Running Away Is Serious Business

This week I'm on vacation from work, but staying home.  I meant to do some errands around the house and get some quality time in space grinding Sisters of EVE loyalty points doing some distribution missions in low sec.  Besides the loyalty points, I think getting both my pilots up to 8.0 so they have jump clone access with the Sisters is a good long term investment.  Something about the way the lore is heading tells me so.

Because of covering the SOMERblink mess I didn't get a chance to get into space until last night. This new area of space I'm in has one constellation that holds a pretty active Australian PvP corporation.  So when a mission would take me into their space, things would get interesting.

Remember all of those bookmarks I wrote about making?  Very handy, especially when undocking from a station and a non-flashy red ship is waiting outside.  Instant warp-off bookmarks FTW!

I think they should put up a sign reading, "If you enter this space, you agree to play with us."  But that's okay, I'm good at running.  I had a Zealot try to catch up to my Prowler.  With Rubicon that's insanity but until then very doable.  He was persistent, but I lost him when I did an immediate uncloak/warp/recloak upon landing on a gate.  I don't think he knew which way I went.

Of course, the constellation only had one way out and sitting on the gate was a Broadsword plus another ship.  That woke me up.  Heavy interdictors in low sec mean they have the infinite point script.  That doesn't bother me too much because I rely on speed, agility, bookmarks, and my cloak to get out of tight spots, not warp core stabilizers.  But the Broadsword meant these guys were serious and all those other ships were just waiting around until he tackled something.

After slipping past the Broadsword, he complimented me on getting recloaked so fast and we started talking.  The pilot was an American who had joined up and we had a nice conversation.  The important thing I took out of it was that pilots of cloaky ships are getting sloppy in low sec.  He told me that a lot of pilots just aren't cloaking very fast, which means he can catch them.

I ended the talk because I needed to log off for the night.  I might have stayed on a bit longer but I didn't feel like testing these guys.  They reacted pretty quickly once they realized I had entered their constellation.  Worse, they knew they were trying to catch a blockade runner and they were confident enough to think they could do it.  And from talking to the Broadsword pilot, they have success catching cloaky ships.

These Australians also aren't a gate camp at a low sec entry system looking for people bumbling into their lair, either.  Those gate camps don't bother me, until the Broadswords start showing up (and why is the Broadsword popping up everywhere I go?).  I have had a good chance to observe these guys in action.  They tend to go about their normal business and then when an intruder enters, they try to pounce.

No one's caught me in my Prowler yet.  I know someone will, but part of the game is not getting caught.  And not getting caught also involves not going into a situation where a group of pilots is waiting for me.  Being a low sec carebear may mean I'm crazy, but I'd like to think I'm not THAT stupid.

SOMERblink: Headshot

I think that things are starting to settle down on the SOMERblink ISK for GTC sales front.  At 14:21 EVE time yesterday Katarina Reid, the player who CCP was allowing to run an ISK for GTC referral system on the EVE Online forums, made the following post:

Headshot Not sure if im allowed to link the letter given to resellers but it says to stop players trading ingame items for cash. ETC + bonus items may not be direclty or indirectly traded by the buyer for isk. EULA says cant sell ingame stuff for cash. 10 days for reseller to stop it or else. You can still support me for no reward when you buy your ETC's here $660 made for me 377 sale of ETC's $13,195 for CCP 188b given out

The letter apparently was shown to her by an employee at Markee Dragon, although Katarina didn't post the letter for fear of violating the EULA/ToS.  Good move as I think publishing violates point 18 of the EVE Online Terms of Service.  Also, when asked why he was ending the sale immediately, he replied, "Don't want to annoy GM's anymore and after 10 days it's a breach of reseller agreement. So I will shut it down now. I made my point."

UPDATE:  I've been informed by Marcus Eikenberry, the owner of Markee Dragon, that no one at Markee Dragon showed Katarina the letter.  After Mr. Eikenberry pointed this out, I reread Katarina's post and realized that it could also indicate she was contacted by Shattered Crystal, with whom she is an affiliate.  Shattered Crystal would have a definite interest in making sure that Katarina stopped giving out ISK for GTC referrals.  The link to Markee Dragon came from another post Katarina wrote in a different thread.

Also, in fairness, I think I should post the relevant part of Mr. Eikenberry's email:

"Your latest article you state that an employee at Markee Dragon provided the letter.  This is not correct.  Our employees have not seen the letter and we have not shared it with anyone.  Their source is someone else.

