EVE Online Answers Your Questions

Last week at GDC I had the privilege of sitting down to speak with a representative from CCP, the folks who maintain EVE Online. The week before, we'd asked for questions to pass on. I had the chance to put them directly to Magnus Bergsson, CMO at CCP. He very directly tackles the recent scandal involving a CCP developer, the reason why EVE's hardcore gameplay is so appealing, the balance between casual and hardcore players, and some information on the future of the game. Read on for his answers to your questions in a transcript of the interview, as well as audio live from the GDC Expo floor. Note: This interview was recorded live on the show floor of GDC 2007, at around 2pm on March 7th. The transcript here has been edited to eliminate repeated words and 'umms', and to provide a clear reading experience. If you'd prefer, the full, unedited audio recording is available for your listening enjoyment. (reduced bitrate: 48 kbps, 32 kbps)

Slashdot: So, for the record could you say who you are?

Magnus: Magnus Bergsson, the CMO at CCP.

Slashdot: Excellent. Thank you sir. The way that we got these questions, basically, was we spoke to the Slashdot community, and the way that we do interviews is we ask people what they're interested in hearing. So, most of these questions are basically directly from the readers, what they want to know. So, if they're bad questions, or you get angry, don't get angry at me. (laughs)

Magnus: I don't get angry.

Slashdot: That's good. There was that scandal thing ... (laughs) Unfortunately, I'm going to start with that one. There was that scandal thing that happened recently. Could you sort of ... explain to folks I guess, what happened, so we can hear directly from you what your take on the situation is?

Magnus: Ahh ... people need to know when the issue with this one developer happened, which was last summer, all of the management team was actually on a summer vacation. And the people in charge then they basically decided to handle it the way they handled it. And they just made a really bad decision the way they managed that whole thing. But they did the best they could, because we had never done anything, nothing like this had ever come up. And this goes so much against the CCP mentality, and the corporate culture that, in our naiveness, we never really thought that anything like that could actually happen. Because CCP is our baby, and this basically is like hurting your own baby, which you just don't do. And the person that did it, which I know really well, he doesn't understand himself, it just doesn't make any sense. Anyway, they mishandled it, absolutely, and we've stated so in our blogs. From that came a number of rules that we have now for our own employees. We have an internal affairs department that does nothing but monitor our employees, to ensure that nothing like that will ever happen again. But some still think that CCP as a whole is trying to help one alliance in-game. And, it's so ridiculous for anyone to think that. Why would anyone at CCP want to do something like that? So, we just mishandled it and we tried to correct it, and we I think we handled it as best we could, and that's what it basically was. We made a mistake, we'd never dealt with something like this before. It's part of growing up, getting a bigger company, we have people in shanghai, we have people in Atlanta, we now have all these rules and regulations in place that we've set for our employees, they're good. People have to realize that we're working on EVE because we have a passion for the game, we will be playing the game. It would be horrible for the community and the game if CCP employees were not playing. Because the game gets created in the hands of the players. It's critical for us to have people playing the game just to know what's going on. We actually did a survey, and we found it's an even distribution of CCP employees in the top ten alliances. And those people would never allow somebody to be working against their alliance, so ... it's a mess, in the end we came and did the right thing. People know at the company, people know that if you were to do something like that you'd basically get fired. We couldn't double judge in that case, you know, double jeopardy if you want to compare it to that. You know, and that's basically the short of it.

Slashdot: Well, thank you. Thank you for going into that. I know it's probably not something that you guys want to touch on a lot right now. Do you think with the internal affairs department set up right now, and the action you've taken against the people involved, do you folks consider this matter closed right now? I just know that some of the comments were in the area of there is still some mixed -- and since it's still so fresh in people's minds -- there's still some mixed feelings there. Do you consider this matter closed at the moment?

Magnus: That case, from our end, is closed. I mean, we've done all the investigation, we know it was only one person and not the whole company like some like to believe, and ahh there's nothing more that we feel can be done, um it was just an unfortunate case, and in the overall scheme of things it didn't affect the game in that like some people like to thing. And, in the end, we're just damn sorry and it hurts our feelings to see some of the players say some of the things about us; we love this game and we'd never do anything to hurt it, and to have people think that this is a widespread thing within CCP: that's as far from the truth as it possibly can.

Slashdot: Right, okay, so I think one of the things that people were really frustrated by with that, is I guess, the hardcore ... EVE has this reputation as a very 'tough' game, and obviously there are a lot of people who really enjoy that. Why do you think the hardcore nature of the game appeals to so many people?

Magnus: Uhhh wow, that's a big question. EVE can be very hardcore, and it can be also a very casual game. It really depends on how you play it. But most of these people who are commenting on the forums and so forth are the hardcore players, they've been with the game for many years. If you live in 0.0, it's very hardcore. It's a very you know, dog eat dog world, and I for one, I live there, I am one of those hardcore players. You know, it's just the threat the, big death penalty and the amount of strategy you have to employ and the amount of thinking you have to do, and I think it's a big big challenge, and I think these people really enjoy the challenge.

Slashdot: Yeah, um, so you in your estimation the fact that it's not more like a World of Warcraft, where death is not really a big deal, you guys see that as a definite strength for the game?

Magnus: Absolutely. The reason that people team up in corporations and then corporations team up in alliances is because there is this inherent big threat of dying and losing a lot of money. You can lose months of work in 30 seconds, and this forces people because of human nature, to band together and form relationships. I'm saving somebody's life, saving their three, four, five, six months of work, so you create very strong relationships, where you don't have an opportunity in real life to rescue your friends from death.

Slashdot: Right, hopefully.

Magnus: Yeah, hopefully, but you get to do that on a daily basis. And that's what creates these really strong feelings, the really strong relationships, that are such a big part of this game. And because it's so totally open ended, so totally different from a game like World of Warcraft, which is a really structured game experience. A great game, but it's just different. So when people have done that type of game, it's kind of a natural progression for them to step into something that's heavier and deeper, and more rewarding in the end.

Slashdot: Totally. So, another thing that came up a lot in comments were the um, the sort of backseat designers ... you mentioned the folks on the forums who have been playing this for a number of years now, and they obviously have very strong opinions on where the game should go. How do you balance making those folks happy with attracting new players, people who might be looking at the more casual aspects of the game?

Magnus: Well, we have to satisfy most people, so it's always a balancing act, sometimes we take an upgrade, and we say now we're going to focus on this part of the game because we haven't done it before. And often when you dive into one part of the game, there are a lot of associated things that come with it. So sometimes we might actually be focusing a lot on the newer players, sometimes we might be focusing a lot on the hardcore players, but we try to do our best to have our expansions so that they touch on something for everybody. But sometimes we do more for the other, we always try to do something for everybody, it's a balancing act, and there's a big group at CCP that discusses this on a daily basis. Of course, we get input from the CCP employees that are playing the game at every single level. We have empire dwellers and people living in 0.0, let's call them Carebears, I like to call them that. Everybody has their input, in the end some features get selected as the best ones, it's a long process and a difficult one.

Slashdot: Could you point out a feature that was added recently, or with the last group of features, that you thought was really good for the more casual players?

Magnus: Yeah, the new player experience, which we spent a lot of time and effort on. That was just for the new players, just to make it easier for them. We are still working on adding a lot more to that, we have a team that is just dedicated to that aspect of the game.

Slashdot: Really?

Magnus: Yeah, so we're always trying to improve that part. Because, when you get thrown into a game like EVE, which is so open-ended, and there's no hand holding you really need to ahh, help those people. Those people are going to see a lot of new things this year. There' s a lot of new things were working on helping them getting into the game and understanding it. Of course, you don't really see it - you get thrown into this world, and if you don't already have a friend that's already playing it can be a little tricky.

Slashdot: Yeah, that's interesting, because a friend of mine was recently trying out some games and she tried out your game, and she was a little offput because EVE has this reputation for being such an intimidating game, but she found the new player experience very intuitive. In fact she said it was more intuitive to her than like an EverQuest 2, which is ... well, it's directed, but in EVE it's like a step-by-step thing. So this is going to be a focus in the future, is there's going to be a team that stays on the new player experience?

Magnus: And it's been on there for a long time, this team. So we are always extremely aware of, and we're always trying to make it easier. It's not easy trying to make those first steps real easy without making them real boring. But I think the new player experience is really good, it takes people in the right direction. It shows them a lot about the game, but as with EVE in it's nature you have to bring something to the table. You have to take some action, you have to take responsibility with what you're doing, just as in real life. There's no manual for this side of the screen, so we'll do our best, there's a lot of things we're going to be doing from now on to get people in ...

Slashdot: Can you give an example?

Magnus: Ahh, for instance, just helping people in the tutorial, just pointing things out to them in the email. Ahh, staying in touch with them, that's a huge thing because right now you might skip something in the tutorial but there's nothing that really pulls you back, nothing that points 'you why don't you check this out?' So we're going to be tracking what people are doing and sending them appropriate notifications about, hey you should be trying this out.

Slashdot: Okay. I guess just to pull back and deal with, obviously Slashdot's a very technology-oriented site, and some of the questions were very much on the technology. There's been PvP wars in the past few months that in the opinion of the posters highlighted some server limitations, some hardware limitations. Are there any plans in the future to change the scale of the world at all? Perhaps move to multiple servers?

Magnus: No, we will not move to multiple servers. What we are doing right now, there is actually and has been for the last four or five months, all of the developers are focusing on one thing right now - the need for speed. In EVE you have larger battles than in any other MMO. We had the other day, not too long ago, a battle of 1000 in the same system, and we want to continue supporting that, allowing them to have these large battles, but we also want to create incentives to create smaller engagements, which in the end are more fun for the player.

Slashdot: Right. They're certainly more understandable.

Magnus: Yes, but having 1000 people combat in the same system, is a massive requirement on the servers. Today they weigh two tons, the whole cluster weighs two tons. There's still a lot of work being done, we're still implementing new optimizations for the client and the server, and the hardware it's running on, we can't get any better hardware, so we have to focus on the code, so there's a lot of effort to allow people to have these big battles.

Slashdot: Excellent. I know you're probably disinclined to give out exact details, but for the technology nerds, for the server nerds, can you give any details about what you're running the game on. You mentioned the weight, I mean what are some of your specs?

Magnus: For instance, the we don't have hard disks on our database server. Those are solid-state harddisks, which are only previously only been used for military applications, those are extremely high output, they're called RAMSANS, and that's one applications. We're now moving everything to 64 bit architecture. Everything is running on IBM hardware. IBM has been a really great partner for us to work with, so we get the latest hardware from them as soon as they can possibly deliver it. We're always updating the hardware so we invest and have invested many many millions of dollars just on the hardware side.

Slashdot: And uhh... i'm not sure this is a question you'd be all that interested in answering, but there was one gentleman who was very interested in Stackless Python, and how that's worked out for you? Do you find that it still meets the demands of the many thousands of players that are playing the game?

Magnus: Absolutely, Stackless Python because it's a stateless environment is one of the keys of why EVE is actually capable of supporting all these users. And we have been working very closely with the Python community, we had a Python convention in Iceland that CCP actually orchestrated, and we've supported the PyCon conventions. We want to see more development on that end, and there's some interesting things happening there, so we will continue using that.

Slashdot: Okay, so looking back you definitely wouldn't have done it differently?

Magnus: It's one of the best things that has happened to EVE in the beginning, was to actually select that.

Slashdot: Okay. Do you feel that way about MSSQL?

Magnus: (pause) It has actually worked really well for us. We have worked really closely with Microsoft and ahh, it has performed really well. So that was the right decision, and still is. There are no issues with the database, and no other database would be able to perform better, in our opinion. So there are no issues there. And Microsoft has been really good to work with.

Slashdot: Excellent. Um, so as I was talking about a little earlier ... White Wolf. I know a lot of people are very very interested in what you're planning. I know you can't talk a lot about plans right now because you're very much in the initial phases. First of all, can you shed some light on why you folks got together? What was the rationale there?

Magnus: White Wolf has some assets we didn't have. They are extremely good storytellers, they have a lot of expertise in physical distribution, they can create board games, they are now writing the EVE manual, the EVE strategy guide. They're going to help us getting EVE into physical distribution, into stores, Then they have this fantastic IP, which we are converting into an MMO. But, ahh, I don't have any more information on that because it's early stages. We're still designing the gameplay and everything else, but we're very committed to making that into an MMO, so that relationship has been fantastic. The team at White wolf is actually working on some aspects of EVE online. To add more storytelling missions, and so forth.

Slashdot: That's very interesting, do you know when we might see that stuff in the game?

Magnus: I don't know the release schedule for the missions and so forth, but the strategy guide and the player guide which is badly missing right now, that is an ongoing project and should be ready as soon as possible.

Slashdot: I know you really can't .. you're already in the planning stages, but I have to ask. Are there plans to use the whole World of Darkness license or, is right now thinking moving more towards one of the specific parts of the World of Darkness, moving there?

Magnus: We just don't know yet, this is exactly what we're doing right now, is thinking about how the game will play, so anything I would tell you about that right now would probably be a lie. I don't want to make a liar out of myself.

Slashdot: I appreciate you not lying (laughs).

Magnus: That's something we are working on right now, we just don't know yet.

Slashdot: Okay, ahh, I know you folks, you spoke with Brent from VirginWorlds the other day, and I know he was very impressed with some of the Avatar elements you folks are putting in the game. Do you want to talk about that a little bit?

Magnus: Sure. The project is called Ambulation, and what it does it will allow the pilots to step out of their spaceships and walk in the stations and in the stations you will have corporate meeting rooms, you will have services like recruitment centers in certain stations, people will be able to make and sell items like clothing. We are not going to turn that like into a first person shooter, people will not be able to shoot each other in the stations, that's a whole different game. But the gameplay in the stations, works well with what happens outside of the stations. We put a lot of work in Iceland into behavioral analysis, they have a specialized team that has been studying that for years. And our AI is going to be quite interesting, you won't see avatars going through a routine of animations when they're standing still. They're actually going to be emulated out of human nature, human behavior, so we are doing everything we can to make the avatars as human like as possible. We're going to put a lot of work into making them realistic. Hopefully we'll be something of a breakthrough in avatar development. At least, we have some ambitious goals for it.

Slashdot: Okay, alright, when you talk about gameplay on the station, does that mean there will be more than just meetings and recruitment, there will actually be gameplay elements as well?

Magnus: Yes ... we're still deciding exactly ... some of them have been determined. Until it's finalized it's better to let the designers and developers have some leeway to work with, but yeah there are definite ideas of what will be allowed in station. There will not just be you stepping out into the station and that's it, there will be something else in the stations.

Slashdot: Good deal, usually, when I do an interview in person I like to ask, is there something that you want to say to the people you're working with, the customers, is there something about EVE that you find particularly interesting that you want them to know about?

Magnus: Well, I think anybody looking for a game experience that is, let's call it smart gaming without sounding arrogant, if people are looking for something like that, I think they'll find eve quite interesting, it's a very strategic game, some people hate it but I hope more people actually love it and try it. It's the type of a game that you grow with, it's probably more of a commitment than most other MMOs right now, and it's the type of a game that leaves a lot behind. It's quite rewarding because all of the things you accomplish in the game are the results of your actions. It's more than a game in that sense. We at CCP then don't really consider ourselves so much as a game developer, we are more like a service provider. We are providing a sandbox, or a universe for these people to live in and we are very much a hands-off company on what happens in game. We don't want to be caught up in what users do , we just want to influence a little bit here and there and respond to the users.

Slashdot: Alright, great. Well, I think that pretty much covers it, so thank you very much for your time, I really appreciate it.

Magnus: Thanks! Good questions!

Comments

Uh, hmm, uhh, ahhhh

[LordKaT]

Dear Slashdot,

We don't need a literal translation of every sound made during the interview.

Thank you,
LK

Re:Uh, hmm, uhh, ahhhh

[apathy maybe]

Except that in some cases, they provide a fuller experience of what was said.

Like grammar, such words can make it easy to tell what the person was thinking (or not thinking as the case maybe).

Which is another reason to always try and use good grammer and speling;

Re:Uh, hmm, uhh, ahhhh

[veganboyjosh]

(laughs)

Re:Uh, hmm, uhh, ahhhh

[Anonymous Coward]

Look, man, I've got certain information, all right? Certain things have come to light. And, you know, has it ever occurred to you, that, instead of, uh, you know, running around, uh, uh, blaming Slashdot, you know, given the nature of all this new shit, you know, I-I-I-I... this could be a-a-a-a lot more, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, complex, I mean, it's not just, it might not be just such a simple... uh, you know?

Re:Uh, hmm, uhh, ahhhh

[physicsboy500]

Yeah... um, you need to, like... be the worlds most compulsive typist to ahhh, summit... *coughs* excuse me - where was I...

As I was saying, you have to be really compulsive to, um submit something like that.

*click* -submit-

Awww crap!

Re:Uh, hmm, uhh, ahhhh

[meme lies]

I agree; I understand that this is an informal interview and the editor is trying to present it as such, but you are doing neither yourself nor your subject a favor by presenting it "warts and all." It's expected, if not obligatory, for a transcript like this to be cleaned up a bit for publication and not doing so makes both parties seem amateurish and awkward.

In addition there are some points where I don't believe the transcript is even accurate; key words are mis-transcribed.

For example:

That case, from our end, is closed. I mean, we've done all the investigation, we know it was only one person and not the whole company like some like to believe, and ahh there's nothing more that we feel can be done, um it was just an unfortunate case, and in the overall scheme of things it didn't affect the game in that like some people like to thing.

A real journalist would "translate" this for publication as something along the lines of:

"The case, from our end, is closed. We've done the investigation, we know it was only one person and not the whole company as some would like to believe, and there's nothing more that we feel can be done. It was just an unfortuate case, and in the overall scheme of things it didn't affect the game like some people like to think."

(Yes, he says think, not "thing.")

I know you're trying for realism or accuracy but really, it's only fair to smooth it out a bit for public consumption. This man is doing you a favor by granting an interview and by including every awkward pause you make him seem inarticulate and unprofessional.

