EVE player loses over $6k when ship is destroyed

[Seraph]

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/10...th-over-6-000/

....all I can say at the moment is dear lord, you EVE players are INSANE.

Even better, EVE's official FB page lol'd over the incident: http://www.facebook.com/eveonline/posts/194070124062271

[wraiths_crono]

Yes, yes we can be crazy, but I mean.. WHY was he moving it to start with, was it revenge, stupidity, a bot gone wild?! whhhhyyyyyyyy (uh same toon in game as I use here no _ just a space lol)

[RayvenQ]

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/10...th-over-6-000/

....all I can say at the moment is dear lord, you EVE players are INSANE.

Even better, EVE's official FB page lol'd over the incident: http://www.facebook.com/eveonline/posts/194070124062271

In this particular case, it's a severe case of stupidity that is being exhiibited, I can name probably half a dozen ways he could have avoided being that stupid.losing that much.

[Raveni]

Rumor has it that the stuff has already been replaced. Some places say it's because his account got hacked and others...

http://themittani.com/news/alod-titanic-atron

[RayvenQ]

I think the whole him getting it replaced is bull, CCP simply doesn't do that sort of thing.

[AccountingDrone]

I have gotten ship and cargo replaced once - I was in midchat with a GM and I lagged out on a jump and a goon ganked me [frigate, set of expensive copies. I rarely move originals in low or nullsec. Way easier to copy them in hi sec and move the copies.]

Honestly, it is really funny when something like this happens. I was in game when that PLEX guy rage-quit over all the plex and his ship being ganked.

[But what do you expect a self respecting pirate to do ... you just know someone moving a secure small can has got to have either blueprint originals or implants ... and is just screaming for ganking.]

[Chromatix]

Since there are reports that the account was hacked, here's what I think happened:

1) The account was hacked. Hacker then pokes around and sees how best to strip the account of assets, preferably to convert into real money. Simply transferring them to the hacker's real account doesn't fly, because that would lose him the real account once the hacking was uncovered.

2) Hacker spots incredibly valuable, small goods sitting in a hangar. He picks out the smallest and fastest ship that can carry them to a place where they can be sold - incorrectly assuming that this will keep them safe. He then sets the ship on autopilot to Jita, the biggest marketplace.

3) Pirate in lowsec sees low-end frigate warp in 15km off the gate and slowboat in towards jumping range. Easy target. Boom. Wow, that's one heck of a nice killmail, what an idiot.

4) Player reports account hacking, gets account back, notices that goods are missing...

[Alpha Strike]

So I realize that I'm coming into this conversation horribly late but can one of you Eve pros explain to me what this all means? How exactly are they equating in-game... stuff with real-word money?

[PepperElf]

that's why i prefer not mixing RL money with game money. Except second life - i bought myself some lindens once. but i'm watching my spending so i probably won't do that again for a long time.

[AccountingDrone]

So I realize that I'm coming into this conversation horribly late but can of you Eve pros explain to me what this all means? How exactly are they equating in-game... stuff with real-word money?

Eve is an odd sort of game, the company that owns it, CCP made the decision to eliminate chinese gold farmers/sellers by making P.L.E.X. cards available in game - you use them to give you a month play time instead of paying with real world money. You can also buy time cards that if you input the number into the game turns into 2 PLEX cards, which you can actually sell in game for in game money.

So, you can buy a time card, turn it into 2 PLEX cards and sell them for [haven't checked the price recently but for the hell of it pulling a number out of my ass] 500 million ISK [in game money] and turn around and buy a frigate and all the equipment for it for that 500 mil ISK.

So, for $30US or whatever the going rate of a time card is you can have an in game ship which can be destroyed in an in game fight.

So, as you can see, you can figure out a direct relationship between actual cash and in game money.

[Chromatix]

Last time I checked, 500 million isk would buy a very well fitted battleship or a really good T2 cruiser, not merely a frigate. But that is the principle - there really is a sort of exchange rate between real money and isk these days. But *someone* has to have put in the time and effort in game to create the isk to buy PLEX with.

[Alpha Strike]

Eve is an odd sort of game, the company that owns it, CCP made the decision to eliminate chinese gold farmers/sellers by making P.L.E.X. cards available in game - you use them to give you a month play time instead of paying with real world money. You can also buy time cards that if you input the number into the game turns into 2 PLEX cards, which you can actually sell in game for in game money.

Thanks for the explanation - that makes more sense now.

I haven't done online RPGs since they were known as MUDs back in the 1990s, so the idea of Gold Farmers is still a bit strange to me. Is there a reason that gold farming is frowned upon? Is it the idea that a 3rd party - and not the developer - is profiting from an in-game transaction?

[Jay 2K Winger]

I haven't done online RPGs since they were known as MUDs back in the 1990s, so the idea of Gold Farmers is still a bit strange to me. Is there a reason that gold farming is frowned upon? Is it the idea that a 3rd party - and not the developer - is profiting from an in-game transaction?

I don't play MMO games very much (because I'm a cheap bastard and can think of other ways to waste my time and money), but I think that's exactly the reason the Developers are against it.

Players are against it because it lets some people reap the benefits (i.e., get a whole lot of in-game currency) without putting in the work (hours and hours and hours and hours of in-game 'grinding').

[AmbrosiaWriter]

I don't play MMO games very much (because I'm a cheap bastard and can think of other ways to waste my time and money), but I think that's exactly the reason the Developers are against it.

Players are against it because it lets some people reap the benefits (i.e., get a whole lot of in-game currency) without putting in the work (hours and hours and hours and hours of in-game 'grinding').

Not only that, but gold sellers are also known for breaking ToS of the game in order to gain all their gold to sell off. (Also for many games, the action of selling in-game items for real world currency is against the ToS itself.)

The two most common ways gold sellers get their gold to sell;

1) Botting. So they don't actually put in any effort either.

2) Hacking other people's accounts, stripping them clean, then selling what they can.

[Gravekeeper]

There's more too it on the developer's side. It can destroy an in-game economy. Gold farming essentially fuels itself. Bots can run 24/7 generating more currency than average players. More money is injected into the economy then its designed to handle. AH prices go up. People need to buy gold to afford said AH prices. Cycle repeats itself until your server is an economic wasteland.

There use to be WoW servers where the economy was just destroyed because of it. EVE on the other hand has a clever way of nixing it, is all one big server and employs full time economists to monitor the game economy.