A Space Noob Ate My Post

Last night I made the mistake of reading Mord Fiddle's latest post.  Why was reading Mord a mistake?  Because he introduced me to a blog called Diaries of a Space Noob.  I love reading and listening to new Eve players discuss their experiences.  Diaries of a Space Noob is a player's journal of playing Eve.  Not a pod pilot, but the actual player, including taking days off for real life events.

Diaries of a Space Noob is really good.  In some ways too good as I read all 61 posts last night.  He hooked me in with this passage from day 41.

"Back in the home system, chilling out and grinding some rock. There is another miner here and Rob reckons he is a bot. After Rob pokes him a bit with a battlecruiser I'm inclined to agree. The miner simply goes about his business. Either he is the coolest customer ever, or he is a bot. A bot is an automated player run by someone grinding out money in the game to sell on to other players outside it. They skew the economy and generally make things difficult for everyone else. There is a bit of chat in Local about it which Rob ignores and can flips the miner, dropping the loot as a free for all so he can claim it back. The miner ignores it. Bot. Soon after he this he warps out of system as the belt becomes crowded with us all having a look. Now I have to go look up on how to deal with bots. This is my system and no gold farming idiot is going to mess it up. It’s odd how it has become home. This is where I try to make it back to at the end of the day. This is where I’d rather be mining, despite some possibilities of greater rocks down in the neighbouring 0.5 system. Home. In space in a game? Weird."

So while I didn't really log in and play or write my planned post I did find another good blog.  He's good enough I added him to my Eve blogroll and I'm looking forward to reading his future adventures.

CSM Town Hall Saturday And Security Questions

This Saturday, 18 August, the Council of Stellar Management will hold another town hall meeting at 1800 GMT on Eve Radio.  I've heard that Eve Radio will make a podcast available for download for those who can't listen live.  The podcast is also useful for people like bloggers to skip to the juicy parts and replay them to get quotes.

The CSM created a forum thread for people to put questions into.  I probably need to put my questions together and get them submitted.  But what to ask about?  The War on Bots™, of course!  So here are some questions I'd like answered.  Some of them the CSM may not have answers for but hopefully some of the information was given in CCP Sreegs' presentation.

1. Why is fighting against botters and the illicit RMT trade important?
2. Are the illicit RMT accounts that were banned mostly paid for with PLEX or cash?
3. How big was the drop when accounts banned for botting could no longer transfer characters? (p. 146)
4. Were the figures about RMT accounts in the minutes just subscriptions or did they include trial accounts? (p. 148)
5. What is a disabled account? (p. 148)
6. There is no six.
7. Do those using injection bots receive permanent bans? (p. 149)
8. How much effort does the CSM think CCP should put into making or retrofitting content to make writing botting code more difficult?

Okay, so this list is probably more appropriate for a Security dev blog.  But since the CSM received a briefing a couple of months ago, they might have some of the answers I'm looking for.  Now I just need to paste these into the forums.

The Mittani's New Venture

"Mainly ’cause Mittens ain’t a bitter vet.  He is beyond that.  Dunno what ta call the ones who get that far but they are legends in their own minds.  Half of them don’t even bother piloting anymore.  They move and shake on an entirely other level than we poor immortals.  He is not playin' the same game we is, and that is what sometimes worries me."

- Mike Azariah

The Mittani has led a storied career in Eve Online but I've always thought he was aiming for something higher.  Over the course of my seven years playing MMORPGs I witnessed many players, bloggers, podcasters and games journalists move toward their ultimate goal: a job with a studio in the games industry.  Observing The Mittani I always thought he desired the status of the godhood many give to developers without becoming absorbed by the collective that are studios like Blizzard, SOE and EA.  From being quoted by the BBC over his role in the disbanding of the Band of Brothers to becoming the first player to speak at GDC to a successful long-running column on Ten Ton Hammer The Mittani made his mark as one of the most famous, if not notorious, players in the MMO world.

