The Spy is in the Refridgerator!
April 13, 2009 3:17 PM   Subscribe

Bad Crazy in Internet Space
There is a jagged fissure of insanity which runs through the heart of the EVE playerbase, a kind of feverish bad crazy that you simply don't find in other online games. Oh, sure, everyone knows a tale or two about the Starcraft player who stayed awake for 50 hours and died from exhaustion because he wouldn't stop gaming, or the legions of relatively mundane overweight basement-dwelling nerds that populate the other MMOs that have a lack of perspective that comes from playing in virtual worlds too much. Some people like to point to South Korea's Starcraft tournaments as a sign of abnormality, but sporting leagues are a 'healthy' expression of hobby activity by most standards. No, if you want utter madness, you have to look to EVE.
The Mitanni, head of the Goonswarm Intelligence Agency, tells some tales from the dark underbelly of Eve Online. (previously)
posted by empath (109 comments total) 35 users marked this as a favorite
 
Internet spaceships is serious business.
posted by dopamine at 3:27 PM on April 13, 2009 [4 favorites]


I wasin GoonFleet/GoonSwarm for a while.

I got tired of EVE because it's really more on the side of playing an excel spreadsheet. I had spreadsheets for character progression (planned out almost 6 mos in advance!) and economic analysis spreadsheets for equipment. It just lost the fun. I was doing way more formula massaging in Excel than flying around blowing shit up.


Although I will say that the engine is vastly better now than it was a couple years ago. It runs much much much better on comparable hardware than the old engines.




The intrigue and high-level RP stuff is what keeps me reading about EVE though-- it's just that so few are actually capable of the devotion to pull off those capers or are privy to the 'inner circles' of these orgs that for the 'average' player, they never do anything close to this. grindgrindgrind.
posted by SeanMac at 3:29 PM on April 13, 2009 [4 favorites]


That's two tees, one n; kthxbai.
posted by Slothrup at 3:29 PM on April 13, 2009


it is due to the nature of the game. pvp loot games like eve, darkfall, asherons call, ultima online, merdian 59 etc etc have a distinctly different playerbase than World of Warcraft type games.
posted by Addiction at 3:30 PM on April 13, 2009


Yay, another EVE thread. I'm 90% sure I don't want to play EVE, but I love to read about it.
posted by Bookhouse at 3:32 PM on April 13, 2009 [29 favorites]


...an anomalous spy organization serving the thousands-strong, SomethingAwful.com-derived GoonSwarm alliance...

OK, that explains it. Of course it's crazy!
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 3:34 PM on April 13, 2009


EVE is one of those games where it seems much more fun to just watch the happenings of the world from the outside rather than participate in them. Nobody writes stories about all the time you spend doing boring things like traveling from A to B or looking at spreadsheets.
posted by ymgve at 3:36 PM on April 13, 2009


Good stuff. As an Eve Online player and a member of the MeFi corp Hurf Durf Moon Eaters, the game is fascinating even to just read about. Reading The Mittani's column, Sins of a Solar Spymaster will give a good flavor of the game.

If you want to try internet spaceships, drop me a note and I'll help you get started.
posted by Argyle at 3:37 PM on April 13, 2009 [7 favorites]


I joined EVE Online because of the last thread on the topic. There's a Metafilter corporation now. It's called "Hurf Durf Moon Eaters." We're based at Bourynes (in Gallente space), and thanks to my own stupid trash-talking, we've gotten war declared on us by a similarly-sized corporation in a neighboring solar system. (Hopefully the other MeFites won't kick me out because of this.)

It's ridiculously fun, and to my mind the spreadsheet aspect is a feature, not a bug.
posted by infinitywaltz at 3:37 PM on April 13, 2009 [1 favorite]


I have to think, if they ever made a game with an open world universe ala Eve with the Skinner box mechanics of World of Warcraft, it would be a controlled substance.

The main problem with Eve is that the entire fun part of the game is what's mentioned above. The actual gameplay is the closest thing I've ever seen to a job you have to pay to be a part of, a combination of ditch digging, long haul trucking and accounting.

But to have a game that is engaging at the micro and the macro level would almost be too good of a game. I have to wonder about the future.
posted by zabuni at 3:40 PM on April 13, 2009 [3 favorites]


They say it's a myth, but I've seen it. I've seen men go mad on the edge of the internet. They click too far. Follow too deep. Take of this what you will, but I know enough to leave. them. be.
posted by The Whelk at 3:40 PM on April 13, 2009 [13 favorites]


The game is indeed a job. I was helping administrate operations and strategic planning for a smallish corp last year and got so involved in making it "perfect" that I seriously felt like I was at the office.

So we arranged to have the corp merged into another which then went for a ride in the GBC, only to be there right as the great betrayal occurred. Needless to say, I did not have the time or energy to fight for Delve.

The effort that had to go into that operation, on both the Goon side and the BoB side makes my brain hurt. I know how much of a pain small-time logistics can be in EVE, and trying to take regions from a historically entrenched (albeit demoralized) enemy misht as well require timecards and 50+ hour work weeks.

Now I just pirate. Simple, fun, and it totally allows for one to experience the fringes of all the politics without truly having to deal with the headaches.
posted by dopamine at 3:45 PM on April 13, 2009 [1 favorite]


"Given the violence, loss, and (horror of horrors) math, it is only a certain sort of of monkey who not only ascends the nightmarish and Darwinian learning curve, but finds the process entertaining enough to stick around and play for more than a week. So this is EVE REAL LIFE, a galaxy filled with socially inept spreadsheet nerds on the one hand and obsessive, ambitious griefers on the other. Resources are limited and must be fought over, and the only way out is to quit entirely."
posted by Spacelegoman at 3:49 PM on April 13, 2009 [6 favorites]


formal apology now to the HDME, I had to back out cause my life decided to spaz out all at once
posted by The Whelk at 3:49 PM on April 13, 2009


