Time To Reread The Empyrean Age

"Goonswarm 2015: We are not here to ruin your game, but to ~enhance your immersion~"

The Mittani

Yesterday TMC published the latest Goonswarm Federation Alliance Update. Not very much news was proclaimed, really. Just that the name of the coalition was changing from the Cluster Fuck Coalition to The Imperium. And that the coalition will withdraw from Fountain and Cloud Ring before the new sovereignty system hits Tranquility on 2 June. Oh, and Get Off My Lawn and The Bastion will occupy Vale of the Silent while Executive Outcomes moves to Branch. I suspect that means that the GSF's rental alliance, Greater Western Co-Prosperity Sphere , will soon disband to make room for the regular members of the coalition.

But for me, the big news is the The Imperium's first campaign:

"The first act of our new Imperium: we formally declare our undying loyalty to the True Emperor of Amarr: Maximilian Singularity VI, First of His Name. Anyone in New Eden declaring for the False Empress Jamyl will be violently disabused of their heresy and their territory forfeit. Until the CONCORD-protected zones declare for the True Emperor, we'll have to content ourselves with enforcing the True Emperor's truth across Providence the moment that Fozziesov goes live. We grant Providence the opportunity to reflect upon their sins and seek redemption by bending the knee, just as I have." 

Sure, The Mittani and his leadership team plan to use Providence as a testing ground for evaluating new tactics in sovereignty warfare. But the way The Mittani has couched his coalition's actions almost forces CVA to put up a fight. Sure, Empress Jamyl violated the doctrine of Sacred Flesh and had herself cloned in order to survive the defeat of her champion during the Succession Trials. But Maximilian Singularity VI, First of His Name, is not one of the heirs of the five royal houses.

Of course, The Mittani, or more likely his diplomatic corp operating in Maximilian's name, could argue that the Sarum family has forfeited its place to rule the Amarr Empire, much like what happened to the Khanid Family after Garkeh Khanid refused to commit Shathol'Syn following the ascension of Heideran Kador to the throne in 22762 AD. Just as the Tash-Murkon family replaced the Khanid, so could one argue that the house of Singularity should replace the Sarum.

Does anyone think that CVA will meekly stand back and watch The Mittani place a successor onto the Amarr throne? Even if CVA buys into the legal precedent that if a heir of an Amarr royal house fails to commit Shathol'Syn, then the house is stripped of its royal titles, I would expect that they would want to place one of their own on the throne. At that point, I can foresee an "Amarrian" civil war, with CVA encouraged to persevere by the realistic belief that Goonswarm will eventually tire of the war and move on to bigger and better things.

Quite frankly, I hope both sides fight just to see how CCP handles the situation. The possibilities for future The Scope news updates is endless. But in the meantime, once I finish my current book, I think I'll reread The Empyrean Age and Templar One again. Something tells me I may need to brush up on my Amarrian lore.

Locator Agents

Our second war with Absolute Defiance ended, but a new war started with Noob Farmers began at 0109 EVE time today. That means another corporation is paying CONCORD for Eve-Scout Enclave to deliver hugs in high sec. But unlike Absolute Defiance, Noob Farmers appears to move around some. So the question is, how can we ensure the delivery of the hugs Noob Farmers so desperately needs in a timely manner?

The answer is fairly simple. Locator agents. Locator agents are agents that not only give out missions, but can track down players as long as they are not located in a wormhole. The better the standings a player has with certain NPC corporations, the better the quality of the agent available. That's right, doing PvE in order to increase standings can help in PvP situations, especially war decs.

All players have access to the basic level 1 locator agents. These agents can instantly locate a player in the same system and locate a player in the same constellation withing 1 minute. If the player is in a station, the agent will even disclose the station the player is docked in. However, the location the agent gives is the player's location when the search began. Not a great difference for level 1 agents, but a factor in the better quality agents.

The agent does charge for the information, but will name the price before disclosing the location. In the case of the level 1 agent, the agent will ask for 1,000 ISK if the player you are searching for is in the system or 5,000 ISK if the player in in the same constellation. Just obtaining the price from the agent can tell a player some information. If the player is not located within the constellation, then the agent tells you that the agent is outside the area and does not charge for the information.

