Slashdot Mirror
EVE Online Players Rage, Protest Over Microtransactions
Several readers have written with news of a controversy that's been slowly building in space-based MMO EVE Online. "It all began with the Incarna update, which added an item shop to the long-running sci-fi sandbox. Players began to voice their concerns over the bizarrely high prices of items in the shop, with one particular item reaching an insane $68 US. Before this hullabaloo had the chance to so much as come to a simmer, an internal newsletter from CCP was leaked to the internet. The document outlined the introduction of microtransactions into EVE and mentioned that at some point, ships, ammunition, and so forth may be available for purchase with real-world currency. This naturally sent players into even more of a frenzy." Reader Ogre332 points out additional coverage, but notes that many publications are missing the punchline: "Players are angry that CCP has blatantly lied about their intentions and have responded to these customers concerns by basically telling us they know what we want better than we do. The purported e-mail from CCP CEO Hilmar Pétursson was like gas on a fire, and a response to some concerns in the form of a dev blog was not well received at all. Players are protesting, and many claim to be canceling their accounts left and right."
Companies always want to milk the cow. Has it ever been any different in the history of man?
It's a stupid, boring-ass game anyways.
Rage? They are raging? Would you say this is "epic" rage over some sort of "fail"? Perhaps there are some "lols" involved in said epic fail rage?
Im not sure why they are trying to be sneaky about it, but if thats what they think will be best for the bottom line, it will be coming.
The monacle being 68$ doesn't matter to me. What matters to me is talk about selling ships, items, and/or faction standings for real life money. Those are game changing items, and should be earned as part of the game.
Players are angry that CCP has blatantly lied about their intentions and have responded to these customers concerns by basically telling us they know what we want better than we do.
Players aren't a hivemind. Odds are the company that makes the game has a pretty good idea what the community as a whole wants, while a vocal minority is convinced that everyone else feels as they do.
This is not "Not News for Nerds" nor "Stuff That Matters", and here's why:
The people that play Eve Online do so after agreeing to its Terms of Service.
Link: EVE Online TERMS OF SERVICE. One of its sections states:
CCP MAY FIND IT NECESSARY ON OCCASION TO MAKE CHANGES TO OR RESET CERTAIN PARAMETERS OF THE PERSISTENT GAME WORLD MECHANICS, INTERFACE OR FEATURES OF EVE ONLINE IN ORDER TO MAINTAIN GAME BALANCE AND ENHANCE PLAYABILITY OR PERFORMANCE FOR ITS SUBSCRIBERS. THESE CHANGES MAY AFFECT OR CAUSE SETBACKS FOR THE CHARACTERS YOU’VE CREATED.
The next paragraph states:
"THESE RULES MAY BE REVISED AT ANY TIME. IT IS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY TO REVIEW THEM OCCASIONALLY TO ENSURE THAT YOU ARE IN COMPLIANCE WITH THE RULES, POLICIES AND AGREEMENTS DESIGNATED BY CCP."
So, I say "Fuck 'em - even if they were too lazy to read the TOS, they are still bound by it."
They are free to gripe, bitch, etc., but in the end, they have no recourse.
It's a game, they paid to play under the terms offered. If they don't like the changes, they are free to quit. If they think that they're "owed" anything, they're delusional: They gained whatever they did, BEFORE the changes... so, they've already benefited from the money they spent.
Sorry, but I've no sympathy: I've played the original EverQuest for over 11 years now, and have occasionally been pissed off as SOE has attempted to make it more "WoW-like"... but, I CHOSE to continue to play. If I were sufficiently angered, I'd quit, but it wouldn't make me think that all of time and money spent previously was wasted, nor would I think that I was somehow entitled to protest and have such recognized simply because of the money I knowlingly spent and the time I willingly consumed.
I suppose that this is one of the ways that I'm different from the "Entitled Generations" that came after me... I actually *read* the TOS', etc., read it when it's updated, and then decide whether or not I wish to be bound by its terms.
That, of course, is contrary to many of the people here on Slashdot these days, who think that such are merely suggestions, or can be ignored 'cause they didn't read them or disagree with them.
Regards,
dj
You could make a headline every day of the week just by filling in the blank. "Eve Online players rage, protest over ______."
..It's not a rare thing. Companies do this to their players all the time. On one hand you have the dev's listening and then on the other the sales team do whatever makes money. This is not unusual.
Everquest/EQ2 did it, they enabled purchasing items that directly effected the game. The dev's had promised they would never allow RMT (real money trading) in that game, it was implemented, people whined, the same people are still playing. People are fickle, they want the game to head in a particular direction and they'll be active enough in voicing their opinion, but at the end of the day if things don't go the way they plan they will still pay to play the game.
This is what happens when the company is ran by marketing people instead of the people that are actually in touch with the playerbase. Remembering of course that game forums do not represent the entire playerbase, or even a small part of the playerbase. The vocal should not be the only people listened to. The best way to get through to everyone is to make a simple yes/no poll on the server login screen and not let people pass go until they pick an option. This causes the knock on problem of people that have multiple accounts, but surely this can be easily solved by filtering results to 1 per IP.
As someone else said, companies want to make profits? Shock! Life will go on, people won't close their accounts in protest. They know it's futile and they've invested far too much at this point to just walk away because suddenly there's microtransactions available. The predictable excuse that the dev's will use is "if you dislike microtransactions just don't pay for anything, avoid the game shop".
Come on, once they started selling PLEX, you've been able to trade real life money for ships, items, etc. This will just make the relationship more obvious.
It wouldn't be hard. Just take the spreadsheet from Openoffice and you're already halfway there! Build some cheesy flash graphics on top of it and chances are it'll come out looking better than Eve does!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Is a game that rewards consumers who generate real world disposable wealth from real world jobs worse then a game that rewards its customers who generate virtual wealth in the game?
This seems to be just another case of the "hard core" weeping for special status.
"these customers concerns by basically telling us they know what we want better than we do." The fact is this is true, the CCP do know what is better for its consumers. The "hard core" vocal minority do not speak for the plurality of the gamers. CCP know the "hard core" is full of shit because at the end of the day gamers speak their voice by buying what CCP is selling.
One of the first MMO companies to introduce pay-for-perks, Iron Realms Entertainment, has items for hundreds of dollars in their MUDs.
It is called PLEX.
I can go spend real $$ on PLEX on CCPs website. I then get a item in game that is called PLEX.
I can take said PLEX and sell it on the eve online market for ISK.
I can then take ISK and buy SHIPS, AMMO, etc.
** Nothing significant has changed **
Nerd Rage! Nerd Rage! Aaaaaah!
PLEX is just an alternative way to obtain game currency. Incarna stuff can only be obtained with RL money. The inevitable future will be new items, ships, etc. that can only be obtained via RL money. CCP is setting a precedent here. Something significant has changed.
I don't play EVE, so correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't this whole notion of paying real money for in-game stuff already exist? If I recall, you can buy items that extend your gametime, and those items can in turn be sold to other players. Which means you can turn your IRL money into in-game money. All that seems to be changing is that a level of indirection is being removed; instead of paying for gametime, selling the gametime, and then using that money to buy things you'd just buy stuff directly. Which leads me to this question: why is this causing an uproar in the community? It seems like nothing's really changing.
