EVE Player Loses $1,200 Worth of Game Time In-Game

An anonymous reader writes "Massively.com has reported that an EVE Online player recently lost over $1,200 worth of in-game items during a pirate attack. The player in question was carrying 74 PLEX in their ship's cargo hold — in-game 'Pilot's License Extensions' that award 30 days of EVE Online time when used on your account. When the ship was blown up by another player, all 74 PLEX were destroyed in the resulting blast, costing $1,200 worth of damage, or over 6 years of EVE subscription time, however you prefer to count it. Ow."

Comments

ok i'll say it

[pezpunk]

...and nothing of value was lost.

Re:ok i'll say it

[kiljoy001]

Or rather in the old EVE adage: Don't fly (or cargo) what you can't afford to replace!

Re:ok i'll say it

[Dahamma]

Actually, since these were paid for with real money and are basically "one month subscriptions" to the game they have as much value as any subscription to a service.

Re:ok i'll say it

[pacman on prozac]

It's a shame they blew up with the ship, if they'd dropped then we'd now be reading the headline "eve pirates legally steal $1200".

Re:ok i'll say it

[Abstrackt]

I see most MMOs as a race where they keep moving the finish line further away.

The only MMO I've really enjoyed was Guild Wars because anybody could make it to the endgame without sacrificing other areas of their lives. They have decent expansions and some groups raise a stink if you don't have certain ones on your account but you never feel like weeks worth of work was undone in an instant if you fail a mission. Once you "beat" the game you could spend time on upgrades or test out strategies in PvP and since it was free to play I never felt like I had to keep playing to get my money's worth (Everquest, I'm looking at you here).

Re:ok i'll say it

[Ephemeriis]

Exactly. Digital information can be destroyed with a click of a button. It's called backups, don't put all your eggs in one basket and backups.

That has basically no relevance to this story.

The ship was carrying PLEXes. They're in-game items representing a one month subscription. You purchase them with real money, and get an in-game item, that you can then sell for in-game money.

This allows people to fund their EVE addition without having to pay real money.

It allows people with lots of real money to burn to get lots of in-game money to burn.

And there is absolutely no way to make a backup of a PLEX.

No, it isn't very smart to carry all 74 of them with you at one time. You certainly shouldn't put all of your eggs in one basket. But you cannot create a backup.

Re:ok i'll say it

[Draek]

Another nice thing of Guild Wars was that, if you spent two months building up your pimped-out sword-focused Warrior and suddenly decided axes looked kinda cool, all you had to do was to enter an outpost, take the points you spent on sword specialization and put them in axes rather than spend another two months building up *another* Warrior on your account from scratch, only this time with axes rather than swords.

But then again, Guild Wars has always been focused on 'casual' playing, preventing any 'hardcore' from gaining too much of an advantage over a casual player, while EVE goes pretty much the other way, pampering its hardcore playerbase and encouraging its casual players to become part of it, with PLEX are one of the main ways they do that. I'm not saying either approach is better, but they are different enough that it feels like an "apples vs oranges" comparison.

Re:ok i'll say it

[Kithran]

However there is also no need to ever undock with one PLEX never mind 74. You can apply them to you account (ie use the item to add 30 days to your subscription) from anywhere in the game. Yes he dies trying to get to the main trading hub in the game however he could have gone to any other station in the system and had no problems. Also he was an absolute fool for flying in a very fragile ship when another group had declared war on him (thus was able to be attacked even in the main trading hub system without interference).

Kithran

Re:ok i'll say it

[Yvan256]

I "beat" EVE Online on day zero.

My goal was to never play that game.

Re:ok i'll say it

[Shark]

Exactly. Digital information can be destroyed with a click of a button.

Nowadays, lives are destroyed in the exact same manner, albeit with no backup strategy.

Re:ok i'll say it

[Loki_1929]

Eve doesn't have an "endgame". It's a sandbox where you can do what you want (and so can everyone else) limited only by what features exist within the game mechanics. If the game mechanics are working correctly, CCP doesn't care what you do or how you do it. The nice thing is that there's essentially no "power leveling" and a week-old player could potentially kill someone who's been playing for many years (and not "potentially" in the winning-the-lottery sense either, but in the getting-the-ball-in-the-cup-during-Beerpong sense).