Level 2 locator agents are better than level 1 agents due to the fact the level 2 agent can search the entire region, not just the constellation. Level 2 locator agents, just like mission agents, require a standing with the corporation or faction of 1.0 Like a level 1 agent, a level 2 agent can locate a player within the same system instantly and within the same constellation within 1 minute. But the level 2 agent can find a player within the same region within 8 minutes. The required payouts are 5,000 ISK if the player is located within the same system, 10,000 ISK if the player is in the same constellation, and 25,000 ISK if the player is within the same region. If the player is located outside the region, the agent informs you the player is out of the search area and does not charge you for that information.

One final attribute I have not touched on is the cooldown period in which you can ask an agent to search for a second player (or the same player a second time). Both level 1 and level 2 agents have a 5 minute cooldown period. However, that is only if you pay ISK to find the location of a player. See the loophole in the system? But I'm not sure how often someone would cycle through 20 players to see which ones are in the system, especially since local is available to do that. Perhaps finding players in the same constellation is more useful.

Level 3 locator agents are available with corporate or faction standings of 3.0. Level 3 agents not only can find players located anywhere outside of wormholes, but can find players in the same constellation or region faster than the lower level agents. Level 3 agents can find players within the same constellation within 30 seconds, the same region in 4 minutes, and anywhere else in 8 minutes. However, the agent asks for 10,000 ISK if the player is in the same system, 25,000 ISK if the player is in the same constellation, 50,000 ISK if the player is in the same region, and 100,000 ISK if the player is outside the current region. The cooldown to reuse the agent, at 15 minutes, is also greater than the lower level agents.

Finally, the level 4 agent becomes available with corporate or faction standings of 5.0. The search times drop to 20 seconds if the player is in the same constellation, 2 minutes if in the same region, and 4 minutes located outside the region. The offset is the increased cooldown time (30 minutes) and the increased costs (25,000 ISK / 50,000 ISK / 100,000 ISK / 250,000 ISK).

For those just starting out, getting access to level 2 agents isn't that hard. Just train the Connections and Diplomacy skills to improve standings and the Social skill to improve standings gain. Then again, saying that gaining standings for myself is easy. Both Rosewalker and Wandering Rose have access to all the Minmatar and Gallente level 4 location agents. I also have an alt that has access to all the Caldari level 4 agents and is only 0.15 away from having access to all of the level 4 Amarr agents as well.

I will add that I got a lot of faction standings from running COSMOS missions. So if you really want to go on a standings grind, I'd suggest training Social up to 5, then run the COSMOS missions while you train Connections. Just getting standings up to 3 with one faction will help a great deal. Plus, unless you are only interested in PvP, high standings unlocks so much in EVE.

Hopefully this explanation helps a little bit in understanding how locator agents work. And who knows. Perhaps one day you can provide the intelligence required to hug a war target.

Checking The Price Of Illicit WoW Gold

Last week, the big news in the MMORPG genre was Blizzard's introduction of the WoW Token, a PLEX-like in-game object, into World of Warcraft. News outlets like VentureBeat, PC Gamer, and Eurogamer covered the obvious first-day story, the huge drop in the value of the WoW Token. While some articles have mentioned the problem in passing, an article on TheMittani.com tried to address the influence of illicit RMT on the cost of the WoW Token.

I think that my biggest complaint about the TMC piece actually revolves around the source used for obtaining the prices of WoW gold on the secondary RMT market. Because he used WOW Gold Rates, the author of the piece came away with a bit of a distorted picture of the price of illicitly marketed WoW gold. That price colored the rest of his piece and may have led him to judge Blizzard more harshly than the game company deserved.

The prices listed for 12 April 2015 seem a bit high

Looking for review sites of virtual currency sellers is good and shows that a writer is making an effort to look for an authority with expertise in the field. I did the same thing when I first started out, using MMOBUX as a source until I grew confident enough in my knowledge of the ISK market to branch out on my own. But among the interesting tidbits I've collected over the course of writing about secondary RMT markets is that a lot of old, outdated RMT-related websites are lying around waiting for an eager researcher to trip over them. Apparently, WoW Gold Rates is one of those sites.