Man, it does sound fun but also a huge time sink. If I had more free time I'd probably want to play it.
posted by delmoi at 3:51 PM on April 13, 2009


That was really entertaining to read about. My WoW stories pale in comparison.
posted by Nattie at 3:52 PM on April 13, 2009


I'm with bookhouse. You couldn't pay me to play EVE, but I love reading about it.
posted by lekvar at 3:54 PM on April 13, 2009 [1 favorite]


75 million ISK and all is forgiven, Whelk.
posted by infinitywaltz at 3:56 PM on April 13, 2009


"Don't touch that! Don't open the refrigerator! The spy is in the refrigerator!"
posted by nola at 3:59 PM on April 13, 2009


My mind goes into a sort of content vertigo whenever I hear about this sort of thing. Just the sheer amount of totally awesome happenings that I'll never get to see. Then I realise that this is just from one game, and there's that whole world out there and oh my god.
posted by lucidium at 4:00 PM on April 13, 2009 [20 favorites]


Eve is the only game I've ever played where I felt it was necessary to make sure no one could find out my real world identity from my character's name. People take the game very seriously.
posted by Nelson at 4:05 PM on April 13, 2009


If I ever hit the lottery, or otherwise come into fuck-you money, I'm going to play EVE. The level of strategizing and politicking fascinates me, even if I can objectively recognize that any level of success requires far more time investment than I'm willing to put into it.
posted by Tomorrowful at 4:07 PM on April 13, 2009 [2 favorites]


Metafilter: the spreadsheet aspect is a feature, not a bug.

Metafilter: it totally allows for one to experience the fringes of all the politics without truly having to deal with the headaches.

Metafilter: there's that whole world out there and oh my god.

I'm here all week, folks. Thankyouverymuch.
posted by hippybear at 4:16 PM on April 13, 2009 [1 favorite]


My mind goes into a sort of content vertigo whenever I hear about this sort of thing. Just the sheer amount of totally awesome happenings that I'll never get to see.

This is the same sort of feeling I get when I hear people talk about playing Civilization from dusk to dawn. For all my strategy gaming past, I never so much as played a minute of any Civilization game, and always wondered if I missed out on something really cool. Now, I simply don't have the time for it.
posted by jal0021 at 4:19 PM on April 13, 2009


Something else for Eve Voyeurs: Zero Punctuation reviews Eve Online
posted by Argyle at 4:21 PM on April 13, 2009 [6 favorites]


They say it's a myth, but I've seen it. I've seen men go mad on the edge of the internet. They click too far. Follow too deep. Take of this what you will, but I know enough to leave. them. be.

Hell, I been to the edge. Just looked like more space.
posted by The Tensor at 4:21 PM on April 13, 2009 [5 favorites]


The game is indeed a job. I was helping administrate operations and strategic planning for a smallish corp last year and got so involved in making it "perfect" that I seriously felt like I was at the office.

I've heard tell Second Life is kind of like this, except every so often you make enough real-world money to go buy yourself a smoothie.
posted by davejay at 4:21 PM on April 13, 2009 [2 favorites]


I'm with bookhouse and lekvar on this one, and I place it in the same realm as Dwarf Fortress in that while I would never play it, I love to read about it and I'm grateful every time a new story about it hits the main page! More please.
posted by barnacles at 4:22 PM on April 13, 2009 [1 favorite]


If the author could have refrained from using the word "monkey" in every other sentence, this article would be a lot more enjoyable for me. Still pretty interesting testament to online gaming in general.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 4:28 PM on April 13, 2009


Wow, the link at the end for time limited nature is also a fascinating read.
posted by delmoi at 4:30 PM on April 13, 2009


Recent skills I've trained in EVE Online:

Accounting
Metallurgy
Refinery Efficiency

...and I'm working toward learning Scrapmetal Processing.

For real.

Kinda excited about it, too.

I spent some time today in a battlecruiser camped outside the home station of the corp who war decced HDME, but no joy. No one undocked. Whussup, corpies?
posted by BitterOldPunk at 4:31 PM on April 13, 2009


Also, this:
The bad crazy goes beyond dropping 100 large on internet spaceships, though. About two years ago, Goonswarm was aiding our allies, Red Alliance (RA, the aforementioned 'rats' with whom SirLordex is cross) in the invasion of the Scalding Pass region against Lotka Volterra and their coalition. Lotka Volterra had unveiled one of the first Titans against us to catastrophic consequences, and at the time these profoundly silly ships were nearly impossible to kill through legitimate in-game means; they were essentially invulnerable, with the only Titans destroyed through catching the ship while the pilot was disconnected from the game. It was determined that 'The Enslaver' and his Avatar-class Titan had to go. I was approached by one of the leaders of Red Alliance to help make this happen, but almost immediately we were down the rabbit hole. Much to my surprise, the RA director didn't want in-game information from me; he wanted us to use the forensic resources of our intelligence agency to trace down The Enslaver's home address. At a coordinated time, armed with this information, a RA member would apparently cut the power to The Enslaver's house in the real world, and in EVE a RA capital fleet would assault the abruptly pilotless Titan. Yikes.
Is indeed nuts, but I'd put it in about the same ballpark as the people who have prostituted themselves for WoW mounts and gold.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 4:36 PM on April 13, 2009


argyle: If you want to try internet spaceships, drop me a note and I'll help you get started.

You should try recruiting over at MeFight Club. I'd love to join but I barely have time enough to balance social life, hobbies and work so adding something to the mix I would get completely sucked into like Eve is a recipe for disaster.

I do know a bunch of old timers. I should see if they're still playing and see if they'd be willing to make some mutually beneficial pacts.

Oh, and for those following at home, this thread on the official City of Heroes message board is the best place I've found for keeping tabs on the GoonSwarm conquest of Band of Brothers' former territory. The really good reporting, by Human_Being, starts on page 17.
posted by Kattullus at 4:37 PM on April 13, 2009 [8 favorites]


My wife, who wrangles spreadsheets about real world things, would undoubtedly kill me should she ever find me wasting my time on this thing.
posted by Artw at 4:38 PM on April 13, 2009


Is indeed nuts, but I'd put it in about the same ballpark as the people who have prostituted themselves for WoW mounts and gold.

