In Isk We Trust: the EVE Online IskBank Exposed 145
riverni writes "Eve News 24 is running a couple of articles uncovering the lucrative 'black-market' existing in EVE Online, a sci-fi themed single-server MMORPG. The overall scale of the operation is breathtaking. While there exist legal ways to exchange real world currency for in-game currency, the black market, primarily driven by botters (users who utilize automated macros to perform rewardable tasks in game), remains strong. One article reports on how Iskbank.com made approximately $290,000 in sales during a 10.5-month period. These figures do not include any sales made through their sister site, Eveisk.ru and yes, those are US dollars."
Currency conversion and a reference of the value. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:On the plus side.. (Score:3, Interesting)
That's completely false. I know of several people ( that were caught ) buying isk. They all knew exactly what they were doing and did it because they wanted "that extra 500 million isk" to play around with or they didn't want to run missions for isk. A LOT of people buy ISK to fund PvP.
Re:EVE is terrible. (Score:4, Interesting)
It has a *lot* of ships and even ship classes. I haven't played for years and even then it was pretty diverse in that regard. Even ship classes do not limit you to a certain style of play because anyone is allowed to fly any ship class. Some are just harder to train for and to obtain than others.
There are definitely generalized roles that you can get into, but you have a great deal of choice in how you spec yourself. Since skill learning is done in RL time, and not based on "levels", you do have to make some choices about what you are going to do which will be difficult to alter. That is made even more time consuming because the skill trees are very deep. However, there is no bar to one player learning every skill in the game, except for the fact that there are so many skills that no one is ever going to have the time to learn them all unless they stop adding classes and you play for years.
You could, for instance, in a relatively short amount of time become a freighter pilot and also become very, very good at a specialized combat role like flying as a tackler (slows/immobilizes enemy ships so the more powerful warships can catch up to attack it) in a small, but fast interceptor. Being a freighter pilot and also being a tackler are both important, if not overly glorious roles. This also doesn't prevent you from flying a Titan (the biggest capital ship available), but unless you start down the skill path to that end, the skill trees and the realtime skill progression does postpone that day into the far, far future if you are not focused on it.
So, I would say that it absolutely correct to say that there is no class system in EVE. It is clear that there are some broad roles that exist, such as tanking, mining, crafting, logistics and electronic warfare, but players are not forced to select skills based on a class, they select skills based on how they want to play. A priest in WoW may be able to spec for healing or damage, but they will never get to use warrior or warlock or mage skills. In EVE, your one character can use any ship or capability that they have the skills learned for, and later on, they can decide to learn something else, and they don't lose the skills they have already learned.