By Jim Rossignol on February 5th, 2009 at 11:38 am.
In what is probably the biggest backstab in Eve Online’s rather stabby history, a director of one of the key corporations in key PvP alliance Band Of Brothers has turned out to be an agent of their biggest enemies, the Something Awful spawned GoonSwarm. The consequence of this is some huge in-game material losses, but also the disbanding of the alliance itself. This means that the sovereignty game mechanic which holds Band Of Brother’s galactic empire together has gone offline, leaving them horrendously exposed to attack. Worse, Goonswarm have stolen the name and ticker of an alliance that has been running for almost five years.
GoonSwarm director The Mittani has had the pleasure of disbanding his enemies, reportedly thanks to access granted via a disillusioned BoB player turncoating to the Goon side. After deciding to backstab his former chums the BoB director was able to get to the controls and kick out the member corporations, and a steal a huge stack of capital ships and cash. Spying like this does not involve illegal activities such as hacking accounts, it’s purely down to players lying, and is therefore a valid tactic within the game.
This event is now the most significant coup in Eve history, not because of the money lost, but because the disbanding of an alliance means that all its defensive infrastructure lies exposed. Without alliance ownership various system-access jammers, jumpbridges between systems and other vital machinery of Eve’s alliance mega-game are put offline. It’s a titanic victory for the Goons, who had often quoted griefing Band Of Brothers as one of their core goals. The catastrophic effect this has means that BoB’s empire is now totally exposed to attack from its enemies, and Goon fleets are reportedly already at the heart of the former BoB stronghold.
While this is indeed an impressive work of infiltration and an amazing betrayal of trust, and wholly in the spirit of Eve, I can’t help feeling sad for the thousands of players who put so much into that alliance, only to have it taken away by a single person. Theft of the name itself is, indeed, a painful thing. In some ways it proves what an astonishingly clever space of possibilities Eve provides for this kind of meta-gaming, and in others: what a total bastard.
(Thanks to the two dozen people who mailed me this morning.)
Wow. Reading about EVE always makes me forget how incredibly slow and unfriendly it is for newcomers.
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So if I understand it right there’s some guy from the clan GoonSwarm and he made a second character, got it into a rival clan, built up trust so he got promoted and then took the clan apart from the inside?
I never played Eve Online..
It ain’t the type of game I play.
It’s kind of mean but as they say; all is fair in love and war.
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Very interesting.
For more about The Mittani, this article comes to mind.
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“It is known that there are an infinte number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely products of a deranged imagination.”
Douglas Adams.
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Holy shit.
This is hilarity on a level of such that makes me feel that buying this game right now, suscribing forever and giving up most of my mind to think my way through this may actually be a constructive time waste.
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Flood of ‘Jumpgate: Evolution’ preorders predicted as people can’t face EVE anymore :)
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Stories like this always make me want to play it properly, but when I have a go at the trial it seems I’m just clicking buttons and watching stuff happen. Really non-interactive. Am I missing the point?
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No alliance lasts forever in EVE, but that is a crap way to go out. It’ll be quite interesting to see what rises from the ashes.
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Hahahaha. Amazing. I love EVE. It is win.
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Schtee, you may be missing out on the talking to other people part of the game, along with the setting of common goals and strategies.
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Yargh, I understand it’s an MMO, but I meant in terms of game mechanics.
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Awesome. Basically.
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@Schtee. Yes. This makes me want to get a 3rd trial and play the game again, but the amount of time needed to do anything useful is just too ginormous for the casual mmo player.
*sigh*
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Jumpgate?
But EVE is more like “mothership combat” than “world war II: dogfight” combat.
EvE is like Nexus: beyond jupiter, like Jumpgate is more like Tie Fighter (I suppose).
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Heh, i got myself a 2nd EVE online trial yesterday coincedentally, just because the news stories about it are always so entertaining. As opposed to my last free trial i’ve decided instead of bumming about in space with a couple of mates, to join up to a corp, and we signed on to a PvP training corp in the ‘donkey punch’ alliance.
Still, the lengths some people will go to, to win at this game are like nothing else. Hopefully I’ll get a bit closer to the core game of EvE this time, to see what all the fuss is about. Last time it was basically about mining/grinding missions to get enough ISK to afford a better ship and modules.
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Alliences live and die, griefers are eternal.
BoB will return but imaginary money and imaginary property has been lost, also imaginary territory conceeded.
If BoB were anything but tinpot dictators they can make it back. Interesting to see the Goons achieve something so epic, when fundementally the site was purely parasitic in form but classicly, parasitic in nature.
This all horrifies me though, I’d want to create something, own something and have a place in the world, an allience is one of the few ways to achieve that and even that is vunerable to things like this.
Makes me realise you can draw comparisons to real life and history, but never did “I’m sparticus” drop an automated deffence system. I guess decentralisation is key.
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I meant to also say that the act they performed was “parasitic in nature”. Stealing etc.
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Wow…
Is there any official statement from CCP? Frankly, even if is was not “illegal” I find it too “Meta” for my taste to the point of unfairness. There should be mechanisms to avoid a single player to destroy something like the alliance, we are speaking of years of real time and effort put on this. They should had the chance to fight for it, but they didn’t have even the right to lose everything in a battle.
At the same time it´s hilarious and a amazing strike from Goons, and a powerful example of the brutal nature of Eve, but I can’t help to thinks it´s wrong and a bit sad.
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i should probably mention E-UNI again…
Those of you thinking about a trial and getting involved in Eve for the first/second/forty-fifth time should look up Eve University. Just short of 1000 active members, almost 5 years old, and a great environment to learn how the stuff works.
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I feel exactly the same way as Mythrilfan and Schtee.
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What? So basically someone lies and cheats their way to ruining a prefectly good competition between two empires and people say it’s ‘awesome’. It’s poor sportsmanship…. not like this is a real war or something.
How can any alliance ever be formed again in Eve? Won’t Goonswarm just self-destruct after their short-lived ‘win’ because now that it’s be established that you can steal and dissolve enemies instead of fighting them why would you bother? The strongest alliance becomes one which knows all the people with power within that alliance and because Eve is an MMO that’s unlikely to be a very large alliance or corp.
I played Eve in the beta but something like this would stop me from playing. I never liked the idiots over at SA….
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Sometimes I wish I could get into Eve, but it’s insanely user unfreindly.
I guess in the end it’s better to just hear about it instead.
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No, he didn’t create a second character, join BoB, and get promoted – one of BoB’s directors defected after finding that goons were much more fun to play with, and mittens got together with him to plan out how they were going to do it. The director was an actual BoB director, not an infiltrator or spy.
I guess the moral is that you should not be a dick to people you’ve given lots of power to, because they’ll get fed up with you.
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This sounds stupid, tbh. If the mechanisms of the game allows something as insane as this, there’s something wrong with them.
I will never play Eve, that’s for sure.
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Yeah well I was a Netherwing Egg away from getting my drake last night when my router decided not to talk to my ISP.
SO THERE
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Yeah, this is a classic development in a fundamentally tribal organization. Corporations and Alliances are not held together by many rules: it boils down to personalities. You have the power because you convince the most people it’s beneficial. When you run out of charismatic leaders, the whole structure rots from the inside.
The same thing happens to mod teams, only not so often with treason.
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Crazy stuff. I don’t really have an opinion on whether this is awesome or sad. If the EVE players like their game to provide the opportunity for this sort of thing to happen, then more power to them. If not, they can leave.
Are there not laws in place in EVE which would allow for the prosecution of the guy who ‘defected’ though? Sounds like industrial espionage to me. Or something.
Or he could just be hunted down and killed. In the game, I hasten to add.
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EPIC
And Jim, why the hell would you feel sorry for BoB? lol
Feed them to the dogs
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Yeah, meta’s the sticking point for me too. If this had been something like the Guiding Hand Social Club heist – a theft by one party for the sake of revenge by another – that’d be awesome, but the Goons’ goal isn’t money or power or revenge or protecting their friends, it’s MAKE EVERYBODY MAD LAWL LOOK HOW DUMB YOUR GAME IS TYPE /RAGEQUIT NERD. In trying to be immersive and integrated, EvE’s made itself extra-vulnerable to assholes who aren’t actually playing the game.
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the dark days are comming
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I really enjoy reading stuff about EVE, but I’d never ever want to play it.
Mostly because of stories like this which strike me as simultaneously awesome and terrifying.
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I’m a little shocked that the game mechanics allow this – obviously spies, lies, theft and treachery are part and parcel of the game, but you’d have thought that it wouldn’t be possible for one dude to make an alliance go poof overnight, with all the associated logistics going out the window instantly.
Guess I was wrong, eh?
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Its a fricken game. I could play a game of chess for two years and whine when i eventually lose too.
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ouch!
now comes the fun as alliances all over EvE attempt to take BoBs space and stuff, it’ll be like Far and Away only with more bottom
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This is why I love to read about this game, but not play it.
The “anything goes” mechanics are just great (thinking UO pre-Trammel/Fellucca) for stories, but in action, well, I’ll just leave it the people with a little more free time.
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Once again, Eve shows us that all the best MMO stories are found within its near-impenetrable shell. I truly wish I had the patience and desire to play it because I utterly adore reading all these tales of betrayal and subterfuge it creates.
But, y’know, mining. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. There’s just nothing like enough instant gratifcation for a shallow fellow like myself to last more than a few hours with it.
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@the comments “this is too meta to me”:
CCP Wrangler (Eve Online Community Manager) :
EVE is a dark and harsh world, you’re supposed to feel a bit worried and slightly angry when you log in, you’re not supposed to feel like you’re logging in to a happy, happy, fluffy, fluffy lala land filled with fun and adventures, that’s what hello kitty online is for.
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Yeah, it seems like this is kind of a design flaw regarding the way alliances work. I mean, what sort of real-world organization could something like this happen in? It sort of makes the entire game pointless, doesn’t it? One guy can completely disband an entire alliance… doesn’t sound fun, fair, or realistic. And why play a game if it’s none of those things? Although, I guess if that’s the way it works, it’s just a matter of time before the guy who did this gets backstabbed himself. He seems like kind of a dick.
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/creates Hello Kitty account.
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Yay. Although this kind of thing sure looks like a great achievement in a big way, it feels like bad sportsmanship. I mean, if you are going to win, do so by fighting the other dudes in the battlefield.
It just feels as if GoonSwarm was having trouble fighting BoB and then decided for an alternative way of ending victorious.
Maybe these possibilieties are what is so great about EVE. But that’s just oh so lame too.
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Survival of the Fittest just got digital, eh?
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Was this the Roman Empire of EVE? Taken down by the barbarians? Ouch.
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That’s EVE all over, though. Consistently there with the most interesting stories of how someone has gamed the system to destroy the work of thousands of others, but there’s absolutely nothing in those stories that makes me want to be part of them myself.
Which is a pity, because the game looks like shiny overload.
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Yeah, you mean like Barings PLC? Never happens in the real world.
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Also: LOL at the second comment after the forum reveal post.
“We didn’t want that alliance anyways.”
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EVE is about being mean to other people
The scale of it doesn’t matter as long as it remains within the game
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Is there a way to stop the one person from getting that much power in an organisation?
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Yes. The CEO of a corp has ultimate control over who gets into positions of power. Not sure how it works for alliance controls, but still someone has to have promoted the spy into the position of power.
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I’ve clarified the story: the access to alliance controls was actually granted by a long term BoB member who became a double agent for the Goons, rather than a spy infiltrator.
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@Tei
No. See, I have no problem with that mentality, it´s what Eve and it what makes it interesting: You can lose. Great. If someone infiltrates to steal a Titan, well, that’s pretty awesome, a great story and is something I could imagine inside the boundaries of the game.