This thread is useless without pictures.

The bad crazy goes beyond dropping 100 large on internet spaceships, though.

No, the 100k sounds about as crazy as it gets so far. I have no doubt that that amount of $ will be exceeded someday in some MMO, and maybe someone will figure out how to take $100,000 in real money to quickly build an in game organized crime hierarchy and extort enough virtual money out of players (pay X million ISK protection per month/year to get on our PvP exclusion list) to recoup 10x their investment.
posted by BrotherCaine at 4:59 PM on April 13, 2009


I wonder if any real-life hedge funds have invested in PLEX, isk, or Linden dollars.
posted by limeonaire at 5:04 PM on April 13, 2009


Oh wow, wrote too soon: There's apparently this.
posted by limeonaire at 5:07 PM on April 13, 2009 [4 favorites]


MeFight Club? I just signed up. This could be bad. So as a non-Eve player who is now seriously interested in this, is there hardcore economics at play here or is it more politics and alliances? If I could put some of my heavy lifting option trading training to use so it doesn't go to cobwebs I'd sign up. I really want to put my knowledge of gammas, betas and iron condors to work.
posted by geoff. at 5:07 PM on April 13, 2009 [1 favorite]


What doesn't tend to get the same kind of attention in these kind of threads is the pitch perfect atmosphere of the game. Maybe it's the isolation. You can't wander past a group of Guild Wars adventurers without being assaulted by a barrage of LOL-speak word bubbles. But out in your mining craft in some far flung sector, with maybe one or two mining buddies to keep you company, with your dog (IRL) in your lap, the whirr of the mining laser turning over... it's pretty good. That and the fact that you can (and often should) be attending to other things -- maps, market reports, etc -- the game got that right, too, in giving you lots to do at once if you want. And it looks simply beautiful.

No time for it, though.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 5:17 PM on April 13, 2009


Eve definitely sounds like too much for a casual player like me. Too bad, because it sounds like a MMO v. of Escape Velocity, which makes me very happy.
posted by brundlefly at 5:20 PM on April 13, 2009 [1 favorite]


is there hardcore economics at play here or is it more politics and alliances?

There's a pretty rich supply and demand economy in Eve that works more like a real market than any other online game I've played The markets are fragmented by region, too, so there's arbitrage opportunities and lots of Space Trucker vs. The Pirates fun to be had moving cargo around dangerous places. There's no way to implement derivatives or futures contracts last I checked, so no structured finance, although the Contracts system they added a year or so ago should allow for some form of collateralized debt.

You may find the Eve Econ Devblog posts interesting; dispatches about the Eve economy from a real live in-house economist.
posted by Nelson at 5:28 PM on April 13, 2009


If the author could have refrained from using the word "monkey" in every other sentence,

Given SoonSwarm's usual level of discourse, you should be grateful he wasn't referring to ISK making activities as "Jewing."
posted by rodgerd at 5:44 PM on April 13, 2009


"If I ever hit the lottery, or otherwise come into fuck-you money, I'm going to play EVE."

If I ever hit the lottery or come into fuck-you money, I'm going to pay you to play EVE for me. I'll make all the strategic decisions, you can do all the endless grinding, and you can interrupt my World of Warcraft session when something interesting happens.
posted by gd779 at 5:49 PM on April 13, 2009 [5 favorites]


Surely someone has worked through the protocols enough that they have bots which take care of the grind, right?
posted by adipocere at 6:15 PM on April 13, 2009


Surely someone has worked through the protocols enough that they have bots which take care of the grind, right?

That's a-bannin'.
posted by rodgerd at 6:37 PM on April 13, 2009


You couldn't pay me to play EVE, but I love reading about it.

I'd like to read some reviews of books written about it.
posted by StickyCarpet at 7:02 PM on April 13, 2009 [1 favorite]


How easy is it to actually extract wealth from EVE online? I mean, could you invest a few thousand dollars into an EVE corporation, have it grow, and then extract wealth from the economy on the Grey market on eBay? How difficult would that be, and risky would it be, given the possibility of the game runners wiping out your accounts?
posted by delmoi at 7:10 PM on April 13, 2009


geoff.: I've always wondered that about EVE players. From what I hear their spreadsheets aren't all that advanced — more bookkeeping, less option-pricing/risk. I don't play EVE (only vicariously), but I think it'd be interesting to see if it'd be feasible to set up a corporation which is little more than a trading-desk/exchange running futures contracts. Their spot minerals markets are highly volatile and a futures market that clears nightly would probably stabilize prices in the game. I suspect it's not done already because you might as well do that in real-life if you know how.
posted by amuseDetachment at 7:23 PM on April 13, 2009 [1 favorite]


Can you imagine if someone combined this sort of high level strat game with old fashioned RPG or FPS parts where you could, if you wanted, go on unscheduled espionage missions to fuck up the other corps? It would make WOW look like candy cigarettes in comparison to how fun it would be.

I already quit video games a few years ago...I think I'd have to quit internet if that happened just stay away from it.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 7:23 PM on April 13, 2009 [1 favorite]


Can you imagine if someone combined this sort of high level strat game with old fashioned RPG or FPS parts

The funny thing is that we did this almost 20 years ago on GEnie. Multiplayer Battletech. It combined the mechwarrior-like mech battles with a strategic layer in which the houses tried capture the other house's planets (and defend their own) with the eventual goal of capturing your enemy's capital world.

Needless to say my fellows and I spent a lot of time skiing on Tharkad after we took it from those Steiner pansies.

It's odd that gaming took a step backward after that and largely abandoned the dual-layer strategic/FPG (or RPG) hybrids. There have been other attempts... I think Dark Age of Camelot did something like this... but nothing on a very large scale.

