How the hell did this happen: T2 prices to go through the roof. Spolits!

[Endie]

Now this is not specifically about war, but it may have a substantial impact on the balances of some alliances, so this seems a fair place to put it.

CCP just posted to say that they had closed an exploit loophole using moon mining setups, and that individuals and corporations that profitted have been banned, while assets have been siezed.

So far so normal.  However, some five hours earlier, on SHC, someone posted to say that they had just been banned for a moon mining exploit that had netted them trillions of ISK over several years, using offlined moon mining/reaction setups to create super-valuable materials out of thin air.  He also said that he knew of three powerblocs that have been using this.  This may have been exaggeration, but the timing is impressive, and the maths he stated works out.

Now we wait to see who has had such game-dominating, or at least game-changing amounts of money to throw around.  Darius has said categorically that we've not been doing it, and since we are traditionally ultra-poor this does not suprise me.  People are bund to point at the alliance that has put 20-odd outposts up, and puts out titans with alarming regularity, but I genuinelly don't believe that Bob are that dumb: they have enough early-game advantage from T2 BPOs (some of which they even got fairly  ) and the like.

AAA, however, has a nice little arms-length setup with AAA citizens, and I remember seeing a bunch of offline reaction components get blown up in Impass in the past month, which struck me as strange at the time, since the setups seemed very pricy to just let them get blown up by leaving them offline.  I'll try to find the kills, but this would be a total delight 

[Comstar]

UPDATE FROM CCP 11/2/2009 - the full story of how it was caused, fixed, and resolved


First Announced here

Hello Every one

I would like to tell you a short eve story
Today all of my EvE Online accounts were banned
I was sure that this day would come.
What surprises me is that it took CCP this long to catch up with me.
Even though they knew about it.

But now to the story:

The time is November 2004.
The EvE Universe is excited about the Starbase patch.
The new System Sov. is introduced.
The face of Eve has changed.
How right they are.

Two weeks after Patch day we built our first POS.
We wanted a piece of the moon mining pie and also wanted to figure out how it word as none of us knew exactly.
After our first try we were aggravated that we could get it working and decided to try again the next day to finish our project.
The next day to our amazment we found that the silos in our unfinished POS chain were full. After a short time we found out the reason for this phenomenon.
The POS system was BUGGED.
Of course a petition was sent to CCP to make them aware of this situation and the answer was sobering.

“Your petition has been received” CLOSE

But the phenomenon was still there.
After a week we decided what to do.
We built a POS network that included over a dozen POS’s in lowsec and checked the market prices. After a short look we decided on Ferrogel and Fermionic Condensates.

The Story today.

The expanse of this so far is probably lost on most people so I would like to make a few facts clear.
In the past 4 jears we are talking about ISK in value of 2.500.000.000.000 ISK to 3.000.000.000.000 ISK.
That’s 2500 – 3000 billion.
Everyone that owns a T2 item can bet that it was build in part from resources due to this phenomenon.
At this point I would like to thank CCP for making it possible to buy GTC’s with ISK.
So much about us.

What the other 3 large alliances did with this knowledge is unknown to me.
But I can tell you that we’ve sat with coverts in front of POS chains and watched it happen.

Titans are expensive !

In closing.

Some I’m sure will say “well are you proud of yourself?” or “You cheater-exploiter”
I only have one thing to say to that.
.
This issue allowed me to play Eve how and when I liked.
It didn’t matter what item or what happened in Eve. I spent ISK with out thinking about the price.
I haven’t paid a cent for any of my Eve accounts for 4 years now.
And have had many amusing moments reading posts in EVE-O.

I don’t know you and to be honest Eve and most of you I could care less about.
But my thanks go out to you all, you were wonderful statistics on this virtual stage.

Regards,

The Writer

CCP shortly thereafter admitted it, and now everyone is wondering:

a- Who got the can?
b- Which Alliences were doing it?
c- How badly did this distort the T2 and EVE ecomany?
d- Are T2 prices going to go up? If so, how much?
e- Why didn't CCP see this 4 years ago?

CCP Offical Comment

CCP Wrangler

We have discovered an exploit involving starbases that made it possible for some players to gain an unfair advantage over others. We have taken measures to address this by removing the starbases used in the exploit. Additionally, assets gained from its use have been seized and bans levied against the players involved. We will continue to monitor the game for issues such as this one. We encourage players to create a petition if become aware of any activities which may permit others to gain an unfair advantage in the game.

[TripleDES]

That's one huge fuck up if they've really ignored the issue.

[Yoru]

EVE drama is the best drama.

[Sparky]

Couple of alliances are rumored.  My gut feeling is it wasn't widespread and the biggest effect on prices will be speculators going nuts stockpiling or producers hording.  Once everything shakes out I expect little change.

Only guessing though.