The fact of the matter is that you can get the items for ISK. That means that you can get the items for NOTHING from yourself other than time. There's no difference between buying these and buying other expensive items from NPCs in game.
Try blueprints for example. The avatar blueprint costs 67.5 billion (with a B) isk. That's about $169 and it goes directly to an NPC. Where's the outrage for that? Is that not high enough? How about a player to player trade of a revenent blueprint copy (a one time use item) for 70b?
Then if you want to research (upgrade) your blueprint it costs a further 12 billion or so isk. Oh, and years of waiting on top of the financial cost.
I think this update shows more the cluelessness of the certain loud mouthed players concerning the state of their game (which they won't be truly quitting from as much as they threaten) rather than the cluelessness of the designers. It's been proven time and again that eve players will spend seemingly obscene amounts of cash on items, and a $68 vanity item is nothing, especially if you can get it for free.
The only thing online games offer over real life is the opportunity to be someone you are not. WoW is successful because people can be rich and famous without actually being rich or famous. Once you allow people with more money to have cooler items in-game, you are destroying the reason people play it.
That doesn't mean it won't be profitable, but I think it will certainly turn many people off.
Doesn't Lord of the Rings Online already have such a system? It became big and kind of died a little, but is still going strong. How is this different than EVE? People still play LOTRO. It seems that game though it is less built in gear than say WOW where it is everything. Is Eve more WOW like or did most people really leave LOTRO when it went free with pay for items?
http://saveie6.com/
ISK > PLEX > Aurum
Where is RL money required?
Playing two sides of the field = nono.
You either make players pay every month - which means they expect balance.
Or you give players the ability to '1-up' their opponent by paying their way through it.
Doing both is silly, it just means that players will pay to win, and the others won't want to pay their monthly fee and enjoy the game less than the guy who bought his way in.
Doing it with just micropayments works, because if the players get tired of the heavy-users that's fine, they're not paying anything.
some of us are protesting the fact we have been forced to upgrade our computers again as we can no longer use all our accounts at one time woithout crashing as ccp has made all cpus overheat and if you play 8 accounts cpus can no longer handlke the stress and are crashing annd im also sick bug ridden sofware
I think companies are taking advantage of the fact that some people have a tendency to hoard and collect trinkets/items. Micro-transactions are just a way for these companies to cash in on human behaviour. I think it's unethical.
I have one friend for example that only plays Team Fortress 2 on idle servers. He barely even plays the game, he just idles 24/7 to collect more and more items. I ask him why he even bothers to idle since he doesnt actually play the game, and he can't come up with an answer. He constantly tells me how much he hates the game and all the changes Valve has made by constantly adding more and more items, yet he continues to idle and collect more items. Is that even sane? That sounds like an addiction.
These companies know exactly what they're doing, and they're making insane profits, so they'll continue to do it.
Cash->PLEX->isk->items feeds the economy twice.
Cash->PLEX->AUR->items feeds nothing but CCP.
CCP needs monies.
http://static.images.memegenerator.net/Instances400/8/8232/8429805.jpg
But you've been able to trade it for things other players made. Other players made those ships and items (or ran the missions or complexes to get the items). In effect, you were buying game time for someone else in exchange for their in-game efforts.
Even when you did buy these things from other players, they didn't make it an "I win by credit card" situation. I say this as someone who has bought Plex and sold them for ISK.
EVE is the most cut-throatedly capitalist MMO I've come across. The philosophy of most games is focused around fair play, balance, and looking out for the little guy, but EVE has always been about "may the richest man win" and "money equals power".
At first, this philosophy was just confined to the game world, but I've found that game designers build their personal values into their games. Nobody should be surprised that EVE's developers turn out to be just as mercenary in real life as they expect their players to be in game.
There is an enormous difference, for many reasons.
The EVE economy is based on items being built by the players, for the players, using materials gathered by the players. PLEX is a sort of trade commodity, it is like diamonds - people want them because they are desirable, not because they are useful (in game at least). It has no effect on gameplay and is basically just a trade good on the market. Trading a PLEX has no other immediate ingame effect other than redistributing ISK among players, which is completely balanced in cost by the players themselves.
"Gold Spaceships" and AUR is completely different from this mechanic. Ships are seeded and directly tied to real money. Sure, you can buy a PLEX with ISK, but that is superficial - you are, in effect, just having somebody else pay real money for your spaceship. Sure you can fund a CNR (a special battleship) using ISK gained from a PLEX, but it is completely optional for that PLEX to be involved - with Gold Spaceships it would become MANDATORY to involve a PLEX. Also, since the ship is seeded, no tangible effort has been made to build or acquire the ship by anybody - not through missioning, grinding, building, whatever - the ship entirely come into being depending on real money.
Basically the entire EVE economy, which is the pride and I daresay center of the soul of EVE, can become entirely unhinged by AUR and Gold Stuff, since it is impossible for an industrial body in EVE to compete with people simply swiping their credit card for special premium superstuff.
More issues can be touched upon. Think for example the Alliance Tournament (a yearly competition with spaceships), what happens to the game if a team wins because they brought Gold Spaceships? Should all invest real money to be able to compete then?
P2W and microtransactions are reasonable depending on the gaming model. EVE is simply not built for it.
The real issue is that this reeks of depseration for money on CCP's(the developer) part, as well as stupidity on how to get that money.
The expansion is bug ridden. They literally showed the players the door if you don't want the new features.
Basically there's a long list of problems. Everyone understood that the latest changes and expansion were pretty damn crap and there was bugs which came with an expansion like any expansion for any game. Everyone was grumbly/sad but didnt care. The main new addition to the game however was these vanity items like clothes and hats which they sell for $$. The players were concerned but didnt care too much.
Then an internal document leaked which showed they wanted to sell non-vanity things, which basically breaks the game. Nobody really knew for sure if the "internal document" was real or not. After a day or so of anger a mod let loose a vague comment which basically confirmed it as real by calling it a "newsletter" which caused a real shitstorm but they just continued to ignore the situation.
Finally they make an apology but basically say nothing and while they mention issues... they dont address the biggest issue at all. Which made the players that much more angry. Then they have a senior person write a dev blog quickly because the amount of rage and he basically said nothing at all... if not added fuel to the fire.
Rage goes on and then someone leaks CEO internal letter which basically says, ignore the customers. Customers rage more and they demand to know if they want to sell non-vanity items. Which they confirm so Mass unsubscribing and protests. Afterall you still have a month of gameplay at least after unsubscribing so there's protesting.
Except PLEX trade is a win for everyone, still requiring the actual 'crafting' of the ship/item, and rewarding the industrialist. The feared MTs are an utter loss for the industrialist, basically flushing the economy (foundation of the game) down the toilet.
What everyone seems to forget, is these are "Vanity" items which aren't supposed to effect the balance of the game in any way. Also the purported selling of ammo would, if we are to believe the "balance maintaining" intentions, are also Vanity items. Such as special rockets that make multicolored blast effects or some such.