While you could choose to do nothing but grind PvE missions all day, every day, actually completing all of them for all the races, plus the epic arcs, would likely take a number of years. By that time, plenty more missions would have been added and you'd probably be more than ready to try something else.

Re:ok i'll say it

[Loki_1929]

CCP doesn't pamper its hardcore players. If anything, the hardcore players get the short end of the stick.

In Eve, there are no levels for characters. You can be as hardcore as you like, playing 14 hours a day, every single day, for 5 years. I can play an hour or two a week, with sometimes a week or more between logging on. After 5 years, you'll probably have a whole lot more cash than I do, but we'll be pretty close in skillpoints (depending on implants we each use and how much PvP you're doing to lose implants), and I can undock a ship I just bought and blow your ass away in 1v1 depending on what we've each happened to have undocked with.

In fact, given the right circumstances, a week-old player could certainly kill a 5-year veteran if the ships were right and the newbie had at least some idea what they were doing. Add to that the fact that fleet battle lag has been an ongoing issue since the Dominion patch (while Planetary Interaction got loads of dev time) and you come to the inescapable conclusion that CCP's more interested in adding new players and keeping things unpredictable and challenging than they are in kissing the arses of their most obsessed players.

Re:ok i'll say it

[Loki_1929]

While I generally agree and would tell this guy "tough shit, should have been more careful, but it's only a game", I wouldn't say nothing of value was lost. These items do have a value which directly translates to a USD amount. So it is definitely arguable that they have a "real world value". Even if it was just ISK or another in game currency. Alternate currencies are legal and still have a real value. I think it would be interesting to see what a court would say on this. For example, if somebody had been in some way been defrauded out of $1200 worth of in-game items. Fraud is a crime, and it does not only apply to a US Dollar; it applies to any item or items of value. I would suspect most judges would throw the case out, as taking on a case like this could open the floodgates.

I am not a lawyer, nor have I ever played EVE

Eve's ToS specifically states that all in-game objects (including ISK, PLEX, etc) belong to CCP. This is the basis upon which CCP bans those who sell OR buy ISK and other game items outside CCP-sanctioned venues. As such, it's a legally difficult argument to make that the virtual objects or ISK have any real-world value since nobody could (per the ToS) pay any real-world money to get them from you. In the eyes of CCP (via their ToS), what happened here was that two players used established and functional in-game mechanics to cause the destruction of in-game objects belonging to CCP. The person who owns the account has no firm basis to bring a suit because they received what they purchased from CCP (access to the in-game PLEX objects) and the person lost those objects via well-known and well-documented game mechanics.

CCP gave them access to the objects (which is what they paid for) and through a series of events initiated by their own actions, those objects were destroyed. If I rent a car from Enterprise for a week and I blow it up with explosives on day three, I don't get to sue Enterprise for fraud because I paid for 7 days' use of a car that no longer exists because I blew it up.

Re:ok i'll say it

[X0563511]

However there is also no need to ever undock with one PLEX never mind 74.

You've made one error here - prices can vary by location, and buying/selling is location sensitive.

I'm not arguing about anything else, he definitely acted the fool - but still.

Re:ok i'll say it

[idontgno]

Oh, I see what you did there.

Lazy

A word used by the obsessed to describe the sane.

Re:ok i'll say it

[Rakshasa Taisab]

There is _NO_ excuse to even UNDOCK while carrying 22 billion ISK worth of cargo in a kestrel* during a wardec** (or even when you're not, as we have suicide ganks), in Jita*** of all places.

The guy and his alliance is now the laughingstock of EVE, and the alliance he led probably won't survive losing pretty much their whole ISK reserve.

* Kestrel; noob frigate that goes pop if you stare too hard at it.

** Wardec; one corp declares officially sanctioned war against another, being able to shoot without retaliation from CONCORD.

*** Jita; most trafficked system in EVE, a trade hub with average of 1000-1400 people and known to lag at times.

Re:ok i'll say it

[Jeremi]

By the time you got 80% of the universe together in one big united alliance, people in that alliance would get bored and double-cross like crazy, stealing everything not bolted to the deck plating along the way.

Sounds like what you really need is a proper reign of terror. Blow up a few civilian planets at random to set an example, that'll keep the rest of them in line.