Whenever I look at a virtual currency seller, the first thing I check is that the site is still in business. I guess that's a result of watching so many ISK sellers quietly leave the market without turning off the lights. So I did the same with the WoW gold seller review site and checked out the prices for the Horde-side market on the Earthen Ring realm. I think the results would surprise the author.

Of the seven gold shops listed, GameGoody and MySuperSales are no longer in existence. Another, OffGamers, is not a WoW gold seller. The closest the website comes to selling WoW gold is offering 60-day WoW game time cards. A fourth seller, IGE, no longer directly sells WoW gold. The site IGE redirects buyers to currently sells WoW gold at $18.99 / 30,000 gold, or almost 78% less than is listed at WoW Gold Rates. As for the other three shops that actually do sell WoW gold, MOGS sells for 41.2% less, Bank of WoW 66.0% less, and Guy4Game sells for 68.5% cheaper than is listed on WoW Gold Rates. No wonder the author of the TMC piece thought that Blizzard was really trying to undercut the illicit gold sellers; his source was using outdated information.

I've pointed out why the source the author of the TMC piece used was bad and how someone could check the validity of the information. But what should a writer who is interested in the subject do to find out the price of virtual currencies on the secondary market?

For those looking to quickly gather up a set of prices, I'd suggest either MMOBUX or Player Auctions. MMOBUX makes a good starting place and even has history graphs, although I would advise clicking on each of the shops to make sure they are still active. Player Auctions is more a marketplace of several sellers, but for those games that don't have a lot of websites selling their in-game currency, then Player Auctions is the next best place. The downside is publicizing those places and driving gold buyers to those shops. Something a small blog like The Nosy Gamer can do, but something a site with a lot more traffic like TMC might want to shy away from.

The other way is a method I used with ISK sellers and am now establishing for monitoring the secondary RMT market for World of Warcraft.  I established my own index of gold/ISK sellers and recorded their prices every Sunday. Or, in the case of WoW, daily, at least for now. The selection criteria is simple. In the case of WoW, I used the search term "buy WoW gold" and recorded the links of all the websites I found that showed up in Google Ads. I only got ten, so I added four more from the search. I missed a couple of the cheaper sites and picked up one clunker, but I think I can drop two of the sites and have a pretty good index going forward.

I realize that not a lot of people write about real money trading to the extent that I do. I don't want to discourage anyone from writing about the subject, either. Let's just say that I urge anyone writing about the subject to go in with eyes wide open. Oh, and that I think bloggers may have an easier time. After all, we're not really under any time constraints. We can take our time and really develop the story. I may actually have one ready on changes in the price of illicit WoW gold in a couple of weeks. My editor doesn't mind waiting.

Drifters, The RSS, And Eifyr, Oh My!

Sometimes, a subject calls out for a post. Today's example is the latest video from The Scope, covering HERO's withdrawal from Catch and the conflict between N3 and the CFC in the Fountain/Delve area of operations.


For me, the news scroll is often more interesting than the main storyline the narrator of the video reads. Let's look at those stories:

• Mineral prices rise amid second quarter market speculation by capsuleer industrialists.
• Propel Dynamics decline to comment on arrival of unidentified vessel at Tamo factory gravdock.
• 24th Imperial Crusade trade Saidusairos for Arnstur after sustained fighting in The Bleak Lands.
• Tama remains under Caldari control after State Protectorate assumed sovereignty on March 29th.
• Almost Awesome loses swathes of space in Wicked Creek as TEST Alliance roll in.
• Darkness loses ZXB-VC to Fatal Ascention after sizeable capital fight.
• Further rumors circulate regarding Jackdaw technical specifications after prototype vessel is spotted in Saisid.
• Republic Security Services patrol observed briefly engaging Drifter vessels in Elgoi before retreat to Arlek.

Yes, seeing up to the minute references to factional warfare in the video (the flips of Saidusairos and Arnstur occurred on Thursday) was a nice tip of the hat to low sec. But the last story really peaked my interest. Arlek is a 1.0 system in Metropolis equidistant (at least in terms of jumps) between the two major trade hubs of the Minmatar Republic, Rens and Hek.

