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
Let the wife go to work, let the husband telecommute and take care of the children while working >:) I mean, come on, regular "daycare" centers aren't even that careful with the kids they supposedly take care of. I wouldn't mind being a "stay at home dad", actually, I think I'd enjoy it.
Yes. Really. Everey freaking GSM phone with every gorram GSM operator. That's the whole fracking point of STANDARDS.
Of course, across the pond in la-la-land, you would expect problems like that. Here, in Europe, you expect ANY GSM phone you pick up from ANY GSM shop to work with ANY GSM carrier.
The only difference between carriers and phones ? You might get it cheaper from the carrier's shop if you get a "locked to their network" one alongside a predetermined duration contract.
34 "High" population PvP servers 31 "Medium" population PvP servers 36 "Low" population PvP servers 17 "High" population regular servers 69 "Medium" population regular servers 13 "Low" population regular servers 22 assorted population density "special" servers = 222 servers
The total AVERAGE number of USERS on a server would therefore be in the 40k area. As for the activity level, I'd be seriously surprised if they manage to have over 10k concurent users online on any of them, more like 5k tops probably.
Banks help CIA spy, customers find out, sue banks, judge does not through out suit, gov plays "state secret" card for distance and/or to help the banks.
Quoth the parent, "I'll bet that less than 20% know when you put money in a bank they lend it out to someone else."
And apparently, YOU don't know that when you put money in the bank, they don't actually lend it to anybody, they ALREADY LENT IT way in advance, and multiple times. Here's how it works. A bank has, say 10 mil USD deposited with the central bank and somesuch first. They can now LOAN OUT at least 90 mil USD to people. Yes, they can loan out 80 mil USD they DON'T HAVE, and nobody wonders if that's wrong or not. Whenever you deposit money at a bank, they get to loan out up to 9 times more money to other people. Again, money that doesn't exist. But nobody's questioning that. If you ask "but how can this work", it's because not everybody comes in to cash out at the same time, and that people generally pay back way more as they borrowed first.
Basically, the whole banking system is a huge circular "I.O.U." system that's ever-expanding. Nothing more, nothing less.
First off... did you have a brainfart, or are you actually advocating USA ISOLATIONISM, on all fronts, economic, political and military ?!? You know it can never work nowadays, do you ? Not that I wouldn't just love to see the USA shut the hell up already and keep its nose out of other people's bussiness, work out internal issues first... but that will and could never happend.
Second... fiat currency is insignificant compared to the "virtual money" in circulation nowadays, at least 90% of today's "money" doesn't actually exist at all (with a pessimistic estimate of up to 98% of it being virtual money... yes, that's one "real, paper dollar" out every 50 in "circulation" in the worst case scenario, or one out of 10 in the best case scenario). And government has zero fucking control over it, because it declined it in favor of the banking industry, just like most countries on this stupid planet. I'd really love to see a "bank run" in the world of today, with the banking system's bubble burst wide open to its rotten core all across the globe, governments forced to make banking a state issue rather than a private one.
In order to have this whole "but sex is damaging to CHILDREN", you have to define "child". If by your definition, "child" means "person of an age under 18" as opposed to, say, "person of age under 12", then your argument about children not knowing, not thinking and not wanting sex is pretty far-fetched.
I distinctively remember myself in 3rd grade (so, about age 9-10) reading about male and female reproductive organs, about sexual intercourse and hygiene, pregnancy and child birth from a book (can't recall the title, but something like "sexual hygiene") I found in the house on one of the "hidden shelves". Before you ask, no, there were no pictures, just black and white "anatomical section" drawings. And I read that book BECAUSED I already KNEW what sex was, and I WAS interested in it. Where I knew about that ? Other chidlren, a couple of years older. Child. Under age 10. No media. Just other children. Your theory is so damn busted.
HOWEVER, you are partially right. Yes, if you insist in NOT having sexual education at all, and that from a very young age (8 might be too soon, 12 might be too late), then indeed, exposing SUCH a child to porn will cause problems. Pornography is not the answer, and pornography might be damaging to a child who has no clue what was going on. However, to a child that KNOWS what's going on, a child who was EDUCATED about what sex is, why people want to have sex, what the risks are if they (as a child) might want to do it... that child will look at porno as being simply entertainment not fact.
Translation ? Get mandatory "sex.ed." in all schools from the 5th grade the latest, maybe even 4th grade, and lay off the "porn is bad" attitude.