Re:ok i'll say it

[Calinous]

One week is enough to grind your skills to do something useful. Maybe a couple of days would be enough, or maybe you could get useful with the original skills.
      After all, a lowly frigate with a jump device interdictor is enough to pin down a battleship, and the big guns of a battleship are almost unusable against a small and agile target as a frigate. True, you'd only be the tackler and not dish any damage, but you'd be as important as the people doing the shooting.
      As for skills, you only get 5% out of every additional skill level (and every additional skill level costs much more than the previous one), so as a new player you're only 5% to 20% weaker than the most seasoned veteran there is (so three-four new players could easily beat a seasoned veteran, assuming they're using somewhat similar ships and weapons). Compare to WoW (as everyone likes to do comparation with WoW)

Question for EVE players

[hansamurai]

Is there a reason an out of game object is stored within the game like this? Can you buy them in the game?

Re:Question for EVE players

[MozeeToby]

If I remember right (and it's been a while) you can buy PLEX in game for real cash, and then exchange it in game for game cash. It's a way of A) Allowing players to exchange real money for in game money, and B) Allow players to buy their subscription using only in game money (without upsetting their finances because someone at some point paid for it).

Re:Question for EVE players

[Lord Ender]

Ever play arcade games? Remember how you got free games if you did well enough? This is that, but you can trade your quarters in-game just like you trade any other game item.

Re:Question for EVE players

[Monkeedude1212]

You can buy PLEX (Pilots license extension) in game. This means that elite players that have spent the time developing the skills to make a lot of in game money no longer have to pay to play the game. It's a good system I think, rewards the hardcore fans.

Anyways, if you buy it in game - it would have to have been sold at a station, and the system is set up that you can't take PLEX outside of a station (or at least thats how it was about 3 months ago).

So - this guy would have actually had to have bought the time codes from an online retailer, activated them while in his ship while in space - and not in the safety of a station where he could have used them. It's likely he wanted to check the best prices in verse for plex and then sell them for massive in game profit - however he activated them before reaching that destination (74 plex codes CAN take a while to enter).

It's all foolishness in my eyes - I don't have any qualms with people who want to pay for in game money - be it ISK or WoW Gold or whatever. Eve at least balances it so that if you WANT to buy in game money, the PLEX is a solid and secure way of doing it, and its pretty steady based on the market of the game, and the real world value of Plex is always constant, whatever CCP says it is ($40 for 2 plexes or whatever?).

However, this idiot basically circumvented every provision designed to stop this from happening. Had he been docked at a station this would have been impossible.

Re:Question for EVE players

[Dahamma]

Interesting... it almost sounds like a 'gift card' type situation, in which case there are some fairly decent consumer protection laws depending on the state (ie, in CA they are transferable and never expire). It would be an interesting lawsuit if the player tried to claim they were equivalent and that by allowing them to be permanently "destroyed" the company was cancelling/expiring the certificates (though I doubt any lawyer would take it unless it was common enough that they were able to establish a class action).

Re:Question for EVE players

[T3hD0gg]

Anyways, if you buy it in game - it would have to have been sold at a station, and the system is set up that you can't take PLEX outside of a station (or at least thats how it was about 3 months ago).

A recent patch a few weeks ago opened up the ability for PLEX to be transported by ship. CCP thought that would be a good idea to allow players more control of their items and I would have to agree with them. It's helpful for those who live deep out in 0.0 and would rather buy PLEX from a corp-mate than have to travel back into the Empire systems.

Re:Question for EVE players

[Glith]

You can now undock with PLEX. The player didn't buy them with real money - he was the direction of an alliance and was using the alliance's pocketbooks for a "get rich quick" market speculation.

Of course, undocking with an active wardec going on with hostiles present in the local system and no defenses are chance at getting out...

Re:Question for EVE players

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone has to pay real money for the PLEX before they can sell it to the hardcore player buys for fake money.

Re:Question for EVE players

[Monkeedude1212]

Well its pretty silly if you ask me - considering you can create 3 characters - you can leave one of them in high sec space to deal with PLEX if you want, without having to take your low level toon out of low sec space.

It was really a non-issue before, I don't know why anyone would have wanted it any other way. I guess it just opens itself to these kinds of stories. Because PLEX is negligable in cargo space - you can put infinite amount on a cargo ship and move them around now.

You could have some fool moving over a million dollars worth of in game plex and have them get blown up - and theres only chance that any of the loot is recoverable - meaning 1 Million dollars worth of money ends up in CCP's pockets without anyone gaining anything out of it.