What is next?  Media mogul.  I saw on Twitter that The Mittani is now working with a site called, believe it or not, The Mittani Dot Com.  The site promises to compete with Eve News 24.

"Welcome to your numbered, collector’s first edition of TheMittani.com, a gaming site with a particular focus on Eve Online.  Our goal is to create a combination of news and commentary for you that is both up-to-date and insightful, and one which combines old-fashioned fact-checking with a broad range of contributors in order to provide an authoritative source of updates for Eve Online and everything that interests Eve Online players.  We have by far the largest team working on any Eve-related site - currently over twenty people both behind the scenes and producing content, and we hope that that breadth of talent will show in the quality of what you read."

The site looks slick and The Mittani and friends definitely have some good content up to lure readers in.  Will TheMittani.com establish itself as the high-brow alternative to the tabloid Eve News 24? More importantly, will TheMittani.com have a soul or will the site just become a soulless corporate type of place soaking up hits and ad revenue from Google Ads?  I hope the site is successful because I love the community of bloggers, podcasters, radio stations and newsites surrounding Eve.  Having competing news sites up and running before the influx of DUST players arrive would make the world feel more real and alive and perhaps help retain those players longer.

The Digital Dozen: 12 August 2012

The rankings of the top twelve MMORPGs as determined by the players of the Xfire community from play on Sunday, 12 August 2012.  For more details about the methodology, click here.  Historical data can be found here.

Rank	Prev Week	Game	Score	Hours Played
1	1	World of Warcraft	59.2	54,996
2	2	Star Wars: The Old Republic	8.3	7,693
3	3	Aion	5.1	4,711
4	5	Eve Online	4.8	4,432
5	6	Metin 2	3.9	3,605
6	8	APB: Reloaded	3.2	2,955
7	7	Lord of the Rings Online	3.2	2,952
8	4	The Secret World	3.1	2,852
9	11	Maple Story	2.7	2,485
10	9	Guild Wars	2.4	2,276
11	12	Need For Speed World	2.3	2,148
12	10	Star Trek Online	2.0	1,827

  Total MMORPG hours played Sunday: 128,495  

The number of hours spent playing MMORPGs by the Xfire community stayed stable again this Sunday, only increasing by .4% over the previous week.  Big percentage gains by Maple Story (+18.7%), Eve Online (+14.4%) and APB: Reloaded were offset by a huge decline in play of The Secret World (-38.6%).

In The Shadow - Following Funcom's one-month celebration in The Secret World two weekends ago, the number of hours played declined by 38.6% this past Sunday.  Since 8 July, the amount of hours played has fallen by 52.5%.  I can't help but wonder if Star Wars: The Old Republic's announcement of going free-to-play has set expectations that The Secret World will soon go free-to-play as well.

Funcom came out with an investor release discussing their financial expectations for the game.  One player with a financial background came out with his own analysis of how the game is doing.  We will find out more with Funcom's next scheduled release of information on 28 August.

Carebears In Space -  Eve Online saw a 14.4% increase in hours played following the release of the Inferno 1.2 patch.  While Eve has a reputation as a cutthroat player vs. player game, Inferno patch 1.2 featured a revamp of the game's mining barges.  Will a patch aimed at carebears retain more long term interest than one aimed at combat?

First Mining Foray Into Low-Sec

After a busy two days following the release Inferno 1.2 on Wednesday, I finally logged into the game early Saturday morning Eve time to finally fly my first non-cloaky ship into low-sec since I was in Eve University.  With the changes to mining ships (now I guess just called barges) I really wanted to try my hand at mining in low-sec.  I don't like mining in high-sec even though that is where all the big money is for small operations like mine.  So add in the tension of sitting in a fairly defenseless ship waiting for someone to drop by for a visit and trying to avoid becoming another victim in someone's kill report and low-sec mining sounded like fun.