Heh. Really, really funny you shoud say that. I mean, seriously funny. Because... THEY ARE doing that:) Check out http://myeve.eve-online.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid =401 They call it "ambulation", everybody else just calls it "walking in stations".
1. Yes, the current state of "the stockmarket" sucks donkey balls, because there isn't any. It's all player-driven, and trust-based. No in-game support for a genuine stockmarket exists, we barely have three decent features: paying out dividends, corporation votes and voluntary share transfers. As you might have noticed that most developements in EVE were originally player suggestions... it usually takes at least a year to see it in-game if it's a decent and heavily requested feature, but I am sure we'll eventually get an actual stockmarket and many other corp-related tools.
2. Yes, the way the market is handled sucks even more, especially the recent nonsense with "contracts". They should just merge these two features into one single comprehensive whole, with the ability to buy/sell/trade/auction stuff everywhere in the galaxy from anywhere else, with extra rules and limitations based on personal/corp/alliance standing with the entity you interact with in that transaction. I have my doubts this will ever happend, though... but you never know.
3. The "monopoly" is all but broken in most of the cases. Everybody and his dog's mom can manufacture T1 or "find" named T1 gear by himself, and with a little bit of effort you can get just about anything T2 by yourself too. Sure, those that USED to have the monopoly have a financial / "first mover" advantage with their more efficient manufacture methods, but the days of 10000% markup are long-time gone.
4. Mineral pricing is the trickiest possible issue in EVE. It's not actually a free market, it has very "heavy" limits both on top and bottom for most of the individual minerals (the harshest caps are for "low end" minerals, least cap for "high ends"), but also a very narrow bottom AND top cap for an agregate lump of minerals of all kinds. You might be simply mistaking simple game mechanics and smart refiners and traders making a profit for "price fixing monopolies". If anything else just might, minerals simply CAN'T possibly be monopolised for anything but a very small timeframe and with huge effort.
5. So what if raw resources are infinite ? I'll tell you what resource is NOT infinite : manpower. That's right, for each and every bit and piece of "mineral" you see out there, somebody spent time getting it. EVE's economy is based on that resource mainly... namely, time of its users.
Funny you should say that, because EVE's economy IS based on work, and almost exclusively work.
Killing NPCs in asteroid belts for bounties and loot ? Work. Running missions ? Work. Mining ? Work. Setting up a scam ? Work. Ransoming people ? Work. Research ? Invention ? Manufacture ? Trading and/or hauling ? Begging people in Jita for money ? Work, work and all work.
Sure, different kinds of work, different amounts of "boring" versus "fun", different amounts of attention vs smarts needed, but work nevertheless, in all cases. So, sure... nobody wants to work in a game, but you pretty much have to, if you plan on getting in-game wealth. That's why you have so many "ISK farmers", that's why GTC prices have gone up through the roof, that's why there's so much scamming and whining going on. Because nobody wants to work, but everybody has to.
Do you know why no multiplayer "space sim" has completely realistic physics ? Because realistic physics SUCK for fun. And you want to have fun in a game, don't you ? That's why all "space sims" actually handle (ship motion-wise, that is) like a very futuristic "submarine sim" instead.
Yes, you can invoke Elite here, but that's not multiplayer, and couldn't be made multiplayer. There's also a work in progress game called "Infinity" which tries to pull this off, by mixing something resembling a BSG Viper sim (so, fighter combat in a small area of space) with an Elite-like handling of longer distances (only "local time" gets accelerated, and you seem to go FTL from "outside"). I'm curious if they can pull it off in a "fun" way eventually.
People associated with CCP (the company that runs EVE) have a few special case clauses to their gameplay. That doesn't include just the game developers, but also members of the volunteer staff, which have to sign a NDA to join the ranks of the bughunters, interstellar correspondents, moderators or be a part of event teams. CCP has a history of recruiting GMs and other staff from the ranks of volunteers, so there's enough incentive to join and perform well.
Now, the thing with "CCP accounts" is that they're public and have access to various "world manipulation" tools. All their actions are audited, and for over half a year (at least) there's something akin to an "Internal Affairs" department (like the one in the police) tasked with making sure they don't do anything fishy with their rights.
At the same time, all people ALSO MAY have (if they want) a regular account, which they pay for like any other person... and they are subject to the same rules and regulations like all other players. Moreso, they are subjected to one EXTRA rule: they are NOT allowed to disclose the fact they are "related" to CCP.
In case they slip up, common operating procedure is to, well, *cough* "enter them in a witness protection program". They get a new name, a new face, a fake corporation history. They lose all friends they might have made so far. They basically start from scratch relationship-wise... and that's the most horrible thing to lose in EVE, IMHO.