I found the location where the engagement took place interesting. Elgoi is the home system for Eifyr and Co., major backers of Dr. Hilen Tukoss' work on the Arek'Jaalan Project. In fact, Site One of the Arek'Jaalan Project is located in the next-door system of Eram. Is this small reference another piece of the Arek'Jaalan project storyline playing out? I thought last month's story of Zainou Biotech finally getting around to stripping Dr. Tukoss of his Caldari corporate citizenship a bit weird, since I presumed they had done that shortly after his defection to Eifyr and Co. years ago. But as a stepping stone to keep the storyline moving and in the back of people's minds, creating the story was a nice touch.

One other interesting fact about Eifyr and Co. The Minmatar corporation, rumored to have links to the underworld booster rings, is also a player in w-space research:

"The widespread emergence of unstable wormholes and the technological possibilities opened by these phenomena is the most recent opportunity seized by Kolvil Eifyr's remarkable corporation. Eifyr and Co.'s expertise in chemical reactor technology was swiftly adapted to the newly emerging polymers derived from wormhole space gas clouds. Additionally, Sleeper technology became a particular interest of the corporation. Today, Eifyr and Co. acquires Sleeper-related data in a variety of forms primarily from capsuleers, who encounter the ancient civilization’s drone guardians in wormhole space."

Perhaps I'm reading too much into the situation, but why are units of the Republic's Security Services, and not mainline fleet units, battling the Drifters? Forgive me if I'm suspicious, but the RSS has strong links to the New Eden underworld. With Eifyr and Co.'s shady reputation, is something going on?

Since I've come this far, let me put my tinfoil hat on firmly and go deep down the rabbit hole. Eifyr and Co. along with another corporation mentioned in the video, Propel Dynamics, are among two of the five corporations that have their corporate logos plastered on the Sisters of EVE Astero-, Stratios-, and Nestor-class ships. We may have a clue of what the mysterious ship may feature based on Propel Dynamics' history:

"Propel Dynamics was founded by the team that discovered the first functional warp drive for short jumps within a system. Though it has never managed to live up to its early expectation the company has always turned out innovative and interesting designs that have driven the field of propulsion forward."

With the Minmatar clashing with the Drifters in the headquarters system of one SoE ally and another SoE ally working on a mysterious ship, are we about to see the lore explode? I don't think so. With CCP about to release major changes to sovereignty mechanics in June, I don't think CCP would want to step on the possibly epic stories that players are about to create. However, stringing out the story the rest of the year will give those who don't live and breathe null sec politics something to watch as CCP positions players to create their own stargates, hopefully sometime in 2016.

Daybreak And H1Z1 Hackers

I haven't felt well all week and planned to not blog today. Then somone sent me a video from Daybreak Games (formerly SOE) in which a lot of employees read letters from hackers asking to have bans reversed.


I thoroughly enjoyed the video. And then ChYph3r, who runs Evepodcasts.com, tweeted this screenshot:

Hey, these aren't EVE-related tears, but when you get right down to it, botting, hacking, and RMT tears are the best tears, no matter what the game.

Global War On Illicit RMT: Blizzard Slams Honorbuddy

A lot of people think that the introduction of the WoW Token alone will bring an end to gold sellers in World of Warcraft. Ha! If ending the selling of black market virtual currency in MMORPGs was that easy, CCP would have ended the practice in EVE Online years ago when it introduced PLEX.

I've criticized Blizzard for having a lax ban policy in the past, especially when compared to CCP. However, with the introduction of the WoW Token, which should have the top down effect of putting a cap on how much black market gold sellers can charge, I wondered about Blizzard's efforts at trying to choke off the flow of gold at the farming/botting level.

Things have changed. When I clicked on the link to visit the "penalty volcano", I discovered the link redirected me to a new page created on 1 April.  I followed the links on the page to Blizzard's new "Exploitation Policy". I call the policy new as the page shows a last modified date of 3 April.  Nowhere do I see any references to lengths of bans.

I then went to the forums for the Honorbuddy bot looking for reactions to the news of the release of the WoW Token. Honorbuddy is famous as Blizzard paid €650,000 in 2013 in order to halt the sale of the bot in Germany. Instead of finding a lot of talk about the new item, I found a lot of reports of bans.

