“CCP confirmed that no change was planned for how the CSM fit into EVE’s development as a result of the reorg, the CSM is a very good sounding board for CCP and will be continued to be used as such. The value of the CSM has been seen in the past and there is no reason to disregard that fact on CCP’s behalf.”

Given the writing style of the minutes, once could take that to be just an emotionless statement, but I am a bit suspicious that the statement is worded in a cold way rather than an emotionless way. We shall see when the next CSM enters. I for one have been very impressed with  the CSM as an organizing force this go around, even with the ~evil~ nullsec agenda. I hope that CCP recognizes the value of the current iteration of the CSM and isn’t simply paying lip service to them. While many have thought this CSM to be controversial or unrepresentative of the Eve community’s wants, this CSM has done more for the “game” in terms of iteration than any previous CSM. Many features that wouldn’t have seen the light of day were fast tracked in order to “fix” broken parts of the game. Say what you will about Mitanni, Death, and Vile Rat, but they’ve brought fixes to severely broken areas of the game while making sure they are parts that the entire Eve player base can enjoy.

Back to the minutes. I loved the idea of a loyalty program, mostly for selfish reasons. Admittedly though it doesn’t make much sense. The player base is extremely loyal once they’ve passed that dreaded three year mark, according to CCP. I certainly believe it given the number of 2008 and older characters i see about. So a loyalty program would be nice as a “thank you” to the players but wouldn’t do a whole ton to increase player retention as a whole. Either you are hooked and play till your wife threatens to leave you or you quit within the first few years. One great idea that CCP has been tossing about was the Master Account. I have three separate accounts, I would have more if I could afford it, but logging into all those accounts is a pain in the ass. I’d love to log into one and service the all three accounts with one username and password. The less work for the player, the better. I really hope this comes to fruition.

The economy section was interesting but had math and :words: which meant it totally  over my head. There’s a reason why I pvp instead of playing the market: I’m a relative idiot. I know, good reader, “That can’t be!” Quit gasping, it’s true. Similarly to the economy discussion was the discussion about PLEX. A notable section says:

“

CSM also pointed out that ISK is not tied to PLEX in any fashion, and the amount of ISK does not change in the overall economy due to PLEX use. Therefore the CSM wanted to know more about the reasons why CCP wanted to be able to react, and what they would do, to price fluctuations on the PLEX market – barring of course a possible steep decline in subscriber numbers should players not be able to afford PLEX for ISK.

CCP noted that in monetary theory it is possible to have inflation, or deflation, in an economic system even though the amount of money in the system is stable. This is due to the velocity of money – how often cash is changing hands. Therefore it is very important not only to monitor money supply in EVE but rather the entire economic value produced within the system, and imported into the economic system via PLEX. A large influx of economic value via PLEX could potentially have damaging effect on the economy, at least in the short and medium term.”

CCP’s reply was then backed up with the Quantity Theory of Money. While I’m not an economist at all, I disagree with CCP’s desire to intervene in PLEX prices simply because of this criticism of the QTM:

“While mainstream economists agree that the quantity theory holds true in the long run, there is still disagreement about its applicability in the short run. Critics of the theory argue that money velocity is not stable and, in the short-run, prices are sticky, so the direct relationship between money supply and price level does not hold.”

I would also point out that CCP is most likely falling for the money illusion. ISK has a “real value” that represents what it x amount of ISK can actually purchase. This “real value” rises and falls depending on the market and overall amount of ISK actively trading hands. If a 60 day PLEX costs 2 Billion ISK, CCP would most certainly view that as an excessive price for a PLEX, but the price would have risen that high due to high volumes of ISK trading hands and the driving down of ISK’s ”real value”. All that poorly linked economic theory to say, I think CCP “actively” adjusting prices of any sort is a bad idea. I certainly think that restricting or opening the ISK flood gates is a great way to respond to inflation or deflation just as a central bank would do, but all these adjustments must be made carefully and with consideration for the sand box aspect of the game.