But one guy disbanding something like the alliance pressing some buttons for the shake of it is not something realistic at all in the context of Eve, it´s a flaw of the design. You can make a dangerous world, but it must be fair and coherent. If a director is a traitor he should be able to make tons of damage, steal tons of cash, give a fleet to the enemy, whatever, but not disband and make worthless every structure. It looks a flaw on the design of the game, alliances should have more strict mechanism to avoid one guy having all the control with a few of fast clicks.
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I love reading about EVE. Just a shame I couldn’t get into it. Now if combat was Tie Fighter style, it’d be a done deal. Here’s hoping Jumpgate: Evolution nails both of the above.
I’ll be interested in seeing what happens next. All that is really lost is a name (and some expensive stuff), but surely if the BoB leaders are dedicated enough, they can reform under a new name with limited loss. Of course, in 24 hours, the whole of BoB’s territory could be lost. GoonSwarm is the Joker personified in a game.
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As others have said, this is the sort of thing that makes EVE facinating to those of us who don’t have the time/patience/inclination to jump in, but who love to read about it.
I actually really like that something like this can happen, because it just makes things much more geniune – less like a game, and more like an alternate universe. ‘Games’ wouldn’t let this sort of thing happen as it breaks too much of what’s gone before – but since EVE does, I respect it for that. Facinating stuff…
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They should name the next expansion “The Age of Paranoia”.
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I love hearing about EVE’s end game – it’s the only MMO I know which has that deep level of payer involvement in the game itself, which is the only reason I see a point in having an MMO… I have promised myself to try it out again in the not-too-distant future. Once I find all that spare time. Probably somewhere under my bed.
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hahha. best post evar from the news-breakin’ thread in the eve online forums:
Ess Erbe (GoonFleet): CULTURAL VICTORY
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if eve didn’t suck it might’ve been good. love the eve-o-drama, though, it’s awsum.
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The guy who did this isn’t a bastard; this is downright impressive. More power to him.
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You know, they should make more spin off games based around EVE. I love this sort of backstory, but the core game requires too much commitment. To change that for the sake of appealing to people like me would be a mistake, I think.
But it would be nice to have some sort of low commitment way to play in the world they’ve created. Especially if it somehow was able to tie in to events in the game propper.
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I find it hard to use words such as “awesome” over this. Basically one player undid literally years of work from who knows how many people, and just because he wanted to be a jackass. I don’t like EVE’s apparently policy of “if it’s not hacking it’s fine”. I think you can have a high level of player involvement and actual consequences without letting major-scale griefing like this happen.
I would never play EVE. Granted, not only because of this.
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Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Eve is brutal, corporate warfare. Not honorable, middle ages knights in shining armour. Subterfuge, betrayal, theft and lies are integral to the entire game.
2 600 man strong fleets meeting in the field of battle would have been nice to watch, but laggy as fuck and a rather pathetic strategy.
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Nimic – does it really count as griefing any more when being an arse to as many other players as possible is pretty much the central goal of the MMO? I hate everything Something Awful have ever done as much as the next person, but you really shouldn’t bother playing EVE if you don’t want this sort of thing to happen.
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Cant wait to see what the result of the fallout will be. Will BoB members reunite to try and take back what was theirs, (maybe using guerilla tactics?)(or is it too late?).
Certainly this will cause players to leave and join. but which will be greater? And designer of MMO’s will have to consider how they can prevent this from happening in their games and whether they want to. Remember some people like playing games like diplomacy precisely because you can use tactics like this. How long do you think it will be before someone creates an MMO where this is a valid tactic?(!)
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No related news:
Two good animes, with a interesting plot, that include “power take-overs”.
- Speed Grapher
- Code Geass
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Well, there you go Jim, you have a mandate now to do a follow up piece once the official CCP response has been announced and the initial aftermath has resolved.
Skimming over the turgid waters of the forum, there’s a couple of things that need clarification. Is this an inherent weakness of the system, or just lax alliance security? Also, this is an alliance, not a corporation, so presumably all the other corporations involved are still sitting there with their resources intact but no blanket border protection?
In fairness to those crying foul, it would seem that all CCP needs to do is possibly create an Alliance management panel that functions like the alliance’s constitution, with each option hardwired to being an executive decision that anyone can change with the right code, or alternatively anyone of the right rank can try and make an ammendment but only through submitting it to a vote of all ‘citizens’, etc.
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Yes, it’s epic. Yes it’s really sad for BoB members.
but…. I play Eve and I don’t see how this affects me. I’m not a member of BoB. The space BoB controlled will be controlled by someone else, and it won’t be me. When I log in today, the game will be exactly the same as it was yesterday. In fact, I bet it would be very hard for the average Eve player to find even one person in-game that is affected by this directly.
I haven’t spoken to anyone in BoB in about 6 hours, but according to someone from BoB management, they were under the impression that it was an account hack and they had a petition filed. I would wait and see what the truth is before believing anything.
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How accurate are the accusations of this being “too meta”, though? I’m not wise to the ways of EvE, at least not in depth, but it seems to be every part of the game as space combat and exploration do. It highlights precisely what the genre stands to gain when it leaves behind a similar design applied in single-player games – stagnant economies, political backstabbing which we are usually only witnessing and never being a part of, a static gameworld which doesn’t take into account anything meaningful we do (or try to).
The impact this kind of event seems to have on gamers, both the fans and the outsiders, is that it seems unfair. It totally is; there is nothing more unfair than seeing your hard work undone by people who betray you, by making a bad judgement call, by not being aware of all the gears in the clockwork. But it is part of the game. Is it really “too meta” to operate under the rules of the game? Try applying that reasoning to the field of secret intelligence in real life. Was it unfair you had spy networks during World War II disrupting the hard work done in the frontlines with petty machinations and turncoating? Totally. Yet, no one would scream about how it shouldn’t be done. It was one of the pillars of the war; the unseen one which has unfathomable repercussions.
People claiming it’s “bad sportsmanship” don’t seem to get it, either. It’s not a sport. It’s war. It’s politics. It’s scheming. You’re not in a universe or gameworld about friendly competition and as such, it’s naive to expect its players all give out friendly warnings across the board to those they are going to attack.
Admittedly, I would feel pretty bad if I was affected in such a way, but I wouldn’t blame the rules of the game when these events *are* the game. What next, no more team speak in Team Fortress 2 to discuss tactics because that would give an unfair advantage to those who don’t do it? Or even forum talk to discuss strategies for a game later on?
To quote a replay to Space Giraffe’s negative reception made by a fan of Jeff Minter, man up and grow a pair.
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^reply, instead of replay.
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Perhaps if CCP added some new functionality to the alliance controls to require authorisation from multiple directors for some actions it would help cut down on this.
In RL it takes this kind of security breach before people upgrade their systems so it would kinda work in game.
Otherwise, EPIC!
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That is just silly, surely in the future they would have means to deal with these sort of things. They would have something close to a proper democracy at least whereby single individuals are not able to reap utter destruction. Or a collective whereby many individuals have to give authorisation for things that have large scoping effects.
This sort of thing is bound to happen in a game though where you are able to be all powerful and have little to no responsibility, everyone gets bored eventually.
Maybe that even happens to real coorporations, microsoft got bored and decided to mess with people by releasing vista, and the zune.
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EVE has always had a lot of metagaming at the big alliance level.
BoB are certainly no strangers to this kind of tactic.
I’m in a Northern Coalition (some of the guys fighting against BoB) corp with this name and our forums got compromised the other month. Big panic, everybody changing passwords.
What’s more this is only arguably metagaming as I understand the term because it involves a defector rather than an alt spy.
CCP have always said that they make betrayal possible to give trust some real value in EVE. Seems like that principal at work.
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I calculated that the real-world-equivalent losses were somewhere in the millions of dollars. Insane.
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BoB have used foul play many times themselves
They’re the biggest assholes, or they were at least
Of course it’s “unfair” but that’s how the game is. Is killing someone with 20 bil ISK who’s defenseless in a freighter unfair? Yes but that’s the game. It’s never been about being fair
You can avoid this side of the game if you want to but these guys have been doing it to other people for years. They were the bullies. No remorse
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@Diogo
Your line of thinking is fine, but let me use your own example against it. This was not an spy network breaking the supply line to the front, that actually takes lot of effort and sacrifice. This was Hitler having a bad day and deciding all was worthless and he was going to have some fun, making worthless every tank, plane, defensive structures, everything. Does that sound logic to you? Things don’t work like that.
Actually, the “victory” of Goons goes against Eve itself and prove their point. With a traitor in such position they could have made something much more spectacular in the own context of Eve, but instead of that they just disbanded the alliance, unplugged the power supply and showed their victory in forums, out of the game. It´s not a complex political setting inside the game, it´s just something they won using msn and the boredom of one guy. Eve was not needed at all in all this process and that make it quite unnecessary, only a silly game, just like Goons like it. The real war was in the forums and this just proved it.
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got the trial and in 2 daysI bought the first month through steam (only 15$ w00t).
I joined a pvp corp, got evemon and other utilities and I must say that I am a happy person. Yes, it will take time to learn the big ships but right now I can use some modules to help up my corp kill some ships and it is very very very very fun to do it. I might be in this game for a long time, it is nice.
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Aren’t there (official or otherwise) systems in place that limits the amount of power one individual has so he/she can’t dick around and blow them to kingdom come?? Sort of like – person A and person B have each have keys to the warehouse of money that can’t be opened without the other.
Stopping one player from causing all this damaged using legal game tactics seems to be punishing creativity and rewarding lethargy. Is there really a reason to try too hard if there is a system in place that sustains enough of your wealth and power no matter how devastating your opponents are.
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Somewhat random:
I am moving in spiral with my comments.
My next stop is Doom comic.
http://www.doomworld.com/10years/doomcomic/comic.php?page=6
“At this particular moment in time. I don’t believe I have a healthier or more deeply-felt respect for any object in the universe than this here shotgun…”
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It just strikes me as odd that an alliance is something that can be disbanded. An alliance should be something that individual corporations can join or leave or that they can vote to remove another corporation from. Just like you can’t disband NATO in the morning but individual countries can choose to join or leave.
This strikes me as exploiting a poorly structured game mechanism.
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Eamo: The alliance is created by and focused on one central corporation. The director disbanded the central corp.
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Which is a bad system, yes. Many systems in EVE are, but they don’t tend to get fixed when they’re good for BoB. Someone hurts BoB, though, and oh noes those exploits must be fixed!
Hopefully they won’t roll this back.
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I love all the EVE-related stories here on RPS even though I never got into the game myself. It kinda feels like standing on the shore watching a ship on the horizon, its buzzing with life but I just cant bother to swim in ice cold water to catch up with it. Either way, this is very cool and EVE has some qualities that I hope to see in future MMOs.
Oh, and yea, good luck to BoB. Going to be interesting to see how this unfolds.
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@Acosta:
I’m having a hard time buying into that. Would it be more tolerable if they’d stuck to whatever EvE uses as a communications instead of exchaning intel and planning through a common chat program? Again, when chat technology is so integrated into a gamer’s way of life, it would be asinine to refuse it because they were planning things outside the game. How to set up a meeting? A game session? A reunion between alliance members if, say, more than half are at work and not in the game? We can never tell, and considering any and all such communication as bad sportsmanship is tenuous at best.
Showing their victory on forums doesn’t seem to me like it’s exposing a weakness of EvE, its mechanics or its players. Boys will be boys, as someone once said. After TF2 sessions it’s not uncommon to find someone posting images of who scored more often, who died more often, who got dominated and by whom. You could argue that what really made it metagaming was the fact that such an act was born out of forum intrigues and not whatever intrigue may have been created in the game, which is true. But this is a natural aspect of communities using videogames to challenge themselves and others. It’s no different than being dominated in TF2 by the guy you banned from your forum. It might have started with two teams competing for fun, but someone will always make it personal on the battleground.
Disbanding an entire alliance and thus disable its economic and military power isn’t logic? I suspect that, judging by some commentaries, the way it’s handled in EvE is not particularly good, but it seems no more different than the typical layer of abstraction in videogames where certain elements of gameplay are abstracted. Like unit or infrastructure building in RTSs taking seconds or minutes rather than weeks or months.