I'd kill for an updated multiplayer Battletech. Whoever has the Battletech license is pissing away money by letting it sit idle. I yearn for the old days of crushing my enemies, seeing them driven before me, and hearing the lamentation of the women. And the men. Basically of everyone.
posted by Justinian at 7:35 PM on April 13, 2009 [5 favorites]


brundlefly: Eve definitely sounds like too much for a casual player like me. Too bad, because it sounds like a MMO v. of Escape Velocity, which makes me very happy.

Actually EVE would make you very happy. I've been playing it for about two months and decided to start building a small mining empire in high security space with just myself and another eager noob to keep me company. I play, perhaps, 2 hours per night after my wife goes to bed (we work different schedules) and then maybe 8 hours total over the weekend.

EVE can be a huge time sink, but it doesn't have to be -- you can have a fun rewarding game experience at almost any level of commitment. If you're interested, contact me or any of the members of HDME. We can set you up with a 21-day trial and some starter cash and ships. (You're certainly welcome to come play in my little 2-man corp if you're interested in mining)
posted by nathan_teske at 8:02 PM on April 13, 2009


I just let my account expire, and am taking a break. I'm in Goonfleet, and I must say it's fun to be part of a big storyline as it is happening. Those moments when you actually are a part of some big "pew pew" space battle, almost make up for the grind work and running from star system to star system, praying the next jump doesn't take you into a trap that some joyriding idiots have set up to make your day suck. Whoops, one wrong move and weeks if not months of work go down the drain. Sure, you can insure your ship, but it never covers how much time/money you really put into it.

I just got tired of having all sorts of fun, and then to have my ship I spent months on blown up trying to do the EVE equivalent of 'going across the street to get a quart of milk.'

I'll be back though, once my pride has healed a bit.
posted by chambers at 8:39 PM on April 13, 2009


The funny thing is that we did this almost 20 years ago on GEnie. Multiplayer Battletech. It combined the mechwarrior-like mech battles with a strategic layer in which the houses tried capture the other house's planets (and defend their own) with the eventual goal of capturing your enemy's capital world. [....] It's odd that gaming took a step backward after that and largely abandoned the dual-layer strategic/FPG (or RPG) hybrids. There have been other attempts... I think Dark Age of Camelot did something like this...

I was just thinking, yesterday, back to the time when I was playing Dark Age of Camelot, and read that somebody hooked up the RSS feeds from the Camelot Herald to send text messages to his phone so he'd be notified when his realm's keeps got captured. At the time, that seemed to me like way too much of a violation of the boundary between the virtual realm and the real world. Planning to cut somebody's electricity to take their in-game resources is, just... yikes.
posted by trunk muffins at 8:55 PM on April 13, 2009


MeFight Club? I just signed up.

Glad to hear it! We don't really have any organized group of Eve players at this stage, though, so I'd be sure to sign up with the Hurf Durf Moon Eaters, too (and any of them are of course welcome to join us at Mefight Club for some cross-pollenization!)
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 10:55 PM on April 13, 2009


I think where Eve falls down somewhat is that their tactical space is too spacey from a topologic perspective.

Being a WW2 aficionado I am intimately familiar with the dramas of eg. the Bismarck and Graf Spee, Iron Bottom Sound, and the naval battle for the Philippines, and I don't see (much of) this tactical-level texture at all in Eve. Just masses of fleets going at it like the card game of War.

I've been working off & on on my idea of what this type of space game should be so I'll leave it at that ;)
posted by mrt at 11:08 PM on April 13, 2009


The funny thing is that we did this almost 20 years ago on GEnie.

Ah, GEnie. I was just reminiscing about it the other day.

GemStone was my poison... that and forum politics. ::shakes fist at ZYMURGY and PALMS::
posted by Foosnark at 11:09 PM on April 13, 2009


Oh wow, wrote too soon: There's apparently this.

From link:

The fund seeks to achieve capital growth by engaging in virtual world currency arbitrage, as well as providing quotation services and liquidity at various virtual world currency markets.

I thought arbitrage required extremely low transaction costs to be successful. It seems like virtual to real world currency exchanges are antithetical to this.
posted by BrotherCaine at 11:43 PM on April 13, 2009


My WoW stories pale in comparison.

True that.

They pale in comparison to The Saga Of My Last Trip To A Convenience Store and they Were Sold Out of MTN Dew Code Red: The Quest For Red Fizz

or

The Epic of My Most Recent Bowel Movement: A Grunter's Tale .

I kid, I kid. Games are a fun occasional diversion. Enjoy!
posted by sourwookie at 12:42 AM on April 14, 2009 [1 favorite]


I tried EVE for about a week before I got bored - because as much as I love sci-fi, spaceships, MMOs and the Internet, if you're joining as a total newbie who doesn't know anyone ingame, all you get to do is mine asteroids.

Maybe I'll give this MeFi corp a shot!
posted by Xany at 1:20 AM on April 14, 2009


BrotherCaine: I think that's just fancy talk for undercutting retail price by the game creators/host. At least that's what Second Life currency exchanges were like when I last checked. No one does any currency transactions on SL anymore, because they shut down gambling (and thereby ruined the major economy of SL).
posted by amuseDetachment at 1:37 AM on April 14, 2009


I was just thinking, yesterday, back to the time when I was playing Dark Age of Camelot, and read that somebody hooked up the RSS feeds from the Camelot Herald to send text messages to his phone so he'd be notified when his realm's keeps got captured. At the time, that seemed to me like way too much of a violation of the boundary between the virtual realm and the real world. Planning to cut somebody's electricity to take their in-game resources is, just... yikes.

The thing I find most interesting is how many people are jaded about MMO 'stuff' that it takes something like that to get their attention. I find it bizarre that people in the big territorial corps have things like telephone trees and alarm clock ops. You know something? At 4 in the morning I'm either asleep, having sex, or drinking with friends. I am not waking up for a fucking POS seige. I am not having someone ring me at work to tell me I need to get online to save a Titan or whatever.