According to what I read, a tripwire event occurred on 19 March. A tripwire event in one, like an update to the Warden anti-bot software, that causes all of the bots in operation to immediately shut down. Apparently, the emergency shutdown didn't work as many botters were banned for six months for their (supposedly) first offense. Six months for a first offense? Well, apparently, as you'll soon read, creating new accounts is quite easy.

Did I type "soon read"? Yes I did. I found some quality botter and RMTer tears on the Honorbuddy forums. Since the operator of the forums was kind enough to leave the forums open to the public, I thought I'd go ahead and share some of the feedback Honorbuddy botters left. Remember, the term "Abuse of the Economy" is the reason Blizzard gives for banning a player for conducting black market RMT. Also, I'm going to copy the posts "as is", complete with all spelling, punctuation, and grammer mistakes.

22 March

wesleysniper - "Summary : 5 accounts and 5 expansions bought from plati.ru not from that cheap battlechest link. all safe. applied codes and got 90 level boosts. paladin tank / hunter / shaman / druid and holy priest for the sake of looking normal.all of them have crafted items bought from AH or some 665 BOE items again for the sake of looking normal and casual. 

"Lately i've been experimenting with 5 boosted chars. i leveled them up to 100 and sic them to wod normal dungeons. they barely made it 2 weeks straight in wod dungeons - and barely pay off their costs. this morning all of them are banned with the total of 100k gold which is made in 2-3 days ( and yes very very low gph overall )

"i dont know you all but from this moment on botting with honorbuddy is finished for me. and i dont know the plans of the developers or programmers but their product is compromised big time. 

"you cant level your toons / cant send them to BGs / cant send them to Dungeons / no solo dungeons / no grindings so whats the use of hb ? and from what i understand is you just dont neccessarily be reported to a GM cos ppl get banned in their garrisons. so its something else. 

"Can someone from programmers / developers side care to eleborate a little bit more of events happening lately because we'Re paid customers and i feel like we're deliberetely kept in the dark for the sake of not losing customers..

"Anyways TL : DR i'm shutting down my operations for sometime. me and my friend have lost more then 60 accounts in 1-2 weeks time and its not worth it anymore."

27 March

misterneko - "Yeah, another vanilla account banned. I use legit HB key, Millz/Kingwow2 of store, and still got the hammer. Seems 6 month is the standart. This is real..."

narusu - "I got the ban hammer pretty hard today a few hours ago. I had lost a few last week but the final 7 all went down at the same time today. All exploitation of economy. Seems a common thread today especially on US. I made an account to post this because i thought everyone should know the frequency of bans on US is high. Some of my accounts were 7-9 days old... ALL were online during trip wire event....o.O."

Note: this user lost 13 out of 13 accounts.

30 March

AlexCosmos - "My 6 trial acc was closed for goldselling. OMG, blizz are crazy? how can i sell anything on trial?"

31 March

dragonbuddy - "mule banned overnight, then set my 5/5 dungeon buddy and 1/1 anzul Gundrak too who is a separate account farm while i goto shops for 1hr,come back all banned. old school perma banned, all for bots as per usual letter."

Macatho - "Used WoD Trial on 5 accounts that had been without game time for months, they ran for 2-3 days then they got banned when they were off line. I'm seriously starting to question how to bot nowadays, botting for profit is just increasingly difficult."

1 April

Malice213 - "Only two soldiers left...and they are going to go dark until the game is worth playing again."

Note: The user had 11 of 13 accounts banned.

2 April

HBL0V3 - "42/42 eu accounts banned today abuse of eco"

3 April

233286 - "Not here the fill in a usual report, just stating that over the past 2 days I lost 34 account.
First lost 15 due to Eco exploiting, few hours later I checked and another 10 on EU were banned aswell for automated software.

"Next day I started off making 5 new raf accounts and had 4 left overs who I ran through instances (note: they did not run the same instances). These 4 accounts where banned the same day in about 2 hours. Other 5 who ran on other VM where still intact. They got 85, next morning set them up, banned after 3/4 hours.

"Now this was over the last 2 days, I have lost alot more but these went out with enough profit so I usually do not care to post. Now suddenly I am getting targetted hard? Or something else I have no idea.
<2 computers.="" different="" each="" ip="" mac="" modems="" multiple="" running="" vm="">

"That is it for me for a while. Will cooldown alittle and start again."

happyfriet - "Was trying to figure out what to do in WoD because of all the heat atm, so I made 3 WoD accounts, each on 1 pc with it's own IP.

