Normally I blather on about whatever is on my mind. But today I would like to ask a question. Right now both of my main characters are training charisma intensive leadership and trading skills. Once that is done I'd like to go out and join a real corporation or alliance. However, now that people are actually reading the blog, I'm wondering how joining a low or null sec organization would effect any credibility I have on issues I care about like botting and illicit RMT. Right now I'm just a high sec carebear so politics don't matter. But if I join a null sec alliance, will people dismiss my stance as just propoganda? I really don't want that to happen.
So my question is: does a blogger's in-game corp or alliance influence what you think about his or her writing? I'm really interested to find out.
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
The Digital Dozen: 3 July 2012
The rankings of the top twelve MMORPGs as determined by the players
of the Xfire community from play on Sunday, 1 July 2012. For more
details about the methodology, click here. Historical data can be found here.
Total MMORPG hours played Sunday: 130,406
| Rank | Prev Week | Game | Score | Hours Played |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | World of Warcraft | 54.7 | 51,754 |
| 2 | 2 | Star Wars: The Old Republic | 9.4 | 8,692 |
| 3 | 3 | Aion | 5.8 | 5,412 |
| 4 | 4 | Eve Online | 4.7 | 4,320 |
| 5 | 9 | The Secret World | 4.3 | 3,955 |
| 6 | 6 | Tera | 3.7 | 3,460 |
| 7 | 7 | Metin 2 | 3.4 | 3,137 |
| 8 | 5 | Lord of the Rings Online | 3.4 | 3,120 |
| 9 | NR | Guild Wars | 3.1 | 2,907 |
| 10 | 8 | APB: Reloaded | 3.0 | 2,781 |
| 11 | 12 | Maple Story | 2.4 | 2,180 |
| 12 | 10 | Need For Speed World | 2.2 | 2,070 |
The Xfire community saw another increase in the number of hours spent playing MMORPGs last week. Although only 1%, this increase breaks against the popular belief that the amount of game play always decreases during the summer. The increase was driven by the pre-launch of The Secret World (+64.8%), Guild Wars (+90.5%) and Maple Story (+38.7%). The big losers for the week were Lord of the Rings Online (-14.7%), Need For Speed World (-10.5%) and Aion (-10%).
Coming Out Of The Cold: While this week is the third week The Secret World is on the list, this is the first week out of beta. With the early bird weekend putting the Funcom product in the number 5 position, expect TSW to at least move into the number 3 slot next week. If TSW manages to post the same numbers as Tera did in its first Sunday after full launch, we could see a new #2 game on the list.
Why Not Raptr? I've received some comments asking about Raptr. I've chosen to not look at Raptr stats for a couple of reasons. I first heard about Xfire by reading a blog that was doing something similar to The Digital Dozen. He also tried looking at Raptr but gave up as he didn't consider Raptr as being a reliable source to judge the popularity of MMORPGs. I guess I'm influenced a lot by that.
A second reason for not using Raptr is accessiblity to the data. Xfire makes its statistics open to the public and I link to the Xfire website every week so people can take a look for themselves. Raptr, as far as I can tell, requires a membership to get the same information. I'm not thrilled with using a source that is kept behind any type of firewall like that. Also, I read the terms of service and I am not convinced that publishing the Raptr numbers, especially in a weekly column like The Digital Dozen, would not be a TOS violation. I really don't want to have to deal with a possible legal situation.
The final reason is time. I designed The Digital Dozen as a project that would not take a lot of time to write. Adding a second source would not only add to my bookkeeping time but require a lot more analysis. But if someone else wants to write a blog based on the Raptr numbers, I would definitely read it.
Monday, July 2, 2012
Seasonal Adjustment
Last week when I was comparing the player activity after the launches of the Incarna and Inferno expansions I was reminded that I needed to take summer into account. I had been careful in my post about player activity in the month before the Inferno launch, comparing that with the run-up to the Tyrannis launch since both expansions launched in the month of May. But I didn't take the difference when comparing Inferno's May launch with Incarna's June launch. The difference isn't that great, right?
Fortunately for me Chribba has almost 6 years' worth of data about player activity on Eve-Offline I can study. So I did and the results were surprising.
I took the median daily average concurrent user number for each month from January 2007 to December 2011 and then compared that number to the median daily average concurrent user number from the month before. Sure enough, the numbers show that activity decreases during the summer. But the numbers show that summer really means summer (late June to late September) as the average jump in activity between May and June was 3.8%. So why does June have the increases?
I believe that CCP's expansion release schedule has something to do with that. A look at the expansion release dates shows that from Revelations II through Incursion that in both the month an expansion was released and the following month the median average concurrent user numbers rose. Incarna broke that pattern because while the normal excitement for an expansion existed, the following month showed a decline. Excusing the decline in the month following Incarna because of summer doesn't hold water as both Revelations II and Empyrean Age also released during June and saw increasing pilot activity levels in the following month.
So while the seasons influence player behavior and whether they log in, the seasonal influence evaporates when an expansion is launched. At that point players want to see and play with the new shinies. Well, except for Incarna. We all know how that turned out.
Fortunately for me Chribba has almost 6 years' worth of data about player activity on Eve-Offline I can study. So I did and the results were surprising.
I took the median daily average concurrent user number for each month from January 2007 to December 2011 and then compared that number to the median daily average concurrent user number from the month before. Sure enough, the numbers show that activity decreases during the summer. But the numbers show that summer really means summer (late June to late September) as the average jump in activity between May and June was 3.8%. So why does June have the increases?
I believe that CCP's expansion release schedule has something to do with that. A look at the expansion release dates shows that from Revelations II through Incursion that in both the month an expansion was released and the following month the median average concurrent user numbers rose. Incarna broke that pattern because while the normal excitement for an expansion existed, the following month showed a decline. Excusing the decline in the month following Incarna because of summer doesn't hold water as both Revelations II and Empyrean Age also released during June and saw increasing pilot activity levels in the following month.
So while the seasons influence player behavior and whether they log in, the seasonal influence evaporates when an expansion is launched. At that point players want to see and play with the new shinies. Well, except for Incarna. We all know how that turned out.
Friday, June 29, 2012
The $175,000 Faction Warfare Exploit
A week ago word spread throughout the Internet that a group of Goons figured out how to manipulate the new faction warfare loyalty point mechanics to the tune of $175,000 if the earned isk and goods were converted to real currency. While the Goons manipulated the control levels in the Amar-Minmatar war zone, I'm more interested in CCP's response to the incident. To that end CCP Sreegs published a dev blog yesterday explaining the results of the investigation...
Q: What sort of metrics does CCP watch for to catch these kinds of exploits? And what sort of systems can be put in place to understand why LP is coming from nothing, similar to how tech was coming from nothing under the previous silo duplication exploit?
CCP Sreegs: "Without getting into too much detail things as simple as watching top LP gains by player is a fairly simple one. If you look at the graph provided you really only had to look at the LP at all to see it spike. The other indicator is LP by faction. All the other factions are kinda even keep and Minmitar was like OH HI!"
Q: Shouldn't the five players also retain LP equivalent to 2 weeks worth of 'normal' game play? They were playing, they did let you know and they did participate in Faction Warfare.
CCP Sreegs: "I really don't want to discuss actions against individual players any more than was detailed in the blog for informational purposes. Sorry duder."
Q: If we do not manipulate prices but do research to take advantage of existing market values, is this still exploiting? Your blog seems to hint that it is.
CCP Sreegs: "I'm going to pass this point around internally. I'm not really comfortable answering this Maverick-Style."
Q: If manipulating market prices is exploiting, then there literally is no sandbox anymore.