My ship of choice for this first effort was the Procurer.  Why the Procurer instead of the Skiff I was raving about a couple of weeks ago?  First, Gevlin from SpaceMonkey's Alliance left a comment that a nice cheap Procurer should suffice for mining in low-sec before giving some advice on to mine in a Skiff.  The second reason is the sharp increase in the cost of the new mining ships once the patch hit.  I bought mine early but still only bought one Skiff compared to two Procurers.  On the theory of fly what you can afford to lose I chose discretion over valor and smuggled a Procurer into low-sec.

Smuggling the ship in was easy.  The mining barges are 3,750 m3 packaged and fits in the small cargo hold of my Prowler.  Throw in the fittings and I made the trip to the sleepy out of the way system I scoped out a few weeks ago easily.  After fitting the ship I was ready to begin the operation.

Belt mining in low-sec involves more than just flying out to a belt and shooting rocks.  First, a security team needs to scout out the belt looking for pirates, either the NPC or human kind.  I didn't see any players in the belt so I just had to deal with the Angel Cartel.  Did I mention I don't like the Angel Cartel?  So while doing an activity I really don't like I got to kill Angels.  Cool!

My security "team" was Rosewalker in a Hound.  I'm getting better at ratting in belts so once killing the Angel battleship and accompanying frigate Wandering Rose flew into the belt and bookmarked a really good location inside the belt.  From there came the waiting game.  Where would the attacks come from?  I did pretty well in picking my system and except for a guy triple-boxing a Rifter/Incursus/Griffin gang I wasn't too worried about players once I spotted the operational patterns.  A lot of neutral pilots just flew on through without stopping.  The real presence thoughout the day was Nulli Secunda doing the faction warfare thing.  A Procurer wasn't worth wasting their time killing.

With players not interested in my little operation, I just needed to worry about the Angel Cartel.  They seemed to spawn every 10-15 minutes or so.  If only frigates showed up, I would unleash my flight of Hobgoblin Is, which did surprisingly well against one group of four frigates I fought once.  They were so busy trying to kill me they totally ignored the drones.  I guess someone forgot to tell the NPCs about the new specs on the mining ships.  If heavy ships showed up like battlecruisers and battleships I warped the Procurer back to the station and let the Hound take care of business.

That's right, I didn't stay mining the entire time.  In fact, one time when returning to the belt after delivering a load to the station three Angel battlecruisers spawned 40 km from my bookmark while I was in warp.  Thankfully Procurers are really agile and I landed and jumped back faster than they could lock me up.  My mining session ended when three battlecruisers and two frigates spawned.  Since the Cartel wanted the belt so badly I left the field to them.

I did learn a few lessons from my first day of mining in low-sec.  First, the only reason that low-sec mining will bring more money into my wallet than high-sec mining is that I hate high-sec mining.  For those concerned with maximizing yield, either stay in high-sec or move out to null.  The second is that the Procurer is a tough little ship.  If I had a flight of Hobgoblin IIs instead of the tech 1 variant I probably could have taken on cruisers and below.  I've corrected my lack of advanced Gallente drone skills and have the tech 2 drones in the station ready for the next time I go mining.  The third is that I need a ship with a salvager on-site to clean up all the wrecks.  I got some nice loot but salvage always helps.  I can probably fit a salvager on my Hound and then just on-line the module once I begin looting.

Will I take a Procurer out again?  Why not?  The whole process was more engaging and I wound up with a log of minerals I can't get out of Minmatar high-sec.   I probably won't mine at a belt again which means I need to brush up on my exploration skills and perhaps even buy some better equipment.  Is now the time I can justify purchasing a Loki?  I definitely need to start researching what types of defenses I will find in gravimetric sites.

Pondering The Penalties

I just had a thought after sleeping on what I read on the botting forums and reading the comments left by the developer of the Red Guard software that attempts to protect unscrupulous holders of Eve accounts from hardware detection.  What is the penalty for using that type of software?  Yesterday I quoted a user of the Eve Pilot bot who stated that he was going to use Red Guard and hoped it did not result in a permanent ban.

