CCP Sreegs Unleashed: Scarlet Numbers

CCP Sreegs didn't want those RMTers anyway

With one tweet CCP Sreegs started a load of fun around RMT in Eve Online.  While members of TEST Alliance Please Ignore asked each other on Reddit who lost money, Pandemic Legion was busy trolling the player base on both Kugutsumen and the Eve Online forums that they had now had a negative balances of 15 trillion within the alliance.  Yesterday CCP Sreegs issued a dev blog clarifying the situation.

"Much like with the initial reintroduction of botting bans many of you have noticed that a wonderful event occurred last Friday. Prior to Fanfest and again at Fanfest I promised that the security team would be looking into RMT as well as botting. Last Friday saw the first results of that work. I'm not going to get into confirming or denying who was involved as per policy and as much as I love to write I'm just going to break down the results of the first action into bullet points."

• Around 105 accounts with direct ties to RMT (Real Money Trade) operations banned permanently
• Between 1-3 trillion ISK in assets seized permanently
• Around 500 billion ISK in RMT transactions reversed

Unlike botters, those engaged in selling illicit isk receive no warnings, just a permanent ban.  Those who purchase the isk have it removed, even if it means the player's wallet goes into negative numbers.  You can tell because the numbers go red.  Also, just like the War on Bots™, CCP Sreegs plans a daily war of attrition against the RMT operators instead of allowing them to operate unmolested for weeks at a time.

Botters should not feel left out.  CCP Sreegs intends to hit botters every day and expects to take an average of 100 billion isk a day from their wallets.

And just as a taste of things to come, tacked onto the end of the dev blog was information that another RMT/bot ring consisting of 365 accounts was banned.  The war is starting to heat up again.

The Digital Dozen: 3 April 2012

The rankings of the top twelve MMORPGs as determined by the players of the Xfire community from play on Sunday, 1 April 2012.  For more details about the methodology, click here.

Rank	Prev Week	Game	Score	Hours Played
1	1	World of Warcraft	58.4	86,777
2	2	Star Wars: The Old Republic	14.4	21,467
3	3	Aion	7.0	10,452
4	4	Eve Online	3.6	5,301
5	7	Guild Wars	2.7	3,963
6	5	Lord of the Rings Online	2.7	3,943
7	6	Metin 2	2.3	3,378
8	8	APB:Reloaded	2.1	3,063
9	11	Need For Speed World	1.9	2,859
10	9	Star Trek Online	1.9	2,855
11	10	Rift	1.7	2,485
12	12	Maple Story	1.5	2,103

 Total MMORPG hours played Sunday: 199,903 

Supreme Destiny explained - I have refused to put Supreme Destiny on the list because I could not believe that people actually spent 15 hours a day playing the game.  I have found the reason for the numbers: a rewards program!

Event Period: 2012.

Rewards:(Account Single Lifetime Based)
1. 100 Hours playing SD: D Grade Weapon 63 DMG/28 Map +9 (None Ancient).
2. 300 Hours playing SD: God Weapon Ancient +9 Stateless.
3. 600 Hours playing SD: God Armor Perfect Stats +0 (4 Parts).

Special Reward:(Monthly Based):
1.The Player that achieves highest amount of hours: +12 Upgrade.
2.The Player that post the best voted screenshot will win: +1 Mount Upgrade(Max level 120).
3.The Player that post the best voted Video will win: Spirit Stone with option

Note:
1. All the Above rewards can be all achieved, it is like accumulation system, with 100% surely win.

2. The rewards can be claimed once in the account lifetime, so avoid multiple claiming requests so you do not be blocked permanent.

3. Event Rewards will be updates every month with higher amounts of hours so that the players who had won the first rewards can still continue win more and more rewards.

4. It is account restricted event, only 1 account on Supreme Destiny and Xfire can win the event.

Example:
1. If a player played 700 Hours and sends to us a QnA with the required proofs, he/she will get the first 3 rewards and if he/she was the highest one to play SD, will get the +12 upgrade.

2. If player played 300 Hours:
Once he/she reaches100 Hours playing SD, you can claim your: D Grade Weapon 63 DMG/28 Map +9 (None Ancient)
And once he/she reaches 300 Hours playing SD, you can claim your: God Weapon Ancient +9 Stateless.

Needless to say Supreme Destiny will not appear on my list this year.

The Fanfest Bounce - Last weekend was the first weekend after CCP's Fanfest and the event certainly seems to have generated enthusiasm amongst the Eve Online player base if the Xfire numbers are any judge.  In a week that saw the overall time spent playing MMORPGs increase by 4.5% over the previous week, Eve's numbers jumped 9.8%.  Apparently SuicideGate and the accompanying media firestorm failed to dampen enthusiasm for the internet spaceship game.

Dog Bites Man - The biggest MMO story this year continues to be how well or poorly Star Wars: The Old Republic is doing.  As normal, the Bioware game saw declining playtime by the Xfire community, bucking the positive trend in MMORPGs overall.  Despite the 4.5% increase in playtime, SWTOR actually saw an 8% decline in hours played.  Since 1 January SWTOR has seen a 71.7% decrease in hours played.

