Greedy Goblin

Friday, March 30, 2012

The singing ransom

Do you know what a singing ransom is? The griefers tackle a ship. Ask the pilot to come on voice chat. Tell him that if he sings a song his ship will be spared. They record the "song" and then put it on the internet for public amusement and to humiliate the victim. They kill him after that of course and if he rages or tells "why? I did what you asked", they record it too and publish that for even more amusement.

What shall you do when someone tackles your ship and demands ransom? Fire everything you have, wait a second and leave ship. If you are lucky, he doesn't notice your capsule until destroyed the ship and even if he does, his weapons are on their cooldown cycle. This way you can save your implants and your dignity.

People are surprised by the action of CCP to ban The Mittani from the game for 30 days and removing him from the CSM, despite getting 10K votes. Especially that he apologized. This post perfectly describe how many times CCP failed to stop the disaster coming. They saw the slides. They could have moderated the event. They could have delayed the stream. They did nothing and now they put the blame on a guy. How unjust is that?

The speech happened 4 days ago. If they were honestly outraged over the act, they would have banned him instantly. If they were not, but a CEO (a real one, not a silly spaceship clan leader) told them to be, they would have banned him on Monday, at worst at the end of the workday. One workday is more than enough to hold an emergency meeting with media analysts, lawyers and marketing gurus, other CSM members.

How naive can you be to believe that? How naive the "spymaster", the "King of Space" could be to believe in his "mandate"?

The Goons, lead by The Mittani are nothing but trouble for CCP. They are not conquerors, they are not pirates. Conquerors need mining slaves/workers. Pirates need loot. They make content for little guys. Goons are griefers. They farm tears. Tears are taking away content. CCP shown many time that they are not Goons, but Goblins. They want profit. The Goons are just bad for business. For every Goon player, there are a dozen who left EVE because of them or didn't join because of its bad name made by Goons. Someone, probably in SONY gave the order: "The Goon behavior must go". For public success, EVE must be a place of war, not war crime. Fighting and running from pirates is fun. Being pointlessly ganked is not. If I knock out a guy in the ring, I get a champion belt and cheers. If I beat up a kid on the street, I get to prison and even my family disown me. Most people understand the difference. Goons don't. They would even call the heavyweight champion carebear for not hitting kids and tell him HTFU.

But how to remove the Goons? They are not only 3-5% of the playerbase, but very vocal and known to be bad people. If they just change ToS or the game rules to make griefing impossible, the Goons would not only make a forum nightmare, but probably also DoS attacks, hacks. To make it worse, many players don't see the difference between griefing and pirating and would assume that CCP will stop them too. EVE could easily lose all of its nullsec population on the banning of Goons. And who the hell in his right mind would remove 10+K paying accounts? The goonism must go, not the players.

The trap was set. The slides were accepted, probably even encouraged. Alcohol was supplied in great deal. Friendly audience assembled. All they needed is The Mittani to do something stupid. A drunken egomaniac front of cheering crowd making something stupid isn't a long shot.

But even if they had a reason to ban him, the Goons would be in uproar. So first, they made him sing. They told him that he can keep his CSM position, the one he fought so hard for if he apologize. So he did, destroying his credibility before the Goons and also making him unable to share the blame. He could have told "you saw the slides and OK-ed it", but now, after accepting full responsibility, he can't. They left him tackled for 4 days, making him beg and sing for his shiny little pixel mandate he grinded so hard for.

I think they enjoyed it. I'm sure they hated the guy hard for constantly messing with their game, scaring customers away. These developers lose their real life job, the investors lose their real life money if EVE goes down, and some punk named Alex came along and tried to destroy it "just for lulz". Spare me from "The Mittani did so much for the community" comments, community don't pay the bills, subscribers do. If I close my eyes I can see them reading the apology. The audience of the alliance panel had the same face when presented with singing ransoms.