Re:Question for EVE players

[ildon]

You should read this: http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=776

Re:Question for EVE players

[roc97007]

> Is there a reason an out of game object is stored within the game like this?

My guess is because it increases the profits of CCP.

Re:Question for EVE players

[VoiceInTheDesert]

Someone already explained the reason these things exist (to legally trade real money for in game currency), but I just want to point out the stupidity of the pilot. PLEX do not take up any space at all. He could have transported them in a fully cloaked (read, impossible to detect) Covert Ops ship across the galaxy if he wanted to. Certain parts of space would still be risky, but there's no reason to go to those places since PLEX aren't really sold there.... To non-players, it seems like a development issue to allow a player to be exposed to suck loses as this, but I assure you, it was his own fault. The game has many many many ways of protecting a player when transporting goods such as this. If the player ignores them however....they lose it all (and someone else profits). That's why I love EVE.

Re:Question for EVE players

[Nobo]

Adding to the above to provide a bit of sense of the scales of money here.

Allowing players to exchange real-world money for in-game money:
The current rate is (roughly) $35 -> 2x 30day PLEX -> 560 million isk. 560 million isk will get you 4-5 fully equipped and fitted battleships, or halfway to a equipped and fitted capital ship. Amusingly, as with any real-world currency conversion, exchange rates vary minute to minute, based on the current buy and sell orders on the market.

Allow players to buy their subscription using only in-game money:
It costs 280 million isk to buy 30d of game time. Operating efficiently in a profitable area, you can make about 25 million an hour hunting NPCs in 0.0 or running high level missions in empire. (You will need a character who's a year old or so to be able to fly the ships you need to use to do those things) So, all considered, you can play for free, if you're willing to put in about 16 hours of sweat equity per month. Of course, to get ahead in the game, you'll also need to pay expenses like ammunition, replacing lost or damaged ships, and you'll need to be growing wealth to buy more things in the future.

Re:Question for EVE players

[Bobfrankly1]

You can now undock with PLEX. The player didn't buy them with real money - he was the direction of an alliance and was using the alliance's pocketbooks for a "get rich quick" market speculation.

Of course, undocking with an active wardec going on with hostiles present in the local system and no defenses are chance at getting out...

Not to mention he was in a kestral. It's not a beginner ship, it just one of the next ones up. Just plain stupid of a move.

Re:Question for EVE players

[Culture20]

meaning 1 Million dollars worth of money ends up in CCP's pockets without anyone gaining anything out of it.

Now why would CCP allow that to happen?

Re:This stuff matters

[MBGMorden]

This wasn't a hack. This was a legitimate in game activity (essentially just an in-game PvP attack) which caused the destruction of cargo worth real world money.

Sheesh!

[Pojut]

I thought Ultima Online was unforgiving back in the day...jeebus.

So in other words...

[morikahnx]

6 years of someones life has just been gained?

Send more rodians!

[Drakkenmensch]

I'll pay back Jabba with THIS shipment, I swear!!!

Piracy in space!

[Abstrackt]

This must be what developers mean when they say pirates ruin gaming.

Re:They should made so the only way to lose it was

[BitZtream]

No. That is not something they should ever do.

This is not WoW.

This is not a game for pussies.

This is not a game for you to play so don't try to change it so it is.

This is a game where getting killed HURTS, especially if you've not used any of the mitigation methods and safe practices that you should have used.

The only reason I even started playing EVE was because its not a pussied out game where you basically do nothing but grind and even death has no real loss to it.

You do not want to die in EVE. You lose skills, you lose implants, you lose your usually rather expensive ship and you lose your cargo.

There are methods to avoid it:

Stay in more secure areas.

Travel in well armed groups.

Travel in a ship with protections against warp disruptors so you can always get the hell out of dodge when something bad happens.

DO NOT EVER USE AUTOPILOT TO TRAVEL BETWEEN STAR SYSTEMS as it INTENTIONALLY leaves you wide open for a large portion of the travel time.

Most of these methods mean you earn less money, but take less risk so you have to figure out the balance.

The fact that there is an actual cost to being killed makes not being killed worth something.

Remember Rule #1

[bosef1]

If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times:

First pillage, _then_ burn.

Wrong summary

[Aphoxema]

It wasn't a "pirate attack", it was a sanctioned war in a trade hub where hundreds of players are on at any time and it's difficult to spot war targets in local.