The real issue that has pissed off the majority of hard core players (including me) is the new release is such a resource hog that it is impossible to run multiple clients on the same PC. I was able to run 3 clients at once before Incarna, now I can barely run 2, and my system is no slouch. I can only hope that the Client gets more streamlined as the release is completed. I have a certain degree of faith that the technical issues will be resolved by CCP in the future.
In short, I see nothing that would make me cancel my accounts. At least not yet.
Needless to say, the threat to cancel one's account as a sign of disapproval for CCP's ideas has been a running gag for years as well ...
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
CCP is moving to become Zynga? Are they going to rename the game to EVEville or EVEwars too?
I could understand the screaming if it wasn't one old monopoly alliance screaming about possible new T2 BPOs.
As it is, it's just EVE selling overpriced skirts. Big deal.
Finding God in a Dog
Yeah, because ships and faction/officer items are not being sold for real money right now.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Post your opinion on www.warpdriveactive.de
(grind for ISK)->PLEX->AUR->items and whoa were does CCP take a cut in all this? Hell if you're good you don't even have to pay the monthly subscription fee.
What, you too lazy to actually play the game now? Want everything to be given to you for free?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
No wonder they are trying to get more money out of it. As for real money letting you buy stuff, that has of course been possible already via PLEX. What's interesting and is probably the major motivation for this store is that it lets people use PLEX for something that doesn't renew someone's subscription. Without it PLEX are just early payments for subscriptions.
The newsletter has been taken a little out of context though, it was basically just one employee's opinion in a newsletter that was specifically meant for controversial topics (the disclaimer apparently said so, but was removed in the initial leak). Next there's the leaked e-mail. I've heard people mention it was editted (actual lines inserted) but I'm not sure if that is actually the case, given that multiple people had already confirmed its authenticity.
The real worry that players seem to have though, is that CCP has for days now not been willing to answer the simple question "Will MTs also be used for non-vanity items", that fact that they dodged that question even in their devblog has a lot of people worried that they did in fact plan to intoduce non-vanity items in the NeX.
The raging is pretty hilarious by the way. I was in Jita on an alt and it was fun to see 328492384 lasers shooting at the monument, local chat going crazy and there actually being a livestream of the whole thing with EVE-Radio on. EVE really has a 'special' community :D
...and there goes any excitement I had about renewing my sub once the expansion went live.
I suppose with the PLEX (and that damn "strategy guide") people were already able to buy stuff in-game for real life money, but this is just so damn... blatant. I don't know what else to say about it.
One by one I see games and series I love succumb to the lure of microtransactions and pay-to-win while I stand by telling myself that there will always be another game to take it's place.
I suppose I should just stop being so damn melodramatic and just accept that the hobby I fell in love with years ago just isn't the same anymore.
Maybe once I finish reveling in nostalgia I'll go read a book or something instead...
If you mean RMT, sure, there's some, and they fight it when possible. There's some RMT in every MMO.
If you mean PLEX, you've completely missed the point.
You can only find virtual riots on EVE.... I will miss that game...
Okay, so you really seem to not understand where things come from in Eve.
Basic lesson:
Just like the food you eat doesn't magically appear in the grocery store, items in Eve are made by players, commonly referred to as "industrialists".
The ship that you fly was built by another player, using minerals mined from asteroids or by reprocessing drops, and salvage gathered by yet another player, be it a new player salvaging where they can find ships or a mission runner salvaging in bulk. Depending on the tech level of the ship, there were also datacores from research agents, likely gained by yet another player who ground standings with a corporation to get access to those research agents, plus other salvage gained by other player corporations that operate in wormholes that they explored to find.
The people flying and blowing up ships are only the tip of the wedge. Logistics wins wars, in RL and in Eve.
Years ago, played EVE for about 7 months. Still get invites to activate my account for a few days and see all the great changes. Not likely. On the one hand like WoW, on the other hand like a spreadsheet. But overall like a million scam jobs all after you at once. EVE players were always up in arms about something.This sounds a bit more serious though. I think in the end micro transactions will mark the final decline of the MMO. Playing online with "friends" was once a novelty. Now it is more of a pain than anything else. Offline games have a lot more to offer me, I know that. Except for forums filled with outrage ... think I'll nip over and watch the lynch mobs.
Of course they're spamming chat, but they're doing more than that. They're currently bombarding a major trade station at Amarr VIII (Emperor Family Academy). It's at 0% armor and 0% structure, but still standing - the structure is invulnerable. In Jita, they're bombarding a statue near the major trade station at Jita IV - Caldari Navy Assembly Plant. It's kinda silly but the screenshots are impressive; so IMO is the thought that these guys are throwing billions of ISK in ships away in protest (as CONCORD takes them out one by one).
Finding God in a Dog
I've been playing continuously since August of 2003. I earn enough doing very little to pay for 3 accounts with ISK and I have a ton of experience in the game - market manipulation, industrial stuff, sciency stuff, sov warfare, solo hunting, massive capital fleet warfare etc etc.
My take on this is twofold:
1) Carebear tears will become a LOT more succulent
o/ --- this is Jim, a well-skilled player from 2005. Well, not REALLY. The real Jim sold the account on ebay to the new owner who has only played a trial account with a friend of his who has been in the game for about a year.
Jim just bought a Nyx (supercarrier hull costs roughly 15 billion ISK) with real money from CCP's Noble Exchange. He's kitted it out with some officer mods, lots of deadspace stuff and has a clone with expensive Slave implants - His friend told him that this setup is ungankable - he's close to invulnerable - can't even be warpscrambled amirite? All save the hull were bought with ISK from selling PLEX in the game. In total lets say he's got 24 BILLION between the ship and mods - . Lets say he bought 84 PLEX at $1469.58US (3 packs of 28 PLEX for $489.86 each pack) plus lets say conservatively (based on the Monacle price) $1000 for the hull. $2469.58 US Dollars for Jim's shiny supertoy.
Wanting to try out his new supertoy, Jim goes hunting belt rats in a .4 system. He kills a few cruiser rats, some battlecruiser rats and lots of frigate rats, all of whom die to his unending fleets of tech 2 drones. A few people pass through the system and time passes with the wrecks of the rats piling up.
o7 --- this is me. I pass through his system and check the directional scanner. I see a Nyx on scan with no POS. Only wrecks are bog-standard belt rats, not the deadspace variants, so he's not in an anomaly or mission. I zip through the belts in my Broadsword and quickly locate him. Landing within the range of my infinite point, I immediately engage, set my orbit and yell on teamspeak about the Nyx I just tackled.
Jim doesn't really know whats happening so he tries to warp away - the Nyx is invulnerable to warp jamming right? Not for the heavy interdictor's infinite point. He goes nowhere. Thinking he can quickly dispatch me he launches a bunch of fighter bombers. The fighter bombers impotently orbit my broadsword, missing each shot because my ship is so small - the fbs can't hit it and when they DO hit they do very little damage. I pop my cyno.