CCP Sreegs: "Nobody ever said anything about manipulating the market prices. What we said was that this could be done in such a way that lead to an artificial disparity (albeit one created by our own systems) between the real value of an item and the number we were calculating value based upon to magically die over and over again to gain another currency.
"That's not 'Market Manipulation' that's blowing someone up over and over again to magically get more money out of the same item.
"Nowhere has anyone said Manipulating Market Prices is exploiting. Ever. At all."
Q: So... This means that insurance fraud is actually an exploit? If, somehow, mineral prices hit the ground tomorrow and we start building and blowing ships for the insurance ISK, we are exploiting?
CCP Sreegs: "As I said I won't deal in hypotheticals. That could certainly be the case but it could also not be. Are you printing money from nowhere? Is that printing being done in a tremendous volume? If either or both of those is yes then I think it's pretty fair to say we'd be pretty displeased."
Q: Insurance fraud was anything but Hypothetical. Those exact circumstance happened and was abused on a very large scale. If it's an exploit, why no rollback?
CCP Sreegs: "I'm discussing this exploit not any one of a number of hypothetical past or future exploits. (or non-exploits)"
Q: The issue is the thing you've said directly applies to insurance fraud. Insurance fraud was directly a case where you blew something up and got more than the value of that item back - in isk not an alternative currency like LP.
CCP Sreegs: "I don't disagree at all I'm just tired and really not prepared to compare one to the other. I'm still heads down in fixing this one."
Q: Along those same lines, what about people who didn't actively manipulate the value of items, but benefited from these manipulations?
CCP Sreegs: "As stated in the blog only the five people who actively did this repeatedly were touched."
Q: The market creates these disparties on it's own sometimes without player help. At least active help. Is it ok to use it then? Is it ok to use it as a matter converter? Essentially this system can function like reprocessing for any item in EVE. It has dramatic implications for EVE going forward.
CCP Sreegs: "I think it certainly has an impact on EVE as you stated, but that impact is something new. To make a statement of USING THE MARKET TO GAIN MONEY IS OVER EVE IS DYING, is a bit silly. (Not you specifically but others in this thread) This isn't a legacy problem and has no impact on how you deal with existing systems. It only impacts your interaction with FW.
"What we need to do is take a good long hard look at how to deal with items that have disparate values in what are essentially two currencies. I'm pretty sure that is the pivot point in this scenario and from that perspective I'm just Winston Wolf. I don't design these systems.
"As it stands today our stance is that buying something and purposely blowing it up to generate value in another currency is exploiting. It was clearly not our intent in creating the system for that to occur. The system was meant to encourage PVP not wanton suicidal destruction to print money.
"I guess it would somewhat logically be the same to use an example as going to the lamp shop in America, buying a lamp and smashing it, and having the Chinese manufacturer send more money than you paid for it to your account over and over and over again. It's a bit of a stretch in my opinion at least to think this would ever be acceptable.
"There's certainly a design flaw here that needs to be worked out but we have never intentionally introduced a system in EVE where buying an item and killing yourself should be a legitimate way to manufacture income. Least of all on a massive scale."
Q: How much PLEX will the individual who reported the exploit receive?
CCP Sreegs: "PLEX reward scales with the severity of the exploitable condition so it'll be more than one."
Q: Is the column in the database tasked with storing a player's LP a signed 32-bit integer? I was legitimately worried that if we breached 2.1 billion LP, it would wrap around to a negative value.
CCP Sreegs: "I'll ask internally but I'm not sure I'd tell you either way. To my knowledge we don't really give out that level of detail about our DB structure."
"Last week we manually adjusted some of the pricing as we stated in our news item. We then introduced some changes in order to prevent the disparity between actual cost and 'Average Price' in items. For the near future this should no longer be an issue but we are monitoring and we will make further changes to this system.The response from Aryth, the Goon who originally posted the details of the exploit on the forums showed he thought the decision fair.
"The people who sought to benefit from this exploit will receive no gain from this system. Because this was essentially a system where you could print LP, even if ISK was provided as an input, it is classified as an exploit.
"Because the players made efforts to inform us about the issue their accounts will remain in good standing. We have temporarily seized all LP points and store items from them. Once we're done determining how much each person has benefitted we will remove the LP gained value in LP and items and return the ISK invested in the purchase of items to them. This essentially will set each of them back to the original point at which they began this activity. The person who reported the issue will receive the usual PLEX for Snitches reward.
"I wrote a blog on 'Responsible Disclosures' a year or so ago. In that blog I mention that telling us about something after you've used the heck out of it isn't what we consider to be responsible. We do our best to be lenient in cases such as this but we want this to serve as a notice to the community that the proper time to alert us to the issue was before actually using the system. I can understand a desire to test the limits but we don't believe two weeks of testing a bug or exploit should net a tremendous benefit in lieu of reporting it in the first place, and that is another reason why the LP activity will be reversed back to zero."
"... I was already a trillionaire before this. It's not like I am crying all the way to the poor house if CCP just unwinds me. I will remain one of the riches players in EVE. Sure, I would more like trillions, but I got many news articles, a 160 page thread or whatever, multiple blogs/news annoucements and the most hilarious graph to ever exist in the history of EVE play.As is his custom after publishing dev blogs CCP Sreegs hung around and answered questions on the Eve Online forums. Since a lot of people refuse (for very good reasons) to visit the official forums, I have extracted the best of the questions and answers from the first few hours of the thread. Having put this together, I think it reads like a press conference. Hopefully this will give some greater insight into CCP's response. Enjoy!
"Throw in the most ISK in kills/deaths records, and goddamn. I am pretty smug.
"But really. The true reward is to dunk on Stoffer [CCP Soundwave]. If there is one things goons love, it's trolling goons. Even Ex-goons.
"CCP gets press, we get our capital back, EVE gets another hilarious footnote in history. Everyone won here. We just won less than we woulda liked."
Q: What sort of metrics does CCP watch for to catch these kinds of exploits? And what sort of systems can be put in place to understand why LP is coming from nothing, similar to how tech was coming from nothing under the previous silo duplication exploit?
CCP Sreegs: "Without getting into too much detail things as simple as watching top LP gains by player is a fairly simple one. If you look at the graph provided you really only had to look at the LP at all to see it spike. The other indicator is LP by faction. All the other factions are kinda even keep and Minmitar was like OH HI!"
Q: Shouldn't the five players also retain LP equivalent to 2 weeks worth of 'normal' game play? They were playing, they did let you know and they did participate in Faction Warfare.
CCP Sreegs: "I really don't want to discuss actions against individual players any more than was detailed in the blog for informational purposes. Sorry duder."
Q: If we do not manipulate prices but do research to take advantage of existing market values, is this still exploiting? Your blog seems to hint that it is.
CCP Sreegs: "I'm going to pass this point around internally. I'm not really comfortable answering this Maverick-Style."
Q: If manipulating market prices is exploiting, then there literally is no sandbox anymore.
CCP Sreegs: "Nobody ever said anything about manipulating the market prices. What we said was that this could be done in such a way that lead to an artificial disparity (albeit one created by our own systems) between the real value of an item and the number we were calculating value based upon to magically die over and over again to gain another currency.
"That's not 'Market Manipulation' that's blowing someone up over and over again to magically get more money out of the same item.
"Nowhere has anyone said Manipulating Market Prices is exploiting. Ever. At all."
Q: So... This means that insurance fraud is actually an exploit? If, somehow, mineral prices hit the ground tomorrow and we start building and blowing ships for the insurance ISK, we are exploiting?