"I just want to make that very clear because the privacy of our business partners and customers is very important to us.  This would be a violation of trust and it would violate our privacy policy.   We would never share anything like this."

UPDATE 2: Katarina seems to have confirmed that she received the information from Shattered Crystal in this post.

I can confirm that Katarina's view of the letter is correct because a copy of the letter was in my inbox when I woke up Tuesday.  I received it from one of my many new contacts I've established while covering this story.  I can't quote from it due to the ToS.  However, I think I can safely state that the exact bonus scheme that SOMERblink uses was described as violating the EVE Online EULA, specifically Section 6B.

One important thing I think Katarina left out is that while the GTC resellers have 10 days to get their player affiliates in line, the letter did not state how long the player sites have to comply.  So I would think that websites would want to work quickly to comply.

One site which also ran an ISK for GTC referral system is EVE-GAMES.NET.  The site is an affiliate of BattleClinic Deep Space Supply.  The site quickly updated, stating, "We have discontinued the Time Code Bonus at the request of CCP."

Eve-Games.net new GTC referral page

I don't know of others except for SOMERblink.  As of 0800 EVE time today SOMERblink was still advertising their BlinkCredit promotion for purchasing game time codes from Markee Dragon on the site.

SOMERblink GTC referral page @ 2013.10.30 0754

Of course, just because one player site can change quickly doesn't mean all of them can.  Perhaps SOMERblink's web designer is only available on to work on the site on weekends.  So players should give SOMERblink a little time to get things straightened out.  Something tells me a lot of eyes will stare at that page in the coming 10 days.

The Digital Dozen: 29 October 2013

The rankings of the top twelve MMORPGs as determined by the players of the Xfire community from play on Sunday, 27 September 2013.  For more details about the methodology, click here.  Historical data can be found here.

Rank	Prev Week	Game	Score	Hours Played	+/- %
1	1	World of Warcraft	43.4	15,302	-3.6
2	2	Guild Wars 2	15.3	5,411	-10.1
3	3	Final Fantasy XIV	10.2	3,607	-4.3
4	4	Star Wars: The Old Republic	9.7	3,409	-1.4
5	5	EVE Online	5.3	1,869	+15.4
6	6	Tera	3.9	1,361	+11.2
7	8	RIFT	2.8	981	+15.8
8	7	Lord of the Rings Online	2.5	864	-22.6
9	--	APB: Reloaded	1.9	657	+16.9
10	9	Planetside 2	1.8	631	-5.4
11	10	Infestation: Survivor Stories	1.7	609	-4.4
12	--	Runescape	1.6	563	+4.6

 

Total Digital Dozen Hours: 35,263

Sunday saw the 5th decline in time the Xfire community has spent playing MMORPGs over the past 6 weeks.  Games experiencing the biggest declines were Guild Wars 2 (-606 hours) and World of Warcraft (-573 hours) while APB: Reloaded (+16.9%), RIFT (+15.8%), and EVE Online (+15.4%) experienced the largest percentage increases in playtime.  Overall, the genre experienced a 3.3% decline in the time the Xfire community spent playing the 12 most popular games.

And Then There Were Three - After 90 weeks in The Digital Dozen, Aion fell off the list after experiencing a 15.7% decline in play on Sunday.  The game had seemed in good shape but following the end of the month-long celebration of its 4th anniversary the numbers started to plummet.  Aion was one of four games that had stayed continuously in the rankings since the first Digital Dozen list was published.  The only three games remaining that can make that claim are World of Warcraft, Star Wars: The Old Republic, and EVE Online.

Also Dropping Off The List - Aion was not the only game that fell out of The Digital Dozen for the first time.  Cryptic's Neverwinter also fell off the list for the first time since launch.  The game managed to stay on the list for 24 weeks.

Celebrating Steam - RIFT experienced a 15.8% increase in playtime Sunday as Trion ran a promotion to celebrate the game's return to Steam.  From 25 October to 1 November all players receive 20% boosts to all XP and currency earned plus 160% XP potions and raid 1 rings are available in the cash shop.

SOMERblink, A SOMER Clone, And GTCs

When writing about illicit real money transactions (RMT) I know I will get some things right and other things wrong.  But I really thought I had read the EVE Online End Users License Agreement (EULA) and Terms of Service (ToS) correctly last Monday.  Both DNSBlack's and SOMERblink's model of converting in-game assets and currency for real world cash were clearly RMT unsactioned by CCP.  How could I get that wrong?  Everyone from FunkyBacon to James315 have pointed it out before I wrote about SOMERblink's model.  But as events over the past week showed, I did.