You're an editor, Zonk. That means you should, you know, um, ah, edit.

Re:Uh, hmm, uhh, ahhhh

[Anonymous Coward]

Alright, Mr. Goldblum. Back in the cell.

Re:Uh, hmm, uhh, ahhhh

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Which is another reason to always try and use good grammer and speling; Oh, the irony :)

screw ccp

[stim216]

i just canceled my account today, and i look and see that they are on slashdot, small world.
I'll just have to say that despite that the game play is innovative and different, and that they supply loads of free content upgrades their customer service is garbage. They treat you like you like scum if you ever deal with them directly. And GM's interfere with the game play playing favorites, on gm even is the ceo of a major alliance i hear tell!

Re:screw ccp

[stim216]

lol i make the same posts as others, I'm a troll and they are insightful. figures!

Re:screw ccp

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you considered that this may be because of your bad English skills, or that others are more insightful than you?

Re:screw ccp

[kinsoa]

i just canceled my account today,

Can I have your stuff ?

Re:screw ccp

[Slashcrap]

i just canceled my account today, and i look and see that they are on slashdot, small world.
I'll just have to say that despite that the game play is innovative and different, and that they supply loads of free content upgrades their customer service is garbage. They treat you like you like scum if you ever deal with them directly. And GM's interfere with the game play playing favorites, on gm even is the ceo of a major alliance i hear tell!

Dear Mr Angry Internet Nerd,

Was this you being interviewed on Something Awful the other day?

http://www.somethingawful.com/d/news/warcraft-fron tline.php

Also you say they treat you like you like scum. Well, do you like scum or not bitch? If you don't specify then how can we tell whether they're being unfair?

Re:screw ccp

[Anonymous Coward]

lol, no, thats not me.
Due to a rare bug I lost over a million skill points, when i petitioned it, they assumed i was trying to scam and it took several conversations with them before it got escalated enough for them even to check out my story. The simple fact is that when that happened and I initiated the petition it became not only a issue with that bug but a customer service one. I paid them money every month for 3 years, they can treat me with a little respect. If it makes you an 'angry nerd' for desiring being treated with a little respect by someone who your sending money too, sign me up!

CCP?

[Anonymous Coward]

Chinese Communist Party is into games?

Must alert Whitehouse!

Re:CCP?

[mknewman]

Yeah, let them know at http://www.whitehouse.com/ .

I love these things

[HomelessInLaJolla]

Eight minutes left... I wonder how far I'll make it.

The transcript here has been edited to eliminate repeated words and 'umms' McDonald's has a great program for this. A speaker stands in front of an audience. Each audience member is holding a handbuzzer. Every time the speaker uses "ah" or "um" or a similar spacer the members of the audience ring the buzzer.

Magnus: I don't get angry. I've prepared all the proper doublespeak.

Magnus: Ahh ... people need to know when the issue with this one developer happened, which was last summer, all of the management team was actually on a summer vacation. What a rough life--a whole summer of vacation.

they just made a really bad decision the way they managed that whole thing Understatement of the year so far.

this goes so much against the CCP mentality, and the corporate culture Actually this kind of backstabbery is par for the course in corporate culture.

we never really thought that anything like that could actually happen He's really acknowledging that they never thought that anyone would ever be able to infiltrate the ranks and bust the ruse.

We have an internal affairs department that does nothing but monitor our employees The EVE corporate gestapo.

to ensure that nothing like that will ever happen again To ensure that we cover our behinds more effectively next time.

it's so ridiculous for anyone to think that. Why would anyone at CCP want to do something like that? Quick! Look over there!

we'd never dealt with something like this before Now we have experience, and we won't let you users figure out the scam again.

we have a passion for the game, we will be playing the game And we'll still be making use of every advantage we have at our disposal--only now we know how we need to better cover our tracks.

And those people would never allow somebody to be working against their alliance No. Shock and awe. Never.

people know that if you were to do something like that you'd basically get fired He forgot "to do something and get caught like that".

That case, from our end, is closed We don't want to expose our secrets anymore.

we know it was only one person One minute left... so I'll close with raucous laughter.

Re:I love these things

[0racle]

Did these guys run over your cat or something?

Re:I love these things

[torchdragon]

I suppose you're one of those bitter EVE players that got your mad l3wts blowed up!!!! while having a casual relation to any of the parties involved in the employee "scandal." While I can't really blame you for being angry at a mis-managed situation, I can blame you for being a short-sighted twit that needs to get out and see the sun once in a while.
And, yes, that was a rather personal attack against you but I figure its alright because you seem perfectly justified to attack another stranger's character with absolutely no evidence. Maybe next time you could actually attend the GDC, speak with some of the developers, and possibly be able to create a more accurate rendition of the situation.
Have a wonderful day.

Re:I love these things

[gothzilla]

Yer tinfoil hat is on too tight. Loosen that sucker up a bit there, and don't forget to take your meds. You obviously reeeally need them right now.

Re:I love these things

[HomelessInLaJolla]

Hemos say what?

cancelling

[superid]

Kind of a coincidence for me that this article came out today since I'd already planned on canceling my account tonight. I skilled up to get a retriever and whooot I can strip mine now. I've got 50 days left to get my Covetor and then....what exacty? I have found no meaningful group activities and mining is boring.

It's back to DaoC for me while I wait for Warhammer.

Re:cancelling

[tsalaroth]

You're in the wrong space, then. Join a corp that's in one of the larger alliances. Just last weekend, we went patrolling the connecting jumps between two stations in a very large group (80+ fleet). We then met up with a fleet of 20 or so at the end point, and decided to join them on their station raid. The target station never had a chance. The "fleet" they had guarding it lasted maybe a minute.

Re:cancelling

[will_frag_for_food]

gawd was it really 50 days for covetor? no wonder my character still sucks :(

seriously though... what you are describing is the same experience you would get in DAoC if you never left Mag Mell in Hibernia... the game is 'open ended'... it is what you make of it... so if you choose to farm rocks solo in a mining barge then that is what you get.

that being said... skilling up for other ships/mods and running some different mission types should feel very different... and there is always lo-sec and no-sec... who knows what is going to happen out there from day to day?

for a start at PvP that is not in 0.0... look up Privateer Alliance and see if you can't get into one of their corps... they declare war on 0.0 alliances and then fight them in 'safe-space'... you would be a quick sell to them because you can mine... and in return you will be able to hunt war targets without having to go into the depths of lawless space to do it.

good luck!

Re:cancelling

[AugstWest]

Privateers aren't going to be much fun for a miner, it will just make him a target.

Find a corp and join it. If they suck, find another. I went through 3 or 4 before I found the one I'm in now, and I've been with them for 6 months and am having a blast. If I'd stayed in empire screwing around, I would have missed 99% of what makes this game fun.

Re:cancelling

[PopeRatzo]

My corporation and alliance has just moved to an area of 0.0 security space in the North. We're pioneers racing to build a station and setup manufacturing operations in order to try to have something a little bit permanent before the "BoRG" take over all of 0.0.

Plus, I've finally figured out how to use rigs and Invention to create TechII blueprints which will give us a chance at a more even playing field with the alliance that used illegal activities to build their strength. I've got 5 R&D agents working for me, and I'm clocking over 1000 Research Points every day.

All this whilst fighting a shooting war in our little area of no-security space.

If you can't find meaningful activity in Eve, you're not trying. Have you ever read any of the forums? How about chatting with some people in Local?

I know my corp would love another skilled miner, and we'd even provide a convoy to bring you out to the 0.0 wilderness. Give me your username and I'll look you up.

Re:cancelling

[PopeRatzo]

So you destroyed another corp's station. You must be very proud. Were you trying to push them out of their system to settle their space or were you just trying to spoil their day?

I hope we someday meet your "very large group" and scatter the system with your wreckages.

Re:cancelling

[coolGuyZak]

As an experienced eve miner, I can say with a modicum of certainty that he's leaving something out. Either the OP quoted an aggregate value of all training before that (including the high Mining and Astrogeo skills to use the Strip Miners), or he doesn't have his learning skills up to par. I did Barge V (required for covetor) in just under 26 days (tier 1 learning skills to 5, tier 2 to 4, +1 implants across the board). The whole array of skills required to get that far took 40 days at most.

I agree that he should get into combat if he wants more excitement. For new players, it appears that you are SOL for money unless you do mining or hauling. However, I find that running combat missions, deadspace complexes, and (if you are truly badass) COSMOS installations provides more than enough money to burn through. In addition, it acquaints you to battle and ship loss while gradually increasing the resources you have for ships.

Another hint: Sometimes its good to drop your subscription for a month or two while to let long skills train. I picked up Barge V, Gallante Industrial V, and (recently) Cruiser V all while "on vacation". As soon as I replace my deadbeat computer, I can get back on and cruise the galaxy in a HAC. :D

- Zaaq (14 million+ SP)

Re:cancelling

[Maserati]

If you didn't cancel, check out Lucky Hydra. We're a lowsec mixed pvp/carebear corp located in Earwick near the Minmatar-Caldari border. We've got veterans and newbies, 0.0 and alliance connections and a Ventrilo server. Plus we maintain two PoS.

Here's a good test of how our corp compares to one you may not enjoy: do you want a corp that tells you what to do, or one where one of the explorers announces a hidden belt with good ore in the home system and a half-dozen people head out to get the goodies (I'm heading for the belt as I type this) ? We do structure on the industrial side, mining contracts with other corps where we have a due date and a quantity to deliver. And sometimes we go out and blow people up - especially if they harass our folks.

Message Llaneza, Bayleor or Miss Noir in game. And read the website for application info. Fast actors may get into tonight's op. Just think, Kernite and Jaspet in a 0.6 system...

Re:cancelling

[Voltageaav]

Um... I just feel I have to say something, cause people have been REALLY overtstating this. The guy gave himself 1 T2 BPO. BoB owns like 50 T2 BPOs. Yes they are relitively rare and are expensive, but BoB was a superpower before the entire thing happened.

Re:cancelling

[Sobrique]

What he said.

EVE's really a lot of fun, once you get out of crap corps, and you get out of empire.

Contrary to popular belief, 0.0 isn't all filled with hardcore elite griefers. The 'things' that let you get by are far more about attitude and use of brain, than they are about how many sps or isks you have.

Which is part of the appeal. I can also under stand though, that it's not to everyone's taste. I mean, in EVE, if you don't go looking for stuff to do, it won't find you. So you'll sit there, getting bored, waiting for 'things to happen'. And unless you piss someone off, it won't.

Re:cancelling

[andersa]

Great! Can I have ur stuff!?

Re:cancelling

[Sobrique]

Mining and hauling are baseline staples, but I find combat missions and ratting are much more to my taste. Which is what I ended up doing right early on when I was a newbie. Some steady cash from the pay, and the odd 'win' as you net a tasty module.

Re:cancelling

[Sobrique]

BoB have been in EVE since day one. That's like, 3,4 years?

Over that time, they've been enthusiastic, eager and dedicated, and have a lot of high skilled and fantatical players

Lots of people are getting hung up on them being the 'big evil cheaters' but they're really not - one BPO, yeah, it's naughty, but IMO it's hardly the end of the world. I _know_ BoB have legitimately gained a LOT of very good blueprints. There is a reason most of the alliance PvPs in HACs for example.

They're not supermen, they're just enthusiastic and focussed.

Re:cancelling

[PopeRatzo]

It's not ONE BPO. Read the stories again.

Re:cancelling

[Voltageaav]

A Sabre BPO and some T2 Ammo BPOs. While Sabres are nice and all, I prefer them of all the dictors, they aren't all that expensive. And T2 Ammo BPOs are nice, yeah, but not that big. They go for what? 2 Bil? That's not that much. If we were talking a command ship or HAC BPO, that would be serious, but we're not. They aren't the best BPOs BoB have and I highly doubt they contributed to even 5% of their income at any one time. If you think I'm wrong, take a look through their space some time in a CVO. They have all kinds of POSs mining moons. Each alliance that lives in thier space pays 6 Bil a month for the privlidge and there's a bunch of them. They control god knows how many 10/10 complexes and you can make 10 bil a week running each of those EASY.

Re:cancelling

[tsalaroth]

You don't destroy stations, that's wasteful. You punch through their shields completely, then hit the armor until the station "surrenders", then recharge the shields once you own it.

This wasn't to ruin anyone's day, war was declared - and we didn't declare it.

Re:cancelling

[PopeRatzo]

Because this happened a while ago, the cumulative effect of any advantage is now much greater. An unfair advantage only grows with time.

Re:cancelling

[Voltageaav]

Maybe if you're not constantly PVPing and at war. But if you are, you'll take losses that have to be replaced. In BoB's case, they have major capital engagements every day. In combat such as that you will take losses, no matter how good you are. I heard BoB lost 9 dreads in one engagement not long ago. Sounds big, but they have a huge capital fleet and I'm willing to bet those 9 took a lot down with them. Anyways, 9 dreads, base cost, 18 Billion, including equip, you're talking at least 30 Billion ISK in resources lost in a single day. If I know anything about BoB and thier allies, they either have most of them already replaced or about to be replaced. So they had a few T2 BPOs for I belive a month. That's maybe 10 Bil as a generous estimate? When you can lose 3 times that in a day and recover from it without much trouble, that's not a major issue in my book. Also, everyone keeps saying BoB are being favored by CCP. Supposedly, unless CCP are lieing through thier teeth, (I'm sure some foil head is going to claim they are) CCP's employies are evenly distributed between the major 0.0 alliances. If it happened with BoB, who's to say it didn't happen with ASCN, RA, or ISS and no one found out about it? A lot of people hate BoB so it wouldn't surprise me if there were a lot more people going through their dirty laundry than the other alliances. Thinking about it that way, makes sense to me that they got the bad PR.

Re:cancelling

[buckthorn]

I have to agree completely, and I'm sure tons others have said this in the space below where I haven't read to yet.

I used to hang out in highsec (0.5+) Empire space, mining and ratting, and it was just this side of hella boring. oooo Pyrox and Plag while popping rat frigates, ever so exciting. I ran missions, and even got so bored I ended up running trade goods. The occasional foray in to 0.4 and 0.3 space to mine or rat was about as exciting as it got.

0.0 changed all that. I have a corp with a strong presence in 0.0 (and in BoB), and they run ops all the time.. be they mining, PvP, complexes.. not to mention the rats are more interesting and the ore quite tasty. Plus, you just make at least 3x what you'd make in highsec, and that money translates into freedom.

For the casual gamers who just want to dink around, highsec is probably the better choice. But if you're playing to play and enjoy the game, find a good 0.0 corp.

Scandal?

[HockeyPuck]

People need to know when the issue with this one developer happened, which was last summer, all of the management team was actually on a summer vacation. And the people in charge then they basically decided to handle it the way they handled it. And they just made a really bad decision the way they managed that whole thing. But they did the best they could, because we had never done anything, nothing like this had ever come up. And this goes so much against the CCP mentality, and the corporate culture that, in our naiveness, we never really thought that anything like that could actually happen. Because CCP is our baby, and this basically is like hurting your own baby, which you just don't do. And the person that did it, which I know really well, he doesn't understand himself, it just doesn't make any sense. Anyway, they mishandled it, absolutely, and we've stated so in our blogs. From that came a number of rules that we have now for our own employees. We have an internal affairs department that does nothing but monitor our employees, to ensure that nothing like that will ever happen again. But some still think that CCP as a whole is trying to help one alliance in-game. And, it's so ridiculous for anyone to think that. Why would anyone at CCP want to do something like that? So, we just mishandled it and we tried to correct it, and we I think we handled it as best we could, and that's what it basically was. We made a mistake, we'd never dealt with something like this before

Can someone explain what the actual scandal was?

Re:Scandal?

[Nananine]

It was originally published in The Escapist. There's three parts to it.

Basically, a player gained access to the private forums of one of the top alliances in the game, Band of Brothers. After sifting through chat logs and tracing IPs, he then alleged that the head of BoB's Capital Ship force used to be, in fact, a CCP employee. He also claimed that the same employee gave himself valuable Tech 2 original blueprints which he eventually donated to his corporation after he left.

After a big brouhaha that resulted in the "hacking" player's banning, the employee in question revealed himself as T20, one of the developers of EVE Online. He also confessed to have illegally spawned the Tech 2 blueprints for himself.

Eventually, CCP set up an internal affairs department headed by an impartial and well-regarded GM, Arkanon and placed the improperly spawned blueprints into the lottery pool (Tech 2 blueprint distribution relies on a lottery system which I'll skip explaining). The "hacker" remains banned, T20 remains employed at the company and the profits that BoB gained from the blueprints have yet to have been stripped.

Re:Scandal?

[drinkypoo]

Can someone explain what the actual scandal was?

Jesus H. Christ with a crutch in a sidecar on a pogo stick. The very first hit on a google search for "eve online scandal" (no quotes) tells you all about it.

Can you please explain why you're here? This is news for nerds, and a nerd would know how to use google.

Re:Scandal?

[epiphani]

I know nothing about this scandal, but one specific thing comes to mind when reading this:

What company has ever allowed the entire management team to go on vacation at the same time. I cant book vacation at the same time as a co-worker in my team. Nevermind managers trying to book vacations at the same time.

This answer wreaks of bullshit. Someone fucked up when someone else was on vacation. So they fucked up. Leave it at that and be done with.

Re:Scandal?

[Anonymous Coward]

A dev was in the leadership of one of the big alliances. (It's since come out that there are more GMs leading major alliances) His identity as a dev was known by his in-game corporation. Eventually it was leaked to the public and he was forced to step down. On his way out he gave illegitimately acquired items worth incredible amounts of money to his corporation. Several months later this became public, CCP tried to cover it up but it was leaked onto places such as slashdot. They then issued a statement admitting that the dev did this and was sorry, and removed the items from the game months after the fact. The dev in question is still working for CCP.

Re:Scandal?

[ThosLives]

You're obviously not familiar with European - especially Scandanavian - vacation practices.

It's quite common for an entire company to go on vacation for the same several weeks of the year.

I experienced this directly several years ago with a simulation (physics simulation, that is) software company based in Sweden.