Also the PLEX cards survived, but to stop scavengers that are all over the trade hubs the wreck was immediately destroyed.

Quite the red-letter day.

Re:Wrong summary

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the killmail is API verified and the PLEX were not dropped. The article even states it: "Unfortunately for the trigger-happy duo, all 74 were destroyed when they blew the ship up."

http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=7309710

For those that are new to looking at killboards, bellow the picture of the ship is a list of all the items equipped to the ship and in its cargo hold. Green items survived the destruction of the ship, the others did not.

New headline

[goodmanj]

The right headline for this article is, "CCP takes $1200 from subscriber."

I'm trying to imagine if Blizzard created a World of Warcraft monster that could eat your monthly subscription if it killed you. Players would be furious, and accuse Blizzard of stealing from them. By setting up the system so that PLEX can be destroyed, CCP is doing the same thing.

But in the cutthroat capitalism uber alles world of EVE, it's all part of the game.

This is just one isolated incident, but I assume ships carrying small quantities of PLEX get destroyed all the time. Can anyone estimate how much real money CCP earns from this?

Re:New headline

[DarkXale]

Generally no, PLEXes in ships are rare - since the only purpose of moving them is to sell them elsewhere (or give them to someone). If you buy one for real money yourself to sell, you redeem it at the location you want to sell it at (usually Jita). If you buy it for yourself, you just use it immediately. Buying PLEXes at one location and selling them at another is generally only profitable in bulk - because of the typically low price variety, especially after sales taxes and fees. Such bulk transfers are both extremely expensive to setup, and again - the risk involved is unreal. If you get spotted, you can be expected to be pursued or stalked for hours. A single PLEX is enough to buy most of the common advanced combat ships, including a lot of expensive ship equipment for it. If we scale the ship size down, potentially dozens of ships can be afforded by a single one. So when you're carrying several...

Re:New headline

[Xveers]

Nice Try, but no.

The way PLEXes work is that a player buys a gametime code from an authorized online retailer. The player then docks up at a station, and enters the code into a menu. This converts the codes into PLEXs (two PLEX per code). These PLEXes can then be put it onto the market and sold like other items

Now, in this situation all these PLEXes were purchased from multiple sellers in Jita (THE trade hub in EVE). The pilot then decided to move them out of Jita on a small, poorly defended and very weak ship. By all accounts the pilot had bought them in order to move them elsewhere and sell them at a considerable markup and make profit. Unfortunately, some hostiles were waiting outside of the undock point at the Jita space station (not uncommon). They saw a hostile target undock, and they engaged. Boom.

You may notice that the player(s) who actually created the PLEXes were compensated. They made ISK from their sales. The person who bought them however... just did something astronomically stupid.

Meme over

[spun]

This is one of the more condescending and snotty memes out there, like "FTFY" it exists only to mock. Basically it is saying "I militantly don't care about this, and neither should you." Value is a funny thing, by definition it means whatever you want it to mean. There is no 'value' outside of the human mind. In your own mind, you are the absolute master of value, you can place whatever valuation you like on anything you like. So, when you say "Nothing of value was lost" All you are saying is that nothing you value was lost. Which is likely just as true of, oh say, those floods in Pakistan, nothing you value was lost.

But obviously, these PLEX were valuable to quite a few people, not to mention a gaming company.

Re:Meme over

[genner]

Not any more than usual. I don't play EVE or other online games, so it's not personal in that sense. It's just that overvaluing goofy things that other people don't is pretty much the definition of being a geek. I'd hazard a guess that most people here are pretty obsessively into something that most normal people would consider "nothing of value."

The meme is basically a slight against all geek-kind.

Not all geek kind. Just those specific geeks that are slightly different from us.
I play Warcraft so I'm NOTHING like them :P

Re:Meme over

[pushing-robot]

It's just that overvaluing goofy things that other people don't is pretty much the definition of being a geek.

Ah, like sports geeks, and beer geeks, and dance geeks...

Maybe "overvaluing goofy things that other people don't" is the definition of being human.

EVE is the dickhead MMO

[Sycraft-fu]

It is designed specially for people who love to make others miserable. It is a griefer's paradise. One of the main things would be the destructibility of so much in the game that takes so much time to get. You can lose nearly everything under the right circumstances. It would be like a single player game that goes and deletes your saves if you screw up. Also there's a real caste type system in that it takes real time to increase skills, as in you set the game to increase a skill and after a fixed amount of Earth time has passed it does. As such those that got in early have a permanent advantage.