Sure, they might have some inside knowledge, and there have been a couple of occurences of abuse, but all short of ONE incident were very harshly punished (and of course, they no longer work for CCP, except that one incident I was talking about). CCP has been very forthcoming with player accusations, and as open to communication as can possibly be expected from a company. Of course, many people still feel "cheated" or think CCP is hiding something, but what would be the world without conspiracy theory nutjobs ?
So no... they CAN'T just do the stuff you're afraid they can do, and no, they don't get away with it.
In space, nobody can hear you scream......but their ship's computer can synthetize a realistic simulated audio track for their crew's listening pleasure.
Only 1.5 TB of porn ? That's like what, 350 DVDs worth ?
That's 85-125 USD for your entire collection in one single copy. Or make that a nice round 200$ for two sets of copies. So, where can I get two 1.5 TB HDDs for 100$ each ?
Sure, the "seek time" would suck, but then again who cares, it's porn, not like you'll die if you wait 15 more seconds before you start looking at it... or are you ?
Well, it's actually quite simple. EVERY ISP will "overbook" their bandwidth, and bet on users NOT using it to the fullest all the time, hence being able to get away with it. Do you honestly believe an ISP expected you, as a "home user", to use up your full bandwidth 24/7 a couple of years ago when they started offering "cheap, unlimited broadband" ? Hell no, they expected you, on average, to use up about as much as they priced the "cheap package" for, because (they believed) there wouldn't be that much data you could get over the internet that might possibly be interested in on a daily basis.
The problem is that nowadays, people are more likely to use up more bandwidth for longer periods of time... be it a torrent download, internet TV/radio or just old regular (but large) downloads. So now, the people who "run" the show find they can no longer get away with their overbooking... and instead of "getting more bandwidth" themselves, are going after the people who are likely to generate that increased bandwidth demand.
Pure, simple, unadulterated greed and lack of forethought. That's what's going on. Nothing else. Know what the flipside is ?
You, the consumer, ACTUALLY paying for what the bandwith you use up is worth, at the ISP side... plus their cut, of course, you can't expect an ISP to run on charity, or do you ?. In most cases, this would translate in heavily increased rates compared to those you're used to now. Or, you know, we can always go back to the "pay for traffic" model. That would work just fine... but then again, nobody would take it.
Of course, there's always the alternative of ISPs actually getting a lot more cheap broadband, but that requires infrastructure and indvestment, and in any profit-driven economy, this is not all that good for bussiness, especially when the current model "works just fine" (for them).
Wow, already -1, Flamebait ? I'll take it, nevertheless.
SOMEBODY has to test new technology. Sure, you can test it recklessly and without much regard to human rights (read: cheaply), or you can test it thoroughly in simulated environments and then strictly on volunteers and/or terminal patients, with the utmost possible care possible (read: expensively). That doesn't change the fact that no technology is bug-free from its first prototype, nor perfect from its conception.
The matter WHO you test it on is a matter of responsability of developers. The technology itself isn't "evil", it's the methods of the developers/testers that MIGHT BE greedy or corrupt. But they don't NEED to be.
In order for something to be "dead" it needs to be "alive" first, then lose that quality. Human doctors can make such "minute mistakes" too, that wouldn't show up on a "dummy test".
Personally, right now, I'd rather put my life on the line to a human than an experimental robot, because I know that a human is less likely to be "buggy". However, if a "robot doctor" can prove it won't have any "programming bugs", and once it's endowed with sufficient (and correct) "knowledge", I'd rather take the robot than the human medic, because (unlike humans), machines are less prone to errors in judgement. The problem is in deciding WHEN the robot is sufficiently "bug free", and when it has "enough knowledge" (and how accurate that knowledge actually is).
The one and only reason I use Azureus on Windows (and convinced the others in the house to use it too instead of miu-torrent): auto-speed. Being on a 1024kbps (128KBps) line shared between 4 computers, utorrent either chokes the regular use (unlimited) or goes way too slow compared to how it could (if limited).
Slashdot Mirror
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
Let the wife go to work, let the husband telecommute and take care of the children while working >:)
I mean, come on, regular "daycare" centers aren't even that careful with the kids they supposedly take care of.
I wouldn't mind being a "stay at home dad", actually, I think I'd enjoy it.
Yes. Really. Everey freaking GSM phone with every gorram GSM operator. That's the whole fracking point of STANDARDS.