MMOs in general, and Eve in particular, can do a great job of warping what people see as extraordinary; Mittens will have been a regular on stuff I wouldn't touch with a barge pole, so it takes actually cutting power to someone's house to give him a WTF? moment.

I play, perhaps, 2 hours per night after my wife goes to bed (we work different schedules) and then maybe 8 hours total over the weekend.

Dude, that's nearly 20 hours a week. That's half a full time job playing one game. That's not low commitment.
posted by rodgerd at 2:33 AM on April 14, 2009 [2 favorites]


If MMOs are jobs that you have to pay for, I get the impression that EVE would be like working for some organization straight out of Kafka / Brazil.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 3:00 AM on April 14, 2009


Whoever has the Battletech license is pissing away money by letting it sit idle.

At first, I thought it was Wizards of the Coast. I looked it up and it's a leeettle bit complicated, but according to the Wikipedia page it went from FASA to WizKids, from here it gets dicey. Possibly Catalyst Games has the rights. If not it went to Topps then to Tornante & Madison Dearborn Partners.

One thing is for sure, somebody is just sitting on goldmine and probably have no idea.
posted by P.o.B. at 3:12 AM on April 14, 2009


EVE does seem to have a dubious advantage as far as gameplay goes. With a lot of the mechanisms being organically evolved from player interactions, it goes to show - for me at least - that hardcore gamers aren't the best game developers ;) Bad Crazy indeed.

It would be fun to be a part of it, I'm sure, but as with all MMORPGs, the time sink factor makes it a no-go.
posted by flippant at 3:28 AM on April 14, 2009


I decided a couple of weeks ago that I wanted to try both EVE and Lord of the Rings Online.


I'm glad that I tried Lord of the Rings Online first.
posted by spirit72 at 5:52 AM on April 14, 2009


What I'd like to know is: where are all the asshats from the Doga thread screaming about stupid yuppies/boomers with their outrageous disposable income throwing away money on getting dogs to do yoga? How is spending disposable income on getting FAKE disposable income in a FAKE galaxy to wage FAKE WAR FOR FUCK'S SAKE any better? I mean I'm half kidding here but how about some load balancing on the outrage?
posted by spicynuts at 6:05 AM on April 14, 2009


I started playing Eve around December and I have to say it's a fun time. I met another newb who lives in Colorado via a market accident and we ran missions for a few days until we fell for a can flip and got blown up by the PvP wing of [EBMA]. One of the other EBMA members felt bad for us, so he gave us some cash to buy some decent cruisers and we ended up joining the corporation.

One of the nice things about Eve is that if you stick in high security Empire space, it really doesn't take up that much of your time. Your character accumulates skill points whether you log on or not, and research and construction jobs are zero maintenance. Part of the fun for me is seeing all that accumulated time turn into bigger and bigger structures, sort of like gardening. Our corp recently got an Orca, which is the biggest mining ship in the game and easily represents hundreds if not thousands of real world US dollars worth of monthly fees, construction, and material costs. Watching that thing have its way with a hunk of rock and depositing small mountains of material into our corp's refinery is a good time.

With regard to the comments about ships being blown up, there's a saying in game: don't get anything you can't afford two of. It's good advice not just in game, but for real life as well.
posted by thalakan at 6:15 AM on April 14, 2009


I got caught up in that HDME war. That station-camping corp that declared war on us frustrated me enough to drop the game alltogether. The basic missioning is fun enough, but once you get into PVP you have to invest a lot of effort and time into training your and your characters skills to not get killed all the time; you really have to bring more frustration tolerance than I can muster right now.

The game architecture apparently encourages this kind of dickish behaviour, so "griefing" is seen as a natural part of the game. I want to play games to secape sociopathic assholes thriving on the frustration of others, not to seek them out.
posted by kolophon at 6:35 AM on April 14, 2009


where are all the asshats from the Doga thread screaming about stupid yuppies/boomers with their outrageous disposable income throwing away money on getting dogs to do yoga? How is spending disposable income on getting FAKE disposable income in a FAKE galaxy to wage FAKE WAR FOR FUCK'S SAKE any better?

Well, at least playing space spreadsheets doesn't embarrass your dog.
posted by Spatch at 6:38 AM on April 14, 2009 [2 favorites]


Eve definitely sounds like too much for a casual player like me.

Oh, I'd suggest giving it a try. IMNSHO it has game mechanics that are considerably more "casual friendly" than World of Warcraft. Even with all the complaining about how WoW made endgame content considerably easier than past expansions, you are still looking at a good 100 hours of playing time to develop your character, then grinding a lottery to get the blue, purple and orange loot, while spending time out of the game to theorycraft the minmaxing of your character to a specific role.

In EVE, well, at the end of your first week you can be flying one of the highest-rated PvP craft in the game. Skill training happens mostly offline, so if I log in every few days, I'm still developing my character. And while you can play the aggressive economic game of monopoly, it's quite possible to make money as a small mom-and-pop industry.

While WoW is a game that depends greatly on player achievement and gear, EVE is much more balanced towards player smarts and skill. In WoW, venturing outside of the newbie zones means almost certain death, the leveling mechanic is such a dominant feature of the game that a level 20 mob can slaughter a level 10 character before he or she has a chance to run. In EVE, your best defenses for surviving in lowsec space are your skills in reading a map, and using the scanner.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 7:32 AM on April 14, 2009 [2 favorites]


Watching that thing have its way with a hunk of rock and depositing small mountains of material into our corp's refinery is a good time.

All due respect, but of all the things I've read about EVE, this comment does more than anything else to convince me it would never be my idea of fun, but what the hell. I'm sure I spend 20 hours a week-- at least-- online, probably half of that reading Mefi.