CCP's War On Bots: Eve Pilot Tears, March 2012

Note: This blog post was originally titled "CCP's War On Bots: Tiny Miner Tears, March 2012".  I got my eve bots confused.  I apologize for the error.

I was in the audience for the Eve Security presentation and was delighted when CCP Sreegs pointed to The Nosy Gamer in his presentation for my coverage on the War on Bots™.  Inspired, I have gone out and looked for some good tears from botting sites.  I found a lot on the forums for  Eve Pilot. Here are some comments from some users.  I can't give out links because they are hidden behind a pay wall.  But I'm taking screenshots to document the original text.  Enjoy!

15 March:

SokarNox:  I woke this morning to find 4 of my 4 accounts banned. I was only running the bot on one account... Great!  Anyone else getting banned? Or was I singled out?

desi0103a:  No you are not allone i lost at this moment all my 11 acc that are not funny now i think the bot is not safe ;(

liu_kuojen:  3bots, 5 accounts banned. including 1 account that has never touched any macro'ed isk

Eldritch: 6 accounts banned - for 2 weeks (thank god not permanent).
only 2 were botting on a different pc - same network, so it's deffinitely an ip-ban.
Very nice from ccp: i payed a new account today to switch from trial to normal account - also banned.
But I have to say, that I mined 23/7 the last days and that i used it although it behaved strange, so it's most likely not a problem with the bot.

godless: banned 2 accounts. 1 only macroing.
I am switching to another game after 7 years playing it. This game is for fucking ccp's friends. I don't have a public IP so it's kinda weird they banned me 2 accounts.


rider23:  I was botting 20hrs/day, on 4 accounts, all banned (+1 extra!) for 2 weeks. 2 remain.  Now, without botting I have no other way to make isk and get plexes for all accounts even for my main.  So there is no way to play for FREE.   FREE? Hmm, seems that CCP have problems with their funding to support company, servers, etc.

Fuck them I say (sorry, but I had to say that) and I finally understood that I have no true need to play their game (or are they who play with us?),even though I have been with EVE since 1994...

So, I will let them eat my s**t, and on my 2 remaining unblocked accounts I have started the process to return all characters to the virtual biomass, where they virtually came from. Subscriptions already canceled.

It was one of the best games I've played but now I regret for the real money and the effort I have spent to this game.  All the dedication I've given to this game could be a type of mental slavery.  And I do believe that it is not worth investing money to any game unless we learn something from it. I have only learned a lot of useless crap for this game.

 

17 March:

Gregar:  I have yet to be banned and have been using the BOT on 2 accounts - I think I might have got lucky though as I stopped playing for about a month when everyone was getting banned and I had a day off when the next lot of people started getting banned...

EDIT - Both accounts just got banned..

March 18:

Shitsai:   Ok, something fishy is goin' on.  I just create a new trial account, who only went to jita, and bought 1 skill book.  Only thing he did "wrong" was running launcher and eve, while evepilot was sitting in the background.  I have renamed the title to notepad, a long time ago.  But this character has NOT done anything in game, that would cause a EULA violation. But now he is banned for 14 days.  Who bannes a trial account?

29 March:

Suslik2004:  Мой аккаунт сегодня забанили до 11.04. Причина - использование макро. Вот так то...  C этим ничего нельзя сделать?

My account was banned today to 4.11.  The reason - the use of macro.  That's it... C that nothing can be done?

fartovii:  А вообще, не могу понять логику CCP. Борьба с ботами? Так ботов, на мой взгляд, около 20% активных аккаунтов в еве. И какой смысл в этой "борьбе"?

In general, I cannot understand the logic of CCP.  The fight with bots?  So bots, in my opinion, about 20% of active accounts in Eve.  And what's the point in this "fight"?

30 March:

squattingnevil:  So, a while back all 3 of my miners got banned.  They are still showing banned waiting investigation.

Has there been any devlopments on whats happening with this all? It seemed CCP were having a huge wave of banning everyone, I know quite a few who got banned. When my accounts are unbanned, what do you guys suggest I do? I hear that you cannot sell an account any more if its ever previously been banned, is this true?

I was thinking of continuing mining on those 3 accounts but less often and starting training up new accounts now .... what do you all think is best to do?

Dinky:  Sorry to report but this message normally means that the characters have been perma banned. The same thing has happened to me with my characters. I pressed the GM's for an answer to when there investigation would be finished & the outcome was a perma ban. The message on logon simply means that CCP have not got the balls to state you are banned but the message means just that, so don't bank on getting the characters back.

The mistake I made was being greedy & associating the same email addresses with my main characters & the whole chain was banned- a lot of characters in all with mains in excess of 80 million SP each

The Rise of Eve's Pajamahadeen?

Pajamahadeen - a portmanteau of pajamas and Mujahideen meaning bloggers who challenge and fact-check the traditional media.

I had a ringside seat in the summer of 2004 as a bunch of "pajama-clad" bloggers took on the powerful Dan Rather and CBS News over a story containing forged documents ... and won.  Are we about to see a repeat this year between the Eve blogosphere and the mainstream gaming press?