Of course, across the pond in la-la-land, you would expect problems like that.
Here, in Europe, you expect ANY GSM phone you pick up from ANY GSM shop to work with ANY GSM carrier.
The only difference between carriers and phones ?
You might get it cheaper from the carrier's shop if you get a "locked to their network" one alongside a predetermined duration contract.
No, but maybe for the upcoming war with the Zorkanoids from the QF-P73 Nebula or somesuch.
Seriously.
Hey, "t3h intarwebs", and especialy wikipedia is always right ! :)
Especially if the last edit was a few seconds ago !
WoW servers and status info
34 "High" population PvP servers
31 "Medium" population PvP servers
36 "Low" population PvP servers
17 "High" population regular servers
69 "Medium" population regular servers
13 "Low" population regular servers
22 assorted population density "special" servers
= 222 servers
The total AVERAGE number of USERS on a server would therefore be in the 40k area.
As for the activity level, I'd be seriously surprised if they manage to have over 10k concurent users online on any of them, more like 5k tops probably.
Banks help CIA spy, customers find out, sue banks, judge does not through out suit, gov plays "state secret" card for distance and/or to help the banks.
There you go, less than 30 words.
My money's on Duke Nukem Forever :)
Well, good luck with that then.
And I don't mean it sarcastically.
However, I wouldn't hold my breath until it happends.
Quoth the parent, "I'll bet that less than 20% know when you put money in a bank they lend it out to someone else."
And apparently, YOU don't know that when you put money in the bank, they don't actually lend it to anybody, they ALREADY LENT IT way in advance, and multiple times.
Here's how it works. A bank has, say 10 mil USD deposited with the central bank and somesuch first.
They can now LOAN OUT at least 90 mil USD to people. Yes, they can loan out 80 mil USD they DON'T HAVE, and nobody wonders if that's wrong or not.
Whenever you deposit money at a bank, they get to loan out up to 9 times more money to other people. Again, money that doesn't exist. But nobody's questioning that.
If you ask "but how can this work", it's because not everybody comes in to cash out at the same time, and that people generally pay back way more as they borrowed first.
Basically, the whole banking system is a huge circular "I.O.U." system that's ever-expanding. Nothing more, nothing less.
First off... did you have a brainfart, or are you actually advocating USA ISOLATIONISM, on all fronts, economic, political and military ?!?
You know it can never work nowadays, do you ?
Not that I wouldn't just love to see the USA shut the hell up already and keep its nose out of other people's bussiness, work out internal issues first... but that will and could never happend.
Second... fiat currency is insignificant compared to the "virtual money" in circulation nowadays, at least 90% of today's "money" doesn't actually exist at all (with a pessimistic estimate of up to 98% of it being virtual money... yes, that's one "real, paper dollar" out every 50 in "circulation" in the worst case scenario, or one out of 10 in the best case scenario).
And government has zero fucking control over it, because it declined it in favor of the banking industry, just like most countries on this stupid planet.
I'd really love to see a "bank run" in the world of today, with the banking system's bubble burst wide open to its rotten core all across the globe, governments forced to make banking a state issue rather than a private one.
In order to have this whole "but sex is damaging to CHILDREN", you have to define "child".
If by your definition, "child" means "person of an age under 18" as opposed to, say, "person of age under 12", then your argument about children not knowing, not thinking and not wanting sex is pretty far-fetched.
I distinctively remember myself in 3rd grade (so, about age 9-10) reading about male and female reproductive organs, about sexual intercourse and hygiene, pregnancy and child birth from a book (can't recall the title, but something like "sexual hygiene") I found in the house on one of the "hidden shelves".
Before you ask, no, there were no pictures, just black and white "anatomical section" drawings.
And I read that book BECAUSED I already KNEW what sex was, and I WAS interested in it.
Where I knew about that ? Other chidlren, a couple of years older. Child. Under age 10. No media. Just other children.
Your theory is so damn busted.
HOWEVER, you are partially right.
Yes, if you insist in NOT having sexual education at all, and that from a very young age (8 might be too soon, 12 might be too late), then indeed, exposing SUCH a child to porn will cause problems.
Pornography is not the answer, and pornography might be damaging to a child who has no clue what was going on.
However, to a child that KNOWS what's going on, a child who was EDUCATED about what sex is, why people want to have sex, what the risks are if they (as a child) might want to do it... that child will look at porno as being simply entertainment not fact.
Translation ?
Get mandatory "sex.ed." in all schools from the 5th grade the latest, maybe even 4th grade, and lay off the "porn is bad" attitude.
