EVE Bans Exploiters; Dropping 2% of Users Cuts Average CPU Usage 30%

Earthquake Retrofit writes "Ars has a story about EVE Online banning thousands of accounts for real-world trading of in-game money for profit. From the article: 'Those who buy and sell ISK, the game's currency, are not only exploiting the game, but unbalancing play. That's why the company decided to go drastic: a program they called "Unholy Rage." For weeks they studied the behavior and effects these real-money traders had on the game, and then they struck. During scheduled maintenance, over 6,000 accounts were banned. [Einar Hreiðarsson, EVE's lead GM,] assures us that the methods were sound, and the bannings went off with surgical precision. ... While the number of accounts banned in the opening phase of the operation constituted around 2 percent of the total active registered accounts, the CPU per user usage was cut by a good 30 percent.' Looks like they got the right 6,000.' Further information and more graphs are available from the EVE dev blog."

Comments

About time

[stoat]

They shouldn't pat themselves on the back too hard over this. The playerbase has been pushing for it for years.

Re:About time

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you actually read the article or even the summary? This is a good thing. Nothing wrong with punishing gold farmers and those who make the game frustrating for others.

Re:About time

[eldavojohn]

They shouldn't pat themselves on the back too hard over this. The playerbase has been pushing for it for years.

I don't play the game, but these guys just forfeited 2% of their profits. And you're saying "about time"?

Knowingly cutting that kind of revenue requires more than balls, my friend. That requires the confidence that doing this is going to bring at least that 2% back. That it does not scare away more that are exploiting that haven't been caught. These guys took a chance for ideals of the players. There should be nothing but kudos from the community and an understanding that they have your best interests in mind despite scandals in the past.

I applaud their efforts and found the analysis of "unholy rage" more extensive than anything I've ever seen an MMO release. It almost makes me want to pick up the game and see what it's about. The only thing holding me back is that I have heard it's quite monotonous at first.

Re:About time

[Sets_Chaos]

He read it, hence why he said what he did. It's a good thing.

Re:About time

[ivucica]

Did you read his post? Because he agrees with you, and says CCP should have done this sooner rather than later.

Re:About time

[maxume]

"2% of their profits" isn't something you could possibly know. They are claiming that cutting the players reduced their system load by 20%, so the loss of 2% of their revenues might have been offset by lower per user costs and increased their profits, even if they never make it up new users.

It's likely that you were just being sloppy, but what does that matter?

Re:About time

[ivucica]

They may lose even greater player base (more than just gold farmers). On the other hand, such moves might attract other non-cheating players, or keep the current non-cheating ones playing for longer time.

MMOs employing banning are counting on long-time effects, not on short-time effects. They probably weighted all the facts and concluded this is beter than losing players observing how many people are gold-mining, and how many people are buying the "illegally"-mined gold.

Re:About time

[sopssa]

I don't play the game, but these guys just forfeited 2% of their profits. And you're saying "about time"?

Knowingly cutting that kind of revenue requires more than balls, my friend. That requires the confidence that doing this is going to bring at least that 2% back. That it does not scare away more that are exploiting that haven't been caught. These guys took a chance for ideals of the players. There should be nothing but kudos from the community and an understanding that they have your best interests in mind despite scandals in the past.

Getting rid of the 2% that ruins the game for everyone else does a lot better for the game than trying to keep them in just because they offer extra 2% profit. Maybe someone has left the game because of that and now wants to go back to try it again. Maybe more players will join (they did get article to slashdot again, and probably to lots of other sites). As you see from the analysis, you also see that this 2% used a lot more cpu etc resources than normal players and affected stability of systems aswell, so they save extra there.

I've been wondering long time if I should try EVE and last time I read that you could quite nicely do mining on background while doing work and other stuff on internet. Now that they got rid of these people, maybe it would be even nicer experience for me.

Re:About time

[eldavojohn]

"2% of their profits" isn't something you could possibly know. They are claiming that cutting the players reduced their system load by 20%, so the loss of 2% of their revenues might have been offset by lower per user costs and increased their profits, even if they never make it up new users.

It's likely that you were just being sloppy, but what does that matter?

So you're telling me that on that day, on June 22nd, they sold 20% of the servers they had bought and they cut 20% of their jobs that maintained them? You might be able to convince me that they experienced a small immediate savings in power or that in the future months to come they had to purchase less servers than they would have initially. But on June 22nd, they cut their subscriptions by 2% in one day. That's an immediate effect, how they come back from that can be done in many ways including reduced server growth and job cuts. But on that day, no matter how you cut it, their profits were reduced by 2% ... nothing "sloppy" about saying that. I guess gamers always manage to find a way to be ungrateful.

Re:About time

[taoye]

He read it. I was one of those frustrated players. For quite a while, too, I actually started playing back in Summer 2003. This crap was one of the main reasons why I eventually stopped playing the game. Had CCP bothered to deal with this problem in any meaningful way years ago, perhaps I'd still be forking over $12 / month.

Re:About time

[Ilgaz]

Such games require a lot of time, possibly spared from your real life and if those 3% idiots were gaming the game, their harm were way more than 30% of CPU time.

I was interested in Eve Online and now have access to Intel Mac, I would have trialed it. If I have seen some rich idiot getting same kind of virtual goods (they speak about trillions) just because he paid to some lifeless idiot, I would cancel my trial immediately.

In fact, if I did know such things are possible, I wouldn't trial at all. Why bother?

Re:About time

[stoat]

So cutting 2% of their income vs freeing up 30% of server resources equates to a loss of profit now huh? I wonder what happens when all those farmers just make new accounts.

I guess you weren't around when they were spending tons of money on new hardware/pissing off the playerbase removing bookmarks/anchored containers to reduce database load.

Re:About time

[sopssa]

And now they will save money when they dont need to buy so many new servers to cater to people who used 30% more resources.

Also its not immediate 2% loss. Maybe the gold farmers bought new accounts (they do it for money anyway). Those bans also were only temporary first. After it expired and account returned to same activies, it was only banned completely then.

Re:About time

[c_forq]

Actually if you read the article they claim most of these accounts are started using credit fraud. Last I looked, you don't make money when you are a victim of fraud.

Re:About time

[Anonymous Coward]

I realize that Slashdot is full of idiots and you probably can't help yourself, but do you think you could at least try to take into account the distinction between "profits" and "revenues" when you continue this discussion? You continually refer to the former, but in fact this 2% applies to the latter.

Re:About time

[maxume]

Profits and revenues are different things. They certainly lost revenues, but neither one of us knows how they use their revenues, and how that translates into profits; maybe their hardware costs are 1% of their revenues, and overtime dealing with complaints about RMT users was 3% of revenues (that's probably silly, but it's possible).

The sloppy is in pretending that revenues and profits are the same thing. As far as being an ungrateful gamer, I'm not either, I'm simply encouraging you to think about what you are saying before you say it.

Re:About time

[Anonymous Coward]

I realize that Slashdot is full of idiots and you probably can't help yourself, but do you think you could at least try to take into account the distinction between "profits" and "revenues" when you continue this discussion? You continually refer to the former, but in fact this 2% applies to the latter.

Let me help you with basic math, say you make 70% profit on your revenues:
((x*0.7) - (0.7*0.02*x)) = 0.7*(x - (0.02*x))

Re:About time

[Anonymous Coward]

If you hadn't randomly insulted GP, I would not have modded you down. Just doing my part for a kinder, gentler /. .

Re:About time

[ShecoDu]

In EVE you can buy In-Game cards to extend your subscription, if you have enough ISK, which the farmers most definitely have.

Re:About time

[maxume]

Where's the insult? Confusing revenues and profits is sloppy.

If you really are the mod who chucked in a Flamebait, you should have commented from a browser where you weren't logged in, it were undone.

Re:About time

[Chrono11901]

They also agreed to the same set of rules as everyone else... Such as no boting/exploiting.

If you don't agree with the rules, don't play. If you break the rules, don't bitch when you have to face the consequences.

Re:About time

[Anonymous Coward]

Profits and revenues are different things. They certainly lost revenues, but neither one of us knows how they use their revenues, and how that translates into profits; maybe their hardware costs are 1% of their revenues, and overtime dealing with complaints about RMT users was 3% of revenues (that's probably silly, but it's possible).

The sloppy is in pretending that revenues and profits are the same thing. As far as being an ungrateful gamer, I'm not either, I'm simply encouraging you to think about what you are saying before you say it.

Seriously, dude on one day (June 22nd) they lost 2% of revenues, profits, whatever. Noticing that you dropped your argument of server usage. Why don't you keep trying to defend that?

Re:About time

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen online games that were almost unplayable due to the amount of chat spam advertising the sale of virtual goods (unless you turn off chat entirely). I think that is where the 30% CPU use drop came from; broadcasting messages to every player is somewhat CPU and network intensive. Getting rid of the most annoying 2% does make the game more playable and enjoyable; if nothing else, it will keep the other players around a bit longer. So yes, it should actually increase their revenues, although it is a bit of a gamble.

Re:About time

[maxume]

Because I said "might have been". I'm encouraging clear language use, not making any assertions about how the 2% drop in revenues will impact their profits.

Re:About time

[Planesdragon]

The only thing holding me back is that I have heard it's quite monotonous at first.

Find friends in-game ASAP. Eve does not get any less monotonous as you progress -- you just eventually find friends, and it becomes worth it.

If you want to play Eve as PvE, you're essentially playing "how big can my wallet get." It's mindless boredom, and was why I quit when all my RL friends did. I picked it up only when they did, and if I didn't have friends in-game I wouldn't play.

OTOH... if you want to go for PvP, (which you CAN do on day 1) then there's no better game than Eve.

Re:About time

[nitehawk214]

Think of it this way. The stuido CCP has its own Real World Transfer system. You can buy Game Time Codes and sell them to other players for in game money. This has the basic effect of "buying gold" except that 100% of the money goes to the stuido.

The effect of this was not to reduce their revenue, but likley to increase it, this wont stop people from buying, it will just cause them to buy from the studio itself. Effectively they banned their competitors in the gold buying market.

However I will theorize that this will have less of an effect of the in game economy. Since the RMT transfers are happening anyhow, this simply cuts the dependency of the resources. Those 2% of users were likely macro-miners and missioners, and were using a large amount of resources comparatively.

Re:About time

[goodmanj]

-1, pedantic.

Re:About time

[Lulfas]

I realized I slightly misread it. The Botters/Exploiters, yes, ban them in droves, no complains from me. However, people selling ISK is a different story.

Re:About time

[Hurricane78]

Well, in such a game, long-term balance is the absolute king. Because it is literally equal to the fun that players will have. Which then is equal to the number of active players, positive word-of-mouth and test accounts being made into real accounts.

If there's one rule for such projects, it's that you must maintain a good game balance at all cost, all the time.

CCP did it in a pretty proper way. Which is really hard work. I would have done it a bit earlier if in any way possible, and I have a feeling, that they would have too, if they could.
Don't forget, that there could have been a way, to make them normal players again. Which would have been the better way.

Re:About time

[fooslacker]

Depending on data center costs and decommissioning cycles and billing cycles it is probably that this isn't an immediate 2% hit but for the sake of argument let's assume it is. That said I'm guessing they've done the business case to realize that a 20% reduction in infrastructure costs will pay back their 2% drop in profits within X number of months and that X is short enough time frame to affect yearly operational costs in a positive way for several years to come. Additionally it affects taxes and assets and all sorts of things. I don't know how they justified it but I'm pretty sure there was a positive business case before they did something like this.

Data center costs are brutal for companies with significant infrastructure. Most people don't realize how expensive servers are to run day in and ay out. In a top tier data center it sometimes costs as much or more to run a server for a year than it did to originally buy it, and we're not talking dells from best buy we're talking about $20K+ machines ranging on up to ridiculous numbers for some SunOracle boxes. Once you add in things like the land lease, the power, the telecoms, redundancy, depreciation on the facility, labor, etc. it becomes a rather significant cost. If they don't decide to decommission the freed up capacity right away to get the savings it gives them options for deferred spending or for various corporate trade in programs which allow corps to treat servers like cars and get a good bit off of the next gen, generally cheaper due to efficiency gains versions of hardware. Additionally these days most companies outsource the data center work and are locked into various contracts for given periods of time so the only recourse they have to be more efficient on the infrastructure front is to use less until the next contract cycle comes up.

Again, I have no idea what their numbers look like but it's not crazy to think that a 20% reduction in infrastructure usage could have a very good business case with a very short payback time.

Re:About time

[kv9]

I don't play the game, but these guys just forfeited 2% of their profits. And you're saying "about time"?

they mostly did it for the greater space good, but if you wanna be a jew about it I'm sure GTC/PLEX sales will offset that lost revenue (not profit) pretty soon. the farmers were not only raping server resources, but were also competitors.