I really liked the supercapital logistics discussions. The “spool up” idea for jumpdrives is brilliant as it provides both a useful game mechanic and potential lore for the eve universe. Living in 0.0 for over a year now, I’ve seen firsthand the pure portability of supercaps and its quite silly how quickly they can move from one end of the universe to the other given the proper coordination.

Thumbs up on destructable outposts. Great idea, get on it CCP. Let me urge them in this: If you develop destructable outposts, you much make owning one all the more valuable. Put more worth into having them, otherwise you’ll find people simply setting up lots of POS’s and living out of those. I suppose this all goes back into making sovereignty valuable on its own. Technetium is obviously the most lucrative game in Eve right now, but its not tied to Sov. You can take advantage of moons regardless of Sov. Obviously holding Sov makes it far easier to have and to hold those moons (till xxxdeathxxx do we part), but again they are not dependent on sov. I’ve no solutions here, just trying to make the echo louder and more redundant.

In the Game Balancing section, there are several fantastic ideas that CCP has devoted some thought to. The first is making T1 frigates and cruisers more useful. They specifically mentioned making cruisers speedier than battlecruisers as an example of T1 cruisers being bypassed. While I do agree that a bit of a boost to T1 ships would be nice, CCP has to realize that there are always going to be “useless” ships to certain players. I personally passed over regular cruisers rather quickly. IIRC, I was into a Hurricane within a few months. Now think about that, I bypassed a stabber and rupture within a few months and really haven’t touched them since. Part of the reason is that fitting a T1 cruiser with T2 mods increases the cost ten fold. That’s probably the highest cost increase in the entire game, so it’s simply not worth it for me to use a rupture that costs me ~30mil fully fit, when I can pay a negligible 15 more million and get a fully fit hurricane that has vastly improved abilities. It’s not so much that these ships suck, but that once you quit using meta 1 mods, the price becomes unjustifiable (except for the ~lulz~ fleets).

Electronic Attack Ships are briefly mentioned for being allowed to use ECM mods on capital ships. That’s just stupid unless you create specific mods for those ships that are useful. The main problem with the EAS is their massive sig radius’ relative to other frigate sized ships. There’s no point in flying something that has little chance of getting away while not providing a strong incentive to do so. The EAS frigs are certainly fun gimmick ships, but again probably need a complete revamping instead of being given an even bigger gimmick as “capital tacklers” or something.

Seemingly the most controversial point in the CSM minutes has been the proposed nerf to the drake. The proposition is to remove the resist and kinetic missile damage bonus, which makes sense. It has always been a ridiculous brick tank (I’ve personally used a >100k ehp drake as bait) and to see that changed and become more focused will be great. OH NOES WHAT ABOUT MY PVE DRAKE??? Get over it and grit your teeth for faction BS’s and other more expensive mission toys that you can lose hilariously like me. This change will give supreme reign to the nanodrakes though, especially if you can expect >100k engagement ranges with 400dps. Goodbye my sweet Cerberus, you’re about to become completely useless now.

“Cloak hunters” – retarded idea. AFK cloaking is a completely fine and legit mechanic, quit bitching about it, for fuck’s sake people.

The last notable thing to me was the mention of new missile and explosion animations. “Anime style missile swarm” sounds very appealing. Give me Gundam missiles dammit! This all is a very good thing because the missiles and explosions are about as lame as can be. Think about how many things explode in Eve every minute and we have the same shitty “Death start ring of doom” explosion. 

All in all, the minutes were very encouraging. I’m excited to see how some of these ideas (most certainly the terrible ones) makes it into the game and how other ideas (the great ones) disappear.

