f13.net

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

Let me guess, scalding pass?

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

Ok, time to get serious:

Still one more alliance to go ^_^
/me grabs more popcorn.

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?

Eve is an awesome spectator sport

Banning IRL is a great idea, I fully support CCP funded hitmen

has that official economist for Eve popped up yet?  This + whole Iceland financial debacle + official economist for Eve =  :awesome_for_real:

If, even with database access, he somehow didn't notice that reactions were appearing out of thin air without a corresponding drain on moon minerals then he wouldn't be fit to work in an American bank would be fit to be CEO of a major Wall Street finance division, complete with $200 million golden parachute.

To be fair, the next topic that was supposed to be raised by their pet economist was POSes, moon-mining et al so it is not totally outside the bounds of possibility that he was the one who found this.

If, even with database access, he somehow didn't notice that reactions were appearing out of thin air without a corresponding drain on moon minerals then he wouldn't be fit to work in an American bank.

They teach bankers about moon prospecting now?

Kieron could you check your email (I know you receive loads and are quite busy because our corp suffered from POS exploit some time ago. We petioned the event with quite a bit of evidence (fraps, howto).
The GM closed the petition while providing another "solution" for the events. This caused a lot of frustration. Their solution isn't possible the given game mechanics. A second unanswered petition is still going this ages without answer while the first was lost...

Now some days ago the same exploit happened again with another G POS.

Well you can guess that we are a bit frustrated since we provided information how it happened while we get told something that doesn't even work.

</understatement>

PS: I won't go into the details because it would just get the thread locked.

Sorry to pull you back onto the ground of solid facts.

That post mentioned was about SHIPS REIMBURSEMENT because people lost ships inside pos. People could target from the outside (passive targetter, anyone?) and then shoot through the pos shields.

THAT is the topic about. That's why the post mentions that "corp suffered from POS exploit" and not something like 'corp gained from pos exploit'.

That post has NOTHING to do with pos reactions and moon materials AT ALL!


Capiche?

Viper ShizzIe

Posted - 2008.12.12 02:16:00 - [35] - Quote


Couple hours later:

[16:12] <B> so evoke just confirmed it was KIA
[16:13] <B> aswell
[16:13] <M> LOL
[16:13] <M> bahaha
[16:13] <M> eddz down
[16:13] <B> no apparently
[16:13] <B> they changed all their pos fits
[16:13] <B> before this hit

EDIT: Added a bit of clarity and cleaned up the logs.

God yes.  Nobody does drama like CCP  :grin:

To be fair, the next topic that was supposed to be raised by their pet economist was POSes, moon-mining et al so it is not totally outside the bounds of possibility that he was the one who found this.

EyjoG was able to confirm exploits starting in March 2008, with the bulk of it becoming operational in May/June 2008. CCP is in the process of restoring older data and will mine that data for further information over the next two weeks.

EyjoG noted that the reason it wasn’t detected sooner was that the exploit wasn’t started on a grand scale until this year, so the effect on the economy came gradually.

EyjoG stated that the exact numbers weren’t known currently, but will be part of the entire investigation. Diagoras provided the rough estimates: Roughly 35% of the Ferrogel market. He noted that that is a very rough and an early figure that needs further analysis.

EyjoG noted that CCP have already said that they expect this to impact the market, and data in Jita shows the impact already. However, they plan to let the market settle a little more before they give out estimates as there is a lot of speculation occurring currently and the market needs to settle.

The impact on the economy is significant; overall they are expecting this generated a few trillion isk. As a comparison, the daily trade on average in EVE through the market for all items is 3 trillion isk. So it’s significant, but not catastrophic.

The user cuts off all the links to the reactor.

The Control Tower, crazed by its optimization logic, careens through the production code. Wide-eyed, it reaches your reactor first. In its addled eyes, it sees only that the poor reactor has no links.

The Control Tower speaks.

"We can't stop here! This is bat country!"