Re:About time

[B3ryllium]

Actually, having played it, I found that it wasn't monotonous "at first" - there were enough missions and such that I was able to have a lot of fun right off the bat with it.

It got monotonous, for me, when instead of working up the alliances and resources to conduct missions in 0-Sec, I chose to go into the mining profession hardcore. I had thought that with my dual-monitor setup, I would be able to program on one monitor and play the game on the other monitor - and that would have worked fine, if my computer could have handled it. It couldn't. Eventually, after a while of this, I ended up getting a 360 Elite for my birthday (this was about two years ago) - I hooked that up to my second monitor, instead, and I cancelled EVE in favour of Halo 3, which I still play at least 3 times a week online with friends.

However, as concerns EVE, I have no doubt that if you are willing to venture into 0-Sec space, where you *could* lose everything on a moment's notice, the game can be VERY exciting.

Re:About time

[Anonymous Coward]

Either you've discovered a new kind if math, or you're a blathering idiot.

I'll give you the benefit if the doubt and ask you to explain your new rules of mathematics in more detail, as I still don't see how y = x (r - c) and y = x r yeild the same result if c is not zero.

On second thought, I revoke the benefit of the doubt.

Re:About time

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a good point. 2% of their revenue could represent much more than 2% of their profits. Especially in an industry where marginal cost is low compared to capital and fixed costs.

Re:About time

[MooUK]

Almost entirely the same people.

Re:About time

[Anonymous Coward]

who cares? I sure don't

Re:About time

[ari_j]

I'm really wondering this. What is the relationship between real-world trading of in-game resources and CPU usage?

Re:About time

[geminidomino]

However, people selling ISK is a different story.

Not if it's against the same rules.

Re:About time

[Anonymous Coward]

Kindly explain how you maintain precisely the same profit margin after changing your revenues and nothing else. Ever hear of a little thing called "overhead"?

I know you probably can't help your mental disability, but you should at least refrain from showing it off.

Re:About time

[geminidomino]

Either you've discovered a new kind if math, or you're a blathering idiot.

I'll give you the benefit if the doubt and ask you to explain your new rules of mathematics in more detail, as I still don't see how y = x (r - c) and y = x r yeild the same result if c is not zero.

On second thought, I revoke the benefit of the doubt.

They would also yield the same result if r==0. ;)

Re:About time

[AndrewNeo]

There is a legitimate in-game system for buying and selling ISK, it is a part of the market and doesn't break it. Farming is not a part of that system.

Re:About time

[Sancho]

The fact that in order to maintain sales, you have to be on pretty much all of the time.
Look at it this way--if these people were playing the game 12 hours per day, and the average non-exploiter plays the game 2 hours per day, then when you ban the exploiters, you get back a massive amount of per-user CPU time.

Re:About time

[Anonymous Coward]

Either you've discovered a new kind if math, or you're a blathering idiot.

I'll give you the benefit if the doubt and ask you to explain your new rules of mathematics in more detail, as I still don't see how y = x (r - c) and y = x r yeild the same result if c is not zero.

On second thought, I revoke the benefit of the doubt.

They would also yield the same result if r==0. ;)

Err, no. If r == 0 and c != 0, then y = x(r-c) is non-zero for any non-zero x. y = xr would always be zero, and thus the results would only be the same when r == c == 0.

 

/highschool_math_lesson

Re:About time

[Artifakt]

So maybe people should have specified GROSS profits? Yes, net profitability may go up if this cuts Eve's operating costs, and quarterly gross profit may go back up for separate reasons (i.e. this attracts new players or causes dissatisfied former players to return, or both.). Still, this move directly impacts immediate gross profit, and that's something we can reliably know (those of us who have studied small scale economics).
      Since you didn't make the distinction in your comments either, I'm unclear what you think 'eldavojon' was being sloppy about. Maybe he or someone else should specify what they think will happen to reported quarterly gross and net profits, research whether Eve's parent company is publicly traded, and so on, and if it is, talk stock price effects, and so on, but that doesn't sound like what you mean, offhand, so I must confess I'm puzzled.

Re:About time

[Anonymous Coward]

There is another cost here. The farmers could be running off legit business. 'I do not play that game its full of farmers' means one less legit player and whomever he tells. Also these dudes are abusing their system to make money off them at the cost of their 'real' customers. So a small minority of players are abusing it and the other 98% of the players are pissed and may leave over it. Make 98% of your customers happy vs the leaches. Yeah I would drop kick them too. A good example would be going into an all you can eat buffet then hovering up all dinner rolls so no one else gets any. Eventually the management would come over and say your patronage is not welcome. Ive seen it boy was that dude LOUD :)

Its amazing what a little good will can do for a business.

Re:About time

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Depending on data center costs and decommissioning cycles and billing cycles it is probably that this isn't an immediate 2% hit but for the sake of argument let's assume it is.

Their server load is at 70% of the previous level - this implies that they can increase their userbase by 42% (linear scaling) or 19% (quadratic scaling) without buying more hardware. That's pretty significant.

Re:About time

[naasking]

Cut 2% of their income for 30% of their operating costs and increased customer satisfaction? It may not balance out exactly like that, but I'm sure it made sense as a business decision.

Re:About time

[mpe]

Actually if you read the article they claim most of these accounts are started using credit fraud. Last I looked, you don't make money when you are a victim of fraud.

It could even wind up costing you money, due to transaction costs.

Re:About time

[KibibyteBrain]

That is begging the question. The whole point of the distinction between profit and revenue is that the profit margin can change as a function of revenue. Say you make $5k a month in revenue by working a job in NYC, but it costs you $k a month to live there. You are offered a new job in Kentucky that pays only $4k per month, but would cost only $1k per month to maintain the same standard of living. Yikes, thats a 20% drop in revenue. But wait, now you are clearing $3k per month and not only $2k, or a profit Increase of 50%! /3rd grade Now back to business. One of the main technical challenges of EVE is the fact they only have one virtual world, and they devote a ton of engineering and server resources to somehow make that happen. So its very likely the monetary cost of %load varies exponentially with the %load. But the cost per user is linear. So killing user who use disproportionate load will ALWAYS be profitable with these cost functions as long as the total number of users remains above the critical value where the exponential (offset by fixed costs) intersects the line.

Re:About time

[Toonol]

Your argument has devolved to "They lost 2% of SOMETHING".

They lost about two percent of their revenue. Maybe this means they lost 100% of their profit; maybe they just increased their profit by 100%. You have no way of knowing what this did, because you don't know the amount of fixed expenses, nor the expense of these particular accounts.

However, for an mmorpg running a bank of servers, a 30% reduction in processing is a HUGE reduction in expenses. Whether the savings was immediately taken the next day by selling servers or not is meaningless. Even if they never reduced the number of servers, they just added a huge amount of future expandability, for a relatively negligible price.

Re:About time

[timeOday]

Quibbling about 2% is pretty silly anyways compared to something that spoils the fun for the other 98%. Fun is why people play, after all (well, 98% of them). Who's going to play a sport where the losing team can just whip out their checkbook and buy points? (Think about it, Yankees fans).

Re:About time

[nedlohs]

1. Since the accounts had higher than average resource usage they have possibly reduced their expenses.

2. Such players can make the game less fun for others, farmers can cause inflation and other players buying their way to in game riches can cause resentment. Hence removing those players may result in less loss of other players.

3. Payment fraud is likely higher amongst farmers than the rest of the player base. They aren't playing for fun and hence more likely to increase their profits by using stolen credit cards, etc than other players (who don't want to lose their characters and fraud is harder if you want to kep the account for a long time).

Of course what really matters is how do they stop them from creating new accounts and repeating. There detection mechanism needs to be precise enough to not ban real players, but fast enough to not allow a profitable window of gold farming/selling before the ban. Which seems non-trivial.

Re:About time

[maxume]

The whole point is that we don't know anything about the cost of revenues for the accounts that were banned, so we can't talk meaningfully about any sort of profits, we can only speculate. We can assume that the costs are similar to the costs for other accounts, but that gets sloppy quite quickly.

Re:About time

[Artifakt]

Ah, that clarifies what you meant by 'sloppy' earlier, and it seems I guessed right. For all sorts of people trying to discuss this, words such as revenues or profits are generally qualified if you want to convey meaning, or there's really no point in using them. Gross and Net profits will work for many cases, or Pretax Revenues, Operational Profits, or even Ordinary and Passive profits in some cases. Ordinary and Capital Revenues, or Ordinary and Special Revenues, are also occasionally seen qualifications. For many corporations reconciling Book Revenues with Reportable Revenues is the issue, and I've frequently seen this referred to as Book Profits vs. Actual Profits too.
      To put it more simply, Revenues can definitely be used to mean the same thing as Profits in some cases but the two cannot possibly be the same thing in all cases. To explain that in detail is the trick - I'd rather teach something simple like Quantum Chromodynamics than U.S. Title 26.
      I would flat out guarantee you, if you use the general term 'revenues' to mean gross, ordinary or pretax revenues (any of which is also sometimes called gross, ordinary, or pretax profits), any competent judge, contract lawyer or IRS agent will make you spell out which one you really mean, and use it consistently from then on. The IRS guy is likely to just tell you what terms you must use in an audit instead, and in such case he or she can theoretically fine you every single time you slip. You are insisting that your use of the words is correct and someone else's is wrong - but you've acquired a colloquial shorthand that is no closer to professional usage than the person's you are 'correcting'.
        What's scary is, once I picked up on your terminology, your post probably deserves an insightful mod or two. But, I couldn't have argued if anyone had flamebate modded you instead.

Re:About time

[Todd Knarr]

CCP also noted that the accounts they dumped were also responsible for a lot of credit-card fraud which CCP had to foot the bill for. So they didn't forfeit 2% of their profits, they forfeited 2% of their profits minus the costs of the credit-card fraud associated with those accounts. The penalties (both in direct costs for those transactions and in higher processing fees for all transactions) are steep, so it's entirely possible that the fraud costs exceeded the revenue from those accounts. In that case, CCP actually will turn a profit by terminating those accounts.

Re:About time

[fooslacker]

Agreed, but the post i was replying to was questioning the savings aspect even if they didn't grow their user base and I was trying (in a long winded and poorly written way) to explain how that could be true.

Re:About time

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't play the game, but these guys just forfeited 2% of their profits. And you're saying "about time"?

The problem was that these 2% of accounts did not represent 2% of their profits.

In EVE it is possible to pay for your game time using in game currency (ISK)

Most of the "farmer" accounts would pay for their first 30 days of game time, then using automated macros (that are illegal to use under the terms of the games EULA) to "farm" ISK 24/7 funding their own accounts and illegally sell the in-game profits they make for real world cash.

I think it was when CCP realised that they was not actually making any profits from these players as well as them ruining the game for the rest of the (non exploiting) player base that they decided to ban them.

Other contributing factors were the "farmers" not even paying for their first 30 days of game time by using stolen credit cards and the fact the CCP provides a legitimate method to pay for in game currency. This must represent a significant portion of CCPs profits from EVE, and these farmers were directly competing with them by offering players in game currency for about 25% of the cost, albeit illegally by the rules of the game.

The facts that the "farmer" accounts were ruining the game for legitimate players and were increasing server loads significantly, IMO was not they primary motivation in CCP banning them, the loss of profits was.

Re:About time

[angel'o'sphere]

I'm really wondering this. What is the relationship between real-world trading of in-game resources and CPU usage?

The farming of those ingame resources cost CPU ... especially if done with bots that mindlessly spam combat commands.

Note: in huge MMOs usually only the parts of the world where actually players are running around are activated and loaded into memory and are executed/simulated by the CPUs. So if less parts of the universe are active you have less CPU demand etc.

angel'o'sphere

Re:About time

[WNight]

So charge by the hour...

Seriously, this is just like ISPs who advertise unlimited usage and then ban users who take them literally. And in every post about something like that people like you come along - people who don't game much, or use much bandwidth, and they act like reneging on your contracts is okay as long as you have some token justification.

Hey, at that, I've looked at my finances and this Visa company is sucking up 80% of the resources... I just need to say that while demanding some money is okay, demanding as much as they do is excessive and cut them off. A bit of "for the good of the rest of my creditors" rhetoric - play the car dealership against Visa, and I'm all set.

Re:About time

[Martin Spamer]

A 2% reduction in revenue doesn't reduce profits by 2% when it leads to 30% reduction of the system resources costs.

The exploiters have cost Eve a lot of players over the years. I played Eve for 3 years and had 4 accounts and along with half a dozen rl mates all with multiple accounts quit because we got fed up with exploiters, gold miners and their ilk.