What will happen now? We seen it enough times. The Hulk pilot who sings for Goons won't dare to fly anything expensive again. He becomes paranoid. He abandons his "great" plans of an Orca. He don't log in for some time. Maybe he continues playing, but will never be the same again. His person, not his avatar is broken by the song of shame. Maybe the Goons find a new charismatic leader who will lead them to evil. It will be hard as the fate of The Mittani will force the leader to always think twice if he is over the line or not. Maybe they won't find any and fade into "just another alliance warring for nullsec sov". But for the short run, their Jita madness is postponed and that's great news for CCP.

When Tobold wrote that this event will be the end of PvP games, he couldn't be more wrong. It's the very dawn of them. The developers found a way to get rid of the few bad eggs who make these games unwelcoming to the wide audience. Competitive players are playing to win. I won't gank your ship, even when I'll have the resources to do it thousand times. Why? What's the point? Actually I'll give you ships to haul for me, to mine for me, to guard the gates of my empire. Most griefing lolkids are unable to grow big enough to be a problem. They now found the way to handle the few who could grow to be a pain: as they play for ego, they are not after pixel spaceships but real life people. All the game company needs is to let them do something real life atrocious and they are out by real life laws. Remember, if the person behind The Wiz avatar would really commit suicide, Alex (not the pixel Mittani) would go to jail for long time.

What can we learn from this? The enemy of the "evil" is not "good". The helpful, sharing "good" is by definition weak to fight "evil". The bane of "evil" is the selfish goblin who coldly calculates his move, who sees people as resources. He protect the useful ones and destroys the loose cannons.


Business report: 2.5B (0.4B gifts) Remember that you can participate in our EVE conversations and soon group activities on the "goblinworks" channel.

40 comments:

IO said...

Wrong. You don't have a clue who are Goons other than from public media :)

Current goons are the largest alliance in the game, leading the largest coalition of other alliances. They DO create contents. They also DO attract so many new players into the game. Goons are actually more healthy to the game than some old elite alliances.

Also they have a culture of griefing and spamming local, which isn't nice, but well it's a game, there always 'bad guys'.

Also disclaimer: I am not in goonswarm though I am in CFC.

Babar said...

Did you read his announcement that he was stepping down as CSM Chairmain? There Mittani basically said that being the leader of Goonswarm and being CSM Chair is incompatible, and that giving that up opens up new options for goons. Then he was kicked off CSM all together.

The Jita Holocaust thing was also planned long before this happened. When CSM voting started, Mittani promised a weekend of Jita burning if he got 10k votes. He did, so that was the plan all along.

However, do you really think kicking Mittani of CSM will somehow make goons grief less? If anything, goons are probably now trying to think of ways to ruin the game as much as possible for CCP. This also leaves Goonswarm free to wardec corporations of the CSM members that called for him being kicked.

Gevlon said...

@IO: even if I get my "goon" picture from the Public Media, that's enough reason for CCP to terminate them, even if they are totally innocent. You know, the prospective new players know everything of the game from the Public Media.

@Babar: the step down was part of the "song". CCP probably told them "step down from chair and you can stay inside". It's like
1: dump your cargo
2: give me 50M ransom
3: sing me a song
4: DIE

The goons will be more grief less because The Mittani loses his spirit. He either quit soon and then the Goons have a civil war for power, or he goes berserk and make stupid mistakes that make the goons lose lot of ISK and turn them into laughing stocks.

Goons won't wardec anyone. They kill rookie ships and Hulks, wouldn't mess with anyone who can set up an able fleet.

IO said...

Gevlon, seriously, stop posting about things you have no clue about.

"Goons won't wardec anyone. They kill rookie ships and Hulks, wouldn't mess with anyone who can set up an able fleet."

Check current 0.0 alliance situation, rethink what you posted. Goonswarm is leading largest coalition in game which has 1000 vs 1000 man fights almost every week. The only single alliance that is more powerful is AAA. Every other coalition is bitching about the CFC swarm - 2-3 full fleets of maelstroms and drakes.

Media picture is based on goons image 5 years ago. A lot have changed since then, y'know.

And getting banned for creating image of EVE being ruthless and cold.. good luck with such dreams :)

Kana said...

Goons exists from 2006, they seen many "destroy the Evil Goons" crusades, and still alive to be smug. EVE will be very interesting for next couple of months.

Anonymous said...

The fanfest video in full if you want to watch the "train wreck" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvo08_uYjHI.