Re:Scandal?

[Dan Slotman]

You ought to search for the article, but here is the situation as I understand it (as a non-player). Basically a CCP employee spawned in some ultra-rare recipes for making items and gave them to his company in exchange for being promoted into a management position. CCP only got busted when a non-employee player got access to the SQL logs and found some incriminating conversations. CCP proceeded to attempt a cover up involving massive post removal and player banning.

Re:Scandal?

[slothbait]

Magnus: Magnus Bergsson, the CMO at CCP.
Magnus: I don't get angry.
Magnus: I live there, I am one of those hardcore players.
Oh boy

The followup is
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/68604-Ju mpGate-EVEs-Devs-and-the-Friends-They-Keep-Part-2
here

I thought I would take a break. But with all the Corp Directors that are actually GMs and Devs poping up I guess I'm not going back. Eve is dead to me.

None of their 'hardcore' playerbase should still be playing and giving money to these people so they can build their private little playground with their old skool band of buddies.
Enjoy rotting in your elitist club masquerading as a sandbox.

Maybe I go try WoW or some thing I though was shit back when I loved Eve.

Re:Scandal?

[Crizp]

Companies that have customer contact and depend on having their systems up and running usually have a skeleton crew that can handle things while the others are away, i.e. both sysadmins in a company are not on vacation at the same time.

Re:Scandal?

[joelleo]

The scandal that blew it all into the open has already been posted. However, Magnus insinuates that this was an isolated event - a single dev doing a single naughty thing. Unfortunately, that is not true in the least. There have been numerous incidents of CCP employees' favoritism exhibited in-game, some of which have been noted by the eve playing public - scorp with all officer equipment spawned by a gm for instance that was blown up by a player gatecamp for instance.

I, personally, have been involved in numerous actions over the course of 3 years, including outright wars, against the corp and alliance of which t20 was a member and have seen first hand some very questionable events and decisions.

For instance, a corporation was involved in an event - essentially "Take back NOL-M9" which is the alliance in question's home system. The event coordinators within CCP assisted this corporation with a SINGLE carrier and a few other actors in faction battleships. A carrier can't take down pos - a fleet of a hundred carriers couldn't - yet they were supposed to take back the alliance's home system. Of course the attempt failed and the reward for the corporation involved was a few tier 1 battleships and some tech 1 cruisers.

ok, no big deal you say. True, but for events that transpired a few weeks afterwards. Essentially the same event but against a different target - a different alliance in the North - and the corporation involved is one of the founding corps of the alliance in question. For their event they received the assistance of several (I've heard variously 5 through 9) dreadnaughts, carriers and numerous faction battleships to assist them. On its own, the fleet provided by CCP would've been enough to do significant damage and take down many pos. In combination with the player forces it was unstoppable. I don't know the specifics of the rewards given to the corp involved but my understanding is that they received a few capital ships as well as several faction battleships.

This sort of lopsided favoritism is blatant and rampant in the game, unfortunately. After 3 and a half years of telling myself it couldn't be that bad, I've come to the realization that it is. CCP's bungled handling of this situation and the ones that preceded it and lack of acknowledgement of the scope of the issue constituted the final nail in the coffin - I cancelled both of my 3 and a half year old accounts already.

Re:Scandal?

[HomelessInLaJolla]

Can someone explain what the actual scandal was? Someone figured out what the scam was, exposed it, and the mods (company employees abusing in-game advantage) smacked them down for it:

Moderation -1
    20% Flamebait
    40% Funny
    20% Troll
Extra 'Flamebait' Modifier 0 (Edit)
Subscriber-Bonus Modifier +1 (Edit)

Total Score: 1 I've seen this happen so many times I could script it in more than one language.

Re:Scandal?

[PopeRatzo]

Slashdot: Really?

I'm impressed with the interviewer's insightful questions. Really.

Re:Scandal?

[Sobrique]

I don't see the problem. Devs play the game, and experience it in the same way as the rest of the player base. OK, cheating incident = bad. *shrug* in a general sense though, so what? I don't think I've been in the same system as a dev. I don't know, but ... well frankly I don't care.

Does it really seem so strange to you, that the GMs and Devs are being recruited from the enthusiastic and focussed EVE players? The same traits that make them able to be a 'power' in EVE, are the same traits that make them good choices for the job.

Then again, I suppose it's always easier to blame someone cheating than it is to accept they beat you fair and square.

Re:Scandal?

[CyrusG]

I can't speak for HockeyPuck, but sometimes I'd rather hear from Slashdot instead of some random source found on Google. Personally, I had a tough time piecing together the whole story when it first broke, but Nananine just summarized it quite nicely.

Re:Scandal?

[dapprman]

The problem is that the way the cheating was done totally imballanced the game, and in such a way that unpicking would be extemely hard.

To equate it to a form non-players might understand.
A group of you are playing monopoly. it is still near the start and people are slowly buying properties with the initial funds. Suddenly the owner of the game gives himself the title deeds to the properties on the final row, plus the funds to build hotels on all of them. The effect on the Eve universe was that extreme.

One of the reasons I effectively soloed the game when my old corp (which was a small mining one) split up, was because it was pointless trying to compete with the big boys in the big drop areas, so I just carried on doing missions. I was talked in to joning a friend's corp and connecting alliance, and now partly regret it as the old issues are now affecting me. Still I've only played Eve part time since WoW came out. It is an intersting game with beautiful graphics, but unless you join BoB or one of their clones, you'll never make it big (or get big things and survive).

Re:Scandal?

[Sobrique]

A few T2 BPOs are hardly 'totally imballancing'. The ones that got spawned, yeah, they were useful, but ... well, I know how much revenue a refinery outpost makes in a good location. I know how much alliances tend to charge for tenancy. The profit from a couple of 'not ultra uber' T2 BPOs is a drop in the ocean. You can make 3-4 billion a week from an outpost, no problems. BoB and other large alliances charge 'around' 300mil/week/corp. That's why BoB are doing phenomenally well - they're _actually_ doing business, rather than (just) chest beating and whining about 'zomg cheating'.

Re:Scandal?

[phxbadash]

To equate it to a form non-players might understand. A group of you are playing monopoly. it is still near the start and people are slowly buying properties with the initial funds. Suddenly the owner of the game gives himself the title deeds to the properties on the final row, plus the funds to build hotels on all of them. The effect on the Eve universe was that extreme. Uh...I'm sorry but that is a gross overstatement. It was a fucking sabre BPO FFS not a T2 BS. They sell for like 20 mill. the profit off of that in 6 months is MINISCULE compared to other T2 BPO's BoB already has. Quit being a fucking tard.

Re:Scandal?

[mindshaper155]

If you think an entire company shutting down is bad, what about an entire country shutting down? France basically shuts down for the entire month of August, so if you leave anything to be repaired or need anything fixed, you might as well forget it.

Eve? Online? Hardcore?

[stratjakt]

It's not what I thought it would be.

Management team on vacation excuse?

[PoderOmega]

I would never allow this excuse to come from any company where I am paying from something.

For example, what if there was a major server issue where the replacement management had 2 choices
1) Cut the capacity of players in half and queue the rest
2) Allow all players, but the performance of the game would be reduce

Well since management is on vacation, and since this "never" happened before, the replacement management thought #2 was the best option. It doesn't really matter what they pick, the community is going to be pissed. Then management gives an interview afterwords, and tries to use the excuse they were on vacation? Are you f-ing kidding me? No matter how this "cheating employee" issue was handled, a big chunk of the community will be pissed. The worst thing you can do is blame on it summer vacation.

Re:Management team on vacation excuse?

[cowscows]

CCP has repeatedly handled this whole issue in pretty much the worst ways possible. Basically their response has been excuses for not handling it properly at first, and assurances that it's been handled properly this time. Not much specific information, just a "trust us, it's fine" attitude, completely oblivious to the fact that they have already lost credibility with much of their player base.

And in this interview, he sets up a nice little strawman argument about how it's not CCP's official policy to unfairly favor one particular alliance/corp/group. That's not what people think or are upset about. We're concerned about individuals within CCP unfairly favoring particular groups, and CCP's (un)official policy of not giving a damn.

He then goes on and talks about how hardcore EvE is, and how 30 second events can determine the results of months of work. That being the case, why won't he understand why even a single individual at CCP cheating within the game is so damaging and frustrating.

Re:Management team on vacation excuse?

[AugstWest]

The absolutely worst part of the whole thing, imho, is that they tried to cover it up.

THEN, when one person refused to let that happen, he spent months digging information out of chat logs, web forums, etc. until he had actual hardcore evidence of the wrongdoing.

CCP then tried to shut him up.

Then the whole community got pissed off about it and made so much noise that CCP was finally forced to deal with it.

Then CCP banned the guy who found all the evidence from the game.

Nice job, guys. Way to build trust.

Re:Management team on vacation excuse?

[zerocool^]

There's more grey area there than you are allowing for.

For one, it was overhanded that CCP baned him for his out of game actions, but the fact is that CCP provide a service at their discresion, and can cancel anyone's account for any reason.

For two, he didn't do a bunch of sherlock holmes deducing of the situation, he HACKED INTO SOMEONE'S WEBSITE AND TEAMSPEAK SERVER and got the website forum's IP logs and used them to determine that T20 was a CCP employee.

Also, guys, the total profit from a Sabre Blueprint over the course of 6 months is about 4 billion isk. I don't even think he had it for 6 months, but whatever, let's assume 4 billion. Band of Brothers has a HUGE infrastructure - they charge pet alliances 6 billion per month per constillation to live in their space, in addition to their huge stock of legit Tech 2 blueprints, their massive moon mining operations, and other things that they use to make money. 4 billion for Band of Brothers is a drop in the bucket. Everyone is just up in arms because for other alliances, 4 billion is a huge investment. BoB plays on a different level than everyone else.

They should have fired the guy. As they said, the company's senior managers were out of town at the time, so the junior guys didn't want to overstep their boundries and fire someone. And then, the senior guys thought that it would be unfair to punish someone twice for the same misdeed. But, having said that, if you read the CCP forums, it would seem that the fact that this guy cheated and generated a few ammo blueprints and a sabre blueprint is causing the sky to fall, the servers to explode, and every one who has ever played Eve to get the aids and parvo at the same time.

~Wx

Re:Management team on vacation excuse?

[Andy Dodd]

For example - It later came out that a person whose ingame name was The Enslaver, a leader of one of the game's major alliances and one of the first 3-4 titan pilots in the game, had been hired as a GM. Let's face it, no matter how impartial a person might try to be, someone THAT connected to an alliance cannot be trusted not to subconsciously favor their alliance in any disputes that may involve it. Yes, The Enslaver left his leadership position in his alliance, but still, one's connection to an organization does not end after one retires from it. Like previously, CCP basically said, "It's OK, trust us, it'll be fine!". Suuuure...

FYI, a Titan is the largest and most expensive ship class in EVE, so expensive that less than ten have been built so far in the game, and the blueprints have been available for over six months.

Re:Management team on vacation excuse?

[cowscows]

Most of the people in serious 0.0 alliances (the smarter ones at least), aren't that concerned with the isk from the illegitimate BPO's. That's just what the empire dwellers and such understand, as you noted, and one of the easier things to prove. More upsetting to me is that if this guy was willing to cheat in a manner as blatant as spawning extremely rare items and giving them to his buddies, then it's hard to imagine him not sharing information at least as freely, because there's all sorts of ways that he could do that outside of the game, through methods that CCP would find much harder to monitor.

In a game with as much complexity as EvE, knowledge and information is very important. Advanced knowledge of upcoming gameplay changes could give one side a huge advantage. The guy who's been publishing the info about all this nonsense showed some logs that indicate that BoB was invited by CCP to do some serious testing of POS mechanics and whatnot. And while it's not unreasonable for CCP to ask some highly skilled players to help them test something like that, they certainly didn't share all the information gained through that exercise with everyone else. POS mechanics, like much in EVE, are poorly documented, extremely buggy, and often end up being dealt with on a case-by-case basis by GM's, because stuff is always happening for no apparent reason. Since they're such a significant part of the 0.0 game, having some extra CCP provided knowledge on how all of that functions is an unfair advantage to BoB, whether that was CCP's intentions or not.

It goes well beyond a few BPO's. And everyone's a little extra pissy because BoB has historically been very snarky and judgemental towards pretty much everyone else. No one doubted that they're some smart, experienced players with lots of resources, but they didn't need to be such douche bags about it. Doubly so because they've had some unfair help (whether they needed it or not), and at least their leadership knew about it.

Re:Management team on vacation excuse?

[zerocool^]

It goes well beyond a few BPO's. And everyone's a little extra pissy because BoB has historically been very snarky and judgemental towards pretty much everyone else. No one doubted that they're some smart, experienced players with lots of resources, but they didn't need to be such douche bags about it. Doubly so because they've had some unfair help (whether they needed it or not), and at least their leadership knew about it. Oh, definately agreed.

I haven't seen any evidence that they got any more help from T20 / CCP than the blueprints, but having one scandal come to light certainly means there could be others.

All I was saying is that I still see tons of outrage at BoB over this, but I see not nearly enough outrage at the asshole who hacked forums and databases to get private convos and IP addresses. That guy is a true douchebag. The ends don't justify illegal means, sorry.

And then, the guy outed The Enslaver, who I have actually flown with and been on Teamspeak with. That dude is a standup guy, and he knows more about eve than pretty much anyone else in the game - which is why he got offered a position once he graduated high school. He didn't do anything wrong, and outing him as a GM was another douchebag move.

Whether or not it should have come to light that BoB cheated, I think that guy who did the hacking and exposure really has ruined a lot of the game, for a lot of people.

~Wx

Re:Management team on vacation excuse?

[rujholla]

As someone who has never played or wanted to play EVE all this goes more than a little over my head but blaming any of this on the guy did the hacking smacks of trying to hide something.

If some reporter had hacked into the white house network and found chat logs proving that Carl Rove had maliciously outed Valarie Plame the majority of slashdot would be patting him on the back and congratulating him.

How is that different from what this hacker did? He exposed corruption and illegal(ok illegal in the game) behavior. Can you explain to me how he ruined the game by exposing the corruption that existed? It seems to me that CCP ruined the game by being corrupt. Or do I just totally not understand whats going on?

Re:Management team on vacation excuse?

[cowscows]

He's not completely motivated by altruistic intentions. Before he started this scandal, he broke into the forums of many EvE alliances, and basically held their secret information for ransom. Some also believe that he was basically for hire, you could pay him in-game money to break into the forums of your enemies. He ruined a lot of hard work by a lot of people, even people who weren't doing anything wrong.

Also, since his big announcements involving T20 and BoB, he's kind of bought into his own hype. As stated in some of the earlier comments, he outed The Enslaver as a GM, and really trumped up questionable evidence, trying to make it into another big scandal. Turns out The Enslaver is probably a good guy, who was following the rules, and trying to do a good job. And he didn't really deserve all the crap he's had shoveled onto him.

None of what he's done excuses CCP from their wrongs or vice-versa.

Re:Management team on vacation excuse?

[jeff4747]

All I was saying is that I still see tons of outrage at BoB over this, but I see not nearly enough outrage at the asshole who hacked forums and databases to get private convos and IP addresses. That guy is a true douchebag. The ends don't justify illegal means, sorry.

BoB members have spent a lot of time hacking forums, teamspeak and databases of other alliances. Turnabout is fair play.

Re:Management team on vacation excuse?

[MMaestro]

CCP: "You found out about T20's dark secret. Shut up or we'll ban you."

T20's secret is revealed publicly.

CCP: "..."

'Questionable evidence' begins to surface that The Enslaver has been involved in similar transgressions.

CCP: "F*** you, you're banned."

A few months later...

CCP: "We actually did a survey, and we found it's an even distribution of CCP employees in the top ten alliances."

EVE Community: "..."

Re:Management team on vacation excuse?

[Sobrique]

Same skills that make him able to lead alliances, build titans, and generally be a solid bloke (and he is) are also the same things that would make him a good GM.

And since becoming a GM, I know for a fact he's been taking a step back from 'Alliance business'. Didn't realise why at the time of course, but ...

'exposing' him so his main character is deleted is just ... unbelievably crass.

Re:Management team on vacation excuse?

[Anonymous Coward]

As one other commenter posted in the in-game forum, "Wow. In the grand scheme of things that amounts to seriously so little. Anyone demanding more or threatening to quit over this still feel free to contract your stuff to me."

Basically, all the BPO's were ammo BPO's. Oh noes!

As someone who's played Eve since Beta, I could frankly care less about these BPO's, as long as it doesn't happen with BPO's that might actually matter. Granted, it's "loading" what's equivalent for ammo for use or sale, but I can only disagree with the ethics of the situation.

I'm glad that CCP actually cares about something that affects the rest of the game so little...

I actually feel sorry for t20, he was one of my favorite devs just for the DB releases. He was the one that engineered and released all the core constant database data that's been given to players publicly.

I hope database releases continue as the game evolves.

PS: As a disclaimer, I absolutely hate BoB, and have been working to limit their growth and hurt 'em whenever I get the chance. I just love podding some BoB'er who'll actually venture out of their fiefdom alone (for a change) and wonders why they're being persecuted. ;)

Re:Management team on vacation excuse?

[Shardis]

Yeah, I agree - illegal activity okay when in retaliation against bad corporate policy decisions. When my boss and I disagree, I just slit the throat of the new guy.

Oh, wait...

Re:Management team on vacation excuse?

[DarkGreenNight]

Some weeks ago there was one of such incidents in the middle of the night (GMT-wise, that is their timezone), 2 am or so. The main database expert and a developer connected to help solve the problem. It was an int index that grew over its limit, just like the problem slashdot had some time ago.

The server was down some time, but in about an hour or two it was open again, with some little nuisances (no money transactions shown from february or before).

Yes, the people in charge when the BPO incident happened were a bit on the lenient side, but on the rest of the ocasions I've found that they are right where they need to be.

And now they have entered an agreement with Transgamming to use Cider in order to have working Mac and Linux clients. This while also working for the DX10 client with graphic upgrades.