CCP Sreegs: "As I said I won't deal in hypotheticals. That could certainly be the case but it could also not be. Are you printing money from nowhere? Is that printing being done in a tremendous volume? If either or both of those is yes then I think it's pretty fair to say we'd be pretty displeased."
Q: Insurance fraud was anything but Hypothetical. Those exact circumstance happened and was abused on a very large scale. If it's an exploit, why no rollback?
CCP Sreegs: "I'm discussing this exploit not any one of a number of hypothetical past or future exploits. (or non-exploits)"
Q: The issue is the thing you've said directly applies to insurance fraud. Insurance fraud was directly a case where you blew something up and got more than the value of that item back - in isk not an alternative currency like LP.
CCP Sreegs: "I don't disagree at all I'm just tired and really not prepared to compare one to the other. I'm still heads down in fixing this one."
Q: Along those same lines, what about people who didn't actively manipulate the value of items, but benefited from these manipulations?
CCP Sreegs: "As stated in the blog only the five people who actively did this repeatedly were touched."
Q: The market creates these disparties on it's own sometimes without player help. At least active help. Is it ok to use it then? Is it ok to use it as a matter converter? Essentially this system can function like reprocessing for any item in EVE. It has dramatic implications for EVE going forward.
CCP Sreegs: "I think it certainly has an impact on EVE as you stated, but that impact is something new. To make a statement of USING THE MARKET TO GAIN MONEY IS OVER EVE IS DYING, is a bit silly. (Not you specifically but others in this thread) This isn't a legacy problem and has no impact on how you deal with existing systems. It only impacts your interaction with FW.
"What we need to do is take a good long hard look at how to deal with items that have disparate values in what are essentially two currencies. I'm pretty sure that is the pivot point in this scenario and from that perspective I'm just Winston Wolf. I don't design these systems.
"As it stands today our stance is that buying something and purposely blowing it up to generate value in another currency is exploiting. It was clearly not our intent in creating the system for that to occur. The system was meant to encourage PVP not wanton suicidal destruction to print money.
"I guess it would somewhat logically be the same to use an example as going to the lamp shop in America, buying a lamp and smashing it, and having the Chinese manufacturer send more money than you paid for it to your account over and over and over again. It's a bit of a stretch in my opinion at least to think this would ever be acceptable.
"There's certainly a design flaw here that needs to be worked out but we have never intentionally introduced a system in EVE where buying an item and killing yourself should be a legitimate way to manufacture income. Least of all on a massive scale."
Q: How much PLEX will the individual who reported the exploit receive?
CCP Sreegs: "PLEX reward scales with the severity of the exploitable condition so it'll be more than one."
Q: Is the column in the database tasked with storing a player's LP a signed 32-bit integer? I was legitimately worried that if we breached 2.1 billion LP, it would wrap around to a negative value.
CCP Sreegs: "I'll ask internally but I'm not sure I'd tell you either way. To my knowledge we don't really give out that level of detail about our DB structure."
Thursday, June 28, 2012
The Mittani's Info War Mistakes
With the coming campaign in Delve The Mittani has signaled that the Goons and the CFC will shift their focus away from high sec back to null sec warfare. High sec is a place that Mittens uses to keep the troops occupied when things get slow in null security space because, let's face it, a bored Goon is a Goon who won't log in. For The Mittani, boredom is right now probably the greatest threat, if not to the GSF, then to his hold on power.
Watching The Mittani and the Ministry of Love bumbling around high sec was amusing while it lasted. Bumbling, I mean. I don't think Mittens is quite done with that effort. Not because suppressing dissent in the blogging community is a vital Goon interest. Actually, the MoL effort only targeted those in high sec. Considering how much of the Eve blogosphere and its podcast community are members of the GSF and the CFC, the only reasons I can see for putting together the effort is to keep some of his more troublesome members occupied and the general Goon distaste for bad posting brought over from the Something Awful forums.
No, the Ministry of Love will gain attention because it is an intelligence organization. Can a "solar spymaster" whose rise to internet fame and power was fueled by his intelligence successes afford to have a failure like the Ministry of Love on his record? I don't believe so. So while most of the Goonswarm Federation is busy in Delve making things blow up, the cloak and dagger types will figure out how to make the MoL a more effective tool.
In order to know how to fix the problem, The Mittani and his minions will first need to recognize what went wrong. Let me give three areas that need improvement.
1. Publicity. One of the basics of beginning something like the Ministry of Love is that it should stay in the shadows and slowly become known. The MoL was designed as much to instill fear as to carry out operations. Part of instilling fear is that an organization needs to be seen as nearly perfectly efficient. Good examples are the internal security organizations that operated in the old Soviet bloc like the KGB. Instead, the MoL was publicized prematurely and its early failures will always rob it of some of its effectiveness.
2. Deniability. An organization like the Ministry of Love should not have corporations within the GSF. As The Mittani himself proves every day, being a Goon does not require logging into a character that is a member of Goonswarm. Just like the GIA's corporation and alliance infiltration efforts, the MoL should be alts. Really, how hard is it to train up an alt that can gank a Hulk?
The reason for using alts is that if an operation goes bad, the failure does not leave a stain on the Ministry. For the MoL to serve as an effective instrument of terror, then failure is not allowed. Really, conducting a long term sting operation against Jade Constantine ala The Guiding Hand Social Club would have been much more effective than the mess that actually happened when the GSF actually issued a formal war declaration.
3. Targets. I have to say that the target selection for the Ministry of Love has been, shall we say, questionable. Sure, in propaganda value going after morons like Krixtal Icefluxor not only looks good but does the entire Eve Online community a huge favor and probably deserves some sort of commendation. But the target selection needs some work.
The poster child for bad target selection is Mabrick, the blogger who writes Mabrick's Mumblings. I'm still trying to figure out what The Mittani (and yes, I'm convinced The Mittani was involved in the target selection) was thinking when he chose Mabrick for retribution. Does he have so much contempt for high sec dwellers that he automatically assumes they all will wilt under his glaze and either bow down to him or slink away from the game? As you can read from Mabrick's post today about the lessons he learned from the Goons' war on his 3 man corporation, Mabrick didn't fit the profile that the Ministry should look for, at least at this point in the Ministry's development.
The war on Mabrick reminded me of President Obama's war on Fox News back in 2009. When someone with that much power goes after someone whose business is using pixels to disseminate information, some of that power is distributed to the target. The decision to end the war against Mabrick was the correct decision in order to limit the damage the Ministry of Love did to itself. Given that The Mittani, unlike U.S. politicians, tends to learn from his mistakes, I don't expect to see a repeat of that performance.
I remember listening to a talk The Mittani gave to Eve University in which he complained about Darius Johnson demanding forum porn, leading to the blowing of his agents' cover. Has The Mittani turned into something he once complained about and is now more worried about short-term gain rather than the long term benefits of successful intelligence operations? Or was the MoL really just a make-work project that had the added benefit of striking out at those who annoyed the great leader? And will pride force The Mittani to improve the organization and make it a viable tool to influence his foes? Time will tell.
Watching The Mittani and the Ministry of Love bumbling around high sec was amusing while it lasted. Bumbling, I mean. I don't think Mittens is quite done with that effort. Not because suppressing dissent in the blogging community is a vital Goon interest. Actually, the MoL effort only targeted those in high sec. Considering how much of the Eve blogosphere and its podcast community are members of the GSF and the CFC, the only reasons I can see for putting together the effort is to keep some of his more troublesome members occupied and the general Goon distaste for bad posting brought over from the Something Awful forums.