Re:About time

[Anonymous Coward]

Err I am sorry guys but if the reduction did not allow them to get rid of physical servers then they save NO MONEY on the hardware. A server running at 50% costs the same as a server running at 90%, or even one SITTING IDLE but powered on. They don't have nice things like standby and such for big iron servers, they chug along, arrays, switches and all at full power all the time. I am venturing to guess that the savings will be in manhours having to deal with the crap stirred up by this mass of 'sploiters who no longer need constant monitoring. The goodwill engendered by the purge should also have a very positive, if possibly intangible effect.

Posting anon to not kill my thread mods...

Re:About time

[Anonymous Coward]

"Most people don't realize how expensive servers are to run day in and ay out. In a top tier data center it sometimes costs as much or more to run a server for a year than it did to originally buy it, and we're not talking dells from best buy we're talking about $20K+ machines ranging on up to ridiculous numbers for some SunOracle boxes."

Unfortunately, even more people don't realise the real requirements to run an MMO, and in fact, it's not that high. There is no reason a game like Eve would need anything like what you might call a top tier data centre.

Whilst Eve has a single concurrent universe, it is heavily zone based, meaning a network of cheap servers is all that would be required. In fact, Dark Age of Camelot was capable of handling a few thousand players on basic commodity PC - yes, of the type you could buy at Best Buy. Whilst this wasn't an idea you'd want to use long term because you don't have the redundancy you require from commodity PCs to run an MMO long term they did at points use them to relieve pressure on high volume servers. They also used simply MySQL on Linux for their database backend.

You do not need $20k servers to run an MMO. You also do not need a bigger server room than you would at most small to medium sized companies, a single run of the mill blade server should be able to handle 500 to 1000 clients with ease (probably more for Eve in fact as it's a relatively slow paced game). As modern blade racks can hold over 100 servers nowadays, a single rack would in fact be plenty enough to run Eve's full, 30,000 to 50,000 player universe.

Re:About time

[Plekto]

The real issue is that the farmers were using loads of resources and constantly hammering the system every second for 20 hours a day with input updates as opposed to the typical guy who sets it and ignores it for a minute at a time, plays an hour, and gets off. Or who is talking in a chat window in a station.

Also, the estimate of people in Korea, China, and India that are involved in this is in the millions. And it's not some guy in a basement at his PC, either. It's warehouses with 100+ computers and nearly slave wages(though better than having no job at all over there of course). Usually this facilitates money laundering and other seedy activities as well. Some lone guy selling a character or item on Ebay or Craigslist isn't an issue by comparison. Yes it was hugely overdue, but also I think it was that CCP wanted to have the tools in place to catch every last one of them that they could. It appears as if they caught 60-70% just in one sweep. So far other than a bunch of people whining and lying about not doing anything, they appear to have been nearly 100% right in the cases where they did ban people as well.

Now as for fixing it long term, I think they need to first reject all players without a verified ID or credit/debit card. This makes it pretty much Europe and North America only(which is their intended player base anyways). Then they need to reject all connections that trace-route back to or through Asia. They have plans to set up a server in Asia already, so do it and block traffic from there. Lastly, they need different in-game currency for any future server in Asia.

Re:About time

[maxume]

I'm not really sure if I am right or wrong versus the professional usage you are talking about, and I don't really care, but I have never noticed the business press use the terms 'revenue' and 'profit' differently than I am (an example would be here: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=MSFT&annual ); for the most part, I am basing my usage on that, and I don't think it is particularly absurd to expect conversations between laymen to follow that definition (especially because the dictionary definition of revenue is rather vague, but the dictionary definition of profit clearly specifies that it is a gain above some base cost).

Re:About time

[tsm_sf]

Hey, at that, I've looked at my finances and this Visa company is sucking up 80% of the resources... I just need to say that while demanding some money is okay, demanding as much as they do is excessive and cut them off.

Yes, that is in fact what you should do when your borrowing gets out of hand. That you were speaking sarcastically really highlights the credit crisis in this country.

Re:About time

[Sancho]

You assume too much. "People like you?" Really?

Go work on your reading comprehension. ÂThe poster to whom I replied asked how culling 2% of their users could have such a dramatic change on CPU load. ÂI explained how without passing judgement.

I didn't read the article carefully, but it doesn't look like they were even aiming for CPU load reduction. They were trying to get rid of real-life sale of virtual goods. ÂYou can argue about whether they should do this, but it's clearly spelled out as against the ToS in many MMOROGs--if it's in theirs, they are pretty much in the right.

In fact, the CPU reduction seems to be largely a side-effect--something interesting that was noticed after they enacted their plan. Â ÂÂ

Re:About time

[KahabutDieDrake]

It doesn't work that way. The EVE cluster is for all intents FIXED. They can't pull down nodes and they don't often add new ones. The reason for this is because of the way the game balances load across those nodes.

I don't know how many nodes they are running right now, but there are 5000+ solar systems. Each node can run one, or more often many solar systems at a time. This only works because the majority of the solar systems are all but empty most of the time. Some systems, like Jita, are SUPER busy all the time and systems like that have their own dedicated node. Even so, Jita is the single most laggy spot in the game. If CCP were to remove nodes from the system, they would be directly increasing lag, something they have been fighting for ages. They aren't going to do that.

That isn't to say that won't save some money on bandwidth and power utilization, but they aren't going to be shutting down nodes anytime soon.

Re:About time

[Anonymous Coward]

If you moderated the above thread and then posted on it i hope you know you violated the spirit of the moderator system.

Re:About time

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think you can translate the 30% decrease in CPU time per user to the required hardware. The number of servers has to suffice the peak of needed performance, the prime time. Exploiters usually spend more time in the game than normal players, often during hours were the servers are quite empty.

They would be lucky if that would free 2% of the server resources.

Re:About time

[Anonymous Coward]

As I understand it, the cards are a way that a player can trade bought playing time between themselves on the market, which means that somebody paid real money for it.
The official way to get fake money for real money is to buy these and sell them for ISK, which ensures the money go to the game developers (and saves them from money laundering woes) and stimulates the in-game market.
If you trace the money, effectively some people are paying other people's subscriptions in return for them providing in-game services. It's pretty impressive as an economics model.

Re:About time

[fooslacker]

Not to argue because I've never seen a physical architecture diagram of the EVE system but how do you know this? You seem to be taking in game experiences (which may have something to do with server capacity) and I assume communications form the company to the user community then assuming a design.

Additionally I seriously doubt the cluster is "FIXED" otherwise they've implemented a system that can't scale (btw, scale generally goes both ways up and down or it's not very useful but it does have a minimum and maximum point). Finally even if you have inside knowledge and what you say about the design is 100% accurate that really doesn't have anything to do with whether or not they'll decommission some nodes, just which nodes would be targeted and what type of consolidation strategy they might use.

All that said I don't have any ideas what CCP's plans are I'm just telling you how these decisions are made and how various architectures can support different scaling models based on several years of software architecture experience across multiple industries. If you have information on how they chose to provide scalability I'd love to see it out of general curiosity.

Re:About time

[Opportunist]

The problem is that those 2% in lost profit could mean the survival of the game. Allow me to let you in on the inner workings of the EvE economy.

Most MMOs have a fairly steady economy due to it being highly normalized, i.e. dependent on fixed prices due to core equipment being available either from NPC stores or from encounter drops. So, in other words, the economy isn't so terribly important. If anything, a gallopping inflation helps new players because their goods might be bought at inflated prices by high level players (like, say, their harvested materials if a high level tries to speed up leveling a trade skill or getting equipment for twinks), while they in turn can buy their consumables from NPC vendors at fixed, "low" prices.

Why is that important? Because gold sellers drive inflation. These people usually excel in the art of maximizing money output with minimal money input. They don't care about flashy feelgood equipment that might take a fortune to have, they do their best to avoid money sinks that do not boost their ability to generate more money, they only care about "good" equipment if it increases their money generating speed. Since normal players don't have the means to minmax like this, usually goldsellers can generate way more money than they need to "survive", they also don't level twinks for kicks (if anything, just one to harvest more money), they end up with a ton of in game money that is being sold for real money, resulting in more money in the system. This is what drives prices up due to an increase in money with a fairly steady supply of goods.

As I said, this isn't so terrible for normal MMOs. It may be beneficial for new players. In EvE, it's devatstating for new players and non-top level players (i.e. the staple of any MMO alike). The economy in EvE is almost entirely player driven. Virtually anything you might want to buy has to be sold by another player, at a price the market will pay. A gallopping inflation spells doom on such a game. New players could not possibly ever afford anything they might want, unless they start buying game money for real money as well. What you want costs 200 today. You earn, you save, you have 200 money, only to see it costs 400 in the meantime. When you have 400, it costs 800. Usually by then the average player says "screw it" and leaves.

CCP has a history of making very interesting and usually fairly good decisions when it comes to their EvE economy. And I'm quite convinced they noticed something similar (the prices have recently gone through a roller coaster ride, maybe due to the banning or something that preceeded it) and decided for this bold move. Better to lose 2% of your income than to lose 100%.

Re:About time

[Shinobi]

Read through the dev blog archives and you'll have many of those questions of yours answered handily, but then again, here's a quick handicap for those challenged in research ability:

Terminology:
Node: The hardware the game runs on
Core: Each individual CPU core on a node.
System: Each individual star system with associated game universe services etc.

A System is the cornerstone process upon which the game universe is built, and it handles everything game universe related, such as combat, market trading(synchronized with constellation and region level markets), NPC's, POS's, Outposts etc etc for a star system. A node and even a core can run many systems, but a System can only scale to one core at this point in time, due to the inability of people at CCP to handle either multithreaded programming or message passing.

In addition, systems cannot be dynamically allocated, but instead have to be mapped during downtime. So when big alliances foresee large battles, they request a reinforced node for a particular System, and if it's responded to in a timely fashion, after next downtime, that System is mapped to a mostly inactive node with low RAM use etc. Add to that the fact that large battles are on the order of 300+ players per side, with hundreds or even thousands of drones+fighters, wrecks that can be looted and salvaged and the fact that there are huge battles on an almost daily basis, and you can see that decommisioning isn't really an option, the demand for reinforced nodes is large enough to make that non-viable.

Re:About time

[LiquidRaptor]

Actually, just about any server now days has power management turned on by default, (and in the case of HP's c class blades almost impossible to turn off). If they reduce the load by 30%, assuming that they were running near peak capacity I could easily see them cutting their power bill by 25%, if not more due to cooling expenses.

Re:About time

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you should bother reading up on EVE's servers before blathering on about them. After all, EVE is running on the largest supercomputing cluster in the entire gaming industry.

http://wiki.eveonline.com/wiki/Tranquility

Re:About time

[fooslacker]

Thanks for the info, it's always interesting to see how others approach shared problems but I'm not sure how this means that decommissioning hardware is non-viable. To be 100% clear, I'm not saying they will, I'm not saying the should, I'm not saying I'm certain they can but it is a common strategy / reason for cutting into a user base and not replacing the users (i.e. the hardware savings are worth more than the users)

Does it have to be planned? Sure. Do they have to do this during downtime assuming what you've posted? Sure. Does it require proper capacity management and sizing analysis based on usage, nodes, and everything you've mentioned above? Yes. Can all that affect how much is available for resizing? Yes. But does it prevent them from decommissioning if they have an excess of unused hardware capacity? Absolutely not. I can tell from the posts that players don't want them to and think its a bad idea but that's not really what we're taking about. We were talking about could they save money in this manner and I have yet to see anything that says they can't.

Take for example the following thought exercise using your terminology. I have five systems A, B, C, D & E all running on separate nodes (we'll equate a node and core for simplicity sake but the concept will apply to cores in reality which means there is more complicated planning required during decommissioning in the real world.). A always requires a reinforced node B and C sometimes do and D & E are lightly used. If usage drops by 30% the needs of these systems changes. In our example let's assume that A still requires a big node, B & C sometimes do but less frequently and D & E drop to even less usage. I can leave A on a big node, I can consolidate B & D onto a single node and C & E onto a single node then keep a warm node for when I need to upsize B or C. Or I can put B & C on dedicated big nodes and consolidate D & E on a shared node. Either way I went from 5 nodes to 4 in this rather simplistic example. There is a ton of analysis that has to be done for a software system the size and complexity of EVE but to state categorically that a 30% drop in usage doesn't provide a chance for consolidation and decommissioning isn't logical.

Now there are scenarios where this won't work. For example, if they're already running in an efficient usage mode then there is nothing to consolidate. However a 30% drop in usage of resources implies that they aren't running efficiently post drop evne if they were perfect pre-drop. As another example, if all systems require that they be on reinforced nodes at regular and unpredictable intervals with similar frequency then it becomes much tougher. But that is rarely the case in game worlds because some locales are more valuable than others. Additionally if that is the case CCP would be well served to look at rearchitecting their system for dynamic allocations of resources which would let them respond to user needs in real-time and keep only the amount of needed hardware on hand and running (granted this isn't want we're discussing)

...here's a quick handicap for those challenged in research ability...

oh and thanks for this nugget of slashdot jackassary, next time I'll be sure to search around for dev blog archives for any system that I might want to have a conceptual conversation about.