It is a kind of game that most people would really hate, however it appeals to a small subset of gamers. Those that derive their pleasure from causing pain to others love it.

I can't explain why people like that kind of thing but there you go. For them, there is EVE. For everyone else, there is WoW :D.

Re:EVE is the dickhead MMO

[Draek]

Yeah, or I could say that WoW is for dull idiots who love to simply click a button endlessly til a virtual candy pops out, while EVE is for those that prefer having a simulation of real-world economies, with all the risks and opportunities it entails, in a virtual world.

In short, don't be so fucking biased with your descriptions, if you couldn't get into EVE it doesn't mean it's just for "griefers" and people who "derive their pleasure from causing pain to others".

Disclaimer: I don't play either of them and prefer Guild Wars instead, its just I've enough common sense not to offend people just because they don't play my favorite game.

Re:EVE is the dickhead MMO

[DMUTPeregrine]

I find it fun because there is "real" risk. If I fight that guy, and he kills me, I just lost my ship. I have to get a new one, I don't just respawn with on consequences. I got sick of arenas and battlegrounds in WoW where nothing I did mattered in any way to anyone else but myself and there was no real risk. In EVE I can affect the world around me, even if only in small ways. That's a lot more fun than a game where nothing you do has any consequence.

Re:EVE is the dickhead MMO

[vux984]

We like a challenge. When I take my favorite ship into combat there's a substantial risk of losing it. Higher risks make the rewards of victory that much sweeter.

Yawn. If you really thought there was a 'substantial risk of losing it' you wouldn't take it out, unless you already had a backup that was nearly as good, if not better, or enough isks lying around that you could afford to lose it.

Higher risks make the rewards of victory that much sweeter.

Indeed. I'm no stranger to risk, I've played EVE, I played Diablo2 online "Hardcore" (permadeath) with level 85+ characters in Hell (and not just safe hillz runs) and I lost them time and again, along with piles of difficult/impossible to replace sets, uniques, and rares.

I played Everquest on Rallos Zek - with open PVP and the ability to loot opponents. I played Asheron's call on DarkTide with open PVP and opponent looting. I'm certainly no 'pussy' when it comes to risk.

In all of these games, when there is conflict, its almost always extremely one-sided. Few combats are between remotely balanced forces. And most of the time group-A knows it can't lose, while group-B knows it can't win and just wants to escape... and if its stuck around to fight its because it CAN'T escape. Nearly all combat in EVE falls into this category.

The trouble with EVE is that despite this potential adrenalin shot... EVE is still 99% tediously and drearily dull spreadsheet reading with a terrible UI and a lousying colour scheme and font. Interesting combat is rare.

Real competition is hard to find... if you want to go get blown up, that's easy, just wander off alone. But if you want to have a good fight? Good luck finding it in eve... anybody worth fighting will run if you outmatch them, or your group will flee from a group that outmatches you. Close-fights? Sure they happen... but its rare.

All the EVE advcotes will boast about how they aren't pussies, and how they love risk and a challenge. But they only love risk and challenge when they are heavily favored to win. What do they do when a stronger force shows up? They run away. God forbid they actually fight something that might beat them. Of course, this is the 'intelligent' thing to do in EVE, so you can't fault them.

IF anything it just shows how stupid eve is. Its called a greifer paradise because that's what the mechanics have dictated it must be. The game rewards preying on the weak, and brutally punishes standing up for yourself when outmatched. And a fair fight? Best to avoid those as much as possible too, as the risk of losing is great.

Get involved in 4 or 5 fair fights and there is an overwhelming chance you'll lose at least once. And you only need to lose once to wipe out any profit you might have made from the other 4.

Eve is a tediously slow game, punctuated by the occasional one-sided combat. Now and again you'll come away victorious from a difficult fight... or perhaps just escape a fight you shouldn't have, and this 'victory' will sustain you through the next patch of tedium.

I normally love games with risk and consequence. I still think eve is a waste of time.