On a completely different note, I got into a Cerberus last night. I have no idea why I though flying a sniping missile ship was a great idea, its not. So don’t do it. Here’s a little story for your amusement though. I get my ship fit up in a fitting that I’m relatively happy with. It has a targeting range of ~140km and a missile range of 180k. I rolled down to Oijanen quickly to sit off the hisec gate. I first warped off to a safe spot in system and then to my sniping spot. Upon landing I found my cap was at 5% when I had over 80% midwarp so clearly the warp hadn’t taken it down and I was cap stable without my MWD and even with it, had a cap time of 40 seconds. I waited a couple of seconds for my cap to recharge and then warped back to my safe. Once I landed at the safe, my cap was fine. I did this three or four times and lost nearly all of my cap upon landing on the gate. The unlucky 4th time, I landed on the gate and some BricK sQuAD. guys landed right there and proceeded to murder me. My poor Cerb had lasted less than 10 minutes in this world. Damn. 

I am a terrible pilot, space friends.

On top of that, we got hit up by some more BricK sQuAD. guys in another system. We’d been moving some freighters around and one of our escort guys got caught by their crow. I warped in with my daredevil hoping to kill the crow before the other guys showed up, but right as the crow popped a cane showed up followed by a stiletto and dram. I was sunk. While this was going on, I stupidly warped my Falcon in too (just in case losing my daredevil wasn’t enough lost isk). I cried into my pint glass the rest of the night. Which was filled with Bier Brewery’s Kolsch! It was such  a lovely example of a delicate style. The ale that was a lager. Goodbye spacefriends.

I’ve barely had time since then to log in and do anything. The Order has been dead as far as PvP stuff goes, so I think its about time to schedule another “Skerrit’s Gonna Get Drunk and PvP” op. In other news, this very night, a new episode of Local Spam is going to be recorded. Fortunately I have plenty of beer and water, but I’ll probably just stick with bourbon and water due to the embarrassment of drunkenness last episode. Peace out e’ryone.

Seismic Stan wrote an interesting post on the whole subject a week ago. For the most part I agree with his implications that CCP is showing favoritism towards certain eve “celebrities”. Let me get a couple of things out before I go on my rant; 1) I am not jealous of the popular eve personalities 2) I do not give 1 single fuck about site traffic 3) I give even less fucks (read: negative fucks) about whether or not people respect or value my opinion. I know very little about this game and my analysis is even worse than my knowledge. /commence rant.

The whole eve celebrity thing is a bit ridiculous. Take a step back and realize that the people behind the avatar are simply people. For they most part, they go to work and come home to family or friends and spend time playing a game.  With that said, I do scratch my head as to how/why CCP picks certain people to be highlighted. For example: Mintchip. I’ve no fucking idea why CCP would spotlight anything she does. I’m not a mintchip fan because I don’t think her content is that great, its mediocre at best (yes lulz, making my content terrible). She covers far too much general video game content to be spotlighted as well. Just to clarify my position, I’m not against Mintchip in general, but only in her celebrity status in connection to Eve. There are numerous other examples to cite, but I’ll just stop with her. Mainly because I’m a massive, throbbing chauvinist.

If the community is frustrated with CCP’s spotlighting, then let’s create our own. Just as inside the game, the most compelling content is always created by the player base so the player base needs to take up the mantle yet again. We had CK and BC doing this stuff, notice a problem? They’re individuals. Are individuals in Eve typically successful? Certainly not as successful as groups working together. Players often burn out and leave the game; it just happens. It would be nice to see the a communal site created and run by several people and funded by the people taking advantage of its services. It wouldn’t be too difficult to do given the camaraderie of many in the tweetfleet and the blogging community. The main obstacle is finding those willing to take the responsibility.

As a side note, I find it rather stupid that there are free “press accounts”. Eve is a good enough game with passionate enough players that CCP need not give away “press accounts” to bloggers. Hell, CCP makes it easy to play their game for free anyway.

What the fuck. Is there seriously that much isk to be made in lowsec that three separate average size (<100) corps can afford to have three carriers on field for relatively no reason? I was intrigued when watching this fight develop because all six carriers were deployed, a tengu gang with 4 or 5 tengus plus 4 basci’s showed up. Who was it? None other than that famed CDM blogger Nashh Kadavr! For whatever reason, the fight just seemed to die when they showed up. The carriers disappeared one by one until only one thanny remained. Even more strange was that all that died in Taff last night were two cyno Kestrels, a cane, and a claw; with the cane and claw being losses completely unrelated to the carrier drops.