Re:About time

[SL Baur]

I'm not really sure if I am right or wrong versus the professional usage you are talking about

I am sure. Your usage is fine. "Revenue" and "Profit" are interchangeable. Technically you would want to say "Net Revenue of expenses", but the distinction only matters to wankers.

The guy flaming you is confused about "Gross Revenue", which is a different beastie entirely.

(And yes, I have all the educational requirements for CPA).

Re:About time

[Hubbell]

How exactly do ebayers/goldsellers affect you? I played Asheron's Call on the Darktide PVP server, and ebayers never affected me negatively in the slightest, they were actually a great thing to have cause they were so easy to kill even with their maxed out accounts vs my low level character that I made shittons of free loot off them

Re:About time

[maxume]

Actually, I started all this business by insisting that revenue and profit are not interchangeable, way back here:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1344441&cid=29155553

Re:About time

[SL Baur]

On the other hand, such moves might attract other non-cheating players, or keep the current non-cheating ones playing for longer time.

That sounds about right and I presume that's what they're counting on.

There was the same vocal (tiny) minority when Blizzard came down hard on mmo glider.

Nobody enjoys playing against cheaters.

Re:About time

[St.Creed]

Not only that, but World of Warcraft had a similar issue when they started and the creditcard companies actually threatened to take away the ability to pay for the game by creditcard. It took Blizzard a few meetings to explain why they weren't running a racket but were victims instead of perpetrators. That was before most people knew what WoW was, ofcourse.

Re:About time

[Shinobi]

It is perfectly logical. Those 30 percent won't be from one, two, three or even twenty different systems. The reduction will be from an aggregate of hundreds of systems(The systems the mining happens in, the systems the mission botting take place in, the travelling for courier missions, the transport of ore for sale, market trading, and of course the database servers). As such, it is logical when one has actual knowledge of the game, as well as how it's designed server-wise, despite it not being apparent on a conceptual basis.

Also, fights can spring up in the most unlikely systems, that seem as they would not be fighting spots at all because they offer no resources, nothing of apparent value(That does not mean that they lack any ACTUAL value however). Therefore, as a base mapping, you want even low and middle load systems spread out as much as possible.

Re:About time

[SL Baur]

I read that. Congrats on getting it modded up despite the muddled wording. I suppose I should do the OB: I want some of whatever that moderator was smoking.

Or maybe I should just ask you because revenue (unprefixed) and profit are the same. "Revenue" does not imply "gross revenue" which is, of course, vastly different than profit.

They dropped (maybe) 2% of gross revenue by banhammering those accounts. They are likely to recover far more than that with increased revenue from players continuing and (re)joining.

Re:About time

[WNight]

In fact, if I did know such things are possible, I wouldn't trial at all. Why bother?

Why not? If EVE is your cup of tea you'll need to adjust to the fact that most of the other players have more skills, stuff, and money than you. They've just been playing longer and are ahead. At that, who cares if some idiot payed for his ship? If anything, it's ideal because they won't be very good and you'll get expensive toys for killing them.

But really, if flying a ship around is fun, it's fun, do it because you like it not to compete.

At that, EVE is kind of fun. The skill system rewards length of time player, but makes death have real consequences, so it's good for casual players. You can camp and mine for hours but you can also usually kill NPCs instead which is usually more fun. I played EVE for a while (and liked it) but their cheating-GM scandal and the company's crappy response caused me to stop playing. I probably wouldn't have kept paying to play because you can't stop or your character is gone... No replay value in other words.

Re:About time

[fooslacker]

As such, it is logical when one has actual knowledge of the game, as well as how it's designed server-wise, despite it not being apparent on a conceptual basis.

Wow...you really can't have a discussion without being an ass can you?

So best I can tell you've successfully made the argument for 30% reduction != 30% decommissioning and that you can't achieve perfect efficiency due to the volatile nature of the resource usage profile. I have no issue with either of these assertions. I think you're deluding yourself if you think that they're running at peak efficiency post and pre a 30% drop and that there has been no possible change in resource utilization or that "playing the game" is the best view into how hardware is being used.

Re:About time

[maxume]

It seems there is a fair sized contingent here who agrees with my sentiment that, at least in a general context, there is a difference (perhaps only in connotation, but it could be the case that accountant types, who have to pay attention to the specifics all of the time, do no realize that other folks wantonly interchange revenue and gross revenue in day-to-day conversation).

Re:About time

[X0563511]

You forget that 30% less load, means 30% less CPU usage - which means less thermal emission from the servers, which means less power used both driving the CPUs and cooling them. It also means less bandwidth usage, and that can lower cost as well.

(yes, it's 30%, not 20%)

Re:About time

[X0563511]

Lets not forget how much they might save on their power bills - 30% is a large percentage of load when you take the whole datacenter into consideration. Less power going into the servers to begin with, and less power used by the HVAC since there's less heat pumped into the air.

So, less fraud-related loss, and less power bills, and (possibly) less bandwidth bills... all for (at most) at 2% loss of revenue. A fair trade, I would say!

Re:About time

[FlyingBishop]

I haven't played either game, but it seems evident to me that EVE has a much more complex economy than Asheron's Call, and that gold trading screws with the economy considerably. There are no individual servers, any user's actions affects every other user. Market instability is a real issue for playability.

And in any case, the drain on the servers caused by bots requires significant infrastructure increases.

Re:About time

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, most often its the credit card companies (their insurance) that wears the cost of the fraud.

Re:About time

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, in the short term at least, freeing up 30% of server resources gains them $0, whereas banning the accounts causes them to lose 2% of their monthly revenue. Maybe if they could shut off 30% of their servers, they could save some electricity. But, more likely, their servers are just 30% more idle. At this point, their current servers are a sunk cost.

Re:About time

[Anonymous Coward]

A. There is no 'right to play' other than following the terms of service all players must agree to.

B. The sellers knowingly violate these terms.

C. And finally with regards to DRM. Excellent straw man argument.

Re:About time

[rtb61]

So what you are saying is people who spend a lot of time playing the games, basically using what that are paying for are not good customers. Good customers pay for the game without actually playing in, hence use no resources apart from billing and accounts receivable, an interesting idea. You haven't spent any time working for health insurance or casinos by any chance. Health insurance only want customers who make no claims and go out of their way to get rid of customers who make any claims and, casinos routinely bar people who win and much prefer amateurs who lose.

This story has really put me off the idea of ever bothering with any subscription based multilayer game, if I like it too much and play it too often they will kick me off, no refund for subscriptions to date, no payment for the time lost on now evaporated virtual goods. It is really inappropriate to kick people because it is cheaper and easier than tweaking game play to resolve problematic issues.

Now even though I do dislike playing on games when long term, really frequent players gain a huge advantage and you just end up being a pointless target playing what becomes a rather ineffectual boring game, kicking those players is still wrong, tweaking game play to achieve some sot of balance seems far more sensible, golfers managed it, it's called a handicap and ensures the game maintains greater competitive accessibility. So in game virtual taxes to subsidise newer players.

Re:About time

[Anonymous Coward]

So cutting 2% of their income vs freeing up 30% of server resources equates to a loss of profit now huh?

You seem to basing your argument on the simple fact that 30 is a larger number than 2. That is retarded.

Re:About time

[ellenbee]

eve servers work in clusters and blades.. the solar systems are linked all into one world that makes database calls, but dif systems are ran on individual "blades".. less cpu usage means they have to use less of these. therefore actually saving money on hardware...

Re:About time

[Anonymous Coward]

So it's OK for EVE to do traffic-shaping and throttling, but not OK for ISPs? This sounds a lot like Comcast or AT&T banning BitTorrent users. They have the same excuse "they take up too much of the network and CPU".

Re:About time

[iamangry]

Right, cause its ok to hack and disrupt everyone else's positive experience of the game. You're one of those 13 year old kids that thinks its "really cool" to get "super h4x" and then take them onto ranked/public/hack free servers, aren't you? The rules are there for a reason, and CCP is not required to give them service any more than any other game, especially since the actual copy of the game is totally free.

Cause hackers... suck so hard that not only can they not get laid, they can't even play video games well either! Piles of n00bey epic failure.

Re:About time

[4phun]

They are paying to play the same game as everyone else, and deserve the right to do what they want with their time. Denying you the right to play the game as you see fit, and do with your time as you see fit, is really no different than some of the DRM schemes we see and complain about daily here on /.

No one has the right to screw up the game for others. Legitimate players have the right to demand that these people with a personailty and social defect be banned.

Re:About time

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless you work for CCP or are a member of their favorite corps. Then you can get direct help from the developers, special treatment from the GMs and advanced knowledge not available to anyone else with out being worried about being punished at all.

Re:About time

[geminidomino]

Yeah, that's what I meant to write. It was more of a joke (considering that r is revenues, if r==0, then they have bigger issues than worrying about the botters)

Re:About time

[commodore64_love]

>>>They are claiming that cutting the players reduced their system load by 20%, so the loss of 2% of their revenues might have been offset by lower per user costs and increased their profits

This is the same argument ISPs make when they boot their Bittorrent users.
I hope they're not listening.

Re:About time

[commodore64_love]

This is the same argument ISPs make when they boot their Bittorrent users - yes they lost 2% of their revenue, but they cut costs by eliminating the heavy users, so overall it's a net profit.

I hope they're not listening.

Re:About time

[commodore64_love]

So these online RPGs are just like real life

- He who has the money to buy credits (cough - trillion-dollar bailouts), or high-level characters (Congress) to exert power over everybody else. He who does not have money just gets shoved around.

Re:About time

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, read the second article - RMT accounts - these 2% - are thethe accounts that most often had fraudlent/stolen credit card numbers and had cracked/attacked other accounts to clean them out too.

In other words, losing this 2% doesn't equate to losing 2% of the gross revenue anyway. If those 2% were almost always stolen credit card numbers, chances are you've increased your gross profit getting rid of them. (If the credit cards were always reversed, you might get hit with a fee for the reversal as well as no actual money in the hand.)

Re:About time

[Anonymous Coward]

No, those 2% did not use 30% more CPU resources, they used 30% of the CPU resources. 98% of users used 70% of the CPU resources, 2% used 30%. That means that on average, each of those 2% used 21 times the amount of CPU that each of the other users -- that's 2,100%!

If 0 users were using the system, there'd likely be some base level of CPU usage, the so called "fixed costs". And in the above calculations we're attributing all those fixed CPU costs to the 98% of normal users. So in fact, the factor is more than 21.

Re:About time

[Anonymous Coward]

people don't play EVE to have fun. We do it to ruin other people's in game experiences.

Re:About time

[dullnev]

.... I probably wouldn't have kept paying to play because you can't stop or your character is gone... No replay value in other words.

You can suspend your account at no cost and come back when you have time to play, I did so for 7 months and my character, ships and gear were right where I left them when I returned.

Re:About time

[Hubbell]

That's the worst analogy I've ever seen. Ebayers pay rl cash mostly for the time spent on someone procuring ingame currency or character levels/stats, just the same as someone pays a mechanic for his time & knowledge to work on their car.

Re:About time

[GundamFan]

The really smart part is that using the PLEX system they can edge out the ISK sellers making it less financially viable for them to restart there activites. I don't believe in buying game money or items from RMTs but I have no problem putting money into the developers pockets for ISK especially since it provides value to other players as well.

Re:About time

[cbaze19]

They also agreed to the same set of rules as everyone else... Such as no boting/exploiting.

Agree completely... If you accept the service terms, don't complain when you disobey them. Whine all you want... Doubt they'll give your account back

Re:About time

[reauxgg]

I play Eve. There's a wonderful thing that CCP (makers of Eve) sells called "Pilot License Extensions" (PLEX), for about $35 you can get 2 of them, and they sell for about 300 million ISK in game. They give you 30 days of playtime. If you play enough or have an operation that generates an extra 300million isk/month, you basically can play for free, as, from what I understand, you can just continue to apply PLEX to your account every 30 days. You can also buy and sell game time codes which get converted into PLEX, for ISK. CCP has a forum up for it. So, saying they forfeited 2% of their profits isn't completely true, since presumably many of the accounts could be buying PLEX through the marketplace, and not paying cash to play.

Re:About time

[Hognoxious]

But it's against freedom of speech. Anyway, corpra$hunz are evil!!!!

Re:About time

[Hognoxious]

2% of revenues and 2% of profits are not the same thing. Once again your homespun aww-shucks logic fails.

Re:About time

[Hognoxious]

A server running at 50% costs the same as a server running at 90%, or even one SITTING IDLE but powered on.

This is nonesense. For one thing, disks have moving parts.