Heh. Really, really funny you shoud say that. I mean, seriously funny. Because... THEY ARE doing that :)d =401
Check out http://myeve.eve-online.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bi
They call it "ambulation", everybody else just calls it "walking in stations".
1. Yes, the current state of "the stockmarket" sucks donkey balls, because there isn't any. It's all player-driven, and trust-based. No in-game support for a genuine stockmarket exists, we barely have three decent features: paying out dividends, corporation votes and voluntary share transfers.
As you might have noticed that most developements in EVE were originally player suggestions... it usually takes at least a year to see it in-game if it's a decent and heavily requested feature, but I am sure we'll eventually get an actual stockmarket and many other corp-related tools.
2. Yes, the way the market is handled sucks even more, especially the recent nonsense with "contracts".
They should just merge these two features into one single comprehensive whole, with the ability to buy/sell/trade/auction stuff everywhere in the galaxy from anywhere else, with extra rules and limitations based on personal/corp/alliance standing with the entity you interact with in that transaction.
I have my doubts this will ever happend, though... but you never know.
3. The "monopoly" is all but broken in most of the cases. Everybody and his dog's mom can manufacture T1 or "find" named T1 gear by himself, and with a little bit of effort you can get just about anything T2 by yourself too.
Sure, those that USED to have the monopoly have a financial / "first mover" advantage with their more efficient manufacture methods, but the days of 10000% markup are long-time gone.
4. Mineral pricing is the trickiest possible issue in EVE. It's not actually a free market, it has very "heavy" limits both on top and bottom for most of the individual minerals (the harshest caps are for "low end" minerals, least cap for "high ends"), but also a very narrow bottom AND top cap for an agregate lump of minerals of all kinds. You might be simply mistaking simple game mechanics and smart refiners and traders making a profit for "price fixing monopolies".
If anything else just might, minerals simply CAN'T possibly be monopolised for anything but a very small timeframe and with huge effort.
5. So what if raw resources are infinite ?
I'll tell you what resource is NOT infinite : manpower.
That's right, for each and every bit and piece of "mineral" you see out there, somebody spent time getting it.
EVE's economy is based on that resource mainly... namely, time of its users.
Funny you should say that, because EVE's economy IS based on work, and almost exclusively work.
Killing NPCs in asteroid belts for bounties and loot ? Work.
Running missions ? Work.
Mining ? Work.
Setting up a scam ? Work.
Ransoming people ? Work.
Research ? Invention ? Manufacture ? Trading and/or hauling ? Begging people in Jita for money ? Work, work and all work.
Sure, different kinds of work, different amounts of "boring" versus "fun", different amounts of attention vs smarts needed, but work nevertheless, in all cases.
So, sure... nobody wants to work in a game, but you pretty much have to, if you plan on getting in-game wealth.
That's why you have so many "ISK farmers", that's why GTC prices have gone up through the roof, that's why there's so much scamming and whining going on.
Because nobody wants to work, but everybody has to.
Do you know why no multiplayer "space sim" has completely realistic physics ?
Because realistic physics SUCK for fun.
And you want to have fun in a game, don't you ?
That's why all "space sims" actually handle (ship motion-wise, that is) like a very futuristic "submarine sim" instead.
Yes, you can invoke Elite here, but that's not multiplayer, and couldn't be made multiplayer.
There's also a work in progress game called "Infinity" which tries to pull this off, by mixing something resembling a BSG Viper sim (so, fighter combat in a small area of space) with an Elite-like handling of longer distances (only "local time" gets accelerated, and you seem to go FTL from "outside").
I'm curious if they can pull it off in a "fun" way eventually.
People associated with CCP (the company that runs EVE) have a few special case clauses to their gameplay.
That doesn't include just the game developers, but also members of the volunteer staff, which have to sign a NDA to join the ranks of the bughunters, interstellar correspondents, moderators or be a part of event teams. CCP has a history of recruiting GMs and other staff from the ranks of volunteers, so there's enough incentive to join and perform well.
Now, the thing with "CCP accounts" is that they're public and have access to various "world manipulation" tools. All their actions are audited, and for over half a year (at least) there's something akin to an "Internal Affairs" department (like the one in the police) tasked with making sure they don't do anything fishy with their rights.
At the same time, all people ALSO MAY have (if they want) a regular account, which they pay for like any other person... and they are subject to the same rules and regulations like all other players.
Moreso, they are subjected to one EXTRA rule: they are NOT allowed to disclose the fact they are "related" to CCP.