Maybe it is unfair, and maybe EvE could refine those play mechanics so as not to shaft all those players. But then, this would be a problem with balance, not because they played by the rules.
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Tei, Softrev, Diogo etc – the problem’s not that people lost or that the war was decided by something other than splodes, it’s that the wrong people with the wrong goal won – and yes, that does matter when I’m deciding whether some action is neat. The betrayal/agent/whatever thing is fine; again, I think the GHSC heist was a shining exemplar of what EVE has that nobody else does. This wasn’t done for any in-game reason, and by in-game I include the interpersonal stuff that makes trust a currency. This was done in order to reduce this little universe full of interest and intrigue into nothing more than the pew-pew grind that forms its first tier, because the group that did it abhors the idea of anyone enjoying anything.
If I shoot you in Counterstrike, I am adding to your multiplayer fun. If I DoS your servers for a week, I’m not.
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JESUSFCHRISTONACRUTCH what is it with RPS not letting me edit my posts?
@Acosta, where I wrote:
“doesn’t seem to me like it’s exposing a weakness of EvE, its mechanics or its players.”
it should read:
“doesn’t seem to me like it’s exposing a weakness of EvE, or its mechanics; just its players’ ego.”
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WOOOHOO!!!! ITS TRUE!!
HAHA! great news, fantastic news :) So who just cancelled their accounts??? come on don’t be shy, Jim is one of them? I’m definetly NOT! HAHAHA! great, bye bye Bob
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Events like this in EVE are always fascinating to read about, but they’re also reason #1 why I would never play that game. As you said, “I can’t help feeling sad for the thousands of players who put so much into that alliance, only to have it taken away by a single person.” One gets screwed over enough in real life, why would you want to put up with it in your entertainment?
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@Hypocee:
“the problem’s not that people lost or that the war was decided by something other than splodes, it’s that the wrong people with the wrong goal won”
How does one decide the right and wrong goal? True, we can say the SA Forumites are always on the side of wrong. And stupid. But… Where do we draw the line? EvE, the game, doesn’t. It’s the communities that start to decide, on their own terms, who they’re supporting, who they would like to see victorious. GoonSwarm may have just been a petty excuse to hurt a community, true – but if SA weren’t involved, and this was made by someone else with no agenda other than dominion or advancement in EvE, would people’s reactions be any different?
I suspect many would still make the claim that this was unfair, poor sportsmanship and whatnot. The wrong people with the wrong goal won – but we call it wrong because we were exposed to their reasons. What if we hadn’t been? Who could determine who was right or wrong?
And besides, the wrong people with the wrong goal winning happens everywhere, everytime. It doesn’t make it necessarily excusable but it’s a truism of all things in life. People going into a game like EvE and expecting otherwise were probably kidding themselves.
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Mine would be, and has been.
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Oh, man. Very Star Wars. I can’t wait for Episode IV.
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Mine would be, and has been.
And what if the motivation had been just as petty as SA’s was, but never came out into the public? How could you determine who was the wrong side, or if you’d react any differently?
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@Swift Voyager
Nobody’s account was hacked. An account was shared, but that was a private forum account, not an EVE account. All of the turncoat actions were done by the turncoat himself on his own account, so it is completely legal from a TOS perspective.
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I get the feeling that if someone other than the goons did this, they uproar wouldn’t be as bad.
Meh, I don’t play but it’s a nice story to hear. Schadenfreude or whatever it’s called.
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I just wanted to point out that Goonswarm is alot more people then just SA. You had guys from tons of places joining up because they hated BoB
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Then golly, I’d be wrong about something for a period of time. Irrelevant to this situation where we do know that a large outside community set out to destroy a game. I also feel that your hypothetical’s pretty farfetched; in any situation with a petty nihilist aim, making a big gloating announcement both pre- and post-deed is pretty much the point.
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There should be some kind of in-game mechanic where the members of BoB would be able to stop this from happening.
For example, they would have to come up with an insane amount of ISK in a very short time. And the only way to do this? A talent show featuring breakdancing!!
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Not until Walking Around, sadly.
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This seems like a legitimate way to break an alliance to me. Double agents or defectors are always very dangerous. Sure, not completely realistic, but IS IS A GAME.
Look at it like this, IRL the BoB director defects to the other side, but before he does this he uses his top-level clearance to load a massive virus into the alliance network, effectively disabling all their defenses. When he flees he steals a huge chunk of cash (life isn’t cheap) and as his ship leaves the system the Goonswarm moves in and captures everything they possibly can.
Now, in EVE he just had to press some buttons, but I can make up a good enough story behind it that I buy it.
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On another note, all analysis of whether it should have been possible or not I can’t help but think that disbanding BoB will be better for EVE overall. The problem for a long time has been that BoB had basically won the game, there was no real way anyone arriving now could compete. A lot of their power was just a relic of being one of the first big alliances.
In the long run I think if BoB is gone the inter alliance story is going to be a hell of a lot more interesting and maybe the ongoing story will be more interesting and available to more players because of it.
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I love EVE, always have, always will. I was planning to re-sub come march for the new expansion anyway, this just makes it better :D
This is in no way too meta, there is no game out there like EVE, it is the marmite of MMOs.
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Im quite sad to hear that. Yes Bob has done many similar underhanded techniques before in its time but none quite so abrupt as this.
I agree with other posters that it is far too easy to let huge entities go in Eve with the click of a button but hey thats Eve for you! No doubt CCP will strengthen the game mechanics surrounding this in time but the damage is already done and I dont see them trying to reverse it (contrary to a lot of skeptics beliefs).
This would never happened under old Bob management. But then again come to think of it there was this time when i was given (accidentally) access to the ‘capitals’ and ‘directors’ hangers, oh the damage I could of done. But also the guys were a good (if a little too dedicated) bunch of guys (and some gals) so I left it.
Now all is left i suppose is to watch Goonswarm eat itself from within, or start griefing empire carebears on a massive scale again.
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Also, anyone on the fence about this game who thinks that they could never catch up to the players who have been playing forever should keep in mind that Goonswarm is primarily made of relatively new players whose purpose was to prove that newbies could stand up to established powerhouses. BoB was one of the longest standing powerhouses. Even though it took a turncoat to do them in completely, they’ve been on a downward slope for a while and have been coasting on their good name for a year or two.
Now, that doesn’t mean that every new player will eventually be a playmaker in 0.0 space like Mittens, but it’s all a matter of what you want out of the game, you can be ‘that guy’ too if you want it bad enough, and if not there are plenty of other niches you might find fun. But one of the important things to know about this game is that you can’t go at it alone, if you try and “solo” your way through your trail you’re probably going to get bored of doing NPC missions and mining Veldspar to cover your losses. Join EvE University and from there try and find a niche that you like.
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This, of course, is why Mehmed II instituted a policy of new Sultans killing any brothers who might pose a threat to the Ottoman empire.
I’m one of those who loves hearing about EVE, but has never played it and still doesn’t understand 90% of its mechanics. The sheer scale of this story — essentially, an alienated general defects to the barbarian horde and pulls down the empire from within — just doesn’t happen anywhere else. Hopefully, RPS will give us some follow-up stories detailing what happens now that the regional hyperpower is dead.
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The main reasons I don’t play MMO’s are because of griefers.
With an older brother (my very first griefer, lol) who constantly beat me at whatever game we played, I realized that I would have to try harder or play another game altogether. Sometimes he beat me just for an ego boost or to be an ass about it but I do and will always likely will find the idea repugnant, that I should have won because I played for fun rather than glory or ego. Or rather my brother didn’t deserve victory despite being better than me.
Sesame Street was never able to ingrain that little nugget of advice in me and I eventually learned how to get past Guile’s spammy flashkick.
My point is that BoB should have been more vigilant, especially if years of work were involved. They lost within the scope of the game.
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For the people saying it’s a problem that the game mechanics allow this, I think you’re missing the point. The game mechanics don’t allow this. The game mechanics allow the alliance to decide who gets which privileges. If BoB hadn’t given access right to pretty much the entire alliance to this one character, they wouldn’t have been hit by this. I think I’ve read interviews with BoB leaders before, preening about how their biggest strength was how decentralized their alliance was. Guess they were wrong.
Yes, it’s harsh, but at the same time, BoB could have been prevented it. They got lazy. They gave too much power to people who shouldn’t have been trusted. But the choice to do that was still BoB’s. The game mechanics did give them the necessary tools to limit access rights for any individual member.
In any case, BoB has definitely had their 15 minutes of fame. As said above, they had pretty much “won” the game for what, several years now? For most BoB members, life will go on. They’ll forge new, smaller alliances, and fight to conquer the galaxy again. And that will probably make Eve politics a hell of a lot more interesting. :)
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The further I got into the comments the more I began to think, too long, not reading at each comment. Err, anyway, this all kinda suggests to me that Alliances are too centralised in terms of control, if one of 10 medium level commanders goes turncoat it should only significantly affect 10-15% of the alliance on the whole. As in, the fact that the rest of the leadership is subdivided elsewhere prevents one person from destroying the whole organisation in one fell swoop, disgruntled player or otherwise.
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Irrelevant to this situation where we do know that a large outside community set out to destroy a game.
Or is it irrelevant because it questions your comfortable notion that one side has to be wrong, rather than just being shades of grey? The very shades EvE proposes as one of the game’s best characteristics?
Also, destroy a game? Hyperbole much? EvE has underwent this kind of universe defining moments ever since its inception, and most of them have been perpetuated by the community itself. That an outside community would destroy the game is ludicrous when resident players have fueled some measure of disorder or chaos into the system themselves for a long time.
I also feel that your hypothetical’s pretty farfetched; in any situation with a petty nihilist aim, making a big gloating announcement both pre- and post-deed is pretty much the point.
So, that would make the ones that keep quiet about their underhanded tactics and monopolies on the “right side”.
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Awesome.
Eve is great to read about. It’s literally like reading epic war correspondence from the edge of known space.
Also, yay Goons.
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Some folks are acting like it’s the end of the world. Yes, a group with the sworn interest of taking down the social elite of an online community succeeded in depriving them of a ton of capital. All they’re left with is their very experienced characters, much of internal social structure, some huge sum of money, and their wits.
And the game pecking order just got thrown into upheaval. Great. You lost a lot? Well, now there’s more room at the top. Don’t have any longer the time or dedication to put in to re-achieving your past successes? Well, how’d you get in this mess anyway?
I don’t see the problem. IRL, one person, whether from malice or incompetence can ruin the lives of millions. It’s a cold world out there.
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this sort of thing is awesome to read about. i hope you drop a proper eve book one day, mr. walker.
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The game mechanics allow the alliance to decide who gets which privileges. If BoB hadn’t given access right to pretty much the entire alliance to this one character, they wouldn’t have been hit by this. I think I’ve read interviews with BoB leaders before, preening about how their biggest strength was how decentralized their alliance was. Guess they were wrong.
Now I have even less reservations about the coup. So, more than a lesson in trust, also a lesson in corporate despotism?
(I suck at government analogies, so work with me)
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dhex:
It’s Jim, not Walker.
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@Dinger
That is probably the best thing I’ve read all week.
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I’ve heard Eve described as Excel MMO…. basically a spread sheet with a chat app and oh by the way, you can fly around some. But the politics and the amount of time and energy invested into anything, even a spreadsheet, would make a move like this heart breaking. After reading all the “would never play it” comments in this article, it seems likely this could cause a great many like minded people to exit Eve.
As always, it makes for better reading then actual playing.
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The thing I rather feel about it is that while the SA branch of the Goons may be intentionally annoying little tosspots (much like the kid in Slumdog Millionaire’s brother), since they haven’t broken the rules of the game, actually all they’ve done is make the game more interesting.
