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Three grand is peanuts. How about spending $100,000?

Eve Online is the only MMO that has been able to keep me interested in playing for more than a few months at a time. It doesn't have any elves or dragons. It's not built around a film franchise or a beloved series of books. It is unique in that the content created by the game developers plays second fiddle to the content created by the players themselves. It has vibrant player corporations (guilds) based around third-party websites like Something Awful and Reddit (see also: Fweddit and Brave Newbies); which leads to in-game drama aka content creation. It offers high-stakes PvP, in that when you die; your ship explodes and the winning player loots your wreck (corpse) taking whatever valuables survived the explosions. It also allows you to scam your fellow players; which is fairly unique among games. It regularly makes mainstream news for it's large fleet fights and huge losses. And, you're allowed to use your money to buy in-game currency if you are so inclined. I should note that your characters do not level and you don't earn XP or experience points for killing stuff in-game. Instead, your characters earn points that apply to in-game skills in real-time whether you are logged in or not. Eve Online, because spaceships.

$68 is not a lot for a certain really, really insane subset of EVE players.

I used to play EVE and would still play if it weren't for the fact that the group I ran with fell apart.

Firstly, an important example. EVE has a legitimate backdoor to Real Money Trading. You can buy "PLEXes" (Pilot's License EXtension) with real money. You get 2 PLEXes for $30 or so, and each PLEX extends game time by 30 days. It's not all that different from the regular subscription, with the exception that the PLEXes are in-game items that you can sell for in-game currency. Therefore, you can, say, buy 2 game time cards, use one for yourself, and sell the other for in-game money (and the prices have stayed relatively stable). Conversely, once you have reached a certain level of skill, you can use in-game money to buy PLEXes and never have to spend real money on game time. With moderate skill you can earn enough in-game money in about 30 hours, and anything you play after that equates to profit.

Secondly, a Russian man named SirLodex spent $100,000 on PLEXes and used the ISK (in-game money) to bankroll an entire player alliance called RED.Overlord a couple years ago. If you look at the automatic territory control map, you can see that they still exist today. (As the map changes daily, here's the archive version of the map for the day this post was made.) Granted, SirLodex is a wealthy man who seems to enjoy playing EVE like a RTS but with real people, but it's not uncommon for people to buy a few PLEXes and sell the spares for a quick infusion of ISK.

Lastly, there are more than a few people who have multiple accounts that they run at the same time. I've known people who ran 2-5 accounts simultaneously - which equates to $30-75 a month - and some people have reportedly ran 10 accounts at once. These are people paying the same amount in subscription fees every month as most people do in a year. They can command a small fleet by themselves through ingenious use of macros, multiple monitors, etc.

In short, there is a small subset of players that will see $68 as no huge deal.

Considering they once took it so seriously they were going to cut the power to the home of a pilot of a Titan ship in game to keep him from logging on, I don't think it's that far of a stretch to avoid pissing off some of the russian players.

Not BS either, see: http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/65475/page/3

Eve Online was ported this way and allowed for both Mac and Linux clients.

See: http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/14269

that weren't in Kentia hall.

They completely miss some of the gems - especially in the MMO area.

See: http://www.tentonhammer.com/index.php?module=Conte ntExpress&func=display&ceid=191

Also, this game was playable. How many of the above were?

We have been working with that authors of the most popular guides on the SoE forum system. The other guides that have been formatted and moved to moved to permanent homes are:

• The Display Settings Guide
• Basic Tradekill Guide (Still Extensive but geared to the new player)
• Advanced Tradeskill Guide
• Paladin Guide ( Strangely, this is the most popular one we run. Especially strange since I maintain it. )

Warcraft info. is in the works covering Display Settings (though I think if you hit GameSpot they have a guide up). Things you wish you knew earlier in World of Warcraft is in the pipe.

IRex

We have been working with that authors of the most popular guides on the SoE forum system. The other guides that have been formatted and moved to moved to permanent homes are:

• The Display Settings Guide
• Basic Tradekill Guide (Still Extensive but geared to the new player)
• Advanced Tradeskill Guide
• Paladin Guide ( Strangely, this is the most popular one we run. Especially strange since I maintain it. )

Warcraft info. is in the works covering Display Settings (though I think if you hit GameSpot they have a guide up). Things you wish you knew earlier in World of Warcraft is in the pipe.

IRex

We have been working with that authors of the most popular guides on the SoE forum system. The other guides that have been formatted and moved to moved to permanent homes are:

• The Display Settings Guide
• Basic Tradekill Guide (Still Extensive but geared to the new player)
• Advanced Tradeskill Guide
• Paladin Guide ( Strangely, this is the most popular one we run. Especially strange since I maintain it. )

Warcraft info. is in the works covering Display Settings (though I think if you hit GameSpot they have a guide up). Things you wish you knew earlier in World of Warcraft is in the pipe.

IRex

We have been working with that authors of the most popular guides on the SoE forum system. The other guides that have been formatted and moved to moved to permanent homes are:

• The Display Settings Guide
• Basic Tradekill Guide (Still Extensive but geared to the new player)
• Advanced Tradeskill Guide
• Paladin Guide ( Strangely, this is the most popular one we run. Especially strange since I maintain it. )

Warcraft info. is in the works covering Display Settings (though I think if you hit GameSpot they have a guide up). Things you wish you knew earlier in World of Warcraft is in the pipe.

IRex