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The Deadly Dollar of Eve Online
The Escapist this week talks griefing and griefers. One of their features delves into the down and dirty economic wars in Eve Online. From the article: "Having transferred the money and placed their trust in these virtual business proposals, the investors realized that they had been duped, but could do nothing to rescue their lost capital. The scam tolled 480 million ISK (EVE's currency), which is almost $1,000 in meatspace money."
For them to spend a year planning and executing the infiltration, assassination, and thefts shows that they were in it for more than just "getting" the target and her corporation. In my experience in other games, griefers tend to use the power/influence they've accumulated working alone or with random strangers to kill/loot/annoy other random strangers for that moment of glee they get from their target's anguish. It's more about showing their power than it is about personal gain, since they usually target much weaker opponents.
The Guiding Hand was hired to do a job, in game, and they did it, in game. Yes, they also found a way to make it easier for themselves (the article mentions that it's much harder to assassinate a character through purely military means), but it took a year of their time. What they did proved that they are talented in-game manipulators and assassins, and ensures that they'll not lack for lucrative contracts in the future. They spent their time on acquiring in-game resources for themselves by the best means possible, taking them from others who had spent their time gaining them.
For the players of the members of the target corporation (Ubiqua Seraph), this was probably a very upsetting experience. Characters (people) they thought they knew had betrayed them. Would the Guiding Hand members act like that in real life? Most likely not. Would they act like that if real life were like EVE Online's universe? Likely. The Ubiqua Seraph players will probably have real trust issues, if they made that all too common mistake of assuming that your online opponents' characters are your online opponents.
That's the whole freaking point of Eve. It's a sandbox where you can do whatever you want to do. It's a different game than other MMORPG where ripping people off is frowned upon. In this game people are famous for pulling off these sort of things. People put bounties on other people's heads. They try to gain the trust of a corporation just to rob everything that they own. That's the point of the game. It's like complaining that WoW can't be played without an Internet connection. I can understand if some people would not find this type of game fun...but you have to see why some people would be drawn to a game where anything goes.
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As to the scam itself? Bloody brilliant. But in an age where suddenly there's a SERIOUS time commitment to make that amount of cash, and theft causes SERIOUS anger in people, it makes me wonder how long it will be before the government tries to get involved. I mean, how is cash in a game different from any other nonphysical thing which you can be busted for stealing?
The funny thing is that after he got it all, he gave it to some noob and deleted his character, since this was this guy's way of "beating" the game. Which I guess makes sense in a game that places so much importance on the all mighty credit.
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The problems with scams is that they leave the victims with no course of retribution.
I personally believe sams have their place in PvP, but not so much PvE games.
In Ultima Online (back when everything was "unconsensual" as the article states Lord British saying) if someone scammed you and you knew who they were you had a chance of taking revenge on them at least by killing them.
I knew a guy that scammed my coworker back in 2000 (or was it 1999) and he took it personally. My coworker had a house and somehow this guy actually hacked his account with a trojan that he sent him on ICQ since he was supposedly a friend online and cleaned out his house and since it was obvious that it was the file that he had sent him he knew what the other names he played with.
We spent many a night just showing up and following him around. Out of the blue when he stepped out of the town we would kill him. We turned him in for macroing several times and even had someone make a character just to join his guild that he was in to mess with him.
When he was in town we'd have throw away death robe theives to steal from him and even run up to him naked with DP (deadly posion) daggers and hit him to make him die in town (even though the guards would halberd us at the same time)
After a while, we might have made it over excessive given the retaliation harrasment we gave him, but with player justice we took things into our own hands rather than letting the GMs handle it.
In a PvE environment this is really impossible since players do not have any other ways of retribution other than reporting the offending player.
However, the down side of player justice is that if you weren't in a guild or were just a poor player compared to the rest you don't have much chance of retribution. Secondly, I think often times player justice would often kill the wrong player or people that were supsect of scamming or being pks.
In a simulated world scams are just an extension of the theiving and player killing and perhaps is a legitimate strategy (although I would disdain anyone who would scam anyone in a game). However, you still have to balance that out with what the player base will tolerate in the terms of 'greifing'.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Eve is very unique in this sense. The rules of the game are set up where this kind of espionage is possible, and the players know it. That is what makes the game interesting. A rival corporation trying to squeeze into your marketspace? You can try and beat them in the market by undercutting them until they can no longer keep up, you can declare war on them and hope to disrupt their production via physical might, you can attack them politically with a smear campaign, or you can hire someone shady to destroy them from within.
This is what really sets the game apart. You have so many choices in how you want to accomplish your goal, and so many of the possible avenues require player skill instead of character skill. The game is brutal, it is ruthless, it is unforgiving. But when you truly succeed at something in this game, you are deserving of respect.
As much as I would hate to be on the recieving end of what they did, I have to respect GHSC for pulling off what they did. How many times do you hear of MMO players dedicating over a year of prep work to one goal? That is a LOT more patience than your verage gamer demonstrates.