But anyway, if it's running close to full capacity you'll have to spend labour to keep constantly tweaking and tuning it. If it's already running at capacity (even if only at certain times) you risk losing other customers.

But more importantly, it puts off the time when you need to add new hardware.

Re:About time

[thrash242]

Yes, and obviously people doing that won't be banned.

Straight up selling ISK is against the rules, since your only legal options are to indirectly buy ISK or to trade ISK for playtime. Selling ISK for real-world money is not allowed.

Re:About time

[thrash242]

That's the worst analogy I've ever seen. Ebayers pay rl cash mostly for the time spent on someone procuring ingame currency or character levels/stats, just the same as someone pays a mechanic for his time & knowledge to work on their car.

..and that's the worst analogy I've ever seen.

Eve is not a traditional MMO. The almost entirely player run player economy is a huge part of the game. People doing missions or mining 23 hours a day affects everyone by lowering the value of minerals, salvage, T1 items, and other things. That makes it harder for legitimate miners or manufacturers to make a profit.

It's not transferring the money that's the problem--there is a legal way to indirectly buy ISK in-game. The problem is how these bot farmers get the money and how that negatively affects the economy.

Re:About time

[thrash242]

I probably wouldn't have kept paying to play because you can't stop or your character is gone... No replay value in other words.

This is wrong. You can suspend your account for years and come back and your character will still be there. Your character even used to continue training the current skill during that time, but that was recently fixed.

Re:About time

[thrash242]

This story has really put me off the idea of ever bothering with any subscription based multilayer game, if I like it too much and play it too often they will kick me off, no refund for subscriptions to date, no payment for the time lost on now evaporated virtual goods.

Huh? Either you didn't read the article or your tin-foil hat is on too tight. You really think people got kicked for playing too much? They got kicked for breaking the game rules. The reason that 30% of the CPU load was removed was because the farmers and ISK-sellers run macros that keep their character mining or doing missions non-stop while they're not at the keyboard, which is against the rules.

If they just randomly kicked people they thought played too much, Eve would not be around today, as that's a very poor business model.

loss of money?

[goombah99]

I'm sure their user agreement spells out that they can ban you for any reason at any time and owe you nothing. But that was before they started selling imaginary property outside the game. THis legitimizes the ingame value of the stuff they just "took" from you without compensation. I bet there are a few in that 6000 that will sue. Might set an interesting precedent if it's not all settled out of court.

Re:loss of money?

[Lulfas]

You know, I forgot all about that. They can't pretend stuff has no in-game value now in their TOS if they are selling stuff for real money. That might be a really easy lawsuit.

Re:loss of money?

[Anonymous Coward]

CCP selling imaginary property outside of the game? You clearly don't even have the slightest clue what you're talking about.

Re:loss of money?

[daethon]

While it may be true that there has been a market price established for the ingame property it does not mean that there is potential for a lawsuit.

If Eve's EULA states specifically that the sale of ingame assets in the real world is against the agreement and can result in termination, then they should be fully covered. It would imply that really any sale made in the real world was essentially a "black market" sale and a breach of contract by the user. They'd be doubly protected if there was a clause in the EULA that stated that ISK were not transferred property and were retained by EVE. Regardless though, as long as EVE followed the terms of their EULA they shouldn't have any exposure for lawsuits.

Maybe I'm wrong...but I doubt it.

Re:loss of money?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure their user agreement spells out that they can ban you for any reason at any time and owe you nothing. But that was before they started selling imaginary property outside the game. THis legitimizes the ingame value of the stuff they just "took" from you without compensation. I bet there are a few in that 6000 that will sue. Might set an interesting precedent if it's not all settled out of court.

It might be too difficult for a sweatshop worker in China to sue, or the sweatshop itself even. So much effort when they were already violating the ToS and would have to justify the validity of a novel and dubious argument.

Re:loss of money?

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, not everywhere is like the US.

I've lived all over the world, including the US, and only in America do people sue at every opportunity. I think it is a real sign of a sickness in American culture, and your comment reminded me of it.

Re:loss of money?

[raftpeople]

If they've broken the terms of a contract, it is the correct method of resolution.

Re:loss of money?

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize CCP is based on Iceland, don't you?

Re:loss of money?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ive never heard of someone suing Blizzard for the same reason, I expect the same result.

Re:loss of money?

[Anonymous Coward]

The issue I have with this is that they banned accounts to "protect the economy" and because buying isk is against the EULA. Ok, fine - both are legitimate reasons. But what about plex? To me, this is essentially Eve saying "its illegal to buy isk with real money - unless it's from us, then its ok". If buying isk distorts the economy as they claim, then buying it via plex is still buying it.
I am not a fan of gold farmers, but this just strikes me as being a bit two-faced.

Re:loss of money?

[Jedi Alec]

But that was before they started selling imaginary property outside the game.

And just how do they do that? To my knowledge the only thing they sell is gametimecards that allow a subscription to their game to be extended by x amount of time. Said gametimecard can be converted into an ingame item that does the same thing, allowing players to easily trade these time extensions among themselves, often in exchange for ingame currency. The ingame item only allows the time extension, there is no conversion possible back to real life money.

Re:loss of money?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think suing is wonderful way to resolve disputes, when all else fails. You make me put away my lawyer. Then I'll take out my gun.

Re:loss of money?

[Anonymous Coward]

The stuff in the game is at no time owned by the user. It is like going to a casino and claiming you own the poker cards in your hand.

Re:loss of money?

[glwtta]

If buying isk distorts the economy as they claim, then buying it via plex is still buying it.

Huh? PLEX is nothing of the sort, it just lets you pay for game time with ISK.

Re:loss of money?

[Opportunist]

If everything fails, they declare everything you have in-game property of CCP and you only have the right to use it for as long as you may have it. You can't sell what you don't own.

Re:loss of money?

[Opportunist]

I see where you're coming from. After all, bottom line in both cases is that someone generate ISK through in-game means (the gold seller or the PLEX buyer), in both cases those ISK are then transfered to someone else (the gold buyer or the PLEX seller) and someone gets real money from the person "buying" the ISK (the gold seller or CCP).

The main difference is the motivation, and thus also the amount of ISK generated this way. A PLEX buyer will stop generating money for someone else once he accumulated the 600 Mil (or whatever it costs to buy a 2 Month GTC), "sell" those 600 Mil for his GTC and then play for 2 months, the rest of the time for those 2 months he will play the game. Why should he farm more than what's needed to buy one PLEX? He only needs one every 2 months per account.

A gold seller will not stop there. He will continue generate money because there is no upper limit for him where it stops being sensible.

Re:loss of money?

[Quothz]

You know, not everywhere is like the US.

I've lived all over the world, including the US, and only in America do people sue at every opportunity. I think it is a real sign of a sickness in American culture, and your comment reminded me of it.

That's true. Of course, I'm assuming you don't count England, France, Germany or most of the rest of the industrialized world. Even in nations where the culture is such that individuals roll over like dogs and don't complain - for example, Japan or Australia* - their corporations are just as lawyered up as any American biz. By "all over the world" I can only infer that you mean "Upper Yemen, the Central African Republic, and Micronesia", which is very cool but not indicative of societies developed under modern jurisprudence or common law.

* All right, Ozzies, I'll grant you don't roll over like dogs. You just suck it up. Much more manly that way.

Re:loss of money?

[Quothz]

To me, this is essentially Eve saying "its illegal to buy isk with real money - unless it's from us, then its ok". If buying isk distorts the economy as they claim, then buying it via plex is still buying it.

I'm not a player of EVE - or any other MMO - but I have no problem with that. There's not much moral difference when restaurants or movie theaters bar outside food, and it's less questionable than overpricing proprietary cell phone chargers or requiring that you purchase graduation uniforms from a university's contracted supplier.

Re:loss of money?

[jeff4747]

in both cases is that someone generate ISK through in-game means

Actually, the RMT folks generate most of their money from theft, usually via keylogger.

Re:loss of money?

[Stephenmg]

Where did you get your facts from? I'm guessing you pulled them out of your rear end. No items or characters may be sold for real money. The only thing that comes close is the game time trade which is exactly opposite, selling real stuff ( a service) for imaginary money. Also, when you sign up and the first time you play, like most other mmos, the EULA states that nothing ingame belongs to you. You are just paying for the right to use a service, which is connecting to ccp's servers. I'm sure most judges would laugh at you and then the IRS or some similar agency would ask for there cut.

Re:loss of money?

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, not everywhere is like the US. I've lived all over the world, including the US, and only in America do people take out their guns at every opportunity. I think it is a real sign of a sickness in American culture, and your comment reminded me of it.

Re:loss of money?

[WolfWithoutAClause]

If so, the people who got terminated might have a case. The company have done the equivalent of tossing you off the table, in the middle of the hand, when you have money in the pot.

Re:Thank you Captain Obvious!

[ivucica]

Banning 2% players to decrease CPU usage by 30% is not obvious.

Re:Thank you Captain Obvious!

[drinkypoo]

Banning 2% players to decrease CPU usage by 30% is not obvious.

By this time in the game's development, though, it should be obvious which players use the most CPU time, and for that matter any other system resource.

Re:Thank you Captain Obvious!

[Anonymous Coward]

Those users were exploiters meaning their requests were more resource intensive than regular users.

It is kinda obvious that the usage economy would be significantly high.

Re:Thank you Captain Obvious!

[ivucica]

Unless you are a CCP developer, it is not obvious for you as a reader of Slashdot summary.

Re:Thank you Captain Obvious!

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop being so stubborn, you don't have a point at all. A Slashdot reader cannot predict the exact value, but a Slashdot reader knows that a CCP developer has access to enough information to make the estimation. Hence, it's obvious.

Re:Thank you Captain Obvious!

[Anonymous Coward]

+1 funny, i guess

How ironic

[Anonymous Coward]

Ads by Google:

EVE ISK 500000M in Storck
$0.02/M in all EVE ISK service , Share the Warefare, 5mins Delivery
www.THSale.com/Fast-EVE-ISK

Slashdot promoting exploiting..

Re:How ironic

[Ifandbut]

What Ads?
http://adblockplus.org/en/ FTW

This may net them a near-immediate profit

[Anonymous Coward]

EVE themselves allow players to buy gold with real money. You can buy 60-day GTCs (game time codes) which allow you to purchase 2 months of game time. EVEs own website allows you to exchange these GTCs for in-game currency. So if you want, you can buy as many GTCs as you like, sell them via EVE, and buy yourself the ship of your dreams.

With a large percentage of the gold farmers killed off, anybody wanting to buy gold will have to do it through EVE. The net result is that many more GTCs are sold, generating lots of extra revenue for EVE

Re:This may net them a near-immediate profit

[Celeritas 5k]

This is simply not true, as there is no such thing as this "gold" you speak of in EVE. Also, math fail.

Re:This may net them a near-immediate profit

[Dmxftw]

Isk then, smartarse. Most people on here seem to know that gold can be used a generic term for in-game currencies, but if you want to insist on Isk so that non-Eve players are confused with needless Eve terminology, go ahead. How does smugly writing "math fail" in any way nullify my argument? Why don't you try actually using math to make your point? Or would that be beyond your limited intellect, perhaps?

Re:This may net them a near-immediate profit

[Jedi Alec]

EVE themselves allow players to buy gold with real money. You can buy 60-day GTCs (game time codes) which allow you to purchase 2 months of game time. EVEs own website allows you to exchange these GTCs for in-game currency. So if you want, you can buy as many GTCs as you like, sell them via EVE, and buy yourself the ship of your dreams.

With a large percentage of the gold farmers killed off, anybody wanting to buy gold will have to do it through EVE. The net result is that many more GTCs are sold, generating lots of extra revenue for EVE

Who knows, maybe if I explain this a couple hundred times more, people will finally figure it out...

CCP does not make a penny more when people get their isk through Gametimecards. The only thing that happens is that instead of 2 players each paying for their own subscriptions, one of them pays for both of them in exchange for ingame currency. The end result for CCP is exactly the same, in that they receive money for 2 player subscriptions.

Re:This may net them a near-immediate profit

[jeff4747]

EVEs own website allows you to exchange these GTCs for in-game currency.

Actually, it doesn't.

A GTC can be used to create an in-game item (one or more PLEXes) which is good for 30 days game time when used by a player in game. PLEXes can be sold to other players for ISK using the normal in-game market.

As a result, there's a lot of EvE players who "pay" for the game using in-game currency.

So, CCP still gets paid, established players can play "for free", and people who just can't wait to buy a new shiny get their instant gratification.

gaming the system?

[isd.bz]

I find it kind of funny (ironic, Alanis?) that using software to 'game the system' and create money out of thin air is dealt with swiftly and with 'surgical precision', and when Goldman Sachs does the same thing with the stock markets, they are dealt with by being provided protection from the SEC and FBI.