But spreadsheets are something I would have a hard time getting passionate about.
posted by jokeefe at 7:37 AM on April 14, 2009


"
In EVE, well, at the end of your first week you can be flying one of the highest-rated PvP craft in the game."


no way you can do that. Training skills to fly a high-rated pvp ship takes weeks to months, not counting the money you have to accumulate to buy it with a decend fitting.
posted by kolophon at 7:54 AM on April 14, 2009


All due respect, but of all the things I've read about EVE, this comment does more than anything else to convince me it would never be my idea of fun, but what the hell. I'm sure I spend 20 hours a week-- at least-- online, probably half of that reading Mefi.

Well, that's one of the nice things about the game. After you do your initial starting missions, you never have to touch a mining laser again. EVE, in my opinion, offers quite a bit of variety in what you can do in the game. Think about it this way, mining, industry and trade exist within the game in addition to the PVE and PVP elements that are traditional in other MMORPGs. And unlike WoW, they are actually independently viable.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 8:06 AM on April 14, 2009


With regard to the comments about ships being blown up, there's a saying in game: don't get anything you can't afford two of. It's good advice not just in game, but for real life as well.

I guess I should just give up on finding a girlfriend then.
posted by spicynuts at 8:14 AM on April 14, 2009 [1 favorite]


All due respect, but of all the things I've read about EVE, this comment does more than anything else to convince me it would never be my idea of fun, but what the hell. I'm sure I spend 20 hours a week-- at least-- online, probably half of that reading Mefi.

After the first few minutes it does get kind of boring. What I'm really doing is keeping an eye on that on one monitor, chatting with friends / running missions on another monitor, and doing actual work on a third monitor.

The payoff comes at the end of the day, when a tool I use adds another row to a table which shows how much stuff just got added to our corp hanger. Honestly, mining and other resource acquisition tasks can feel like a second job sometimes, but knowing that those resources are going into building Awesome Things makes it worthwhile. This goes double now that we have wormholes and a new exploration bent to the game.

At work we have very large (47") touchscreen panels, and sometimes my co-workers and I will make an ad-hoc group after hours and run risky missions on them. When we set those up in the lab and have the designated fleet commander trying to keep things organized by barking orders, it sort of does feel like I'm crew on an Internet Spaceship. If it wasn't for those experiences, I'd get bored of all the resourcing pretty fast.
posted by thalakan at 8:15 AM on April 14, 2009


kolophon: no way you can do that. Training skills to fly a high-rated pvp ship takes weeks to months, not counting the money you have to accumulate to buy it with a decend fitting.

T1 frigates, especially the Rifter are highly recommended for PvP combat and piracy as they are cheap to replace and get the job done. Not everyone in the game is flying expensive T2 ships and fittings for high-risk combat.
The Rifter is considered to be one of the best (if not the best) T1 combat frigate of choice for PvP activities. With it's ability to fit an impressive amount of weapons, essential PvP modules, and a strong armor tank the Rifter is a first pick for PvP frigate combat by many pilots, new and experienced. evelopedia
I've had huge success with this setup. You have the ability to change out all t2's with named if you aren't able to fit them. EMP S is in cargo in case you come up against shield tankers and just for general versatility in damage type.

This setup is for killing other frigs and cruisers. Orbit at 500m and most medium turrets won't be able to track you. Little cap dependency, great damage, good tank. Battleclinic.net
posted by KirkJobSluder at 8:25 AM on April 14, 2009


Dayum. There's an all MeFi corp now? I might just have to start an alt since I don't want to leave my present alliance. Awesome.

Also, anyone who thinks that they can't do anything but mine asteroids for their first week in the game, it's just not true. You really can be PvP'ing within a couple hours' time if you want, but the trick is you've gotta talk to people. Weed out the idiots, they're obvious enough. If you try to lone-wolf it you'll take a LOT longer to get anything done and it WILL feel like grinding.

My personal complaint with the game is the same as any online game - you'll be going along enjoying yourself in a small gang, thinking these guys are pretty cool and hey we're having some fun here, and then one of them will just suddenly pop out the most offensive sexist/racist/nazi/whatever comment imaginable, and whoa hey, now everybody's chuckling and joining in the contest to be the biggest asshole.

I gotta figure the Eve demographic is mostly composed of ridiculously insecure 18-25 guys who don't get out much, and at those moments it really shows.
posted by dragstroke at 9:19 AM on April 14, 2009 [1 favorite]


Mmm, Rifters. They used to be tasty snacks for my Crow. (Now shut up all you, or I'm gonna have to reactivate my account).
posted by Nelson at 9:20 AM on April 14, 2009


GemStone was my poison

I was a GM in GemStone and (particularly) Dragonrealms - for those who don't know, being a GM for a MMORPG back then wasn't the glorified customer service job it is now, we actually coded the game with the proprietary coding language - and a bunch of the other GMs who were more active in GS are good friends of mine. Yes, almost 20 years later.

Boy we sure took our gaming more seriously when we were paying $6 an hour for it. Monthly gaming bills of $600+ were common. $1000+ were not THAT unusual. Not for me, thank god, but for a lot of people.
posted by Justinian at 10:18 AM on April 14, 2009


Huh, Foosnark, if you were Shalnhh then I actually knew you, albeit not that well. I believe we even met at Simucon. Didn't you work for Simu?
posted by Justinian at 10:21 AM on April 14, 2009


Wow, GEnie. I spent hours and hours on that thing back in my teenage days. I played Gemstone on there as Quickpick. Spent a lot of time in Air Warrior as well. And I was really active on the "CB Simulator" forums as KOMPUTER KIDD. Just the other day I was wondering what happened to all the folks I used to hang out with online when I was 17.
posted by smoothvirus at 11:52 AM on April 14, 2009 [1 favorite]


Not to mention the late night chats I used to have with Tom Clancy, Wil Wheaton, J. Michael Straczynski, and even Leslie Nielsen. Those were the days.
posted by smoothvirus at 11:57 AM on April 14, 2009 [1 favorite]


I used to be on GEnie, too :) Hung around on the sci-fi forums. Got Bob Weinberg to write me into a Vampire: The Masquerade novel as a character, lol.
posted by empath at 2:18 PM on April 14, 2009


In EVE, well, at the end of your first week you can be flying one of the highest-rated PvP craft in the game.