Right now I find it's one of the best online games in the market. And I love that I'm at work and my character is still learning, not getting behind of the friends that could play 23 hours a day, not getting ahead of those that can play once a week.

Re:Management team on vacation excuse?

[Anonymous Coward]

While you rabble on about the Whitehouse, you're forgetting EVE is a game.

Re:Management team on vacation excuse?

[Rogerborg]

Eh, what "cheating employee" issue? With Slashdot showing their usual standard of "journalism", I don't even know what question was being answered.

Re:Management team on vacation excuse?

[Andy Dodd]

The fact that I would not even trust myself if I were in his situation not to do something "unfair" subconsciously despite putting as much conscious effort into being objective and unbiased means that fundamentally, I cannot trust him. He can try as hard as he can to be objective and unbiased, but the fact remains that someone with as many connections as he does to one entity is going to have an uncontrollable subconscious bias.

Re:Management team on vacation excuse?

[jeff4747]

This has nothing to do with CCP's policies. BoB's policies seem to be to hack into other alliance's message boards and teamspeak/ventrillo, since they've done it repeatedly. As such, it's very hypocritical to claim this guy is in the wrong when he has what BoB has done repeatedly.

I got better answers from...

[Quiet_Desperation]

ELIZA online. Why, I think I corrected at least two neuroses today!

For you Scientologists, that would be "engrams".

Re:Eve? Online? Hardcore?

[the_humeister]

It was on slashdot a few months ago. Basically, a developer was giving one of the in-game corporations (somewhat like a guild in other games) blueprints to powerful ships and other things.

Re:Eve? Online? Hardcore?

[the_humeister]

Oops! Gave the wrong link. Here's the actual link.

A Dangerous Assumption

[popo]

Magnus: "Absolutely. The reason that people team up in corporations and then corporations team up in alliances is because there is this inherent big threat of dying and losing a lot of money. You can lose months of work in 30 seconds, and this forces people because of human nature, to band together and form relationships."

That was the prevailing mantra in fantasy based MMORPG's. And then WoW and GW came along and defied that mantra. ... and kicked everyone else's asses.

Its pretty clear that from a market/business/popularity perspective that the "You can lose months of work in 30 seconds"-thing lost-out in a huge way to the "safer", "nice-warm-bath" approach. Which is why I think EVE is ultimately doomed -- more doomed than its management knows. When the space-based equivalent of WoW hits the shelves ("World of Starcraft", perhaps?) EVE is going to see far, far more attrition than they know. And for those who say "Yeah, but all those people with all that time invested -- those guys won't jump-ship"... well... that ain't what happened to DAoC, EQ, Asheron's or any of the others when WoW launched.

Re:A Dangerous Assumption

[drinkypoo]

Its pretty clear that from a market/business/popularity perspective that the "You can lose months of work in 30 seconds"-thing lost-out in a huge way to the "safer", "nice-warm-bath" approach.

It's pretty clear that from any perspective there is room for more than one kind of game in the market. If EVE were doomed it would have died already.

It's not the investment in time, it's the array of people who WANT the life-or-death experience, or don't. Those who don't will jump ship. Those who do will stick around. Some people will leave and come back. Some people who have never tried either EVE or their future competition will go to EVE because of the difficulty level. Most won't. That's okay, because the market continues to grow.

Re:A Dangerous Assumption

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a good point. You can't simultaneously pride yourself on how your game makes it possible to lose everything you've worked for very quickly and expect people to stick around because they've spent so much time at it.

Re:A Dangerous Assumption

[merreborn]

There's always gonna be a market for "hardcore" MMOs. I don't think EVE is in direct competition with WoW -- they're different subgenres, really.

There are MMO players out there that *want* death to matter. You're right, they're the minority, but they're out there, games like EVE cater to them, and that minority isn't going to dissolve.

The guys who are out there in lowsec space (the most dangerous areas) every day don't *want* to play World of Starcraft. It'd bore the hell out of them.

Re:A Dangerous Assumption

[brkello]

I disagree. These two are in direct competition like every MMO. It is just too hard to play multiple MMOs well. I am sure there are people who do this, but I know if I am playing one MMO, I don't have time to play another. If I do, that other MMO will be cancelled because it doesn't have enough content to keep me playing.

Re:A Dangerous Assumption

[Miniluv]

The death penalty in EvE is one half of the double edged sword of Damocles waiting to smite CCP. The other is the barrier to entry, which they didn't actually "fix" at all with the last upgrade. I spent about 4 months as an active player, with a couple months in the middle not logging in except to change training skills, and still couldn't do much of anything interesting without having to join a corp, do the shitwork they assigned me to at the outset, and maybe eventually working my way up to a cool ship or something interesting. To me if a game isn't solo-able to a large extent then its a waste of my time, as I refuse to be dependent on other people for my leisure time.

Re:A Dangerous Assumption

[LodCrappo]

I hear what you are saying.. but what I think makes Eve different is that it isn't just that you *could* lose months of work in 30 seconds, rather it's that almost everyone *does* lose big, and more regularly than they'd like in most cases. I've played game where there were risks of losing, but only in Eve are those risks so ever present and real. And there are so many ways to die :) It's like we've all been through this and so we band together to fight a very real threat of massive loss, not just to make some ingame money or clear a level like in other mmorgs I've played.

Re:A Dangerous Assumption

[merreborn]

I disagree. These two are in direct competition like every MMO. It is just too hard to play multiple MMOs well. I am sure there are people who do this, but I know if I am playing one MMO, I don't have time to play another. If I do, that other MMO will be cancelled because it doesn't have enough content to keep me playing.

I'd suggest that EVE online and World Of Warcraft are only in competition as much as Honda and Porsche are -- sure, you probably choose one or the other, but the type of people that choose to drive a Porsche aren't very likely to be tempted away by the latest Civic.

Re:A Dangerous Assumption

[fitten]

The death penalty in EvE is one half of the double edged sword of Damocles waiting to smite CCP. The other is the barrier to entry, which they didn't actually "fix" at all with the last upgrade. I spent about 4 months as an active player, with a couple months in the middle not logging in except to change training skills, and still couldn't do much of anything interesting without having to join a corp, do the shitwork they assigned me to at the outset, and maybe eventually working my way up to a cool ship or something interesting. To me if a game isn't solo-able to a large extent then its a waste of my time, as I refuse to be dependent on other people for my leisure time.

Whether your not you are in a corp (or even an NPC corp) has no bearing on whether your not you can get into a cool ship or 'something'. You train up for it and buy it on your own and *pow* you're in your cool ship or 'something' as soon as you can afford to buy it and no one can stop you (as long as the ship is for sale somewhere). The game is soloable to a large extent. I've been playing for just over a year now and the only time I join gangs are when I want to do so, usually to help a newer pilot out finishing a mission, inviting newer players to join me on tougher missions so they can make some money and have fun shooting bigger npc ships, or when we gang up to go hunting in lowsec/zerosec for other players.

Sounds like you may have spent that four months waiting on someone to hold your hand and give you stuff. That won't happen unless there's some reason to do so and/or you are somewhat trusted already. You can't expect to join a corp and get access to the coffers right away because there's too many spies and corporate thieves around. You have to earn trust before you'll get handouts. So yeah, you were wasting your time.

Re:A Dangerous Assumption

[fitten]

Eve has been around for 3+ years now and is still growing, slowly, but growing. Even one year ago when I first signed on, the record for simultanous players was around 16000. These days, it's normally in the high 20s and the record is double that a year ago (around 33000 simultaneous). Granted, it's probably two orders of magnitude lower than WoW, but it doesn't try to cater to the masses... it's a niche game.

Here's a quick comparison. I never once in WoW got very excited about anything and I've done most all the content before BC (didn't do the Slithus stuff because I quit before that was put in). In Eve, I've had so much adrenalin pumping that my hands were shaking so hard I couldn't control my ship.

Re:A Dangerous Assumption

[ifrag]

Its pretty clear that from a market/business/popularity perspective that the "You can lose months of work in 30 seconds"-thing lost-out in a huge way to the "safer", "nice-warm-bath" approach.

Having been in that actual situation several times, I can say that's a distinct feeling you cannot find in most other games. Maybe it really is a bad thing, it certainly feels bad when it happens. The extreme sense of loss and 'wasted' time when you watch in horror as a Vagabond with T2 and faction items fitted explodes, well... there's almost no way to describe exactly how that feels but it's very bad indeed.

However I can say being on the other side, the extreme sense of victory and triumph is also something you cannot find in most other games. I guess it's just the full knowledge of the amount of pain, agony, and destruction you just inflicted on another person's in game existence. Obviously to experience this very opposite feeling requires that hardcore game play setup needs to be there. It's like the bitter / sweet analogy.

I've won countless battles in the WoW battlegrounds and none of them have left me even near the satisfaction of getting a great kill in EVE. In EVE I know that my opponent has been deprived of his ship, its items, and possibly even his implants. To top it off, I even get to further my own characters wealth by scavenging through what was left of the opponents ship. In WoW, I get the nice little medals which, if I grind through the exact same battleground, doing the EXACT same battle day after day, I might get something worth actually equipping, at least as a secondary item anyway. I also can rest easy in the knowledge that nothing was really taken over, and nobody really died or lost, or gained anything at all, other than a few cheap medals which are actually worth almost nothing. Yea... nice-warm-bath is just far too much to compete with.

Re:A Dangerous Assumption

[Cornflake917]

I play both Eve and WoW. I know some other people who do the same.

Re:A Dangerous Assumption

[squidbeast]

As do I. Sometimes even at the same time.

Re:A Dangerous Assumption

[Anonymous Coward]

EVE does allow you situations where you can lose everything, but the way to manage the risk of losing everything is to use tactics that prevent it. you don't HAVE to fly your most expensive ship with your best mods and your best clone all the time, with no awareness of what lies beyond the next gate. you can jump to a clone with no implants, grab a cheap ship with cheap mods, and rely on your alliance's intel for information on risky places.

when i joined my alliance, we popped a hauler carrying expensive blueprints through our gatecamp, and he sent this heart-wrenching message to one of the guys that popped him. if you know how EVE works, you'd think to yourself "what the hell is this guy doing flying a hauler through 0.0 with no escort, no intel, carrying valuable blueprints?"

the moral of the story is that EVE gives you the opportunity for risk, because you can manage the risk if you play smart and have teammates that play smart.

Re:A Dangerous Assumption

[brkello]

Not really. Eve likes to make itself out as a more intelligent game for a different type of gamer...but it is really just more of the same. It has a bit more of a learning curve...but complexity has more to do with the piss poor interface because you have to click through multiple menus rather than actually requiring any true intelligence. They seem to confuse making things tedious with skill (but I digress, this is just me venting on how a good game could be so much better).

In any case, people get tired of WoW, FFXI, etc and want to try something different. So they try Eve. Some hardcore people stick with Eve, some stick with WoW, some float between the two. People who have been playing the longest have the most invested, so they are going to stick with their game. They sing the praises of their game and belittle the other one not because they like it so much more...just because they need to justify why they have spent 3 years playing the same game (generalizing here, obviously there are exceptions). I did enjoy Eve for awhile when I first played but eventually grew tired of it. I don't have time to play multiple MMOs...it is just the nature of the beast.

I would compare Eve and WoW to Counter Strike and Quake 3. One takes a bit more time to get in to, but they are both fun. People can enjoy both but they tend to prefer one or the other. The long time players of one put down the players of the other. Just that WoW and Eve are MMOs...which require massive amounts of time to play. Only those without a family or good job can really progress in multiple MMOs unless they are extremely casual in both. Thus they really are in competition with each other as people have a finite amount of free time to play.

Re:A Dangerous Assumption

[will_frag_for_food]

That was the prevailing mantra in fantasy based MMORPG's. And then WoW and GW came along and defied that mantra. ... and kicked everyone else's asses.

Actually WoW rode on the success of a previous generation of 3D MMORPGs, of which your friend DAoC is a member. They were not the 'first' to any of this... DAoC and others already did the whole 'die and keep your gear' thing and yes, it was well received and made for some fun gameplay where people go totally balls-out because they know the worst that can happen is that you might need to drop a few plat to repair your stuff.


Its pretty clear that from a market/business/popularity perspective that the "You can lose months of work in 30 seconds"-thing lost-out in a huge way to the "safer", "nice-warm-bath" approach.

Years later, UO is still running as a 2D/crappy3D game... the ONLY reason many folks left Ultima Online (which still enjoys a subscriber base) is because they ditched the client revamp and people wanted eye-candy. Put the DAoC or WoW interface on UO and I am back in an instant. The move from UO to DAoC and the like is the move that you are giving WoW credit for.


When the space-based equivalent of WoW hits the shelves ("World of Starcraft", perhaps?) EVE is going to see far, far more attrition than they know. And for those who say "Yeah, but all those people with all that time invested -- those guys won't jump-ship"... well... that ain't what happened to DAoC, EQ, Asheron's or any of the others when WoW launched.

How does this comparison work? Ultimately you are talking about the 'price of death', right? So WoW's success over the other MMOs mentioned (same 'price of death') has some relevence to the ability of your "World of Starcraft" (totally different 'price of death') to deplete the EVE player base? WoW succeeded because it gave players of similarly styled games more of what they wanted, arguably the advantage of NOT being first to market. This argument loses steam when you start predicting the effects of a totally differently styled game on the player base of EVE.

Idunno, I guess some of the shallow grave stuff from the fantasy MMOs just doesn't feel like it would quite fit in the Sci-Fi ones... I can get into the idea of my Shadowblade respawning after death and still having armor and weapons and stuff, but watching my ship blow up and then respawning in it? That feels more like a spacefighter sim, or FPS (first person shipper?).

Re:A Dangerous Assumption

[Jedi Alec]

without having to join a corp, do the shitwork they assigned me to at the outset, and maybe eventually working my way up to a cool ship or something interesting. To me if a game isn't solo-able to a large extent then its a waste of my time, as I refuse to be dependent on other people for my leisure time.

Ehmmmm, and it isn't? You don't need a corp to mine and make money(yuck! mining! boring! carebear!). You don't need a corp to take your freshly created character out in a cheap frig to cause a bit of mayhem in low sec. You don't need a corp to set up a huge research imperium. The only thing you do need a corp for is to take advantage of the whole "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts" concept.

Re:A Dangerous Assumption

[Miniluv]

No, I played hours a night 7 nights a week doing missions, trying to earn enough cash to afford a ship that can survive 2.5 minutes in 0.0 space without having to CONSTANTLY look over my shoulder. I'm well aware that all you have to do is train up and have the cash, but those are both time consuming in the extreme. Yes its a lot quicker now that you get hundreds of thousands of skill points instead of the meager couple thousand I started with.

Yes, there's lots of solo content. If you don't mind doing the same mindless shit over, and over, and over again.

Our tastes in gaming obviously differ, and thus we view the EVE experience differently. To me its a game that caters entirely to the hardcore community, and that's fine it just means I shan't be playing (even though by most standards I am a hardcore gamer).

Re:A Dangerous Assumption

[Miniluv]

No, you don't NEED a corp. I don't think I said it was required so much as it was required to do before you got really, really tired of the game. I actually enjoyed mining, but it just wasn't profitable enough. Even jet-can mining I couldn't manage to break above 300k/hr and that's peanuts at this point in EVE. Shit, kids can spend their $5 allowance and have more isk in 5 minutes than I'd have in a week.

The missions that are solo-able are incredibly repetitive (WAY more so than WoW for instance), and living 5 minutes in low-sec or 0.0 space just isn't a thrill to me.

Who knows, perhaps I just sucked ass at EVE and am much better at games like WoW or CoV (both of which I play regularly and enjoy immensely).

Hopefully you keep on enjoying EVE though, if that is the way your tastes are currently running.

Re:A Dangerous Assumption

[Andy Dodd]

In fact, I would say that the "high risk of loss" mantra hurts the tendency of players to team up and band together.

The fact of the matter is that EVE game mechanics breed an environment of distrust and paranoia. Corp thievery is rampant, and as a result corporations rarely trust new members, making it difficult for an intelligent player to reach their full potential. Similarly, it's impossible to group up with a player to "get to know" them - the moment you gang with someone, they can kill you without repercussions, and more often than not, if you gang up with a stranger, they ARE out to kill you and loot your ship's wreck.

That said, if you have an established group of friends that you explicitly trust without any doubts, EVE can be a great game. I play with a bunch of OLD friends that I've known for many years, and love it. But EVE has a lot of potential that is not being realized because CCP is so focused on PvP to the exception of all else.

Re:A Dangerous Assumption

[fitten]

No, I played hours a night 7 nights a week doing missions, trying to earn enough cash to afford a ship that can survive 2.5 minutes in 0.0 space without having to CONSTANTLY look over my shoulder. I'm well aware that all you have to do is train up and have the cash, but those are both time consuming in the extreme. Yes its a lot quicker now that you get hundreds of thousands of skill points instead of the meager couple thousand I started with.

Actually, what you want is impossible. There is no player in all of Eve who can cruise around 0.0 space without constantly looking over his shoulder. The best one could do is cruise around 0.0 space that his corporation has sovereignty over, but even that does not make him immune to being killed by another player, it just makes it more likely that he would be notified of a hostile in the area sooner. In 0.0, if they aren't "blue", then you *must* assume they are hostile. It's that simple. And... there is no ship in the game that can't be killed by another gang so searching for such a ship is pointless. No matter what you fly or how many skill points or how much money you have, you can (and probably will) be killed flying around lowsec/0.0 solo. In fact, there are several mantras:
1. Do not undock in any ship that you cannot afford to lose. (slightly relaxed in highsec but still somewhat true, depending)
2. If you plan to fly into lowsec/0.0 space, assume that whatever ship you are in is already blown up, because it most likely will be.

If either of the two points above don't sit well with you while you are in a particular ship, you probably should put it back in your hangar and pick another ship to fly.

Yes, there's lots of solo content. If you don't mind doing the same mindless shit over, and over, and over again.

