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Yet Another EVE Online Scandal?
Ariastis writes "An open letter, posted by former EVE Players, levels some new and serious accusations against CCP, the makers of the EVE Online MMOG. In the letter, chat logs & event timelines, along with description of in-game events from CCP-Approved reporting users, describe how most of the big role-playing events are rigged to favor specific alliances & players by CCP. More disturbingly, these users also appear to have CCP employees 'on call', ready to step in on behalf of the favoured players and alliances within the game. CCP reaction is member-only, but a forum thread has been left open to discuss about it." It should be pointed out at the moment all of the evidence put forward is circumstantial; take with a grain of salt. The issue of corruption in EVE was addressed in our interview with Magnus Bergsson at GDC.
Other one really happened on irc: That was the last I've seen of Raekhan.
Posting anonymously for obvious reasons.
Or better yet, imagine if Ghengis Khan, Hitler, etc. had imaginary wargames like this to play with. Would they leave their basements either?
Apparently, yes, they would have eventually emerged from their basements. And they would have emerged mightier than before! From Wikipedia:
"The stunning Prussian victory over the Second French Empire in the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71) is sometimes partly credited to the training of Prussian officers with the game Kriegspiel, which was invented around 1811 and gained popularity with many officers in the Prussian army.
Useful Historical Fact of the Day: If Hitler had played C&C, we would all by typing in German by now.
The game is real. I know. I've played it, and it wasn't all in my imagination. I recently canceled my subscription though I must admit it had little to do with these scandals.
... but then, people get pissed off about all sorts of stupid, minor things all the time. People get pissed off when their order at a fast food joint was screwed up. They get pissed off when a stranger on the street gives them a nasty look. They get pissed off when someone cuts them off while driving. It's human nature.
What I assume you mean to say is that what goes on in the game is not very important in the grand scheme of things, and to an extent, you're right
It's only natural that someone gets "pissed off," enough to go off on a strongly-worded, lengthy rant about a game they've invested hundreds of hours in when the people whose profession it is to keep the game running smoothly and on the level, they find out, have been actively assisting your in game rival's opponents in their cheating, actively thwarting your efforts to try to enjoy yourself by achieving the goals you've set for yourself in the game.
Sure, you can just stop playing, but if you've spent a lot of time playing the game, and if you generally enjoy it, why should that be your first option before expressing an apparently well-founded concern and complaint, hoping to see that concern escalated to the point where something is actually done to remedy it? No, things will never be perfect, but what could happen is that the game management decides to make the integrity of the game a priority and takes a zero tolerance approach to staff misconduct, with a high degree of transparency and openness in terms of letting customers know what is and has been done to thwart and punish corrupt staff members.
People will continue to complain, and yes, some of them will quit playing (as much as they might not want to) as long as these stories keep coming out, brought the the player base by other players who have been running their own investigations, or who have been failed by the official systems and policies of the company. In other words, until the staff gets so subtle and smart about their cheating that no strong evidence can be never be offered that it occurs, or until the company gets good enough about keeping its own house that it can catch the sloppier of offenders and come clean before it explodes into a PR spin/damage control fiasco (like the last scandal) then people will, justifiably, continue to complain.
Also, one thing to understand about EVE is that the stakes are a bit higher than they are in your typical FPS session or even MMO. In EVE, you can go from rags to riches and back to rags again in a virtual eye-blink. You can grind for months to afford a new, decked out battleship and then lose it 25 minutes into its maiden voyage if you're not careful (this is why there is a common adage to never fly anything you can't afford to lose). EVE is also a highly PvP oriented game, not just in terms of combat and territoriality but also in terms of economy. It's all about acquiring and controlling resources, and the best resources require thousands of man-hours of effort and painstaking coordination to obtain and secure. These resources are fiercely fought over and negotiated for by large corporations (much like real life). If your enemies are able to find a chink in your armor, or have a critical advantage at a critical moment, you can lose the fruits of all of those many hours of effort with relatively little to show for it, which magnifies dramatically the importance of good strategy and smart play, but also the consequences of cheating, mechanics abuse and staff favoritism.
If someone uses an aimbot in a FPS, the solution is pretty simple, you find another server or play with people you know are a bit more trustworthy. You don't really lose anything besides a few minutes of your time if you get fragged by a cheater. In a game like Word of Warcraft, a cheater might deny you your rightful fruits of victory (wh