EVE Online - Bob's dead baby...

[loomer]

Fuck it, I'll do both. 25% discount for posting pics of yourself rocking out with your cock out in a rubber chicken suit! It's high value, here! Good deal, you should take it!

[Chris OFarrell]

I am not sure if this has been posted here, but just in case;

This made the BBC website, that's just class

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7905924.stm

By Flora Graham
BBC News

It's a credit crunch nightmare.

The chief executive of the world's biggest corporation gets a phone call in the middle of the night. Thanks to industrial espionage, the company has been bankrupted, assets stripped, bank accounts emptied. When trading starts the next day, even the company name will be gone.

If this were real life, the executive might consider jumping out the window. But in the online game of EVE Online, it's all part of the fun.

"It is another challenge," said Par Molen, the leader of the "corporation" Band of Brothers (BoB), who got the late-night call.

"That's what we live for."

Mr Molen and his online colleagues had spent four years building BoB into the dominant force in a game where 200,000 players battle it out in an online galaxy of spaceships and planets.

Unlike other multiplayer online games like the hugely popular World of Warcraft, which is split into smaller groups, the thousands of EVE players are in it together.

In one virtual galaxy, players build, fight, and trade, joining together to form "corporations" to gain control over sections of the huge starscape.

This creates a complex society where anything can happen, and often does. Rules are few, and all of the lying, cheating and stealing that occurs in real life can also happen in the game.

A player called "The Mittani" is the shadowy spymaster who runs dozens of agents for his corporation - GoonSwarm. He got the call of his career when a disgruntled BoB director contacted him to say that he was thinking of switching sides.

With the director's access to BoB's internal workings, the pair were able to disband the corporation and steal all the assets they could lay their hands on.

To add insult to injury, GoonSwarm then re-registered the Band of Brothers name for itself, leaving the former alliance nameless and broken.

It's a finale that has been compared to "Apple dissolving Microsoft", and led to some players calling for the game's developer, CCP, to "roll-back" the game to the previous day and cancel the change.
Screenshot from Eve Online, Atari
Eve Online is about the struggle between giant corporations

"Any one director should not have the power to destroy the work of so many people for so many months and years with two mouse clicks," wrote a player called David on an EVE-related blog.

But CCP is well-known for keeping its hands off action within the game. Since no rules were broken, the changes stood, and thousands of BoB members woke up to a very different world.

Scams in space

This is not the first time that rogue bankers and credit fraud have made EVE Online seem more like the financial pages than a space cowboy video game.

In January, a player absconded with over 80bn ISK, the game's virtual currency, from an in-game bank. Although the 80bn is only worth a few thousand pounds if exchanged for real money, it represents hours of in-game toil.

In an online echo of the real-world banking crisis, the bank's chairman issued a statement to calm a run on deposits, writing: "Dynasty Banking will get over these times and we will continue to strive to earn the public's faith as one of the leading banks of Eve Online".

Another scam on an epic scale beyond the fantasies of real conmen was perpetrated in 2006, when a player ran off with 700bn ISK from another EVE bank.

"Think of me as a space Robin Hood—steals from the rich and gives to himself," wrote the perpetrator in an EVE-related internet forum.

Such swindles left some players in awe of EVE's potential for realism, whilst others called for a stronger code of ethics in the game.

But spymaster Mittani scoffed at calls for in-game morals, noting that without dirty tricks, GoonSwarm would have had no chance of toppling a more established corporation like BoB.

He said: "We don't have any advantages, so we can't obey your stupid 'space bushido'. We're going to spy, we're going to use defectors, we're going to lie, cheat, steal and be bastards."

[loomer]

Goddamn, getting into the BBC News? That's pretty impressive - but then, this was huge inside the game.

[Commander 598]

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b329/ ... 090304.png

There is something missing here...

Funny that this was the day that they would have regained Sov3...

[bilateralrope]

Actually they still hold 9 systems, though that number is decreasing slowly.

But the reason I revive this thread is that The Mittani has been giving a column on TenTonHammer.com. What is interesting is that in this one he describes how BoB lost the war because they made several mistakes, not because of any clever moves on Goonswarms part.

[Andrew_Fireborn]

Heh, sometimes, the only clever moves available are capitalizing on an enemy's mistakes. With the resources BOB had, they could pretty much instantly drop a huge power into any system that came into contention.

[Commander 598]

Actually they still hold 9 systems, though that number is decreasing slowly.

Seeing as how most of them are still trapped in pr-, I think it's pretty irrelevant.

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b329/ ... 155053.jpg
(PR-, the blockade continues on.)

Also: New expansion is pretty cool as is the new intro for it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNyfI4dv1dg

[Rahvin]

The new expansion is frakking great. The skill queue alone is a major change that's made it easy to blow through lowlevel skills while you're at work, or sleeping, or doing things other than signing on to EVE every hour to switch skills.

The new visual effects for basically everything in the game from guns to shields to stargates to the awesome new wormholes are all fantastic.

Wormhole space is a genuinely fun change from missions and ratting, and offers a real challenge with opponents that have vastly improved AI and offensive/defensive capabilities over what you see in normal PvE content.

And the T3 cruisers look like they'll be loads of fun. A soon as I get my missile skills up to a serviceable level, I'm going to train up for a shiny new Loki and start playing with all of the customization options!

[wautd]

Well I finally got a new monitor. For some reason, since the previous patch I could only play fullscreen on ye ol 19", but now I have a shiny 26" it's perfect for multi tasking. Together with the expansion I'll probably start playing a bit more again.

The skill queue alone is a major change that's made it easy to blow through lowlevel skills while you're at work, or sleeping, or doing things other than signing on to EVE every hour to switch skills.

