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Thursday, January 24, 2013

Analyzing The Honey Botter Expose - Tribal Band and Pandemic Legion

In this post of the series analyzing the Eve News 24 article, "The Honey Botter Coalition – An Exposé on Botting Within Eve Online’s Biggest Coalition," I finish looking at the last of the allegations of wrongdoing by players.  In yesterday's post I examined the extensive charges leveled against the Tribal Band corporation Blood and Sand.  Today's post covers the last two corporations, Infinite Covenant and Fallen Nova as well as allegations that Pandemic Legion voice comms are used by a player for selling ISK.

Infinite Covenant - Having looked into what Horus has stated for more hours than I like to admit I have come to the conclusion that I don't trust him.  If another source does not verify what he says, I tend to disregard it.  The only statement against Infinite Covenant was the following from Horus:
"Another bot corp is Infinite Covenant. 2 year ago I was botting in venal together with a german guy. He is one of biggest EVE botters and is in Infinite Covenant, he run all theyr [sic] supercap production and was all funded by bots."
Throughout the years of supplying EN24 with information Horus has never shied away from naming names.  No names this time?  I would disregard this allegation until more proof is offered.

Fallen Nova - Fallen Nova is an interesting case.  Not only is the corporation accused of botting, but also of being a Pandemic Legion alt corp that had infiltrated Tribal Band.  Looking at the corporation on Eve Who shows an average security status of 4.0 which probably indicates a lot of ratting occurring.  The source stated that one member, Quisarious, was the alt of a Pandemic Legion member.  The source did lose credibility when stating that he was told by Triget that Pandemic Legion put alt botting corps into all alliances as an additional source of income.  I know that PL has a good intelligence network but I would think that a member of OTEC would not need to bot.  The information is probably questionable as earlier in the article Fallen Nova was described as "allegedly a 16 member Pandemic Legion sleeping cell corp within Tribal Band."  Once again I would not accuse Fallen Nova of botting without a lot more information.

Pandemic Legion Facilitating RMT - Perhaps the most inflammatory charge based on very little evidence is that a Pandemic Legion Jabber channel is used to conduct sales of RMT ISK.  Perhaps the source is correct; since the source is not Horus the information is more believable.  Of the three allegations, this one is the most credible, but that is a very low bar to clear.

Conclusion - Most of the article was devoted to the activities of Montolio and Blood and Sand.  I think that the authors of the article figured that they would gain so much credibility with those charges that people would consider all charges as valid.  Did the article present enough information to trigger an investigation by CCP to look into possible wrongdoing?  Probably, especially if the name of the alleged German botter in Infinite Covenant were handed over.  But was enough information presented for me to feel confident of the information?  No.

UPDATE 24 January 2013 - I neglected to publish a statement from Tribal Band leader Triget that I referenced in yestereday's post.  Here is Triget's reply to my request for a statement on the EN24 story that I received on Sunday.
"Botting has been actively discouraged in TRIBE. As much as being elite pvpers is anathema to our alliance, being botters and renters is the other against which we define ourselves. I have standing orders to awox any botter detected so long as it can be proven. Each of these corps have particular circumstances that effect their game play, in particular, Fallen Nova is ANZAC and Blood and Sand are EU (IT). When asked, they contribute. Incov's participation in the alliance is unquestioned. I only go by solid proof, not crazed accusations by eve's most well known botter that your news site is now heavily affiliated with. This is a disgruntled ex-coalition member playing you for his own ends. You should be more careful in who you chose to associate with."
In the interests of full disclosure I ended my syndication agreement with EN24 on 6 January and my last article was published on 4 January.

6 comments:

  1. Back in the days when RA was holding Querious and fighting for delve it is rumored that PL offered help if they would get one or two constellations. rumor says they pretty bluntly stated "to install bots" there. I wouldn't think any alliance is bad through and through but in some cases there surely are botters at high ranks to abuse there position to get new sources. How much other leaders recognize that is something different.

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  2. You guys are all dildos thinking PL bots.. We have enough moon good to fund what we do.. If anyone in PL bot's it's at the individual level and leadership knows nothing about it.. If someone can prove to me that someone in PL is botting I will purge them myself.

    I thought ccp had a handle on botting and was able to wack accounts that try to do it ? How about an article about what the are doing and not doing to combat this.

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    Replies
    1. "How about an article about what the are doing and not doing to combat this."

      How about reading, say, the last six months of Nosy's blog, wherein he covers precisely that?

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    2. @Kearl "How about an article about what the are doing and not doing to combat this."

      You mean like this one?

      http://nosygamer.blogspot.com/2012/12/ccps-war-on-bots-2012-in-review.html

      Delete
  3. Ratting taxes are actually a large part of alliance income, even for OTEC alliances. Botting would be very profitable, if an alliance could stomach the risk.

    Unfortunately CCP isn't as on the ball as one might think. People have been openly bragging about botting for years without CCP taking action on them, so clearly it's still easy to get away with.

    Here's a couple of examples: http://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/174yaj/baki_yuku_a_ceo_in_hbc_admits_to_writing_bots_for/

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  4. The idea that "OTEC holders don't need to bot" is very inaccurate, and comes from the widespread belief that Tech is good money. It is not. A Tech moon provides 5B/month which is nice money for a guy, but no guy owns Tech moons. Large alliances do. There are 400 Tech moons in the galaxy, PL has somewhere around 50. 50 moons is 250B/month income. PL has 1700 members, so the Tech income is lousy 147M/month. Having highsec planets extracting water earns more.

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