The system quickly fills with bad men in big ships. Jim's Nyx dies in about a minute and a half. Being the hero tackler I get a bunch of expensive mods for my trouble and go home a richer man.
Imagine how Jim feels. Oh, the sweet, sweet tears of the Carebear.
2) Shipbuilders just got screwed
o7 -- me again, this time on an industrial alt. I've spent a year in this alliance building my trust in them and theirs in me. Months of effort has gotten me a system with sov 5 and I've put up a well protected large pos. Weeks have passed while my Nyx was just a baby in the CSAA
I finally completed my first Nyx build in my system. This has rolled out and is now in a travel fit, but noone is buying. All my time and effort were wasted by CCP, who just *poof*ed a Nyx for Jim, as detailed above. My tears are not so succulent to my taste :(
"In the end, there is simply no weapon more devastating than the truth, delivered in just the right way." - tnk1
CCP have stated they only care about player actions, and could care less about what we have to say or feel. That leaves only one possible response on my part - unsubscribe and protest hard as my remaining time counts down. I'll then be taking a holiday from Eve lasting six months or so to play other games. Then I'll check back on Eve, and if I see what I expect, I'll never ever return. The hell with you CCP! I won't stick around as you destroy the sandbox and shit all over your customers!
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
CCP has shown nothing but contempt and disrespect to their subscribers. They have put out an unplayable product, but more importantly, they've betrayed their committements to the playerbase. In the past they have promised that there would be no "Pay to win" problem, that no game affecting or altering items would be introduced(previously it was stated that only cosmetic items would be open for real money purchase). They are now unwilling to even communicate with us in a manner that any reasonable person could call sufficient. The responses that we have received have been demeaning and condescending, such as them chiding us for not grasping their comparisson to a person in real life paying $1,000.00 USD for a pair of jeans. (seriously?)
At the end of the day, the mass of the problem can be summed up in one statement. They cannot answer the simple question: "Are you planning to offer game affecting items for real money microtransaction?" As silly as this may seem to the casual, non-gamer reader, this is a serious concern to those of us who pay a monthly subscription fee to play this game.
The rage has continued for a few days now and it's no longer just about the unbelievable initial MT lineup that they put in. The focus has shifted almost completely to how CCP seems unable to handle the PR disaster, and how there appears to be a force as of yet unknown at the higher levels of the company that puts emphasis on maximizing revenue and screwing the playerbase over in the process. The senior producer is widely acknowledged as a nice guy and having a similar mindset to veteran players, but the devblog he posted reeks of committee writing and of the CEO in particular, according to some CSM members. This kind of strange behavior and obvious businesstype meddling, in addition to widely known inhouse problems like a serious lack of professionalism and poor quality of workmanship, has the players worried that CCP as a company is turning into a catastrophic trainwreck and the future and wellbeing of their beloved hobby is in danger.
(grind for ISK)->PLEX->AUR->items and whoa were does CCP take a cut in all this?
CCP takes its cut when the PLEX was generated. It is not possible for a PLEX to exist in the game without a player plunking down ~$15. You can obfuscate the trading equation as much as you want. As long as the word "PLEX" is somewhere in the chain, CCP has received its cut.
It's just a matter of time before they straight out sell skill points or a boost to skill point training speed.
As for the rage over this. Most people may not quite understand the culture of EVE. Though it has extremes in all directions, it has always been a great exception to every other MMO out there. Hell, even every other developer out there. If ever there was a company and an MMO with ambition, dedication, and respect for players, it was EVE. Regardless of what the reality of their changes are or will be, it is very easy to see how any changes toward the dark side can be perceived as a very real and very upsetting backstab. Especially for people who have spent many of the last eight years of EVE playing it, building corporations, building alliances, building communities. Like they began saying awhile ago "EVE IS REAL". And so are the feelings of betrayal and frustration.
It is not possible for a PLEX to exist in the game without a player plunking down ~$15.
Wrong. CCP can make all the PLEX it wants out of thin air, offer it for sale, and flood the market. And CCP can buy all the PLEX it wants and take it off the market with its magical ISK printing press. That's the fun of being a "Central Bank". One of the points of PLEX is providing a way to fiddle with the "money supply" without engaging in direct ISK transactions. Think of PLEX as a sort of Treasury Note, except it doesn't pay interest.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
People are also concerned that the items offered for cash will be better than those available through in game means - that it won't just be an easy way to get a ship, but the only way to get a *better* ship
"Players are angry that CCP has blatantly lied about their intentions and have responded to these customers concerns by basically telling us they know what we want better than we do."
This has always been CCP's attitude towards the EVE player base, even when they setup that silly community council. I mean, it is their game and they have every right to do as they please with it, but it would do them well to remember that EVE is kept alive in large part by a loyal long-term player base, many of whom have multiple subscriptions simultaneously.
On the other hand, RMT has always been a large part of EVE. The oft talked about Goonfleet of old was partially funded by kickbacks it got through referrals for game time card/code purchases, which was re-invested into game time cards/codes and then sold for in-game currency. Many, many players buy game time codes just to sell them in-game, and many players pay their subscriptions by buying game time with EVE currency (ISK). A while back CCP even implemented a method to convert game time codes into an EVE item (Pilot License Extension, or PLEX) that can be sold on the EVE market and used to add play time to your account.
CCP has been walking a fine line with real money trading for many years, and if the players have finally come out and said that they've gone too far, then they've probably gone too far.
Just to give you some idea of the kind of people protesting about an overpriced monocle that they don't have to buy.
There was recently a multipage thread in the EvE Online general discussion forum calling for all protestors to email / ring / sms CCP's company investors. Their emails and phone numbers were then listed.
CCP management Quote
“what our players do and less of what they say. Innovation takes time to set in and the predictable reaction is always to resist change”
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My Reply
If I lived in Iceland and wouldn’t have to fly on a plane to throw you assholes a beat down I would.
It would be like the rock with a bat to your face for being such assholes but its ok the consequences of your actions wont be realized with my punches or the other players but the with lost revenue you have when thousands of us quit.
No worries rich assholes I am too poor to afford your fuking monocle and too poor to afford a plane ticket to wup your rich asshole assess for rubbing it in my nose so I and thousands of other poor people protests will be unsubing your rich asshole game
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CCP management Quote
”After 40 hours we have already sold 52 monocles, generating more revenue than any of the other items in the store.”
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My Reply
Check how many people canceled there sub CCP shit heads, you have forgotten that the majority of your player base are not RICH and you alienated the majority of them Eve has 2 years at best with your horrible management ever sense sov changes you have been and idiot factory that chases away your players
In ending if you think I am wrong, look at any other mmo that has single micro transaction item that costs over 30 dollars. None
You people are fucking out of your minds and you are just raping idiots for there cash while pissing off the majority of the players.
PS: Eat shit and die and I don’t give fuk just like i am nobody your nobody to me anymore too fukheads
The rollout of this past expansion has been amazingly clumsy. At a time when they should be garnering all kinds of positive reaction for the new avatar interface, instead they're scoring ridicule for the ham-fisted introduction of microtransactions, which contradicts numerous longstanding promises to players. They've managed to turn a victory into a fail, and magnify that by their reluctance to communicate with players over the last week.
