EvE Devs play with BoB. Investigation in progress....New Scandal page 9!

[LC]

Well Dianabolic has at least proved that one of the three accusations brought to light are true. BoB does have a bat phone to the devs and can have people dealt with without the need of filing a petition. I wonder if someone can get him to comment on the other two accusations. If someone could get him to post a little more I bet all the dirty laundry could be hung out to dry.

When I joined BoB I was given an 800 number I can call to have T2 BPOs delivered to my hangar.

You guys are a bit paranoid. This is all a goon leadership scheme to distract it's members from their internal problems.

[Trippy]

- After all the gagging on the issue, mere hours later GM Kutsu openly discusses his personal opinion in Jita local. When petitioned about how inappropriate this is, he himself responds to the petition and closes it.

This just illustrates CCP's systematic inability to Do The Right Thing. Is it possible for a company to participate in their own game and have a non-abusive relationship with their customers when the game is all about abusing others?

Blizzard apparently doesn't think so, judging from this post by an ex-employee of theirs:

WoW isn't the same sort of the game that EVE is, but even so like the above poster said, Blizzard takes this sort of thing very seriously. Right after WoW launched one employee used his influence to get some forum posts deleted and some people banned for attacking the Guild that he ran. When that was discovered his guild was deleted and he simply vanished off the face of the Internet, never to be heard from again.

[Morat20]

WoW isn't the same sort of the game that EVE is, but even so like the above poster said, Blizzard takes this sort of thing very seriously. Right after WoW launched one employee used his influence to get some forum posts deleted and some people banned for attacking the Guild that he ran. When that was discovered his guild was deleted and he simply vanished off the face of the Internet, never to be heard from again.

It's rumored his toon is trapped forever in an instance of the Stockade -- the closest thing to Hell the Blizzard staff has ever devised. His real body has never been found.

[Endie]

I love Dianabolic.  He is the GIA's best agent.  I think he may even be a Mitanni alt.  There's no danger of the Eve-O hordes failing to believe this stuff when our Dianabolic is happily boasting that, hey, of course it's true.  Dammit, he earned those dev numbers and has the sore knees to prove it.

[Sir Fodder]

The first time I witnessed an instance of staff abuse in UO (in '97) my little heart broke, but I got over it and kept playing the game. After witnessing a few more instances of rather unethical GM/volunteer behavior in UO I realized that it was rampant, whoop dee doo, big deal. The thing I always found hilarious though were the dismissive and sarcastic comments made regarding favoritisim by high profile and "important" members of the community (some well respected in these circles to this day), as if the rampant favoritisim was simply a delusion of jilted fanboys. I think it is safe to assume that this sort of stuff is going on in just about every MMO, some are just better at keeping it under wraps.

[Merusk]

The first time I witnessed an instance of staff abuse in UO (in '97) my little heart broke, but I got over it and kept playing the game. After witnessing a few more instances of rather unethical GM/volunteer behavior in UO I realized that it was rampant, whoop dee doo, big deal. The thing I always found hilarious though were the dismissive and sarcastic comments made regarding favoritisim by high profile and "important" members of the community (some well respected in these circles to this day), as if the rampant favoritisim was simply a delusion of jilted fanboys. I think it is safe to assume that this sort of stuff is going on in just about every MMO, some are just better at keeping it under wraps.

Given the unprofessional nature of MMO studios as a whole, only a fool would say you were incorrect.  What gives me chuckles here is the folks so willing to rationalize any behavior one way or the other, based on their 'side.' 

[Lum]

The posting by the ex-Blizzard GM tracks with the Acceptable Use Policies most MMO companies have. They're almost all identical - never log into a live server with extra access unless it's strictly necessary for your job, various levels of "don't tell people you work for the company" (which are ignored more often than not, since people like to talk, but do usually serve to prevent trading on your position for in-game favors), and above all never, never, ever affect in-game play with your knowledge and/or abilities gained outside the game itself.

I'm somewhat surprised that CCP would ever have GMs log into the game visibly. When I was at a seminar with some CCP folks they were quite proud of the fact that the game could essentially be played completely from a SQL client. Most games today have specialized CS tools (writing one of these was my first job for Mythic, actually) that keep GMs from having to actually log into the game to do their jobs... it's a lot quicker to have a centralized tool to talk to players, examine data, etc. Now, if a GM wanted to mad cheatz0r for his friends by looking up factory builds or whatever, there's no reason why he'd ever need to be visible to players to do that. He should be able to analyze that level of data without ever logging in.

Of course I'm completely talking out of my ass, and have no idea what level of tool support Eve has, or what AUP they have. But they do seem to have a problem - at a bare minimum, a problem with perception, if naught else. Which makes that last little tidbit - a GM smacktalking in public chat - so worrisome. In any game whatsoever that would be utterly, utterly beyond the pale. In Eve given the current hullaballoo, it's either malicious rumormongering or it's suicidal.

[Fmar]

Talk about setting yourself up: CCP Admiral Cham is the guy accused of some of the misconduct...
http://img295.imageshack.us/img295/7857/hhhhaaaaaajj0.jpg

I think this is going to boil down to two basic questions.
-Is the fact that BoB leadership has a direct instant line to CCP employees 'a bad thing' for the longterm health of the game?
And
-Has dev/BoB friendships interfered with the game?

[Slayerik]

Don't worry, Dave is always on a different page cause he's leet ;) Its kinda nice having the BoB representitive in here though, keeps it "fair and balanced". Just like EvE!

Two of us versus several dozen of you is balanced? Sounds like proper goonfleet math to me.