Yeah, just doing missions or mining is that way. In lowsec/0.0 it's never the same thing from minute to minute as it is almost entirely PvP on a 1-on-1, 1-on-many, many-on-many, or OMG-LOOK-AT-ALL-THOSE-SHIPS!!!!one

Our tastes in gaming obviously differ, and thus we view the EVE experience differently. To me its a game that caters entirely to the hardcore community, and that's fine it just means I shan't be playing (even though by most standards I am a hardcore gamer).

That's perfectly fine :) To each his own and it's good that there is choice in the MMO world. Maybe we'll see each other in LotR:O (my next game to pick up) :)

Re:A Dangerous Assumption

[@madeus]

You don't need a corp to take your freshly created character out in a cheap frig to cause a bit of mayhem in low sec. "Oh look, my frigate/cruiser has been blow up in [1-2] shots by a random guy gate camping low sec space in a Megathron. Again."

Even with insurance that's very expensive, as of course there is no option for 'full contents' and insurance is overpriced anyway (they are just fixed amounts for everyone). It's half assed because they couldn't be bother to write a system that evaluated risk like in RL, so players nearer the bottom are punished the most because the system is incomplete. When I was starting out, the system became bugged and refused to let me insure my large Industrial ship, which I couldn't afford to replace. I raised a support ticket and was told "well it's only a few million, so it can't be a big deal" by an enormously unhelpful twat.

Mining is definitely crazy if you are not in a group. It's very competitive, and hauling pays better dividends with little investment, missions used to be great, but I got fed up of that when they decided to nerf my Thorax from carrying 6 medium drones to 2, which totally buggered it (similar to when the SWG 'rebalancing' took down my carbine skill down from > 800 to 80 and prevented me from wearing any item in my very extensive armour collection) AND nerfed the drones themselves (and, IIRC, some of the weapons I could mount) - all in all meaning I could now only do missions half the difficulty of the missions I used to be able to do.

I can understand needing to nerf an overpowered item, but when you do things as drastic as that it's just a sign of stupidity on the part of the team responsible. EVE is so flexible they could have handle that so much better, so easily, instead they chose the option that would punish players who'd worked out a really good setup ("We don't like that sort of thinking round here!").

That they didn't get round to implementing corporations fully (I'm thinking with regard to the trading of shares, which was left half done the last time I looked at it) or implementing payment support into the EVE browser (another initial goal I could see huge potential in - particularly in building up a community) was also disappointing.

I suspect the developers are by now too removed from the experience to be able to see it from a perspective of anything but an existing hardcore player (and I'm sure any new developers are 'brought up to speed' quickly if they arn't already, rather than being listened to for their unique perspective.

I think there is a lot they could do to make it more appealing to the masses. The improved mission system was good, but didn't go far enough - I think they really need something (and I think PvE leading into maybe some faction PvP is the way) to bridge the gap between 'new character' and 'hardcore' to increase the take up. I've seen so many people (who love hardcore PvP) look at it and just turn away in disgust.

They'd have to actually go after the gold farmers before I'd even consider coming back. Everyone I know who is *still* playing it buys their ISK online from IGE for insanely low prices - just 5 UKP for 50 Million ISK. With retarded no-penalty ganking so prevalent (see beginning of this post) it's a pre-requisite if you want to be able to do high level PvP. That just isn't a mechanic I want to embrace.

Re:A Dangerous Assumption

[zippthorne]

Not to mention that you don't even get to fly your own ships.

Re:A Dangerous Assumption

[coolGuyZak]

It's called a Niche Market:

By definition, then, a business that focuses on a niche market is addressing a need for a product or service that is not being addressed by mainstream providers. A niche market may be thought of as a narrowly defined group of potential customers.

Re:A Dangerous Assumption

[Voltageaav]

Close to how it feels when your rigged out rook gets scrammed by a Privateer Arazu and the ECM gods don't happen to favor you at that moment? 6 Figgin ECMs and none of them work on 1 stupid ship....

Re:A Dangerous Assumption

[Maserati]

It's way more fun with a good corp. Not all of 'em have schedules and quotas and rules and regs. Lucky Hydra is one of the good kind, I posted a link upthread.

Re:A Dangerous Assumption

[Sobrique]

Been playing EVE 2 years myself. Would have to say I disagree (obviously).

EVE _isn't_ to everyone's tastes, this is true. But it truly does have some features that serve to differentiate it - whether you like that or not, is a different matter

It's a player driven game. This to me, is a big thing. There's wars raging across EVE at the moment, and it's players, going after other players, and the changes that are happening, are permanent. No one's going to reset the battlefield.

The very fact that resources are finite, and unfair is what appeals to me. I don't like the idea of everyone queuing for their fair share - I do that in supermarkets, I don't want to do that in games.

EVE is a real time strategy game. You generate resources, and use them to build your stuff. You actually lead, and get your corp to co-operate behind a singular strategy, and then you start to become a 'power' in the game. And then you go out, and take control of some real estate, and use it as a foothold to further boost your organisation.

I like that, but ... well some day I can see the appeal of a no stress evening killing orcs.

Re:A Dangerous Assumption

[Anonymous Coward]

But complexity has more to do with the piss poor interface because you have to click through multiple menus rather than actually requiring any true intelligence.

Oh, wow, you're joking, right?

It's pretty much the only reason I bother to play Eve. I've never even heard of an MMO that's even come close. I've given up on other lackluster offerings, although I keep an eye out for new projects.

It's not even my favorite genre, but it's the only MMO that I've found where I'm actually challenged and have to think. Other MMOs like the EQs and WoWs are just too easy, you just have to put the time in and you're golden. I love a challenge...

I guess it depends on what you want to do to have fun and relax though. I just don't enjoy superficially "tough" goals or missions that are usually a walk in the park or just require lengthy amounts of time doing the same dumb, easy chore.

You can really do either in Eve though, it all depends on how you play the game!

Re:A Dangerous Assumption

[Anonymous Coward]

You missed an important point here. That the nature of EVE is different from even other "hardcore" games in that EVE is one of the only MMO's I know of where the player base actually shapes the world. And I don't mean a little bit, I mean almost entirely.

Once you leave empire space, EVE is a free for all run by people, not a script. Dieing means something because living also means something. WOW has no purpose, no goal and no change. It's essentially a static war. EVE is not even remotely static, entire regions change hands monthly, sometime incredibly quickly.

What I'm trying to say is that for the "hardcore" players, EVE apeals because they can actually shape the world in which they play, which is unique, at least among mainstream MMO's.

EVE has history, events and people that have made massive impacts on the rest of the game world. And while you can sit it out in empire space and be oblivious if you wish, you also have the option of becoming the next mover or shacker in the world.

When was the last time someones name in WOW was made famous because they betrayed an alliance of 3000 people and turned the tide of a war? Yeah, didn't think so.

When was the last time a single person could change the fate of an entire universe by opening a jump portal? (cyno field, to those in the know)

I've seen the face of EVE change. Alot. Much of this was actually the developers improving and expanding the features of the game. But the most important part, deep space, is left to the players to shape. Its our job to conquer the wastes, build infastructure and Stations and industry and protect it, or not.

EVE is hardcore, but it's not hardcore because dieing hurts. It's hardcore because living matters, because you can acomplish something.

No you probably won't get a shiny new piece of armor for your trouble, but you might become the next emperor, or the next piece of history.

*disclaimer, I've been playing EVE since beta2. I just quit for personal reasons. I will be back. I was there for some of the most influential events in EVE, and I know all the people that matter today. I wonder who will matter next week?

DS- you're a forum whore. (he knows who he is)

Re:A Dangerous Assumption

[buckthorn]

It's tough to know what to do sometimes, especially if you don't interact much with the community. And you're more likely to interact with the community if you're in an active corporation. That's one of the negative aspects of the freedom the game gives you, it's hard to know what to do sometimes.

And honestly... if you just sat afk in an industrial with a Miner II pointed at a Veldspar asteroid for an hour you'd make more than 300k. But trust me, I've worked hader for less in my younger Eve days, so I understand your frustration.

Some people do better with linerar stories, others with open-ended. I'm actually more of the former, so Eve has been a challenge for me. But there's a huge player-driven community behind it that really makes it an amazing game. Tons of resources, theories of optimization, all that. It honestly wouldn't be nearly as fun without the player interaction, both in game and OOG.

And again, you CAN live longer than 5 minutes in 0.0, just probably not solo. I have a friend who is working towards buying a carrier with the plan of "claiming" a low-security system. We'll see how long that lasts. But a well-run corporation as part of a bigger alliance, now that's a recipe for longevity in zero sec.

Here.

[Anonymous Coward]

Try this.

Dead p*ssy

[HomelessInLaJolla]

People just like them--running the exact same type of scam and making the exact same bullsh*t apologies, excuses, and coverups--did.

Re:Dead p*ssy

[mahmud]

Hey! Get a life! It's just a bloody videogame!

Re:Dead p*ssy

[HomelessInLaJolla]

I've never played any online MMORPG. I'm noting absolute similarities. I could have written the whole situation (at least five years worth) verbatim, in a different scenario, including this interview, the moment I read the first release about EVE. I've already seen it inside, outside, and inbetween.

Re:Dead p*ssy

[drinkypoo]

Bullshit. It's a major part of the entertainment in the lives of thousands of people. It's a service for which they pay. I think they have the right to expect a lack of corruption. That's the same asinine argument as when someone hops on irc, talks a mad load of shit, and then when you get pissed off says "Hey, it's only irc". Well, bull fucking shit. Guess what? With the exception of bots, those nicknames you see on irc belong to people, real humans with emotions and all that jazz. Well, all those people you see running around in-game are the same. If we shouldn't be upset when someone cheats in a game, then what are professional sports all about?

Re:Dead p*ssy

[mahmud]

I guess I overreacted. EVE being "just a videogame" approach works both ways. The other way being that the developers are not too likely by any stretch of imagination to scheme and plot ways to fool their customers. Some people cheated, they got caught, they got punished, what's the problem? Maybe I have missed some details, but from what I infer from my limited contact with EVE related articles during the last year, it seems that the incident is resolved. Some developer/developers were being douchebags and got slapped. Also, CCP did stuff to prevent abuse from happening again. Where's the problem? Also, while still a game, EVE is a pretty impressive and serious game. Obviously people working on it must be "into it" and enjoy the actual product and what it stands for. Why would they want to consciously poo on their own model train set?

Re:Dead p*ssy

[PopeRatzo]

Absolutely right, drinkypoo.

I wish the interviewer would have simply asked the guy if he was now or every had been a member of BoB. I'd also like to know exactly what happened to the person who was caught cheating in the game while working for CCP. If he wasn't fired, then something is still very much wrong.

"Metagaming" is for punks. There's a guy in the neighborhood where I grew up. He tried to "metagame" while shooting craps with some of the fellas over by the park and he now lives with an artificial eye. Cheating is cheating. If you have to think about whether you should or should not do something to gain an advantage in a game, don't do it.

As far as "professional sports", unfortunately, the same type of "metagaming" is going on there. There's not a lot of difference between shooting up human growth hormone to gain an advantage in football or making creative use of lag while engaged in a large-scale battle in Eve.

Re:Dead p*ssy

[HomelessInLaJolla]

I guess I overreacted How many people did you tell?

Maybe I have missed some details this one

Where's the problem? this one

while still a game It's the only game

Why would they want to To win. To have a good time together. Because it's fun.

on their own train set? because it's theirs. Nobody else can have it. It's not about the code. It's about owning the game.

Re:Dead p*ssy

[HomelessInLaJolla]

making creative use of lag while engaged in a large-scale battle in Eve. creative ways to use the network in order to create lag in games of Red Alert so that the winner can "prove" he's more intelligent to a group of judges, what?

Re:Dead p*ssy

[Sobrique]

Actually, I'm pretty certain that a fairly large fraction of CCP employees are _not_ in BoB. The thing is, I think it's important to have them all involved. Because then they get to see first hand, what's relevant to the players. What's more likely to get fixed, realistically - someone bitching on the forums about lag, or first hand experience by a dev. Lets face it, it's way harder to get 1000 people together to 'test' on Singularity.

Top 10 Alliances..

[Anonymous Coward]

He mentioned there's an even distribution of CCP employees in the top ten alliances.

Intriguing. Are they the top ten alliances because of the CCP employees are in them?

Or are the CCP employees in them, because they are the top 10 alliances?

I'm going to go with the former. Must be nice to have GM/Dev help in the game. As a member of a top 100 alliance (wihtout a dev in it, and we are fighting an alliance that DEFINITELY has a dev in it), I'm pretty annoyed.

Re:Top 10 Alliances..

[Anonymous Coward]

Eve is pretty crazy in the amount of dev activity inside the game. This one guy, tomB, actually challenged me to a duel! I called him a faker or something, and next thing I know hes sitting outside the station im in in a battlecruiser! Was pretty exciting actually. I had no intention of fighting him (kestrel tech1 ftw), but it was still interesting.

The fact that they can see where any char is and basically warp to them in whatever ship they want, makes them definately seem like gods.

Re:Top 10 Alliances..

[Anonymous Coward]

As a member of a top 10 Alliance I wonder who the GM/Dev is in my alliance. Just because they are out there doesn't mean we know who they are.

Re:Top 10 Alliances..

[Saint_Waldo]

As a member of a top 10 Alliance I wonder who the GM/Dev is in my alliance. Just because they are out there doesn't mean we know who they are.

Just because you don't know who they are doesn't mean it isn't suspicious that the only GMs he mentions are in the Top 10.

Re:Top 10 Alliances..

[forgotten_my_nick]

> Intriguing. Are they the top ten alliances because of the CCP employees are in them?

To become a major player in the game requires a huge amount of resources and people working for you. It has dick to do with what happened with ONE GM. Maybe you should focus on that instead of just blaming it on imaginary enemies.

There have been major corps/alliances that have been on top that never had a Dev in them. Take m0o for example who actually through their own skills forced CCP to change major portions of how the game works.

One GM spawning a couple of T2 blueprints (and not great ones at that) did squat in the grand scheme of things.

Re:Top 10 Alliances..

[PopeRatzo]

You are absolutely right. Why not publicly announce the player-names of the GMs and their corporation/alliance? Right now, EVE needs a lot of transparency to get back player confidence.

Re:Top 10 Alliances..

[Belanth]

Because they need their anonymity in order to actually achieve the stated goal of playing the game to make it better. If all of the personnel of CCP that played EVE were to be 'outed', they would no longer be able to have legitimate positions in alliances that have the assets to use the high-end game mechanics - which you simply can't test under load on the test server, since the difference in population can be tens of thousands.

I think that CCP has the right policy of immediately deleting any outed GM/Employee character. Magnus Bergsson didn't specifically state that employees were ONLY in Top 10 alliances - he said that amongst the Top 10, there is a even distribution of GMs...and that carries a much different meaning.

As far as the hacker is concerned, he violated the EULA. Breaking the rules to point out that someone else is also breaking the rules doesn't make it right. I don't want that kind of person playing the game - he might try and hack the game too.

I play EVE - and while I may have been saddened by the t20 issue, I will continue to pay them money for their product because I find that it is a unique and highly entertaining game.

Re:Top 10 Alliances..

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you played a MMO? Developers have been known to openly flaunt their GM/employee status while working to make the game "better". Saying they need anonymous status in order to do any time of in game testing is bullshit. Thats like saying the FBI should be allowed to wire-tap any American citizen they want to "test" their new equipment.

Re:Top 10 Alliances..

[Belanth]

That is a specious analogy. If you subscribe to EVE Online, you are entering their property. They can perform any surveillance of your activities in the game, and are complete masters of what happens in that world (subject to certain laws of the user and system, such as child pornography and such.) They are under no obligation to tell you who the coders or GMs are when they are not performing GM duties.

The reality is that they cannot experience first-hand the issues that may be affecting certain systems without being in 0.0 fleet combat. Those fleet engagements, along with station building and production systems, may have flaws that will not be something that customers are able to trace - which means that they need to be able to see them in action themselves. If they were exposed, them the player-run organizations that they are part of would either not trust them like another player, or would ask for special favors - which would go against the point of exposing them in the first place. This isn't WOW, where you have a few thousand players on a given server, and that is it.

This is a system that averages more than 15,000 concurrent connections on a slow night. There is simply no way to load the test server up like Tranquility (the live server) will be loaded. This means that there isn't the option of keeping to Singularity (the test server) exclusively. Especially when they are trying to resolve lag issues involving fleet combat.

This is a game run by a company. Companies are composed of people - and people make mistakes. Yes, it was irresponsible for them to delay handling of the issue, and t20 should have been fired. But don't confuse the acknowledged mistake of one developer with a broken development model. They have built a good game mostly (in my view) precisely because they play the game as customers do.

You cannot replace first hand experience with a test server.

Re:Top 10 Alliances..

[forgotten_my_nick]

> Why not publicly announce the player-names of the GMs and their corporation/alliance?

Eve is a very harsh game. If you annoy the wrong people your pretty much out of the game for good unless you like sitting in a space station. There is no where you can go that a group of people won't get you, even rejoining a starter corp and living in Empire space doesn't guarantee your safety.

Also a lot of the game is designed based on how the GMs see the game. While its possible to do this a lot of people don't because there are conditions in the game that can counter it. In the GMs case this may not be viable as any action the GM takes to counter such attacks will be taken as favoritism for the GM or the GM using their *special abilities* to stop people pissing them off.

Thier option at that point is to reroll or discuss ways to change the code to counter this while leaving an element of risk in the game.

Re:Top 10 Alliances..

[dapprman]

I take it you've never played the game.

Plus it was not just 1 or 2 T2 blue prints, it was a lot, and awful lot, and it did give BoB a ratehr larger advantage.

Still I'm just a part time player and happy to keep that way (and out of BoBs way ;) )

Re:Top 10 Alliances..

[Anonymous Coward]

"As far as the hacker is concerned, he violated the EULA. Breaking the rules to point out that someone else is also breaking the rules doesn't make it right. I don't want that kind of person playing the game - he might try and hack the game too."