Yes, I feel sorry for the people who poured their lives into making BOB over the years, but actually what I like about this is that it was a very politic thing to do. It’s actually one group in Eve defeating another – through Eve. Had the accounts been hacked, the alliance wiped through mass-spamming or other intentionally irritating tactics that weren’t part of the universe, I’d see it as illegitimate. As it is, they were devious but the ramifications of this will make Eve more politically interesting from the sounds of it, and the future will play out inside the game universe without any actual outside-the-game-fantasy-breaking thing changing that.
They played the game. After all, Richard III lost the Battle of Bosworth Field because Lord Stanley switched sides…
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The Goons aims are what is annoying about the situation, and why it seems unfair to me. Hitler’s aims were also a bit annoying, in that he really wanted to ruin everyone’s fun too, so a lot of people got together and squished him.
I don’t play Eve, but if the general opinion is what it seems on RPS it seems to be common sense that if the rest of the players would just get organised against a common foe.
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Suck it, Goons.
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This looked like another great EvE story when I first read it, but on closer inspection, it really isn’t. I love the stuff that comes out of EvE despite not playing it, but this is just naff. The best thing it does is highlight what could be done via someone infiltrating an alliance at a high level.
But that didn’t happen.
There’s no story, no tale of intrigue or cunning to report here. It’s simply: “kid got bored and decided to throw a spanner in the works”.
That’s the problem with the mechanics too. While the fact that something like this could be done is sorta cool, the amount of effort required to do so was massively at odds with the scope of what was done.
It sucks for everyone else that was in that alliance, but I imagine the guy that did it will be quitting the game soon enough anyway (or at least starting a new character so he isn’t hounded constantly by the people he pissed off).
And that’s the mechanical problem. You can throw around real-world analogies all you like, but in the real world there’s one major difference: you only get one life, and you can’t quit it. If someone did this is a real life corporation, he’d never get a job again. That’s a massive consequence hanging over his head. It might still be worth it, but it’s a huge personal sacrifice.
In EvE there’s no reason not to do something like this if you were going to quit anyway, and he can always re-roll.
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Man, GoonSwarm is the Bush administration of online games. It’s fun and profitable to be a part of it, but everybody else is fucked.
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Wait.. I’ve heard this story before. Isn’t this the pilot to Battlestar Galactica? Frustrated higher up switches sides due to connection with the enemy, allowing an entire alliance to be destroyed by decisive action when all the defensive systems go down?
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The problem here is not what was done (which is the sort of devious behavior that should occur in Eve), but who did it. If another alliance had done this, I’d actually be pretty impressed. But when your entire goal is simply to cause disorder independent of the game’s fiction, your’re no longer playing Eve, your playing TEH INTERNETZ.
@P7uen
Why the Goons aren’t like Hitler: Hitler had a real-world goal independent of simply causing trouble. A Goonsquad Hitler would have conquered Europe, declared that it had all been a LULZkrieg, and gone home.
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^ That’s “GoonSwarm Hitler”, not “Goonsquad Hitler”.
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“Try applying that reasoning to the field of secret intelligence in real life. Was it unfair you had spy networks during World War II disrupting the hard work done in the frontlines with petty machinations and turncoating? Totally. Yet, no one would scream about how it shouldn’t be done. It was one of the pillars of the war; the unseen one which has unfathomable repercussions.”
Yes. But Roosevelt didn’t just decide that the Nazis were more fun, and disband the USA– nor could he have, if he had wanted to. I think a lot of the whining here comes from the fundamental unrealism of the event. It’s legal, but legal because the game design is flawed. Unless it’s not, and it’s purely the corp design which was flawed, in which case it’s their own damned fault.
And also from the Goons being total bastards.
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Incorrect. I like underdogs as much as the next guy, and everyone knows BoB reached its hegemony in part by member devs’ cheating. There’s no such thing as a good guy in EVE; however, in the outside world there are people who want to achieve certain things, people who want to ‘win’ the game and other people who just want everyone else to stop having fun. In my eyes, one of those groups is a bunch of jackasses. Bad guys.
I didn’t say they’d destroyed the game. I said their stated goal is to destroy the game – to stop people taking it seriously by whatever means possible. The earlier episode that stands out in my mind is randomly mass-kamikaze’ing anyone with a nice ship. Anything to make a real person angry; bonus points if you can make him quit. As I’ve said again and again, I think previous events just like this have been great. If Northern Alliance had pulled this off, I’d be cheering. It’s jerks taking the outside world into the game world for griefing’s sake that pisses me off.
Pretty much, yeah. Because as I said, if they care enough to keep it secret they weren’t just fucking shit up for lulz. They were playing the game.
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@Dean
There’s no story, no tale of intrigue or cunning to report here. It’s simply: “kid got bored and decided to throw a spanner in the works”.
Yeah. Had the guy put a lot (a real friggin lot) of effort into this action, then maybe this whole thing would have seemed less unfair.
I don’t see a director of anything else just getting bored and causing massive damage without hardly any consequences to him.
Except in EVE. The guy is a bloody hero in the eyes of a forum filled with trolls. Tee hee.
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Seems to me that a mechanic that gives over that much destructive control to one player within an alliance Vs the rest of it’s membership is a broken one, or at least in need of a major rethink. You need 2 keys to launch a nuclear missile (if you catch my drift). Certain Safeguards need to be introduced it seems.
Sure it’s easy for a community manager to carp on about it being a tough and dangerous (and one assumes rugged, manly and not remotely homosexual) game, but when you’re sides been wiped out by weak mechanics and a lack of safeguards its not exactly cricket.
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Would it perhaps be too ‘meta’ to locate the server headquarters and burn it down?
There!, the whole EVE universe destroyed in a single swipe!
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So the Goons are the Reavers from Firefly.
And, y’know, when I was watching Firefly, I never thought: “Man, this universe would be so much better if all the enemies were rational, reasonable people motivated by a desire for profit and power.”
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I never thought of this in terms of good guys and bad guys. My mind processes this as winners and losers.
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There was a big discussion thread about griefers quite some time back, and one of the key paradoxes seems to be that this notion of attacking people for ‘taking it too seriously’ never really holds up under scrutiny, given the inordinate amount of time, effort and passion (important word that) they themselves put into it. Seems to be a case of pinching the girl instead of kissing her. In the world of SA conformity is king, and the only passion allowed is disdain.
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Kadayi, the game is about being mean
It’s open PVP,
The game is designed for people to be able to inflict huge losses towards other people. That’s the point, that the stakes are high
Losing a ship, losing billions worth of ships or losing everything, it doesn’t matter
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Enabling such a mechanic (requiring confirmation from X players) would probably be a nice addition to the game, I agree, but once again, the game mechanics to prevent this *did* exist. The game does have a very fine-grained permissions system. It is possible to control very precisely which access rights and privileges any single member should have. And allowing too much power into the hands of one individual is risky.
In Anthony Damiani’s example above, no, Roosevelt couldn’t decide to disband the USA. But the reason he couldn’t is not some universal built-into-the-world rule that “the leader of a country may not disband it”. The reason he couldn’t is that the USA has rules about how much power a president gets.
And similar, BoB, as any other serious alliance, has rules about how much power their leaders get. If these rules are not strict enough, then individual leaders *can* abuse them. If Roosevelt had decided to disband the USA, it wouldn’t have been the universe’s fault. It’s not that the “developers” should have imposed stricter rules on pvp on planet Earth. It’s that the USA failed to safeguard its own interests.
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As someone who engages in troll behavior from time to time, I can say it sometimes brings great joy (at least to me).
And there is a misconception that it takes an inordinate amount of time, effort and passion. Perhaps for the EVE Goons because EVE looks difficult to me, but I personally would never troll if the work far outweighed the amusement at the end.
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Metalevel fail. You’re making the claim that the Internet would be boring without assholes. Possibly. What I’m saying is that when I was watching Firefly I never watched them biting some kid’s face and thought ‘Yaaaay go Reavers!’
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“Nobody’s account was hacked. An account was shared, but that was a private forum account, not an EVE account. All of the turncoat actions were done by the turncoat himself on his own account, so it is completely legal from a TOS perspective.”
Has there been some post from an official source that I haven’t seen? I’ve spoken with BoB management and they claim that an Eve account was hacked. They have filed a petition and CCP are investigating. This whole thread, including the initial post, is speculation.
Please people. Take a deep breath and calm down. Wait a day or two and see what the truth is. Goons are the absolute last source of information I would trust on this.
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“Nobody’s account was hacked. An account was shared, but that was a private forum account, not an EVE account. All of the turncoat actions were done by the turncoat himself on his own account.”
Has there been some post from an official source that I haven’t seen? I’ve spoken with BoB management and they claim that an Eve account was hacked. They have filed a petition and CCP are investigating. This whole thread, including the initial post, is speculation.
Please people. Wait a day or two and see what the truth is. Goons are the absolute last source of information I would trust on this.
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@fulis
“Losing a ship, losing billions worth of ships or losing everything, it doesn’t matter”
I don’t care about the matter of the loss, it’s the manner of the loss. There is a fundamental difference. Losing a ship because of your own stupidity/ inexperience is fine. Losing a ship because your sold down the river through a lack of developer enforced safeguards is another issue. Note I don’t play EVE (I don’t have the time), but a game needs to be played within a recognisable frame. Griefing is a good thing because it exposes vulnerabilities in the frame, but once those vulnerabilities are uncovered, they then need to be addressed by the developers. Should there be a reset? Unless there was a clear breach of the existing rules, then I’d say no. But certainly it’s a matter the developers should be keen to ensure doesn’t happen again on such a scale. I’m sure quite a few subscribers will have thrown the towel in over this, and that is never a good thing.
@jalf
People will always take the easy route when it comes to matters of confirmation , a few mandatory multi-player/majority vote protocols been thrown into the mix would be no bad thing by the sounds of it.
@Klaus
General griefing perhaps not, but in order to outwit organised opposition you have to get pretty organised yourself. In a grind heavy game like EVE, commitment is necessary (unless your exploiting/hacking the mechanics).
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Incorrect. I like underdogs as much as the next guy, and everyone knows BoB reached its hegemony in part by member devs’ cheating. There’s no such thing as a good guy in EVE; however, in the outside world there are people who want to achieve certain things, people who want to ‘win’ the game and other people who just want everyone else to stop having fun. In my eyes, one of those groups is a bunch of jackasses. Bad guys.
As I said earlier, hurting a community for kicks seems petty. But the end result wouldn’t be any different whether they were being metagaming jackasses or ingame jackasses. BoB would still burn to the ground. You could argue it’s more understandable if they had done it within the context of the game – which I agree – but even playing it within the context of the game, the reasons behind the attack could have very well been the same. Only major difference was that they exposed it and were loudmouths about it.
And if, as you say, they achieved their power through some cheating, that’s poetic justice.
I didn’t say they’d destroyed the game. I said their stated goal is to destroy the game – to stop people taking it seriously by whatever means possible. The earlier episode that stands out in my mind is randomly mass-kamikaze’ing anyone with a nice ship. Anything to make a real person angry; bonus points if you can make him quit. As I’ve said again and again, I think previous events just like this have been great. If Northern Alliance had pulled this off, I’d be cheering. It’s jerks taking the outside world into the game world for griefing’s sake that pisses me off.
Hey, I can’t stand griefers either. But the fact remains, not only EvE encourages these actions (in terms of major offenses against alliances, not the griefers), they seem to have played by the rules. It’s the purpose they gave the rules which might be questionable, but trying to separate individual’s goals and online games that help serve them is tricky at best.
Pretty much, yeah. Because as I said, if they care enough to keep it secret they weren’t just fucking shit up for lulz. They were playing the game.
“Fuck shit up for the lulz” or caring enough about the game are not measured by how much you keep quiet about it, unfortunately. BoB didn’t seem to care enough to not cheat, for instance.
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Absolutely awesome. The haters and the “ohmygosh mechanics are broked” can all go back to their level 80 Warlocks in greens and get e-laid in the Brill tavern, or whatever you braindead casuals do.