The Mittani, to hopefully no one's surprise, is mad as hell at the gaming press and yesterday began tweeting about their terrible posting, er, I mean reporting.  Just watching the Tweetfleet post I have the feeling we may be about to witness a barrage of blogs and podcasts backing up The Mittani's claims.  And reading the news I see several easily spotted inaccurate facts.

From The Escapist's Mike Kayatta:

"Alexander Gianturco (perhaps better known as "The Mittani") went on a five-minute-long bullying tirade against a recently-divorced player whom his group had recently blown apart in game. A 'dramatic' reading of the player's reaction to the death culminated in Gianturco muttering the following: "'Incidentally, if you want to make the guy kill himself, his name is [REDACTED]. He has his own Corp. Find him.'"

Sorry, but the offending comment did not come at the end of a "dramatic" reading.  It came near the end of the question and answer session as The Mittani tried to be cool in the way drunks will; with too much volume and thinking himself funny "ha-ha" instead of funny "let's lock him in the basement and not let him in public again."  In other words, the remark was a spur of the moment brain-fart, not a planned part of the presentation.  The worst part of the story is that Mr. Kayatta actually references where to find the remark in the video and still managed to get it wrong.

From xmediaonline's Andrew Smith:

"Possibly realising what he had done, The Mittani posted a heartfelt apology almost instantly to the Eve Online official forums. It wasn't until a few days later that the pressure of the media started to show and CCP was forced to act. Stating a breach of the user agreement and terms of service they placed a 30 day ban on The Mittani and forced him not only to resign his chairmanship, but to give up his place on the CSM."

Perhaps I should not include Mr. Smith since xmediaonline.com is not really a gaming site, but as the number #2 listed story on Google News I just have to point out that the Alliance Panel was on Thursday night and Mittens posted his apology after landing in Boston on Tuesday night.  The facts I mentioned, except for the part about Boston, were easily available.  I happen to know about the Boston angle because I flew back to the States on the same plane.

Mr. Smith also got the penalty wrong, but came a bit closer than Massively.com's Eliot Lefebvre:

"Following harsh remarks in which he advocated finding and harassing a player who had expressed suicidal thoughts, Gianturco issued an official apology for his actions. But that isn't the end of it -- Gianturco has also been hit with a 30-day ban from EVE Online due to actions that violate the game's terms of service. He's also resigned from his position as chairman of the current Council of Stellar Management and forfeited the right to serve on the next CSM."

The actual sequence of events was that The Mittani resigned his position as chairman of  CSM 6, then CCP issued the 30-day ban for a ToS violation two hours later.  Because CCP does not allowed banned players from sitting on the CSM, The Mittani could not take his seat on CSM 7, which had not yet been seated.  But because he was not a sitting CSM member at the time he was banned, he is eligible to serve on future CSMs, starting with the 8th.  The way the moves were reported, it would lead people to believe that Mittens was barred for running for CSM 8.

Massively.com is a big gaming site that influences the reporting of others.  I believe that is the case with a piece written by Video Game Writers' Russell Jones:

"Later, Gianturco said he was drunk during the panel and issued an apology for what he said.  That wasn’t enough to avoid a ban for violating CCP’s terms of service, and Gianturco also resigned his position on the Council of Stellar Management, a group of player-elected representatives that discuss game issues and development with CCP."

Other reporters tried to provide background information for their readers.  For example, Develop's Seth Tipps wrote:

"The Mittani is the most famous player character in EVE, responsible for single-handedly bringing down 'Band of Brothers', one of the major factions in a conflict the community now refers to as 'The Great War.'

"A member of the alliance known as 'Goonswarm', The Mittani infiltrated the ranks of rival alliance BOB and, over the course of two years, worked his way up to the upper echelons of the faction's leadership.

"He then disbanded the alliance."

No he didn't, but that seems to be a recurring thread.  From VideoGamer.com's Martin Gaston:

"Gianturco was responsible for EVE Online's most famous and publicised moment, when he managed to infiltrate and disable Band of Brothers, the game's dominant corporation at the time. The event is referred to as 'The Great War'".

Poor analysis of The Mittani goes beyond why he is famous.  Alec Meer of Rock, Paper, Shotgun provided this startling analysis:

"Gianturco is to receive a 30-day ban from Eve – which is, I suspect, quite a handicap for a player as powerful as he ..."

Considering that The Mittani is famous for not logging into Eve for long stretches of time, his analysis is flawed.  But at least the article no longer shows an image attributed to Mittens that was actually created by a player outside of Goowswarm.

With the gaming media supplying such fertile ground for a potential Pajamahadeen to grow, what type of activity is occurring now?

Jester wrote a great post, Hats, that can form the basis for any intelligent counterattack against the barbs thrown by the gaming media, especially if they keep up with the quality they have currently displayed to date.


Voices from the Void podcast host Arydanika blogs about the hypocrisy at the gaming sites talking about cyber-bullying because of their silence about sexual harassment at Cross Assault in February.

Eve Radio's DJ Funky Bacon will cover irresponsible journalism on his next show scheduled for Saturday at midnight GMT/in-game (Friday at 8pm Eastern time). 

SynCaine at Hardcore Casual has already started making fun of Massively, even in a post about incursions.