LolWut? as the kids say.

T1 frigates, especially the Rifter are highly recommended for PvP combat and piracy as they are cheap to replace and get the job done.

Yeah, until you run into light drones. Or want to fight under gate guns. Or, well, just about anything. Yes, if you have excellent real-world skills (which you won't get in a week), and select your targets carefully (which you won't do in a week), a Rifter can be awesome.

And if you spend a few more week's training, a Jag will shit all over it. Never mind a droneboat.
posted by rodgerd at 4:44 PM on April 14, 2009


Update on the MeFi corp: we're getting our collective asses kicked by some rinky-dink little corp in the system next door.

I got podded last night and lost my lovely, lovely T2-rigged mission-running Drake.

I fucking hate EVE Online. Fucking hate it. Stupid fucking MMO making me lose fucking sleep over a fucking imaginary spaceship. Fuck.

OK, I'm just gonna log in for a little while to set a skill and check the markets...
posted by BitterOldPunk at 5:18 PM on April 14, 2009 [3 favorites]


Is Sesfan really number one? Cuz that's what I've heard.
posted by hellphish at 5:57 PM on April 14, 2009


An ex of mine was apparently a high-end healer on Gemstone. Whenever I think I maybe spend too much time on WoW, I think back to her Gemstone sessions.
posted by Pope Guilty at 10:50 PM on April 14, 2009


Update on the MeFi corp: we're getting our collective asses kicked by some rinky-dink little corp in the system next door.

Agony PVP Basics courses for all!
posted by rodgerd at 11:57 PM on April 14, 2009



My WoW stories pale in comparison.

I wrote an account of my days as a raider in WoW for a writing class a couple of weeks back. My classmates had shared very personal stories of therapy, drug use, run in with the law and so forth without arousing the sort of open mouthed, wide-eyed, disbelief my years in a mediocre raiding guild engendered. One dude thought I was writing an LSD inspired parody of the game. THIS takes that sort of crazy way beyond anything I could have imagined. It all sounds very cool and I am sure I must never try EVE.
posted by Tashtego at 12:30 AM on April 15, 2009 [1 favorite]


Not to mention the late night chats I used to have with Tom Clancy, Wil Wheaton, J. Michael Straczynski, and even Leslie Nielsen. Those were the days.

I got to talk to Jim Davis, Patricia C. Wrede, and the future Art Director for Baldur's Gate!
posted by The Whelk at 8:45 AM on April 15, 2009


And that's why I stick to news, gadgets and porn.
posted by deusdiabolus at 8:50 AM on April 15, 2009


Whenever I think I maybe spend too much time on WoW, I think back to her Gemstone sessions.

There was never such a thing as too much Gemstone. Real life was just a way to earn money to support your Gemstone habit.
posted by Justinian at 9:56 AM on April 15, 2009


No, see, that's what my job was for.
posted by Pope Guilty at 11:53 AM on April 15, 2009


In WoW, venturing outside of the newbie zones means almost certain death, the leveling mechanic is such a dominant feature of the game that a level 20 mob can slaughter a level 10 character before he or she has a chance to run.

This is my least favorite thing about most MMORPGs, how level affects most of your chances of success more than anything else. Even a five level difference can be lethal to your chances of success, and with 60-70 levels to advance through, a L70 character is literally thousands of times more powerful, all told than a L1.

In real life, fighting is risky. No matter how skilled you are, someone getting in a lucky shot can hurt, even potentially kill you. The near-invulnerability when you're at relatively high levels possibly causes more griefing behavior than anything else.

Are there any games out there that feature slow character growth and more randomized combat? Yeah, I know, I'm asking about the opposite of World of Warcraft so, probably, no.
posted by JHarris at 1:47 PM on April 15, 2009 [1 favorite]


Are there any games out there that feature slow character growth and more randomized combat?

No, most gamers prefer to be rewarded for success.
posted by Pope Guilty at 2:41 PM on April 15, 2009


But it's not success they're being rewarded for, it's raw time being put into the game. Paying your dues (literally, in the form of subscription fees). Little about World of Warcraft, or any MMORPG really, is skill based, except maybe hard character choices and PvP. Hearing a friend brag about reaching level 70 seems a hollow achievement to me. This is one of the big reasons EVE Online is fascinating, these people obviously -are- skilled.

Slow character growth would lessen the difference between characters who have spent both short and large amounts of time in the game, decreasing the need to have weird level-adjustments to keep teamed players compatible in instances. More randomized combat would increase the risks associated with griefing, plus would get low-level characters more of a real chance against high-level foes. Balanced well, it would give expert players (as opposed to characters) a better challenge, while inexperienced players could still take their time rising up the ranks as they learn the game. And it needn't necessarily feel to the player that he's advancing slowly; the difference in real power could be made up in what I'll call "feelies," advantages and perks that don't influence combat.
posted by JHarris at 3:09 PM on April 15, 2009


Are there any games out there that feature slow character growth and more randomized combat? Yeah, I know, I'm asking about the opposite of World of Warcraft so, probably, no.

Four of the things that are attractive to me about Eve are (a) skill progression is a function of time, not effort, so while people have been playing longer will have access to better equipment and be able to use it more effectively, you don't get anything (except money) from playing 12 hours a day; (b) skill progression is by diminishing returns, so a simple (rank 1) skill takes about a week to train completely, but you get the first 80% of it in the first day or two of training - this means that new characters can quickly access a high level of functionality in their first few months in game; and (c) there are niche ships and roles that can be trained for relatively quickly and can act as force multipliers for new players - examples that spring to mind are electronic warfare, logistics ships (the Eve analogue of healers), remote-rep Domis. Again, all of those specialised roles can be trained for relatively quickly and can be surprisingly effective. Finally, (d) there are relatively few ships that are solopwnmobiles - an explicit goal of game balance is that ships hould fill roles, not be good in every situation.

