Should MMOG 'Play' Be Confined? 62
Arti writes "Eve Online is famous for hosting the world's first virtual IPO, and also for its Byzantine 'meta game', in which players create fake characters and accounts to infiltrate each other's organisations for intelligence, theft or sabotage. More recently the game has seen the rise of Kugutsumen an intel blog whose creator has been accused of using real-world hacks to obtain secret information from other player forums and private messages. Some players are up in arms at the use of such out-of-game tactics. On the other hand, Kugutsumen claims these techniques have uncovered evidence of corruption. Quite aside from the legal ramifications of attacking other people's web forums, should game companies tolerate forms of 'play' that involve out of game illegality? Should they attempt to monitor and punish these kinds of activity using sanctions in-game, where the company writes the rules? This ties right back in to the discussion of Real Money Transfer we've been having over the past week. Where does the line between 'play' and 'cheating' lie?"
Impossible (Score:4, Interesting)
An MMO is left with three options: promote this sort of activity because it further "involves" players in the game's happenings (this option is probably best for hardcore MMOs); take a neutral stance on the issue; design the game in such a way that out-of-game spying and intel-sharing is ineffective at changing the course of the game. This last option is the most difficult, of course, but it's the only way I can see of combating spies and saboteurs. Examples might include instanced gameplay elements that are impossible to predict or, in the case of a military game, an emphasis on small battles so that spies could never uncover a single masterstroke battle plan and spoil the fun.
One of the reasons that a warfare MMO/FPS/strategy game would be difficult to implement is because there's no way to secure all forms of communication. The game would not be fun if the enemy knew operational details because of a mole in command. This might very well be realistic, but try explaining that to all the players who just got owned upon launching their attack.
In PlanetSide, players would IM commanders in the opposing Empires and give them a heads up before we launched a huge raid. Even so, we would still have an advantage because it takes several minutes - if not an hour - for the other team to trickle to the battle.
I play Eve-online (Score:4, Interesting)
I've played Eve-online for over a year now, and as stated it is indeed the most brutal, darwinistic multi player game on the net that I know of; utterly unforgiving of mistakes and weakness
In a way, I'm glad the accusations have come to light - firstly, it took repeated forum spamming by 'Goon fleet' (an alliance/guild within the Eve universe) before the Devs within CCP (owners of Eve-online) finally made a statement regarding the issues; I gather the impression that had they had not repeatedly spammed the forums, the current investigation that is being carried out would not have been initiated.
Secondly, there have indeed been several instances as of late where certain players have known of information that could only have come from CCP employees.
The biggest issue at the end of the day is that CCP employees are also allowed to actually play the game itself, and as players are expected to give their loyalty to their corp/alliance, while simultaneously remaining true to CCP's doctrine and not give out any internal information that would aid player alliances/corps.
And that in a nutshell is what started this current uproar. The players are stating that each and every time a CCP employee logs on as a player, he or she has a clear conflict of loyalties, and they are asking for clarification from CCP regarding this.
In my opinion, the vast majority of CCP employees who play the Eve online game are honest and genuine. However, it only takes on single misguided Dev to leak information, and much is ruined, which seems to be the case here.
Having read Kugutsumen's blog, I cannot of course say that it is genuine. I can however say it is believable.
Hopefully in the future CCP Developers will no longer be allowed to maintain positions within PvP alliances, and the clear conflict of interest will be avoided; as to if that will actually happen however, remains to be seen.
Re:You're missing the whole story... (Score:2, Interesting)
I'd say that a Malediction BPO and a Sabre BPO (in addition to several T2 Ammo BPOs) are anything but mediocre. Also, he had (according to the information obtained by Kugutsumen) at least 8 Tech2 BPOS. You and I both know that the chances of getting 1 BPO are very slim, but one single character presumably played by a dev having 8 of them is a little ridiculous. See it for yourself here:
http://www.kugutsumen.com/showthread.php?t=68 [kugutsumen.com]
It's nice to see you try to downplay it, though. Old habits die hard, uh?
You also forget the other allegations of improper behavior by BoB members with some or full knowledge by CCP staff brought up by Kugutsumen, such as:
a) the sharing of player accounts capable of deploying cyno fields to allow 23/7 movement of BoB's capital fleet at a moment's notice;
b) 'renting out' one or more complexes in BoB's space to a known Ebay currency seller and his crew;
c) the purchase of character accounts from other players (namely DB Preacher).
This is all in Kugutsumen's posts in the forum linked above, with forum posts and PM logs (which in all honesty can be faked, but it'd require quite a bit of work).
Note that I never said that CCP employees should not play like anyone else; quite the contrary, I think that we absolutely need devs to be as active as possible to enable CCP to fix all the existing problems with EvE.
However, this particular situation (if ultimately proven truthful) illustrates an apparent lack of ethics by some of CCP's staff, and CCP's inability to control its own employees.
This is a very poor example for the regular EvE player, that spends his time grinding away missions or doing any number of tasks to try to achieve something, when ultimately he has no chance of accomplishing his goal because a character played by a CCP employee wanted to 'get in with the cool kids'.
What's the point of playing if you're gimped from the start?
Do you understand why so many are upset at these developments and how the possibility of this being true can be a major blow to CCP's credibility?