Personally I just thought is that it? 3 drunken clowns and an audience that cant wait to leave and didnt.

Also I read enough somethingawful and suddenly ninja to know that a ransom request in eve is an insult. My response to it will be to destroy my ship and pod to deny them the kill mails. Then I will log out.

Gevlon said...

@Kana: NO ONE, especially not CCP want to destroy goons. They want to domesticate them by emasculating their leader.

Kana said...

@Gevlon: We will see, if Goons will continue making news, but stop harassing players it's win for everyone.
BTW if they still manage to pull they "Burn Jita" plan, maybe there will be some profit opportunities in other trade hubs for prepared goblin, while most jita traders whine/ragequit... What do you think?

Babar said...

Gevlon, Goonswarm is currently at war with Raiden., one of the most powerful alliances in the game. There are daily battles, where Goonswarm can field 3-4 full fleets (256 in each). There are also weekly skirmishes with Nc. Saying that Goons don't do large scale war is either blatant lies or pure ignorance. They also have a long history of large scale wars.

Also, Goonswarm is organized through forums, IM clients and voice communication. Banning Mittani does not in any way stop him from still leading Goonswarm. If anything, it makes them more determined than ever.

You're vastly underestimating Goonswarm, and you don't seem to understand what goons do. You have the same view of goons as most of the uninformed public does. It's usually worth doing a little research into what you write.

Gevlon said...

@Babar: ever heard the term "irony"? Of course they wage real wars. But they can't afford to randomly wardec anyone they please.

@Kana: The "burn Jita" idea is the dumbest thing they could come up with. There is nothing interesting in Jita and I doubt if anyone knows why it became the "trade capital". I guess it's because it's one jump from Lonetrek and The Citadel regions so Caldaris started to use it as hub.

However using it is a custom, a habit and not a necessity like mining ice where the ice is. If the goons blockade it, people will trade in other systems. The "burn Jita" will not "fail". It will simply be ignored and no one will care, the goon gatecamps won't catch anything else than lost noobs who is unucky enough that the route calculator includes Jita to their way.

IO said...

Ahhh my eyes are burning.

:)

1. Goons (or any other major alliance) can declare war on anyone they want. But why they should bother with random 50man entities in lol-hisec? Look at major alliances killboards - 99% of kills happen in 0.0, no one bothers with high sec.

2. Burning Jita has the same reasoning as having Gallente interdiction campaign, or having any campaign - to provide content that members could participate and then talk about. This is freaking sandbox, you only have to do what you create!!! (except shooting rocks or red crosses)

3. Jita is trade capital because once upon a time it had a lot of high quality L4 agents, Caldari was always the most popular race (due to Raven, Drake and some good character attribute distribution way ago). Before that, Yulai was trade hub.

Sadly, the last point especially shows how little do you know. Yet you try to look smarter than everyone else :) Please, be more open and absorb more information. That is one thing that differentiates smart people against M&S.

Anonymous said...

LOL, funniest thing I've read all week.

There *are* reasons why Jita is the main trade-hub of the game, the same as there were reasons for Yulai being the main trade-hub of the game before it. Features have slowly been removed from Jita to allow the system to better function as a trade-hub, and the game has evolved, hence the original reasons are pertinent any more.

Goons are the best alliance in the game at bringing new players in and retaining them. They're also - by a long way - not the biggest set of griefers in high-sec.

If CCP wanted to stop suicide ganking in high-sec they'd simply put a block on operating weapons against player-targets in high-sec. In the same way that certain classes of weapons currently don't work.

Finally, if the Goons want to catch every ship going in and out of Jita - I have a couple of ideas how they could achieve it, and frankly nothing would be immune.

I'd suggest you learn a lot more about the game, before making such wide-ranging assertions.

Gevlon said...

@IO: are you drunk like your master was?

Anyone can declare war on anyone, it's just wouldn't work too well for them. The more enemies they have, the more ships they lose, and ships they need if they have pilots who can't tell "bridge" from "jump".

I know why they make their stupid campaign, except it won't work.

So, because Jita ONCE had good L4 agents, we are bound to it and can't relocate from the goons? That makes lot of sense.