I'm sure we shall see more if the gaming press decides they want to camp Eve Online.  Eve players tend to be ... creative.  Maybe someone should warn those reporters to stay away.

SuicideGate

The Mittani is the master of the Eve metagame, riding that skill to internet gaming celebrity and the chairmanship of Eve Online’s 6th Council of Stellar Management. On the eve of assuming the chairmanship of the 7th CSM after his crushing victory in the March elections he made a fatal mistake that his enemies seized upon, leaving CCP no choice but to strip The Mittani of his title and place on New Eden’s player council.

Despite attending the 2012 Fanfest I missed witnessing the event by not attending the Alliance Panel. At the panel were several alliance CEO’s, including Dirt Nap Squad’s DNS Black and The Mittani, head of Goonswarm Federation. Both had appeared on the previous year’s panel and mixed up their presentations to be less than serious in an effort to entertain the crowd. In fact, The Mittani’s presentation the year before was not very good and he was visibly trying to impress the crowd.

The reason I mention DNS Black is that the hard drinking ex-Marine is always willing to share his beloved Jagermeister with others. He is also a happy drunk as I found out on the Golden Circle tour the day before the convention began. In other words, he is the type of person you want to hang around because sober or drunk he is very likable. And with DNS Black and The Mittani sitting together the alcohol began to flow.

After watching DNS Black’s presentation on how Dirt Nap Squad penetrated Jovian space then shooting The Mittani with magic missiles before presenting The Mittani with a genuine Jovian wizard’s hat, my interpretation of the video indicates that The Mittani thought he would be funnier if drunk. So in addition to what he had already drank he downed a couple more shots. A big mistake in judgment.  Unlike DNS Black, The Mittani is a sloppy drunk and it really showed.

Also unlike DNS Black, whose presentation poked good-natured fun at CCP’s closure of Jovian space, The Mittani’s presentation poked fun at other players. Actually an appropriate choice for the head Goon as it demonstrated the GSF attitudes toward the game, but a presentation that I believe really required The Mittani to not get more that slightly buzzed in order to pull of properly. That didn’t happen.

After Fanfest ended The Mittani’s enemies seized upon a slide of a miner’s letter implying that he was suicidal after undergoing a bad divorce. Given that this is Eve I think everyone in the audience believed the letter was an effort to get someone to feel bad and compensate him for the 22 Hulks he lost in a smartbombing attack. I know I did as I watched the presentation. But in fairness to The Mittani, his PowerPoint presentation did undergo CCP review and they allowed it because the The Mittani made no mention of any player names. But in my opinion The Mittani was really feeling the alcohol and that part of the presentation was rated NC. No class.

With one half of the panel drunk CCP Xhagen attempted to close down the panel as it ran long but the audience wanted to ask questions. The panel still almost managed to close down without incident until a player indicated that the miner The Mittani poked fun at had also been driven out of the Drone Regions also.  After the player told The Mittani that a second time The Mittani decided to shout out the miner's name and encouraged everyone to track him down to try to get him to kill himself.

Being at Fanfest staying in a hotel with flaky internet service I didn't catch the early rumblings about the call to gank the miner.  From the little I read and heard in the Harpa center the controversy was that members of the panel, especially The Mittani, were a disgrace because they drank and used bad language.  I didn't hear about the suicide controversy until I got back home on Tuesday.  Not only did I find a threadnaught calling for The Mittani's ouster, but a player had contacted Eurogamer to get the media ball rolling.

The Mittani first issued an apology for his statement on the forums.  But the apology was too late as CCP had already begun an investigation.  As pressure grew from both the player base and the media, The Mittani carried through with his pledge to resign as chairman of the CSM on Wednesday.  But two hours later CCP issued their own ruling, totally removing The Mittani from CSM7 and banning him from Eve for 30 days for violating the EULA/TOS.

The Mittani's reaction in the 29 March State of the Goonion is similar to that following the Incarna debacle last summer.  Then, he called for calm toward the devs like CCP Soundwave who were taking a lot of heat and wanted to direct any rage against the top leadership of CCP.  Now, he is pointing to the large press contingent that was flown in to cover DUST 514 at Fanfest and suggesting that CCP may be succumbing to pressure by Sony to make Eve Online less controversial.  As a test Goonswarm will hold a Free Mittani event in which they take 1800 Tornadoes and burn Jita to the ground on 28 April, The Mittani's first day back.  Depending on CCP's reaction The Mittani will decide what steps to take next.  Given new CCP Marketing Director David Reid's statement in his speech at the CCP Presents event at Fanfest, this Free Mittani event should be something that CCP should trumpet.  If a crackdown occurs instead, the game might have changed.

Fanfest 2012 - Day 3

Saturday began, as expected, with a hangover.  However, the never-ending supply of hot water available in Iceland really came in handy and by the time I left the hotel for the first event of the day I felt pretty good.