Someone We Should Feel Sorry For

While many have followed the SOMERblink saga, notorious gud Tweeter wartzilla reminded us of what's important.

Infamous UC Davis Pepper Spray Cop Given $38,000 in Worker's Comp for His 'Suffering' http://t.co/oox1vz5Nc0 via @reason
— wartzilla (@wartzilla) October 24, 2013

That's right, what about the poor slob that has to put up with all the abuse.  In EVE Online, that job falls to the men and women of CONCORD's Directive Enforcement Department.  When Goonswarm decides to burn Jita, who do you think is asked to put out the fire?  The Caldari Navy?  Please, get serious.  Or who has to handle the complains when The New Order decides to teach a miner how to tank his ship using a practical exercise?  Sure, teaching people not to use smartbombs in high sec sounds like a fun job, but look who you deal with all the way out to lowsec.

So the next time you think about pulling the trigger in high security space, please, think of the poor people in those ships that have to reduce your shiny ship to slag and just say no.

From the latest Freebooted video about Rubicon

First Poll: Is SOMERblink Conducting RMT

If you visit the blog for the rest of the month instead of using an RSS feed you'll see my first ever Nosy Gamer poll question.

Do you believe that SOMERblink is engaged in RMT? If so, what should CCP do?

I've also embedded the question in this post for those who are using some sort of feed reader.  I don't know if it will actually work, though.

As always with internet polls of this nature, the results are completely unscientific.  I don't want people to think the all internet polls are bad, because they can be good if standards and best practices (and honest sample selection) are followed.  But this one is just to see what people who visit the blog think.

Also, apologies if this post loads a bit slow.

The Slippery Slope

Okay, so after opening my eyes and actually seeing that SOMERblink engages in RMT activity, I would think that sometime before the end of the year that CCP would seize the assets of the Cognative Distortion alliance and permanently ban the alliance executor, Somerset Mahm.  With GTC seller Markee Dragon having sold over 1 million EVE time codes, it is entirely conceivable that SOMERblink has made over $100,000 as an affiliate. That $100,000 figure I gave represents slightly over 57,000 time codes sold over two years.  Is it possible that SOMERblink has referred an average of 1,200 GTC sales a month to Markee Dragon over the past two years?  While I have no hard sales figures, I can believe that 5% of Markee Dragon's sales have come from SOMERblink.

UPDATE: 27 October 2013 -The link to the article on the CCP site, as well as a video put out by Markee Dragon himself, both refer to Markee Dragon as having sold over 1 million GTC.  But a source indicates that the 1 million is the number of GTC sold by Marcus Eikenberry the person, not Markee Dragon the website.  This seems to be confirmed by a story Mr. Eikenberry told in a video about helping to fund Goonswarm's wars.  I'm pretty sure he was referring to Goonswarm during the Great War, when Mr. Eikenberry was still with Shattered Crystal.

Also, a source at Shattered Crystal revealed that during SOMERblink's first 32 months, when it was an affiliate of Shattered Crystal, that SOMERblink received approximately $135,000 for GTC referrals.

But will that happen?  That entirely depends on CCP's relationship with SOMERblink.  The most important part of that relationship, at least for this argument, is what was Somerset Mahm told was allowable when first starting the enterprise.  If Somerset Mahm was told that this GTC for ISK scheme was allowable, I don't see how CCP can enact punitive measures for past actions. If that is the case, I think the most that could happen is for SOMERblink to stop the RMT offer.

If CCP told Somerset Mahm that the GTC for ISK scheme was allowable, it would not be the first time that CCP had told players to do something that violates the EULA and/or ToS.  Anyone remember the cache scraping controversy?  Yes, cache scraping is not allowed, but because a dev many years ago told players cache scraping was okay (and CCP subsequently put in features to make cache scraping easier), CCP is not enforcing that portion of the EULA.  Here is the statement from CCP Peligro concerning the use of cache scraping...

"After consulting with CCP Legal and Team Security, we are not prepared to amend the EULA at this time to address your concerns. However, your comments are good ones, and we will consider incorporating them with the next scheduled update to the EULA (expected this fall, 2013).

"In the meantime, CCP confirms that we will only impose penalties on cache scraping if used in connection with other illegal activities in the game (i.e., botting). We will not take action against cache scraping for other uses."

The same holds true for the use of ISBoxer.  Anyone remember this statement by CCP Stillman concerning section 9c of the EULA?

"Some of the multiboxing software out there is powerful enough to count as “client modification” if used for that purpose."

