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CCP Comes Clean

EVE[EVE Online] CCP t20 On Recent Allegations:

As you might have read and heard, there were recently some allegations posted regarding developer misconduct that basically come down to:

* Developers helping (an) alliance(s) gain information they otherwise would not have.
* Developers having an unfair advantage of game mechanics.
* Developers helping themselves acquire goods in-game by means of in-house tools, otherwise not available to regular players.

All allegations mentioned above are untrue, except one. Sadly enough, the allegation regarding unlawfully obtained blueprints are, in my case, true. I’m here, laying out the facts of what happened in June 2006 so this whole issue — which jeopardized my colleagues, my company and our community — can be put behind us, I hope for the better.

Continue reading CCP Comes Clean

Paying to Beta

wow[World of Warcraft] A thread I’ve been following elsewhere references a theme I’ve heard before: the release of unfinished content in an expansion has become acceptable. The poster states that there are several unfinished aspects in WoW’s expansion, The Burning Crusade, and declares that the solution to this problem is that the developers should have made it harder to level so that they had time to fix it, after release.

How has this become modus operandi?

Continue reading Paying to Beta

Should Devs Play Their Own Game?

Recently, in EVE Online, allegations have arisen about the possibility that the most powerful alliance in the game had gained benefits due to having several CCP employees playing in their various corporations. The accusations revolved around things such as finding out about events ahead of time, getting valuable items handed over to the corporations, and gaining inside information that might help advance a war against another alliance.

CCP has investigated these claims and so far has only admitted to having employee characters in many alliances and since they have now been “outed”, they will be removed from the game (or maybe just revised to have a different name and corp history – my thoughts only, not something CCP said they would do).

Continue reading Should Devs Play Their Own Game?

PVP is Grief Play

EVE[EVE Online] My subscription has run out and I think I’m done playing EVE Online for good. War between large alliances has shown me some things about pure PVP games, things I don’t care for. Is PVP in it’s true form nothing short of grief play? At least in EVE, I say yes it is.

In EVE, it seems the best way to win a war is to try and ruin the fun of the game for your opponent. Smack them on the public forums, get spies into their alliance so you can post private forum threads on the public forums, steal their stuff, shut off their player-owned stations from within, and do everything you can to demoralize them. In short, make them want to quit playing the game. In a game that supports these play styles, expect nothing less.

Continue reading PVP is Grief Play

Back In EVE

EVE[EVE Online] I re-subscribed to EVE Online for a month, and as is usually the case, the game has changed quite a bit since I was last here. This time, the boxes of candy from exploding ships have turned into “wrecks,” so I apparently need a salvaging skill to get what I previously got. Is that correct? [edit: no, just first day bad luck with wrecks] Any reason for this, or just a skill point sink? My warping seems to have changed, too. No more of that 10km-off warping?

I have been away for about six months. Any other big changes that will affect me in low-level play?

: Zubon

Update: Funny thing is, I did not realize that I was re-subscribing after a major patch. I expect that I will show up in their data mining as someone who returned in the buzz about Revelations, but I had not heard of it before updating.

Wave of Spam

I spent a while this morning deleting a wave of comments offering links to sites that seemed just a bit off topic. If you want to tell us about your sales on roses, wonderful trip options, “pornucopia,” or indeed any of a variety of porn sites that apparently consider themselves MMO-related, please just e-mail us directly.

Thank you for your support.

: Zubon

Update: and then I realize, oh wait, hundreds of people a day already e-mail me these offers directly.

I Beat You Because I Love You

I avoid mentioning some games because I am scared that people will try them. Can we just forget that Horizons exists, or that lawyer from Florida who shall not be named? If the game is irredeemable dreck, there is no point in discussing its problems.

At my book blog, I note that I give some of the longest, harshest reviews to books that get the next-to-best rating. When you really enjoy something, it is infuriating that there are just a few problems that keep joy from being perfected. Just fix these few things, and I can abandon all else to exult in your creation. The sheer excellence of the surrounding material is what makes the problems stand out so much.

Our complaints about games are usually signs that we like those games. Bugs, queues, and crashes are upsetting because they stand between us and the fun that we know to lie just beyond them. The details bug us because they distort what is otherwise a great design. The pettiness of the problem even makes it worse, since you can see how little it would take to fix it; you must be patient with big projects, but can someone take the five minutes to clear up this one annoying thing that is driving me insane?

: Zubon

For Discussion: The Charitable Goldfarmer

In honor of Milton Friedman Day, I toss an economic question: What in-game differences would there be between someone who sold gold for RL money and someone who gave gold away to people s/he had never met before? Follow-up: whatever effects you believe RMT has on your game, are you causing the same effects on a smaller scale when you give a friend ten gold to get started (or any other form of help/twinkery)?

I have seen people give away millions of influence in City of Heroes just because they could, although that has presumably gone down with prestige and the impending auction house as cash sinks. I would expect charitable goldfarmers to farm less gold, since they have less incentive, although they get whatever joy altruists get. Their effects are randomly distributed, rather than going to folks with more money than time.

Would there be different effects if Blizzard awarded 100 gold to a random character once per hour (besides people trying to stay logged on for free gold)?

: Zubon