EVE Online Scandal Deliberate Frame-Job? 382
Last Friday, we discussed serious allegations leveled against CCP by players of the game. The comments on the discussion were lively, and pointed. Perhaps a bit too pointed, as CCP's internal affairs investigation claims that a plot to smear the company with false accusations over the long holiday weekend was behind the flurry of online activity. "The objective of this scheme was to permanently paint CCP as a biased and corrupt company that favors a select group of players over the rest of our community. In this particular case, instead of receiving notification of a possible problem and sufficient time to examine and address it, we faced a coordinated and hostile attack executed on our forums, Digg, Wikipedia, Slashdot, and other outlets at the beginning of a three-day weekend. We believe this speaks volumes of the intention of the person(s) responsible for orchestrating this scheme. Verification of this can be readily found on the forums of the people responsible--or at least could, the last time we looked." Scott Jennings over at Broken Toys points the finger at the Goon Fleet corporation, an organization based out of the Something Awful forums. As I noted in the original post, the evidence presented on both sides is challenging to verify independently. Take everything you read about these events with a grain of salt.
hoo boy (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:hoo boy (Score:4, Funny)
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Mod parent up, or at least something other than "troll".
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http://goonfleet.com/reply_to_CCP.html [goonfleet.com] - SA/Goon's response to the latest CCP devblog. It is extremely well written, and I agree with it completely despite the fact that I think the SA crew (and GoonFleet) are assholes.
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You posted as AC, though, so you're probably just trolling or something.
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But you are right. If instead of WoW, I had done something else with that time I'd be able to speak a second language or play the guitar. But I played WoW and I enjoyed playing it. I've made some friends and had some lulz, and isn't that the
Re:hoo boy (Score:5, Insightful)
His hobby is EVE, and they bumped his bottle, causing damage to his tiny ship.
Just because it's not real events doesn't mean it's not a real hobby.
Bad PR move: Never whine (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't go on the defensive by playing the "victim" card. (Newsflash: No one cares.)
Here's what skilled PR departments do:
Make strong statements of integrity. Fire someone. Institute a new policy or two.
Devise a system of compensating those wronged. Spend money on public relations,
advertising and technological improvements. Claim (regardless of truth) that the
problem has been solved and that (wait for it...) the reason people hate you is
because your products are so damn good.
I didn't make up the rules. They've been etched in stone for a while now.
Re:Bad PR move: Never whine (Score:4, Insightful)
A more cynical person than me would conclude that they manufactured the entire scandal specifically for the press.
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Re:Bad PR move: Never whine (Score:5, Interesting)
They actually tried this in the last scandal, which actually ended up having some truth behind the allegations, to solicit sympathy from the player community and, I guess, to mitigate the any harsh feelings directed at the devs and CCP in general. In an announcement that the company's investigation was complete [eve-online.com], the game's community manager mentioned how the whistleblower who was responsible in large part for bringing the whole controversy to light outed the player character identities of a few developers. He stated that, as per company policy, these developers had those characters removed from the game, and, boo-hoo, were forced to end their long-standing relationships with friends and corp-mates in game.
I was flabbergasted by the ineptitude of their PR.
It didn't help that some of the specific allegations of wrongdoing that were made by the whistleblower went unaddressed until a later post, some of which turned out to be on the mark. One of the developers admitted to supplying items to his corp-mates using by abusing his dev tools. For the record, he wasn't fired (I don't recall what disciplinary action they took, if any, beyond removing his player characters and possibly compelling him to make a public apology.)
Re:Bad PR move: Never whine (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately for CCP, they have already been caught trying to cover up allegations that turned out in the end to be true, and a large portion of the playerbase does not believe that CCP handled the initial incident properly at all.
Most of us were willing to give them a second chance, but so far, they're blowing it.
An insightful poster in the EVE Online forums said, "You know you're in trouble when the majority of your playerbase is more inclined to believe an organization that was responsible for the term Photoshop Friday than they are inclined to believe you." Honestly, while the Something Awful/GoonSwarm crew may be assholes, they make NO effort to hide that fact. They're blatant about it, and a lot of people will prefer an open blatant asshole (you know what to expect from them) to a backstabbing sleazebag (They're acting nice, but what are they REALLY up to?)