[TripleDES]

The russians have silos on every single goddamn POS they've set up, often accompanied by reactors. Granted, I don't know if the modules were offline (never bothered to check those), since I never knew about the exploit, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were actually exploiting. I really hope that a majority of the existing related assets have been seized and parties banned.

[Yoru]

Split off the discussion from the WAR thread and merged it here. Carry on.

[Jayce]

The russians have silos on every single goddamn POS they've set up, often accompanied by reactors. Granted, I don't know if the modules were offline (never bothered to check those), since I never knew about the exploit, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were actually exploiting. I really hope that a majority of the existing related assets have been seized and parties banned.

I happened to run across Triple here deep behind enemy lines the other day and can confirm that I saw a lot more moon mining arrays and reactors than I would have expected given the rarity of Dyspro moons and the known unprofitable nature of all other reactions.

[Thrawn]

One good question that seems to keep coming us is if CCP is doing these in-depth economic reports and such on a regular basis how did they not catch trillions of extra t2 on the market that shouldn't of existed.  Maybe the exploits started before the economic reports?

[Endie]

OK, Vash was the guy I meant, and he posted about these poses on the GF forums: the kills are spread across six pages: http://killboard.goonfleet.com/player/Vash%20Fhtagn/1-1

[TripleDES]

I happened to run across Triple here deep behind enemy lines the other day and can confirm that I saw a lot more moon mining arrays and reactors than I would have expected given the rarity of Dyspro moons and the known unprofitable nature of all other reactions.

SPY! 

[Comstar]

Endie...is that an indiction AAA was up to their neck about this, or is that an unrelated comment?

[Endie]

Endie...is that an indiction AAA was up to their neck about this, or is that an unrelated comment?

Well, those are offline reaction mods which Vash says dropped the right reactions.  It's not proof, but it raises questions...

[JoeTF]

A bit drunk with all the joy newest drama caused, hope you will forgive the spelling and such.

Uhm, BoB does our business legitimately and we woudn't be running all around EVE conquering high end moons if we could just press few switches. Our leadership is extremely happy about this whole thing getting gutted and are considering threadnaoughting ccp to made them publish a list of people involved.


My biggest bet would be goons (yes, cause, they may be just that dumb), russians (mosty RA with their unending history of brutal explotion of everything that even in a sligest bit looks like sploit, but also russians in general), NC - how did they become riches powerblock in EVE living in space with worst npcs, worst plexes, uttery worst minerals?:P

[Sparky]

Goons are constantly broke and not clever enough to figure out 'sploits, sorry. :p

I'd love to know who was involved but unless they kick up a fuss themselves about being banhammered we'll never find out.  CCP will never name and shame.

Look for titan pilots suddenly titanless or alliance leaders spontaneously deciding they've had their fill of Eve.

[Thrawn]

My biggest bet would be goons (yes, cause, they may be just that dumb), russians (mosty RA with their unending history of brutal explotion of everything that even in a sligest bit looks like sploit, but also russians in general), NC - how did they become riches powerblock in EVE living in space with worst npcs, worst plexes, uttery worst minerals?:P

I'd be VERY suprised if Goons was exploiting this unless it was individuals without alliance knowledge.  What do Goons have to show for it?  They control some very profitable space, are a huge alliance, and still have a small amount of Titans compared to the alliance size and have deployed very few outposts as far as I'm aware.

[Jayce]

lolz

[Nerf]

Theres a bunch of people in that eve-o thread that are saying price histories for ferrogel and fermionic condensates have been deleted to hide the price spike.

[Fordel]

This went on for four years?

[Sir T]

Uhm, BoB does our business legitimately

 

and we woudn't be running all around EVE conquering high end moons if we could just press few switches.

Failing to conquer moons you mean, and you didn't want them anyway, remember...

Our leadership is extremely happy about this whole thing getting gutted and are considering threadnaoughting ccp to made them publish a list of people involved.

And officially in the second scandal about BOB getting a Volunteer fired through MSN they Denied having a special relationship with the devs and said everyone else had a better relationship with the devs than they did... and then Dianabolic started yammering that he talks to the devs on MSN every day and they are his friends but that really didn;t mean anything! And DBPreacher in a panicked attempt to minimize that spoke about his he knows game developers from another game and that means nothing... and then his arrogance took over and he went into a long speech about how he could ask them questions about the game if he didn't know something and it was great to have questions answered immediately...

Officially they were very happy about the T20 thing too and they accused everyone else, especially their enemies, of having more dev characters than BOB to show that they weren't really all that bad in case the allegations were proven true ... oh wait...

My biggest bet would be goons (yes, cause, they may be just that dumb), russians (mosty RA with their unending history of brutal explotion of everything that even in a sligest bit looks like sploit, but also russians in general), NC - how did they become riches powerblock in EVE living in space with worst npcs, worst plexes, uttery worst minerals?:P

Stop it! Your killing me!   