I've only had the time to tinker a few minutes with it, so this may be a dumb question but how can you delete/switch skills in your queue?

[White Haven]

Be careful of the queue, a number of people have been reporting skill detraining when using it under certain circumstances. It's got potential, but yeeeesh.

[Mr. Coffee]

Wormholes are nice. Not nearly as scary as CCP tried to make them out to be. The New enemy AI is decent, but they're full of shit about the whole "they call in reinforcements" crap. The Sleepers have specific ships that act as spawn triggers when killed, same as all the other NPCs. If you plan on exploring wormholes, do it as a group, don't use anything bigger then a battlecruiser, and have someone stay at the wormhole checking it's stability and watching for people coming in. And for fuck's sake, train up some astrometrics and bring a scanprobe launcher with you so if the hole closes you can find a way back.

[White Haven]

To clarify, Coffee's talking about highsec wormholes. Nullsec ones will eat your all-BC fleet for lunch without a burp in all likelihood.

[Mr. Coffee]

The low-sec/null-sec ones also supposedly have much larger mass cap before they collapse.

[wautd]

Be careful of the queue, a number of people have been reporting skill detraining when using it under certain circumstances. It's got potential, but yeeeesh.

Yeah... I think my small projectile turret went to level 4 to 2

[Rahvin]

Be careful of the queue, a number of people have been reporting skill detraining when using it under certain circumstances. It's got potential, but yeeeesh.

Yeah... I think my small projectile turret went to level 4 to 2

Supposedly they've fixed that bug and are manually fixing those whose skills decreased.

As for switching the skills in your queue, you can use the Remove button, or just click/drag skills in the list until you have the desired order, and then hit "Apply."

[wautd]

Be careful of the queue, a number of people have been reporting skill detraining when using it under certain circumstances. It's got potential, but yeeeesh.

What happens when you're stuck then?

As for switching the skills in your queue, you can use the Remove button, or just click/drag skills in the list until you have the desired order, and then hit "Apply."

Yeah didn't noticed that button the last time

[Commander 598]

Oh nos, it seems the great PR- camp has been defeated.

[Vanas]

I've literally just started EVE out. Everything seems in order, and the HMS Hellenback, while a space-faring Trabant, is fulfilling it's role adequately. Time to skill up and pootle around for a bit before choosing a ship that may actually be useful.

[White Haven]

You may indeed find that we are in possession of a corp, Vanas. Poke Andrew Riviera, Angus McAWESOME, or...eh, one of us is usually on.

[Spyder]

I'm sure someone's probably tried this but, an idea I came up with while I was taking a shit, what EVE really needs is a player run regulatory authority.

You could do audits for other corps and grant them certifications based on what their actions and adherence to standards (that you make up), depending on what criteria you could come up with, you could offer financial, trade, combat specialists. It wouldn't be easy but if you could promote your certs as being worthwhile eventually they'll gain value. You could force corps to name a "compliance officer" to ensure standards are adhered to, procure some wealthy contributors to help carry out your 'audits' and wardec anyone that fails a compliance check which you'll be able to afford because by this time your regulatory authority has probably become corrupt as fuck.

[GuppyShark]

Bob's dead?

Apparently they got better.

What's better than reforming your alliance under a new name?

Having someone at CCP change it for you so you don't have to pay the cost, lose your sovereignty, or adhere to the maximum character limit for a player alliance...

http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.as ... ID=1031624

[White Haven]

I'm sure someone's probably tried this but, an idea I came up with while I was taking a shit, what EVE really needs is a player run regulatory authority.

You could do audits for other corps and grant them certifications based on what their actions and adherence to standards (that you make up), depending on what criteria you could come up with, you could offer financial, trade, combat specialists. It wouldn't be easy but if you could promote your certs as being worthwhile eventually they'll gain value. You could force corps to name a "compliance officer" to ensure standards are adhered to, procure some wealthy contributors to help carry out your 'audits' and wardec anyone that fails a compliance check which you'll be able to afford because by this time your regulatory authority has probably become corrupt as fuck.

The flaw in your reasoning is that Goonswarm would object, and they tend to object with great zeal and also caliber.

[Resinence]

While CCP favoritism towards BoB is nothing new, "BoB is back" is overstating it. They hold a glorious entire 9 systems, lost all of Delve and still don't have the numbers logging in that they did. Their egotistic rambling aside, they have no outposts and they are steadily hemorrhaging members. I know soo many people would be happy to see BoB claw their way back up, but fuck them, I'd rather have the crazy goons in delve than the pompous retards bandwagon of band of brothers. The Goons cause chaos and crazy shit, BoB would just sit in their little cyno jammed citadel occasionally lashing out at someone to show how "superior" they are.

[White Haven]

Meh. I still hold that the huge alliances are a bad idea. Sure, it's produced some epic wars, but it also produces Cold War syndrome, where nobody worth mentioning wants to risk throwing the first blow because he knows he'll be buried under the weight of his own corpses. There's no good answer, because with big fish already existing it's suicide to NOT link up with a big alliance of alliances, but...blah. Ironically, there's too much order out in the chaos of 0.0.

[Uraniun235]

I'm not sure that's really the case. I think it's more due to the enormously powerful advantages granted by entrenchment. If you stripped out a lot of the game mechanic advantages granted by holding a system for a certain period of time, you could easily make warfare much more viable even among the bigger powers. As it is the impression I get is that war between great powers (at least, when conducted competently) is very trench warfare-ish.


What would you do if you were starting an EVE-esque game from scratch, in order to discourage very large alliances?