"All 3 were doing (self-made) profiles after dinging level 100.

"Aaaand their gone... fml - they weren't connected in ANY way nor involved in gold selling.

"Ir pissed yo."

Mario27 - "i gues i was to greedy i already had botted 10 classes to 100 it was weird that i even came this far normally i was banned at questing lvl 15 and i dont get a 6 month or anything my bans are permantly evrytime with no Suspension i dont get that why but i was bored with the game anyways if i played for 1 hour i was done i play more on my ps4 then wow now those days wel that was it for me with wow i might come back onetime when the wow token comes out but then i wont be botting again"

v1go - "12/12 eu accounts banned today abuse of eco. 100 lvl, private grind profiles."

6 April

masterwow - "My main acc got banned last week, got a perma ban then i apealed and nothing they insist on perma ban, i never got any suspensions on that acc before, i dont know what to do!"

milouchoa - "I just get banned in my first attempt to sell gold. It was only 50k gold but they caught me. I´m trying to revert the ban, but I have no hope."

These are just some of the ban reports that weren't just filling out a questionnaire. Some of the numbers are quite surprising, given the scale I'm used to in EVE. But given the scale of botting and RMT in WoW, Blizzard has a lot of work ahead of it if it wants to make the WoW Token truly effective in fighting illicit RMT.

The WoW Token Arrives Today

Yesterday, Blizzard announced that they planned to launch the introduction of the WoW Token, its version of EVE Online's PLEX ... today. Well, at lest in the Americas region (North America, Latin America, Australia and New Zealand). Tokens will cost $20 USD/$25 AUD in the in-game cash shop and Blizzard will set the initial auction house price to 30,000 gold. The WoW Token will operate in a region-wide, not realm-wide, market. Blizzard has also placed an initial limit of allowing players to purchase 10 WoW Tokens within a 30-day period.

The price point that Blizzard set reflects the real world price that players have already assigned to WoW gold purchased on the black market.

Black market prices on Earthen Ring, Horde, 6 April 2015

The graphic above lists the prices that shops on Player Auctions were offering for 30,000 gold on Monday. Except for one shop that is already barely below Blizzard's initial price, these black market shops are all at least 15% over Blizzard's initial price.

One major difference between EVE's PLEX and Blizzard's WoW Token is that in the Blizzard model, players do not necessarily trade the WoW Token for gold on a contract basis like they would a weapon or flask. An interview lead game designer Ion Hazzikostas did with Venture Beat in March revealed a slight twist:

"One interesting note is that no matter when or how big the movement in the market is, sellers and buyers will always be guaranteed to get the price they saw. If a seller posts a token and the market moves downward before a buyer picks it up, the purchaser will pay the cheaper price — but the seller will still get the higher gold price they were quoted when listing the token. The same thing will happen in reverse: If a buyer pays more gold for the token than the seller was promised, the seller will still get paid the lower price.

"'Potentially there are small amounts of gold that are being created, but also destroyed,” Hazzikostas said. “It’s about security and certainty, and it all evens out.'"

Between these price guarantees along with the inability to trade or resell a token once purchased from the auction house, Blizzard hopes to avoid the WoW Token becoming the investment vehicle that PLEX became in the EVE economy.

From an RMT standpoint, Blizzard appears well-positioned to cause the sellers of black market gold some problems. With the rules around the sale and possession of the WoW Token, the item should never become a viable product for sale unless the RMT shop resorts to credit card fraud. Also, the initial price point should force gold sellers to, at least initially, lower prices in order to attract sales. Even if the price of the WoW Token falls to 25,000 gold, that still equates to a $24 USD/30,000 gold rate, which still matches or beats the price of the major gold sellers on Player Auctions. I personally believe that gold sellers will need to beat the price offered by purchasing the token by 30-40% in order to generate a high level of sales. Such a drop in the price of black market gold would definitely hurt the wallets of the professionals.