I went to the Eve Online community site and looked up the posted "Suspension and Ban Policy" page and found this:

2. HACKING

An immediate permanent ban of an account may result from attempting to or successfully:

a. Interfering with the performance of the EVE Online servers or web site.
• b.Defrauding another player of his account through use of misinformation or impersonating an EVE Online official. NOTE: No employee of CCP or one of its authorized representatives will ever ask for your password. Should someone claiming to be a CCP associate request your password, don’t give it. Instead, notify the support team immediately by sending an in-game petition or by using the “Ask a question” form on our support website.  Please retain all related documentation in the event it is needed during a possible investigation.
• c. Deciphering, hacking into or interfering with any transmissions to or from the EVE Online servers or web site.
• d. Engaging in any activity that increases the difficulty and/or expense of CCP in maintaining the EVE Online client, server, web site or other services.
• e. Obtaining unauthorized access to another’s EVE Online account or account information

Okay, spoofing the hardware signature falls under the permanent ban category.   I also read some concern on the Questor forums about the EULA.  Especially Section 7D:

"You agree that CCP may remotely monitor your Game hardware solely for the purpose of establishing whether in playing the Game and accessing the System you are using software created or approved by CCP, or whether you are using unauthorized software created by you or a third party in contravention of Section 6."

So when Eve players log into the game, they give CCP Sreegs and Team Security free reign to search if certain programs used by botters are running.  Interesting.

I know that a lot of Eve players don't like the fact that CCP Sreegs believes in only handing out 14 day bans to first time botters.  But if those first time botters are using the wrong type of software, those bans may turn out to be permanent.

CCP's War On Bots: Hardware Bans

"Two Step stated that he’s pretty sure he’s heard of CCP recording a digital fingerprint of each computer, from botting forums."

CSM Spring 2012 Summit Minutes, p. 148

I was looking for some tears from botters over the changes to mining ships when I found something much more interesting over on the Eve Pilot/Eve Miner forums:

6 August 2012

LoPhatMelk:  "I'm trying to setup a new trial account after ban, so far all I get is waiting for account to be verified. I think there is some type of mini ban happening as soon as I log in. I have tried changing my system HW ID (not MAC), no luck there. I'm attempting to reload eve after wiping the install dirs. The only thing I found that slightly worked was when I created a new account and started up a fresh VMware guest of Win7. which had a fresh install of EO worked... Until I loaded that account up onto my reg system then it got the flag also. Any help you guys can give on how to get a trial account up and running with active ban would be appreciated."

Slav2 (Eve Pilot developer):  "Never heard that CCP start to ban accounts by hardware besides if you spam about ISKS sales in game or have connection to RMT accounts ... 

"p.s. One of my trial accounts was banned as soon as I created first character because I used shared (first found in google) VPN. Not every VPN is good, if you share VPN with other botters or ISK spammers this will make you banned very soon ... Frequent change of external IP will lead to ban also."

LoPhatMelk:  "Thank you very much for the info Slav2. Yes after more testing it seems they are infact mini-banning by eve fingerprint. I have no idea if this will ever get lifted after ban is off or not. Hopefully RG does not get me perma banned, I wanted to try to use a trial account to regain some money while I wait for the 2 weeks to go by."

I don't know how much of a secret this is, but Two Step was correct about the digital fingerprinting.  Slav2 documented the information that is uploaded by the Eve client when players log in and I have a copy of the list sitting on my laptop.  Looking at the list I see information about Eve client settings as well as hardware and operating system settings.  The information is consistent with what is in the EULA:

Section 9D - CCP may from time to time update or otherwise modify the Software electronically. You hereby grant CCP permission to: (i) extract hardware system profile data from your computer; (ii) extract information from your computer's file directories pertaining to the Game and your ability to access the System; (iii) download to your computer content and Game files and any data related to the operation of the Game. The foregoing applies to any computer from which you log into the System using your Account. [emphasis mine]

What is useful in debugging problems and allowing CCP to know what platforms to support also has the capability to identify people logging into Eve.  In this case, CCP Sreegs has had a smart programmer put into place a system that will automatically prevent someone with an active ban from creating another account. 