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Typical GOONS, to be fair. You either destroy them whenever and ever they turn up, just to stop them ever getting into a position where they can do this, or you let them grow to the point they destroy you.
Sooner or later they’ll splinter, they always do. But until then, I suggest EVE players welcome their new GOON overlords.
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Very cool… except that it will indeed usher in a new age of paranoia, as many copycats are bound to surface in the hopes of similar publicity.
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The complaints about how broken the mechanic that allowed this is are kind of funny.
Theft, scams, and espionage are all part of the game. They are natural human behavior that crops up in any system that doesn’t specifically outlaw it, and EVE doesn’t.
The director that trashed BoB wasn’t some schlub that signed up and started pressing buttons. The game itself didn’t inherently trust him and give him this opportunity – if it did, we’d have seen this happen all the time. The permissions on abilities like disbanding an alliance and transferring assets are all granted by other members of the alliance – it’s not that nobody trusted him and they were powerless to stop him, it’s that everybody trusted him and he was handed the key to the city.
You can’t call it unfair because he completely got the drop on a lot of players and they can’t fight back now, because they already had their chance.
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I would like to direct you to Eve RAdio to hear about this if you are interested, it is big EvE news obviously. they have had interviews with the people involved, it’s entertaining to say the least.
http://everadio.gamingradio.net/
This thread is a bounty upon Goonfleet for current Goonfleet members :) Lets see how long the bees last with numbers like this guy is offering.
http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=980800
:)
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In game response to in game drama. I like.
Of course, it all adds to the lulz which means GOONS still win.
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@ Kadayi
That’s what I figured. I tried EVE once, when it first came out and ended up angrily uninstalling it. I’m much more simple minded and flippant.
Although, from what I understand of Goonology, they don’t ‘do it for the lulz’, but it’s all the same result in the end anyhow.
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EVELANDO!
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Kadayi
It was a backstabbing move. It happens a lot.
Trusting someone in EVE is risky business and people get fooled / scammed every day. Besides, BoB used spies a whole lot too. They were as mean or meaner than anyone else. It’s a game and that’s the way of the game. If you decide to get invested too much in it then you can’t blame the people who treat it as a game.
BoB have been sitting in their region of space forever. It’s boring. The balance of power has been upset, it’s exciting. Everyone who thought they would forever be under BoB’s protection and were arrogantly confident about it are now running for their lives, and belongings.
Also, to clarify. BoB still have a lot left even though they were hit really badly. They have a lot of ships, and the most experienced players in the game.
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Lunaran, the mechanics are actually a bit broken
Everything important in a corp / alliance takes voting to do and takes time to go into action. The chances of things like this being prevented in the future are very high
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“There should be mechanisms to avoid a single player to destroy something like the alliance, we are speaking of years of real time and effort put on this.”
There are such mechanisms. They’re called “don’t give access to people you can’t trust to things that are vital”. It’s not like some guy can just waltz in and destroy your corp unless YOU give him access to the tools and permissions he needs to accomplish this.
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The Eve Radio is seriously amazing. They’re currently interviewing both the head of Goonswarm and some important guy from bob. It’s unbelievable how serious they take this stuff.
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Even if they hacked the account, to put the story out that it was a insider traitor does a more subtle kind of damage to the opposition (indeed all the opposition). Sowing the seeds of doubt throughout the known universe!
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@Lunaran
I’m not looking at this from a player perspective (I couldn’t give a hoot), I’m looking at it from a developer perspective. From developer perspective, having thousands of peoples efforts trashed overnight by one lone individuals actions in such an ad hoc fashion is not a good thing, for your players, for your community or for the game. If players lose faith in the games mechanics, then the game loses players, and a disillusioned player is never a good advertiser, in fact they can be quite a liability because they will tend to vocalise their discontent whenever an opportunity arises.
@No
Trust is not a mechanism.
@Dorsch
When people sink a lot of time into their hobbies, they tend to take them pretty seriously.
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Why are so many of you blaming Goonswarm when they just accepted the disillusioned BoB leader? If he wanted to leave he could have gone anywhere. He just chose to go to Goonswarm. It’s not the US’s fault that Captain Ramius stole the Red October.
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Doesnt surprise me, this is the way the goons operate, therefore they must be smashed down may the first signs of there appearance arrive in any game.
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Guys, guys, guys, the Roman Empire just fell. The Dark Ages might have sucked, what with the holy wars, the plagues, and the endless, meaningless conflict over tiny tracts of land, but they sucked because people really suffered and really died. This is a game, and warring over the remnants is going to be fun. We even have the Byzantines–Bob still technically exists.
My only problem with what happened is that, as far as I know, you can mark out a particular space as owned by GoonSwarm. It’s an empire that wants to abolish empires. We’ll see how that works out for them now that people know how to destroy an alliance. I suspect they’ll go out like Bob did, after a little more difficulty. Goons have dedicated internet detectives, and they won’t trust easily.
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Eve Radio rocks. I should tune in from time to time even though I’m no longer subscribed to the game. They also play some great music from time to time. :)
By the way, it’s probably worth mentioning that as harsh and unfair as this seems to the outsider, it really is not all that unique. It has happened before, it will happen again. Abusing people’s trust is a well-known and accepted form of warfare in Eve. It’s the rules of the game. CCP knows this, and *every* player involved in PvP on this level knows it. No, this has not caused a significant number of people to quit. To the vast majority, it’s a spectacular example of “business as usual”. The goons are not heroes, no, but they’re certainly not villains either. They’re simply playing the game. They were faced with a once-in-a-lifetime chance, and they took it. And they won their war. That’s not good or bad. It’s just “well duh, what else should they have done?”
In most Eve-players’ eyes, they haven’t cheated. They haven’t even violated the spirit of the game. They’ve been real bastards, but this isn’t WoW. To survive more than a week on the level they’re playing, being a bastard goes without saying. BoB were bastards too. That’s to be expected (and respected, if not loved)
As far as calling them griefers, I’m not convinced. SomethingAwful in general, yes, of course. That goes without saying. But the Eve “detachment” specifically? It seems to me they’ve invested too much in the game to be labelled “just griefers”. They’re playing the game as much as BoB is/was. It may have started out as “just griefing”, but to me they look more like an alliance who wants to “win” at the game, in the exact same way that BoB did, and the alliances that dominated before BoB beat them into oblivion.
This is exactly the reason why people play Eve. It’s never fun to lose so much, but when the stakes are high, it certainly becomes more interesting.
Just as they accepted their BoB overlords until now.
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The only ways the goons can be braught down is by either dividing them and then smash them into bits or wait untill they get bored.
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jalf makes a good point about GoonSwarm merely griefing. They might have started out wanting to screw up the system, but is it such a bad thing to promote communication between entry-level players and to democratize the game a little (admittedly starting within a clique of SA members)? Have I misunderstood the way GoonSwarms work?
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It’s too bad EVE is such a boring clunky piece of shit. The metagame is amazing. I love hearing about Goonfleet’s intelegence organization. What other games can you do that in!?
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@no…. and yet some guy who was previously trusted for a couple of years can suddenly get bored and turn around and do what’s been reported….. There’s no protection against that. No one is 100% trustable when they gain nothing from the situation and face no consequences for their actions.
Like was said above, there are rules to prevent the US or NATO from being disbanded…. because even if one person decides to leave they could never make the whole thing fall apart. Why isn’t there something like that in EVE? Seems like a major lack of foresight on the developers part rather than the players.
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How is it a lack of foresight on the developers part, and not BoB’s? If NATO had written in their charter “Oh, and the general secretary can, at his discretion, disband the entire thing. So can his secretary, the security council, and the head of any member nation”, that would be NATO’s own fault, and not a problem with the rules of the universe. I believe that Eve’s system requires *one* person to have access to everything, and not more than that (I’ve never run an alliance, so not sure if even that is neccesary). Everyone else are given the specific privileges that the leaders decide. I agree that it’s risky for the game to require that any one person is able to disband everything, but that wasn’t the problem here. This wasn’t the founder quitting. This was someone whom BoB has actually given privileges to do everything he did. So the real question is “why the hell did BoB grant him, or anyone else, the permissions to do this?”
The developers have provided the tools to ensure that only 1 person has the ability to disband an alliance. Perhaps that number should be 0 instead (making such decision possible only through a vote). But as it is now, I believe the minimum number is 1. One person must be able to disband the alliance. More people can be given the permission to do it, but that is not required by the game. So if BoB decided to grant that permission to more members than necessary, then it is their own problem. They, not CCP screwed up.
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It’s certainly an interesting story, but not one that brings a smile to my face. I’m more disappointed by people’s reactions than the act itself. I think it is a sad indictment of our society how may people think this is “awesome”. To celebrate the petty actions of how one man has wrecked what hundreds of people have strived to build up over a number of years just doesn’t seem right to me. It seems like one more deluded individual trying to make a name for them self in our celebrity culture, where fame is perceived as being on a far higher pedestal than being a decent human being.
Don’t get me wrong I like the fact that EvE is dark and edgy and I wouldn’t want the rules to change. That great freedom allows the game to work in a unique and exciting way, I just don’t like some of the consequences, but I accept them. François-Marie Arouet said it best “I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”.
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@ Jalf – the fact that the programme has limitations on what the users can do as opposed to having free reign as in real life.
The way the game works (as far as i understand it) there will always have to be at least one person who has access to ‘supreme power’ over an alliance or corp. Now, in a highly structured game environment that’s okay as long as the actions of that person do not adversly affect those playing with or under them…. but since EVE is so similar to real life you need to be able to say, this alliance is a council of corporations. It may be founded by 3 corps but now there are 29 in the alliance the original three can’t just disband the alliance – it is no longer just theirs.
This is the reason why saying things like ‘it can happen in the real world so it’s great that it can happen in EVE’…. it’s an exploit. In the real world the users can address these problems when they arise and generally these types of problems are limited in the extent of the damage caused. In the real world, the dissolution of an alliance would result in sections of the alliance and alliance hardware and installations falling under local govern/ownership for a short time while things got sorted out – they wouldn’t just get turned off.
The lack of foresight on the developers part is that they didn’t include the tools for users to avoid this very situation. There is always going to be one person in charge – one person whose account can be hacked, one person who can get bored and just rage quit, taking every imaginary thing down with his defunct account. That is the oversight…. are you disputing this point? Like i said, under this system there is no protection against one man going AWOL or whatever…. NATO, and other governing bodies and corporations etc. have failsafes against this very thing.
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This is what computer games should be. Congratulations EVE.
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This is the reason why saying things like ‘it can happen in the real world so it’s great that it can happen in EVE’…. it’s an exploit. In the real world the users can address these problems when they arise and generally these types of problems are limited in the extent of the damage caused. In the real world, the dissolution of an alliance would result in sections of the alliance and alliance hardware and installations falling under local govern/ownership for a short time while things got sorted out – they wouldn’t just get turned off.
That doesn’t make it an exploit. That merely means the real world’s rules are different from the game’s rules.
Listening to Eve Radio right now this certainly seems to be perceived as one of the most interesting things happening in EVE lately.
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As soon as the Goons start to splinter and break up, or dwindle in power, i’m starting EVE.
I’ve always wanted to , but not having any money and the fact that there is a massively powerful corporation out there with the stated aim of griefing turns me off..
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So, let me see if I can’t boil this down…
One of the most massively shocking in-game events that could take place has – A traitor has taken down an empire. What a freaking awsome turn of events. But instead of this being a a shining achievement that should be held up as an example of what makes the game great, it’s a tragedy. No rules were broken. But this must mean that the rules are flawed, because this is event obviously illegitimate. But why is this event obviously illegitimate? Because the daggermen have a reputation for not taking their role-playing as seriously as they should.
This is why I stick to single-player games.