In typical CCP fashion the first presentation at 1100, "Growing Eve's Infrastructure", involved lots of numbers.  Did I mention that CCP has a bit of a sadistic streak?  The impressive numbers that I noted were that Tranquility has grown to 220 Sol servers and 48 proxy servers.  The proxy servers handle tasks such as connection negotiation, routing and data integrity checks. They route traffic to and from the Sol layer. Sol servers are where all the processing missioning, mining and fighting are computed and shared out via various proxy servers to other clients.  These servers have a combined 1 terahertz of processing power and 4 terabytes of RAM.  The proxy servers are designed to handle up to 40,000 concurrent players, which is good because with the introduction of DUST 514 CCP expects the peak concurrent users to increase by a factor of 10.  Yipes!

One thing I am concerned about is a possible move to virtualize Tranquility.  CCP has already virtualized a lot of other servers with no issues.  I even see how virtualization could aid in combating lag as resources would move around from underpopulated nodes to large fleet fights automatically.  I'm mainly concerned if a server is vMotioned whether that would lead to nodes disconnecting all the players in the fight.

Following the infrastructure presentation at 1200 was the "War Declarations" presentation.  The Eve-O forums contain a good summary of the presentation so I'll just make a couple of observations.  The first is that while we were told one of the basic questions was whether there was a problem with the war dec system, the problem became widely acknowledged with the GMs allowing practices that used to be considered exploits to become common practice.

Another thing that struck me is that while the devs are putting in features like war reports and war histories to attract those outside of high sec to declare war, I still don't see null sec alliances doing so.  For example, the current proposed pricing structure for wars I think would preclude that.  For example, I think war deccing the Goons would cost 3.5 billion isk per week.  I think that the cost will actually reduce the number of war decs as high sec corporations will no longer be able to declare nuisance wars against the large null sec alliances where the only combat occurs in Jita.

The good thing is that the changes to the war dec system are still in progress so I hope the devs take in player feedback about the holes in the system.

I felt a bit run down so I took a break until 1400.  That first presentation with all those numbers really took a lot out of me.  But eating some crackers, downing some aspirin, drinking lots of water and lying down for a bit left me refreshed for the next presentation I attended, "Eve Online vs. The Real World".   The presentation was given by a graduate student from the University of Aberdeen who did his thesis on real world security and international relations theories as applied to Eve.  I just put down my pen and enjoyed the talk.  If the video gets posted to YouTube I highly recommend watching.

The next event I attended at 1500 was the War Declarations round table.  I sat back as I watched the folks from Eve University, some mercs and some griefers discuss the mechanics.  A very informative session that showed me just how broken the war dec mechanics were.  For instance, people would drop corp, fly through two systems to another station and then rejoin corp.  Yes, definitely broken.

With the end of the round table it was time to go to the main hall for the "CCP Presents" talk.  This final session gave us CCP's vision of the future.  On Friday Hilmar told us of the first 4 ages of CCP.  On Saturday he told us of the fifth planned age from 2012-2015 which would begin with the launch of DUST 514 and would end with the launch of World of Darkness.  That's right, no one put the stake through the vampire's heart and the game will see the light of the moon yet.  Or that is the plan.

Next up was CCP's Chief Technology Officer Halldor Fannar.  The big news was the demonstration of improved graphics but with a requirement of dedicating a team of 5 developers for a year on implementing the graphics the question of whether to put forth that effort will go to the player base.  The other big news was that the purchase of GTX 560 video cards is now possible for the cost of 20 PLEX.  I'm not sure I like that idea since I anticipate some cash strapped governments would use the exchange of virtual currency for physical objects as an excuse to tax my in game earnings.

After the CTO came the new head of CCP Marketing David Reid.  He gave a great talk, but I have the same feeling as Wilhelm from The Ancient Gaming Noob about the former NC West President of Publishing.  Does anyone remember the Tabula Rasa "we're triple-A and here to stay" interview given a month before the announcement that the servers would close?  So I think this is a good time to list his "2012 Laws of CCP Marketing".

1.  We don't need to make Eve something it is not.
2.  We don't need Jesus features to get new players.
3.  We will launch DUST as a AAA shooter.
4.  We will create moments out of our Eve experiences.
5.  We will portray New Eden and its citizens with authenticity.

Let's see if he carries through with this list.

Following David Reid came DUST 514's executive producer Brandon Laurino.  After giving the standard information from the Thursday presentation he decided to drop a couple of bombs.  DUST will have PvE in the form of combat against rogue drones.  DUST will also introduce gladiator arenas in 2013 in which battles can be observed and wagered on within both DUST and Eve.  Also in 2013 combat on non-temperate planets and MTACs are planned.

Next came Eve Online's producer John Lander.  Most of what he said was just a review of everything I'd heard over the past 3 days so I just sat back and relaxed.  Then Hilmar came back out and introduced the new Eve trailer based on the story of Templar One.  I was really hoping that the video was a trailer for an Eve Online movie but after a bit of reflection I figured that the orgy scene would cause some problems.






With the end of CCP Presents only one more event remained: The Party at the Top of the World.  I walked back to the hotel, stopping by Hlölla Bátar for one of their delicious subs for dinner.  The party was listed to begin at 8pm but was delayed a bit for some setup.  I have to admit I was pretty tired but managed to make it through RoXoR's set and see Permaband's two songs, ending with HTFU.  I called it a night around 11pm and went back to the hotel after 3 beers to catch some much needed sleep.