After the t20 incident, CCP destroyed any trust the playerbase had in them. They tried to cover up the t20 scandal for as long as they could (including banning anyone who discussed or linked to the allegations), and in the end it turned out that the allegations were true. At that point, t20 got a small slap on the wrist and the BPOs were removed from the game, but not the ingame money they generated (and hence the damage they caused). By the time CCP addressed the issue, the ingame balance of power had already been permanently altered. t20 is still with the company, and no effort was made to repair the damage he did. In any other MMO, the damage a rogue developer could have done is far less, and despite that, it's known that other MMO companies (Blizzard, Mythic) are FAR stricter about dev/GM misconduct - at any other company, t20 would be LONG gone, but the fact is that as long as he is still with the company and the playerbase continues to fail to see heads roll, they will never trust CCP again.
The funniest thing is the fact that they say "trust us, we'll do what's right" when so far they have an established track record of not doing so.
Yes, I am now actively looking for another game to play. I was passively waiting for something better to be released, but now I think I can find something better from the list of what is already out there.
Re:Bad PR move: Never whine (Score:4, Interesting)
Just a thought and not a defense. I love eve and play it quite a bit. The acts of T20 were unconscionable and should have been handled differently. "Those that were responsible for sacking the producers have been sacked" type thing.
Anyway end of my rant.
-Infodragon
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All of the other problems that plague the company and the outright hostile manner in which they treat problems and players adds up to a very disturbing picture.
This previous evidence as well as their general demeanor towards cheating and squashing players and so on over the la
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If the complaint isn't true, though, the only one wronged would be the person you fired.
Re:Bad PR move: Never whine (Score:5, Insightful)
CCP has created a great game, but they need some adult supervision to operate it as a viable business. They are in danger of squandering a very well-made game by taking it too seriously. There are ways to stay "involved" in gameplay without having a stake in the outcome of large-scale battles. And you cannot, under any circumstances, get too "friendly" with certain players, no matter how dedicated the player. When the game "starts", those relationships have to end.
Do you know what happens when a pit boss in a casino gets too friendly with someone who tends to win a lot of money, regularly? And trust me, there's a reason both MMORPGs and Casinos are said to be part of the "gaming" industry.
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As much fun as Eve is (and I've heard it's easily the best MMO for peop
misleading, as always (Score:5, Insightful)
CCP, while whining about the posting of all this stuff to slashdot and digg, and then claiming that they've shown all the accusations to be false, is being rather misleading. They've completely ignored one of the very serious accusations (the one that said that players have the msn contact details of devs - sure they had a petition, but 5 minutes turn around on a petition resulting in the dismissal of a volunteer has to be a speed record in the world of MMORPGs), and actually more or less acknowledged the one about rigging story lines. Their defense to the rigging accusation that they didn't know how they were going to rig the ending yet. Uh, yeah, that certainly clears you of the accusations... (to their credit, they have thoroughly dismissed the accusation involving a dev infiltrating a player corp).
The funny thing is that they make a veiled threat of legal action against the somethingawful.com - that'll be quite a sight to see! I can't see CCP coming out on top of that battle. (regardless of whether their lawsuit has any legal merit)
Not really (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Not really (Score:4, Insightful)
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Space Libertarianism? That seems to imply the existence of Space Libertarians. Personally I find the terrestrial ones annoying enough, but Space Libertarians sound a bit scary. I can practically hear the ominous voice of the movie trailer guy:
"They believed in a free market, unfettered by government regulation, and they came... FROM SPACE!"
I suppose they would look like the creature f
Stairs and Protection (Score:2)
Well I for one hope that the somethingawful people have protection.
Because if they have stairs in their house they are likely to get pushed down them...
I certainly feel like doing that every time someone asks me if I have stairs in my house.
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They are the one of the most arrogant piles of shit in the web, and could really need a downer.
(got i hate the " I payed money to post, and money for my avatar, and money to use the search, so we are all better than the rest of the internet" thing they have going)
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Isn't it more likely that one of the devs was in BoB and heard about the petition ingame? It's no secret that the devs are encouraged to play t
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Re:misleading, as always (Score:5, Informative)
The relevance is related to the subject:
1) Intersetallar Kredits(ISK) are worth a lot of real-world money, the 100 billion stolen was worth at least $20,000 at the time when the perpetrator attempted to sell them. If they had made off and actually sold 700bil, that would have been a couple years' salary for most people around here.