However, just like PLEX in EVE, the WoW Token will not, by itself, end gold selling in World of Warcraft. By putting a cap on what gold sellers can charge, though, the WoW Token can contribute to marginal RMT operations going out of business. But, that outcome depends on the actions of WoW players. Will those who wish to purchase gold turn to an approved method, or will they continue dealing with the black market sellers?

Fanfest 2015 Security Presentation: Organization And Rules

CCP released the Fanfest 2015 presentations onto its YouTube channel last week. I was interested in watching the Security presentation because I was so nervous during the presentation that I didn't remember exactly what was said. I knew from meetings what everyone planned to present, but things always change from what is planned vs what is actually said. Given the structure of the talk, I'll make two posts, with today's post covering the first part of the presentation given by the InfoSec members of Team Security.

The April Fools' Day o7 Show

I watched yesterday's o7 Show at home on the Twitch recording and found a couple of interesting things. First, CCP Guard definitely changed since I saw him at Fanfest.

Next up, I found out I passed up a chance at making an appearance on the o7 Show. In a segment called "How Do You Say It???", various people who attended Fanfest were asked to try to pronounce some of the words from EVE. When I was approached, I ducked because I had a hard enough time speaking with my braces on, especially rubber-banded shut like they were that day. Oh well, I lost my shot at fame and fortune.

Of course, what's an o7 Show without a community roundup. Highlighted was a player gathering in Finland that occurred during Fanfest. CCP Guard and CCP Mimic also pointed out that over 400 tickets for EVE Vegas were sold in the first couple of weeks. Hendrick Tallardar produced a video, The o7 Report, that reviewed null sec news, NPSI activity, and titan kills.

CCP Fozzie came on to talk about planned changes, which is always kind of dangerous on April Fool's Day. But players should receive a lot of goodies (with a couple of nerfs) on 28 April. First, the new ship skins will make their first appearance on Tranquility, with the skins available for testing on Singularity now.

Null sec will see a lot of changes, with iHub and iHub upgrades receiving size reductions so deep space transports can deploy them. Also, the players will begin manufacturing the structures at that time.

Next, null sec mining will receive changes whose details will emerge in a dev blog scheduled for publication next week. The big changes are the revamping of the mineral ratios of existing ores and the doubling of the amounts of megacyte and zydrine required for almost all blueprints.

Also, the Entosis module will make its appearance on Tranquility so that players can stock up before the new sov capture mechanics take effect on 3 June. The Entosis modules will consume strontium plus add mass to ships. CCP Fozzie created a thread in the Features and Ideas section of the forums for players to give more feedback.

We will also see ship balance changes at the end of April. Battlecruisers will receive a warp speed increase up to 2.7 AU and command ships an increase up to 3 AU. Also, warp rigs will impose a signature radius penalty instead of the current CPU penalty in order to make using the warp rigs less painful. Tech 3 destroyers will lose a significant amount of power grid, become slower and less agile, and see an increase in the materials required to build the ships.

In other changes, the corporate user interface will receive a make-over, the garage door cyno tactic will come to an end, and 2 new burner missions from the Serpentis and Blood Raiders designed for cruisers will make their debut.

Finally, the show ended with an interview with Kira Tsukimoto of Brave Newbies and The Neocom Podcast and a celebrity match between Jayne Fillon vs Gorski Car. For those who placed bets on the match, Gorski didn't throw the fight.

Holding Fire

Some readers of the blog may know about allegations floating around the EVE sub-reddit linking a gambling website with a major black market shop on Player Auctions. I've read the opening posts of both threads and, to say the least, I'm not impressed. The accuser has offered no proof of the connection between the gambling website and the ISK seller. None. So little proof, in fact, that I won't even bother linking to the Reddit posts.

The accuser's story has enough holes that I believe that one of two things is occurring. The first is that the accuser is a disgruntled customer of the gambling website. The second is that the accuser works for a rival RMT shop. The shop on Player Auctions the accuser is listing is the biggest ISK seller on Player Auctions. A ban wave would definitely help its competitors.

The accuser stated he has submitted a ticket with Team Security about the matter. Perhaps he saved all the really good evidence for the ticket. But whether or not the allegations against the gambling site are true, I really hope we see a ban wave emerge from this situation, because that shop on Player Auctions sells a lot of ISK. But I won't disclose just how much until a ban wave hits. Hey, I need something new to include in that post, right?