Actually the EULA violations that CCP quoted to the "hacker" were about him causing CCP to spend time investigating his allegations. Because the investigation took up excessive man hours he was banned for that reason. CCP have also not been able to find any evidence of him hacking the game or the eve-online website. Rest assured ... he is not hacking the game or it's servers.

Re:Top 10 Alliances..

[forgotten_my_nick]

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

He didnt understand?

[crabpeople]

"And the person that did it, which I know really well, he doesn't understand himself, it just doesn't make any sense."

What kind of bullshit is that now? He doesnt understand that he gave some of the rarest items in the game to his corporation? Or he doesnt understand how his corporation was subverted to make that all public. Perhaps he doesnt understand why developer cheating is the worst kind of wrong?

What a statement. Maybe he should take a month long holiday to "find himself". Hes certainly the one WORST affected by this scandal isnt he. The only thing that doesnt make sense is that this guy still has his job.

And zonk, please, pauses in speech do not warrant a literal "ahh" translation. English probably isn't this guys first language, or he is merely pausing to compose his thoughts.

Re:He didnt understand?

[stratjakt]

The ahhhs and ummms are used by authors writing literature to convey stupidity, and transcribed by journalists verbatim for the same reason. It's called "spin".

You can add lots of h's to an ahhh to make them look even stupider, its completely up to the author of the piece.

Zonk simply wants the guy to come off unintelligent, to vent his nerd rage.

See, I'll show you:

Today George Bush said: "Our resolve is strong in Iraq, and we will stay until the fight is finished."

vs

Today George Bush said: "uhhhh durrrrr Our resolve uhhh aahhhh eehhh is ummmm we... uhh strong in ummm whatsit uhhh Iraq until all the fight is uhhhh finished."

Which quote is likely to run in the NY Times, and which is likely to run on foxnews?

Re:He didnt understand?

[Dan Slotman]

You misinterpreted the statement. The CCP representative was saying that the developer didn't know why he cheated. Obviously he wishes he hadn't done it now, but that doesn't change that facts. It is almost irrelevant to the discussion (see appeal to emotion--we are to feel sorry for the dev.) In my opinion the answer about the scandal was basically making feeble excuses for an even more feeble official response.

Re:He didnt understand?

[Crizp]

And I ask, which is more accurate? There is a clear difference in perceived intelligence between the two quotes. The more stalling, mumbling, mmm-ing and aah-ing, the less intelligent you seem. A person that instead formulates a sentence before speaking it comes off as more intelligent, coherent and not to say concise. Even though there are one-to-two-second pause between each sentence and before a reply, it's better and quicker than a person that um... have problems being aaah... able to construct sentences like aaaaahhhhhn... edumacated fella.

Re:He didnt understand?

[AugstWest]

I love this reaction. Every parent since the beginning of humanity has asked their kid something like, "Why did you set fire to the couch?"

I can't tell you how many times my parents asked me why I did something, and finished the question with, "And don't tell me 'I don't know'."

"I don'tknow" is the ultimate stupid, meaningless answer.

Re:He didnt understand?

[stratjakt]

Neither are accurate, that's my point.

All spoken quotes turned text end up with some of the authors bias.

You just assume the author was neutral and tried to accuratly capture what was spoken, but if you have an agenda (which everyone has when it comes to GWB, and zonk has when it comes to some gay video game nobody plays), it's hard to be "fair".

There's very little neutrality in modern print "journalism". You have papers well-known for leaning left, and well-known for leaning right, but you never hear one praised for it's "fair straight down the middle" approach. It makes any bit of print media worthless in and of itself.

Re:He didnt understand?

[Maserati]

Off-topic, but necessary.

All media outlets are biased. A useful source is one that has a known bias so you can allow for it. Ideally you can compare sources with different biases and arrive at something like the truth. This takes effort.

Re:He didnt understand?

[Sobrique]

"I don'tknow" is the ultimate stupid, meaningless answer.

It may be, but "It seemed like a good idea at the time" whilst more accurate, is scarcely any better.

Re:He didnt understand?

[Dan Slotman]

I fail to see how cheating in a game you develop is a good idea at any time.

Re:He didnt understand?

[Some_Llama]

"It may be, but "It seemed like a good idea at the time" whilst more accurate, is scarcely any better."

There is always a true motivation behind any action, we are just not willing to admit what it was, the truth is probably more akin to "I knew it would help my faction, help me gain favor, and I would never get caught." But that sound so truly horrible when said aloud most people will just say (untruthfully) "I don't know".

Same with the kid who sets the couch on fire, saying "I wanted to watch it burn" would most likely bring the wrath down on the child so they just say ambiguously "I don't know".

We often judge someone not solely on their actions but their intent, so to diffuse or lessen punishment, "I don't know" often works well to hide intent.

Exalted MMO

[flymolo]

I really carefully phrased, my question to include non-WoD White Wolf property, and nothing about them got asked.

Still hoping, but annoyed they didn't use the real question posted like normal.

Lack of events

[epr]

Scandals, server specs and new features is all very interesting to read about, but when will for example the Amarr get a new emperor? The lack of ingame events and essential halt of certain ongoing ones (the Gallente election for example) has done nothing but to diminish the immersion factor of the game, which certainly is a shame considering all the material the backstory contains. Anyway, it would have been nice with some sort of update on what the future holds in that area.

Re:Lack of events

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand why developers don't use this kind of stuff to be interactive in the community. If they are so involved with player made alliances why don't they just all play the npc alliances? You could do crazy stuff like hiring players to put the smack down on your rival empire or whatever- be creative!

And if things were not going the way you liked you could always sway things back into balance/direction by flexing your empires might. You don't have to be over the top. A good writer could make situations like this very realistic.

Re:Lack of events

[Anonymous Coward]

They had to gut the events staff after they were also found to be leaking information about upcoming events and allowed one alliance to essentialy fix an event to win a Mothership.

Profits?

[Anonymous Coward]

I still want to know the annual profits from EVE. It was the only important question. I know the profits must be obscene, but the question is how obscene. I think it is important for the players to know just how little it costs to run the game in comparison to the revenue it brings in.

I guess I'll look into whether CCP is publicly traded and if any financial reports are available.

Re:Profits?

[drsquare]

Yeah, sickening, a company offering a service in exchange for profits. Disgusting, money moving around like this really damages the economy.

Re:Profits?

[Premo_Maggot]

Don't Forget Money From: Trading Card Game Magazine Online Store EveCon Whatever White Wolf sells I'm sure there could be other things I'm forgetting.

Re:Profits?

[gallwapa]

Um, 5 mil for their servers "tops" ?

What are you smoking? If you follow the kind of hardware they've put in at all (their blogs detail it much more clearly than this interview) and have any idea of what real servers actually cost, 5 million may be quite a bit short.

Also, don't forget all the network hardware: 33,000 simo users at x kb/s = big pipe, which is also expensive.

I quit Eve

[brkello]

I quit the game due to the scandal and how it was handled. They just delete posts on forums that are damaging to them. I know a forum isn't free speech, but I have never seen a company so heavy handed about removing people's posts.

And the group that benefitted from the corrupt CCP employee got a huge advantage by this despite his denial. He is either clueless to how his game works or he is just trying to cover up (clearly the latter). The amount of in-game money these items allowed them to generate made them most powerful alliance in the game and the balance will be forever skewed because of it. The took the items away, but the damage is already done...they didn't take away the money those items generated to allow them to take over a large part of Eve. And since they only have one shard that everyone plays on, the game will be forever screwed for everyone in the game.

They didn't fire the corrupt employee, they didn't reverse all the damage he did, and I am sure things like this will happen again...they will just cover it up better.

Seriously, if you are looking for a new MMO, move on. Eve has to be one of the most boring, time sink filled game I ever played. Yes, their skill system is brilliant and removes one time sink...but with losses being so high, you have to spend tons of time grinding to make sure that you can replace what will get blown to bits. CCP is tainted and the taint has not been removed.

I hope you see this CCP. Thank god you can't delete posts here.

Re:I quit Eve

[Llywelyn]

How, in what way shape or form, did the "scandal" affect your play?

Re:I quit Eve

[Phier123]

What the hell are you smoking?

A sabre BPO and ammo BPO's did almost NOTHING to help out BoB, you are either a empire carebear noob, or just looking to stir the pot here.

Seriously, if you think BoB was built on the back of those BPO's you have very little understanding of game mechanics.

A better question would be why RA was allowed to keep TRILLIONS of isk they got from bugged complexes that they have sold for RL cash.

I'm not saying CCP is very good at handling security, but if you think this is the big eve scandal you need to wake up.

Re:I quit Eve

[Cornflake917]

Dude, you should have seen his play before the scandal. Great actors and actresses, expensive props, and a elegant light show to boot. Then that horrible scandal in Eve happened and everyone became very upset. Everyone stopped pouring their hearts and soul into the show like they used to, and everyone ended up leaving. Fucking CCP.

Re:I quit Eve

[HellKnite]

Perhaps removing your head from your rectum is in order... a single Sabre BPO did NOT magically turn the tides for BoB's industrial machine and grant them ISK beyond measure. The rest of the BPOs that he spawned for himself were even less important than the Sabre, and likely all they did was save pilots in BoB from going out and buying that ammo. Honestly, with BoB's size, this has more of an impact on other producers of the ammo not having their product purchased than it gives an "advantage" to BoB.

I'm glad you quit, one less imbecile in a game I still think is the best around with one of the best companies backing them. Have fun playing WoW.

Re:I quit Eve

[aafiske]

"The amount of in-game money these items allowed them to generate made them most powerful alliance in the game and the balance will be forever skewed because of it."

You clearly have no idea what you're talking about. Most of the BPOs were ammo, which is _not_ that profitable to manufacture. The only stinger was the Sabre BPO, which _is_ very profitable. But you know ... there are at least 19 others out there in the hands of other alliances. And other ships that are more in demand and more profitable are owned by other people too.

So while, yes, it _did_ earn them probably billions of dollars they were not entitled to, every other large alliance has BPOs like that _also_ pulling in billions of dollars. Hell, even small Alliances can have impressive portfolios of BPOs. (I am in one.) To suggest that it was the sole, or even primary cause of that alliance's success is ridiculous. You are either a troll or a fool.

Re:I quit Eve

[brkello]

It changed the whole shape of the galaxy. Whole sections of territory were owned by an Alliance that was able to control it due to the ill gotten BPOs. This is just one instance where they got caught. How much other crap are they doing? What's the point in investing time and money in to a game where the devs can get away with giving their friends and allies whatever they want? Why should I play a game where I get blown to bits by people with unlimited resources because of devs hacking the system?

Sure, the dev's character is deleted now and they reseeded the BPOs...great. But they didn't remove all the ISK generated by the BPOs. They can't take back the large advantage they gave this alliance over everyone else.

Can you see how this is fairl significant?

Re:I quit Eve

[brkello]

Just the sort of attitude typical of Eve as well. You just didn't ask me for my stuff. They got other advantages from having the dev in there as well (they knew exactly what to train for and what to do for new content). But if you want to live in a world where CCP didn't screw up the universe, that's fine.

But really, if a community full of elitist assholes is your idea of a good time, you too will enjoy Eve. I always love how you guys put down WoW. Shows you have the maturity of a 6 year old. Really, you shouldn't be jealous that so many people like WoW more than Eve. Eve servers can barely handle the current population, much less anywhere near the people playing WoW.

Re:I quit Eve

[Anonymous Coward]

BoD alt found

Re:I quit Eve

[Jaeph]

The group that did this now has the enmity of all other hard-core players in the eve universe. I'm not saying that what happened, and how it happened, were "right", but BoB is certainly not in a good position politically right now.

-Jeff

Re:I quit Eve

[Anonymous Coward]

Give me one reason that after a full year of deception that I should believe a single thing that comes out of CCP's or BoB's mouth. How do we know that there wasn't some other sort of back-room dealings going on that nobody has managed to catch wind of.

Right now, EvE's survival hinges on one thing, if the Allies can beat BoB. If the allies win, everything will be gravey. If BoB wins, then CCP will probably see Tranquility's average population fall by a few hundred, since there are much easier and faster ways of playing a game that's stacked against you by the "house". BoB can be kings of themselves and their lapdog corps, while everyone except the hopeless addicts will move on.

Re:I quit Eve

[Anonymous Coward]

This developer was also in charge of the "capital ship" (read endgame ships) fleet of the most powerful alliance in the game. He didn't just passively cheat. He also leaked information to the leaders of his alliance dev level secrets.

Re:I quit Eve

[zerocool^]

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

Re:I quit Eve

[zerocool^]

Seconded. The Red Alliance is almost entirely made up of griefers and people who sell in game currency for real rubles.

They camp and run every plex in the south east that I have ever seen, from Paragon Soul over to the Drone regions. They just recently backstabbed SMASH alliance in order to get control over one of Lotka Volterra's old 10/10 complexes.

RA are the villians in this game, and yet everyone seems to ally with them and forget it to go get the evil BoB.

~Wx

Re:I quit Eve

[zerocool^]

Just the sort of attitude typical of Eve as well. You just didn't ask me for my stuff. They got other advantages from having the dev in there as well (they knew exactly what to train for and what to do for new content). But if you want to live in a world where CCP didn't screw up the universe, that's fine. As they say in Eve, Proof or STFU.

No one in BoB has ever said they knew T20 was a developer. Blacklight and DBPreacher were pissed off when they found out, because T20's outing turned them into liars. I bet most people thought he aquired those Blueprints legitimately, or didn't know he had them.

Assumptions, rumors, FUD. Please, go back home.

~wx

Re:I quit Eve

[crabpeople]

I am a new player, and obviously dont have the damage history behind this, but doesn't it follow that there is never just "a bit" of corruption? Power corrupts, so who knows what has been going on behind closed doors for bob? How long was this guy with the corp anyway? 03? 04? Who knows what other intel or help they got. As I understand it, devs can evesdrop any channel and teleport to any system.

Its not worth quitting over, but I am sure if I had more invested into the game, had faught and lost to bob, id be tempted.

Personally, I hope theres some sort of anti-bob alliance that develops to completely crush all of their systems. Thats should be the correct vigilante response. If the government (ccp) wont take them down, then the players have to. The great thing about eve is that its possible for this to happen.

Re:I quit Eve

[brkello]

I personally have no proof. I didn't blow the thing wide open. I am going off their accounts. But let us make this simple, ok? BoB had a dev cheating for them. This gave BoB and advantage. You must be A) part of BoB or B) a little thick if you aren't upset that an alliance had someone cheating for them. If you want to be naieve and convince yourself there was no other foul play, that's fine. But if you enjoy playing a game where they cheat, try to cover up that they cheat until there is no way to lie anymore, delete posts and ban users that catch them cheating then only partially deal with the situation...by all means, go for it. But I expect more from a company I am giving ~15 bucks a month to.

But please, continue...all this STFU stuff is only further showing the level of maturity and intelligence that the Eve community contains. (though, as a note, there are nice, interesting, smart people in Eve...you just rarely see them in the forums)

Re:I quit Eve

[zerocool^]

And essentially, that's what's happening.

To be honest, it makes me sick that the guy cheated and gave BoB an advantage. They should have fired him. His actions reflect very poorly and broke a lot of trust.

On the other hand, it's over and done with. I think a lot of people are blowing it out of proportion or using it as an excuse to expand their territory under the guise of saving eve from BoB. Plus, I seriously don't think that RA are any better than BoB, and in many cases I think they're far worse.

So... Basically, I've grown sick of the whole nine yards. 0.0 bas basically turned into: The great northern circlejerk, BoB and pets, and RA and pets. Meta-gaming and Forum whoring often have a greater impact than in game actions. Numbers trump any skills/abilities/equipment/tactics. And superfast ships are the i-win or at least i-never-lose button. It's getting pretty ghey.

Which is why I've moved to empire and am starting my own corp with friends just to hang out, chill, run some missions and do some production and trading. Much more casual, less politics.

By the way, if there's any old-ish eve players who feel the same way, and want to join up and just chill, whore some lvl 4 agents, do research, and whatnot, reply and let me know.

~Wx

Re:I quit Eve

[zerocool^]

Oh, no, it pisses me off to no end that T20 cheated. Actually, i'm going to cut and post from a post i just made here to an EvE noobie:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=226635&cid=183 68529

And essentially, that's what's happening.

To be honest, it makes me sick that the guy cheated and gave BoB an advantage. They should have fired him. His actions reflect very poorly and broke a lot of trust.

On the other hand, it's over and done with. I think a lot of people are blowing it out of proportion or using it as an excuse to expand their territory under the guise of saving eve from BoB. Plus, I seriously don't think that RA are any better than BoB, and in many cases I think they're far worse.

So... Basically, I've grown sick of the whole nine yards. 0.0 bas basically turned into: The great northern circlejerk, BoB and pets, and RA and pets. Meta-gaming and Forum whoring often have a greater impact than in game actions. Numbers trump any skills/abilities/equipment/tactics. And superfast ships are the i-win or at least i-never-lose button. It's getting pretty ghey.

Which is why I've moved to empire and am starting my own corp with friends just to hang out, chill, run some missions and do some production and trading. Much more casual, less politics.

By the way, if there's any old-ish eve players who feel the same way, and want to join up and just chill, whore some lvl 4 agents, do research, and whatnot, reply and let me know.

~Wx

------

So basically, yeah. I'm not happy with either side. I was playing devil's advocate with you, though. Really, BoB cheating sucks ass and is not good for the game or the company. But, it didn't affect the outcome of any wars, and there's nothing to suggest that the alliance as a whole knew about it. I mean, I think you're blowing it out of proportion.

My greatest wish for CCP and Eve is that everyone could just get over it and move on. If CCP isn't going to do anything else to T20 or on behalf of the community at large regarding his actions.... all the bitching in the world isn't going to make them. Which is why I've tried to move on, and why I'm taking a break from all the politics in empire for a while.

~W

Re:I quit Eve

[Anonymous Coward]

But, then, ASCN was a rudderless ship, incompetent leadership, too many carebears, no will to fight.

I am member of a corp (that shall remain nameless) that formerly flew the ASCN banner. The problem with ASCN was not incompetent leadership nor too many carebears. The alliance was comprised largely of stoners. I'm not saying this to slight fans of the sticky icky, as they are generally a great crew to run with. But seriously, ASCN was blazed 24/7.