The Digital Dozen: 27 March 2012

The rankings of the top twelve MMORPGs as determined by the players of the Xfire community from play on Sunday, 25 March 2012.  For more details about the methodology, click here.

Rank	Prev Week	Game	Score	Hours Played
1	1	World of Warcraft	57.4	82,619
2	2	Star Wars: The Old Republic	17.3	23,330
3	3	Aion	6.9	9,904
4	4	Eve Online	3.4	4,828
5	5	Lord of the Rings Online	2.7	3,839
6	7	Metin 2	2.4	3,390
7	6	Guild Wars	2.2	3,216
8	9	APB:Reloaded	2.1	2,974
9	8	Star Trek Online	2.0	2,856
10	11	Rift	1.7	2,451
11	12	Need For Speed World	1.6	2,357
12	10	Maple Story	1.5	2,175

 Total MMORPG hours played Sunday: 191,247
Note: SW:TOR numbers updated on 2 April

Overall, the amount of hours spent playing MMORPGs by the Xfire community decreased by 7.3% from the previous week but was still up 4% from 11 March.

SWTOR's Second Free Trial - Last weekend Bioware launched a second free trial weekend for brand new players in Star Wars: The Old Republic.  This indicates that the first weekend was so good that they could maintain the momentum.  The numbers show that the second weekend did not do so well, at least among the less-casual gamers who use Xfire.  In a week that saw a 7.3% overall decline in overall MMORPG play, SWTOR saw its numbers drop 11.2%.  A more troubling indicator for Bioware is that despite two free trials, the number of hours played actually slipped 2% from 11 March to 25 March while the Xfire number of hours played actually increased by 4%.

Expanding the bot rule - When making this week's list, I had to exclude three games, Supreme Destiny (15 hours), Atlantica Online (10 hours) and Silkroad Online (9 hours) from consideration due to the unbelievable number of hours played by the average gamer.

Eve Online and bots - Speaking of bots, CCP has put into place rules that could smooth out the changes in the number of hours played in Eve Online.  At last week's Fanfest, CCP's internet security chief CCP Sreegs announced that botters would be banned on a daily basis.  No more group bannings as occurred at the end of February.

Speaking of the effects of bots, as I pointed out last week I could not gauge the effect of the bots due to the servers not allowing players to log in for a significant amount of time.  Having the servers work all day was a contributing factor in Eve being one of two games in The Digital Dozen (Star Trek Online the other) to see the numbers played increase.  But going back to 11 March, Eve has seen an increase of 6.9% in hours played vs the general increase of 4%.  However, I can't really tell if the increase is due to botters returning or the excitement generated by Fanfest.

Fanfest 2012 - Day 2

On Friday I woke up, ate breakfast and showed up early to the Harpa center.  I really believe that CCP has a sadistic streak in them by always scheduling CCP Dr.EyjoG's "State of the Economy" presentation at 10am in the main Tranquility hall.  But the time is not as bad as it sounds.  Either that or I was smart and just didn't drink much the night before.  But I learned a lot about the New Eden economy by getting up early.

The first major thing I noted was the demographics show players moving away from null sec and into wormholes.  Null sec went from having 16.2% of the population to having 15% and w-space saw a corresponding increase from 4.2% to 5.4%.  The demographics also show that older players move from high sec to other areas.  While 71.5% of players stay in high sec overall, only 65.3% of players with over 5 million skill points remain in high sec.  And when excluding Jita, the population in Caldari space is actually declining while that of Amar is increasing.  Dr. EyjoG believes this is a function of the Amar Empire's size and that population pressure is forcing players into the traditionally underpopulated systems.

Inflation is a big worry for Dr. EyjoG as the isk faucets are pouring in 24 trillion isk per month more than the isk sinks can remove.  New Eden's GUP (gross user product) increased by 15% in 2011 (or YC113 for roleplayers) which Dr. EvjoG indicates shows that Eve has made up for all the players lost during the Summer of Rage.  One of the big culprits, if not the biggest, to the wave of inflation is incursions.  According to the statistics, 5% of the population in Eve takes part in the anti-Sansha efforts.  What part of incursions do pilots run the most?  Vanguards.  I would expect a Vanguard nerf in the very near future.

Another area of concern is the PLEX market.  The PLEX market now represents 25% of the total trade in Eve.  The CSM is going to receive a new role as a watchdog over CCP's efforts to regulate the market.  Dr. EyjoG revealed that there are over 10,000 PLEX on banned accounts that the Eve Central Bank could use to intervene in the markets.  A new organization, the CCP PLEX Council, consisting of Dr. EyjoG, a senior developer, and a player (most likely a CSM member) will oversee the PLEX market.  With the advent of the CCP/CSM Skype channel, this type of conversation should be possible whenever needed.  For those who think the CSM doesn't have power, you might want to think again.

I would like to make one additional observation before moving on.  Throughout Dr. EyjoG's presentation, no mention of subscriber numbers or actual number of pilots was given.  In fact on one chart the numbers were clumsily blacked out.  I don't know if this is to hide that subscriptions didn't actually increase very much to players or is now proprietary information because CCP is looking to take itself public.  That said, I do believe CCP when it states that subscription numbers went up last year.  I am skeptical of claims that the game has 400,000 paid (real life money or PLEX) subscriptions and the lack of numbers hardens that suspicion.