A long but very well constructed analysis of the problems can be found here: http://eve.beyondreality.se/NeXCQResponse.html
Insight into CCP as a company: http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/CCP-Games-Reviews-E159347.htm
Suddenly it makes sense why Lulzsec DDOS'ed CCP last tuesday.
The internal letter was leaked that same day...
Ill be back when its free to play this game is going down the toilet fast and they are just trying to milk it for every penny on the way down.
Eve will be FTP in like 2 years max it pretty much reached a points its no longer worth a sub, look at DDO, LOTR, EQ2, Conan, Warhammer online all of these are FTP what makes eve so special?
Exactly unless they really do a 180 this Eve isn’t worth 2 dollars a month
Yes, and the moment something is better in a PvP game, it will become the standard.
Starcraft 2 and Blizzard sucks nigger dick. Nice game faggot, its unbalanced shit. Now you're going to sell us a fucking expansion?
I hope their families get face fucked by nigger clowns in the night.
Yes, CCP could do that, at the cost of exactly this kind of uproar.
You may have noticed that the economist's reports have been fact-checked by the players each time they come out, often with a deeper understanding than those that have database access have?
How long did it take the players to figure out that technetium was going to be the bottleneck, and start strategic moves for tech moons?
ememememememem
Is slashdot ever going to fix their broken RSS?
The rage stems from the fact that CCP, which has historically been one of the most open and honest game developers on the planet, has been caught in what looks like a boldfaced lie. It started with the Aurum store opening with Incarna's release, then the last volume of Fearless, their internal newsletter, was leaked, then they did a crappy job at putting out that fire by making an empty apology and then making a long-awaited announcement that essentially told the playerbase nothing, and then Hilmar's email surfaced and we have yet to hear anything. CCP has stated that the Aurum store will be kept to vanity items only, but these leaked documents seem to directly contradict that. CCP has told us that Fearless was looking at the argument from an exaggerated point of view and didn't detail any actual specific plans, but they have yet since its leak actually definitively stated that the Aurum store will be kept to vanity items only.
There are three general models for reasonably-profitable MMO's out there: pay-to-play, pay-to-win, and pay-to-accessorize. Pay-to-play (P2P) means the players must explicitly give money to the game developer every month in order to maintain active account status, and is employed by most successful MMO's including World of Warcraft and EVE. Pay-to-win (P2W) means the players have the option to give the game developer extra money in exchange for in-game items that offer an advantage over other players, or at the very least they cause it to be a fast track to the same items that everybody can gain by playing the game themselves, and is employed by most free-to-play games such as Battlefield Heroes and APB. Pay-to-accessorize (P2A) means the players have the option to give the game developer extra money in exchange for in-game accessories and vanity items that don't actually offer an advantage in gameplay.
Free-to-play (F2P) usually comes about when a game does not have the appeal or simply isn't good enough to sustain enough monthly subscriptions to be profitable. APB was a good example of that. Their developer went out of business and the game was sold to a company that owns and maintains several F2P online games, and it is now sustained by a P2W model. Team Fortress 2, on the other hand, has been wildly successful in the P2P market. So successful, in fact, that it had probably tapped out the market and sales were dwindling because everybody owned it already, and it was a one-time purchase with no monthly fees. It has been converted to F2P and follows the P2A model with a microtransaction store that sells hats and other crap like that, and now Valve is making ridiculous amounts of money off it again.
The F2P model works for many games as there's not much difference between playing the game to earn items or paying real money to gain them more quickly. Don't write me off as some stupid fanboy when I say this, but EVE is different. Half of what makes EVE such an intriguing game is the market which is almost entirely player-driven. Every item you buy on the market -- be it a ship, a gun, ammunition, drones, whatever -- was built by a player from blueprints that were obtained by a player and minerals that were refined by a player from ore that was mined by a player. And that's not including the countless possibilities for traders to make money at every point along the way as they play the market and buy and sell these things before they actually become a final product, and even after. It's also not including the fact that most mining and production is done by groups of people with their own specializations that all help work towards the final product: miners mine in groups and drop their ore to a pilot in an industrial ship who transports it to a station and transfers it to a person with maxed refinery skills who then refines it and transfers them to people with good production skill who own copies of a blueprint owned by somebody with good blueprint research skills who then transfer the finally-finished product back to the industrial pilots to transfer them to a market where
D20, etc? Reember all the t3 stuff going on behind the scenes? Cheating by devs? etc a few years ago? People we soo angrrrry and then got over it. They all said they'd quit and didn't. Same thing. 2 or 3 people will quit, and everyone will continue to play on and forget. Eq2 players did it, WOW players did it. In fact the only time players actually manned up and quit was the NGE in Galaxies. in a month, no one will be talking about EVA again until the next crisis that won't really do anything.
Whilst eve-o has been irrelevant since about 2006 when it began taking a week off work and 1000 people to do anything of any relevance it is always reassuring to see posts like this and know that my IG sig http://tinyurl.com/6gzbyve from years ago is still applicable.
CCP currently has over six hundred employees spread across three international offices who are developing three videos games. They made commitments to strategic partners. That all amounts to many deep promises to keep. The subscriptions from EVE Online pays for the development of all three games.
Incarna was designed to introduce the EVE to a new generation of potential EVE players. A bold new universe that would appeal to gamer whom want to see their character avatars and apparently would put real dollars to purchase pixel apparel for the prices that are greater than the tangible goods located in the in online merchandise shop. CCP upper management sought the professional opinions of game industry consultants outside of the player community and company.
So with the advice of such esteemed outsiders it seems that pixel Monocles for $68 dollars would sell and it understandable that the playerbase emo rages and mass cancel subscriptions now. Let them blew off some steam. No need to communicate. Eventually everyone will drink the cool aid and buy the designer pants that CCP owns on their servers
Betting the farms on pixel Monocles and pants like this ...
It's just crazy.
-Fiend-
http://www.vendetta-online.com/
I like the game world. There are surprising twists that are not obvious during the demo, including mission trees opened to you based on your in-game behavior. The game is developed by a four-person team who have made this their full-time gig. Cost is $10/month, after the free demo.
This reaction was posted on internal forums from the head of the player-run Council for Stellar Management, a council set up by CCP to help them interact with the playerbase:
CEO Update: :ccp:
It's been a busy few days. You may have noticed: EVE is on fire and reeling, and not in the fun "we're at war and having space battles wheeee!!!" sense - though there are space battles taking place - but in the slightly more hysterical yet increasingly real "holy shit, CCP seems hellbent on becoming the next Sony" situation.
What The Fuck Has Happened?