2) As for the Goons, EVE is known as a game where it's best to try to cheat as much as you can in hopes of getting away with it, and that its developers are not above this. The fact that people are paying money to lose is both saddening and remarkable, and such is why it's on the front page.
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OK, this changes things a bit. So the game is a scam? Surely someone would have wised up to that earlier?
Re:misleading, as always (Score:5, Insightful)
There's still plenty of things you can do that aren't touched by corruption, but as a game structured around PvP and then run by biased developers, you don't have a fair chance of winning at the end-game. It goes as the developer wants it to and if you're not part of the plan or winning side too bad for you.
Re:misleading, as always (Score:5, Insightful)
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I used to be a developer and admin on Nightmare LPMud. In the year or so before it finally died, it was a hugely bad atmosphere to play in. We had a new coder who dreamed up and implemented many cool features. She was, by far, the most active developer. She also had a couple of kids who played
Re:misleading, as always (Score:5, Funny)
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Um, t20? Those accusations turned out not to be baseless by any means.
If CCP had handled the t20 incident properly, no one would be believing Goons due to their heritage, but CCP pretty much said "bad t20, you shouldn't have done that but we're not going to punish you."
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Similarly, it's already
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The way I see it, it's cheating (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, I never took chess too seriously either, but if the games at a club were rigged so the same player always wins (e.g., he gets to ask for another queen any time he wishes), then, you know, why bother playing? Or let me use, say, World Of Warcraft as an example. I don't even do PvP myself, much less take it seriously, but imagine that one guild were pals of the devs and got to win the battle grounds every time via outright cheating and having some dev on call to bend the rules as needed. (Which Blizzard doesn't do, but just as a hypothetical example.) Wouldn't it, at the very least, leave a bad taste?
Fixing the outcome of RP events isn't any different either, or not fundamentally. It's still, in effect, a competition, even if an acting competition. It doesn't have to be taken too seriously or give much of a fuck to nevertheless leave a bad taste if it's rigged.
I mean, imagine I'm your DM at a D&D game and said something like "ok, guys, you get to plead your case before the genie, and I want you to RP it. Whoever makes the most compelling case of why he should get it, gets a wish." If all such events blatantly ended up won by the guy who bought me pizza, wouldn't you, at the very least, say, "yada, yada, just give Jack his wish and let's move on"? Why bother competing if you already know it's rigged and that anything you could say or do isn't going to make any difference at all?
Except in this case people have paid some money too, and are paying a monthly fee too. I can see how they'd be a bit more pissed off if all there is in the game is rigged so the devs' buddies win. If PvP is rigged _and_ RP events are rigged, and that pretty much covers all there is except mindless grind, then, you know, why bother playing that game at all?
On the lighter side, though, it does remind me of a Woody Allen quote: "I was watching a ballet at City Center, and I'm not a ballet fan at all, but they were doing the dying swan, and there was a rumour, that some bookmakers had drifted into town from upstate New York, and that they had fixed the ballet. Apparently there was a lot of money bet on the swan to live."
way too serious (Score:5, Insightful)
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-matthew
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heh this all reminds me of how starcraft became so "gang" [clan] oriented- some of them had a reputation not unlike the real gangs- people wouldnt fight them unless they were very skilled- then it became quite amusing to slaghter entire swaths of clans that way :) hackers same thing- alot more fun than fighting in a "fair" fight. so in a sense the cheating
It Shouldn't Suprise Anyone (Score:5, Insightful)
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Actually, it's not that hard a concept (Score:5, Insightful)
It actually works pretty damn well, because you don't have to have a working pyramid. Unlike RL you don't need 1000 peons or more to have a millionaire. You can have half the MMO's population stuck at level 70 for example. (And take a census on WoW sometime if you don't believe me. The bar graph looks like lots of tiny little bars for all levels and a huge spike at level 70.)
It doesn't even have to be all about levels, you can give people lots of other rewards too.
Games are an easy case to make "fair", because you there isn't an actual need to make it "unfair". You don't actially need a privileged 1% minority of rich guys (for bonus points, whose only merit there was being the always drunk son of the guy who actually earned that money) creating employment for everyone else. The game can create any amount of employment or virtual money needed by itself. E.g., a single finite instance, can keep an infinite number of players "employed" hacking those monsters for xp and loot.