No, the Ministry of Love will gain attention because it is an intelligence organization. Can a "solar spymaster" whose rise to internet fame and power was fueled by his intelligence successes afford to have a failure like the Ministry of Love on his record? I don't believe so. So while most of the Goonswarm Federation is busy in Delve making things blow up, the cloak and dagger types will figure out how to make the MoL a more effective tool.
In order to know how to fix the problem, The Mittani and his minions will first need to recognize what went wrong. Let me give three areas that need improvement.
1. Publicity. One of the basics of beginning something like the Ministry of Love is that it should stay in the shadows and slowly become known. The MoL was designed as much to instill fear as to carry out operations. Part of instilling fear is that an organization needs to be seen as nearly perfectly efficient. Good examples are the internal security organizations that operated in the old Soviet bloc like the KGB. Instead, the MoL was publicized prematurely and its early failures will always rob it of some of its effectiveness.
2. Deniability. An organization like the Ministry of Love should not have corporations within the GSF. As The Mittani himself proves every day, being a Goon does not require logging into a character that is a member of Goonswarm. Just like the GIA's corporation and alliance infiltration efforts, the MoL should be alts. Really, how hard is it to train up an alt that can gank a Hulk?
The reason for using alts is that if an operation goes bad, the failure does not leave a stain on the Ministry. For the MoL to serve as an effective instrument of terror, then failure is not allowed. Really, conducting a long term sting operation against Jade Constantine ala The Guiding Hand Social Club would have been much more effective than the mess that actually happened when the GSF actually issued a formal war declaration.
3. Targets. I have to say that the target selection for the Ministry of Love has been, shall we say, questionable. Sure, in propaganda value going after morons like Krixtal Icefluxor not only looks good but does the entire Eve Online community a huge favor and probably deserves some sort of commendation. But the target selection needs some work.
The poster child for bad target selection is Mabrick, the blogger who writes Mabrick's Mumblings. I'm still trying to figure out what The Mittani (and yes, I'm convinced The Mittani was involved in the target selection) was thinking when he chose Mabrick for retribution. Does he have so much contempt for high sec dwellers that he automatically assumes they all will wilt under his glaze and either bow down to him or slink away from the game? As you can read from Mabrick's post today about the lessons he learned from the Goons' war on his 3 man corporation, Mabrick didn't fit the profile that the Ministry should look for, at least at this point in the Ministry's development.
The war on Mabrick reminded me of President Obama's war on Fox News back in 2009. When someone with that much power goes after someone whose business is using pixels to disseminate information, some of that power is distributed to the target. The decision to end the war against Mabrick was the correct decision in order to limit the damage the Ministry of Love did to itself. Given that The Mittani, unlike U.S. politicians, tends to learn from his mistakes, I don't expect to see a repeat of that performance.
I remember listening to a talk The Mittani gave to Eve University in which he complained about Darius Johnson demanding forum porn, leading to the blowing of his agents' cover. Has The Mittani turned into something he once complained about and is now more worried about short-term gain rather than the long term benefits of successful intelligence operations? Or was the MoL really just a make-work project that had the added benefit of striking out at those who annoyed the great leader? And will pride force The Mittani to improve the organization and make it a viable tool to influence his foes? Time will tell.
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Was Inferno An Incarna-Level Event?
I think that Incarna will go down in history as the measuring stick for bad Eve Online expansions. That's why I got a kick out of reading the reactions of players upset with the new unified inventory system comparing Inferno to Incarna. Of course, I'm not a power user who engages in POS management or alliance logistics so I didn't think much of the change. Well, that is not entirely true; I loved all the tears I collected from the botting forums because of all the difficulties bot developers had adapting to the change.
Still, threats were made about mass unsubscriptions and how everyone was leaving the game. I even had this comment left on the blog...
But in the interest of being fair and balanced, I really should take a look at the numbers after launch. I've downloaded the daily average concurrent user numbers from Chribba's Eve Offline and compared the 7-day rolling average for the first thirty days after both the Incarna and Inferno launches. I omitted the average for both launch days because those tend to skew the numbers downward.
My conclusion looking at the numbers is that Inferno truly was not an Incarna-level event. In the first 30 days after the launch of Incarna, the 7-day rolling average of the number of players on Tranquility dropped 8.3%, from 31,990 down to 29,468. In contrast, the ACU after the Inferno launch rose 9.5%, from 25,984 up to 28,359. A clear win for CCP, right?
Well, not really. The problem is that the average concurrent user number is still not back up to where it was when Diablo 3 launched. On 14 May, the day before D3 launched, the ACU on Tranquility was 29,583, which means that 30 days after the launch of Inferno that the number of players logged in was still down 4.1%. I'm not sure what CCP's internal seasonally adjusted numbers are, but I can't believe that not seeing growth, even with the competition from Blizzard, made senior management in Reykjavik very happy.
Of course, ACU does not tell the entire story. I'm anxiously waiting for MMOData to come out with version 3.9 of its charts to see what the latest Eve subscription numbers are. One possibility I have not mentioned is that all the missing people were maintaining their subscriptions and playing in the DUST 514 beta. If that is the case then perhaps only CCP Unifex is unhappy and the rest of senior management is out trying to find a decent beer to celebrate with. So while I'm confident that Inferno was not a disaster, I'll wait another month or two before judging how successful the expansion actually was.
Still, threats were made about mass unsubscriptions and how everyone was leaving the game. I even had this comment left on the blog...
"The numbers are lower from unsubscribed accounts, due to the unplayability for a lot of functions used ny [sic] Industrialists, and the new Infinigeddon. I have cancelled all 4 of my accounts. My former Alliance LEader cancelled 4 as well that are 5 years old.And that comment was to an article that showed a massive drop in the average number of users online before Inferno to corresponded suspiciously with the launch of Diablo 3.
"I know of 4 similar 'cancelled all accounts' players just from my Local Area In-Game.
"It's just too much nonsense anymore for casual play."
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| Showing the Diablo 3 Effect |
 |
| The tale of two expansions |
My conclusion looking at the numbers is that Inferno truly was not an Incarna-level event. In the first 30 days after the launch of Incarna, the 7-day rolling average of the number of players on Tranquility dropped 8.3%, from 31,990 down to 29,468. In contrast, the ACU after the Inferno launch rose 9.5%, from 25,984 up to 28,359. A clear win for CCP, right?
Well, not really. The problem is that the average concurrent user number is still not back up to where it was when Diablo 3 launched. On 14 May, the day before D3 launched, the ACU on Tranquility was 29,583, which means that 30 days after the launch of Inferno that the number of players logged in was still down 4.1%. I'm not sure what CCP's internal seasonally adjusted numbers are, but I can't believe that not seeing growth, even with the competition from Blizzard, made senior management in Reykjavik very happy.
Of course, ACU does not tell the entire story. I'm anxiously waiting for MMOData to come out with version 3.9 of its charts to see what the latest Eve subscription numbers are. One possibility I have not mentioned is that all the missing people were maintaining their subscriptions and playing in the DUST 514 beta. If that is the case then perhaps only CCP Unifex is unhappy and the rest of senior management is out trying to find a decent beer to celebrate with. So while I'm confident that Inferno was not a disaster, I'll wait another month or two before judging how successful the expansion actually was.
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
The Digital Dozen: 26 June 2012
The rankings of the top twelve MMORPGs as determined by the players
of the Xfire community from play on Sunday, 24 June 2012. For more
details about the methodology, click here. Historical data can be found here.
