Analyzing The Honey Botter Expose - Too Long, Didn't Read

Reading a piece like Eve News 24's recent botting exposé, "The Honey Botter Coalition – An exposé on Botting within Eve Online’s biggest Coalition," is a mind numbing experience.  At 7,300 words, of which 6,100 words consist of chat logs, I sometimes felt my eyes would bleed.  My attempt to understand what Eve News 24 published led to a series of five posts totaling 7,200 words.  For those who have read everything, I salute you.  For those who haven't I am writing this sixth and final post to summarize my finding plus add in a few facts that emerged during the almost two weeks I've spent writing the posts.

Analyzing The Honey Botter Expose - Eve News 24

The first four posts of this series analyzing the Eve News 24 article, "The Honey Botter Coalition – An exposé on Botting within Eve Online’s biggest Coalition, focused on the reporting done by the authors of the exposé.  But I also see issues with the editing and editorial decisions surrounding the article as well.  I believe that if these shortcomings were corrected that Eve News 24 would have produced a much stronger exposé.  People still would have criticized EN24 because the reality is that botting and 3rd party RMT are as much weapons that players use against one another as those violations of the EULA are a problem for CCP's business.  In this post I'll examine some of these shortcomings and how EN24 could have presented the information in a more effective manner.

Analyzing The Honey Botter Expose - CCP

The Eve News 24 article, "The Honey Botter Coalition – An exposé on Botting within Eve Online’s biggest Coalition,⁽¹⁾" has a lot of players upset because they believe they were unfairly painted with the bot brush.  Others are perhaps upset for having activities made public they wish had remained hidden in the shadows.  But today's post will look at the other target of the EN24 article, CCP.

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.

Analyzing The Honey Botter Expose - Blood and Sand

The next two posts⁽¹⁾ in the series analyzing the Eve News 24 article, "The Honey Botter Coalition – An Exposé on Botting Within Eve Online’s Biggest Coalition", will examine the charges that one of the members of the Honey Badger Coalition, Tribal Band, either tolerates or approves of botting within the alliance.  The article went further and stated that Triget, the executor of Tribal Band, has given botting corporations special dispensation from participating in alliance/coalition fleets because of the amount of ISK they contribute to the alliance.  One of the sources used by Eve News 24 claims that he received some of the information from conversations held with Triget.

When contacted for this story Triget denied all allegations of wrongdoing.  So unlike the interplay between Horus and Montolio in which the main point of dispute is whether Montolio would have turned in the ISK if he had successfully scammed Horus, we have a he said/she said situation in which all facts are up for dispute.  Who should we believe?  A closer look at the allegations leveled against the three corporations accused of botting, Blood and Sand, Fallen Nova and Infinite Covenant, may reveal some answers.  This second post of the series will examine the mainly Italian corporation Blood and Sand.

Analyzing The Honey Botter Expose - Horus and Montolio

Three weeks ago Eve News 24 ran an article that created quite a stir titled "The Honey Botter Coalition – An exposé on Botting within Eve Online’s biggest Coalition."  The article is in keeping with Eve News 24's tradition of running botting and 3rd party RMT stories with an editorial bias that botting and 3rd party RMT is bad and players should not engage in those activities.  In EN24's latest effort riverini, Darius and Mino Noud made five charges:

1.  Honey Badger Coalition chief Montolio attempted to get large amounts of ISK from Horus to allow The Jagged Alliance to remain in the Honey Badger Coalition.

2.  The HBC allows known botting corporations to operate in Tribal Band and that Tribal Band receives significant funding from botting activities.  Horus made a secondary accusation that TEST was receiving some of that income.

3.  One of the Tribal Band corporations contains a Questor bot developer.

4.  That a member of Pandemic Legion is involved in ISK selling and that he uses a PL jabber channel to conduct business.

5.  CCP is either unable or unwilling to ban the biggest botters and RMT operators in Eve Online.
 
Some in the Eve community believe this coverage is colored by an editorial bias against his in-game foes like Goonswarm Federation and Test Alliance Please Ignore.  So instead of coming out immediately and posting about the scandal, I took my time and did some research into the piece to try to discover whether EN24's critics or supporters were correct.

I came up with more information that I thought so I am dividing this latest look into botting at the alliance level into multiple sections.  This first part will look at the sources used in the EN24 article and the first two points concerning whether the leadership of the HBC tolerates botting and looks to violations of the EULA to help fund the coalition's activities.  The second part will look at the accusations of Tribal Band's involvement in large-scale botting operations.  The third part will examine the conflict that erupted between Eve News 24 and CCP Sreegs following the publication of the article.  The final installment will look at some areas that I think Eve News 24 can improve upon when covering issues like this in the future.