First, some context. Within the course of about two weeks, CCP stunned the playerbase with a series of hijinks. First was the Golden Scorpion controversy, which CCP climbed down from - using AUR to buy a Scorpion with a golden paintjob from the ether. Then there was the $99 Monetization scandal, where CCP announced that they wanted a hundred bucks a year for "3rd Party Apps" which might also include fansites. Again, CCP climbed down in the face of howls of protest. The Alliance Tournament Final ended up rigged, which wasn't CCP's fault but infuriated many of the viewers (I thought it was funny, but w/e). Then Incarna was released with $70 Monocles, and EN24 leaked the Greed Is Good CCP internal newsletter, which showcased their apparent love of all things microtransaction.
The real controversy, of course, is not the silliness of a $70 monocle, though that does seem to indicate the venality and greed of the CCP higher-ups to many players. The controversy is the shadow lurking behind the monocle, hinted at in the Greed is Good newsletter: gold in the sandbox, a "pay to win" gold-ammo situation in EVE. Pay to Win is common enough in Free to Play MMOs, and quite profitable, but the fear among players is that CCP is trying to meld both subscription and FtP revenue models into an especially shitty, expensive product.
A product that allegedly is busy melting down ATI video cards. :cripes:
So hot on the heels of Greed is Good, CCP posted an absolutely comical "please be nice to us" thread on eve-o, which has become the largest threadnaught in history. This went about as well as could be expected; reports of mass-unsubbings became rampant.
In order to try to staunch the bleeding, CCP Zulu posted a devblog which has now famously equated virtual widgets with real-life goods. PC Gamer has picked up on this blog, and not in a good way. The tone of the blog and the follow up post, which amounts to 'shut up ugh :colbert:' is readily apparent.
Meanwhile, Jita, Amarr and other hubs have been brought to virtual shutdown by 'protests' of pubbies shooting statues and overloading the nodes while howling for CCP's blood, mad about the NeX, the Captains Quarters, Incarna sucking, the spectre of gold ammo, or just setting things on fire for the sheer primal joy of watching everything burn.
And to think, it gets worse!
Last night, while I was on Eve Radio discussing the unfolding crisis with some other CSMs, another leak broke: a global email sent from Hilmar, CCP's CEO, congratulating the company on the 'successful launch' of Incarna and selling a whopping 52 Monocles. Most froth-inducing was the statement that:
"Currently we are seeing _very predictable feedback_ on what we are doing. Having the perspective of having done this for a decade, I can tell you that this is one of the moments where we look at what our players do and less of what they say. Innovation takes time to set in and the predictable reaction is always to resist change."
So that went well. CCP appears to be leaking like a sieve. Given the recent authenticated reviews of the company that have popped up on Glassdoor during the past month, that's not a surprise.
What's happened here is a whole nexus of rage from many corners of the playerbase was ignited by one catalyst. Some are angry that Incarna has no real content for veteran players. Some are angry about NeX vanity items being too expensive; some ar
Personally, I wouldn't pay more than $50 for an imaginary monocle.
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
Even if they lose half their players, if they remaining half are spending 4x the money on the game it's a net win for the company. Just ask SOE. They can keep a game running with 100 subscribers left if those subscribers are willing to pay enough.
Well that stuff is still obtained by players via game mechanics, not weaved from thin air what it would be when CCP would sell it straight.
Blizzard has done the same thing, selling some special mounts as micro transactions only, with no option for earning them in-game.
But Blizzard gets away with it because WoW addicts are zealots.
Charge me micro transactions XOR a monthly fee. To do both is blatant double-dipping and pisses me off.
They are essentially using EVE to fund their other projects. I have unchecked "load station environment" and will not participate in the $68 "micro" transactions. I came to space to fly my Internet Spaceship, show off my epeen and blow shit up. Not ambulate my fat ass off and wear fancy clothes. I am a POD pilot in EVE. I do not plan on ever leaving my pod.
1. Incarna Launches riddled with hardware performance issues for some as well as exorbitantly priced Clothing/accessory.
2. People rage about prices, and performance.
3. Internal CCP newsletter leaks that strongly suggest non-vanity MT coming to eve.
4. People rage about leaked PDF.
5. CCP Pann makes a thread apologizing for not responding earlier and puts forward that our chief complaint is the prices, which is no longer the case following the leaked PDF.
6. People overwhelmingly flood CCP Pann's thread with the question of whether non-vanity MT will be coming to eve. All CCP say on the point is they cannot answer.
7. In-game protests start aimed at disrupting the trade hubs and spreading word about their concerns.
8. A out-of-character devblog with a by-line of CCP Zulu is posted. The devblog only addressed the PDF in saying that is not a verbatim indication of their plans but is more a discussion. The dev-blog also addresses the prices of the current items, but nothing about the concern of future MT items.
9. Protests/forum rage continues.
10. An eve-radio show with several CSM members(current & past) goes through the issue. CSM members state the the CCP Zulu devblog is out of character and that they have been stonewalled as far as all the recent controversy has been concerned.
11. During the radio show the e-mail of hillmar's is released, which quickly ends any contemplation to CCP's intentions and stance.
12. YOU ARE HERE.
Stolen from Iamien post here : http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1537932
Being one of the people pissed about this, this is just a very quite overview. If you read the newsletter, dev blog, and email it's easy to understand why the players are very pissed off myself included. It started with the mega-transactions, unstable release, broken promises, and than we started getting leaked information than shit hit the fan.
I'm quitting Eve. The first one who gives me 1 Tritanium can have all my stuff. I've set up a contract in-game -- search for "Tritanium".
EVE has earned a reputation for being a ultra hard core game, and many of its players see the microtransactions as a direct threat to the purity of the game's nature.
One thing to remember is CCP is NOT Blizzard. They have done well by catering to an extreme niche that World of Warcraft and its umpteen clones don't. It seems that CCP is willing to piss off its core players in hopes of luring members of the WoW crowd (especially the types who will drop money in a cash shop) in with the recent Incarna expansion. This is a very dangerous idea because there is little reason for your average WoW / casual gamer to even think about EVE. This is doubly true with TOR on the horizon.
Rumor has it that CCP is unable to pay the bills because they've over committed to delivering both WOD and the other title they're working on, and so they're desperately trying to fleece the EVE player base. If they're not careful, they'll shot themselves in the foot.
The developer doesn't frown upon the selling of in-game money for real-world cash, right? Assuming so, you technically already can buy in-game stuff with real world money...
I don't hate the Captains Quarters per say, but this expansion has brought nothing new to the game that I couldn't have lived without and the developers continue to ignore flaws and bugs that the community has repeatedly requested be addressed. CCP's apparent intent to start selling standings and skill points for real money micro-transactions will, in my opinion, completely nullify the time and effort that older players have spent playing Eve. For me, it has taken me roughly four years of playing to get my character to his current capabilities. If they continue with their apparent plan of action, CCP will put into place a way for new players to surpass my skills when they create their account simply by paying a few bucks more. In my opinion, that's unacceptable.
As a result, I canceled the automatic renewal on both of my accounts last evening. I also have enough ISK to buy roughly three to four PLEX cards at current prices, so I could potentially extend my playtime out with that, if I so desire. If CCP decide to make changes that I feel address my concerns, I will be more than willing to re-subscribe. I don't want anyone's head on a platter or to crush the company into the ground. I've just decided they are going in a direction I don't like. I've sent them messages with the account cancelations explaining my position. They are a business first and foremost, and thus have always had the intention of turning a profit and I don't hold that against them. That being said, I don't think alienating a portion of your older and more established customer base in an effort to increase profit margins is a sound business plan.