Of course, the botters have come up with a workaround, but I feel uncomfortable posting it since the detection system is used to keep more than botters and the illicit RMT crowd from entering Eve.  While the people I customarily write about know this information, I expect someone who was banned for griefing in Eve may not know the solution.  And if someone acts badly enough in Eve to get banned, I definitely don't want to help that person sneak back into the game.

I don't know how long ago CCP Sreegs put this system into place, but I like the fact someone can't just create a new account while doing their time for a botting ban.  The more botters are inconvenienced the more likely they hopefully are to stop and change their ways.

Three Years In Eve

Today marks the 3-year anniversary of the day I started playing Eve Online.  Time to look back at the past year's events and set new goals for the upcoming year.  While Fanfest was great for reviving my interest in the game, these anniversaries help me focus on what I would like to do for the following year.

So what have I accomplished over the last year?  In game, not much of interest, really.  Besides chasing or abandoning the goals I set last year, I just flew around and admired the sights.  In what is becoming a tradition, I lost my most expensive combat ship at Christmas again but when I looked back on the events I saw the random number generator was kind to me and generated an interesting PvE storyline.  Weird, right?

Most of the really interesting things that happened occurred out of the game.  The events started when I made the pilgrimage to Reykjavik and attended Fanfest in March.  What an experience!  Iceland is a beautiful country and as an English speaker I felt comfortable running around town.  The event itself was great and made even more memorable when CCP Sreegs mentioned The Nosy Gamer in the Security presentation.  I met a lot of people and found out second hand about life in null sec.  I know that the Alliance panel will probably leave a negative impression in many minds, but DNSBlack is a really good guy and I can see why people want to fly in Dirt Nap Squad.  And The Mittani, as I found out on the pub crawl with the devs, isn't a ~horrible~ person when he doesn't have his evil space despot hat on.  After Fanfest I'm convinced that The Mittani is the greatest role player in Eve.

The Nosy Gamer itself became part of my Eve game play following Fanfest after CCP Sreegs pointed to the blog in a forum post answering those requesting botter tears.  Following that I actually made the Eve Blog Pack, the feed at the Eve Online Bloggers Portal and syndication on Eve News 24.  I think I did have an impact on the discussion sometimes, especially with my coverage of the troubles botters had after the introduction of the unified inventory system.  The nice stack of ISK I've made in the arrangement with EN24 isn't too bad either.

So how did I do with the goals I set last August?

Cool ships:  I was doing pretty well in my goal to obtain every Minmatar sub-capital ship except for the Panther and the faction ships until Crucible.  Once the Tornado was introduced, I lost the interest in collecting ships.  I just don't like the new tier 3 battlecruiser and having such an expensive ship just sitting in a hanger just killed the thrill.  I'd rather buy a Scythe Fleet Issue.  Needless to say, I failed with this goal, especially since I took the money I was going to use to purchase a Tempest and started buying mining ships in anticipation of Inferno 1.2.

Manufacturing:  Another area I had mixed success.  I succeeded in setting up the infrastructure to start doing tech 2 manufacturing but then OTEC happened and tech 2 industry became unviable in high-sec.  I did do a lot of material research on blueprints, including all of the tech 1 Minmatar frigates and cruisers.  I also completed setting up my datacore mining operation, which of course was nerfed in Inferno.  I wound up doing a lot of preparation work but didn't put anything on the market.  Some would call that a failure.  I'm calling it an investment in the future.

