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EVE Online Industrial-Sized Knowedgebase to be released in print form
Back in August, we brought you the news that an exhaustive Hungarian EVE Online guide had been translated into English and released online for free. The Industrial-Sized Knowledgebase (or ISK for short) represented years of collaborative efforts between players to produce the ultimate all-inclusive strategy guide for EVE Online. The creators of the gargantuan guide have now teamed up with CCP Games and MMM Publishing to bring the entire book up to a professional standard and update it with information on the Incursion expansion. MMM Publishing is the team behind the hugely successful official EVE magazine E-ON. The company's previous collaborations with EVE players and CCP include print copies of EVE Strategic Maps and the EVE Career Guide. A basic version of the new updated ISK guide will be released for free as a downloadable PDF document on February 1st. Following that, the team will then begin work on an extended 500-page premium edition, which will be available for purchase as a digital download or a full print copy some time this spring. The final price and release date have not yet been decided, but as the ISK guide is the closest thing EVE has to a full manual, the print copy is sure to be a popular item.
EVE gambling website SOMER.Blink is the target of 125 billion ISK theft
reddit_url = "http://massively.joystiq.com/2010/11/16/eve-gambling-website-somer-blink-is-the-target-of-125-billion-is/"; reddit_target="gaming"; Tweet It seems like almost every month there's another huge theft or insidious kill in EVE Online, with last month's 30 billion ISK suicide attack and September's record-breaking 850 billion ISK investment scam. In EVE, theft and piracy are part of the game, and players have to make a conscious effort not to put themselves at risk. Trust the wrong person with access to your assets or let your guard down and you might regret it. That lesson was learned the hard way by EVE gambling website SOMER.Blink, as last night it became the target of a 125 billion ISK theft. The thief, Daquaris of Test Alliance Please Ignore, had access to a stash of ISK, PLEX and items as part of his role -- delivering prizes to Blink winners. Most of the prize-distributors for SOMER.Blink are real-life friends of the site's creator Somerset Mahm, a situation that limits the potential for thefts like this. Although Daquaris wasn't a real-life friend of Somer, he was a trusted old friend from a previous alliance. When reached for comment, SOMER.Blink corporation member Andrev Nox had the following to say: "The theft was an eventuality we were prepared for. We certainly didn't expect it from Daq, obviously, but we expected it might happen eventually. The main wallet was regularly cleared to a separate corp's wallet as a 'rainy day' fund. Because of that, Blink is still fully solvent, solid, and functional. Somer has [been], and always will be, an incredibly generous and good friend to all of us. Had Daq asked for exactly the things he had stolen, Somer would have given them unflinchingly, without a doubt. Blink can always earn more ISK, it's the loss of someone we trusted as a valued part of the business, and a long time friend."
EVE Evolved: ISK sinks and faucets
In EVE Online's player-run economy, the flow of ISK is a vital concept. While there are many ways to make ISK in EVE, most of them only move it around from one player to another. When you mine ore and sell it on the market, for example, the mining process doesn't introduce any new ISK to the game. Only a few game mechanics can be called ISK faucets, as the game mechanics actually create ISK from thin air. Similarly, the ISK sink mechanics destroy ISK or remove it from the game in some manner. To the individual player, the difference between something being an ISK faucet or not is largely immaterial. When you sell something on the market for a few million ISK, or get the insurance payout on a lost ship, it doesn't really matter to you where that ISK came from. Where the concept really matters is in discussions on inflation and how the game chooses to reward us in PvE. Are ISK bounties and rewards always a good idea, or could their over-use eventually lead to runaway inflation? In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at the various ways in which ISK flows in and out of EVE Online, and why we should care about inflation.
EVE Evolved: Gambling away all your ISK
EVE Online is said to be a game in which you can do literally anything you set your mind to. It doesn't matter whether your ambition is to climb the alliance ranks, become the scourge of low-security space or even just fly around space telling jokes. If you can conceive of an idea that can be carried out in-game, it's probably a perfectly viable way to play the game. Over the years, players have come up with a number of unique and unconventional gameplay styles. Most of them began as ways for the pilots involved to make ISK or gain notoriety, but some were created just to see if it could be done. I've seen everything from player-run graveyards for the victims of piracy to players renting kill-boards for ISK, and yet the EVE community never ceases to amaze me with the new ways people find to play the game. The most recent development to blow me away is SOMER.blink, a website where players can gamble their ISK to win fabulous prizes. Gambling in EVE is nothing particularly new; players have been wagering ISK on everything from lotteries to hands of poker for a long time. What makes SOMER.blink special is its absolutely flawless execution. Almost everything is automated, from the transfer of ISK into your account balance to the prize lotteries themselves. The website itself is even accessible from outside EVE once ISK has been deposited in your wallet. I've spent hours so far blinking away on lotteries and losing quite a bit of ISK, but I'll be damned if it hasn't been fun. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look into the addictive phenomena of Somer.BLINK and try to explain where all my damn ISK went.