At 1100 was the "Ship Balancing" presentation.  I admit the dev blog on ship balancing left me a bit confused so I welcomed the opportunity for CCP Ytterbium to explain exactly what the reasoning behind the moves.  After listening to the explanation, things started to make more sense.  Personalizing the presentation, why should Rosewalker need to learn Assault Ships and Heavy Assault Ships to fly the Slepnir command ship or Logistics to fly a Claymore?  I think the proposed path that all she needs to learn is Minmatar Battlecruisers V makes sense.  Of course, the fact that he already has Battlecruisers trained to 5 makes me a little uneasy about what happens when the expansion does come out.


After the ship balancing presentation I quickly ran out to the concession stand to get a nutritious meal of a brownie and water before the noon presentation "Year In Lag" by CCP Veritas.  Admittedly I sat back and watched as he pulled out several very impressive graphs and failed to take notes.  But the basic thrust of his talk is that Team Gridlock has made great strides on the servers and the next area that would gain the greatest return for the effort is working on the Eve client.

CCP Veritas at the Eve Keynote

Once CCP Veritas finished, I made my way to Singularity for CCP Sreeg's presentation on "Eve Security".  As tempting as watching the Faction Warfare presentation was, I just had to see the goodies CCP Sreegs would unleash.  And I wasn't disappointed.

CCP Sreegs first surprised me with one of his first slides documenting his successes in 2011 and The Nosy Gamer featured at the bottom of the slide.  I was so surprised that when he said he believed the gentleman who runs the blog is in the hall that I didn't raise my hand or otherwise take a bow.  I'm not sure what surprised me more, the mention of the blog or that he knew I was in Iceland.

But enough about me, what about bots?  First, the majority of characters banned have under 20 million skillpoints, with the most flown ships the Tengu, Hulk and Raven Navy Issue.  Surprisingly, the security team caught on player botting in a Nyx.  Really?!

As for the changes, the one where accounts are flagged as botters can no longer transfer characters was known before Fanfest.  Two new ones are that bannings will be done daily, which means the algorithms that detect bots must be pretty good by now.  Only one player was confirmed as being a false positive with a second about to be confirmed.  Also, effective the week before Fanfest CCP began removing all of the money earned by bots from accounts.  If the character is a mining bot, then a value of the minerals is determined and deducted from a character's wallet.

Among other security news is that two factor authentication will probably begin around July, but that is not confirmed.  I'll have to review the presentation once it hits YouTube for additional details as I was most concerned with bots.

After the presentation I went down to introduce myself to CCP Sreegs.  I waited awhile as people talked with him, including the gentleman who was falsely banned.  During the presentation CCP Sreegs said that CCP would take care of people affected and he confirmed he was well taken care of.  I then had a brief chat with the security chief as we walked out of the room as the next presentation began.

I had 90 minutes to kill before the Eve Keynote address so I made the five minute walk back to the hotel, grabbed some crackers, took some aspirin and drank a lot of water.  Oh, and made a post about getting mentioned by CCP Sreegs.

Unlike the DUST 514 Keynote, the Eve Keynote started on time at 1530. First, Hilmar came out once again to try to convince everyone he "gets" it about Eve being about internet spaceships.  He also came out with an interesting timeline of the "Ages of CCP".  The first age, from 1997-1999 was the "Age of Innocence" where the few members of CCP gathered up the resources to actually begin building Eve Online.  The second age, from 2000-2003, was the actual "Making of Eve Online", or the development of the game.  From 2004-2007 was "The March to 200K", or making the game popular.  The fourth age, 2008-2011, he called "War on the Impossible", when CCP attempted to build two new games while continuing to run Eve.  That last kind of stepped on the whole "flying in space" is priority one and should have been saved for Saturday, but Hilmar does get carried away sometimes.

The new senior producer for Eve, Jon Lander (CCP Unifex) came up next to reassure everyone that the new concentration was on Flying in Space and not leaving features half built.

Senior Producer CCP Unifex at the 2012 Eve Keynote

He also produced a production schedule that reminded me of Scott Hartsman-era EverQuest 2 with releases every month.  Unlike EQ2 though, Eve will continue to have two major releases a year instead of one.  Right now the Inferno pre-patch is scheduled for 24 April with Inferno itself releasing 22 May.  Inferno 1.5 is scheduled for an August release with a point release in September and the winter expansion launching in November.

Next up came CCP Soundwave.  CCP Soundwave stated that Crucible would not be a one-off expansion and that Inferno should be even better as the developers move on to start fixing some of the bigger things that need love like the war dec system and faction warfare.

CCP Soundwave explaining Crucible at 2012 Eve Keynote

After CCP Soundwave finished, CCP Veritas came on and talked about Team Gridlock's efforts to reduce lag.  CCP Veritas is one of the more popular devs and besides, you can never get too many graphs.