That's a direct reference to ISBoxer.  But because devs had ruled that the use of ISBoxer was okay, or at least that people wouldn't recieve a ban for using it in the past, that CCP would not enforce this part of the EULA concerning ISBoxer.  The funny thing is that someone who is detected running a bot using Inner Space is not banned for botting, but permanently banned for client modification.  Using Inner Space to run ISBoxer, however, isn't currently a bannable offense even though the same client modification is performed.

Let's take a look at CCP Stillman's entire statement on the ISBoxer question...

"This extends to multiboxing software. Some of the multiboxing software out there is powerful enough to count as “client modification” if used for that purpose. Our stance on third-party software is that we do not endorse such software as we have no control over what it does. As such, we can’t say that multiboxing software isn’t against our EULA. But the same goes in this case, that unless we determine that people are doing things beyond “multiboxing”, we will not be taking any action. We only care about the instances where people are messing with our process for the purposes of cheating, and running multiple clients at the same time is not in violation of our EULA in and of itself unless it involves trial accounts."

So as you can see, CCP has set precedents over the past year allowing players to break the EULA as long as they don't do "bad things".  Of course, I maintain that RMT is a bad thing.  But the precedent exists for CCP to rule that what SOMERblink is doing does not qualify as bad and to allow it.  I think that would be a huge mistake, but the player base has spoken loud enough on other issues to force a bending of the rules.  What's to keep CCP from doing the same in the case of SOMERblink?

UPDATE: 24 October 2013 - Darius JOHNSON (the former CCP Sreegs) left this comment on Facebook that's relevant.

""So as you can see, CCP has set precedents over the past year allowing players to break the EULA as long as they don't do "bad things"." - Correction... VERY junior members of CCP have gone on record in the past year and prior to that regarding EULA violations. In most cases VERY junior members of a company don't get to decide which portions of their legal contracts a company is going to honor." 

The Digital Dozen: 22 October 2013

The rankings of the top twelve MMORPGs as determined by the players of the Xfire community from play on Sunday, 20 September 2013.  For more details about the methodology, click here.  Historical data can be found here.

Rank	Prev Week	Game	Score	Hours Played	+/- %
1	1	World of Warcraft	43.5	15,875	+7.8
2	2	Guild Wars 2	16.5	6,017	+11.9
3	3	Final Fantasy XIV	10.3	3,768	-2.7
4	4	Star Wars: The Old Republic	9.5	3,457	+3.6
5	5	EVE Online	4.4	1,619	+2.1
6	6	Tera	3.4	1,224	+3.9
7	7	Lord of the Rings Online	2.5	1,117	+30.8
8	8	RIFT	2.3	847	+2.7
9	9	Planetside 2	1.8	667	-2.1
10	--	Infestation: Survivor Stories	1.7	637	+76.0
11	10	Neverwinter	1.7	631	+2.9
12	11	Aion	1.7	610	+2.9

 

Total Digital Dozen Hours: 36,469

Sunday saw the end of a four week slide in the Xfire community's interest in MMORPGs.  In a week that saw a 6.8% increase in the time spent playing the 12 most popular games, only 2 games experienced a decline in interest.  In addition to big increases in the top two games, World of Warcraft (1,148 hours) and Guild Wars 2 (641 hours), two other games experienced big increases in percentage terms, Infestation: Survivor Stories (+76%) and Lord of the Rings Online (+30.8%).

The Game That Won't Die - Fittingly, Infestation: Survivor Stories is a game about killing zombies.  Why?  The game formerly known as The War Z has experienced horrible Steam launches, account and system hacks as well as losing a copyright infringement suit but has managed to make it into the Digital Dozen one more time.  I wasn't able to figure out what caused the big jump in interest, but I do see that that game is back on Steam.  Does being on Steam negate a Metacritic score of 20?  Looks like the answer to that question is yes.

Boosting Interest - Turbine decided to ramp up interest in the next Lord of the Rings Online expansion, Helm's Deep, by granting an XP boost.  Not for a weekend, but for a full month.  That's right, starting on 18 October all the way to launch on 17 November, players will receive a 100% XP boost to help get them to the level cap.  Looks like a lot of players are returning to take advantage of the offer.

Celebrating Halloween - Is the increased interest in both World of Warcraft (+7.8%) and Guild Wars 2 (+11.9%) related to Halloween?  Of course!  On 15 October ArenaNet launched the Blood and Madness event in GW2 while Blizzard launched Hallow's End three days later.  GW2 received and extra boost as ArenaNet held a one-day only 40% off sale on Sunday.