For that reason, you don't have to give anyone privileges over anyone else, much less tolerate (or worse: create) blatant nepotism, like the accusation here went. There is no, "see, Jack wins every time only because he's Richie McMoney's nephew, but, you see, we need rich robber-barons like McMoney to keep the economy going, so quit yer pinko commie whining and get back to work. You wouldn't even have a job if it weren't for people like McMoney." Again, here it's the game's responsibility to create the "jobs" and the rewards, you don't need to put some pricks in privileged positions for that.
And it can get as lopsided as it wants to. You can basically have everyone be a CEO (don't laugh, there are games where everyone owns a company), without worrying that noone is a worker. Who cares? You can have millions of workers as NPCs or abstracted as "your company has 2500 workers, 500 clerks, and 100 researchers" numbers. Or you can have everyone be a king, and noone be a peasant, if you want to. Or whatever.
So "fair" is actually very easy. Most games are "fair" by default unless you actively screw that up. (Which is what CCP is accused of doing.)
And, frankly, it can be prevented. I've been on free MUDs which policed themselves against just this kind of thing. Everything a wizard/creator/builder/whatever gave a player or did to a player was logged and reviewed, and it was cause for immediate termination if you went and made the game unfair to reward your buddies. Can't a company do the same? How hard _can_ it be?
Now "balanced" is a more tricky proposition, and that one takes real skill and work. That much I'll admit. That's what separates good designers from wannabes. Kudos to those who can get that right. But "fair"? "Fair" is the default.
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EVE still is, and will be for a while, the only game that
That still doesn't excuse corruption (Score:5, Insightful)
And comparisons to RL are emotional and all, but missing the point. Noone said they have to police against players who play better. I do, however, say that they should police their own fucking devs.
In most cases it doesn't even need active surveillance, but just making sure there are consequences and you fire the twits who can't stay honest. Same as casino employees, for example, if you want an example with real wins and losses and pulse racing. It doesn't mean you'll have three guys watching each other and the blackjack dealer, it means you make sure everyone knows they'll never work again in that town and possibly face prosecution too if they're caught cheating.
And, from what I understand, CCP already failed in that aspect once. "Uh, we moved the guy to another team" doesn't even start to give the right message to either party. It's like a casino saying "uh, it was only one crooked dealer, and we, erm, moved him to the roulette instead of the blackjack table" in a case like that. It doesn't give the right message to either the patrons or to the other employees.
And I don't think any casino there would go, "yeah, well, RL is corrupt too, we can't police it", by the way. It _is_ possible to build a whole business on the idea that it's fair and honest, and at least legal gambling went to great lengths to build and preserve that image. Especially _because_ everyone has seen movies about rigged roulette tables and money laundering via the blackjack table, and expects that kind of thing, they go to great lengths to distance themselves as far as possible from that kind of an image. They don't go and confirm it, since everyone was expecting it anyway.
So, well, I don't think a MMO company is absolutely unable to do the same thing.
Re:Actually, it's not that hard a concept (Score:5, Insightful)
The idea of "fair" is, basically, that the game itself is agnostic as to who the players are. A "fair" game doesn't even know whether you're Jack who's a drinking buddy of dev X, or Jill who only gives nookie to dev Y if she wins. You're just character Z, with the same chances as any other character of the same class and level. If you have the skill or work hard enough, you win, if you don't you don't, but anyway: it's the same skill or effort anyone else would need in that same situation.
And, as I was saying, that's the default state for a computer game, unless someone actually goes and messes with it. Any way you'd go about genuinely implementing a set of RPG rules, the rules themselves are agnostic. If paper wins against stone and loses against scissors, it doesn't matter if it's dev's friend or the unpopular whiner who's playing paper, it still applies the same rules. The computer only knows it's paper, not who's playing that paper.
To make it unfair, you'd have to actually spend some extra effort there to skew it. Whether by active dev intervention (e.g., dev X steps in to give the +5 Sword Of Ganking to his buddy), or some way in the code and database (e.g., having some hidden flags for who's supposed to win more than normal.) It doesn't just happen by itself. That's all I'm saying.