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@Swift Voyager
BoB says that the ragequitting director did not actually ragequit but was hacked. No idea if they’re trying to save face on the forums by spreading false information or if they’re actively trying to trick an ignorant GM into listening to their petition, but there is just way too much evidence to the contrary to make their story seriously. Besides, the turncoat is in Goonfleet now.
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Holy shit, I am going to have to re-up just so that I can change my ticker from LWTAX to BOB and back again.
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Man, you gentlemen have a lot of hatred for the forum goons, but I have to say, moments like these make me proud to be a goon. As for those who think Goonswarm only wants to grief BoB, hey, BoB started this with their Jihad. You really think BoB wouldn’t have done the same given the chance?
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I predict GoonSquad folds in the next two weeks.
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I think it’s awesome because it shows ingenuity. Regardless of whom did it for what reasons, I would find this awesome. I like the fact the one person can utterly wreck the work of hundreds or thousands of others. It’s inspiring.
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The disbanding was not an ‘I win’ button. Do you have any idea how long it took Goonfleet to demoralize BoB until one of their top level directors finally decided to leave them and join Goonfleet?
Most alliances will never have to worry about this, and the ones that do are probably awful anyway…why would you treat one of your own directors like shit to the point where he decides to not simply ragequit but also take down his entire alliance with it?
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That would be fine if there were some way to defend against it, but there simply isn’t. In this game, you’re forced to rely on people you don’t really know to enjoy the game properly. You can do everything perfect with the information you have and still be utterly fucked. Since when is that good game design? Sure, it may make for interesting stories, but that in itself is not a sign of good game design.
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I had a chance to discuss this with Haargoth last night in IRC and what it boils down to is that when he joined BOB, he was treated like a worm unworthy of the attention of the older members. When he joined OHGOD(Goonswarm), he was treated with appreciation, enthusiasm, and friendliness – all of that while everyone figured he was just some silly newbie who didn’t know Veld from Ark.
You want to pity the thousands of players who spent time building that alliance? Don’t – they got exactly what they deserved.
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There is a way to defend against.. don’t be a bad manager. These are corporations essentially, but with anonymity of the internet and no ethical ramifications, so you have to know who to trust, especially when you are enemies of the Goonswarm. It absolutely is survival of the fittest and people think it’s unfair? It’s a game and the point of the game is built from the context of those playing it, if you’re not prepared for everything, then you deserve to lose.
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So the upshot of all of this is that the Goons are now the ones to beat and will have to defend what they’ve won or leave it behind, eh? That’s a funny turn of fortune.
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I find it interesting that people are so upset by the introduction of an ancient aspect of warfare into a game that is at its heart about total war between states (and for all intents and purposes corporations in EVE are states, in the political science sense). History is full of examples of traitors who crippled and destroyed states and empires (Brutus and Co., Talleyrand), as is popular science fiction (Dr. Yue, Count and Gaius Baltar). It’s an integral aspect one of the main parts of the game, and that it’s evolved naturally rather than being codified in the forms of an in-game mechanic speaks to how well EVE has worked as a simulation of large scale conflict, not a problem with the game. As for the argument that “It’s bad because you can’t defend against it”, poppycock. It’s difficult, certainly, but just as there’s a vast body of material to draw from when devising your espionage plans in a game like this, so there’s likewise a vast body of material to draw your counterespionage plans from. Neglecting this aspect of warfare is short-sighted, and the attitude that “gentlemen don’t read each other’s mail” is going to be about as successful in game as it was in real-life.
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That’s another game design fallacy – that successful emulation of real life is inherently good game design.
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For me, the main question is – would you play a game where you can work 2 years on something, then see it go up in smoke?
I wouldn’t. I don’t even care if what causes the loss is cool (super-battle) or retarded (deception). I just won’t play for these odds. At least in games like Travian servers get rebooted at regular intervals. But losing so much in a continuous, always moving, never ending game? I understand why some people enjoy it, but I wouldn’t, myself.
Also, can anyone name recall an EVE story where someone was beaten in an awesome battle? It seems all the EVE stories are about deception, which I find rather crappy.
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Classy move by (former) BoB: http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=991506
I’m glad they have the strength to accept it and move forward.
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What else should SirMolle do? He’s already with his pants down.
Somehow this seems rather ironic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhcD10bqC74
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Stop right there! That’s the problem! if it’s work and not fun there’s a problem. However, if the whole giga-alliance building was fun then rebuilding’s gonna be fun too.
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Whoops, that first line was a quote, looks like I didn’t format it correctly.
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@marilena
Battle stories are harder to make involving, particularly in a game like EVE where the player interactions are by far the most complex part of the game.
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so, is this opening of the BoB forums entirely altruistic. Any discussions there about allegations of CCP-BoB collusion. i suppose there wouldn’t be. Still, I’m sure there’s yet another good story in there, and this is but chapter 1.
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Jesus, I stop playing EvE for a week to finally play Far Cry 2 and this happens.
I’m no BoB fan but I’d be happier if the Goons weren’t, in my experience, a bunch of complete arseholes. Not in the “oh no, you shot my internet spaceship” sense but in the “hmm, you’re slightly weird and unpleasant” sense. Of course, I haven’t met lots of Goons so, as ever, sweeping generalisations FTL.
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Why the whines? That’s is EvE. Play it with all the consequences or just don’t. As I do.
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Once again, there is a way to defend against it. Don’t give members access to the killswitch. I’ll agree that as far as I know, there is one flaw in the system. The founder automatically has full access. That may be a problem, but that wasn’t the problem which was exploited here. Here, someone was *given* access to do pretty much anything with the alliance. BoB was not forced by the game mechanics to give him, or anyone else, access to this. But they did.
Again, I agree, it’s a problem if at least one person has to have supreme power. But once again, while that may hypothetically be a problem, that was not what caused *THIS*. This was caused by BoB giving out privileges that they did not have to give out to anyone but that one trusted person. But they chose to let multiple people get access to the “kick corps out of the alliance” button.
Not if the alliance is able to order them turned off *before* disbanding the alliance. Then they’ll be turned off until someone gets around to reactivating them.
No, I’m disputing its relevance. I agree, if that happened, it’d suck for everyone involved. But since it was not that one person who betrayed them, I fail to see what it has to do with this event. In this case, the problem was not “CCP requires us to give full access to this guy who can’t be trusted”. It was BoB deciding, of their own free will, that “hey, I know it’s not required, but why don’t we give *all* our directors access to disbanding the alliance?”
And THAT could have been prevented.
Once again, you’re mixing together two separate issues. One is that it is certainly a weakness if one person is required to have full access. But another, which has nothing to do with this, is that an alliance who chooses to give full access to *more* than this one person, have screwed up big time.
yes, there are plenty. But they don’t get much attention outside the Eve community, because they don’t stand out. There are people winning battles in WoW too. Eve’s might be bigger, but it’s still just a battle. A WoW player doesn’t care about that. But something like this certainly gets his attention ,because it’s so different from what he gets in his MMO of choice.
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I’m amused by all the sympathisers saying that it’s unfair and a broken mechanic that this could happen.
It takes away the real human aspect, the way that people want to congregate together – and the way these societies choose to function and treat each other.
BOB built themselves up valuing high-SP and seniority over most other concerns. The pride in these things meant new members were treated like dirt.
If this had not been the case, if BOB had built themselves with a more welcoming and friendly attitude towards their OWN MEMBERS – this would not have happened.
The game mechanic used was simply a means to and end of philosophic expression. There was no long rooted plan to do this, there was no conspiracy to do this. It was a cultural victory, not an abuse of game mechanics.
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One of the top guys of McDonalds realises he prefers Burger King Whoppa’s… logs into McDonalds network and clicks “Disband organisation”.
Burger King now has no competition.
Anyone else?
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While i never liked Goons, i kinda hate them for their childish and wtf behavior, seems like some of them did an amazing job. GG!
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@Catastrophe: He could push a friend the be the main distributor of software for all the company worldwide. Then add a troyan horse on all the computers. The payload could be:
– Use all the credit cards available of clients, and buy stuff at random with then.
– Pay giganteous ammounts of money to the people that work for then.
– Send random “you are fired” checks everywhere.
– Leak documents with the health risks of McDonalds foods
– Delete all client data
– Delete all proveers data
– Lock all workstations *1
– Lock all servers *1
*1 you can force a program called “Stronghold” where everybody is mandatory to store all his passwords.
If the server room refrigeration is operated by software, you finnaly disable it.
If the backup system is fully automated, you can delete all backups, or corrupt it.
If you do this everything at once, maybe will not vanish, but will face seriush problems.
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Eve Online spazzes make WoW dorks look like CoH geeks.
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cross-posted from SA:
<blockquote cite=”Yeah why the hell would anyone want to defect from BoB to Goonswarm?
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damit can’t edit my posts. something went wrong so here it is again:
Yeah why the hell would anyone want to defect from BoB to Goonswarm?
begin bob quote——————————————–
2008-11-13, 21:29 #1
Coranor
BNC Member
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: The Pub
Posts: 832
Default We’re being nice to people. Why?
We’re being nice to people.
When the fuck did we start being nice to people who bring rifters and fucking caracals to our fleets? WHY? Seriously why are we not just shooting these fuckers who’re treating it as a right to fly with us instead of the privilege it should be.We’ve been so afraid to move away from what works for so long that we’re stuck into this retarded blob mentality. Where we put up with shit from the likes of axe and (yes nilie) goodfellas because we need MOAR numbers. I’m sorry but enough is enough. Molle you want us to teach them thats fine. But if they don’t learn they’re getting the fuck out.
We’re the old fogies stuck in our ways deathly afraid to try new things. Tri and pathetic legion are hoovering up most of the quality players because despite their ridiculous fear of losing they’re not afraid to try new things either. Case in point was the time they covert bridged a load of smartbomb typhoons onto a camping fleet. We never would have done that. Not got the imagination any more the idea never would have popped into our heads because so many of us are so quick to shoot down ideas. Myself included btw.
RR bs setups, we’ve never tried them on any sort of large scale, its worth a shot especially now that lag is manageable. Interdiction squads of recon ships to kill enemy reinforcements before they get to the fight, why don’t we do that when we’ve seen the sheer amount of shit that its caused us watching idiots getting ganked on the way back by other idiots. We somehow think our idiots are dumber than their idiots and it won’t work? No we’ve become sucked into the blob. Stick everything we have into one. We don’t do this stuff not because we don’t think it’ll work. I don’t honestly know why we don’t do it. We got the people to run these things we just don’t seem to want to make them do it.
We have been shit lads, not our members, us. We’ve allowed them to turn up in stupid ships and we’ve allowed them to get bored. We’ve allowed our allies to remain shit instead of kicking their leadership up to standards and making them teach their own fucking retards. We’ve allowed them to leach off us instead of growing their own infrastructure, fc’s and identities. We’ve allowed them to continue recruiting players and corps from the forums despite the fact we know the damage its causing them. Above all though we’ve allowed ourselves to get stuck in our ways, become fixated and to lose our grip on the lead in this game. We won the biggest war in eve then we got soft. I’m going to start trying to fix some of these things. Starting with my own corp.
omfg that was cathartic.
Ztrain, Disposition of the allies and targets for them in the north. So they can sort their own shit out. Then get them to knock off the recruiting from the forums or we’ll slap them silly.
Wags nice rant on the evol forums btw. You’re dead right. Just wanted to say that really.
This is not a rant for the sake of a rant. You all know i couldn’t be arsed typing all this just for the sake of it and you all know that we need to figure out what we want ourselves to be now. This sure as fuck isn’t what i want us to be.
end bob quote——————————————–
There’s a ton of admitted account sharing in their director forums. I wonder if CCP will do anything about it once the forums are made public.
Edit: They have a weird hardon for executing people commissar style. They actually want to blow up and pod their own members and allies for this shit.
Don’t have Tech 2 guns? Executed.
Don’t have BS or T2 ship? Executed.
Lose your supercap? Executed.