Shut up brain or I'll stab you with a Q-Tip. - Homer Simpson
This needs a +5
This will send subscribers packing in droves because there is no business.
Their customers will just buy it straight out instead of buying plex to trade.
Problem is you can pay for anything in eve with real money anyway. The difference is that you buy it from game farming companies in China who typically blitz games with 'bot's, employ child labour exploitation or even slavery and are often money laundering fronts for much much worse organisations. If you can buy pretty much anything illegitimately then what's wrong with at least getting it from a clean source and help fund further in-game development?
Sidebar: check out any MMO type stuff that EA have their hands in. Anything most of the larger publishers put out is much like this.
...
Here's an example using Black Box / EA Canada's "Need For Speed: World"
They inflict largely unfinished software on users who then pay for the privilege of eternal beta testing, but ignore their community almost completely. The game's producers are no better than corporate shills, and the development team[s] operate in a total vacuum with no communication with their player base [and this is in fact their corporate policy].
They enforce a level cap to enable "demo" play to get users hooked, then they require real money continue playing.
They then rename the game to "free2play" but keep premium items which can place a brand-new player at the highest level of competition available only for cold, hard cash. Users who paid to get in before this receive no dispensation or thanks for funding the game's introduction [a.k.a. elsewhere in the universe as apha testing].
They create an in-game currency but then render it useless by making big-ticket items unavailable by that means, going so far as to remove the "free" [in-game cash] items and replace them with real-money only ones. They also insult users' intelligence by providing an "inventory" for performance items, but make the inventory one-way: you can't put things back once they're taken out, so performance items [the good ones of which are exceedingly rare unless you dump hundreds to thousands of dollars of real money in] are all single-use, unless you decide to "sell" them for even more insulting amounts of useless in-game currency.
There is no in-game economy; there is no trading between users; there isn't even trading for a user with themself.
While all this is going on, they set their real-cash prices at ridiculous levels [which are ridiculous but not as bad as EVE here], and make the most necessary or desireable items available only by a system of gambling that encourages "hardcore" users to pour up to a few thousand dollars into a game that's not really entered let alone left beta yet, so they can remain competitive with other paying users.
Performance affecting items have a next-to non-existent drop rate to all payers, paying or not. Free players can't compete beyond the lower levels [which are saturated with continual turnover of brand new players who all ragequit by level 20], and high-level paid players [paid or not] are frustrated by the lack of competition and the frequent saturation of the game by blatant cheaters.
Real cash items are one-upped every few weeks or a month by a new for-pay item that blows everything else out of the water, ruining all competition completely, over and over again, for all users.
Meanwhile fundamentally game-breaking bugs and missing basic features [and I mean really basic, like programmable controls or actual graphics options, which all PC games should have, period] are completely ignored by the producers and development team who instead focus on things like adding more useless items that have no more than cosmetic value since they can't be used for actual gaming competition by users.
This is the future of online gaming, nay, gaming in general, where publishers completely miss the point of things like respecting their community, where the "micro" in "microtransaction" leads to games costing users an order of magnitude or several greater [I know of people who have spent >$2,000 USD on NFSW] than an off-the-shelf single player franchise title that itself would cost several orders of magnitude greater to produce than the online game.
The publisher puts less effort in, less money in, shafts their userbase, then makes a crapload more money off it than a traditional title would likely make.
There are few industries other than gaming where customers and fans are so often willing to be bent over to take it up the proverbial backside whil
Gametime they can use to build up mutiple accounts, because in EvE multi-accounts are legal. Mutiple accounts mean more isk, which means more power in game.
You can also use them to straightout buy powerful characters.
So yes you are buying in game power with PLEX.
Always has been that way, nothing changing here.
Where else you think you get you fix? Why you gots to run you mouths off? Don't you know what happen to a ho who get uppity?
Y'all remember Busta McCrabbe, and how he got they fancy airs and graces cause he be a "Admiral"? He only be a Admiral cause I say he a Admiral! You know what bein' an Admiral mean? It mean he slap the rest of you bitches around so I don't have to get off this fine mink covered recliner and do it my own self.
Where he now? Where he at, after he say he want "more respect"? He an ensign now, giving the Vulcan Sex Grip to bumpy-heads over in the Ballsack Nebula.
You hos want that? You want I cut you off? You think you got a fleet at you back, you think you got friends? I own that fleet! I own those friends! You think you can get by on Gratuitous Space Battles by your own self? You think that keep the shakes away? They ain't even got no backstory!
Now, why you want to get me riled up like this? Why you have to get me so angry? You know I just wants to takes care of you. You know I loves all my stable, you know I good to you. Just you settle down, pay me what's mine, and I gets you a fine new blouse, purple rayon, nothing but the best for my hos. But you gots to earn it. You gots to earn it.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
The whole game is one big microtransaction, where players exchange real money for skill points every month. What the players are really raging about is losing the advantage that skill points, T2 BPOs and other "veteran perks" give them over newer players.
Nobody force people to use the plex for the new "economy" - just like blizzard dident force anybody to buy the infamous sparklepony. -and so what if plex prices rise to 400-500 mil - - doing level 4 missions you should be able to get 60-75+ mil/hour. - Im so sick and tired about the whiners in every mmo that i come across.
In this case the rage is misplaced. It fails to take into account something we generally call implementation. Let's say I want to buy a Kinetic Armour Hardener. I go to the market and find the cheapest item. I right click the item and select "buy". I enter the number I want to buy and then get to choose between "buy with ISK" and "buy with credit card". If I do the latter, the database gives me the item from the market, credits the producer/seller with ISK and also credits CCP's bank account with real $. The only thing that didn't happen here is a deduction of ISK from the purchasers in-game bank balance.
So tell me what's the difference between doing that and my buying a PLEX, selling it on the market and then buying the item with the ISK? There is no difference whatsoever. The market hasn't been circumvented at all. Producers still profit from producing. The buyer still gets his item. CCP probably don't make a whole lot of extra $, because they're already making that from PLEX.
In conclusion I think this is just a huge fuss based on some erroneous assumptions about what CCP are actually going to do.
So lets go over how you can buy items in game currently.
You gain ISK, which are the in game currency doing missions or what have you as you would expect. You think use that ISK to purchase all other items that can be purchased.
OR
If you choose to do so, you can buy a PLEX, which is a certificate for 30 days of game time basically. You can legally bring that into the game and sell it on the open market for in game ISK, this isn't new. Its probably about a year old, but its not something people aren't used to at this point.
So ... what people are complaining about ... they are just too stupid to realize is already a legitimate part of the game. Its already trivial to buy game items for real world cash. I suck at the game, but like dicking around in it so thats how I get my stuff, then of course being a bad player I promptly get ganked by some griefer and lose it all if I don't get out fast enough.