@Anonymous: CCP don't want to stop suicide gank or ship kills in highsec. They want to stop pointless griefing. Big difference between 12 tornados taking down a freighter with 30B and some lolkid killing newbships. The first is content for ALL parties, the second is a lost subscription.

Celery Man said...

The goons will be more grief less because The Mittani loses his spirit. He either quit soon and then the Goons have a civil war for power, or he goes berserk and make stupid mistakes that make the goons lose lot of ISK and turn them into laughing stocks.

Goons won't wardec anyone. They kill rookie ships and Hulks, wouldn't mess with anyone who can set up an able fleet.
-Gevlon

Sorry but there are a few things that you aren't taking into account. First of all, griefing is not a core activity of the goonswarm, it is simply a peace-time past time. Every large alliance has one, Pandemic Legion are fanatical FPS and LoL/Hon players in their downtime, the goons enjoy scamming. As has been mentioned they are some of the most active nullsec groups, and have also made great inroads into investigating game mechanics (Grid-Fu for example) and devising new ways of killing super-capitol ships while fielding as little ISK as possible. They are some of the finest fleet warfare experts in the game.

They are also bound together vastly more than other corps as they are founded from an external community, not within the game. The way they educate and indoctrinate people as they join means that they rarely ever move on unless they are leaving the game.

They may not be healthy for the game depending on how you see things, but don't expect them to change, and definitely don't expect them to quit. They once had to build their whole Nullsec holdings back up from scratch due to an absent and stupid leader, and that just re-invigorated them.

IO said...

Drunk? Master? WTF are you talking about?

On the contrary what you just posted, I don't think that this campaign will do much damage. Everyone will chill in Jita for a weekend, and it will be over, goons will be back to ratting to fix their security status.

And one the same note, no one will switch the trade hub with all it's infrastructure (POSes around) because of this. Also because Jita is very conveniently close to North regions, which are by far the most populous 0.0 regions in EVE.

Please get back to thinking instead of resolving to some abstruse personal insults.

As Anonymous 2 posts above said, there are more much better focused griefing entities than 0.0 alliance who is planning to have a weekend holiday trip.

IO said...

Oh I understand your "insult" now! Unfortunately, I am not in goonswarm, and I definitely won't participate in Jita event ;) Matter of fact, I don't even like Goon culture, but there are some things they are doing well (for the game.

I also have couple alts working daily to deliver production to Jita, so at worst my activities will also be disrupted for a day or two.

Good luck.

Anonymous said...

I ask again for simple explanation. How exactly will the Goons "burn" Jita?

My alt is in an NPC corp at the moment and you CAN'T wardec an NPC corp. So - I get my alt with a disposable t1 frig and go out. They kill me, losing X million ISK while I lose nothing. I will do it again and again and again and I will put all the ships that fired upon me on a dedicated killboard for the future generations to laugh upon them.

Buggrit said...

Gevlon, if you consider things as if you were an alliance leader, consider this as well:
You need the stupid predators who can't make much isk but can and go kill, or you have nothing. You must keep them in ships and fights, give them occupation, or they either get bored and leave, or lose their skills and get defeated.
For an alliance, constant conflict on the edges and a strong balance sheet are vital. Its the grind and boredom that kill them.

Anonymous said...

There are other hubs outside jita, but Jita is extremely handy for jumping in and out of,and is relatively central...15 jumps to dixie, 10 to Amarr etc

There are more ways to burn Jita than literally, but then, I am /care about it as I do not go to jita for trading, currently I am enjoying the rewards from the trade hubs being emptied of various minerals due to the volatility in Jita....Most hubs were drained of one or two minerals yesterday, which made quite a nice bit of isk, not in the volumes people were making in Jita of course, but isk is isk.

As an aside "All goons are ganking thugs" is surely akin to "All Republicans are batshit crazy creationists"

Sure, there are people that like blowing stuff up, and that alone, and the media and bloggers pick up on that, but blowing stuff up requires a financial support system, as many nations could tell you.

Recollector said...