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well, its happened, and its a really shitty way to get your back put against the wall. simple though; we will fight them on the pos’s, fight them on the cyno jammers (that dont work lol) and fight them some more.
no way delve will fall without a huge frigging fight and many many many billions in lost hardware on bothsides.
screw goonswarm, can see our side giving up.
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“That would be fine if there were some way to defend against it, but there simply isn’t. In this game, you’re forced to rely on people you don’t really know to enjoy the game properly. You can do everything perfect with the information you have and still be utterly fucked. Since when is that good game design? Sure, it may make for interesting stories, but that in itself is not a sign of good game design.”
This.
Basically contrary to what a lot of people are claiming (rather naively it seems) how the real business world works and how the EVE game space works are entirely different entities. Attempting to drawing parallels as a point of justification in the face of what is quite clearly a case of plain bad game mechanics at work is truly hilarious.
In real business there is a considerable amount of accountability that occurs from the bottom to the top. Directors and even CEOs are wholly accountable for their actions and beholden to the agreement of other board members on wide reaching decisions. Likewise CEOs can be voted off and out by other members of a board in the event of a vote of no confidence by the board. It’s rare unless a business is wholly privately owned that senior decisions are made without director board approval of some kind. Certainly something as far reaching as the dissolution of an alliance would never be undertaken by a director alone without agreement by other senior members.
Appointing a person to a directorial position does not and should not mean that their actions are beyond future assessment. A Director should not be in the position of being a dictator.
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Kadayi> That’s just your opinion, based on our real world, and not the way the game, based on a crazy backstabbing sci-fi world, works. The BoB guys knew the way the game works, and chose to give the eventual turncoat the necessary privileges to spell their doom and then still treat him with enough contempt to trigger this.
If they didn’t want him in the position of a dictator they shouldn’t have given him the power to disband. But they did give it to him, and have to live with the consequences.
And the guy’s actions are not beyond future assessment. Despite the disbanding the bob guys have still got the resources to reassemble into a pretty big alliance, and you can bet once they’ve emerged from their current confusion they’re gonna take their revenge.
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Kadayi: er, “That’s just your opinion” is too validating for my taste. It’s “your unsubstantiated opinion” that only works by overestimating what checks and controls can do on one person (cf. Bagger, Madoff just in the last three months), and the actual damage done to the alliance in question.
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Unsubstantiated? Way to lower the tone there Dinger. This is a games discussion site, and I discuss games, even the ones I don’t play. Regarding this particular issue, prior experience doesn’t seem to be a requisite, because it’s a common flaw across many MMOs (leadership is dictatorship). The argument that it’s not a design flaw is that it’s ‘realistic’. That argument doesn’t appear to hold up under scrutiny, and neither does appealing to notions of it being a reflection of ‘a back stabbing sci-fi world’. In business a corporation is a very specific entity in terms of it’s composition, structure, function and operation. If the corporations in game don’t accurately reflect that model, then the word is being wholly misused as a definition. A corporation should be more than an alternative name for a clan.
I also believe peoples opinions on this tend to be coloured by how much shadenfreude they derive from the results. Clearly those with a hatred of BoB are overjoyed, those with a dislike of the Goons are horrified that more betrayals may follow (nothing is safe). Peoples time, especially their leisure time is a precious thing, that so much effort by so many can be undone so easily by a lone individual is a serious design issue. Right now the situation appears to be one where the individual concerned was the one who instigated the action. What if the scenario was that it was the case of another person physically accessing their account and inflicting the losses? A rival local player, a disgruntled (ex)-girlfriend, a childish brother/sister? In such a scenario would people be so willing to accept the lack of in game safeguards? Esp if the losses incurred were their own? I doubt it.
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Kadayi> You assume too many things. I don’t know who BoB or the goons actually are, so my opinion isn’t colored by anything like that. What I do gather from all the reports is that it’s a serious blow that was struck in a legitimate way for the concerned game, a blow that’s not even unheard of except for the size of the target. It is also a blow that did not, in fact, “undo so much efforts of so many”. If the ex-BoBs themselves are to be believed they can rebuild and reorrganize, the loss they suffered is crippling but not lethal.
What’s more, it’s a blow that is actually providing a lot of other players with an exciting break in routine. Space that was once safe is now haunted by roving bands of pirates or aliances seeking to fill the momentary void of power.
Also your hypothetical cases of the brother/girlfriend/enemy all imply either account hacking (in case of the enemy) or sharing (in case of the friend or relative), both things that are in fact forbidden by the EULA and thus not abiding by the game rules like the actual case was. i.e. they’re not the same thing, it’s playing versus cheating, and thus of course our reaction may be different.
As for the argument about a corporation being a specific term that shouldn’t be misused, that’s like saying health bars or HP should be removed because health is not in fact a discrete quantity that can be measured. There may be a lot of reasons you may want to do away with HP, but it not being a rigorous analogue to reality isn’t one of them. They make sense as a concept and stay coherent within the game itself, and the name allows the user to immediately liken the principle to a concept they’re familiar with. Games use analogies and metaphors all the time, this is just one further example.
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Goons committed themselves to taking Delve and as a result they are losing all of their space to AAA/Atlas. They already lost their high end moons and thus lost their income, so i think this was a move of desperation.
Their last attempt to make ISK turned sour as their main FC stole the titan that was stolen from another goon director who was accused of… spying. This titan was supposed to be sold to pay for POS fuel bills.
Current state of fighting in Delve is… if the initial battles are to be believed, goons are losing. Compared to the first Delve invasion, BoB is in a much better position. Even without SOV, they now have much stronger allies, so goons cannot simply use the strength of numbers.
Should also be pointed out that, even tho goons claim the credit, its not actually “goons” that’s fighting, but a mega coalition of about 80% of EVE’s .0 alliances versus GBC/AAA/Atlas.
EvE is so complicated… -.-
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Shihouka > As a counterpoint to this G_C mouthpiece, it’s worth noting that due to this betrayal, TAFKAB(The Alliance formerly known as BOB) released a full publish of their director-level forums. Included inside are posts where they more or less rag on their “stronger allies” and how, prior to this occurance, they were very soon going to kick the majority of them out of their space.
Shihouka also reads from the party line that goons are broke(a slight mistruth spread by -A- ‘spymaster’ Jake Noble) and glosses over some truths of the initial battles in Delve(so far goons have aborted at least one titan-in-production – and later admittedly had a near-miss on some of their own.)
Ultimately I suppose it proves what’s really epic about EVE – the faux-reality fostered in the gameplay where information itself really is a commodity due to the singular nature of events. He and I will both read from our respective sources about what is going on in the game, but it’s unlikely either of us know everything about these events – if it’s even possible for one person to know.
Only time will tell how this will all settle.
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In two years of playing EVE, I STILL have trouble figuring out who is part of what alliance and how many people are doing what and which ship is now in need of nerfing. But I am still alive because it is not crucial to my survival.
For those of you wondering whether the world is Goonswarm, BOB, and nothing in between, rest assured that while the big game is there, there are far more Corps than I care to count who generally just align themselves with whichever alliance is closer, and then ignore any call to arms, instead choosing to quietly slink away…
For those of you concerned with real world comparisons, how about this: my university is a “Pepsi campus”, which means we get money from Pepsi, Pepsi funds some research, and Pepsi sponsors student concerts etc. Other universities are Coke campuses. If Coke and Pepsi go to war, the universities are not obligated to join in, but there is the prospect of more moolah if they do.
Replace the above references with Goonswarm and BoB, and assume a future where corporations can and do kill each other, and you have a shaky real life analogy.
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Statements of fact do not consist in lowering the tone.
A corporation is a fictional entity that has the legal standing of a person (in equity in the Anglo-American system). In other words, like a person, a corporation can own and alienate goods and has legal standing. As a matter of fact, guilds were among the first corporations in history (right after monasteries), hence their medieval latin name universitas, or “being-turned-in-one-directionness”, the entirety of those doing the same thing.
So corporations in EVE more than fulfill the definition of “corporation”, as do guilds in most fantasy role playing games.
Your argument, as I read it, is:
Modern corporations are not dictatorships.
*Proof: there are numerous checks and controls on executives.
EVE corporations are dictatorships
*proof: there are no checks and controls on executives. This is clear from the BoB event under discussion.
Therefore, EVE corporations are not realistic, because this would never happen in real life. Moreover, the “game mechanic” is broken, because it’s neither fun nor interesting.
First off, this argument ends with an obvious false conclusion (“this would never happen in real life”). I cited, for example, Stein Bagger, who managed to earn all kinds of awards for his company, including those from top-shelf auditing firms, before disappearing with a ton of money.
Rogue executives can and do destroy companies.
Second, while the alliance known as BoB may have dissolved, most of the underlying corporations are intact, and have reformed their alliance, and, as noted here, their losses will be somewhat less than total. So it was an extremely damaging act, but not a lethal one. Now we’re getting into the realm of quite common occurrences in the modern corporate world.
Furthermore, the reasoning is specious, because it takes the notion of “dictatorship” differently in the two cases (aka fallacy secundum quid et simpliciter, for those of you scoring at home). For the modern world, the insistence that corporations are not dictatorships is based on internal and external regulations governing them; but on that measure, many EVE corps are not dictatorships, either. And no alliances are dictatorships. There are rules of governance hard-coded in, and many have rather sophisticated procedures for deciding on a plan of action, and executing it. The director who turned in this case had a lot of power, and he was able to turn over a lot of assets, but he was aided by the vulnerable location of many of these assets (capital ships). And practically everything he did was against internal corporate regulations. If there were a government overseeing them, they could sue.
So if by “dictatorship,” you mean access to powers that can do considerable harm to the corporation, well, that’s true of practically all chief execs today, and many of their underlings.
Finally, the idea that this is a bad game mechanic is just wrong. If anything, it’s served to energize BoB and Goonswarm, as well as many of their neighbors. Stability is a bad thing for a PvP-based MMO. Moreover, this is a compelling story, and a compelling story can be measured in terms of player hours on server and new subs.
But I’d rather not waste everyone’s time explaining these things, when a one-sentence reply gets the point across.
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@Bobby
I’m not assuming it’s bad game design, it’s abundantly clear its bad game design, and no amount of ad hominems is going to change that. The point about real world corporations is that it seems the game should be emulating them in more than name only, esp given the scale of the operators within (the efforts of so many players in the balance). That someone is given a directorship shouldn’t suddenly mean they are given Carte Blanche over a clan/company/corporations entire financial/power structure without some form of vote agreement/approval requirement from other directors within the game on an ongoing basis. If to achieve what was achieved say required 2 other directors to be in on the sting and approve the decisions and the events still occurred, now that would be an audacious move/coup, but as it stands one guy shitting on everyone because he wasn’t ‘loved’ enough seems rather pathetic to be honest.
Also you seemed to miss the point about a physical hack. Sure such things might be in breach of the EULA, but could you actually prove them? Within the operators of the game, if you’ve access to the account, you are the user for all intents and purposes.
@Dinger
A company and a corporation are entirely different things. You need to appreciate the difference.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporation
If that’s lost on you, I recommend you check out the film ‘The Corporation’ as well, as it explains the concept in depth.
As regards the issue of dictator. The point is that within a corporation a directors actions are accountable to the board and it is generally the case that company strategy is agreed at board level. It’s not simply a case of you’ve got the job, here’s the keys to the executive bathroom, now do as you wish (including setting the building on fire). My position has nothing to do with corporation as dictator as you seem to imply (allows fallacy arguments to fall flat on the floor..no amount of Latin will save you there I’m afraid), more to do with leader(s) as dictator(s). “A Director should not be in the position of being a dictator” – Kadayi. Whose the one making the assumptions now?
As for Stein Bagger, I don’t know enough about the case to genuinely comment, but from what I’ve briefly read it seems to be more a case of a long con at work and not of actual corporate espionage/sabotage.