Total MMORPG hours played Sunday:129,062
| Rank | Prev Week | Game | Score | Hours Played |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | World of Warcraft | 56.3 | 51,754 |
| 2 | 2 | Star Wars: The Old Republic | 9.3 | 8,536 |
| 3 | 3 | Aion | 6.5 | 6,013 |
| 4 | 4 | Eve Online | 4.9 | 4,474 |
| 5 | 6 | Lord of the Rings Online | 4.0 | 3,659 |
| 6 | 5 | Tera | 3.8 | 3,527 |
| 7 | 7 | Metin 2 | 3.4 | 3,080 |
| 8 | 8 | APB: Reloaded | 3.2 | 2,903 |
| 9 | T10 | The Secret World (Beta) | 2.6 | 2,399 |
| 10 | 9 | Need For Speed World | 2.5 | 2,312 |
| 11 | NR | D.C. Universe Online | 1.8 | 1,691 |
| 12 | T10 | Maple Story | 1.7 | 1,572 |
For the second consecutive week the hours the Xfire community spent playing MMORPGs increased. The 2.9% increase was led by World of Warcraft's solid 5.8% gain along with the interest in The Secret World's last open beta weekend. The week's big loser was Tera which saw a 15.5% drop in the amount of time spent playing the game.
The Diablo Effect Is Over? In the overall Xfire game charts Diablo 3 is now ranked #3 with the number of hours played Sunday down almost 60% from the first Sunday after the game's launch. World of Warcraft inched it's way back up to the #4 spot overall Sunday and has a good chance of staying there for the foreseeable future. Is it still having an effect on the MMORPG genre? According to the Xfire charts, the answer is arguably yes.
The game most affected by Diablo 3 because of a promotion, World of Warcraft, is still down 15.5% in time played than before the launch of Diablo 3. Overall, the time the Xfire community spends playing MMORPG's is down 15.8%. While one could argue that other factors, such as summer and the weakness of Star Wars: The Old Republic have contributed to the overall weakness in MMORPG numbers, the fact that the overall numbers so closely match with WoW's decline does lead some credence to believing the Diablo Effect is still having an influence.
Heroes Wanted: D.C. Universe Online made its first appearance in The Digital Dozen this week, coming in at #11. Games like DCUO show the weakness of using Xfire to give a definitive listing of the popularity of MMORPGs, as the SOE offering is available in both PC and console versions. Xfire only counts PC time played. DCUO is undoubtedly more popular than some of the games that rank ahead of it, but until game companies come around to CCP's level of openness about concurrency numbers I'll just have to rely on Xfire to give an approximation.
Monday, June 25, 2012
Impressions From The Final The Secret World Beta
I took a break from running around low sec Saturday because I received a beta key from Funcom to play their new MMORPG, The Secret World. Since I've stated that I think The Secret World is one of the top stories of 2012 I thought I should at least play the beta since I had the chance. As always when I do a post about a game, I am only giving my impressions as I don't feel playing 6-7 hours really allows me to see enough of an MMORPG to do an actual review. Hopefully those who don't play Eve Online won't mind all the Eve references since I do see a lot of similarities between the two games.
"A Thinking Man's Game." I have read this or a variation of the phrase on the forums and in general chat and I have to agree. At its heart I believe The Secret World is a puzzle game. In general chat I read requests that people send answers via direct tell and not in chat. Unlike games like Star Wars: The Old Republic that lead players right up to people, TSW will lead players to a general area and then the player has to figure out how to get to the objective. Sometimes that is not easy, involving climbing up and down objects or looking really carefully at the map. At other times the quest only gives clues and the player needs to figure out the answer. And I didn't even try to do an investigative quest which I hear requires researching facts in the real world via the Internet. TSW contains an in-game browser and unlike the one in Eve Online can play videos.
Where are Will Smitty and Tommy Lee Jones? The Secret World is set in a modern-day setting with a twist; every conspiracy theory and myth is true. Instead of a group of guys in black suits running around trying to keep a lid on all the weirdness, Funcom created three player factions, the Templars, Illuminati and Dragon. The Templars and Illunimati are modified versions of "existing" organizations while the Dragon is a composite of secret societies from eastern Asia.
Update? But I did! I knew I might be in trouble when I was prompted to update my video drivers. The problem was my drivers were up to date. The Secret World website did provide a link to check out if my computer meets the recommended requirements. Sadly, it does not. But by running the default settings I can gladly report I didn't notice any problems while running around the game. Of course, I didn't do any dungeons, so I don't know how my computer would have fared. For the record, here are the minimum and recommended system requirements.
Is This Clone Wars? To say that the character creator was pretty basic is putting it kindly. I realize that I'm used to Eve Online's amazing character creation process but TSW's was disappointing. The only customization to appearance is the head and selecting starting clothing. Of course, I should add that Funcom greatly added to the selection of clothing after I created my character, so that helped with the problem of everyone looking the same. But everyone does have the same body type, so that is a bit of personalization out the window. Of course, given the system requirements, that might help me run the game.
I'm Not Watching A Cartoon. Given that my graphics card barely meets the minimum requirements to run The Secret World, I have to say I still liked the graphics. I do have to preference this by stating that I always liked the realistic graphics in games like EverQuest 2 over those found in World of Warcraft or Star Wars: The Old Republic. The one question I will have is the ability to keep the graphics updated long term like CCP has done with Eve if the game is a success. Will the desire to have graphics that last a long time requiring higher-end graphics cards to run limit the potential player base for TSW?
Class? What's That? Up until now, the creation of skill-based classless games like Ultima Online, Eve Online and Darkfall was done by independent game studios. So how does Funcom handle the challenge of creating a game in which players can know every possible skill?
Skill classes: The Secret World has three main classes of skills, magic, melee and ranged, which are then further divided into three sub-classes. But wait, didn't I write that TSW has no classes? That's right, no class that a player is locked into playing. That means no re-rolling a new character if a player wants to try something completely different. Just start learning the new skills on an old character.
Action bar slots: I was struck by the similarity of TSW's design of active, passive and talisman slots reflects CCP's ship design using high, mid and low slots. In The Secret World, a player is limited to only having 7 skills in the Active skill bar and 7 skills in the Passive skill bar. Thus a player must pay attention to the skill selection. Combine that with the 7 talisman slots a player receives to supplement a character's skills and once I actually had purchased 8 active and 8 passive skills I began to feel like I was trying to fit my Hurricane in Eve.
Weapons slots: Funcom keeps the entire skills system from spiraling out of control by limiting the skills in a player's action bar to those associated with the weapons the character is carrying. A character can only carry two weapons and only one of each skill. Funcom is actually putting together something called decks that describe how different combinations of skills work together. The best description I can come up with are multi-class characters in D&D or hybrid characters in World of Warcraft like druids or paladins.
That's A Mighty Small Journal. The quest, or I should say mission, system in The Secret World is unusual in that only six missions are allowed in the quest journal at any one time. And those six missions are broken down further into categories. As TSW is a theme park game, one of the missions is called the story mission. I've never played Lord of the Rings Online, but I wonder if LOTRO does the same thing with its chapters. Another mission slot is reserved for dungeon missions, a third for main missions and the other three for side missions. No carrying around 75 quests like I could do in EverQuest 2.
One nice thing about the quest givers is that they display all of the possible missions they will hand out. That helps when deciding whether to accept a quest from another source when wandering around. Also, some quests are repeatable and by clicking on the quest icon the cool down for the quest is visible. I think the repeatable quests would really come into play when attempting to level up some secondary skills on a character.