I am going to side with gevlon on this one, even tho i know well Gevlon is barely knowing 5% of what EVE is and always told him he have no clues on many issues just after he started posting about EVE.

But, seriously, you DO NOT need to be a 7 years old EVE vet to see that Alex (Mittani) have psychological problems.One DO NOT ask his minions to ENCOURAGE a guy to kill himself.THIS CANNOT BE TOLD.Mittani is no Jesus, nor his Father and don't even have a degree on psychology to even start comprehend why some people want to comite suicide.

Enough about Mittani...let's go to the Goons.In 2007, i was telling my corp mates and RL friens also, that Goons are the biggest danger for EVE.Goons were, are and will be lolkids, either in rifters or supers.When i have seen how they grew in numbers, becoming more amd more powerful BUT still being stupid as they were when they had only rifters...i realized that once they will be powerfull enough that cannot be removed from null, they will start STUPID and MORONIC behaviours, sandbox or not.

Now, CCP is dealing with this problem the way they think is good.The fact that i hate goonism and Goons, does not stop me to to say that this alliance, Goonswarm, must be destroyed by "killing" their leader.Nope, this alliance must be destroyed in a war.

Let them burn Jita (tho, i have no fricking ideea how they will do it) i will be more than happy to wardec Goonswarm knowing that they will be in hundreds available in Jita and neighbouring systems and i don't need 1,000 buddies to go kill them in Dek.

Goons and goonism MUST be stoped.I really don't care how, but i will do my part, becoming a griefer BUT a griefer that targets ONLY goons.Let them eat their own medicine.

Oh...their alts will also be griefed :D.Spying rules.

Kana said...

@Gevlon:"If the goons blockade it, people will trade in other systems." It seems, you have more faith in humanity than me, i vote for "whine/ragequit".

Anonymous said...

Gevlon,

I've been a long time reader of your blog and I have always really enjoyed it. Most of the time you are accurate and have a pretty good summation of the events you are talking about.

This post couldnt be more different. You are completely wrong about almost everything you wrote in this post. Multiple people are telling you why you're wrong and yet you still persist in defending the inaccuracies in your post. Frankly, you are embarassing yourself to say the least.

Yes I am a Goon, and Id more than willing to chat with you in game to discuss the Goon culture, etc, and maybe you'll have a better understanding.

PS One thing Id like to point out: The positive things the Mittani achieved as the CSM Chairman helped bring many subscribers back to the game. It's not too far a reach that the CSM might have literally saved Eve as they were headed down a losing path.

Anonymous said...

As many have noted before me, your lack of EVE knowledge is showing. Again.

1. Ejecting hands your ship to your attackers. I'll take a nice ship over a killmail almost every day.

2. Your scenario under which CCP "trapped" Alex is farfetched considering the timeline. The timing of events suggests it wasn't a big deal for CCP until it became a big deal elsewhere and then they went into damage control mode.

3. The Goons don't have that much effect on hisec. Most hisec players have never encountered them "being Goons". As you noted, they're a tiny % of the total playerbase.

4. In nullsec, the Goons aren't fundamentally different from any of the other big nullsec alliances.

5. Any Hulk pilots that "sang" for the Goons had to have been in lowsec or nullsec. Highsec aggression mechanics allow suicide ganking, but you don't have time to ransom someone before CONCORDed unless the "victim" aggressed you first. So that mythical Hulk pilot in low/nullsec either had to expect to be hunted or was an idiot.

Anonymous said...

About the singing, that was a wormhole alliance not the goons who presented that.

One of the feats the keeps players in Eve is the "everything goes" way of playing. Basically all that will get you banned in other games is allowed in Eve.

I've went back to other games from Eve and couldn't play them anymore because I wasn't free in what I wanted to do.

Also about Isk. Goons are one of the if not the biggest holder of tech-moons in Eve. This enables them to have a good ship replacement program for when players lose ships.

Goons are definitely not the rifter swarm they were a few years ago but certainly keep that spirit alive.

Anonymous said...

I think, at the core, there is an impossible divide between Gevlon and the Goons, and to them they'll always be the bogeymen of EVE.