Wandering Rose:  When I set my training goals for Wandering Rose last year I wondered if my goals were too ambitious.  The answer was yes.  The first goal was to get her Elite Core Competency certificate.  I have one more skill to learn and I'll have the goal complete by the end of the month.  The second goal of learning leadership skills so she can fly command ships is complete.  I only learned the advanced leadership skills to IV so I cannot use tech 2 gang links or mind links, but I reached my goals for the year.  The final goal was to improve her industrial and trade skills.  That I accomplished, although I didn't complete the qualifications for all the Minmatar starter profession certificates to elite.  I just had more important things to learn than Marketing V. 

Get out of my comfort zone:  Given the way Eve is developing, I'd like to bring this quote from last year's post back.

"I've gotten really comfortable in Heimatar and Metropolis.  I don't need to leave the Minmatar Republic, but I probably need to spend more time in low-sec.  The way the game is developing high-sec is going to receive a series of nerfs over the next year and I need to get over my fear of space where people shoot at you."

I felt that way about CCP's vision for the game back then and I feel that way today.   But I'm starting to get sidetracked into a discussion of the future and this section is about the past.

I've definitely spent a lot of time in low-sec over the past few months and even uncloaked and shot at rats in belts.  However, I still haven't flown around in ships that can't cloak.  And I failed to go into wormhole space.  But I think I succeeded in getting out of my comfort zone.

Role play:  Total fail!  I didn't even try.

The Year Ahead

Most of my goals for the next 12 months will all fall under one overarching theme: move out of high-sec.  Currently my plan is to establish myself in low-sec, but I don't want to rule out the possibility of moving to 0.0 or w-space if the right opportunity presents itself.  To accomplish this I play on doing the following:

Ships:  I really need to get a strategic cruiser.  I will definitely pick up a Loki in the next few weeks.   For Wandering Rose she'll start learning Gallente skills so she can fly a Viator.  While I love the Prowler (the true "I Win" button in Eve), I'll need a blockade runner with the capability to transport packaged cruisers.  This is a change in focus from previous years when I was just collecting ships.  Now I want ships that will serve a purpose.

I have a ship goal not related to moving out of high-sec.  I want to learn how to fit my ships better.  As part of the goal I'll take all of the Minmatar combat ships I own, fit them and then run a couple of missions or maybe exploration sites to see how they perform.  I might even post the fits so people can laugh at them offer some constructive criticism.

Skills:  I need to learn more support skills.  In addition to the general defense and electronic warfare skills I need to learn the exploration skills like Archaelogy, Hacking, Salvaging and all of the Astrometric skills to V.  I have the training queue already set through December 2013 so this goal should be safe barring a disaster like getting podded after forgetting to update my clone.

Industry:  I think I have done enough researching of blueprints that I can finally begin the manufacturing plan I originally wanted to implement a few months ago.  The plan won't be that profitable, but hopefully will pay for expanding my collection of blueprints.  Also, I might try building and selling in low-sec.  The revamped mining ships will help as I won't need to transport raw materials through low-sec gate camps.  Also, while others will say I'm stupid for ignoring the opportunity costs, having the ability to acquire most of my own raw materials will help shield against price fluctuations on the market.  Besides, this is Eve.  Always have a plan B.

I am also on track to complete a two-year goal I set for myself last year to aquire the blueprint copies for and manufacture the Republic Fleet Firetail, Stabber Fleet Issue and Tempest Fleet Issue.  I want to acquire the blueprints from the agent so I need to continue grinding Minmatar faction standings.  Currently I am up to 8.3, almost enough to obtain the Firetail bpc.

Exploration:  I will get serious about exploration this year.  I have the skills in the queue and almost have the money to buy the Loki and maintain a sufficient cash reserve.  I will also look into implants.  The new mining ships will help give me additional incentive to do so.  I also will look into running missions for the Sisters of EVE.  My standings with the Sisters are now over 5 which means I can do level 4 missions.  While grinding the LP might mean an extended stay in high-sec, the scanning gear is worth it.  Oh, and the Minmatar level 4 epic arc gives some nice scanning probes at the end in addition to a nice bounce in standings.