Did I Fall Into A Rift? I have to say that the combat system reminded me a lot of RIFT's. Some skills generate resources that are then consumed by more powerful skills. Also, moving around is good, standing still is bad. The one nice feature is that using a skill that generates resources generates for both weapons if a character has two equipped. Since the weapons (at least the ones I played with) use different resources a player can use damage dealing skills and still have the resources needed to cast powerful heals. That type of ability is what I think will make TSW's combat system stand out.
Do All EA MMOs Do This? The Secret World and Star Wars: The Old Republic have more in common than the fact that Electronic Arts is the publisher for both games. Moving between areas in both games just takes so long to do because waiting to load the assets for the new zone takes so long. In TSW perhaps the reason is that my computer only has 4 GB of RAM instead of the recommended 6. I will have to say that unlike what I used to experience with the excessive instancing when moving around the old Qeynos in EQ2, at least the reason for the instancing makes sense travel-wise. And I do have to admit that I like how the screen that is displayed while the new zone loads starts out in black-and-white and slowly fades into color. But be warned.
She's Wearing What? Given the discussion about sexism, especially women's clothing, in gaming, I almost think that anyone planning on writing their thoughts on a game needs to create a female character. How female characters are dressed can tell something about the mindset of the developers. In The Secret World, the developers didn't go out of their ways to make women into sex objects. Sure, female characters can wear bikini tops and hot pants, but they also get the option to wear turtle neck sweaters and jeans. And no shoes with 5-inch heels like in Tera in sight. If any controversy about sexism is generated by TSW, I don't think the game design will be the cause.
One thing I do like about the clothing in TSW is that I did not see any stats on it. That means no mis-matching of clothes unless done intentionally.
Would You Like Fries With That? Looking at the menu brought me to a mockup of a cash shop for TSW using the Funcom currency. As of right now the impression I get is the plan is to only sell vanity items like clothing. But remember that TSW is a subscription game that will charge $14.99 / €14.99 incl. VAT / £12.99 incl. VAT.
Will I play? From what I saw, my having a lower-end computer would not stop me from playing The Secret World. In addition to a mission system that actually requires paying attention to the fine cut scenes, I liked the puzzles I was presented, even if I did do some cursing when I was temporarily stumped. Completing those missions actually made me feel like I had accomplished something. I also liked the exploring I did. I enjoyed my time wandering around Seoul looking for little pieces of lore. So I intend to play The Secret World ... eventually.
Why won't I play at launch? Two reasons. The developer is Funcom and the publisher is Electronic Arts. Funcom does not have a stellar history with MMORPG launches, with the launches of Anarchy Online and Age of Conan arguably amongst the worst of all time. Will TSW break the trend? I'm hopeful, but I'm afraid the game is not ready for prime time just from a couple of things I saw and heard. The launch was delayed once already and I'm afraid the publisher EA won't let Funcom get everything in order.
EA itself is in a bit of a mess right now because of the problems concerning Star Wars: The Old Republic. I think that EA needs a new revenue source to help make up for disappointing news with SW:TOR and they see TSW as a quick fix to make the books look better. Ironically, one could argue that EA pushed Bioware to publish SW:TOR before Christmas when it wasn't ready, thus helping to cause SW:TOR's problems.
So while I want to play TSW, Funcom's and EA's reputations have led me to the decision to wait until August or September to purchase the game and play. I really hope I'm wrong because I really want to see The Secret World be the surprise hit of 2012. But for now I'm going to stay in Eve and fly around low sec. I think I'm safer there.
"A Thinking Man's Game." I have read this or a variation of the phrase on the forums and in general chat and I have to agree. At its heart I believe The Secret World is a puzzle game. In general chat I read requests that people send answers via direct tell and not in chat. Unlike games like Star Wars: The Old Republic that lead players right up to people, TSW will lead players to a general area and then the player has to figure out how to get to the objective. Sometimes that is not easy, involving climbing up and down objects or looking really carefully at the map. At other times the quest only gives clues and the player needs to figure out the answer. And I didn't even try to do an investigative quest which I hear requires researching facts in the real world via the Internet. TSW contains an in-game browser and unlike the one in Eve Online can play videos.
Where are Will Smitty and Tommy Lee Jones? The Secret World is set in a modern-day setting with a twist; every conspiracy theory and myth is true. Instead of a group of guys in black suits running around trying to keep a lid on all the weirdness, Funcom created three player factions, the Templars, Illuminati and Dragon. The Templars and Illunimati are modified versions of "existing" organizations while the Dragon is a composite of secret societies from eastern Asia.
Update? But I did! I knew I might be in trouble when I was prompted to update my video drivers. The problem was my drivers were up to date. The Secret World website did provide a link to check out if my computer meets the recommended requirements. Sadly, it does not. But by running the default settings I can gladly report I didn't notice any problems while running around the game. Of course, I didn't do any dungeons, so I don't know how my computer would have fared. For the record, here are the minimum and recommended system requirements.
Minimum System Requirements
- Internet Connection: 512 KBPS or faster
- OS: Windows XP (SP 1)/Vista (SP 1)/Windows 7 (SP 1)
- DVD-ROM: 8X or faster DVD drive
- Processor: 2.6 GHZ Intel Core 2 Duo or equivalent AMD CPU
- Memory: At least 2GB RAM for Windows XP / 3GB RAM for Windows Vista and Windows 7
- Hard Drive: At least 30GB of free space
- Graphics Card: NVIDIA 8800 series 512 VRAM or better
- DirectX: DirectX 9.0c Compatible
- Input: Keyboard & Mouse
Recommended System Requirements
- OS: Windows 7 64 bit
- Processor: Intel Core i5 3.0Ghz or equivalent
- Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti 1GB
- Memory: 6 GB
- OS: Windows 7 64 bit
- Processor: AMD A4-3400 APU with Radeon HD Graphics, 2.7 GHz
- Graphics Card: AMD Radeon HD 6410D
- Memory: 4 GB
Is This Clone Wars? To say that the character creator was pretty basic is putting it kindly. I realize that I'm used to Eve Online's amazing character creation process but TSW's was disappointing. The only customization to appearance is the head and selecting starting clothing. Of course, I should add that Funcom greatly added to the selection of clothing after I created my character, so that helped with the problem of everyone looking the same. But everyone does have the same body type, so that is a bit of personalization out the window. Of course, given the system requirements, that might help me run the game.
I'm Not Watching A Cartoon. Given that my graphics card barely meets the minimum requirements to run The Secret World, I have to say I still liked the graphics. I do have to preference this by stating that I always liked the realistic graphics in games like EverQuest 2 over those found in World of Warcraft or Star Wars: The Old Republic. The one question I will have is the ability to keep the graphics updated long term like CCP has done with Eve if the game is a success. Will the desire to have graphics that last a long time requiring higher-end graphics cards to run limit the potential player base for TSW?
Class? What's That? Up until now, the creation of skill-based classless games like Ultima Online, Eve Online and Darkfall was done by independent game studios. So how does Funcom handle the challenge of creating a game in which players can know every possible skill?
Skill classes: The Secret World has three main classes of skills, magic, melee and ranged, which are then further divided into three sub-classes. But wait, didn't I write that TSW has no classes? That's right, no class that a player is locked into playing. That means no re-rolling a new character if a player wants to try something completely different. Just start learning the new skills on an old character.
Action bar slots: I was struck by the similarity of TSW's design of active, passive and talisman slots reflects CCP's ship design using high, mid and low slots. In The Secret World, a player is limited to only having 7 skills in the Active skill bar and 7 skills in the Passive skill bar. Thus a player must pay attention to the skill selection. Combine that with the 7 talisman slots a player receives to supplement a character's skills and once I actually had purchased 8 active and 8 passive skills I began to feel like I was trying to fit my Hurricane in Eve.