So now I’m just plain confused about lowsec. It has been almost a year since I’ve lived there, but is lowsec just consistently a rather dead place until someone starts dropping carriers? Or is was this a space oddity? For you long-time lowsec dwellers, is there that much cash  to be made in lowsec?

I’m currently wrapping my mind around the role of a diplomat and all the things that entails. For our Order of the Void, that mostly means damage control internally and externally, but with things being so smooth as of late I’m beginning to turn my eye outward. Coalitions. I consider myself to be a fair wordsmith and a jack of all communication. I do this in my job every day and am very very good at it, yet I’ve not put this particular skill to real use in game. With goons the encouragement is to use a silver tongue to steal and damage and while I suppose I could do that, I’d rather build. So back to the real problem at hand; finding suitable alliances/corps to build a coalition with. I’m currently listing and beginning to figure out how to market not only L.OD for OotV to potentially beneficial allies. As this is a game of relationships, I’ve got to start building vast ones. With our impending move to lowsec, this friendship building will be more crucial than ever.

For any reading this, what has built bridges in the past with you? What has burned them? Have you been part of the hush hush lowsec coalition culture? As always, I’m learning. Enlighten me.

I’ve gotten a bit away from posting about drinking, mainly due to the three tengus and a loki its cost me, but it’s time to get back in the saddle. As the Lush in Local, I’m prejudice against no alcohol. I welcome them all eagerly to my mouth. Over new years, my wife and I finished up the show Entourage with another couple, but shortly before watching the final episodes my buddy and I ran to a liquor store to grab some booze. When we were perusing the shelves we found Avion Resposado tequila. This was interesting as Avion is a key component of the show for a season or so, and even plays a role in the final episode. We couldn’t resist getting a bottle. We got margarita mix as my friend was not a huge fan of tequila but when we poured some into snifters, both of us were made believers. The tequila itself has much more in common with a single malt scotch than jose cuervo. I got citrus notes (a bit of guava also) at the same time as a bit of charred oak. It was delicious. I’ve never wanted to sip tequila straight but its a winner, also makes one helluva margarita. So there’s the ol’ alchie update. Avion’s a winner, not just a pretty face.

As far as in-game activities go, I’ve been doing some ice mining with Skerrit while playing the hell out of MAG on PS3… Oh wait that’s not what anyone wants to hear. Regardless, I’m ice mining in order to stock up on some POS fuel shit. I’ve been flying the hell out of my falcon and have been incredibly impressed with it. It is the king of jams. Along with it, I’ve recently decided I love a good cloaky tengu fit and a HAM Rook. Skerrit’s missile skills are getting pretty pro, I just need my practise to catch up, cuz damn I’m terrible at this game. Jokine has been dicking around in a cloaky Loki and having lots of fun in that along with going on some of the strat ops with goons.

Unfortunately, I’ve not had large chunks of play time at my disposal otherwise I would have much more to report on. I will attempt to become more consistent in order to make the content more day to day, we shall see.

