most awesomest thing to happen in a mmorpg, ever!, The game? EVE Online Options

[Sarjahurmaaja.]

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Basically theres this huge guild in EVE. There is another guild that specializes in bounty collection. Someone hired them to take out the leader for 1 billion of whatever the currency is. They spent a full year, infiltrating every rank of the guild's operations and they even had someone become best friends with the target (they had some funny title for him called a Valentine operative or something like that). This guy got so close that he even influenced the whole guilds policies. He convinced her to fly with him in her flagship worth billions, next to his flagship worth even more "in a show of power". There was an ambush set up where they destroyed her ship, destroyed the escape pod, and collected her body. At the same time operatives ransacked all the vaults and hangers and destroyed anything they couldn't take. In total they did about 30 billion in damages.

So awesome. If I were to play MMORPGs, I guess that'd be the one.

[Musopticon?]

Old hat.


But so true. Too bad EVE isn't free. This is like hundreth time I consider acquiring it.

[Deraldin]

Wow! They went through a lot of work to pull that off. Nice job. Feel sorry for those taht got robbed though. "

[alanschu]

My friend played it for a bit. I tried the 14 day demo but ruled out buying it.

He was head of a huge corporation, and apparently other people had put out bounties on his head and whatnot, because he was becoming powerful.

He had some cool stories of corporate wars.

[Guest_Fishboot_*]

I'd be much more enthused about this if there were some way to ensure that it was all "in character", but as things are there's no question that this type of scam is conducted mostly in the real world, or at least in the context of the real world (candid in-game chatting with no roleplaying pretext, IMs, etc.) So it has all the anatomy of a real world confidence game, which is somewhat unsettling. But hey, so what.

I'd play Eve but from what I understand I'd have to spend a pretty considerable amount of time being the galactic equivalent of a dirt farmer to even access the game proper, much less to play on the level of mass political/corporate intrigue.

[Kaftan Barlast]

Too bad it all looks about as dramatic as defragging your harddrive :D

[Musopticon?]

Like Diplomacy?

[Diogo Ribeiro]

I'd be much more enthused about this if there were some way to ensure that it was all "in character"

There never really is a way, wheter these situations take place in a real or virtual environment. I think this is one of the main problems with the concept of role-playing, more specifically with keeping in character, when it comes to computer RPGs. It's hard for gamers to convince others they're roleplaying a space pirate or similar archetypes when their actions can be easilly deemed as being against the game or metagaming.

To me this situation in EVE Online is a great example of a group of gamers roleplaying their characters in the virtual gameworld. From their motivations, to their tactics, to the whole Ubiqua Seraph situation - all of it just feels like they are dedicated gamers and can deal with this kind of things. While it was no doubt disastrous for players on the receiving end of the well coordinated attack, would there be as much complaints if this act by the Guiding Hand Social Club was instead played out by NPCs in an add-on developed by EVE's developers? Would it be considered cheating or despicable then? It feels like a contradiction - it's a game genre that perhaps allows for the most organic changes made by players, but most gamers tend to frown on such changes. They want to activelly change the gameworld but are afraid of what those changes may mean to them.

The whole problem is that unofficial means of communication (such as forum messaging, private chats or channels, emails) and unwritten game rules allow for this kind of situation to rise. As an example, when I have the time I play a certain MMORPG. No point in naming it, though it's basically centered around building our own empires, mine resources and train out armies to eventually become king cheese. One of the things several players do is set up personal forums for alliances. In those forums players exchange information about other players' soldiers and spy offense and defense, their gold per turn, miners, wheter these players belong to the alliance or not. This is metagaming, insofar as sharing information about users who are not part of the alliance (and therefore never consented to having their stats displayed) and about users whose offense and defense is too high for certain users to fight against.

So basically I can log in a given alliance forum, be nice, scoop up information then find myself using it for personal gains, or for alliance coordinated attacks. I may even build a spy network to infiltrate and undermine a fellow alliance member's fortification and armies based on information he gives me (though I'd have to be careful not to be exposed). I assume a scenario where I actually sell information about other players' status would also be possible ("sell" in terms of ingame monetary resources, not real life currency). I am not aware if such things are done but I wouldn't be surprised. That would have certainly explained all the spy attacks I received after exposing my statistics to fellow alliance members; someone could be playing double agent.

The thing is, these situations are considered to be morally reprehensible simply because they are being done outside the field of the game. Nothing prevents players from establishing alliances and communicate between themselves and set up attacks or somesuch; but all else can be dubbed metagaming. But just where does it begin and where does it end? How do we let everyone know that player A is a metagamer and player B is roleplaying a double agent? Perhaps more importantly, how do we make every other player understand and play along with the differences, to make them sacrifice themselves for a given idea of roleplaying and of virtual co-existence?

It seems to me that the more one tries to put the RPG back into MMORPG the more hassle one finds.

[Musopticon?]

Is there any doubt that Role-Player deserves his nick?


I applaud you.

[Kaftan Barlast]

but EVE online isnt a a role playing game is it? From what Ive seen its all about mining ore and buying bigger ships. I mean, there are no quests or anything, right?

[Musopticon?]

Yeah but diplomacy is the sux.

From what I heard, it doesn't suck. You just suck at playing it.


Kaftan, it's very rpg-like, just without much stats or so. You're effectively playing the role of a miner/contract spy/manager/etc. And player interaction seemst to be vital

[Diogo Ribeiro]

Is there any doubt that Role-Player deserves his nick?

Yes.

I applaud you.

No. I suck. R00fles!


Seriously though, I think anyone could have written the kind of rant I wrote. I don't find it is particularly insightful or intelligent; it's raising more questions than giving answers, though that may be important as well. I'm more interested in other people's opinions than my own to be honest.

[Yst]

Too bad it all looks about as dramatic as defragging your harddrive :D

Clearly you aren't defragging your hard drive in-character. It's not about the distribution of data across your disk. It's about what the distribution of that data means to you.

Go little blue boxes! Yeah! Stick it to those little red boxes! Woohoo!

[Musopticon?]

But you still suck, because noone is gonna ally himself with you. Backstabber.

'Player, it doesn't matter if anyone could have done it. You did it.



Edit: I soon need a rehab. I'm drunk on off-topic.

[Child of Flame]

INTERVENTION!!!