Re:gaming the system?

[Anonymous Coward]

What an embarrassing display of ignorance, my friend.

Re:gaming the system?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ignorance is ignoring the truth. He speaks the truth.

Re:gaming the system?

[Anonymous Coward]

Eve is a virtual world and irreverent to daily life. Goldman Sachs can crash the economy overnight.

Re:gaming the system?

[ari_j]

Alanis* says it's ironic that people fear using the word to refer to actual irony. In this case, you're good. It fits the definition stated by Merriam-Webster as 'incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result.'

* - Not really, but I am being ironic by using an appeal to authority when the authority in question is the canonical example of a counter-authority. This footnote dropped for the benefit of the moderators who didn't get that. By insulting them to their faces, I am doing them a favor because they now won't have to waste valuable time considering whether what I said is wrong or just unfunny, and can go straight for Flamebait.

Re:gaming the system?

[JacksBrokenCode]

I find it kind of funny that, despite things like this, there are still people who think more government is the answer.

Re:gaming the system?

[Anonymous Coward]

all banks create money out of thin air, it's the basis of all industrialized modern economies. scary, no?

when giving loans, a bank can loan out (in the US) 9 times more money than they actually have, this invented money when used to pay for whatever it is you are buying, is taken as real money and can be the basis for another loan when your payees deposit into their banks.

Re:gaming the system?

[Pecisk]

Because rules of stock market are practically just nothing but the air? In theory, there are checks and there are balances, but they are so ridiculously impotent, that it is not even worth to talk about.

Re:gaming the system?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm reading your post but all I'm seeing is "blah blah blah zeitgeist movement blah blah".

Sell crazy somewhere else. We're all stocked up here.

Re:gaming the system?

[Ironchew]

Less government certainly exacerbates the problem. The answer would depend on your political view. More of the status-quo government with deep private financial connections and an oppressive world military? Or a reformed government with more direct citizen action and more severe representative accountability to their constituents? The people who want more government regulation want more of a public say, since the public almost always gets saddled with the losses of financial irresponsibility.

Nobody likes the current corporatist system, except the few who benefit.

Re:gaming the system?

[Anonymous Coward]

Please, this is a huge misunderstanding of what makes markets work. You can't create money out of thin air by trading on stock markets. After all, it takes two *consenting* parties to make a trade. You can create money by taking on risks that other people aren't willing to-- that is, you get paid for bearing risk. This comes in many forms.

It could be holding on to a bankrupt company's stock, which might be worth $0 when the bankruptcy is over, but it might be worth $1. The expected value might be $.50, but most people would sell at $.30 because they don't want the risk or don't want to deal with bankruptcy court. This is one way distressed investors make money.

You can make money by buying stocks that went down yesterday and selling stocks that went up. There is a small amount of mean-reversion in the stock market, so the expected value of this strategy is positve. However few investors will adopt this strategy because it's very risky-- after all, what if the stock is just about to go bust or if it's starting to rally? This can also be done at smaller time scales. This is one way quant hedge funds and high-frequency traders make money.

You can make money by making markets. That is, you always are willing to sell some stock, and you always are willing to buy some stock. There's a spread between your prices, so you make money on average. However, this is a very risky strategy because you may end up selling a lot of stock at low prices, and buying a lot at high prices, before you are able to make up the difference with money earned from the spread. This is one way brokers and high-frequency traders make money.

You can make money by selling derivatives and hedging them. Mathematical finance shows how to replicate on option on stock by constantly buying and selling the underlying stock. Because few people are willing and able to execute the hedging strategy, you can sell derivatives for a significant premium over the cost to hedge them. This is one way more sophisticated brokers and quant hedge funds make money.

As I've hopefully made clear, there are lots of ways to make money without ripping anybody off. These are all win-win situations for the market players: One side makes money on average for taking risks (or providing a service) that the other is willing to pay for.

Goldman Sachs does not make money out of thin air. They make money because people are paying them for their services, primarily market-making and derivatives. (Although Goldman has many other non-stock-market services, too, such as investment banking and asset management.)

(Most of this could be said for the video game issue, too. The currency markets are about one party paying another for a service. But it's different, because games are supposed to be FUN.)

Re:gaming the system?

[Opportunist]

The ISKsellers didn't pay kickbacks to CCP. Duh.

Re:gaming the system?

[fredmosby]

So you are saying the money they made was legitimate because they are assuming risk. But when a company takes too many risks and then gets bailed out by the government they didn't actually assume all the risk they were getting money for. It seems like they just tricked the government into giving them my hard earned money.

Also the fact that this housing market collapse could even happen seems to indicate that these wall street people don't know anything about the risks they are taking.

Re:gaming the system?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish you luck in your endeavor to reach Score:5, Flamebait.

I've managed to get 5, Troll a few times. So much fun!

Re:gaming the system?

[jdigriz]

This is incorrect, if a person buys stocks on margin, using money borrowed from a bank propped up by TARP funds, then money was in fact created out of thin air. It wasn't the stock market that did it but the Fed which created the funds ab initio. But it's still the creation out of thin air.

Re:gaming the system?

[radish]

For the hundredth time - Goldman WAS NOT BAILED OUT. They did just fine, they had one loss making quarter - and it wasn't a big loss. The TARP money they got was actually not something they asked for or needed, and they already paid it back with interest. The taxpayer MADE A PROFIT.

Re:gaming the system?

[JacksBrokenCode]

The people who want more government regulation want more of a public say.

Yet people continually re-elect incumbents, despite their poor performance. "Public say" has been available since the birth of the republic, we don't need a bigger government so we can have more "public say".

People who truly want a "public say" should be conservative leaning - choosing what to do with their own money as opposed to paying ever increasing taxes that fund things the don't approve (ie., "oppressive world military", etc.)

Doesn't it bother you that 1-2 days of your work week are essentially solely for the purpose of paying for government programs (many of which you don't approve of)?

Re:gaming the system?

[Anonymous Coward]

And those who don't know any better, which includes, what.. 4/5 of USA?

Re:gaming the system?

[khallow]

I find it kind of funny (ironic, Alanis?) that using software to 'game the system' and create money out of thin air is dealt with swiftly and with 'surgical precision', and when Goldman Sachs does the same thing with the stock markets, they are dealt with by being provided protection from the SEC and FBI.

Last I checked, Goldman Sachs didn't trade on Eve Online. Instead they did them in a government-influenced market where they were allowed, nay, strongly encouraged to "game the system" and "create money out of thin air".

Re:gaming the system?

[khallow]

Less government certainly exacerbates the problem.

Yes, it keeps getting worse till at some point it's no longer a problem.

More of the status-quo government with deep private financial connections and an oppressive world military? Or a reformed government with more direct citizen action and more severe representative accountability to their constituents?

More government is inconsistent with your implied preference here.

The people who want more government regulation want more of a public say, since the public almost always gets saddled with the losses of financial irresponsibility.

That's the situation under a government that interferes regularly with financial systems. Less interference implies in my view less saddling with the losses of financial irresponsibility. Let us also keep in mind that the public is the source of all but government irresponsibility. It makes sense to me to saddle the cause with the result.

Nobody likes the current corporatist system, except the few who benefit.

That's dubious. Most people don't like the system, but they do like the benefits they get from the system. And it's worth noting again, that government action is a key part of the "corporatist system". Government passes the regulations that heavily favor large businesses that can master the bureaucracy needed to comply with the regulation. In other words, government creates many artificial barriers to entry for new businesses.

Before I get accused of being a Libertarian or something else equally unseemly, it's worth noting that you were the one claiming that less government "makes the problem worse" when it's equally clear that a large government bureaucracy is a key driver of the current system. I really think a bigger government will just make the situation worse. Maybe it'd phase change from the so-called "corporatist system" whatever that is to something else, but I don't see a rosy end.

Re:gaming the system?

[JDevers]

The problem though is when the choices don't involve a party that is fiscally conservative. One is MORALLY conservative and such, but not very fiscally conservative.

Re:gaming the system?

[gad_zuki!]

Because the real world implications of losing your Eve account is going back to playing your level 80 druid on WoW. The real world implications of letting a few thousands companies collapse, a few dozen big banks collapse, and a few hundred thousand people lose their homes is a bit more serious.

Re:gaming the system?

[JacksBrokenCode]

Agreed. I would really like to see a party that is truly fiscally conservative and socially/morally liberal. I don't care what the other 300mil Americans want to do with their free time, I just don't want them using my money to do it.

EVE could actually immediately profit here

[Anonymous Coward]

EVE themselves allow players to buy gold with real money. You can buy 60-day GTCs (game time codes) which allow you to purchase 2 months of game time. EVEs own website allows you to exchange these GTCs for in-game currency. So if you want, you can buy as many GTCs as you like, sell them via EVE, and buy yourself the ship of your dreams.

With a large percentage of the gold farmers killed off, anybody wanting to buy gold will have to do it through EVE. The net result is that many more GTCs are sold, generating lots of extra revenue for EVE. EVE wins.

Re:EVE could actually immediately profit here

[DaveV1.0]

CCP specifically developed the PLEX system to cripple RMT and goldfarming.

Re:Who has the right to execute me? Stand forward

[goodmanj]

A) your comparison between real life execution and losing your account in a video game made me throw up a little bit.

B) You want to add an interesting new "fugitive" mechanic to the game, which requires players to abuse the game to experience? And you think this will *reduce* game abuse? You have a lot to learn about MMOs, my friend.

PLEX

[Sniper98G]

The people banned in the unholy rage were ISK (in game currency) framers. They farmed ISK and sold it for real money. One of the reasons for CCP kicked them out without a second thought was because they expect a lot of that currency purchase to shift to their PLEX (Pilot License Extension) system. They allow you to buy PLEXs for real money and either use them to extend your game time by 30 days or more likely sell them, in game to players who have more ISK then they know what to do with. In this way players who make huge contributions to the player driven in game economy end up playing for free, and players who don't mind paying some extra cash get rich quick.

Also it seams that a lot of these ISK framers were using stolen credit cards and CCP never saw their subscription payments any ways.

Re:PLEX

[AndrewNeo]

Even worse is that you could spend real world money for farmed ISK, then buy PLEXes, which means that none of your money was going to CCP for an extension of your gametime.

Re:PLEX

[Yaur]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think there is a way to bring the PLEX into existence without sending CCP money.

Re:PLEX

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong. PLEXes are not created out of thin air, they are bought from CCP by players with real money then sold to other players. It's transferral of game time, not creation.

Re:PLEX

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what stolen credit cards are used for... An MMO company I recently worked for was almost blacklisted by Visa for the number of chargebacks they were getting -- most goldfarmers will happily let you pay for the gold via credit card... then they have your credit card number... and they have this burning desire to open new accounts, and they're already breaking terms of service, and frequently actual laws, so why wouldn't they use your credit card to open a new farming account?

Anyone who says "the MMO companies like goldfarming, because the farmers are paying $15 a month too" is just confused, because most of them aren't actually ever paying for the game. I expect in EVE, they'd take a CCard payment for the ISK, use the CCard to buy some PLEXes, sell those for ISK... This isn't adding money to the company, because you'll notice and cancel the extra charges. And it isn't driving the in-game economy, because they're scamming someone when they sell the PLEXes too...

Is this the US Economy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't tell me most account ids were variants of 'Goldman Sachs'

Re:Is this the US Economy?

[ari_j]

Don't tell me most account ids were variants of 'Goldman Sachs'

Don't be silly. About half of them were registered by the Department of the Treasury. We have to pay back that debt somehow.

exit interview

[rpillala]

Whenever I've left an MMO or even uninstalled certain software, I've been presented with a short survey asking me why I left. Let's say my answer was "rampant cheating" or "inability to get ahead because of gold farmers and buyers." If the survey data show that people are leaving at rate r for that reason, CCP has a basis for knowing when those 2% become more trouble than they are worth.

surgical precision

[PTBarnum]

So the CEO says that the merthods were sound and the purge went with "surgical precision".

Just how precise is surgery, anyway? An oncologist tries to be precise, but they know that they will be cutting away good tissue in order to make sure they get the entire tumor.

EVE clearly succeeded in getting rid of their most CPU intensive players. Given the change in implant prices, they may be right in assuming that this directly correlates to the people engaged in real money trading (RMT). But even so, what distinguishes a legitimate player or group of players who are very very good at earning money from an RMT trader? In other words, how does Mr. HreiÃarsson know that all the people who were banned were actually involved in RMT? Or does that matter? If a banned player was engaging in CPU intensive, ISK-gathering play, but was not selling their ISK, can they appeal the ban?

Re:surgical precision

[Fumus]

CCP can log pretty much everything. I'm sure they checked for things like if the person ever spoke to someone they sent millions of ISK. If those ISK were going only to other people, or was that just occasional, etc. There are certain things that can be a dead giveaway.