Getting the rules to be "balanced", now that's a problem. But "fair" just means applying the exact same rules and giving the same chances to everyone. That's the _normal_ state.
2. But if you want to get it back on topic to this particular affair: Maybe because, as far as I understand, there was already a case where a dev was acknowledged to have played favourites, and CCP tried to play it down as, basically, "uh, it was just one guy, not the whole company, and we, erm, made him promise he'll stay away from the game in the future"? Just a thought.
Yes, it's harder to get out of MUD slinging contests than to end them in the first place, but that's why most people try to distance themselves as hard and fast as they can from that kind of stuff. I'm betting that if someone at, say, Blizzard, was proved to have rigged battlegrounds, the announcement would have been "we've fired him and taken steps to make sure we'll know if anyone even tries that crap again" not "we've, uh, had a stern talk to him and moved him around to another team". The message the former gives is "we don't allow that kind of crap", while the later says, basically, "heh, we don't give much of a fuck if that happens."
And once you've given the "we don't give much of a fuck" message, yeah, I can see how it would be hard to dig yourself out of that hole.
but.. (Score:2, Interesting)
No such thing (Score:2, Insightful)
Doubt it (Score:2)
MMORPGs are played to build your character so you can sometime reach the top levels. In "traditional" MMORPGs this means, you can go down dungeons and come up with the most prized items. Would it convince you to start one when you hear that the top level dungeons are allegedly reserved for the devs and their buddies?
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I'm inclined to agree, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
The damage done in that first scandal is going to take CCP a long time to fix and anything fishy between now and then is going to be portrayed in the wrong light by default.
However I have no doubt certain groups in the game have benefitted from having developers in their ranks. Not just BoB, though I'd suspect they've gained more than the average advantage over the years. I personally know a few people who are either good friends with developers or have access to certain databases internal to CCP's development and testing team. Although they're hesitant to share "inside information" I've learned a lot about the game from them that can't be found anywhere else. Put one of them in charge of an entire alliance and you can be sure they'd put that information to good use, gaining an unfair advantage for an entire group of players in the process.
These latest accusations may have been baseless, but there are still problems that need to be addressed. A major one is transparency. If CCP employees are going to be playing the game there can only be two policies; complete secrecy or complete transparency. They tried the former and failed, time for another approach.
When in doubt, blindly obey us (Score:4, Insightful)
Suddenly, another EVE scandal is revealed and CCP tells people they're being framed? After months/years of various accusations? Its completely and utterly unbelievable.
MOD Parent up (Score:5, Interesting)
Personally I see it as the game maturing. Anyway remember Ultima Online from years ago? Various tales of GMs helping friends, looking after castles for famous baseball players and manufacturing gold faster then Rumpelstiltskin. They put in a lot of processes/systems to stop this.
CCP is just doing the same.
Btw, I believe any game where the players have interaction with GMs/dev team at any level will eventually call claims of favoritism/cheating. I recall stories like this from Asherons Call or City of Heroes. In those games the Dev/GMs vary become visible in the game.
CCP did one very wrong thing. (Score:2)
*ALL* of the negative publicity is a DIRECT result of this decision. CCP has no one to blame for this but themselves.
Again? (Score:2)
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CCP is doing bad PR (Score:5, Interesting)
It is sad. Eve Online is a good game, with crap management.
Why continue to pay? (Score:5, Insightful)
Otherwise stfu about threating to cancel your multiple subscriptions. The more you continue to pay, the more you continue to ask be fucked. They are more than willing to oblige so long as your checks clear.
Re:Why continue to pay? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Personally, my goal is to defeat BoB or destroy CCP trying. If CCP has to cheat blatantly and repeatedly in order to defeat us, people are going to notice - and we'll end up with story after story on Slashdot, each one exposing CCP as The Company Running The Rigged MMORPG. And each time, people are going to unsubscribe, and people who were going to subscribe are going to change their minds.
Here's a screenshot [imageshack.us] of a thread where one of the developers involved w
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warning, major goatse (Score:2)
In other news... (Score:4, Funny)
Roger, the guy down the hall in room 415, just pulled off the craziest move in Tetris history, clearing 12 rows in three moves, on level 14. Onlookers in the Stupid Tetris Fans United (STFU) guild were quick to point out that this is unpossible, and must be the result of some kind of scandal.