To wrap up the presentation, CCP TorfiFrans came on to talk about avatars and other types of things.  While improved skin colors, sleeve tatoos and race blending are interesting, he fortunately had other things to discuss other than reminders of Incarna.  When you get to talk about salvage drones (finally!) that makes up for a lot.  The steath bomber redesign also looks promising.  But he got to end the presentation with the introduction of missile turrets.  While Minmatar ships do use missiles as well as guns, the Caldari pilots went crazy.  What could have been a rough conclusion got a rousing ovation.

Following the presentation I had a few hours to kill so I stopped by a restaurant called American Style for dinner.  The place played American rock and roll music and was a rather nice place, especially since I managed to hit it at a quiet time.  I had a Buddy Holly burger, which was pretty good.

After going back to my room for a couple of hours I headed back to the Harpa center for the Pub Crawl.  I'm not going to go into too much detail, but my group lost its guide and we would up with the Goons group, squeaky bees and all.  I did bump into The Mittani a couple of times and he isn't as bad as he would like everyone to believe.  He also confirmed my view that going to Iceland is just like going to Wisconsin.


I lost the group in the 5th bar sometime around 1am and made my way back to the hotel, stopping by Hlölla Bátar for a sub to try to soak up some of the alcohol.  Sorry, no pictures.  Sometime what happens in Reykjavik stays in Reykjavik.

Fanfest 2012 - Day 1

Due to some internet connection problems, this post is a day late so I'm posting on a Saturday to try to catch up.  Since this Fanfest is not my first gaming convention, I looked at the schedule and figured out I didn't need to get my badge as soon as the doors opened.  I think people had the same idea as there was still a line starting at the bottom of the stairs.  I think I only had to wait 10 minutes to get my access badge and sign up for a group for the pub crawl Friday night.

I got to the first presentation, "Shoot The Shit w/Unifex", before the hall filled up but there was a problem.  Apparently Eve Online's Senior Producer, John Lander (aka CCP Unifex) was unable to make it.  A bad beginning for the con.  CCP Guard and CCP Darth Beta filled in and instead gave an introduction to what was happening during Fanfest.  That lasted about 30 minutes, with a lot of time to wait for the next event, a discussion on Crimewatch.

Crimewatch is something I think players will begin to hear more of.  A function that controls aggression flagging, global criminal cooldowns, loot rights, kill mails and a bunch of things I didn't have time to write down.  Basically the function is a mess and needs to be rewritten.  The work is just beginning with the first changes occurring in April (probably with the pre-patch for Inferno) which we won't see because they will be back end processes.

Some of the changes include the creation of a single 15 minute aggression times, an option to keep the client open until fully logged off, and a weapons timer that means that someone assisting with aggression will also receive a cooldown timer.  Or as CCP Greyscale said, God hates station games.

The biggest change will be the creation of a third state of criminal activity, "suspect".  Basically suspect status is like committing a mistomeanor, like shooting at someone in low-sec.  If you kill someone while you are suspect your security status can't go below -5.  Also, players will be able to raise their security standings by killing players with negative security status.

I know that I didn't get all of the details so go visit the forum thread or make sure you watch the video when CCP posts it on YouTube.

At 1500 I went to a round table called "Black Ops and You".  DNS Black alsong with two other members of Dirt Nap Squad along with a dev talked about ideas on fighting with stealty ships while DNS Black passed out Jim Beam.  From the Golden Circle tour the day before I knew he couldn't get any of his favored Jagermeister because the duty-free store ran out.  It was a pretty good back and forth with DNS Black and his crew looking at maintaining the elite (or niche) status of black ops within Eve.

The final event I attended was the CSM panel.  Quite frankly I could have done without it but there was nothing else to attend.  However I did come up with one interesting statistic that I found on the slide with the vote totals from prior years.  In last year's election, 49,096 votes were cast for a voter turnout of 14.25%, meaning that there was a pool of 344,533 accounts that were eligible to vote in 2011.  This year, 59,109 votes cast represented a 17.49% voter turnout.  That means that this year 337,959 accounts were eligible to vote, a decrease of almost 6,600 from the year before.  I will have to look up to see if the voting eligibility changed, but just from those numbers it appears that CCP did not recover all of the accounts that left after the Incarna launch last year.

After leaving the site I went to a place called Hlölla Bátar.  It is a nice little sandwich shop right outside the doors of the hotel that I have become quite fond of.  After that I stopped by The Celtic Cross for a drink and then it was time for bed.  The economy presentation was first thing in the morning, and since I couldn't hook up to the internet and blog I got some needed sleep.

As Seen On Eve TV

The internet at the hotel is pretty bad and kept me from making a regular post.  Right now I have a chance to blog because I am in between the Eve Security presentation and the Eve Keynote address.  I left the Eve Security presentation all smiles because at the bottom of one of the first slides was mention of The Nosy Gamer.



I always suspected that CCP Sreegs likes good forum porn and he confirmed it by mentioning the blog and some of my posts based on the tears of botters.  He has made it more difficult to come up with those posts because the site administrators are now hiding all the tears behind login screens.  Before, with CCP taking a noticeable break in its anti-botting efforts I slacked off on my coverage of The War on Bots™, but if CCP carries through with the plans discussed this afternoon, I'll have to pick the coverage back up.  I have to run off to listen to the Eve Keynote presentation now, but you can be sure I'll write more about the subject next week.