In case they slip up, common operating procedure is to, well, *cough* "enter them in a witness protection program". They get a new name, a new face, a fake corporation history. They lose all friends they might have made so far. They basically start from scratch relationship-wise... and that's the most horrible thing to lose in EVE, IMHO.
Sure, they might have some inside knowledge, and there have been a couple of occurences of abuse, but all short of ONE incident were very harshly punished (and of course, they no longer work for CCP, except that one incident I was talking about).
CCP has been very forthcoming with player accusations, and as open to communication as can possibly be expected from a company.
Of course, many people still feel "cheated" or think CCP is hiding something, but what would be the world without conspiracy theory nutjobs ?
So no... they CAN'T just do the stuff you're afraid they can do, and no, they don't get away with it.
In space, nobody can hear you scream... ...but their ship's computer can synthetize a realistic simulated audio track for their crew's listening pleasure.
Only 1.5 TB of porn ? That's like what, 350 DVDs worth ?
That's 85-125 USD for your entire collection in one single copy.
Or make that a nice round 200$ for two sets of copies.
So, where can I get two 1.5 TB HDDs for 100$ each ?
Sure, the "seek time" would suck, but then again who cares, it's porn, not like you'll die if you wait 15 more seconds before you start looking at it... or are you ?
Well, it's actually quite simple.
EVERY ISP will "overbook" their bandwidth, and bet on users NOT using it to the fullest all the time, hence being able to get away with it.
Do you honestly believe an ISP expected you, as a "home user", to use up your full bandwidth 24/7 a couple of years ago when they started offering "cheap, unlimited broadband" ?
Hell no, they expected you, on average, to use up about as much as they priced the "cheap package" for, because (they believed) there wouldn't be that much data you could get over the internet that might possibly be interested in on a daily basis.
The problem is that nowadays, people are more likely to use up more bandwidth for longer periods of time... be it a torrent download, internet TV/radio or just old regular (but large) downloads.
So now, the people who "run" the show find they can no longer get away with their overbooking... and instead of "getting more bandwidth" themselves, are going after the people who are likely to generate that increased bandwidth demand.
Pure, simple, unadulterated greed and lack of forethought. That's what's going on. Nothing else.
Know what the flipside is ?
You, the consumer, ACTUALLY paying for what the bandwith you use up is worth, at the ISP side... plus their cut, of course, you can't expect an ISP to run on charity, or do you ?.
In most cases, this would translate in heavily increased rates compared to those you're used to now.
Or, you know, we can always go back to the "pay for traffic" model. That would work just fine... but then again, nobody would take it.
Of course, there's always the alternative of ISPs actually getting a lot more cheap broadband, but that requires infrastructure and indvestment, and in any profit-driven economy, this is not all that good for bussiness, especially when the current model "works just fine" (for them).
Yeah, the "current" incarnation is human-controlled.
But you'd have to be pretty naive to assume it will (or should) ALWAYS remain that way.
Wow, already -1, Flamebait ? I'll take it, nevertheless.
SOMEBODY has to test new technology.
Sure, you can test it recklessly and without much regard to human rights (read: cheaply), or you can test it thoroughly in simulated environments and then strictly on volunteers and/or terminal patients, with the utmost possible care possible (read: expensively).
That doesn't change the fact that no technology is bug-free from its first prototype, nor perfect from its conception.
The matter WHO you test it on is a matter of responsability of developers.
The technology itself isn't "evil", it's the methods of the developers/testers that MIGHT BE greedy or corrupt.
But they don't NEED to be.
We can always reinstitute slavery if nothing else helps [/sarcasm]
In order for something to be "dead" it needs to be "alive" first, then lose that quality.
Human doctors can make such "minute mistakes" too, that wouldn't show up on a "dummy test".
Personally, right now, I'd rather put my life on the line to a human than an experimental robot, because I know that a human is less likely to be "buggy".
However, if a "robot doctor" can prove it won't have any "programming bugs", and once it's endowed with sufficient (and correct) "knowledge", I'd rather take the robot than the human medic, because (unlike humans), machines are less prone to errors in judgement.
The problem is in deciding WHEN the robot is sufficiently "bug free", and when it has "enough knowledge" (and how accurate that knowledge actually is).
The one and only reason I use Azureus on Windows (and convinced the others in the house to use it too instead of miu-torrent): auto-speed.
Being on a 1024kbps (128KBps) line shared between 4 computers, utorrent either chokes the regular use (unlimited) or goes way too slow compared to how it could (if limited).