Rival guild Zoo Ostrich Masichist's Guild!!1! (ZOMG!!1!) allege that Roger's game is totally illigetimate, oweing to the fact that he once made a tetris game for his calculator while fucking around in high school math class. One member was over heard saying "It's a conspiracy. We all know Roger's in the tetris industry."
Representitives from ZOMG!!1! and STFU were not available for comment, but one thing is certain: news of this scandal is spreading like wildfire, and the tetris world may never be the same.
The tone of the response is totally unacceptable (Score:5, Insightful)
Combative and derisive towards the accusations made. Yeah, that's what an "internal affairs" investigation should be. The tone is 100% supportive of CCP and 100% belligerant to the accusers, and because of that fact ALONE, I simply cannot believe anything the "investigator" says.
I mentioned in a previous thread I'd been undecided on joining EVE, this one blog post locks it down for me- this company will not see a dime of my money, ever.
Re:The tone of the response is totally unacceptabl (Score:2)
Re:The tone of the response is totally unacceptabl (Score:2)
Yet you apparently have no problem believing everything the accusers say. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not convinced CCP is innocent here, but I'm not convinced they're guilty, either. But it seems rather ridiculous (and I'm not just talking about you but also about a bunch of other people who posted further up) to make up one's mind after hearing one side of a story already and then dismissing the other side of the story because it doesn't match
A website built on years of trolling? (Score:3, Funny)
Wargames reference (Score:3, Insightful)
well this does show something corrupt (Score:2)
so no favoritism there. Sure this Gm may not have been able to take actions on his own account and had to place the petition to get the issue resolved, he still received favorab
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To show favouritism, you have to show that a corp gets its complaints answered much
faster than other people.
The MMORPG metagame expanding? (Score:3, Insightful)
It probably still is, but at least this article suggest that there can be more to it than that. Groups of people trying to create "events" by coordinated manipulation of the fora means that the in-game groups are trying to extend their actions to the real world, or at least a level of virtuality close to the real world (fora like
I wonder... (Score:4, Informative)
Let's not forget that the goonfleet internal forums show standing orders to tarnish CCP's image.
http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=top
From dev blog:
Since last Friday, an unnamed corporation posted over 4000 times on EVE's message boards concerning these allegations. In addition, 1046 posts were made on Digg.com; 235 comments were added on Slashdot; and made multiple EVE-related edits on Wikipedia. Each of these sites was hit within a few hours of each other, at the start of the three-day Memorial Day weekend in the US and a three-day weekend in Iceland, all referencing unfounded allegations -- now proven to be false -- that occurred three weeks ago or longer.
Goon fleet members spammed the forums so much that CCP was forced to shut them down (I saw it happen; an entire front page worth of spam). And some people still thing its a CCP conspiracy?
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Goonfleet members spammed forums after a single thread, asking for investigation of allegations was deleted by censors. The web site worked prefectly fine until CCP shut down the forums, because the censors couldn't delete fast enough the posts.
Re:I wonder... (Score:4, Interesting)
CCP went out of their way to ignore the questions until they needed to be made public enough to not be ignored.
CCP made dug their own hole (Score:2)
CCP keeps a tight fist on the isk department -- except for the lucky lottery winners of T2 ships. Yet if they nerf the economy such that everybody can make the lucrative isk, then they will lose 50% of thier player base.
CCP made it possible (Score:3, Insightful)
If EvE was a fully credible game, with a CCP having a record of being straight, honest and upright towards its customers, with no favorism, remembered for being fair and unbiased, with no sensible allegations pending that there could remotely be some kind of intermingling between developers and player groups, the whole case would be laughed off.
The problem is, it's anything but that. There have been such allegations before, there have been shady deals, there have been cases where we've seen favorism.
Can this be a plot by some dissatisfied players to bring down the game? Sure. Could it succeed if there wasn't "prior art" of that kind? Certainly not.
Seriously? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Prior to the t20 scandal, many would have said the same thing.
After the t20 scandal and the way it was botched/non-handled (covered up, then finally admitted with no corrective action taken - t20 is still with the company), people actually are more likely to trust the Goons than CCP.