While I had been curious, I’d always been told that bombers weren’t that useful in game and so I mainly trained my gun skills and the standard alphafleet ships even though quite literally the only skill I missed for flying a Hound was bomb deployment I. So last night, I was playing some Deus Ex: HR (amazing game btw) and get a broadcast over jabber that some bombing stuff was going down. I immediately bought bomb deployment and trained it to level I. The training finished just as we got into the target system. Along the way I quickly read a couple of bombing guides to refresh my mind with the proper techniques. Once in the target system, I quickly loaded up an electron bomb, cloaked, got about 35 off the gate and waited.  While the bombers were doing this, a main fleet was trying to get an IRC gang to engage us. Unfortunately,there was a massive fuck up with mumble going down and the FC of our main fleet got DC’d. The FC of the bomber squad had to then command both fleets at the same time. Needless to say, the situation got sticky for main fleet. We had quite a few hurricanes die, but eventually the IRC gang jumped onto the gate that the bombers were camping. As soon as they landed, we launched bombs and GTFO. Unfortunately, in all the excitement I forgot the most important part of launching a bomb; pointing at the target. I had hit align, but didn’t wait long enough before I launched my bomb. As soon as I’d launched it, I warped out and cloaked at a safe. I was pretty pissed that I couldn’t Use My Erection (Parts 1 & 2) to get some kills, but I will be all the better next time. Another mistake I made was not bringing any torps with me. I was so concerned about the bombs that I totally skipped putting them in my bay, again I won’t make that mistake again.

After my failed attempt at bombing, I went back to some DX only to have another Jabber broadcast go out saying that there were PL supers tackled and to bring neuting canes to the fight. I got in fleet and we quickly took a titan bridge to the target system where we found and Avatar. We pounded it into 10% armor, but lost all of our dictors so it warped off. :rage: After the Avatar left, we got some more points in system and ended up taking down 6 carriers. After poking around, someone found a PL Nyx that had drifted out of POS shields. He wasn’t outside of those shields too long.  We’d heard his cries to get back to station and answered by popping his pod. I’m sure he’s thrilled now.

All in all, it was one helluva night. Fights and experiences like that help keep the game fresh for me and I was sorely needing that. So what’s the moral or this story? Get a jabber server and use it for broadcasting.

This song helped me stay so lucid during the fighting.

Fly safe gentlemen.

Jokine now flies HACs very well (skill-wise, experience is another matter) and is well on his way to heavy interdictors. In general, I’ve been flying a vaga and hound since I just got my torp skills to tops. The hound has been one helluva fun ship, I’m surprised that more people don’t train into them. Obviously their damage output and tank  is rather paltry when running solo, but in medium sized gangs, they can be absolutely devastating. That’s not to say that they can’t be used solo, but you have to choose your targets carefully and pay attention to what may be getting ready to land on top of you. In general, I’ve been enjoying Goons more as a social group than any specific corporation in Eve. We’ve been playing lots of Borderlands, EYE, and other games that we’ve picked up for cheap via Steam.

Skerrit Boy is where most of the shaking and moving has been going on. Back in May-ish, Abaddon Innovations joined the alliance Order of the Void. Things seemed to be going well as the US TZ guys really connected with the other guys in the alliance. We ran missions together, went out on a couple of frigate roams and generally shit it up in TS. Things seemed to be progressing as both the alliance and ABADD were making strong strides towards entering W space. It seems this is where the thorn entered. ABADD found a nice quiet C1 hole with a static to hi-sec. They moved equipment for a small POS into the hole and began to run some sites and mine. Unfortunately, I never made it in the hole due to skerrit not having any scanning or cloaking abilities (at that time, this is remedied now). It seems that there had been discussion by the rest of the member corps of the alliance to move into a C3 or better, so the alliance held off moving into ABADD’s C1. Sometime in the middle of the EU TZ prime, the ABADD POS was invaded by a rather large WH alliance. Rather than lose his cool, ABADD CEO DurzO Blint began talks with the alliance about joining it.

Now during most of these goings on, I was out of game or not logged into Skerrit. As far as I knew, things were moving along swimmingly with the C1 and things were honky dory. Imagine my surprise then when I logged in last week and find that my alliance chat has disappeared. I check the corp page and sure enough, we are out on our own again. Later that day, we are part of said WH alliance. Initially, I though that I would stay in ABADD since I had been there for 7 months or so already, but in the end my desire to play with people in my same TZ won out. Now both Skerrit and my scimi alt are in Legion of Darkwin, the executor corp for the Order of the Void alliance.

