EVE’s problem early on was that the devs didn’t play the game AT ALL. This was evidenced during development and that’s why I made it a mandate for all the EVE team to play the game at least once every two weeks for at least 3 hours at a time. I cannot begin to tell you how quickly annoying bugs and game features were cleaned up. :)

While in an ideal world, what they should have done would be to contact a GM to report the bug, and have the bug fixed.

In the end, the victimized players complained and got CCP’s admittance to a heartoforth unknown bug in the system, all their stuff back, and the bug was fixed. The thread on the official forum – which was undoubtedly full of whining, accusations and inaccurate information from both sides – was removed, since CCP had already changed history and fixed the bug.

What would have been your preferred solution? To see the – obviously very dedicated, likely long-time – subscribers making up the BoB fleet permabanned? To leave an inflammatory and largely incorrect thread about the incident on the official board?

Can you imagine the fallout of a number of formerly dedicated, well-known players campaigning against CCP because they “in good faith” used a “functionality” that CCP “later determined” to be a “bug”? What good would it do to leave a message thread about an event erased from history and a bug that no longer exists on the official board, to irritate players who were not involved and potentially turning off potential subscribers?

I’m sorry, I’m not convinced of the cloven hooves and horns you’re attributing to CCP. It seems to me they were perfectly justified for their actions in the case you’re mentioning.

The allegations include use of exploits by BoB, resulting in (a) none of the exploiters being banned and (b) all discussion of the event removed from the official forums.

“In the case of Eve, it feels like employees were manipulating things along to build up BoB in order to help give momentum to other corps. In other words, they used their spare time to assist in game design and world development.”

Everyday space building, corporation administration and so on is one thing – Eve handles this very well on its own without interference. The rolling out of new (patched in) tech, on the other hand, is not an everyday occurrence and could definitely warrant plot. In the situation Tide’s referring to, a CCP employee – possibly a rogue employee, possibly not – determined (rightly or wrongly) that the game would be more enjoyable for players in general if a particular player faction was bolstered.

I’m not saying he was justified or made the right call, but to call for his and every game dev’s head if he was actually trying to make the game more enjoyable by taking some personal initiative will just serve to make the game worse by making companies afraid of bettering their game (much like the fear of nerfing, or conversely, the fear of having any unbalance whatsoever).

And again – if this was just some dweeb that, in his spare time, has so little of an actual life that he uses godlike powers to improve his own avatar or those of his in-game friends, then he deserves to be roasted on a really large, uncomfortable spit – but the only way other players can enforce this is by lodging the complaint to CCP, let them deal with it, and leave the game if they don’t. Players should not be trying to rewrite the rules of how devs can run their own game, much like players shouldn’t sit around and whine over the latest nerf, the labour/payoff ratio of an instance, or whatever.

Describing it as “plot” seems like a gross mischaracterisation to me – one of the selling points of EvE is that you can do your own worldbuilding, making outposts in space, and so on; if that gets taken away from you and crushed by another group of players who’ve not had to work for their equipment but been handed it, then it’s hard to see that as “worldbuilding”.

If CCP’s staff are immature enough to play a game like Eve to “win”, then they shouldn’t have been hired on in the first place. Just like in MU* land, when the server owners’ hiring practices turn nepotistic and immaturity and corruption ensues, players should leave the game since the game’s administrators has made it clear that the world exist for their enjoyment alone.

I have not seen enough proof to indicate that this is a case of corruption – as Tide mentioned above, it seems more like a case of amateurish unsanctioned world building, something CCP may or may not have a policy against. Judging by the recent “disciplinary action” handed out by the head GM (as reported on Terra Nova, f.ex) it seems as though they might – so let’s sit this one out and see what comes of it, instead of screaming foul and calling for the immediate execution of all manner of plot and dynamism in our games for the sake of predictability and repetition.

The problem is compounded by the T2 lottery system being totally closed: there’s no way to be sure that these valuable items are being handed out fairly at all.