Blitzing missions:  I need to learn how to blitz missions.  I know that should be easy, especially with the use of EVE-Survival, but I never assume that a skill is easily picked up.  I've heard several null-sec veterans say they have trouble with missions.  I have the same problem when I don't run combat missions for a couple of months.

Too much?  Last year I set a lot of goals and knew that I wouldn't accomplish all of them.  This year I think I've scaled back and made my goals more focused.  One thing I'm sure of is that I'll have a memorable 12 months to write about next August.

The Digital Dozen: 7 August 2012

The rankings of the top twelve MMORPGs as determined by the players of the Xfire community from play on Sunday, 5 August 2012.  For more details about the methodology, click here.  Historical data can be found here.

Rank	Prev Week	Game	Score	Hours Played
1	1	World of Warcraft	58.6	55,316
2	2	Star Wars: The Old Republic	8.5	8,025
3	3	Aion	5.3	5,034
4	4	The Secret World	4.9	4,642
5	4	Eve Online	4.1	3,873
6	6	Metin 2	3.7	3,395
7	7	Lord of the Rings Online	3.0	2,853
8	8	APB: Reloaded	2.8	2,604
9	9	Guild Wars	2.4	2,291
10	11	Star Trek Online	2.2	2,105
11	12	Maple Story	2.2	2,093
12	10	Need For Speed World	2.2	2,080

  Total MMORPG hours played Sunday: 128,046

Last Sunday showed an unusual level of constancy in the amount of hours spent playing MMORPGs by the Xfire community with only a drop of 37 hours played over the previous Sunday.  The big gainer percentage-wise was The Secret World which saw its one-month anniversary attract 9% more playtime.  Sunday was a bad day for driving games as Need For Speed World (-13%) and APB: Reloaded (-11.7%) led the way for the losers.

How To Pay:  With many in the gaming media and blogs shouting how EA/Bioware's decision to turn Star Wars: The Old Republic into a free-to-play game I thought I'd list the payment methods for each of the games in The Digital Dozen to see which finanical models are most popular.

1. World of Warcraft:  Box/Digital sales + monthly subscription.
2. Star Wars: The Old Republic:  Box/Digital sales + month subscription until November, then box/digital sale + hybrid model (subscription optional)
3. Aion:  Free-to-play + cash shop
4. The Secret World:  Box/Digital sales + monthly subscription
5. Eve Online:  Digital sales + monthly subscription (payable with in-game currency)
6. Metin 2:  Free-to-play + cash shop
7. Lord of the Rings Online:   Free-to-play + hybrid model (subscription optional + cash shop)
8. APB: Reloaded:  Free-to-play + cash shop
9. Guild Wars:  Box/Digital sales + cash shop
10. Star Trek Online:  Free-to-play + hybrid model (subscription optional + cash shop)
11. Maple Story:  Free-to-play + cash shop
12. Need For Speed World:  Free-to-play + cash shop

CSM's Security Briefing From The Spring 2012 Summit

Often news concerning CCP's shadow war with botters and those involved in the illicit RMT trade takes weeks if not months to reach the outside world.  The information provided to CSM 7 at the CSM Spring Summit held 31 May - 1 June has taken two months to emerge.  While others can debate the reasons why the CSM minutes took so long to produce and approve, I'm more interested in what the minutes tell us about the progress of the conflict from CCP's perspective.

Before I continue, please remember that the information is two months old and that any figures that were presented to the CSM probably covered the period 26 February 2012 to 30 May 2012.

The goals of CCP Sreegs' strategy remain the same as he stated at Fanfest last year.  For those engaged in the illicit RMT trade and selling botting software he wants to make the business unprofitable.  For Eve players who bot or purchase illicit ISK, the goal is to convince them to stop and switch to legitimate means.  CCP saw success in changing player behavior by preventing players from transferring characters on accounts caught botting and seizing any illicitly obtained ISK.