EVE players able to donate in-game ISK to Pakistan flood relief
Back in January, the Republic of Haiti suffered a devastating earthquake. Several MMO development studios responded by coming up with ways to help their players donate to the aid relief campaign. EVE Online developers CCP Games came up with an innovative scheme that allowed players to donate in-game ISK to help the people of Haiti. Players bought PLEX in-game with ISK and donated them to CCP's sponsored relief fund. As PLEX are worth 30 days of game time each, every one donated represented 30 days of EVE game time that someone somewhere purchased. Although CCP had to absorb all tax and administration costs, the company managed to donate the full value of donated game time to charity without taking a significant loss. In total, players donated over $40,000 worth of PLEX to the fund, which was given to the Red Cross to help the people of Haiti. With the recent flooding in Pakistan, a huge need for donations has arisen and CCP is once again allowing players to donate in-game PLEX to charity. In a new devblog, CCP Fallout has urged players to contract unused PLEX to the EVE character "CCP PLEX for Good." The full cash value of each donated PLEX will be passed on to the Pakistan Red Crescent Society, regardless of whether you bought the PLEX for cash or ISK. If you want to donate, the deadline for sending your PLEX is the 6th of October. As with the previous fundraiser, any players perpetrating scams around this donation drive will receive harsh punishment. Perhaps this would be a good opportunity for Bad Bobby, the player who recently confirmed that he'd made over 850 billion ISK with investment scams, to do something worthwhile with his accumulated wealth.
EVE Online player steals $45,000 worth of ISK in massive investment scam
It seems like every few months we hear about another major theft or scam in EVE Online. In most MMOs, acts of theft could earn the perpetrator a permanent game ban. In EVE Online, however, it's an accepted part of the game that people are strongly encouraged to protect themselves from. Even the game's developers have acknowledged that corporate infiltration, scamming and theft are just another part of the harsh criminal underworld of New Eden. With its latest official game trailer, CCP Games told an impressive tale of corporate theft and revenge, showcasing some of the emergent gameplay that typifies EVE. Last week, the latest big scam to come out of the criminal underworld of New Eden came to completion. The popular investment scheme Titans4U turned bad, with the creator "Bad Bobby" stealing all of the company's assets. The theft was the ultimate conclusion of a plan that was set in motion years ago. Bobby began his investment career by running several smaller schemes to build up a positive public image. Over the years, he ran increasingly larger and more popular schemes and always returned on investments. Just over a year ago, his reputation-building efforts paid off as his good name secured the successful launch of the massive Titans4U investment fund. Skip past the cut for the full story of how this apparently secure investment scheme turned into one of EVE's biggest scams to date.
Latest EVE Quarterly Economic Newsletter highlights Tyrannis insurance changes
EVE Online is a game with complex economic activity that often mirrors real-world economic systems. The similarity is so pronounced that CCP even hired its own Lead Economist, Dr. Eyjólfur Guðmundsson, to examine the in-game markets in detail. Each quarter, the economist and his team of researchers publish the EVE Quarterly Economic Newsletter (QEN). The report provides a timeline of market indices and major economic changes over the past several months. This quarter's report focuses on the effect of the insurance changes that came with the Tyrannis expansion. It also has a special segment on ISK sinks and faucets, and their changes following the release of planetary interaction.
New EVE Quarterly Economic Newsletter talks wormholes and tech 3
Four times per year, CCP Lead Economist Dr. Eyjólfur Guðmundsson and his team of researchers publish the Quarterly Economic Newsletter (QEN). In addition to providing trackable statistics on EVE Online's in-game market, each issue focuses heavily on analysing one particular topic. This quarter's report focuses on wormhole systems and the state of the tech 3 market. Updated player demographics show more and more players entering wormhole space, with a drop in the number of characters in high-security space. Statistics for the number of jumps in wormhole space over the past year show a similar trend of growing activity. This QEN provides some enlightening graphs on the popularity of various tech 3 offensive subsystems and how tech 3 material costs have changed in EVE over the past year. Perhaps most illuminating is the sharp rise in the use of tech 3 strategic cruisers in locations that put them at risk. While the majority are being flown in mission hubs and market systems, over 35% were found outside the safety of high-security space. In addition to this quarter's focus on wormholes, the report contains the usual graphs tracking in-game prices, trade volumes, ships in use and other useful metrics.