We’re currently getting set up in a C3. Unfortunately, our static is to a nullsec system that sees a lot of activity. I still have yet to move my stuff to our POS as I need to get a T2 cloak trained (a few days out yet). In the mean time, I’ve been running L4′s in my Tengu set for gank and my scimi providing the reps. It’s like Eve on easy mode (please don’t taze me bros). The whole WH experience is a very exciting one and I’m looking forward to familiarizing myself inside the hole.

Yikes.

Fly safe gentlemen.

It’s been a busy few days. You may have noticed: EVE is on fire and reeling, and not in the fun “we’re at war and having space battles wheeee!!!” sense – though there are space battles taking place – but in the slightly more hysterical yet increasingly real “holy shit, CCP seems hellbent on becoming the next Sony” situation.

What The Fuck Has Happened?

First, some context. Within the course of about two weeks, CCP stunned the playerbase with a series of hijinks. First was the Golden Scorpion controversy, which CCP climbed down from – using AUR to buy a Scorpion with a golden paintjob from the ether. Then there was the $99 Monetization scandal, where CCP announced that they wanted a hundred bucks a year for “3rd Party Apps” which might also include fansites. Again, CCP climbed down in the face of howls of protest. The Alliance Tournament Final ended up rigged, which wasn’t CCP’s fault but infuriated many of the viewers (I thought it was funny, but w/e). Then Incarna was released with $70 Monocles, and EN24 leaked the Greed Is Good CCP internal newsletter, which showcased their apparent love of all things microtransaction.

The real controversy, of course, is not the silliness of a $70 monocle, though that does seem to indicate the venality and greed of the CCP higher-ups to many players. The controversy is the shadow lurking behind the monocle, hinted at in the Greed is Good newsletter: gold in the sandbox, a “pay to win” gold-ammo situation in EVE. Pay to Win is common enough in Free to Play MMOs, and quite profitable, but the fear among players is that CCP is trying to meld both subscription and FtP revenue models into an especially shitty, expensive product.

A product that allegedly is busy melting down ATI video cards.

So hot on the heels of Greed is Good, CCP posted an absolutely comical “please be nice to us” thread on eve-o, which has become the largest threadnaught in history. This went about as well as could be expected; reports of mass-unsubbings became rampant.

In order to try to staunch the bleeding, CCP Zulu posted a devblog which has now famously equated virtual widgets with real-life goods. PC Gamer has picked up on this blog, and not in a good way. The tone of the blog and the follow up post, which amounts to ‘shut up ugh ‘ is readily apparent.

Meanwhile, Jita, Amarr and other hubs have been brought to virtual shutdown by ‘protests’ of pubbies shooting statues and overloading the nodes while howling for CCP’s blood, mad about the NeX, the Captains Quarters, Incarna sucking, the spectre of gold ammo, or just setting things on fire for the sheer primal joy of watching everything burn.

And to think, it gets worse!

Last night, while I was on Eve Radio discussing the unfolding crisis with some other CSMs, another leak broke: a global email sent from Hilmar, CCP’s CEO, congratulating the company on the ‘successful launch’ of Incarna and selling a whopping 52 Monocles. Most froth-inducing was the statement that:

“Currently we are seeing _very predictable feedback_ on what we are doing. Having the perspective of having done this for a decade, I can tell you that this is one of the moments where we look at what our players do and less of what they say. Innovation takes time to set in and the predictable reaction is always to resist change.”

So that went well. CCP appears to be leaking like a sieve. Given the recent authenticated reviews of the company that have popped up on Glassdoor during the past month, that’s not a surprise.

What’s happened here is a whole nexus of rage from many corners of the playerbase was ignited by one catalyst. Some are angry that Incarna has no real content for veteran players. Some are angry about NeX vanity items being too expensive; some are angry that NeX exists at all. Most appear to be horrified by the lurking shadow of Pay to Win, and just about everyone is pissed off at the dismissive, condescending and money-hungry attitudes displayed in the CCP newsletter, the Hilmar email, and the damage control devblogs.