Re:surgical precision

[Anonymous Coward]

Its easy really. Yes, both groups gain large amounts of in game money. (To be fair, almost equal). To determine the money trader from the players stems from how they use that in-game money.

Real players buy crap off the market, use it, keep it, collect it, get it blown up. The cycle continues.

Real Money Traders (RMT) buy expensive crap off the market, use it, and make it 'disappear', and buy it back from the buyer of ISK. Seller gives item to buyer, then buys it back, normally for an inflated price to prevent theft. (Just like real life, Eve logs money transactions. Large sums of ISK being transferred raises eyebrows. Laundering the ISK via auction/private trade/"scam" sell orders not so much. Compare this to normal players who's isk is continually cycled through the system.

What they did was analyze the methods the RMTs use to sell isk, track them, and strike. Took alot of time to figure this out.

Re:I just came back from lunch

[geminidomino]

Go back to twitter.

Hypocritical group.

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this the same /. group of people that cry bloody murder when Time Warner or Comcast try to impose limits on usage? Am I reading this correctly? Bunch of hypocrites. Those 2% purchased the game fair and square. If this is successful, I think Time Warner should just kick the highest 2% of usage accounts right off the system. No warnings, no explanation. You can argue that there something in the EULA to justify this, and there probably is. I bet Time Warner's agreement also permits cancellation at any time, for any reason. No, this is not a troll. Well, maybe it is. But, it just seems there are parallels here that everyone here ignores when convenient.

Re:Hypocritical group.

[fast turtle]

Except the damn idiots they banned were fraudulent accounts. In other words they didn't buy them fair and square nor did CCP get paid for them. So where is the hypocrisy or are you another of those people who think the world owes you a living?

Eve players don't own any congressmen...

[AmazingRuss]

...so no, they don't get protected and bailed out.

Re:Eve players don't own any congressmen...

[btellier]

What evidence do you have that Goldman owns or exerts any influence over the US government? This kind of wild, un-sourced speculation is so rampant and accepted on /. that virtually any comment about corporate conspiracy gets at least a +1, Informative.

Re:Eve players don't own any congressmen...

[radish]

Fact: Goldman were forced to take $10bn in TARP aid, against their wishes. Not a bailout, they didn't need or want the money.
Fact: Goldman paid back said money at the earliest possible opportunity, plus interest.
Fact: The taxpayer made a 23% profit on the money invested in Goldman. That's $2.3bn for those keeping count at home.

Rolling Stone didn't mention that, huh? Maybe you should stop getting your financial news from a washed up "culture" mag.

Re:Eve players don't own any congressmen...

[DoninIN]

You guys are going to mod this up to +5 funny, right? If this isn't the funniest thing I've read this morning... Well no it is.

What about the 30% reduction in CPU time?

[wfstanle]

Yes, but they also eliminated the costs to them of that 30% of CPU time. It actually might have boosted their bottom line. I do not have the means to do a cost analysis but loosing 2% of their users might be outweigh the costs of keeping those 2%.

Headline Misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

I find the headline for this article misleading. "EVE aggresively bans RMTs" would have been a better fit. EVE developers openly encourage users to exploit and abuse each other.

Due process

[rbanffy]

I assume users who engaged in anti-social or rule-breaking rules had enough warning (by the publication of the rules forbidding ISK trading) and plenty of opportunity to defend themselves.

As we move more and more of our social interaction into virtual spaces (and not only immersive environments, but places like Slashdot or Hacker News) the need to pay attention to the institution of justice increases.

I have no sympathy for transgressors who live off transgression, but I have no sympathy either with this notion of justice (from this to the censorship on Apple's bulletin boards to erasure of comments on TechCrunch) I see repeatedly being practiced.

Re:Due process

[Opportunist]

IIRC the usual CCP policy in such cases is to issue a temp ban and the offer to explain yourself, with the information that you'll be under the microscope now.

At least that explains the recent price dip in Trit. It seems the goldsellers tried to squeeze as much money out of their harvested goods as possible before the permban...

The Hidden Cost of Hitting the Farmers

[RobotRunAmok]

Let me state at the outset that I am a big fan of just about everything Eve.

Disclaimer out of the way, the dirty secret in Eve is that it's real tough to make money as a "glamorous combat pilot." Hi-Sec miner, hi-sec industrialist -- you're swimming in cash. But that's not the glamorous, exciting game one sees in the promos that attracts the curious to play the game. THAT game, the "pew pew" of lasers, the mighty racket of autocannons blazing, the squeal of the drones as they shred your enemies' armor -- exciting as all hell, but costly. The profit margin just ain't there, unless you're really, really good. If you're part of a large null-sec Corp that can replace your ships when they (inevitably) are wiped out when you are jumped by a much larger force, you'll get by, but if you're some lone wolf sociopathic space pirate, you'll be holding your ship together with duct tape and using hurled rocks as ammo in no time.

These are the guys who are the ISK farmers' clients. These guys, who comprise most of the lo-sec game (as opposed to hi-sec and null-sec) are the players affected by the farmer clamp-down. What will be the fall-out when they can't run to their real-world "suppliers" to re-tool? Will these guys leave the game? Join a more established Corp? Switch careers? Grow up? It'll be interesting to watch...

Re:The Hidden Cost of Hitting the Farmers

[Fieryphoenix]

you'll be holding your ship together with duct tape and using hurled rocks as ammo in no time.

They made a Firefly MMO??? Sign me up!

Re:The Hidden Cost of Hitting the Farmers

[Shinobi]

As a high-sec miner, you're piss-poor. The real money from mining comes from the alliances who can hold space out in 0.0 and mine the valuable ores there. Holding space requires combat pilots. Supplying combat pilots with ships and ammo requires industrialists to run manufacturing and logistics. But overall, the big money is in market trading, 0.0 mining/moon materials and complexes.

This last week, I've logged a total of 4 hours in EVE, yet made a 2.8Bn ISK profit, due to market trading. Revenue is up over 10Bn ISK.

Re:The Hidden Cost of Hitting the Farmers

[rockNme2349]

There is already a legitimate alternative, it's called PLEX.

Re:The Hidden Cost of Hitting the Farmers

[Anonymous Coward]

We should tax you. It's no fair that you get to exploit the market for profit while the miners don't make any money.

Re:The Hidden Cost of Hitting the Farmers

[sonicmerlin]

LOL. I'm thinking in-game MMORPG unions. Ya baby, let's stick it to the elite!

Re:The Hidden Cost of Hitting the Farmers

[Majik Sheff]

The economics of the game shift to using your resources more wisely. This means getting smarter with your rigs, and smarter about the situations you put yourself into. It also means that many pure PvP corps will begin either hiring industrialists or contracting indy corps to do the heavy ISK lifting. The dynamics will change, but only for the better. Anyone who quits the game because they can't buy wins any more is improving everyone else's experience by quitting.

Re:The Hidden Cost of Hitting the Farmers

[jeff4747]

What will be the fall-out when they can't run to their real-world "suppliers" to re-tool?

This would be an interesting dilemma if they couldn't just turn to buying GTCs/PLEXes with RL cash and turning them into ISK.

Re:The Hidden Cost of Hitting the Farmers

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps making it harder to get ISK will make the combat materials cheaper, and so the lone wolf style of gameplay will become more viable?

Presumably the price of the combat materials is somewhat controlled by the developers...

Re:The Hidden Cost of Hitting the Farmers

[AP31R0N]

If you put that discipline toward stock/options trading, you could be pulling in real money.

Re:The Hidden Cost of Hitting the Farmers

[Anonymous Coward]

the answer has been out there for many months now, plex. For 35 USD or EURO, you can buy about 600Mill ISK. that is a easy, safe alternative to buying from "dealers". that method also gives the money to CCP.. not an outside party.

Re:The Hidden Cost of Hitting the Farmers

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually killing drones in drone space was netting me a billion every 10-15 hours once I skilled correctly. Its not hard, but some people wont believe it. Its busy work for isk, but much more fun then mining if you want to blow stuff up. Just need a good way to get the minerals to market, which I had.

Mining will only net 400-600mil in low sec on arknor.

Its very doable, problem is most combat pilots just want to shoot each other and have the corp pay for it.

Re:The Hidden Cost of Hitting the Farmers

[ErikZ]

Concord Pilot License Extensions?

How in the world is that the equivalent to buying ISK?

Re:The Hidden Cost of Hitting the Farmers

[KermodeBear]

The profit margin just ain't there, unless you're really, really good. If you're part of a large null-sec Corp that can replace your ships when they (inevitably) are wiped out when you are jumped by a much larger force, you'll get by, but if you're some lone wolf sociopathic space pirate, you'll be holding your ship together with duct tape and using hurled rocks as ammo in no time.

I'm a pirate, and though I am not rich, I do manage to not only break even, but make money through pirating. No, it isn't easy. You need to get lucky to find a suitable target in the first place, hope he doesn't have friends, hope you can beat him in a fight, hope he pays a ransom, and if he doesn't pay a ransom, hope that he at least drops some good loot when he pops. Surviving as a pirate without the income of production, mission running, or moon farming isn't easy... But it can be done. I'm not even a great pilot to be honest. The biggest part of it all: Don't fly what you can't afford to lose.

But, as others have said in this comment tree, the BIG money if in trading (margin trading, cross-region trading, market manipulation), sitting on top of Dysp moons, and holding low true-security space where every belt spawns multi-million isk rats. It is easy to make 50-60 million isk in an hour just by ratting in some of the null-sec areas.

Re:The Hidden Cost of Hitting the Farmers

[PAStheLoD]

You can sell PLEX in-game and buy out-of-game. (~400 million ISK = 30 day PLEX)

My friend doesn't pay for EVE, because 400 million ISK is just change when it comes to in-game trading.

Re:The Hidden Cost of Hitting the Farmers

[dullnev]

Call me when the NYSE has frikin' Lasers and spaceships!

Re:The Hidden Cost of Hitting the Farmers

[brkello]

Just as a note, I love Firefly. Eve is no Firefly. Eve is more like Voyager. Painful and usually awkward for everyone involved.

Re:Thank you Captain Obvious!

[Greyfox]

Those guys run their bots round the clock, while even the most dedicated human might manage 7-10 hours a day. So it's not surprising that they're consuming a lot more resources than everyone else.

I wonder if this has freed up any chunks of low-sec space. I've heard rumors of vast tracts of isk farmer territory where automated mining operations go on 'round the clock. And if that's how they were making all their isk, creating new accounts won't help much if they've lost the defenses that made maintaining that space viable in the first place.

You can.

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly, if you stick to high security space, you can pretty much nearly afk-mine. Just alt-tab back in to move minerals from your hold to your hauler (or jetcan, but that comes with its own risks :P).

You'll need to travel a bit to do it though - high sec was devastated by macro miners. EG, people not 'nearly' afk-mining - people *actually* afk-mining. These lovely folks stripped most of high sec of anything worth mining. The good news is, most of these folks were the sort who did it all day and sold the resulting ore/minerals in order to sell the resulting ISK, and were hopefully included in the account bitchslapping.

That aside, there's still plenty of high-sec areas with decent rocks. (Or were, last time I played, which was like six months ago. :p)

Be warned, though, it gets boring fast. :p Unless you're really into it I guess. Man, I don't know how miners do it. ;)

CCP already sells ISK

[Anonymous Coward]

This is essentially a crackdown on a black market which exists because the "official" exchange rate is too high.

EVE 60 day time code: $34.99
Value when sold on the EVE forums: 500 - 600 million ISK
Price for 500 million ISK from sellers: $25.00 - 28.00

That's actually a smaller difference than I thought it would be, but this is essentially a crackdown on unlicensed currency traders, not on RMT in general.

Re:CCP already sells ISK

[luther349]

eve handles rmt there own way being it prevents scams. being eves rule in scams is to bad sucker you should know better.

Maybe Just Maybe...

[Nom du Keyboard]

Maybe just maybe if you didn't create a game that cries out to be exploited in this manner in the first place then you might not have all of these problems. To create the opportunity for the otherwise smart or unemployed to make money in your game -- and then expect them not to because you said just don't do it -- indicates great stupidity on your part.

After you've made this mistake you end up having to go in on a massive cleanup operation that you hope won't bury you in bad press and collateral damage.

Re:Maybe Just Maybe...

[Opportunist]

Bad press? Where? I've seen nothing but cheers from those affected, the players.

If you create a game that has an open, player driven economy you do of course end up with one that can also be exploited by the very same players. That's just natural. If you create a free, open and unfettered market, you end up with one that will be gamed and exploited. The alternative in both cases is to give people only very limited freedom in the business they want to take up. Is that better?