It doesn't help that two of the Goon's accusations in this round were true (albeit whitewashed so as not to look quite as bad as they seemed) with the most serious one as of yet unaddressed.
Damned if you do.. (Score:5, Insightful)
From a player perspective I can see how damaging it would be to even be seen to show bias one way or the other towards a class, guild, corp. or whatever the game terminology happens to be. From a developer perspective it must be quite frustrating not being able to enjoy the game in all its splendor (guild raiding, etc included) whilst simultaneously having to deal with legions of forum whiners moaning about how the Devs "dont know how the game works at the ground level".
And of course let's not forget that MMO communities are, without exception, always incredulous, accusatory, fickle and obstinate on the game forums. Everyone has their tinfoil hat on 24/7, expects (demands) the Earth for their $15 a month and despite having very little visibility of the organisational goals, objectives and constraints everyone purports to be "in the know", a programming expert and a visionary. It must be soul-destroying to have to deal with people with this mindset day-in, day-out. Being a Dev on a MMO must be like living life as a major politician: every word spoken about the game (especially on the forums) has to be carefully crafted so as to be totally unambigious and unemotional, since you can guarantee that the World and his dog will deconstruct and scrutinise every syllable, all the while presupposing a hidden agenda (again, tinfoil). It's no wonder Devs usually don't speak much on the forums.
(A slightly amusing anecdote: I was reading the Star Wars Galaxies forums recently as I used to play and a Dev made the heinous mistake of getting involved in an off-topic discussion about American Football teams. Naturally before long someone piped up saying "it's great that you're talking on here but shouldn't you be looking at the pressing issue of Spy DoT damage not being mitigated whilst wearing the Eye of Sauron ring? If you don't fix this I'm quitting and so is my entire family, friends & pet.". Ok I'm being facetious to prove a point, but it was still disheartening to read).
Ultimately this huge controversy, whilst ultimately of little interest to me as an outsider, has given me a fresh outlook and sympathy towards MMORPG developers.
You wouldn't make a very good game developer. (Score:2)
The answer to this is simple, and two-fold:
From a player perspective I can see how damaging it would be to even be seen to show bias one way or the other towards a class, guild, corp. or whatever the game terminology happens to be.
Yes, anytime your devs are involved in the game, the perception that the game is not fair will become widespread. And in fa
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Lumthemad.... (Score:2)
Can I just not care? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll do one better and just not care at all.
I care a bit (Score:2)
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It getsa lot more interesting when 100,000 people are playing the same game of pinball
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That would definitely make it to the press.
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Re:Goatse Resurrected? (Score:5, Funny)
Lesson learned:
Never click on a link from Slashdot that has
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Based on my own empirical evidence I'd have to agree.
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You'd be hard pressed to find me any MMORPG where people don't complain, lament, groan and moan about unfairness, nerfs and allegations of devs playing a certain class, group or alliance because they always get more and more goodies while the complainers and their class, group or alliance don't, and still they keep playing.
That's no quality of EvE. It's one of MMORPGs in general.
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I did back in Feb http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=221344&
and daily average online users continues to drop
I do miss it, eve was the best MMO I ever played because it was so different and _hard_
Such a pity.
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It's not as if we're talking about a government here, CCP is simply a corporation with commercial interests. It boggles the mind that people would "happily" continue to pay for a service they find displeasing (and in some cases downright mentally unhealthy).
If you bought a coffee from a local shop every day and out of the blue they decided to change the flavour, or throw it in your face when you paid for it, would you continue to go there every day, handing over your money, for the
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I have some sympathy for what this CCP spokesperson is saying simply because as far as MMOs go you can't please e
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If skill is why your team wins, more power to you. If it's because you also call the shots, why bother playing? It's a given that you win, no matter what I do or whether I come with the superbowl winning team.
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And it's easier to believe people who post as "Ash-Fox"?
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There is something divisive about this game. I played for about a year. Within the environment of the game long standing friendships were destroyed over in-game politics.
My response to the experience was to stop playing Eve. Most of the reason I am even interested in playing MMO's is to do something with my buds. If the environment of the game screws up my friendships- I generally bail.
It's a shame. I really like Eve. I'm a sucker for space type games.
As an aside, the borgifying of pl
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The leadership is not "the brain", they're just the crazies shouting "WITCH". You continue to think of the Go