The methods used to detect bots are, quite rightly, a closely held secret, however CCP Stillman revealed that the detection system uses a combination of behavioral and technical detections.  CCP Sreegs also revealed that information submitted using the "Report Bot" button is fed directly into the automated detection system.  Botters have wondered exactly how the detection system works and many are convinced that CCP has no automated detection system and just depend on other players using the "Report Bot" feature.  Apparently both camps in the debate are at least partially correct.

So how effective is CCP Sreegs' strategy and Team Security's efforts?  On the botting front, the automatic detection system was spotting 1,400 accounts every ten days.  In the weeks leading up to the Summit, that number was down to less than 10 accounts every ten days.  If anyone wants to know why I haven't posted more botting tears lately, that is the reason. 

On the illicit RMT front, the numbers sound impressive.  From the beginning of the anti-RMT push in mid-March to the Summit, 1705 accounts were banned for illicit RMT activities.  Of those, 1,354 accounts were less than a year old, indicating that many of the accounts were recently created.  The 192 accounts 500 days or older banned probably included many players trying to cash out of Eve.

The sheer amount of ISK and assets seized from the illicit RMT operations was breathtaking.   A total of 1.1 trillion ISK is cash and 4 trillion ISK in assets were seized in the space of about 2 months.  At the average sale price in Jita on 31 May, that comes out to be 10,808 PLEX, or over $189,000.  That would definitely help explain the rise in the price of illicit ISK in May.

The numbers concerning ISK buyers were a bit confusing, but I think broke out like this.  Of the 767 accounts caught purchasing ISK, 208 went on to purchase a total of 1621 PLEX legitimately after their illicit ISK was confiscated.  That is over $28,000 worth of PLEX.  Of the accounts, 63 cancelled their subscriptions while 330 accounts still have an ISK amount in the red.  I haven't figured out what a "disabled account" is, but 191 of the accounts caught are disabled.

Of course, given the havoc that the unified inventory change wrecked on bots and some bots were still not fixed by the time the summit began, the question came up about making it impossible to create a bot that would work in the game.  CCP Sreegs replied, "If our goal was eradication of the capacity for someone to automate process, then we will fail, it’s a waste of our time and someone is always going to do it."  While I would like to see CCP make bot developers work harder, history in the MMO industry suggests that CCP Sreegs is correct.  The most famous example of a developer who continued to try to make a game resistant to bots that I know of is Jagex with Runescape.  They kept trying, and failing, to break bots and in October 2011 wound up banning over 7.7 million accounts, 1.5 million of them in a single day.

CCP Sreegs also addressed that authenticators are coming soon, but CCP still needs to work on issues surrounding email verification.  Anti-hacking improvements, mainly concerning the client with process injection is still an issue on CCP's agenda as well, which is another item in the fight against botting.

I should add that some of the CSM members had their own concerns about illicit RMT.  UAxDEATH asked about tracking transactions for currency other than ISK that occur at out of game websites and trying to track down those renting 0.0 systems for real money.  Greene Lee brought up the issue of selling characters for real money.  Two step brought up the point that the New Player Experience should warn people not to buy ISK, at least from anyone but CCP.

For many of the concerns CCP Sreegs had to disappoint the CSM:

"CCP Sreegs says they haven’t really gone after character selling yet, but it is something they’re aware of. If they stumble across a business that also sells characters they’ll ban those characters. He goes on to say that they’re aware of most issues, but he doesn’t have the time to do everything that he wants to. While he’d love to go after people renting systems for real money and selling characters for real money, he just doesn’t have the time currently. Maybe in the future though." (p. 150)

So while Team Security has made a lot of progress this year, they still have a lot to do.  I hope no one told CCP Sreegs this was going to be easy.