It feels like 2007 all over again!

Personally I've seen enough blatant corruption and exploitation in Eve to believe anything at this point. Frankly one of the reasons I joined goonswarm is that they are one of the few bunches that would be genuinely untainted by this crap. They are too new to the game and still not allowed to be part of the old boys network. And they have not existed long enough to be part of the real corruption and know about the old style bugs.

It would not surprise me that the real hit with this will be the low end moons that churn out the valueless crap that's needed for reactions. Actually mining that crap is pretty unprofitable and having that come out of thin air in a spare silo in a profit making moon would really make your profit margin a hell of a lot better.

[Phildo]

I'm pretty sure that it's not the main alliances themselves but their alt corps that would be doing things like this.  Especially if they know it's an exploit, in light of previous bannings crippling certain major alliances during crucial moments.

[Resetgun]

4 fucking years.

[Predator Irl]

Somebody check the ROL moons ZS, I do believe they had offline silo's!

[lac]

GM's will have a fun time now that every alliance is petitioning every offline towermod the enemy has

[JoeTF]

Trolling mode on.

CCP admits to banning 7 corporations across two alliances and removing over 70 POses.
On that very day, Goonswarm looses sov in 6 solarsystems (3 of those being sov1).


Of course, someone might ask who would be stupid enough to claim sov with exploit-POS?
...Well, there is only one alliance dumb enough for that:P:P:P

[Goumindong]

Let me guess, scalding pass?

[Comstar]

CCP news update

update regarding the starbase exploit
reported by GM Grimmi | 2008.12.11 13:13:06 | NEW

On December 7th 2008, a date which will live in infamy, a petition from a concerned player alerted us to a serious problem with Starbase reactors. The petition had been filed five days earlier, a far longer waiting time than we can accept with our current queue status and we have now taken measures to fix that. We immediately started investigating the issue and found that there was indeed a problem and that it was being exploited to gain unfair advantages.

We discovered seven corporations with multiple Starbases set up for the express purpose of exploiting the issue.  Three of those corporations were members of two alliances. We took immediate action against the offenders and banned over 70 accounts and destroyed all the Starbases run by the corporations in question.  All the offending corporations are now effectively inactive as a result of our actions.

The corporations were producing high end materials for T2 production. Working with the Research & Statistics team we have established that the effects on the markets have been considerable and far reaching. The effects of our actions against the exploiters will also be felt on the market as the production of the materials has been cut substantially. However, supply should increase again once players have mastered the alchemy process.

We are still conducting operations to deal with this matter and we will keep you posted on the progress and results as things develop.


Thank you

Sooo....who were the corps, and what alliances? Internet detectives, activate!
 

[Sir T]

Let me guess, scalding pass?

Yup, and the result of the tower spamming and attacks that's been going on (which Joe would not know about due to BOB's ACTIVE and COMMITTED PARTICIPATION in running away from Goonswarm)

Anyway whoever those corps were, they would not be in any major alliance. CCP would not ban something that effected the balance of power in the game (Though they have done so in the past when banning those accounts benefited ONE PARTICULAR alliance)

The results of this will be felt in the coming months really. If some alliances what seemed to be thriving suddenly choke, I think we have our answer. Its difficult to know directly. If 70 characters banned would render seven corps basically inactive, then it says each only had an average of ten members. Which basically means that they are all small alt corps.

[Reg]

If CCP is serious about punishing the exploiters they'll look at the IP numbers used by the newly banned alt accounts and ban the other accounts associated with them as well. Since they seem intent on repeating every single mistake ever made by the people running UO they should at least try to be as efficient in their bannings.

[Endie]

Trolling mode on.

CCP admits to banning 7 corporations across two alliances and removing over 70 POses.
On that very day, Goonswarm looses sov in 6 solarsystems (3 of those being sov1).


Of course, someone might ask who would be stupid enough to claim sov with exploit-POS?
...Well, there is only one alliance dumb enough for that:P:P:P

I think that Goonfleet are probably the only alliance in the game that nobody with any intelligence suspects, since we, well, don't have any money.

[JoeTF]

Ok, time to get serious:



Still one more alliance to go ^_^

* JoeTF grabs more popcorn.

[Endie]

Ok, time to get serious:

Still one more alliance to go ^_^

* JoeTF grabs more popcorn.

Hohoho...  Given their Tortuga exploits, I don't imagine that anyone in Bob will sheds tears over that...

As a matter of interest, you say "one more to go", but CCP say that there are seven corps, I think?  Are five others known?

[Thrawn]

As a matter of interest, you say "one more to go", but CCP say that there are seven corps, I think?  Are five others known?

I'm guessing he means one more alliance.

[Gets]

[lac]

'This moon does not provide harvestable resources'