Re:I quit Eve

[jeff4747]

RA are the villians in this game, and yet everyone seems to ally with them and forget it to go get the evil BoB.

This is one factor in why CCP's tepid response is very, very bad for the game. The players are turning to the griefers to punish BoB, because CCP didn't.

IMO, CCP's out-of-game response should have been to fire t20. If you can't trust the guy not to cheat in the game, how can you trust him with access to the source code? How can you justify firing a cheating GM if you won't fire a cheating dev? How can you expect the players to believe that the company is fair, when they have demonstrated that their response to cheating employees is quite tepid?

IMO, CCP's in-game response should have been so completely horrific and over-the-top that every other alliance would post on their forums: "If you're a Dev or GM, please don't cheat. We don't want what happened to BoB to happen to us."

Without some major in-game repercussions, the playerbase is going to turn to whoever will "exact revenge" in-game.

Re:I quit Eve

[Phier123]

I'm sorry but thats not the right thing to do either.

Fire t20, yea that would be the right thing to do, but I think you had a situation where you can't fire the boss so to speak. As for hurting BoB over this, why? In NONE of the hacked posts did BoB even hint they knew the bpo's were not legit. Sure a few people knew he was a dev, but those bpo's were not great beyond the sabre so who would dream he cheated to get them?

Its rather grossly unfair to punish 1000+ players and destroy what they put together because one of YOUR devs couldn't keep his hand out of the cookie jar.

Re:I quit Eve

[jeff4747]

As for hurting BoB over this, why?

Motivation

It's unlikely that the devs will be able to track down every instance of employee cheating in the game. Sure, spawning BPOs or using GM powers to knock out POS shields will show up in logs. But there are plenty of other ways to cheat, such as providing all sorts of inside information to your alliance.

As such, CCP will need the help of the players to prevent cheating. They have to give the players a reason to reject the juicy information about new systems, new complexes or new skills. If the players know that the cost for cheating is extremely high, then they have a reason to police the CCP employees in their ranks. Especially if the penalty is waived or lessened if the non-CCP members of the alliance report the cheating to CCP.

As a side effect, it turns the cheaters themselves into some of the most hated and hunted players in the EvE universe. Which would also be a good thing.

Yes, it would suck to have the cheating of another player in your alliance destroy months of your hard work. But it sucks even more to have the cheating of another player not in your alliance destroy months of your hard work.

Re:I quit Eve

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm afraid that you don't know what you're talking about. Rofl - a couple of billion in ISK is far from what made BoB one of the most powerful alliances in the game.

Playing mostly solo, I've got more in my personal wallet.

While I hate cheating, I'm glad CCP cares so much about something worth a semi-rare ship or three though.

Re:I quit Eve

[^_^x]

I quit Eve long ago. I actually liked the demo enough to pay for a month or two and get an industrial ship for mining. The mechanics were fairly fun when I actually got to interact and build/customize the ships...

My problem was that I was, for any purpose I had, rolling in cash just from doing hours on end of mindless mining with a couple well-equipped ships. I couldn't buy anything though because I didn't have the skills to use it. I didn't have the skills because it doesn't matter how much you DO in the game, you learn things by waiting for progress bars - so it was just the same whether or not I played.

I did some missions, but by the gods they were boring. Hit "autopilot." Watch your ship approach a gate, go through, warp to the next one, fly up to it, go through, etc for 20-30 minutes. Then dock, go to the NPC and say "here you go." Then repeat ad infinitum. Once I stopped looking at the shiny graphics and marvelling at the realistic distances, it really started to grate on me. It was obvious there was something wrong when I'd have to fire up a game console/handheld and play ANOTHER GAME while waiting for my ship to go somewhere.

I could almost have put up with that if not for the skill system. Basically, you pay CCP loads of cash to sit on your ass and wait forever for a progress bar to reach its arbitrary end point. The day I quit was the day I found out that you couldn't even train skills on two characters at once, and they didn't even take 10 seconds to write a paper-thin sci-fi excuse for it! What a sham

CCP's customer service is repulsive.

[silentsentinel]

I flat out refuse to give CCP another cent, ever. They have moronic, technically inexperienced GM's and lousy customer service.

I played EVE for probably 4 months, and had terrible experiences with their customer service reps.

To make a long story short, a player thought I was macroing Escrow Missions, and reported me. Well anyone who played EVE with the old Escrow system knows there's no point in macroing it, it just doesn't take that much time to do legitimately. We're talking 2 to 3 minutes of work.

Basically the scenario devolved into my trying to defend myself, and explaining that I was merely copying/pasting Escrow text-lines from an outside text file. Not a real huge technological marvel, copying/pasting, eh?

Well, I got banned for 1 month, and every petition I filed was answered with a canned reponse that showed very obviously no one had spent more than 10 seconds reading my extremely detailed account of the situation, and suggesting that hey, duh, if I'd macroed, at the very least the server log timestamps for the escrow submissions would have been on even intervals. They had to have been completely random, in truth, as I myself know I wasn't macroing and I'm not a robot, I was only copying-pasting lines from a text file.

I re-activated my account about 3 months after that, (this was last September `06), figuring I'd give CCP one last try. I got bored of the game very quickly at this point, and decided to file a NEW petition on the GM that banned me (GM Arkanon, I believe he's pretty high up in the company, whatever.)

I read on the forums that if you believed you'd been mistreated, then file a harassment petition on said GM. I did so. I waited 1 month, and finally got a 1-sentence response from their GM's that said, essentially "there's no way you're telling the truth. You could not have copied and pasted this from a text file. We are banning this account permanently."

Must not like their customers' money very much. Not another cent, idiots.

Re:CCP's customer service is repulsive.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been playing about a year and half and I have no idea what is you are talking about macroing Escrow missions. Sounds like there is more to the story then you are letting on.

Re:CCP's customer service is repulsive.

[Inverted Intellect]

According to what you're saying, it sounds like you were escrow-spamming. Would you care to clarify?

Re:CCP's customer service is repulsive.

[edschurr]

if I'd macroed, at the very least the server log timestamps for the escrow submissions would have been on even intervals.

I don't think so. I've thought about cheating in the past, and avoiding `fingerprinting' is one of the first things you'll come up with. So while very consistent timing might be indicative of cheating, inconsistent timing could be either cheating or legitimacy.

Why could they do this to begin with?

[Darlantan]

My question is, why could the devs do this sort of stuff on the production server anyway? For troubleshooting purposes, use the freaking test server. Anything spawned on the production server should be logged. Any time you allow people with infinite power to play with the average joes, this sort of stuff is going to happen. Either A) Remove their ability to play, or (much better) B) Remove that infinite power from the area where regular players are.

There's no way that spawning multiple T2 BPO's for BoB should've gone unnoticed. Given the rarity of T2 BPO's, spawning one should throw up a red flag worth at least token investigation. Spawning more than one for a single corp or player should almost never happen.

Whoops!

[HomelessInLaJolla]

Hey look! You missed me!

Game caters to griefers

[entrophos]

The gameplay itself isn't bad, and it looks pretty with a nice system and all the candy turned on, but there isn't so much of a skill curve but a skill CLIFF. Most people that try the game don't survive to the end of the free trial because there's nothing fun about puttering around for a couple hours, getting a shiny new frigate and then making the mistake of wandering into a low security zone. They get OMGWTFPWNBBQ's by a gank squad camped at the warp gate consisting of a bunch of players with far, far more skill points as soon as they appear. These players don't care that these new people have nothing worth taking, they do it for kicks and e-peen enlargement (omg killmails!111one!one!). This kind of deliberate griefing, scamming, cheating, etc. is rampant through the whole game. CCP actively caters to these types of players (hell Magnus even used the derogatory term "carebear" to refer to players that don't want to PVP by staying in "safe" Empire space). EVE has a well-deserved reputation for being a cesspool where all the a$$hats that get kicked out of other MMOs thrive. Unlike Blizzard, don't do seem to do anything about a rampant and out-of-control gold-farmer problem (think whole fleets of macro-miners). Not to mention that they gave a certain, privileged group of players licenses to effectively print money via a limited number of blue-prints for critical items (which is why people got so irate over the dev scandal). This game will have a niche following, but they just won't ever expand beyond a certain point. I guess you could say it's successful from the point that they have made some money at it, but if they would make the game a bit less harsh and predatory, especially towards newer players, they'd be able to pick up a LOT more subscribers.

Re:Game caters to griefers

[Anonymous Coward]

Go play WoW, you pansy!

Re:Game caters to griefers

[hivemind_mvgc]

That comment makes the game seem more attractive to me than anything else I've ever read about EVE...

Re:Game caters to griefers

[Anonymous Coward]

I take issue with your "wandering into low security zones" statement.

The game pops up an alert, clearly, in very certain language, states that you are entering a hazardous area and you are advised to turn back.

Re:Game caters to griefers

[entrophos]

Go play WoW, you pansy! I have an active account in EVE Online ATM and have for over a year. Shows how much you know, eh?

I'm just sick of trying to get new people to play only to have them griefed out of the game or throw their hands up in frustration because it's too hard to figure out what to do in the game to progress before the trial is up. The game and a large segment of the population are downright hostile to new players. You don't throw a person with no combat training into a live combat zone. Same principle here.

They have made a couple stride in the right direction but the game NEEDS to do a better job of easing new players in. After this period (when they're properly lubed up) THEN they can get a real taste of human nature at it's worst.

Re:Game caters to griefers

[Anonymous Coward]

On the other hand, there are quite a few of us who enjoy going around kicking the asses of those "A$$hats". You need to find the right people. Once you do, hang on to them and be loyal; a competent pilot is worth far more than an expensive ship.

Secondly, reputation and image > loads of money. There is an active movement against BoB, the alliance that benefited from the dev scandal- many of their pilots left, and many more are joining their opposition.

Re:Game caters to griefers

[GoatVomit]

Compared to for example batmud the learning curve isn't bad and you don't have to script the client for ages to get going either but if you want to be pampered that's another matter. In fact what's annoying in eve is that the anarchy doesn't include the channels and one has to be somewhat conscious of the amount of bs used (no real roleplaying). You can blow people up but calling them gay is bad. I doubt a real pirate would make such distinctions and thus the immersion isn't there if you really are into 'the role'. Overall it's a highly addictive game and part of it is the freedom to make your own mistakes.

Re:Game caters to griefers

[buckthorn]

I have to applaud CCP for doing something against the macrominers, i.e. removing Ice from 0.8+ security systems (as of tomorrow).

While it doesn't defeat the more sophisticated of the OCR macroers, it's something positive at least. Although it makes me sad now that I won't be able to take my Armageddon battleship out on the last day of its insurance and smartbomb the dickens out of some macro-Mackinaws.

WHy are you here?

[geekoid]

You seem to hate people so much, you'll rant at them about asking a damn question. A question you could have easily ignored.

Cluebat:
Slashdot is a community.
People in communities usually like to communicate within that community*
It's a simple question.
Many people would rather communicate then use google.
Everybody uses Google, you don't need to be a nerd. In fact If you think you are a nerd because you use google, you are wrong.

FInally, and most importantly: Fuck you.

*Thay also have trolls and asshats like you

Have a nice day.

Re:WHy are you here?

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to like people so much, you flame a rightfull flamer. A flame you could have easily ignored.

Cluebat:
Slashdot is a community of geeks and nerds.
Geeks and nerds love a good discussion.
To have a good discussion all participants have to be knowledgeable.
To better oneself through training is at the heart of geek & nerddom.
Using search engines to get the basic facts is basic, basic, basic knowledge
Displaying lack of even the most basic of skills will result in FUCKING FLAMING

FInally, and most importantly: Fuck you.

You'll probably tolerate topposters too.

Have a nice day.

Disappointment

[Stanistani]

>Jesus H. Christ with a crutch in a sidecar on a pogo stick. The very first hit

Now that's a letdown - I had read that far and thought I was in for some beatnik poetry...cue the bongos!

1000 Players - Lies! All Lies

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure there where a 1000 players who where ready to be part of that battle but CCP's servers cannot handle it.

The entire Lotka Volterra Alliance (2000+ players) lost a titan under construction, an outpost and a very nice system because every member of the alliance who was able to stay up until 3am had to look at a login screen for 4 hours! (guys thats right we as group could not play the game or defend while our enemies where destorying years of work and well over $12,000 USD (in ISK terms) of assets.

The node crashed 4 times and allowed our enemies to enter the gate while we where still looking at the 'logging in' screen because their code and servers gives priority to those jumping in thus stopping others from logging in.

This has been known for years and alliances take advantage of it, CCP servers are very unstable and cannot take any kind of battle over 200-300 players at the best of times. There was no 1000 player battle just a 600 player rape while the defenders could not log in.

Examine every battle report on the EVE Online forums everyone complains about massive lag, buggy behavior, node crashes etc, etc, etc.

Frankly EVE is not scalable up, only down. Magnus needs to work on this problem as the highest priority or see subscriber numbers fall due the fact we cannot play the game!

Re:1000 Players - Lies! All Lies

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot to mention the fact that LV's commanders ordered LV to log in anad back off at two minute intervals in a vain hope of keeping the server crashed.
The actual result was that LV's players kept getting bumped to the back of the que, while the attackers waited patiently and got in just fine.

Re:1000 Players - Lies! All Lies

[Anonymous Coward]

Some did, some did not - regardless of what any player did they could not log back in for 4-5 hours yet the opposing force was online all of this time. Thats broken regardless. Face facts CCP's servers cannot handle it, they don't accept it and the game will fall because of it.

The scandal goes beyond the T2 BPOs..

[Anonymous Coward]

For me the biggest problem with the scandal was that there certainly was more than the T2 BPOs handed out.

Information has no price tag.

Information about which regions are getting the 10/10 plexes (dungeons if you will) before they're in the game. Information about the next 'secret event' so your corp can be ready long before anyone else. Information on where your enemy bases are (whatever happened to the GM ship that was found scouting BoB's enemy system less than 24 hours before BoB declared war on them?)

Let's not also forget decisions that can be influenced by corp loyalty.. Where should we put that new 10/10 plex? In our enemy's territory or ours?

BoB has a long, LONG and well documented history of abusing bugs that the average person doesn't know about (using passive targeters to shoot through enemy PoS shields). Who would have first hand access to all the bug reports filed by honest players?

Oh, that's right, a dev.

I also think it is funny that BoB has NEVER been punished for metagaming (using pretexting to be able to post enemy message boards onto the official EVE forums and/or disrupting enemy TS/Vent channels during a war op, etc) yet Kugutsman (the whistleblower) gets banned for metagaming BoB's message board (obtaining and looking through a sql dump of their messages).

Re:The scandal goes beyond the T2 BPOs..

[Sobrique]

I also think it is funny that BoB has NEVER been punished for metagaming (using pretexting to be able to post enemy message boards onto the official EVE forums and/or disrupting enemy TS/Vent channels during a war op, etc) yet Kugutsman (the whistleblower) gets banned for metagaming BoB's message board (obtaining and looking through a sql dump of their messages).

Metagaming != computer misuse.

Re:The scandal goes beyond the T2 BPOs..

[MMaestro]

Metagaming + CCP != Computer misuse + Permanent account banning

EVE Online's forums are legendary among MMOs for deleting posts/threads and banning accounts if you say anything that would deface the game or company.

Re:The scandal goes beyond the T2 BPOs..

[Sobrique]

I'm not sure I agree. I'm pretty certain most of the forums out there that are run by a company have limited tolerance for people slagging off the company in question.

*shrug* to each their own. Personally I think the whole affair is being dragged about with all together more drama than's entirely necessary, but I'll admit I've only a peripheral interest.

Profits?

[Anonymous Coward]

(reposted, piggybacking on a highly moderated early post in order to increase chances of being read)

I still want to know the annual profits from EVE. It was the only important question. I know the profits must be obscene, but the question is how obscene. I think it is important for the players to know just how little it costs to run the game in comparison to the revenue it brings in.

I guess I'll look into whether CCP is publicly traded and if any financial reports are available.

It appears they are not publicly traded. From their website: "CCP Games is a privately held company".

Lets do a rough calculation then...

300 000 players
x $15 per month
x 12 months per year
---
= $ 54 000 000 annual gross revenue from EVE online

That's 54 million dollars annually!

Hardware upkeep and service contracts are probably maximum $5 million annually (a gross over estimation).
Salaries, maximum of $10 million annually (perhaps an under estimation as this is the easiest way to make profit magically disappear).
Bandwidth charges, probably run maximum $2 million annually (again probably a gross overestimation).
I'm sure any debt from initial capital outlay is long gone.

So that gives me an estimate of:

$54 million gross revenue
- $5 million hardware upkeep
- $10 million salaries
- $2 million network service
---
= an estimated $37 million annual profit!

Pay to play makes me sick.

1000 players...

[pacman on prozac]

We had the other day, not too long ago, a battle of 1000 in the same system, and we want to continue supporting that, allowing them to have these large battles

Strange example to pick, if this is the battle I'm thinking of then it pretty much finished off one of the biggest alliances in the game due to the server being unable to handle the load.

The server crash disconnected everyone in the system (the defenders) but when the node eventually came back online it gave priority to people jumping into the system (the attackers). The end result was the defenders lost the system and all of their assets within it and were unable to do anything to defend it. You may think "so what it's only a game" but the assets lost equate to around $20000 at current rates. This was all earned by the work of the thousands of players in that particular alliance.

Re:1000 players...

[Anonymous Coward]

But that's ok, because Lotka Volterra had ANOTHER titan under construction, right?

right?

And you didn't want all those stations?

right?

Re:1000 players...

[Nananine]

This needs to be clarified, because that's actually an inaccurate description of events.

After a node crashes, there is a queue for players to log in. There is no artificial "priority" for attackers or defenders. The defenders were mistakenly ordered to mash the log in key over and over again, which reset their place in queue.

Re:1000 players...