Personally, I prefer a free market with lots of freedom to earn a living, a set of rules that should allow a playing field as level as possible and an executive with teeth that keeps these rules enforced.

Re:Maybe Just Maybe...

[Hognoxious]

Personally, I prefer a free market with lots of freedom to earn a living, a set of rules that should allow a playing field as level as possible and an executive with teeth that keeps these rules enforced.

I can remember when all that existed in real life.

lol, marked me as troll

[Anonymous Coward]

I love the way people mark others as troll, but don't have the balls to state the reasons.

you basement dwellers make me laugh

Re:lol, marked me as troll

[Anonymous Coward]

Stated reasons or not, this post seems to indicate that they made the correct decision.

Re:Who has the right to execute me? Stand forward

[Anonymous Coward]

GET.OUT.MORE

counterintuitive

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure since this post has everyone sucking each other's dick "yea, they got it right", almost certainly means that the banning of accounts will fail in the long term. Not to mention that the reporting of the 30% of cpu usage dropped, is errant or falsified. What were they going to say? "We canned a bunch of accounts and there was no improvement". Yea right. Whatever slight improvement, if any, will be lost when the people who profit from their former activities, will just get better at it, and find ways to circumvent.

Mark this post.

When you're done sucking each others dicks, you can wipe your mouths off and see that centralized authority does not have the power you think it has.

Re:Who has the right to execute me? Stand forward

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm. Parent is at -1 Troll.

If I had mod points I'd add a -1 Overrated to it.

Meh. Badly written. Incoherent. Inflammatory.

Yeah, at -1 it's definitely overrated.

Translation: The devs got rid of their competition

[Chas]

Sorry, but EVE has been one of those train-wreck scenarios from the get-go (why I've avoided it). Everyone, including the devs, have been participating in the whole RMT/botting/etc debacle.

What's really happened here is that the developers of EVE have cornered the market for RMT in their game in a way only they could.

For anyone still playing the game. Other than having lost the money-holders in your cartel (and being out millions or billions of ISK), there's nothing to see here. Business as usual.

Re:Who has the right to execute me? Stand forward

[Opportunist]

Do you honestly believe that the powers that are in "this" universe wouldn't just snap you out cold if they could? The only reason you can possibly go down with blazing guns here is that it's hard to simply execute you with a click on the admin console. That's all.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Translation: The devs got rid of their competit

[Rakshasa Taisab]

CCP does not sell ISK... You must be confused, did you take your medication this morning?

Re:your wrong

[luther349]

you can make alot of money as a combat polit even more so then a miner class. you blast 0.0 and neg sec rats. 1 kill of a bs class rat in 0.0 is 1 million isk not to metion the loot it drops is also can be millions if you brake them down also there salvage can be used to make items worth another good chunk. it would make 200 to 300 mil a day just 0 ratting for a hr or so a day. granted there the risk of getting killed but if you have a 0.0 corp and tower there its pretty safe. in my case my char is a jack of all master of none so i can even hope in my barge if i need to hide in high sec and make money. oh yea and if you hit a rare rat in 0.0 the kills can net alot of money being they drop blueprints. also if you got a stealth bomber they can find goods also worth alot using there advanced scanners and probes. its only hard for a combat pilot at first before they can kill big rats.

a money making scam?

[Anonymous Coward]

So they banned 2 percent of the players accounts. Is that just step one?
Did they ban IP addresses? credit cards? actual people tied to the credit card?

Sometimes a ban in some MMORPG's isn't all it cracked up to be.
They ban some accounts. But then let the exact same people start more accounts. When the company should know full well who they are letting back in.
The ban makes the rank and file players feel good, the company puts a small road block to "the chinese gold farmers", and the company makes money selling new copies of the games to the "the chinese gold farmers". There is a pattern for copies of the game sold after large banning operations. ...

Re:a money making scam?

[ub3r n3u7r4l1st]

Banned IP address? Get a proxy / Tor.

Banned CC's? Get a prepaid gift card.

Re:Translation: The devs got rid of their competit

[Anonymous Coward]

They sell GTCs, which can then be sold for ISK. Ultimately the same thing as ISK. CCP just removes the competition...remember this is the company that was caught red handed cheating against its players before.

Formally

[Anonymous Coward]

For a high school math lesson you mixed in a lot of C syntax.

r = 0
c != 0

y1 = x(r-c) => y = x(0-c) = -xc
y2 = xr => y = 0x = 0

y1 = y2 => -xc = 0 | :c, because c != 0
x = 0

S = { 0 }

When r is zero, the results are only equal when x is zero, too.

Cheating is Good

[ub3r n3u7r4l1st]

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/13/1957200

Cry me some more tears kthnx

[Anonymous Coward]

Show us on the anatomically correct spaceship where the bad pirate touched you. You really think that lowsec is full of 'sociopathic' isk-buyers? Lowsec is full of people who like to pew-pew without the serious business politics bullshit of nullsec. Only 0.0 alliance types have large enough expenses/tastes and give enough of a fuck about the game to spend RL $ on internet pixels.

Re:Who has the right to execute me? Stand forward

[Anonymous Coward]

exactly the point that was being made, in the real world, you dont have admin consoles, you have to take them down the hard way.

so if you want to build a world which is real in every sense you can make it, why not use the tools available in that world.

these guys are not breaking the worlds rules, they are breaking the agreement of play rules, so they should be contained and taken out of the game, using the rules of the GAME, not the rules of the ADMIN CONSOLE.

It's not about whether in our world an admin console would make state sanctioned execution easier. It's about, don't pretend to be a realistic world, the next time you open the admin console to ban someone.

How hard would it be to take that guy down the hard way? put him on a wanted list, each space station has police, send them out elite style. In elite there was no admin console, there was the police, you shoot the space station, your ass is grass. What would be interesting is if there was 5 police ships and 10 fugitives, could they fight back and win, warp out, before the police could build reinforcements.

this is the real world mechanics, start using them.

They created the game in the system

[Anonymous Coward]

Given that Goldman Sachs employs one of the chief architects of the current disaster I would be surprised if they hadn't been making money out of it.

I wouldn't be surprised if there is a place for Brown as well the moment the UK finally manages to eject this unelected oink. And recent pictures of Mandelson suggest he's about ready to write Mein Kampf - all he needs is a moustache with that comb over. But he's not one of the pocket fillers - he just keeps those who do in power and collects the scraps.

And they'll all be back in a few days

[Snaller]

1. Buy new account.
2. Trade gold (ISK).
3. Profit!

Re:Who has the right to execute me? Stand forward

[Opportunist]

Here's where virtual and real world don't match, because there is no "more real" world around our real world, unlike the real world surrounding the virutal one of EvE. And that's the catch here. They are not only using virtual means, they also steal accounts to harvest ISK and use stolen credit cards to pay for their accounts. They abuse bugs and loopholes in the game to harvest more ISK than they should be able to.

But that's besides the point. I wonder what's your problem with the use of the most logical, easiest solution? Why bother doing something the "hard" way? What hard way, anyway? They could just as well spawn a million of Concord (police) ships onto the offender, is that more of an "in system" solution? As any P&P roleplayer will tell you, you can't cheat the GM if he doesn't let you, he always has the power to annihilate your character. With pure in-game means. He doesn't have to reach across the table and shred your char sheet, he just sends an army of red dragons after your superspecialawesome maxed-out warrior and he's toast, and another if he should somehow survive.

My experience with Eve

[ErikZ]

I found Eve to be long and boring. Then I discovered I could buy ISK!

Finally I could get some decent ships and play without the ridiculous grind. Then one day I logged in and my accounts had been debited for the amount of ISK I had purchased. Even with my near gear it would take an intolerable amount of grinding to catch up.

Grinding (Mining) in Eve is more annoying than in any other game I've played. It's at a pace where you can't just do something else, but it's slow enough where you keep on trying.

Running player created missions will get you killed because they're designed to send you somewhere where you can be ganked by them

Doing anything solo in any sector is either a waste of time or a death sentence.

So you have to be a slave to some group to make any progress. Wheeee. After a day of slaving for a real company, you go home and be a slave to a virtual one. This game is not for the Han Solo types out there.

Re:My experience with Eve

[ThePsion5]

I found Eve to be long and boring. Then I discovered I could buy ISK!

While I always find it satisfying when cheaters like these are found out and dealt with, they do provide some benefits to the rest of the playerbase in terms of humor. I've seen guys like him before - flying around in ships far too expensive for them to have ever afforded under the misguided assumption that money in EVE will buy you universal superiority in combat.

It may be entertaining to know that destroying someone's internet spaceship is the equivalent of grabbing a few bucks out of their wallet, but please Slashdotters - don't be like him. Everything in EVE is so much more satisfying if you earn what you fly instead of just shelling out cash to gain a (dubious) advantage.

Re:My experience with Eve

[Anonymous Coward]

You failed at Eve, but it isn't your fault. It's not made clear to beginners that unless you find a decent corporation (not hard to do once you look, btw), the game will SUCK for at least three months.

You wouldn't be a "slave." The game mechanics in Eve are such that new players (2 weeks - 2 months) in large numbers are priceless. This is because numbers ALWAYS beat experience/older players. This is why corps specializing in fielding new players will GIVE you cruisers/frigates for free. The cost to them is very low compared to the benefit.

Yeah, you're cannon fodder -- but here's the secret -- everyone is cannon fodder. The older players just know how to get out of the line of fire a little bit faster.

They did this to prevent something much worse

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone noted in a post above, the people doing this for real world money are typically the ones that bot and cheat. The challenge of the game itself is replaced with the challenge of maximizing your intake by whatever means necessary.

Some games aren't bothered by this type of behavior too greatly. I remember WoW having a large number of gold sellers, but up until WotLK (at which point I unsubscribed) I don't ever remember inflation, cheating, botting, etc. ruining my experience.

The main post of my post - is that this is not always the case. RMT (real money trading) ruined Final Fantasy XI. Thousands of people quit when rampant inflation ruined the economy. Thousands of people quit when end game consisted of camping a spawn against people using bots and hacks. It spiraled way out of control, and Square did nothing to combat it.

FFXI is a good example of why Eve dropped 2% of its customer base - because the unchecked alternative can ruin a game.

Re:They did this to prevent something much worse

[Monkeedude1212]

I remember WoW having a large number of gold sellers, but up until WotLK (at which point I unsubscribed) I don't ever remember inflation, cheating, botting, etc. ruining my experience.

I quit just before WotLK, and I remember everything De-Flating, instead of inflating. Where once the resources I harvested would go for 50 Gold a stack, after the farmers rolled through, it was not only A) Harder to find said resources, and B) They're price dropped like a rock.

All because they would play all the time, farm it all, sell it for gold, sell the gold for real life money.

And I played Eve a little while back, and I can say - ISK farmers were just as if not more annoying than WoW. The problem was that Eve is set up so that if you get "duped" into doing something stupid its your own dang fault, and the GM's will tell you to just be careful next time. Thus if you Accidentally spent 300 mill instead of 300 thousand it was because you misread the zero's. With the ISK sellers running rampant, these kinds of schemes were -ALL OVER THE PLACE- I'm going to try Eve again here in a bit, and see if this has improved at all with the recent actions.

Re:Thank you Captain Obvious!

[Anonymous Coward]

7-10 hours? I've played MMO's for 20 hour sittings with a 15 minute food/bathroom/shower break before returning for another 20.

True story.

Re:Who has the right to execute me? Stand forward

[Anonymous Coward]

you just proved my point. thanks

They break the game, they aren't gamers

[Ilgaz]

No the story talks about people abusing the game system, breaking the casino rules and commercialize game play.

It is not about regular players and regular 5% never quitting players. I am not into space game thing (don't have x86 mac anyway) but let me say...

You achieve something by 6 hours of hard game play, it gives you satisfaction and "winning" feelings. Some idiot basically pays for same thing and gets it in 1 sec.

The game I play is not so popular (World War 2 online) and I guess I must thank for it, if some guy hired his game play to traditionally mid-aged rich people and killed 3-6 guys each time, the entire game world would be broken. I mean the entire concept of the game which sometimes runs 2 months on same campaign. It would result in massive unsubscriptions and game would die in matter of months.

Even more ironic:

[Hadryon]

Ads by Google:

EVE ISK 500000M in Storck $0.02/M in all EVE ISK service , Share the Warefare, 5mins Delivery www.THSale.com/Fast-EVE-ISK

Slashdot promoting exploiting..

Your link to that gold-seller site is now an error page, thanks to their EVE accounts being banned. I left EVE months ago because I was tired of playing on an uneven field out in nullsec space. Now there's a reason to go back to the game.

Re:Thank you Captain Obvious!

[BoothbyTCD]

What an awesome turkey shoot that would be in low-sec. Unattended bot miners, I get happy just thinking about that.

Re:your wrong

[Hognoxious]

I bet you're a hoot at parties.