Weapons slots: Funcom keeps the entire skills system from spiraling out of control by limiting the skills in a player's action bar to those associated with the weapons the character is carrying. A character can only carry two weapons and only one of each skill. Funcom is actually putting together something called decks that describe how different combinations of skills work together. The best description I can come up with are multi-class characters in D&D or hybrid characters in World of Warcraft like druids or paladins.
That's A Mighty Small Journal. The quest, or I should say mission, system in The Secret World is unusual in that only six missions are allowed in the quest journal at any one time. And those six missions are broken down further into categories. As TSW is a theme park game, one of the missions is called the story mission. I've never played Lord of the Rings Online, but I wonder if LOTRO does the same thing with its chapters. Another mission slot is reserved for dungeon missions, a third for main missions and the other three for side missions. No carrying around 75 quests like I could do in EverQuest 2.
One nice thing about the quest givers is that they display all of the possible missions they will hand out. That helps when deciding whether to accept a quest from another source when wandering around. Also, some quests are repeatable and by clicking on the quest icon the cool down for the quest is visible. I think the repeatable quests would really come into play when attempting to level up some secondary skills on a character.
Did I Fall Into A Rift? I have to say that the combat system reminded me a lot of RIFT's. Some skills generate resources that are then consumed by more powerful skills. Also, moving around is good, standing still is bad. The one nice feature is that using a skill that generates resources generates for both weapons if a character has two equipped. Since the weapons (at least the ones I played with) use different resources a player can use damage dealing skills and still have the resources needed to cast powerful heals. That type of ability is what I think will make TSW's combat system stand out.
Do All EA MMOs Do This? The Secret World and Star Wars: The Old Republic have more in common than the fact that Electronic Arts is the publisher for both games. Moving between areas in both games just takes so long to do because waiting to load the assets for the new zone takes so long. In TSW perhaps the reason is that my computer only has 4 GB of RAM instead of the recommended 6. I will have to say that unlike what I used to experience with the excessive instancing when moving around the old Qeynos in EQ2, at least the reason for the instancing makes sense travel-wise. And I do have to admit that I like how the screen that is displayed while the new zone loads starts out in black-and-white and slowly fades into color. But be warned.
She's Wearing What? Given the discussion about sexism, especially women's clothing, in gaming, I almost think that anyone planning on writing their thoughts on a game needs to create a female character. How female characters are dressed can tell something about the mindset of the developers. In The Secret World, the developers didn't go out of their ways to make women into sex objects. Sure, female characters can wear bikini tops and hot pants, but they also get the option to wear turtle neck sweaters and jeans. And no shoes with 5-inch heels like in Tera in sight. If any controversy about sexism is generated by TSW, I don't think the game design will be the cause.
One thing I do like about the clothing in TSW is that I did not see any stats on it. That means no mis-matching of clothes unless done intentionally.
Would You Like Fries With That? Looking at the menu brought me to a mockup of a cash shop for TSW using the Funcom currency. As of right now the impression I get is the plan is to only sell vanity items like clothing. But remember that TSW is a subscription game that will charge $14.99 / €14.99 incl. VAT / £12.99 incl. VAT.
Will I play? From what I saw, my having a lower-end computer would not stop me from playing The Secret World. In addition to a mission system that actually requires paying attention to the fine cut scenes, I liked the puzzles I was presented, even if I did do some cursing when I was temporarily stumped. Completing those missions actually made me feel like I had accomplished something. I also liked the exploring I did. I enjoyed my time wandering around Seoul looking for little pieces of lore. So I intend to play The Secret World ... eventually.
Why won't I play at launch? Two reasons. The developer is Funcom and the publisher is Electronic Arts. Funcom does not have a stellar history with MMORPG launches, with the launches of Anarchy Online and Age of Conan arguably amongst the worst of all time. Will TSW break the trend? I'm hopeful, but I'm afraid the game is not ready for prime time just from a couple of things I saw and heard. The launch was delayed once already and I'm afraid the publisher EA won't let Funcom get everything in order.
EA itself is in a bit of a mess right now because of the problems concerning Star Wars: The Old Republic. I think that EA needs a new revenue source to help make up for disappointing news with SW:TOR and they see TSW as a quick fix to make the books look better. Ironically, one could argue that EA pushed Bioware to publish SW:TOR before Christmas when it wasn't ready, thus helping to cause SW:TOR's problems.
So while I want to play TSW, Funcom's and EA's reputations have led me to the decision to wait until August or September to purchase the game and play. I really hope I'm wrong because I really want to see The Secret World be the surprise hit of 2012. But for now I'm going to stay in Eve and fly around low sec. I think I'm safer there.
Friday, June 22, 2012
Happy Rage Against The Bots Day!
"We actively hunt down and ban ISK [in-game currency] sellers whenever and wherever we find them, with a dedicated effort from our game master team. The main reason for that is those accounts are more often than not associated with credit card fraud, account hacking and using macros. All of this affects the game experience for our regular players in a negative way, and hence we do all that we can do in order to minimise these illegal activities within the game."
For those relatively new to Eve Online, CCP's War on Bots and the illicit RMT trade did not always consist of a long relentless grind more comparable to the shooting of structures and attempts to cause failure cascades associated with null sec warfare. Today marks the third anniversary of an attempt to shock and awe RMTers and their associated botting suppliers into submission with a campaign now known as Unholy Rage.
Unlike a lot of game companies that do massive ban waves in an attempt to keep botting, gold farming and other illicit RMT activities under control, CCP attempted to do a layered approach designed to not only knock out the botters but take away their customers as well. The first part of the plan involved competing directly with the isk sellers. In November 2008 CCP created the 30-day Pilot's License Extension (PLEX) and began the process of allowing players to not only trade isk for game time codes (GTCs) but beginning in February 2009 CCP began selling game time directly. The purpose of PLEX was to make the process of trading isk for game time a lot easier and hopefully lure players away from illicit isk sellers.
With the demand side addressed, CCP began identifying methods to identify and ban those in the illicit RMT trade, including botters. In an early test in early March 2009 CCP identified and banned approximately 3,000 accounts associated with illicit RMT activities. Processes were tweaked and metrics to measure success were identified leading up to the beginning of the offensive, code named "Unholy Rage".
During downtime on 22 June 2009, CCP banned a total of 6,200 accounts. While the associated dev blog documented things like server CPU usage, player populations in popular systems and effects on the markets, the one thing lacking was the effect on how many accounts were actually logged onto Tranquility. According to data downloaded from Eve-Offline, the seven-day rolling average of concurrent users dropped from 31,707 accounts on 21 June 2009 down to 27,333 players on 30 June 2009, a 13.8% drop. Put another way, in June 2009 almost 1 in 7 pilots logged in at any one time were bots.
Unholy Rage was not just a one day effort. Over the course of the anti-RMT/anti-bot operation CCP issued over 30,000 bans, many to repeat offenders, for violations of the EULA for illicit RMT and botting. But if the goal of the operation was to eliminate these activities, Unholy Rage was a failure. By the end of 2010 players were once more complaining about bots and CCP had hired a new security chief who had a different philosophy of how to deal with botters and the RMT trade.
While the operation itself wasn't a lasting success, the first day demonstrated how big of an impact botting had on server performance and that the Eve economy was now large and robust enough to handle the impact of banning that many bots. For that and the fact that 6,200 botters were banned, the anniversary of the start of Unholy Rage deserves to be remembered. So happy Rage Against The Bots Day everyone!