[celeb8]

Poor pacman on prozac forgets to add that it was the defending corp (Lotka Volterra, currently pirating in low-sec space now hehe) that were attempting to crash the server deliberately in a failed attempt to keep people out. They accused the attacking corp of cheating instead, but once LV's forum logs came to light (where they discussed how to use anchored large bubbles to crash the node)they performed a retrograde maneuver.

Re:1000 players...

[pacman on prozac]

My point wasn't really about the battle between alliances, that has been done to death on other forums (eve-online.com in particular), although I don't doubt what you say.

It was that the example given of how stable the servers are was actually an event that resulted in the servers dying and the game being unplayable.

Re:1000 players...

[zerocool^]

I've also heard that if a node crash is caused by people jumping into a system, when the node comes back up, priority is given to the people that are in the process of jumping - because until they are in the system, their characters are "in limbo" between systems. Appearantly the game tries to compensate for having jumped through one jumpgate and not having come out the other yet, by prioritizing these logins first.

Which basically means that the way to beat any defensive position where people are dug in is to bring enough people to crash the node when you jump in.

And yes, it did essentially kill Lotka Volterra as an alliance. But, it has also helped BoB when they fought versus ASCN (and they were the attackers), it's helped Goonswarm when they fought -V- and LV in 1V-LI2, and a bunch of others, too.

Basically, at this point, I look at it as a game mechanic. It's not going to get fixed any time soon, so I just will go ahead and assume that it's better to be on the advantageous end of it (jumping in) rather than the wrong end (defending).

~WX

Re:1000 players...

[celeb8]

Actually what you've heard is wrong, nanonine is on the money. The defenders were ordered to keep mashing the login button "so they would get back in first". This doesn't work, the attackers were first in because they had the first places in queue after the defenders retried.

Re:1000 players...

[Cunk]

As someone who attempted to jump into that system that night I don't agree with your account. I was unable to log in after hours of attempts (I always waited until it kicked me back to the character selection screen...I never aborted the login process) and I finally gave up in frustration and went to bed.

However I really can't refute your assertion that the server gives priority to people jumping into the system over those already in system since I don't have intimate knowledge of the code behind the game. I had never seen this this mentioned before this particular clusterfuck.

Re:1000 players...

[pacman on prozac]

No need to call me poor I am not in that particular alliance.

I didn't forget to add this either, it is not something I have heard before. As far as I was aware the node dropped due to the number of players on it (hence the comment that CCP gave it as example of 1000 player battle), not due to actions by one side or the other.

As stated my point wasn't really about rehashing in-game politics but about the example CCP gave of server stability. However since you seem interested perhaps you could post a link to that particular forum log since your post won't be deleted here.

Re:1000 players...

[Stephenmg]

I am actually impressed by the large fleet battles lately. Early on in the game if you tried something like that it would have taken the entire cluster down with just 200 players.

Re:1000 players...

[slaida1]

Tell me, what good is a 100+ player battle if your smooth gameplay turns into a slideshow? Hell, even 50 player battles lag and aren't smooth in any measurable way.

While their game is attractive hardcore alternative to teenager hell that is WoW, code behind Eve sucks so bad they need to employ T2 Reality Distortion Field to keep straight face when they talk about massive multiplayer battles.

As seen here, people have decided to live with it and instead of whining about slideshows they whine "but they got node crashed and then they were last in the login queue so because they hit logon button too much so they lost the system".

Reality check: slideshows, client/node/server crash and unable to login is not game. It's bullshit and gamers shouldn't tolerate that.

Here's another good Google search...

[EgoWumpus]

Even a nerd ought to be able to look up ways to improve themselves.

Nails in their coffin

[Anonymous Coward]

The onus is on management to make amends, show that the game is fair, and show that it will never happen again.

This interview not only shows that they have done none of the above, it shows that they fundamentally don't understand the problem.

For a game company to require an insane amount of level-grinding AND to foster a broken culture of internal favoritism is financially suicidal in the long run.

Magnus: I don't care how good a buddy this guy is of yours. He broke the rules, and in doing so seriously endangered the company's image and the loyalty of its customers. You need to let him go. You also need to kick players who knew about this at any level. Stop downplaying the issue.

Two things jump out at me in this interview...

[Arsaidh]

"We actually did a survey, and we found it's an even distribution of CCP employees in the top ten alliances." I'm sorry, but that's not a reassuring fact. Does that suggest that many of the top ten alliances have devs and GMs in them? Oh, well then surely there can't be any misbehavior going on there! "And the person that did it, which I know really well, he doesn't understand himself, it just doesn't make any sense." And just what the Hell does this mean? "He doesn't understand himself"? What, was he working late one night when he accidentally clicked on the "Abuse Position and Give Ph4t L3wt to Teammates" icon on his desktop instead of Microsoft Outlook?

Re:Two things jump out at me in this interview...

[dave562]

"And the person that did it, which I know really well, he doesn't understand himself, it just doesn't make any sense." And just what the Hell does this mean?

I got caught up on this one too and I agree with you that it doesn't make much sense. From what I can figure, the Magmus guy was talking about what happened in the context of the CCP "corporate culture" in which they care about game balance. In that context, the "person in question" doesn't understand why he did what he did, sort of like a compulsive drinker "doesn't understand" why they drink... they just do.

Obviously the response is completely composed of corporatesque misdirecting double-speak. The GM in question had a moment of split-personality disorder that caused him to do something he otherwise wouldn't have done? Gimme a freakin break.

Re:Two things jump out at me in this interview...

[Sobrique]

Characters who have been playing a long time, have also ended up in alliances.

The fact that these are also devs is largely irrelevant.

Re:Two things jump out at me in this interview...

[Smuffe]

I agree 100%. To me it's amazing that they allow Devs to play, since so much of EVE is information. As another poster higher up said, "hmm, do we out the ultra high tech level 11 complex at our enemies system, or in our own back yard?".

To me, the "hackers" answer about "doesn't understand" looks more like a way to say "hey, everyone does it, I was just the one that got caught".

To say there are an even number of Devs in the top 10 alliances is to basically say "if you want your alliance to be top 10, get a Dev". I am sure there are absolutely no Devs that would take advantage of this...

Missing items in EVE?

[no1nose]

When are they going to release all of the missing items in EVE? For example: the Large 'Hope' Hull Reconstructor. I looked for one for months and even offered huge sums of ISK on the buy/sell forums.

I got frusterated and stopped playing about 8 months ago. I made a trial account last week only to find they still haven't released it.

Yo, Zonk

[LDoggg_]

Every time you get the opportunity to interview a game developer/company you do the same thing. That is, you ignore the highly modded questions about the possibility of game ports to OSX and Linux.

Why?

It's a question slashdot reades want to be asked, yet you ignore it every time.

We can guess that the answer has something to do with market size, but it doesn't hurt to ask.

This one might actually get a port, why not bring it up or ask about the progess?

Re:Yo, Zonk

[zaibazu]

EvE seems to be built a lot with MS tools and libs. I doubt they'd manage to port it to another platform without massive reqwrites.

Re:Yo, Zonk

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a waste of a question... there's only a limited number of questions an interview can have and this is just a throwaway question. There's always more pertinent info to ask from the game developers than a question about porting to linux/Mac.

Re:Yo, Zonk

[LDoggg_]

Then why even bother asking slashdot readers for questions?. People mod the ones they want to be asked.

We were told many times that's the way these things are supposed to work.

You telling me that we should go on the premise that your and Zonk's opinion is somehow better than the community as a whole?

Bullshit, my friend. Hot Steamy Bullshit.

McD's!?

[Anonymous Coward]

> McDonald's has a great program for this. A speaker stands in front of an audience. Each audience member is holding a handbuzzer. Every time the speaker uses "ah" or "um" or a similar spacer the members of the audience ring the buzzer.

McDonald's? Only place I've seen this was in Toastmasters, where they're called "ah counters" ...

Honestly, I don't think most McDonald's employees are that great at speaking, let alone public speaking. At least, based on how hard a time they've had getting my order right in the past.

Honestly, the dog ate my homework!

[elrous0]

Uh, we were on vacation...uh, it was only one guy, honest!...uh, it won't happen again!

Excuses, excuses, excuses.

And I think their claim that "it was just one guy" and "everyone in management just happened to all be one vacation at the same time" are about as credible as Karl Rove saying "Scooter Libby did it all by himself! We didn't know about it!"

-Eric

Re:Honestly, the dog ate my homework!

[Maserati]

Whatever else may be going on, many European countries have a tradition of much of a company taking summer vacation at the same time. It's mind-boggling to Americans, but it's a way of life over there. I get called to drive 100 miles on a vacation day for a printer jam (and didn't, had trained someone specifically on that particular bizarre jam that can happen to an HP LJ5100 (the one under the bevel between trays 2 and 3) and I'm not walking away from Mom's table because)

For the record, I think CCP screwed up, although there is an element of bad luck in T20 being caught when nobody onsite in management had the stones to fire him - or call Magnus' cell. "Hey boss, I hate to bother you, but should we really fire this guy ?" I believe him when he says (ok, clearly implies) in the dev blog that he would have.

And, if you were in an alliance with a known CCP employee, would you risk your reputation over getting caught ? Wait, out in 0.o that question has a lot of different answers...

Re:Honestly, the dog ate my homework!

[Raenex]

For the record, I think CCP screwed up, although there is an element of bad luck in T20 being caught when nobody onsite in management had the stones to fire him - or call Magnus' cell. "Hey boss, I hate to bother you, but should we really fire this guy ?" I believe him when he says (ok, clearly implies) in the dev blog that he would have. So why was the guy never fired? If they cared about the reputation of the company then they would have fired him. Maybe it wasn't just that one developer? Maybe there was a culture of cheating, and they didn't want the developer speaking out after getting fired? Who knows for sure, but if there's one cockroach in your kitchen, there's likely more.

I don't understand this "double jeopardy" excuse either. He says this behavior is like "hurting your own baby". Who would keep their baby sitter around after hurting their baby? So he says he was on vacation. Ok, when he comes back, he can't fire him because...?

Coming soon...

[Jerry Rivers]

...to an Intel Mac near you.

http://www.insidemacgames.com/news/story.php?ID=14 797

Re:Coming soon...

[Jerry Rivers]

I should have included the following link as well:

http://www.macworld.com/news/2007/03/09/eve/index. php

Re:Coming soon...

[coffee_bouzu]

From http://www.macworld.com/news/2007/03/09/eve/index. php :

CCP Games calls EVE Online the world's largest game universe. It's a massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG) set in outer space. The service currently has over 160,000 active subscriptions -- more than 34,000 thousand players have been online at once.

Holy crap. 34,000 thousand players active at once? No wonder they need two tons of servers. 34,000,000 is a heck of a lot of people playing at once (not to mention more than their 160,000 active subscribers) /sigh, now I've joined the ranks of your common grammar nazi.

Wow

[Odiche]

Personally, I have never had a problem dealing with issues in game, or account problems.

In fact I quite like EVE-Online. You need to find a good group of people to fly around with.

Such a varied amount of options are available to a person. And for the most part it works well.

So please climb down off your high horses people, only when you design a game on this scale can you throw stones.

Re:Game caters to pvpers

[jjgm]

That sounds like regular play in Eve, not griefing.

They don't want more subscribers like you. They make the game they want to play, they don't design it for the largest possible market.

That bullshit direction of marketing-focus-group driven design is the reason I don't play WoW.

They are porting it

[idonthack]

They are porting it.
http://www.linux-gamers.net/modules/news/article.p hp?storyid=1870
It would have been nice to get an update on that though.

OH HELL YEAH. WORLD OF DARKNESS!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

the best thing i heard in the whole interview was WHITE WOLF and WORLD OF DARKNESS!!! did anyone play Vampire: the masquerade by troika??? the best vampire game ever. seriously, it was that good. since then, i have been scavenging the internet for any hint of the world of darkness moving beyond pen and paper or board games. and thank you for asking him those questions. if they make anything at all with the world of darkness i will buy everything they have just to support it. if you haven't played vampire, go get it now. probably 5 - 10 dollars at ebgames or ebay. make sure you have a good system. i recommend the malkavians. sometimes you can hear the voices whisper things to help you........unless they are lying.

i mean it, i will buy anything they make with the world of darkness at the core.

Mgmt school

[HomelessInLaJolla]

'nuff said.

2 tons!!

[peitao]

Yes, but having 1000 people combat in the same system, is a massive requirement on the servers. Today they weigh two tons, the whole cluster weighs two tons. Mine weighs 3 tons! It must be faster.

linux and mac are coming

[Jaeph]

More recent citation:

http://www.gamersinfo.net/index.php?art/id:1598

In addition they are looking at introducing several new clients in the upcoming months including a Linux Client (in around 3 weeks) and a Mac client sometime this summer. The Linux client is mainly being targeted at Eastern Europe where they may be running on older hardware with Linux while the Mac Client has been a joint project with Transgaming. -Jeff

Unrepentant and Oblivious as Usual...

[Plekto]

There are a few problems here tha CCP still ignores.
1: It isn't one employee. It's that since the game's beginning, a majority of the employees have been playing as part of BoB, and it has created a snowball effect. They mysteriously know about special events and spawns first, they know what skills to train for the upcoming patches first, they get blueprints and ships first...

It's not MUCH, but getting a 1-2 week jump on everyone for three years has created a situation where they are easily twice the size that they should be.

See, 9 months ago, player-owned stations didn't exist. There was no way to take and hold areas/territory. Now there is, and the jsmp they got during the summer(and trust me, it's not just one employee - he's just the fallguy here) translated into a massive boost that allowed them to roll over a huge area of the map prtty much unopposed.

My alliance at the time was front and center in the conflict and the running joke was that BoB was like some Hydra - you'd blow up a (capitol - the big ones) ship and it would be replaced almost instantly. Their supply of ships and intel was essentially inexhaustable and nearly perfect. At a very critical time in the game's development.

As of yet, nothing has been done and BoB still has the goal of taking over the whole map - and likely will accomplish it, since most of the Devs still are members(though are much more careful about diong things that they can get caught for) Note - the official response at the time was in effect "we'll take steps so that we're more stealthy from now on", since the official corporate rule is that you can play online as long as you don't get outed or caught. (abuse potential is patently obvious).

2:Eve still routinely edits, censors, and punishes players for raising a stink of any kind on their online forums or in-game. This is unacceptable, since the problems still exist.

3:When their error/problem cue gets to be too large to handle, they jsut delete it and say "re-submit it". This is a errible corporate policy and both of these "points" were repeatedly brought up by members here and yet never made it into the interview. Forget about the cheating, the way they handle feedback and problems is apalling to say the least. It almost reminds me of Microsoft's oblivious attitude. Once you buy their program, well, who cares - they have the money and if you don't like it, tough. Even WoTC is better with this sort of thing.

4:While the newbie tutorials are good, there is virtually no manual of any kind for most of the new areas. Take exploration(new skill/money making area in the last patch) - it was 100% up to the community to figure out how to do it - CCP made no attempt to even give a primer on it. This is true for most of the game - if you want to know how to actually do anything, you have to go offline to some third party site to read a FAQ. this shows a serious lack of willingness to support the community. This also wasn't brought up in the interview. This would be like valve creating a new game and saying "you figure it out..." almost like a typical coin-operated video game(rows of buttons and nothng else).

5:The items in the game are all there. Just they are controlled and fixed by cartels and groups of developer-led individuals(for the most part). They generate huge sums of money. While this is legitimate and proper within the game, there is to date no method to address the fact. Blueprints for these items are still rare and largely unavailable. The "lottery" is a disaster and remains to this day the #1 problem in the game. Yes, they routinely shut down and delete discussions about this on their forums, as expected.

6:Lastly, the interview cold be summed up by one sentance:
"We have taken these issues under consideration."(roundfiled them in plain English)

EVE is a PVP game

[Stephenmg]

Mining is not where the fun is. PvP is where most of the action in eve is. Mining is a great way to make isk, but not much else.

Written Questions/Written Answers

[BobBobBobBobBob]

I like it better when Slashdot submits written questions to the interviewee and gets back a set of written answers.

The questions are clear, the interviewee has time to ponder the answers and then write something coherent (and sometimes also brief). I found the transcript of the audio interview very difficult to read, and believe it's of lower quality than a written interview would have been.

We know you can record sound while you're out and about. Very impressive. Now, do it the other way.

Good IMO

[hsaka]

I really liked this interview. I played EVE back in '04 and thuroughly enjoyed it. I am a bit relieved that he was willing to sort of open up about what happened with the "scandal" and admit that there were some problems which they fixed/are fixing. In any case I really like the game and the interview. Good work.

When Griefers get together to write a spacegame

[baadfood]

You get Jumpgate. Or Eve.

Both games I tried. Both were ultimately shit.

What happened to our question?

[Raef Ruoy]

Why did you not ask about why Kugutsumen was banned. Banning someone who helps keep your game clean because you can not is pathetic.

BS Corporate Spin, I thought Magnus said:

[Taelron]

"People know at the company, people know that if you were to do something like that you'd basically get fired. "

But NOONE got fired!!!

He states yeah, our employee did a bad thing, then says if someone does it they get fired, but the guy still has his job. He was not fired. Further proof they whitewashed the whole issue and arent going to do anything about it. And if they arent going to do anything about it this time, how can anyone beleive they are stopping it from happening again...

Tons of Grinding - Only if you are Stupid

[StCredZero]

I have a blast playing Eve, and I do not spend tons of time grinding.

Groups of inexpensive ships configured to implement good tactics flown by pilots who work well together trump anything in this game. (Use your brains, not your wallet!)

You're supposed to make money with your brain in Eve. If you have to grind, then make it for a specific goal that enables you to earn more money. It's quite possible for someone of modest intelligence to find some way to support a PvP habit.

I've been in the game approaching 2 years. I live in 0.0. Yet I still regularly fly ship types that I got into in the 1st month of the game. I have a blast, and all I do is kill a few NPC spawns when there's no one around to fight.

Join the right corp. Find some good people to fly with. It makes all the difference.

(And I know there was GM corruption -- first hand. I'm willing to give CCP another chance, see if they are tightening things up. It's still a great game.)