I honestly don't know how you can take anything else they say seriously when they have shown that they will blatantly lie to tarnish CCP's image..

And that's sad. Aside from the fact that a sibling post has already noted that you probably are a goon yourself, Here's a comparison:

CCP:

1 year ago, had a developer use dev tools to gain a slight advantage. Was disciplined, perhaps not harshly enough.

Goons:

Created a story about a developer joining their corporation to spy on them.

Write an "open letter", and spam links to this open letter over 4,000 times in a weekend.

Claim to have filed a petition to find out why a developer joined their corporation, and that the petition was closed immediately.

They are confronted by CCP who say that the developer joined their corporation in order to fix an issue with an in-game structure which was not behaving, as per a petition filed by a Goon member. CCP also has no record of any additional petition ever being filed, and asks Goons to come up with a petition number, the account name of the person who filed it, or a date it was filed on, and the Goons cannot do so.

The Goons OUTRIGHT LIE* and say that no petition asking for help with their structure was ever filed, and that their structures have ALWAYS been working properly.

CCP shows the goons the screenshots of their internal database of petitions, including where the Goons filed the petition asking for help with the structure. CCP also notes that the purposeful fabrication of allegations of wrongdoing and the libel which the goons have used over the past weekend in a coordinated effort to smear CCP and waste their time amount to legally actionable infractions.

The Goons respond by bombing the eve-online forums with spam, trolling posts, flamebaiting, improper conduct, profanity, in line pictures, and other such garbage. ......

Yeah, I'd trust a goon, too. They've got everyone's best interest at heart, and they're a group of moral leaders in the online community. /sarcasm.

~Wx

Yeah, except - let's assume that the accusations are false, as CCP state.

CCP employees have spent their entire long, holiday weekend researching and compiling data and screenshots to prove themselves. On top of that, the Goons have created a MASSIVE forum assault, to the point that the signal-to-noise ratio on the Eve-online forums is so bad as to make them difficult to read. There have been, just today, thousands of posts which have had to be moderated for being trolling, flaming, flamebait, against the forum rules, using dis-allowed methods (bypassing the profanity filters, making posts with alts, posting pictures inline, etc).

See for example:
http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=chan nel&channelID=3521&page=2 (this is just today, since the developer blog linked in the story was posted).

The Goons' posts are immature, off color, and they have been told repeatedly to stop. Yet they persist, spamming the forums with their garbage. They have wasted the time of the company and have honestly made the community a difficult place to be a member of - I am embarrassed to say that I play eve now, because people associate it with 1.) CCP favoritism (not true), and 2.) the attitude and intelligence level of the Goons (SomethingAwful is not a paragon of IQ points, that's for damn sure).

THIS is why CCP are frustrated, and if they're sounding a little cross, it's because essentially there are hundreds (probably thousands, I don't know how many accounts to take out because people have alts, but there are 4,000 people in Goonswarm) of people who are PAYING A GAME TO FUCK WITH CCP and to RUIN THE EXPERIENCE FOR THE REST OF US. I'd be pissed too, if I were CCP.

I still love playing eve, I just don't recruit people anymore. Not because I think CCP did anything wrong, but because I don't want to pull people into the Goon's drama-bomb bullshit. Honestly the game was more fun a year ago before the rise of the Goons.

~Wx

Don't go on the defensive by playing the "victim" card. (Newsflash: No one cares.)

Goonies officially disband: http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topi c&threadID=528714


As per the link above, CCP has resoundingly reinforced what was alleged in the first place:


favoritism to Band of Brothers Alliance, in effect completely eviscerating the latter's greatest foe (Goonies) via the threat of real world legal action

How many naysayers of CCP here are from somethingawful?

Let's not forget that the goonfleet internal forums show standing orders to tarnish CCP's image.

http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topi c&threadID=527762

From dev blog:

Since last Friday, an unnamed corporation posted over 4000 times on EVE's message boards concerning these allegations. In addition, 1046 posts were made on Digg.com; 235 comments were added on Slashdot; and made multiple EVE-related edits on Wikipedia. Each of these sites was hit within a few hours of each other, at the start of the three-day Memorial Day weekend in the US and a three-day weekend in Iceland, all referencing unfounded allegations -- now proven to be false -- that occurred three weeks ago or longer.

Goon fleet members spammed the forums so much that CCP was forced to shut them down (I saw it happen; an entire front page worth of spam). And some people still thing its a CCP conspiracy?