All of the blog posts seem to show the Gevlon is serious about the game and its mechanics, and wants to succeed and thrive by making isk. Goonswarm's core mantra is to never, ever take the game seriously; they just want a laugh. Quite often this leads to griefing, but it's not actually the direct purpose. They could care less about what actually happens in the game, and indeed mostly just laughed when a lazy leader destroyed what they'd spent years building. They are Gevlon's Cthulhu, incomprehensible insanity causing horrors from beyond reality.

Whether they are actually bad for the game is irrelevant; the only question is whether griefers are bad for the game (and it's a more complicated question than you might think) and goons are by no means the same thing as griefers, though there is admitedly some crossover.

Also, just seconding that ejecting is a very bad way to try to escape a gank. He mentions their weapons being on cycle, but the same would be true if you fight until you blow up. That also means they can't steal your ship. Additionally, if you're in nullsec then they'll likely have an interdiction bubble over you and your only hope will be to escape the bubble in the ship rather than an extremely slow pod.

Nielas said...

I think you are being naive about the consequences of this. Mittani will not really 'lose face' over this and nothing will fundamentally change in EVE.

One thing I quickly learned in EVE is that trying to project RL consequences onto people's actions in EVE is a big mistake. Stuff that would have serious consequences in RL has a trivial effect in EVE while stuff that is fairly trivial to deal in RL can have massive consequences in EVE.

The ransom thing is a very good example. In RL giving the mugger your money will usually save your life since the mugger does not care for the trouble and wants repeat 'business'. In EVE the mugger will take your money and then kill you anyway since there are no real consequences and the repeat business is guaranteed.

The probably best way to deal with a ransom demand is to self destruct your ship.

Anonymous said...

Also, I think Gevlon would love the Gallente ice interdiction campaign as an example. Goons bought enormous stockpiles of commodities required by industry, then tripled its price by literally destroying the means of its production before selling it. It's cold hearted capitalism in its most pure form, and was also funny (which is the real reason the Goons did it).

Camo said...

Gevlon: "The Mittani loses his spirit. He either quit soon and then the Goons have a civil war for power, or he goes berserk and make stupid mistakes [...]"

This assumes he isn't rational and will throw a fit, but he sounds like anything but that:podcast

Anon 17:20: "The timing of events suggests it wasn't a big deal for CCP until it became a big deal elsewhere and then they went into damage control mode."

I think this is more likely what happened. He talks a bit about that in the podcast.
The first time I heard of it was in the post from Tobold and I was shocked:
"The Mittani revealed a private conversation with a depressed player, giving out that player’s in-game username and encouraged the audience and viewers watching to find the player in-game to harrass them, in the hopes he would eventually act out on his depression and commit suicide."

This is in contrast to the real event blown out of proportion.
It prints the picture of a manhunt.
The conversation with the miner was part of the presentation and revealed that he is more or less a social carebear, that was exploited in real life and after his divorce he wished he would die.

The name was given after a person from the audience commented that the guy with his 23 ships got into trouble elsewhere.

It is still not right to give out the name of an unstable person, but it's not like he stood there and demanded that this guy should be forced into suicide.

Andrei said...

@Anonymous 15:46. As a Goon could you enlighten what part of The Goon culture calls for singing ransoms?

I discussed the signing ransoms with my company lawyer who is specializing in harassment and libel law and she was of opinion that CCP, Alex Gianturco and the goons who participated in ransom episodes could be liable to harassment claims. She would definitely encourage victims if they are US located to file a harassment lawsuit against CCP. It would enable them to subpoena the game logs to identify the individuals behind goon avatars to file civil damages lawsuit(s) against them.

An interesting twist in this story would be if any of the ships or virtual items the victims lost in the ransom gank incidents were acquired by ISK from selling PLEX they bought for RL money. If I was an CCP executive I would be very wary about courts examining and potentially passing a judgement on the legal consequences of PLEX trading in EVE.

Anonymous said...

Mittens's dog have received death threats in the past, and he didn't quit EVE. I doubt that a 30-day ban and the lack of a fancy chairman hat will break him.