EVE is about strategy, just having superior equipment doesn't give you even a little advantage against other players. Might help you beat down an NPC, but in my experience, EVE gives so many ways to fight that there is simply no way you can buy yourself into being protected from a better player.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Eve's economy is an interesting beast. They are one of the few companies who employ a full time PhD economist. In fact he publishes a quarterly report much like any publicly traded company does. CCP benefits from the sale of Pilot's License Extension (PLEX) using real-world cash, which are traded for in-game items. These items are sold for in-game currency and eventually exchanged with CCP for a 1 month game play extension. In other words CCP has been in the Real Money Trade (RMT) business for years. And a large part of the EVE universe make enough in-game currency each month (ISK) in order to play for "free", barring the cost of their time. Since the inception of Eve there's been a set hierarchy - the folks who have been playing the longest have the greatest advantage because item use is directly related to Skill Points (SP) invested and player skill. Obviously nobody can purchase skill, but neither could anyone purchase SP to gain an advantage, or more importantly to close the advantage gap with older players. RMT for better ships or SP would change all that. Because the sale of characters is allowed there is a secondary market and many players depend on "baking" a kind of character for many months and selling it for in-game currency as well. RMT for SP would also impact this market. Just as the "old guard" have no interest in CCP allowing the re-release of unique and limited supply items, neither do they wish for the introduction of any other mechanisms that could close economic or skill gaps. This is one of the reasons Goonswarm was so very reviled with their entry into the EVE universe - they tried to play nice and were ignored or mocked by older players, so the Goons invented tactics to counter the older player's play style, resulting in a huge upset in the balance of power and required game play. This is more of the same and although the source is CCP, the reaction is the same. Nobody wants change as long as they have an advantage over everyone else.
Wow, sounds like our US Gov.....not to go political. If it's bad for BIZ to do it, isn't it bad for Gov to do it?
Tweaking the supply of high-demand in-game items attacks gold farmers directly *and* adds another revenue stream to the game. Why shouldn't the owner of an MMO take steps to reduce the siphoning of profits from their IP by gold farmers and simultaneoulsy exploit it themselves as a revenue source? It will no doubt alter the game in unfavorable directions for some fraction of their subscribers, and some fraction of these subscribers will be lost, but I'm certain that the addictive nature of the game will limit those kinds of losses. End result is more revenue from their IP, and reduced dissipation of potential profit by gold farmers, at the cost of some fraction of their subscriber base.
It's much more complicated than this, and right now a lot of players are too enrage over the poor implementation to see the big picture.
If you're easily bored by explanations, jump right to the last paragraph, if not, read the rest too.
A bit of a background is needed here to properly understand what's going on.
I won't bore you with much detail (as incredible as this sounds, this below is the short version).
Since many years ago, for the majority of the game's life actually, CCP (the game makers) attempted to curtail attempts of RMT ("Real Money Trading") - and mostly succeeded in reducing the frequency of it happening - by allowing players to sell GTC ("Game Time Cards") for ISK ("InterStellar Kredits", the in-game currency).
This meant some people were getting the ISK they wanted without having to buy from "goldfarmers" (so to speak), while some players could afford to "play for free" (not pay any real-life cash for their subscriptions). It didn't take long for CCP to introduce a secure trading method, which became the only allowed exchange option, with the game time automatically applied to the purchasing account (to prevent RMTers from buying GTCs and selling those for cash).
This became popular enough that nearly a quarter of the total active accounts were actually subscribed using this particular method. Or, in other words, they were seeing a more than 30% increase in subscription counts because of it.
About two and a half years ago, CCP decided to introduce a new way to trade GTCs, by allowing players to split a purchased 60-day GTC into two 30-day PLEX ("Pilot License EXtension") in-game items, which could be traded on the in-game free market.
What CCP didn't expect however was just how popular PLEX would become.
TOO popular, in fact.
It didn't take long for the player base to realize that investing ISK into PLEX could be viewed as a hedge against inflation, as a security blanket for the time they might not afford to pay real-life cash for a while, or even just as yet another good to be traded by the ultra-rich (in ISK) players.
Because of that, the demand to purchase PLEX was outstripping the need for PLEX to be used on the spot, so the price on the open market was a bit higher than what it would have been if it would only have been used as a subscription extension tool - and as such, the supply side (people purchasing it for cash to sell for ISK) obliged them, and increasing numbers of PLEX have been stockpiling in people's hangars.
The only data regarding this trend is quite old, from mid-August 2009 - a developer blog with some interesting graphs : http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=684
Players have speculated about just how many PLEX are now stockpiled, the most reserved estimates put a lower count of around 75,000 PLEX (real-life cash equivalent of around 1.3 million USD), with opinions split about the upper bound, but even 300,000 PLEX would not be difficult to believe (roughly 5.25 million USD), and some people claim it might be even higher.
Now, it should be pretty obvious as to why a company the size of CCP would be worried about "unclaimed" pre-paid subscriptions worth anything between 1 and 5 million dollars floating around inside their own game.
As they say, within this here lies the rub.
So they hatched a plan, this microtransaction deal.
It was by no means the first contingency plan, they tried various other methods first, anything from allowing people to use PLEX for other services that used to require a cash payment (like character transfers, for instance) up to holding donation drives for real-life aid, drives accepting both ISK and PLEX (to be converted by CCP into cash and donated on behalf of the player base to charity, without any tax breaks from it).
Obviously, that didn't work well enough, and the threat of financial liabilities growing ever larger in these uncertain economic times (and let's not forget, they're an Iceland-based softw
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Microtransactions and DLC are the primary reasons I play almost no video games these days. I played WoW until the began selling mounts in their store (I'm sure items are not too far off), and only buy games for PCs or Consoles that do not have any game impacting DLC. Vote with your wallets, people.
It is the whole point of the sandbox approach of players driving the storyline.
One player started a protest to sell his stock of surplus missiles. Others did it boost their e-peen, and some just because it was something different to do.
posting anon because I never played eve and don't know what its about and therefore have some geek cred/embarrassment issues but:
several alliances have declared players wearing the $68 item to be Kill On Sight
I will call this item a monocle because I heard it mentioned elsewhere, but I don't know.
Here is the question: how does anyone know richie rich is wearing a monocle if he is driving a battle ship? You don't have to respond to any "main screen turn on" hails if you don't want to, do you?
I've wanted the same thing, but there seems to be a fundamental problem with the concept, same as free Certification Authorities, third party DNS, and Bitcoin
It's not "Official" - there's no scarcity.
It's like playing open battlenet versus closed battlenet. Sure you can do it, but without the enforced scarcity and official recognition your efforts mean nothing.
That's really the bottom line: No-one envies your cool gold plated armor that took 500 hours to get. Because no-one envies it no-one will make the effort, and therefore no-one plays.
No, a PLEX is very useful in-game. You can add it to your account instead paying subscription fees so by buying and using 1 PLEX per month you can play EvE without paying any real-world money at all. Most people buy PLEX to let them run multiple accounts at the same time without having to pay multiple subscription fees. Some people run upwards of 5 accounts like this.
i will gank any AUR ship i see if such things will be available ...