Latest EVE Quarterly Economic Newsletter shows effect of Hulkageddon
EVE Online is a game that's often lauded for its sandbox style and realistic economic structures. Every quarter, CCP Lead Economist Dr. Eyjólfur Guðmundsson and his team of researchers wade through mountains of EVE usage logs to find some interesting economic statistics. In their Quarterly Economic Newsletters (QEN), CCP deliver graphs tracking in-game prices, trade volumes, ships in use and a whole host of other useful metrics. Read on for an overview of this QEN's main highlights.
EVE Morning Report provides news-style daily snapshot of game's economy
EVE Online is a game that can be different things to different people. While some players are intent on the destruction of their fellow capsuleers, others prefer to focus on other aspects of the game like trading and mass production. After all, EVE's setting of New Eden is one largely dominated by megacorporations. For those involved in the complexities of the game's economic side, having frequent snapshots of New Eden's virtual economy would be a boon. The game's would-be tycoons now have this, thanks to EVE Online player Utemetsu and the EVE Morning Report -- short, 5-minute audio recordings released daily that convey information about major commodities traded on the open market in New Eden. EVE Morning Report with Erik Mumm is presented in the style of NPR or the Marketplace Morning Report. It also provides players with the graphed price history of major commodities, captured from the in-game tools. The sponsors of the EVE Morning Report are other players whose various services are mentioned each day in exchange for their patronage. Although Utemetsu's program has only been running for a few days, EVE Morning Report is already expanding to include interviews with New Eden's marketeers. Individual EVE players, corporations, or alliances interested in sponsoring EVE Morning Report can contact Erik (Utemetsu) via email or let him know in the program's thread on the official EVE forums.
EVE's Quarterly Economic Newsletter focuses on impact of anti-RMT operation
One of the strengths of the sandbox game EVE Online is its player-driven economy, which developer CCP Games monitors through a small team of researchers headed up by Lead Economist Dr. Eyjólfur Guðmundsson (aka CCP Dr.EyjoG). They observe all manner of player interactions and sift through a tremendous amount of data to track how EVE Online's economy changes over time. Their findings are presented to the playerbase (or to anyone curious about virtual economies) in the form of Quarterly Economic Newsletters (QEN). CCP released the 3rd Quarter 2009 report this week, which gives us a look at player demographics and the most popular ships flown by those players. (It's interesting to note that the most popular ship in the game is now the Hulk, a mining vessel which has usurped the Raven battleship as EVE's most flown ship, while Black Ops battleships are EVE's least flown ships.) This latest QEN also gives various price indices and Market Snapshots, which chart the volumes of a number of popular items traded on the open market. CCP also shows the impact "Operation: Unholy Rage" -- their anti-RMT initiative -- has had on EVE Online's economy with over 18,000 (paying) accounts banned to date. Dr.EyjoG writes, "Unholy Rage taught us a great deal about RMT operations in EVE. We now have a much clearer picture of the extent of operations and the tools and methods they use."
EVE Online: The taxman cometh
When EVE Online developer CCP Soundwave isn't entertaining fans of internet spaceships with his wit during the EVE Alliance Tournament, he's apparently finding new ways to ... impose taxes on players? His dev blog today explains that CCP Games will tax the earnings of players in NPC corps and their reasons for introducing this taxes. This won't apply to those in EVE's player corporations or those enlisted with a militia for factional warfare. "Service guarantees citizenship and all that, so keep on trucking," he writes. (Note: For those less familiar with EVE Online, this deals entirely with in-game currency of course, InterStellar Kredits or ISK. No real world taxation is involved.)After all these years, why impose taxes on players in NPC corps? CCP Soundwave explains it all in "I Bring Gifts! (By Gifts I Mean Taxes, Sorry)". NPC corps have a few advantages over player corps in that they cannot have wars declared against them by player corporations; immunity to wardecs is perhaps a key reason some players don't move on to player corps. In addition, members of NPC corporations don't have taxes subtracted from their NPC bounties and mission rewards, which most player corporations impose.