Why Do We Give A Shit?

I and the rest of the CSM have been extremely blunt in our demands that CCP issue a formal disavowal of ‘gold ammo’, non-vanity microtransactions, or otherwise bleeding gold into the sandbox of EVE. My impression is that a quick “Look, the monocles are expensive, but we’re not doing gold ammo” would have ended this crisis days ago and CCP wouldn’t be down at least 2500 accounts. The fact that CCP has remained silent on the issue is increasingly being taken to imply what everyone fears – that a company which would without irony charge $70 for a space monocle will issue $250 i-win lasers.

A few years ago, we saw the impact that ‘oligarchs’ had on the nullsec metagame, when Red Overlord had SerLordex spend a hundred thousand dollars on Eve Online, A Bad Game. The kind of economic distortion that would come from a legalized and pervasive ‘gold ammo’ style of gameplay would mean that, in order to stay competitive, every PvP entity would be obliged to acquire and use gameplay-enhancing gold items or suffer for their austerity. Perhaps some of you think that ‘Pay to Win’ is acceptable in a competitive subscription MMO; I do not.

What The Fuck Were They Thinking?

This is my impression of what happened, not based on any NDA information or CSM Secret Squirrel shit.

CCP’s Virtual Goods store tried to imitate the business concept of Starbucks. The great Starbucks trick was coming up with a fancy setting and bourgie babby coffee shops, changing the environment of ‘buying coffee’ enough that the consumer was willing to pay $4 for a cup of coffee where previously he would buy the same drink at Dunkin Donuts for a $1.

Reading Zulu’s blog where he emphasizes that EVE is a ‘premium experience’ and references designer jeans, it seems like the CCP Marketing department hoped to do the same thing. EVE is so special and spiffy and cool, you see, that in EVE you’re not buying a hat for a dollar or two like in Team Fortress, or an entire wardrobe in Star Trek Online for seven bucks. Those games are Dunkin Donuts. EVE is Starbucks – it’s just so different that you’ll buy ~virtual goods~ that are almost ten times the prices of comparable MMOs.

The problem, of course, is that EVE is a broken game. The ship balance is terrible, nullsec desperately needs a revamp, the PvE is laughable, and playing without goons is like stabbing yourself in the balls over and over again. EVE is not a ‘premium experience’ as it currently stands – particularly if your ATI video card just overheated and died when you tried to load your Captain’s Quarters.

So it flopped. CCP tried to distinguish EVE from other MMOs in terms of microtransaction pricing, and now people are running around in lynch mobs wardeccing and blowing up anyone who’s actually bought something from the NeX. Selling a virtual shirt that costs more than the real shirts in your own company’s store was probably not the suavest move, either.

Where Could This Go?

Rumors indicate that ~5000 unsubs have occurred already; there is already significant media blowback over the Monocle, the protests and the CEO letter, with the gaming press unilaterally taking the side of the outraged playerbase. Unless CCP deploys effective damage control and takes charge of the situation, the risk is that the game itself could see an exodus and abrupt subscriber deflation. Meanwhile, a number of ‘famous players’ such as Ombey, Helicity Boson and Lallante have loudly thrown in the towel and are playing Perpetuum or Tanks or whatever.
Even without the head-up-ass public relations crisis, the Incarna release doesn’t look good for CCP. Usually an expansion results in a huge activity spike in subs and online users. While we don’t have access to subs information, anyone can chart the downward slope in average users online since January 2011.

While in nullsec we have ties to this game that are primarily social and competitive, Joe Pubbie just wants to spin his CNR in a mission hub; there’s not much holding the 80% of the Empire subscribers in this game, should there be an obvious stampede towards the exits. And if they do, the economy of the EVE goes into the shitter overnight, CCP’s planned ‘revenue stream’ to fund DUST and WoD vanishes – which will make them even more eager to extract capital from what players remain in the game – and the media has a field day making Horse Armor and SWG:NGE jokes. That’s the Doomsday Scenario.