Also "If the goons blockade it, people will trade in other systems. The "burn Jita" will not "fail". It will simply be ignored and no one will care, the goon gatecamps won't catch anything else than lost noobs who is unucky enough that the route calculator includes Jita to their way." So, suddenly there are no M&S in the entire EVE universe?

Anonymous said...

Jita is special. It runs on more powerful hardware than the average system. It has no agents or minerals to attract mission runners or miners. So it would take CCP to relocate the trade hub to have another hub that can handle 2000+ online users. Because 10 hubs of 200 people is not near as useful as 1x2000. Traders want to create Rome or New York or Jita. Many people have corporate offices in Jita as well as goods. There is no big reason New York trades overwhelmingly more financial transactions than Boston on Phillie; but it does and will.

A favorite quote about businesses is "never assume malice when mere incompetence explains the facts." The very things that make EVE EVE mean it will never be an AAA or AAA-sized MMO. CCP has historically stuck to their vision of EVE. But they or none of the proponents ever admit it has a cost. E.g., the Jester article you reference about the difficulty of attracting and retaining new new players. Significant player growth is not possible with the current target market. De-Gooning EVE would probably be a good thing for CCP's bottom line but I just don't see their ego allowing them to do that.

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=19086

You can go get a free email address and create a free EVE-online account. In 10 offline hours you can have a character able to kill other ships. You have 3 slots per trial account and as many trial accounts as you set up hotmail accounts. Even Gevlon could afford to buy 10,000 frigs or destroyers so imagine how many the CF could afford. CCP the clueless will not only get no RL$ for the trial accounts but will even pay insurance on all the ships destroyed by people trying to ruin others game.

The last Hulkaggedeon seems to have killed 1220 Exhumers, 332 Mining Barges and 12 Orcas. I wonder if this will happen and if it does will it be bigger,

Khanhrhh said...

Without getting into a flame war, some minor points:

- Jita is jita for too many reasons to count, some historical, some current (7 in gates and borders 5 regions and is a handful of jumps from 3 more ... go replicate that. If you don't know why regionality is important, re-learn the game)

- They aren't just attacking Jita, they will also go after every other trade hub as well as any attempt to reestablish "jita" elsewhere. It's worth noting that Jita is on it's own server node and none of the others can sustain it. If people tried to make another system that populated it will fall over.

- Goons are pretty much the most powerful entity in the game. They don't need to "wardec" anyone (though you might note, every large highsec PVP outfit already has them wardecced) but if they did they could both afford it indefinitely and fight it equally. You don't seem to know how large scale conflict works in eve - having multiple enemies is often an advantage.

- The goons are more invigorated and motivated than they have been in recent months; they are galvanized. Shit will blow up.

- You might be interested to know that nearly all of Eve's history / player narrative centres around Goonswarm. Love them or hate them, you are playing a game they have molded.

- Everyone said the Gallente Ice interdiction would fail, too. Then a week later, they were bawwing their eyes out in masses and begging CCP to ban Goonswarm.

Anonymous said...

This article is wrong on so many counts that I don't know where to start.

Goonswarm are an all-encompassing alliance - we do not limit ourselves to hisec griefing, lowsec pirating, nullsec sovwar, or wormholes - we do all of the above. That happens when you have an alliance encompassing all timezones and playstyles. We fight alliances with more titans than us, and early on, we fought alliances with more MEMBERS, and we've won many wars and conquered space. We don't limit ourselves to picking on miners.

Anonymous said...

@ Andrei

First off the singing ransom was from a WH corp, not the goons. christ people need to fact check.

and for the PLEX losses. no, no they could not. TOS/EULA, everything in game belongs to CCP, buying plexes is only buying game time. and as far as I know, you cant blow up game time. ( well unless someone ganks your hauler full of plex, Lol)

once you convert that plex into ISK, your sol

IO said...

Check this battle yesterday:

http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=12898647

100bil killed. Even though Goons were not the biggest entity, entire coalition is centered around them.

As someone else stated, EVE is very much built around 2 major entities: Goonswarm and various BoB incarnations. Even current conflict is Goons+allies vs Raiden. (ex BoB)+allies.

The "Jita burn" campaign is a joke, a small distraction.