Raffles And RMT

I really wanted to avoid the entire SOMER Blink controversy.  So apart from a few links to the writings of others I've pretty much stayed away from the subject.  Until now.  DNSBlack, the leader of Dirt Nap Squad, came up with a post on the EVE Online forums claiming he came up with a method to conduct real money transfers without violating the Eve Online End Users License Agreement (EULA) and Terms of Service (ToS).

Here's the opening post of the thread.

1. I am looking for a 3rd party wholesale GTC seller.

2. I would like to discuss the terms on splitting your profit with me to raffle off some of my in game assets.

3. I will also would like to offer my character to raffle once all my assets are gone. We will follow all CCP rules for transfer once the raffle is over.

4. 1 Black credit for the raffle will be given out for every GTC bought on your site. You can hold the raffle once 1000 GTC have been sold. If players would like to buy a ticket in game it will cost 1 plex and you can have them contract it to you.

5. This practice has been ok'd and does not break the EULA according to CCP.

I am doing this to re-capture some of my money I have spent on EVE over the last 7 years and look for another game to play. This is not a joke and CCP has left me no choice. I suggest that everyone of you look to sell your stuff in this manner before CCP cracks down.

So if you are a third party seller of GTC please send me a eve mail with your percentage offer let the bidding begin.

An obvious attempt to sell a character for real life cash.  No legitimate GTC seller would risk becoming involved with this scheme as it would jeopardize their working relationship with CCP.  This probably led to this post.

Two Step better yet

1. I just sold a GTC to a guy for $2500.00 I gave him 2500 black credits.

2. I just sold another guy a GTC for $17.00 and gave him 2 black credits

3. Both of these guys used the black credits and bought tickets to my charcter [sic] raffle.

4. I all ready held the drawing and the winner will be announced soon.

5. I will be starting the legal transfer on the charcter [sic] form today.

6. Thank you CCP I made $ 2502 dollars enjoy your 30.00 dollars.

7. I did this with no website.

So an admission of someone conducting RMT, if the events posted really happened.  So why such a public method of leaving the game?  After all, CCP's standard response is permanently banning the RMTer (DNSBlack, which since he's allegedly leaving the game probably doesn't bother him) and seizing all the stuff, which in this case I would expect would include the character named DNSBlack.

The answer is surprising.  DNSBlack maintains that the method is totally allowed by the EULA and ToS and for proof, look at how CCP allows SOMERblink to operate.  He received much backing for this stance.  But is this correct?

Harder Than It Looks

This is not a political blog, but watching the roll-out in the United States of the Obamacare health insurance exchanges reminds me of the launch of a new MMORPG.  I don't say that to denigrate any game company because I don't think any MMORPG, including Anarchy Online, has had a launch this bad.  For those not following the story, here's a few articles.

Assessing the Exchanges
Software Expert on Exchanges: Without New Management, Project Is Doomed
‘Tech Experts: Health Exchange Site Needs Total Overhaul’
Design Firm Wipes Website of References to Work on Healthcare.gov

Admittedly these are all from National Review, a conservative publication, but that's just because I was too lazy to scour the web looking for MSM articles.  The links in the stories have some of those.  Besides, the focus of this post isn't about the wisdom of Obamacare.  I want to point out how good of a job game companies do on a day-to-day basis.

Think about it.  The U.S. government spent a reported $634 million on the website and it had a hard time even creating accounts at launch.  Even Star Wars: The Old Republic only spent $200-$250 million and not only could you create an account to play, it has some pretty good voice acting!  Admittedly, over the past 14 months both Guild Wars 2 and Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn had to stop digital sales after launch due to demand, but that's because they just didn't have enough servers built.  All across the political spectrum of the U.S. media outlets are reporting that the design and coding of the exchanges left a lot to be desired.

Just from reading the coverage over the past 3 weeks I'm convinced that the policy makers thought that building a website as massive as Obamacare was easy.  Hey, Blizzard had 12 million players (when the law was passed) and the target insurance market is about 16 million.  All that's needed is throw money at the problem, and the government has a lot of that.  Easy, right?

Watching the technical train wreck makes me realize how easy companies like Blizzard, CCP, ArenaNet, NCSoft and SOE make running an incredibly complicated software project look.  Sure, we complain about bugs and lag and exploits, but I've never had an instance where I couldn't create an account and log into a game I'd just purchased.  I've read people complain about a lack of QA on game forums, but the Obamacare exchanges are giving me a greater appreciation of just how much goes right in order for us to play our games.