A swarm of noobs in low-end ships (cruisers, especially) can, with good tactics and leadership, take down most ships. Titans and Motherships would be exceptions; people regularly try and wpe out Agony frigate classes with battleships, and routeinly get owned.
posted by rodgerd at 3:46 PM on April 15, 2009 [1 favorite]


This is my least favorite thing about most MMORPGs, how level affects most of your chances of success more than anything else.

I started playing a bit of CoH, got used to owning anything in Atlas Park (admittedly not that hard), then wandered over to a neighbouring district and tried to stop a purse-snatcher. He promptly put me in the hospital. It's not so much fun taking on a higher-level opponent when you can't even land a punch.

skill progression is a function of time, not effort, so while people have been playing longer will have access to better equipment and be able to use it more effectively, you don't get anything (except money) from playing 12 hours a day

Yet being able to do a bunch of other things while playing Eve meant I was online far more than I would have been otherwise. At least mining or hauling freight or even -- though sometimes with consequences -- pirating.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 5:10 PM on April 15, 2009 [1 favorite]


Four of the things that are attractive to me about Eve are (a) skill progression is a function of time, not effort

What you see as a plus I see as the reason I've never tried Eve: Skill progression being a function of time means that I could never, ever, ever, under any circumstances catch up to people who joined before me in terms of skills. Not interested in that, thanks.

Effort should be rewarded.
posted by Justinian at 11:36 PM on April 15, 2009


Justinian, Eve's not really like that. Skill training does make for a better pilot but the gap isn't that big, and fleet composition and specific ship choices are more important to any particular encounter than skill points. A week-old frigate pilot can actually make a difference in a fight if he knows how to use a warp jammer, playing a pivotal role in locking down the fancy T2 battleship pilot.

Where effort pays off in Eve is cash. If you spend a lot of time you can make a lot of ISK and afford to fly better ships. It's really quite different from other MMOs and I wish other games would learn from it.
posted by Nelson at 7:37 AM on April 16, 2009


MeFi EVE Corp Update II, the Embiggening:

War dec is off. Carebears such as myself can return to mining and missioning. Peace reigns, unicorns frolic, rainbows taste like candy.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 2:26 PM on April 16, 2009 [1 favorite]


And hopefully we've all learned some valuable lessons on escaping gate and station camps.

Hurf Durf Moon Eaters: Victory Through Pathos!
posted by infinitywaltz at 4:12 PM on April 16, 2009


I don't suppose you guys could be convinced to keep a corporate blog or something so that us EVE spectators could follow along?
posted by Kattullus at 4:48 PM on April 16, 2009 [2 favorites]


Seconding Kattullus.
posted by JHarris at 5:56 PM on April 16, 2009


And hopefully we've all learned some valuable lessons on escaping gate and station camps.

Did any HDME member successfully escape a gate or station camp? Please impart those lessons, cuz I just kept gettin' blowed up.

Kattullus/JHarris: I'm willing to toss up an HDME blog on Blogger, and if any other corp members would like to participate they can EVE-mail me for access. Or, if they have a better hosting solution or want to do it themselves or whatever.

I'll probably get to this sometime over the weekend and post the URL here when it's up and running.

There's a myriad of EVE blogs of varying quality out there already -- I recommend The Ancient Gaming Noob (also posts about WOW, Pokemon, and Lego -- evidently he has kids), Warp Drive Active, Winterblink, Morphisat's Blog, Miner With Fangs (by the former head of EVE University), and, for a pirate's perspective, Flashfresh.

For shits and giggles, also check out omgrawr.net.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 6:38 PM on April 16, 2009


Well, I've always been fond of training Infomorph Psychology so you can clone jump around multiple bases depending on what you want to do.

Logging in space if you expect to be station camped is effective, albeit riskier with the new probing system.

It depends on what you're trying to achieve, though.
posted by rodgerd at 7:59 PM on April 16, 2009


Did any HDME member successfully escape a gate or station camp? Please impart those lessons, cuz I just kept gettin' blowed up.

I did on a regular basis while the war was on. Eventually I even started actually hassling them by buzzing past their camps on a regular basis and posting messages like "Zooooooooom," "Wheeeeeeeee" and "¡Ándale! ¡Arriba! ¡Arriba!" in #local and then stealing their cans in the belts.

I only got blown up twice. Once when I tried to camp their station, knowing there was only one person docked inside, and another one warped in and blew me up. I could have escaped, but I tried to engage, and we simply lobbed missiles at each other. He had bigger missiles and better shields, so I 'sploded. The other time I got blown up was at a gate camp right after the war started. I hadn't realized that war-declared corporate members have a special icon in #local, so I thought I was taking advantage of an opportunity by hiding cloaked next to the gate camp and meticulously adding all of the enemy members to my address book. I was almost done with this when I came out of cloak and was immediately blown up and pod-killed.

I'll write down some of my advice for jumping past camps and post it on the HDME forums tonight. I also have some advice for escaping a pod-killing after getting your ship blown up; it's actually pretty easy once you bypass your instinct to head for the nearest shelter.
posted by infinitywaltz at 11:04 AM on April 17, 2009 [2 favorites]


Oh, and as an aside, I'd love to blog some of our exploits! Especially once we've had some exploits to blog about.

We should put something up in Projects!
posted by infinitywaltz at 12:18 PM on April 17, 2009


The Mittani's newest column has this to say about being a newbie in Eve:
Most newbies think that a terrible grind is required in EVE because newbies are 'powerless', or because other MMOs insist that you hit wolves with a sword for hours on end before you can level up. The greatest thing about EVE is that you are able to think yourself out of almost any situation; your best weapon is your mind, and you're pitting your wits against other humans, rather than pixelated monsters. While in the Bad Old Days, the deck was stacked against the newbie, in this day and age the only thing holding back a newbie is a lack of imagination, daring, or cunning.
It almost makes me want to give up my hobbies in exchange for Eve.
posted by Kattullus at 6:37 PM on April 20, 2009


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