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Well, it’s over 200 posts, nobody else is reading this so, here goes:
In fact, this is how the BoB Alliance worked. The person in charge didn’t have de iure carte blanche. To do what he did would require agreement among the directors. He didn’t. That’s why he’s no longer a director. And that’s why the member corporations have reformed an alliance.
I have no problem stating that the Wikipedia article defines a corporation as a modern incorporated company. Just look at the lead:
This is wrong. Corporations are not formed by people. They are legal fictions, and they are formed by whatever the law says they are formed by. As an officer in a corporation, and a member of several others (most of which are not companies), I do not “form” it, but fulfill a function with respect to the corporation.
Moreover, “ownership by stockholders” is only one type of corporation, and historically, corporations existed before the notion of stockholder. Cities, churches and monasteries existed long before stockholding.
And no, I don’t watch fictional movies to learn the meaning of terms. That would be irresponsible. Besides, you get a much clearer idea of these things studying history.
Oh, and much of CCP’s time is taken up with appeals concerning hacked/compromised accounts.
And I suggest you look up the definition of ad hominem. If you think I’ve committed one, feel free to show me where. Don’t worry — nobody else is reading this.
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1) LOL. Corporations aren’t ‘magicked’ into existence, they are created by people, to argue otherwise is the height of foolhardiness. ‘The corporation’ is a documentary, not a work of fiction. I do recommend you watch it, because you are so far off base with what a corporation is as an entity it’s kind of hilarious to be honest. Appeals to archaic usage aside, the modern understanding of the term is very much centred around business.
http://www.investorwords.com/1140/corporation.html
2) Also did you miss the entire bit about me not likening corporations to dictatorships as you boldly claimed? Way to fail. In fact go to fail, go directly to fail , do not pass ‘no, you’ do not collect delicious cake. Ears burning now? Enjoy the humiliation (that was your intention no? With the little latin outburst?).
3) When you make a point of qualifying peoples opinions as ‘unsubstantiated opinions’ then I’d say your firmly in the realm of the Ad hominems. Feel free to argue otherwise, and feel free to realise I’m still laughing about points (1) and (2).
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1. You keep returning to economic definitions for corporations. Corporations are legal fictions. Yes, that means they’re created by people, but it doesn’t mean they’re constituted by them. You yourself recognize that the definition you defend is overly restrictive, since you brought the whole thing up by saying “In business”. Corporations exist outside of “business”; their idea and usage existed before they were adopted into the business world, and many corporations exist for non-business reasons (So, who are the shareholders in the Catholic Church?). So why insist that a science fiction game extrapolate the notion in some other direction?
2. I have no idea what you’re talking about. You stated:
That constitues aAn unbased assertion that for many MMOs, the leadership position is one of dictator. That’s incorrect, and only works by confusing the mechanisms of power for the structures built around them. A soldier has a gun, and could walk down the street, shooting anyone he pleases, but he wouldn’t be behaving as directed.
3. You are not your opinion, nor is your opinion sacred. If you hold otherwise, there’s no point in discussing or listening to you. That your opinion has not been substantiated constitutes a point of fact germane to the discussion. “That’s my opinion” is often used by those who are weak at argumentation to claim as sacred a fundamentally flawed and contradictory position.
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Kadayi:
That someone is given a directorship shouldn’t suddenly mean they are given Carte Blanche
Who made you king of the game and able to decide how things should be? It just happens that isn’t the way things are. Once again you mistake the real world outside the game for the in-game context.
In the game a directorship is carte blanche, this is an incontrovertible fact. Thus players know it and have to work with it. The BoB guys knew it as well as anyone and made the decision to trust the eventual turncoat with the power to destroy them. As it turns out he eventually sided with their enemies and allowed them a mighty blow from the inside, which is fair game.
And even if by some chance they weren’t aware of the fact then it’s actually their fault for not paying attention to the game they’re playing. It’d be like losing at chess and claiming a foul because you didn’t know all the rules.
As for the hack, the necessity of proving it has no relevance whatsoever here, since the present case is not a hack, and we have proof of that (the turncoat himself).
You may claim it is a design flaw all you want, yet it’ll still be debatable, because it’s actually not for you to decide how the game should be played, it’s entirely up to the devs and them alone. Maybe they do want people to be able to give such power over an alliance. It’s the ultimate proof of trust, after all. You can claim it’s unfair, but then thankfully nobody’s forcing you to grant this proof of trust.
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1)Given that EVE is a game very much centred around economy & control I ‘d say the business definition is more than apt. However the operation of corporations as entities is what I was referencing, historical setting is moot tbh. The principal operators of board and member voting on large scale future actions is the common theme. The board agrees the strategy, then the members assigned implement the tactics.
(2) Again where do I actually say that corporations are dictators as you claim? You can infer and misinterpret all you want, but the reality is it was neither said by me or inferred. Your position is redundant, and no amount of wriggling is going to change that fundamental fact I’m afraid.
My point is about the fact that in the atypical MMO (of which I’ve seen my fair share), once someone is in a senior position within a clan it’s rare if ever that their conduct is brought into question by the game mechanics. It is only through other clan player observation that their behaviour might be brought into question, when problems arise. Leader(s) as dictators as I said before.
(3) I’m pretty sure I never said ‘That’s my opinion either’. I’m offering up an observation based upon my experience of MMOs, as a player and as a designer. You might disagree with it, but it is anything but ‘unsubstantiated opinion’, so to make a deliberate point of labelling it as such, given that phrase could be bandied around at pretty much all posts here seems far less about making a constructive counterpoint and far more about an aimed attempt at personal dismissal.
@Bobby
The Hell? If the best you can muster as a defence against bad design is that the developers made it that way, that’s not much of an argument tbh. Developers are not, contrary to popular belief all knowing, omnipotent and omnipresence. The very fact that pretty much all games end up being patched/balanced after release should be proof positive of this.
From a design perspective the only thing I’ve argued for is a degree of safeguards, nothing more (on a broad level). I’d say it’s a fairly reasonable request and would be conducive to a positive gaming environment for players. I’m not seeing the problem with that as a proposition.
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@Kadayi: I suppose the dev’s are omnipotent on the alfa server, or something like that. Going “God mode” in a server with real customers has to be bad bussines. Even If fun.
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Does anyone have a good recommendation where I can go to get updates from the fighting? That radio thing with the two interviews was pretty fucking entertaining but it seems like they dont have many recordings available on their site.
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@Tei
Heh. I’m just pointing out that Devs are human beings and not the ‘make no mistakes’ gods some people seem to think. MMO games are probably about the most complicated software programs out there given the number of variables they have to contend with, the notion that the people who develop them are able to accurately predict every possible event that can occur in them is flawed is all.
Someone I know on another forum (who does play EVE) summed it up fairly nicely:-
“I agree that its pretty shit that one person can ruin 6 years of work over a matter on 10 minutes and I would imagine now this has happened on such a large scale some kind of measures will be put into some of the next patches to stop it from happening again.
My guess is CCP just didn’t see this kind of thing happening and therefore didn’t put in any counter measures to stop it from happening because it really sucks that so much work has gone down the drain.”
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@Kadayi
Players can be given a number of roles that give them control over areas of a corporation without giving them the same level of access a director has, it’s not simply poor game mechanics at fault here. However, there are certain areas that a player other than the CEO only has access to with directorship.
What I’d like to see in a future patch would be to make a few more assignable roles separate from directorship, so a trusted player can be given access to control much of the corporation without having the power to destroy it entirely. I’d also like to see improvements to the voting system, which is pretty much redundant as it is now. Basically give the CEO more options to customise how the corp is run.
For example, they could choose to have it work like your suggestion, where directors would have to vote on major actions such as withdrawing a large sum from the corp wallet, kicking a player or offlining a starbase. They could also have it so the directors can initiate these actions, but they have to be approved by the CEO before they go ahead, or the option would still be there for the corp to remain as it is currently, with directors having power to do almost everything the CEO can. These would introduce safeguards that are, speaking as a player who loves the darker aspects of EVE, entirely within the spirit of the game. They don’t introduce artificial safeguards against spying and infiltration, but they could prevent large organisations from being destroyed on the whim of a lone player.
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I second Erik’s question:
Does anyone have a good recommendation where I can go to get updates from the fighting? That radio thing with the two interviews was pretty fucking entertaining but it seems like they dont have many recordings available on their site.
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@Kelron
I’m not disagreeing, in fact I’m fully in accord with what you’re saying. Perhaps ‘poor’ is the wrong word, but clearly the mechanics lack the necessary depth and forethought to reflect the complexity of the game at the level it was operating at, to the point that personal ‘trust’ in the individual played too much of a part in the process to the detriment of the game.
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@Mil > There really isn’t a consolidated source of information on this. Information is power in this game, if only to keep your own corp members reading only your propaganda and not realizing how bad things really are.
CAOD on the official forums will generally headline most of what is going on, but there’s little discussion and everything should be viewed skeptically. Mostly because 90% of all posts there come from people involved in a conflict, posting on unaffiliated alt-characters as though they weren’t involved.
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Apart from understanding why anyone wants to play EvE (so I can be a miner or engage in combat, wow, what a thrill), I certainly love the tales of high drama and con jobs that surround it. Those tales are cetainly edifying to anyone with an interest in game design. It’s too bad CCP always seems so unresponsive to fixing these issues.
After going through most of the comments I’m surprised that no one has mentioned just how unrealistic this whole scam was. This isn’t akin to the people of Troy wheeling in the Trojan horse, it’s akin to someone highly placed in a Fortune 500 company somehow managing to tank the company by himself. It just can’t happen.
Honestly, this would be like Steve Ballmer signing over everything MS owns to Sun. It just can’t happen. Even if Steve wanted it to. It ignores any common sense rules of how corporations are governed, nevermind the checks and internal security within the corporation, or even the legalities involved. What happened here is an example of a deeply flawed game mechanic that CCP needs to address – but probably won’t, which is why they’ll never be more than a very bit player in the MOG scheme of things.
Now a corporation in the real world has all manner of avenues open to them to tank themselves, ranging from the legal to wholly illegal – e.g. Enron. Yet, there is no possible way for a single individual to scuttle a large and powerful organization in the manner in which it happened here.
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CCP deliberately leave these kinda things to be possible, because it is what makes the game The Game. EVE is not about flying around mining and fighting. It is about avoiding to (or attempting to) get into this kinda situation, and having to do so requires interaction between players. And that’s why EVE prospers.. EVE forces people to treat people as people (hmm) which takes the game onto a new level.
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@Well
So basically you’re saying, it’s not that the developers didn’t see this coming, it’s that they deliberately planned it this way? I hate to question your abundant faith in CCP, but do you have any evidence to support this assertion?
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Cutter: Madorf?
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@Badger
The general consensus is that he wasn’t working alone, and others in the company were certainly complicit in fraud. It should also be stressed that the guy didn’t dismantle the company, he just basically ripped off his customers.
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@Kadayi
That’s really funny to see a person chatting with gamers, claiming to be a designer and saying sophisticated words such as “bad design” and “lack the necessary depth” while demonstrating complete incompetence in the subject.
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I don’t know if anyone has mentioned this, and I’m not going to read all the replies, but for everyone saying “Bad Mechanics!! How could this happen??” There are actually ways to prevent this, but people got lazy and didn’t implement them correctly. If they had they would have never ended up in this situation.
Like most things in EVE it’s driven by the players. The leaders of the alliance had the option to make it so that a vote would have been called that all the directors of the alliance would have had to participate in to dissolve the alliance. But they didn’t bother to set it up and so they allowed one person to flick the switch.
The fault lies with the executors of the alliance, not with any game design flaws. Just though I’d point that out for the people who don’t know the intricacies of the game.
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What a brilliant effort, i love it, makes me want to play more
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The game allows the alliance to decide who gets which privileges. If BoB hadn’t given access right to pretty much the entire alliance to this one character, they wouldn’t have been hit by this.
– personal wealth academy
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