Also I have nevera heard about Goons and singing ransom; as far as I know other small pirate lowsec alliances/corporation do that. They sometimes honor the ransom, sometimes not.

Anonymous said...

Goons have done singing ransoms in the past; whether or not they honor them usually depends on how good a sport the ransomee is (They'll be much more likely to let someone who laughs and takes it in stride go).

Just to point out, Goons do this to their own members too; having to sing on TS is the penalty for someone accidentally sending an alliance wide mail. I know because I had to do it once. It's really just the goon philosophy; take nothing seriously, just have fun.

antronics said...

..Gevlon, ironic as it is, what I am about to say to you I just said to a co worker.

You are used to thinking your way thru situations. And why not? Your a smart guy, and that method has paid off many time.

HOWEVER, this situation (Eve with you, poker with my co worker) is not like the situations you are used to.

You do not know Eve. You do not know Griefers. And you do not know Goons.

The goons will not stop. They will burn Jita and cause chaos. If a goon looses 100m to ruin the day of a pilot, then that's money we'll spent. They can just rat to replace the isk.

CCP will do more harm to the game and their wallet by trying to stop griefing. That is the biggest appeal to the game! Heres the new slogan "Eve is a sandbox! Do whatever you want! Except this that that and this". Etc.

You have stated that you do not understand why someone would grief. I don't think you ever will. In FPS, I along with some friends will make new accounts, wile the only intention of team killing. Very fun.

In Wow I would camp low levels. Very fun.

Read about Fansy. http://www.notacult.com/fansythefamous.htm
Very fun to read, and when I did something similar in EQ, is was very fun.

Grow up, expand your mind, and for the love of God, go kill someone not for profit, but just for the tears. You might enjoy yourself.

antronics said...

Upon further reflection, Gevlon, you are quite the hypocrite. Examine:

Someone killing another play for no gain is griefing, and in your terms bad. For the game and for an activity. Pointless, even.

So what is your scamming channel, your scamming alt account, and your scamming intentions?

You don't need the isk, you are already an accomplished trader/hauler. You have and can make more isk then you need. Which leads me to...

Your game activities. What do you need isk for? A freighter, so you can make more isk hauling. Some Logistics. And....nothing else?

Your trading/hauling will more then cover your expenses. So why are you griefing players for isk that you do not need, and will not put to good use?

Scamming people out of isk leads to them canceling their subscription, so should CCP head in the direction of making scamming impossible? And turn Eve into Wow in space. Great.

And speaking of wow, with all the time sinks, and low hanging fruit via welfare epics, no one had the time or desire to get into heavy griefing.

This is Eve, my friend. No rep grinds. No stopwatch on you to grind for the next tier of gear least you are rendered useless, because of your gearscore.

This is Eve. What is your Why of Eve? For me, I have mined, manufactured, ratted, consensual pvp'd, griefed, fought for sov, traded,and chatted with some cool folks. The isk I make I spend on what is fun for me, the few hours I can play each week.

What are you going to do with your billions? Take a picture of it and frame it?

Andru said...

I'm not even sure what the hell you're on about, except one thing.

I played EvE for about two months two years ago. I just couldn't understand an enemy that I cannot reason with. The specter of being blown up "for the lulz" is simply something I cannot bear.

Thus, I did the smartest thing I could do. I stopped playing. It didn't even take an actual griefer to make me do that.

antronics said...

..The saying "A player leaving Eve for WoW raises the average IQ of both games" applies.

I am just as risk adverse as you are Gevlon.

I stopped my freighter runs only after one month because, for one it really was not fun, and for two I knew that I could be banked at any time, and that would wipe out any profit I had made, plus more.

I do not fly what I cannot afford to lose. I don't speculate with more isk then I am willing to lose. I don't invest in IPOs on the Market Discussion forum. I make sure that my income is steady and sufficient. Griefers do not bother me one bit because my whole bankroll is not tied into any one venture I am involved in.

The threat of an entity that is willing to kill me at all costs at any time makes me a better, smarter pilot. Did I like it when I lost a 250m ratting boat? No. It sucked. I said a few curse words. And then I stepped up my game, and am better off for it.

I would really like tpfor you to respond to my comments Gevlon.