Thursday, June 21, 2012
Feeling Blue
I recently spent a full week living in low security space, only leaving it when a courier mission sent me to a station in high sec or when I passed through a high sec island system because it was the fastest route. I have to say that the experience was certainly interesting. I hope no one minds that I don't disclose the location of my little visit, but I don't want to give out any information to any pirates that might wander across the blog. Loose lips 'splode ships and all that business.
I've already written about the first few days I spent making bookmarks in my area of operations. A very educational experience letting me know about the inhabitants of the systems I planned to fly in. After making my bookmarks, I began to run level 4 courier, er, I mean distribution missions out of a centrally located station. The first thing I noticed is that the missions pay out a lot better than those in high sec. Of course, that was offset by the fact that I was only having one pilot do the missions. In high sec I normally keep both Rosewalker and Wandering Rose in space doing the missions. But I'm still wary enough of the neighborhood to only want to risk one ship at a time. Because of that I'm not sure that I really get any additional benefit by doing the missions in low sec, reward wise at least. I think I do but my record keeping is really spotty.
Flying in low sec is a lot more intense. In high sec, I just undock and follow the yellow gates until I get to my destination. The most important thing is to make sure I remember the cargo. In low sec, I make sure I have Dotlan up in case I need to make an unscheduled detour from the path my autopilot selects. Then, when undocking, check the overview for nearby ships. If I see a ship, warp to the instawarp bookmark I made for the station. No ships, warp to the first jump gate on the journey, especially if I am the only one in local. If local is crowded, think about jumping to one of my observation bookmarks. Rinse and repeat until I get tired of running missions.
Most days I didn't worry too much as most of the pilots I encountered had positive security statuses, including one pilot with a +5. But on Sunday a pirate corporation I had spotted during my scouting the week before began setting up gate camps. I blew right though one consisting of 4 Hurricanes and a couple of fast tacklers. While flying around I wandered into another system they had moved into and started a conversation. I asked if the system was a bad place to mine in and I was told it was a great place to mine and that I should bring a Hulk. Considering 3 of those Hurricane pilots were flashy, I told them I wasn't interested in mining and went on my way.
Talking to pirates via an open comm channel like local can lead to some interesting events. About ten minutes after talking with the pirates I received a private chat request from a member of an alliance that I had determined probably were not pirates. He warned me about trusting the pirates and then offered the chance of getting a non-agression pact between his alliance and my corp. Okay, maybe NAPs are for carebears, but I'm a carebear! I did a little research and found that the alliance had a page on Steam. I found out they were a NSBI alliance that didn't suicide gank. That combined with some research on Eve Who that showed their average security status was positive and I decided to trust them. I contacted the alliance executor as suggested and a couple of days ago I checked my email and I am now blue to a 300 man alliance.
I haven't had a chance to put my new blue status to the test yet. I pulled out of low sec for a bit to do some things like tend my PI colonies and pick up some skill books. I do have to say that after even just a week in low sec some of my reflexes had changed. When I first logged into the game at a high sec station, I just about panicked looking at all the people in local until I remembered where I was and that I probably didn't need to worry. And I now automatically cloak up whenever traveling, even when I have an empty cargo hold. I used to only do that when I had a full cargo hold.
I'm beginning to think I should do some mining in low sec. I have the feeling I might develop some good habits that I don't currently have on the rare occasions when I mine in high sec. I don't know if I just take a Scythe or ship up to a Retriever. The Scythe perhaps has a greater chance of survival but the Retriever will fit in the cargo hold of my Prowler and has a greater mining capacity to boot.
Of course, if I try to mine in low sec I'll have to bring along a ship as protection, if for no other reason to shoot any NPCs that wander along. That would mean finally bringing armed ships into low sec. I've heard that mining in either a mission site or a gravimetric site is the best way to mine. Maybe I should finally purchase a Loki and turn it into an explorer. Or maybe using a stealth bomber will work.
I'm really starting to become intrigued with the possibilities in low sec. I might wake up and come to my senses but at least earning standings with some of the NPC corps in the region couldn't hurt, right?
I've already written about the first few days I spent making bookmarks in my area of operations. A very educational experience letting me know about the inhabitants of the systems I planned to fly in. After making my bookmarks, I began to run level 4 courier, er, I mean distribution missions out of a centrally located station. The first thing I noticed is that the missions pay out a lot better than those in high sec. Of course, that was offset by the fact that I was only having one pilot do the missions. In high sec I normally keep both Rosewalker and Wandering Rose in space doing the missions. But I'm still wary enough of the neighborhood to only want to risk one ship at a time. Because of that I'm not sure that I really get any additional benefit by doing the missions in low sec, reward wise at least. I think I do but my record keeping is really spotty.
Flying in low sec is a lot more intense. In high sec, I just undock and follow the yellow gates until I get to my destination. The most important thing is to make sure I remember the cargo. In low sec, I make sure I have Dotlan up in case I need to make an unscheduled detour from the path my autopilot selects. Then, when undocking, check the overview for nearby ships. If I see a ship, warp to the instawarp bookmark I made for the station. No ships, warp to the first jump gate on the journey, especially if I am the only one in local. If local is crowded, think about jumping to one of my observation bookmarks. Rinse and repeat until I get tired of running missions.
Most days I didn't worry too much as most of the pilots I encountered had positive security statuses, including one pilot with a +5. But on Sunday a pirate corporation I had spotted during my scouting the week before began setting up gate camps. I blew right though one consisting of 4 Hurricanes and a couple of fast tacklers. While flying around I wandered into another system they had moved into and started a conversation. I asked if the system was a bad place to mine in and I was told it was a great place to mine and that I should bring a Hulk. Considering 3 of those Hurricane pilots were flashy, I told them I wasn't interested in mining and went on my way.
Talking to pirates via an open comm channel like local can lead to some interesting events. About ten minutes after talking with the pirates I received a private chat request from a member of an alliance that I had determined probably were not pirates. He warned me about trusting the pirates and then offered the chance of getting a non-agression pact between his alliance and my corp. Okay, maybe NAPs are for carebears, but I'm a carebear! I did a little research and found that the alliance had a page on Steam. I found out they were a NSBI alliance that didn't suicide gank. That combined with some research on Eve Who that showed their average security status was positive and I decided to trust them. I contacted the alliance executor as suggested and a couple of days ago I checked my email and I am now blue to a 300 man alliance.
I haven't had a chance to put my new blue status to the test yet. I pulled out of low sec for a bit to do some things like tend my PI colonies and pick up some skill books. I do have to say that after even just a week in low sec some of my reflexes had changed. When I first logged into the game at a high sec station, I just about panicked looking at all the people in local until I remembered where I was and that I probably didn't need to worry. And I now automatically cloak up whenever traveling, even when I have an empty cargo hold. I used to only do that when I had a full cargo hold.
I'm beginning to think I should do some mining in low sec. I have the feeling I might develop some good habits that I don't currently have on the rare occasions when I mine in high sec. I don't know if I just take a Scythe or ship up to a Retriever. The Scythe perhaps has a greater chance of survival but the Retriever will fit in the cargo hold of my Prowler and has a greater mining capacity to boot.
Of course, if I try to mine in low sec I'll have to bring along a ship as protection, if for no other reason to shoot any NPCs that wander along. That would mean finally bringing armed ships into low sec. I've heard that mining in either a mission site or a gravimetric site is the best way to mine. Maybe I should finally purchase a Loki and turn it into an explorer. Or maybe using a stealth bomber will work.
I'm really starting to become intrigued with the possibilities in low sec. I might wake up and come to my senses but at least earning standings with some of the NPC corps in the region couldn't hurt, right?
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