Re:EVE is the dickhead MMO

[Loki_1929]

He's absolutely right, though. I've played WoW before and I've played many other games. I play Starcraft 2 (and have throughout the Beta). No other game has ever gotten my heart racing like Eve. No other game has ever gotten my adrenaline and fight-or-flight instincts so pumped up like Eve. In Eve, I jump from one system to another, I could be killed on sight. Maybe there's nothing there. Maybe some absolutely irresistable target will be just sitting there waiting for me. Maybe that irresistable target will be a trap. Will the fleet I'm in fly to this player-owned station and destroy it? Or will there be a fleet three times our size sitting there waiting for us when we get there? Will our trap work to kill off enemy targets? Or will they flood ships in where we only have seconds to try and escape? Will I play my part correctly? Or will my mishap kill off a dozen friends?

When actual, serious loss is involved (as opposed to simply re-appearing elsewhere fully or mostly intact), and you actually care about what you could be losing, it's easy to find a physiological rush coming over you in dangerous situations. That risk, that uncertainty, causing adrenaline jolts to surge through you makes it more worth the subscription cost than anything else.

I can get excited about a new game like Starcraft 2. I can be happy about playing it. But I'll never never have the rushes and highs of Eve while playing a game with a 'reset' button.

He was an IDIOT!

[Fallen Kell]

Seriously, he is an idiot for taking them out of station. EVE only a few weeks ago made the change to allow players to physically move the PLEX between stations, because previously they were treated as a special item, where-in you could only convert a ETC (Extended Time Card), into PLEX (extended pilot license or something like that) in permanent station (i.e. not player controlled, or destroyable by players or other actions), and you could not leave the station if you had the PLEX in your cargo hold. But, EVE really didn't want to have to have all that extra checks to inforce these things, and let everyone know they were taking away the checks against moving of PLEX between stations, but it was at the players own risk.

No one even needs to move the PLEX, you can use them from ANYWHERE (i.e. you do not have to be in the same station as the item, or even in the same region of space, to convert the PLEX into play time on your account). The person moving them was an idiot for doing so. The only reason to move them is so that they are closer to you so you can more easily sell them in the game for in-game money (which is also the main reason to convert them from an ETC to PLEX in the first place).

Re:wat?

[mano.m]

What I (another non-player) gather: CCP is the company that owns the game and maintains it.
ISK is an in-game currency. PLEX is an in-game object you can buy with millions of ISK or 15-20 real-life dollars, and which you can redeem for game play time. Actual EVE players: amirite?

Re:All your eggs...

[Sancho]

Primarily, because they can be traded in-game. It's essentially an approved way of paying for just about anything you might want to pay for in-game using real money. Instead of going through other channels (ebay, etc.) you just buy game time, convert it to PLEX, and trade the PLEX in-game.

It's beneficial to the players because it reduces the likelihood of scams--you pay CCP Games for the PLEX, and you trade it using in-game mechanisms. It's beneficial to CCP because they essentially get cuts out of every transaction and..frankly..PLEX can be destroyed, as we see here. They got paid for nothing.

Of course, losing so much PLEX is really, really rare. It's treated as valuable because it is. Why anyone would move 74 PLEX like this is beyond .. well, pretty much everyone :)

Re:some details...

[Aphoxema]

This guy did this in "empire space" which is supposed to be safe if you are not at war. However the two guys who got him, scanned his cargo, saw what he had, and suicide attacked him, because the amount of the cargo was worth getting blown up by the games AI (penalty for attacking in empire).

I believe they were actually at war, making Aystra's decision making skills even more suspect.

I think that's the point

[Sycraft-fu]

The point is to be condescending. What the grandparent is saying basically is "EVE is a stupid game and you waste your time playing it."

Re:I think that's the point

[gmhowell]

Should that viewpoint be applied to any/all video games then? Should ./ not post a video game story?

Especially in the games section. I mean, wtf?!

Re:They should made so the only way to lose it was

[frist]

This is not a game for pussies.

This is not a game for you to play so don't try to change it so it is.

People keep writing this. Let me get this straight. EVE is not a game for pussies. So it's a game for toughguys? Given the choice between categorizing players of a sci-fi MMO as toughguys or pussies, I'm forced to go with pussies. You're playing an MMO for crying out loud, you're not engaging in street fighting.

I think the term you EVE toughguys are looking for is "casual player" not "pussy". But whatever makes you feel tough about playing a SCI-FI MMO. From what I hear, EVE is for pussies and UO or Lineage are for toughguys. You see what I did there?

Sounds familiar...

[Anachragnome]

Sounds familiar. Bond movie plot?

This is sort of like robbing Fort Knox with a nuclear weapon.