Downmod the parent. No petitions have been deleted, GM's don't even have the CAPABILITY to delete petitions. Read more at these links:
http://myeve.eve-online.com/mb/news.asp?nid=1466
http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topi c&threadID=527435

Downmod the parent. No petitions have been deleted, GM's don't even have the CAPABILITY to delete petitions. Read more at these links:
http://myeve.eve-online.com/mb/news.asp?nid=1466
http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topi c&threadID=527435

RamSan is an alternative - very fast, no moving parts - as used by the database servers for the Eve Online MMORPG.

The only drawback is cost... And they're not totally solid state - if you get a power cut, the batteries last long enough to write the data to internal hard disks. I suppose potentially these hard disks could be replaced by flash memory since it won't be written to that often (compared with a normal PC's hard disk)

For now, hard disks far beat anything else for cost per MB, reliability and data density.

Their patches have only the most minimal content despite having promised "free monthly content updates" and the expansion was the price of a full game on top of that.

Their "free patches" were mostly bug fixes and balance corrections, not content.

I was extremely disappointed in them for that. I bought the collector's edition when it first came out and was eagerly anticipating the Honor System, the Dishonor System and Battlegrounds from day one. Both of those things were promised to be already in the game by the freaking game manual. But they didn't actually come out until over a year later. I got bored and canceled my subscription before they ever came out with features promised at release. And they never did deliver the free monthly content updates they promised.

So screw'em.

I play EVE Online now. The UI sucks, but we get a free expansion every year and constant improvements every month or two.

I signed-up for a 14-day trial of Eve Online. As a fan of Descent, Wing Commander, and Trade Wars I thought I would love this game. After a few days I realized the game was awesome, vast, huge, addictive, and... boring. I think the problem with Eve is that it is _too_ real. I wasn't playing the game - it was playing me. To make progress, I had to spend 15-minute blocks of time watching my ship fly from point A to point B. Or watching a meter count down telling me my character completed some task like building something. *yawn*

I keep hearing that classic linear offline games are boring and limiting and going away. But that's like saying that a book is too limiting because it only has one possible outcome. With a video game or a book, I want to be the hero, I want to see the journey. I don't want to be thrown into a world where my only goal is to make money or get bigger. What fun is that? I can do that in real life.

I've been playing for years. I am not in a major alliance but mainly because I don't have the time.

The T2 BP list was detailed by the devs on their blogs. There were six in total.

You can read it here.
http://myeve.eve-online.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid =424

I suggest you get your history right and look at this post:

http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topi c&threadID=487342

Band of Brothers has owned Delve and Period Basis since WAAAAAAAY back, before the great northern war. The only expansion that they've done in all of late 2005 - current is:

1.) Beat FIX out of Querious. Then, they recruited FIX, set a non-agression pact, and FIX still lives in Querious under BoB banner.
2.) Beat the shit out of Ascendent Frontier. But, then, ASCN was a rudderless ship, incompetent leadership, too many carebears, no will to fight.

And I seriously doubt that ONE Interdictor BPO and a few ammo BPO's could have influenced the outcome of the ASCN war.

You don't understand how much money BoB has.

But, then, you quit, so whatever. You voted with your dollers. I just wish you would let people try Eve for themselves and see if they like it. I would say that T20's BPO's affected far less than 1% of the people that play eve. And yet.... appearantly the sky is falling.

~Wx

See this devblog. Short answer: yes.

http://myeve.eve-online.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid =432

There were two dev posts, one from the CEO, one from the guilty party, on the issue. Another post was made about a new internal investigations team being formed.

The player who was banned was supposedly not banned for being a whistleblower, but for other infractions.

Posts addressing the issue:
http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topi c&threadID=473335

New internal investigators:
http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topi c&threadID=475706

There were two dev posts, one from the CEO, one from the guilty party, on the issue. Another post was made about a new internal investigations team being formed.

The player who was banned was supposedly not banned for being a whistleblower, but for other infractions.

Posts addressing the issue:
http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topi c&threadID=473335

New internal investigators:
http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topi c&threadID=475706

Um.

This has been, and is being, addressed in front of the subscribers.

Um.

This has been, and is being, addressed in front of the subscribers.

Um.

This has been, and is being, addressed in front of the subscribers.

Um.

This has been, and is being, addressed in front of the subscribers.