Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Eve Online’s laughably expensive pretend clothes drama seems to have settled down – officially-speaking, at least. Last week, developers CCP flew the Council of Stellar Management (a collective of player-elected Eve, er, players) to Iceland for crisis talks about what the hell to do about all the online screaming. Both parties have reached some accord, and as far as I can tell it didn’t involve locking the CSM in a dungeon and slowly flaying all the skin from their bodies until they whispered “Yes, charge for everything – the clothes, the ships, the ammo, additional starfield colours… You’re right. You were right all along. Kiiiiiiiill meeeeeeeeee…”

What seems to have been determined in the wake of of this “perfect storm of bad luck, bad planning and bad communication” for sure is that there will be no pay-for-unfair-advantage microtransactions, that lower-priced vanity items are necessary, that more communication is needed and that there are tech issues which need a-fixin’ asap. The problems were “a perfect storm of bad luck, bad planning and bad communication,” apparently. Watch a chat between two very tired-looking representatives of both sides below…
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Eve Online’s player base is currently ANGRY. The above image is of a riot that took place this Friday in Jita, one of the virtual universe’s biggest trading hubs, and this thread on the official forums is keeping track of all the subscriptions that have been cancelled in protest- some 4,500 so far.

Why all the rage? In short, CCP are dragging the game in a direction the players are deeply uncomfortable with. I know all this because I’ve just finished reading Eurogamer’s sterling coverage of what they’re calling the “crisis”, and you should too. You can read it here, or get yourself a taste after the jump.
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CCP hasn’t been making Eve players terribly happy of late, first by introducing microtransaction vanity items broadly perceived as being about as affordable as Ferrero Rocher made of real gold, then by suffering a leak of an internal discussion about how to make even more from microtransactoins, and most recently by a blog from their senior producer which tried to wave away these issues with some rather peculiar arguments. In the wake of a fan uproar, they’ve now held up their hands and admitted to making a bit of a boo-boo.
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Eve Online community overseer and marketing manager Pann last night responded to the anger among Eve players regarding the recent microtransaction-heavy Incarna update (which our own Alec examines here) and a leaked CCP internal memo entitled “Greed Is Good” (which you can download here). In a post on the official forums Pan apologised for not making a statement sooner and says that as of today the developers will start “getting some info out” regarding players’ questions. Read the post in full after the jump.
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There’s high drama in the spacey world of Eve Online this week. Well, there’s always high drama in the spacey world of Eve Online, but this one’s proving especially clamour-inducing. It hinges on the fact that CCP have just introduced a third virtual currency to the game. In addition to standard ISK and the exchangeable gametime credit known as PLEX (perhaps not technically a second currency, but it is traded between players in-game for ISK as well as being bought out-of-game with real-world currency), there’s now something called Aurum. This is spent on customisation and vanity items for the long-promised player Avatars, which were introduced as part of today’s free expansion pack Incarna. You can sell PLEX for Aurum: that’s complication one. Bear with me here.

The vanity items appear to have been comically overpriced. If you’re buying PLEX directly from CCP and you convert it to enough to buy an in-game shirt, you’ll have paid the equivalent of $25. In other words, as much or more than you’d pay for a real-life shirt.
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Yesterday’s denial of service attacks on Minecraft, Eve Online and League of Legends do not appear to be the end of hacker collective Lulzsec’s attempts to force online games offline. Heroes of Newerth’s login server was named a victim around an hour ago, shortly followed by the group declaring its intention to target Eve again tonight. That may of course be a double-bluff, but keep it in mind if you’re intending to play tonight.

Then, just moments ago, they stated that they were now rerouting calls to their ‘requests’ phone number to World of Warcraft’s customer support line. They claim their line, alleged by some to be a premium rate number, receives between 5 and 20 calls a second at present. Whether this signals an impending attack on WoW itself remains to be seen, but the group currently appear to be focusing efforts on phone rerouting.

Update 2: League of Legends is the latest target. Its login servers are currently down, with its website also apparently suffering.

Update 1: Notch has told us that “Looks like we’re back up.. I just hope it lasts!”

Following yesterday’s Bethesda incursion, and earlier attacks on the likes of Sony and Nintendo, hacker collective Lulzsec have targeted further games and gaming services today. Over the last couple of hours, they’ve taken out first Eve Online and then Minecraft’s login servers, as well as knocking out gaming site The Escapist.
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