The idea isn't so much to take the loot, but to destroy it and in the process make your OWN all that more valuable.

If Viktor and slickdog are PLEX dealers, this might actually work in their favor. Well...judging by their mugshots, they probably just blew up the most money they will ever see.

Or...maybe slick and vik are CCP employees with a specific task. Gives the term "corporate raiders" a whole new meaning.

Ah! The wonders of Alternate Universes! The Drama!

Re:bullshit

[neongrau]

you been out of game for too long. http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=776

Re:They should made so the only way to lose it was

[infinitevalence]

You should have tried leaving safe empire space. Lots of stuff happening around the universe away from the main mission hubs.

owned

[luther349]

this is how eve has always worked. your losses are losses that's your death pently. you ship blows up its gone granted some insurance payout to help you rebuild if you insured it and if totally screwed the noob ship is givin back to you. the player knew this and moving plex even if eve now allows it is simply a stupid move. i bet his corp is pissed wile the guys they where waring with are having a party.

Re:All your eggs...

[ZerothAngel]

Hm, not so sure about that. Up until recently, PLEXes were immovable -- you couldn't undock with one in your hold. However, if you owned a PLEX, you could use it (apply game time to your account) no matter where it was located.

To use your example, all you'd have to do is contract the PLEXes to the other player. Private contracts can be accepted even if both parties are in different regions. The buyer can then use the PLEXes when convenient.

One reason (perhaps the only reason?) to move a PLEX is for arbitrage. Buy cheap in Jita and sell them on the open market in a different region.

Welcome to real life

[Sylak]

Welcome to the troubles that face sea captains in real life, and space captains in every science fiction setting.

Re:All your eggs...

[mr_mischief]

In EVE, isk are currency. PLEXes are valuable commodities. They're about as good as in-game currency, and to heavy EVE players they're almost as good as real currency.

Just like some transactions IRL you can make in gold, stock, bonds, beer, or whatever you can get plenty of people to take PLEXes as payment in the game. Still, you can buy and sell PLEXes for isk.

Some players buy PLEXes with IRL currency and sell it for isk or trade it for other stuff in-game. Some players play enough and make enough in-game profit that they buy PLEXes in-game and don't pay real money for their subscriptions, at least not every month. Those are the players CCP wants to keep around anyway, as they make the high-level PvP game interesting for the other players.

What this guy did wrong

[ImNotAtWork]

1. He could have contracted the item to be couriered and put a collateral of isk that was worth more than what the item was worth. If the courier loses it he loses nothing.

2. He couriered something while he was at war with another corporation.

3. He did not set up an instant warp bookmark for exiting the station.

4. He did not put a cloak on this ship.

5. He was in Jita. The biggest trade hub in the game. He did not have to pick up plex there.

6. There is no six (Monty Python and Eve University reference).

Insurance

[SnarfQuest]

I wonder if any of his insurance packages would cover it?

maybe he can hire some lawyers and sue?

Or he might be able to get a grant from one of the many Obama economic stimulus funds.

Re:They should made so the only way to lose it was

[Anonymous Coward]

So it's a game for toughguys?

No. Internet tough guys. The sexually-frustrated, obese, pasty nerds who come home after working their menial IT job and think they are being hardcore by having macros mine and fight for them while munching on Cheetos in their parent's basement.

Re:wat?

[sanosuke001]

CCP: The company that makes EVE Online (akin to Blizzard for WoW)
ISK: In-game currency
PLEX: Pilot License Extension. It's basically an in-game item that can be redeemed for a month's subscription. People basically buy them from CCP for real money and sell them for in-game money. A legitimate way of buying in-game currency that is sanctioned by CCP

Re:They should made so the only way to lose it was

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not a game for pussies.... a pussied out game

Wow... You sure must hate pussy. Fortunately, being a hardcore EVE player, you'll never have to worry about encountering it.

But it is a game FFS

[vortexau]

In real life, ship the sea-lanes off Somalia and you don't just risk some money (or virtual currency); you risk your own LIFE! A real-time pirate can take your life, and rape your wife.

If your lucks fully down the plumbing he may just rape YOU (as well) before he takes your life!

Its not just $1200 you'd have lost, but your intestinal fortitude, and your continuing existence!
 

Re:You an do that?

[hesaigo999ca]

What risk is there to Eve, I have never played, is it like WoW?