You not reading what I said and posting about being outnumbered and superior ...wtf are you talking about? How many incidents need to happen before you decide your boys arent so fuckin squeaky clean. Seriously, anyone wanna buy my 34 mil sp guy? :) The game is slow, and even worse...its slow and corrupt.

[Arthur_Parker]

Talk about setting yourself up: CCP Admiral Cham is the guy accused of some of the misconduct...
http://img295.imageshack.us/img295/7857/hhhhaaaaaajj0.jpg

He's also the guy that is supposed to have said in local, "have fun shooting D2" to BoB somewhere, I don't have a screenshot for that yet but the below link amused far more than it should have.

http://www.mneh.org/pics/games/eve/heh2.jpg

[Chenghiz]

I think blue means dev..

[Furiously]

The ones that tried to use it as a way to get over on the other players got a permanent block on my IM.

So - no free pony?

[MahrinSkel]

No, just a goat.

--Dave

[Venkman]

I would think CCP would be VERY controlling of their internal staff after the last fiasco. I feel like BoB is the FOH of Eve, getting the pandering because they're driving the endgame. That doesn't excuse CCP's behavior, of course.

And make no mistake, this isn't one disgruntled soon-to-be-ex employee of CCP. This is all of CCP. For a game as complex and player-directed as Eve to have the shroud of even hinted contrivance is only a bad thing for it and the company behind it.

They're in a tighter spot now too. If they publicly apologize, they'd have to reinstate some accounts, admit errors, and potentially expose a lot of bad things from the past along the way. So they seem to now be hoping this all blows over. They won't gain any accounts this way, but maybe they won't lose many either. The only people leave Eve do so because they don't like the experience anymore and lose interest in their investment. Everyone else, angry or not, remain.

[Endie]

This is CCP Sharkbait, the one accused of the illicit behaviour with the DS1 corporation.

http://ft.mirror.waffleimages.com/files/a9/a91903b2e03458800f088d9ff25e5e85c0dd272f.jpg

As you can see from his contribution to local chat here, he is a thoroughly professional individual.  I can't see him beiong the sort to abuse his position.

[Ironwood]

 

 :-D

Man, your green goes up to eleven.

[Raging Turtle]

Nice.  Whereas I got a permanent warning on my account and was muted for a hour after I used the word 'fuck' in local.

Yeah, nothing wrong with CCP staff at all.

[Tebonas]

They must have made enough money to last for a lifetime, because they certainly don't work towards customer retention.

[TripleDES]

I think this is going to boil down to two basic questions.
-Is the fact that BoB leadership has a direct instant line to CCP employees 'a bad thing' for the longterm health of the game?

Yes, because anyone using a direct line gets no wait times, while anyone else has to wait for hours, days or sometimes weeks to get their petitions answered. With all that whining of the GM dept of flooded queues. How's that not unfair? Especially in a generally unforgiving game like EVE?

-Has dev/BoB friendships interfered with the game?

For instance T20?

What everyone seems to be forgetting is that this is a single shard game. Devs fucking up and people cheating affects the whole game, not just a slice of it.

Also, Mahrin needs more kool aid.

[TripleDES]

This is CCP Sharkbait, the one accused of the illicit behaviour with the DS1 corporation.

http://ft.mirror.waffleimages.com/files/a9/a91903b2e03458800f088d9ff25e5e85c0dd272f.jpg

As you can see from his contribution to local chat here, he is a thoroughly professional individual.  I can't see him beiong the sort to abuse his position.

You should check the crap he wrote and still writes as new CCP employee both in the forums and on IRC. I don't mean just grammar wise, but also content wise. He may have some skills, but at the end, it's just a moron hired as game tester living in Iceland.

[Trouble]

This is CCP Sharkbait, the one accused of the illicit behaviour with the DS1 corporation.

http://ft.mirror.waffleimages.com/files/a9/a91903b2e03458800f088d9ff25e5e85c0dd272f.jpg

As you can see from his contribution to local chat here, he is a thoroughly professional individual.  I can't see him beiong the sort to abuse his position.

You should check the crap he wrote and still writes as new CCP employee both in the forums and on IRC. I don't mean just grammar wise, but also content wise. He may have some skills, but at the end, it's just a moron hired as game tester living in Iceland.

Which of course leads back to the question of why the hell was he touching corporations on a live server?

[TripleDES]

Which of course leads back to the question of why the hell was he touching corporations on a live server?

To verify unreported issues, that apparently never existed to beginwith. Which is a wonder in itself already, because usually it takes petition spam/waiting (or a direct line to the developers, durrrrr) to get them to look into things on the live server.

[Endie]

Yeah, i got a message from CCP saying that he was responding to a three-day old corporate petition for a non-functioning POS.  The CEO says the PoS's have been working fine and that no petitions occurred.

Working as intended.  Nothing to see.

That said, I still think that this is the least important of the three major issues.  The firing of the ISD bloke at the behest of Orange Species is the one that makes me depressed: mundane, accepted, widespread, don't-see-what's-wrong corruption.

[JoeTF]

Sharkbait issue is apure bullshit.

0) CCP employee with direct db access doesn't fucking need to join your corp to spy your titan fetus - he can use his
1) CEO of D1 admitted that their corp was only running two small POS. Nothing to spy there.
2) Director of D1 admitted filling a petition with stuck bpo.
3) There are multiple, independent cases where Sharkbait have joined player corps to verify and resolve bugs.


Goons filed peition and asked dev for help. Then after a month they attempt to frame him into cheating.
We all know Coalition is losing hard ans they are simply trying to create an excuse for losing the war.

[Reg]

Thanks for setting my mind at ease Joe. HAY GUYZ! We can all relax! There's no corruption after all.

[Endie]

Sharkbait issue is apure bullshit.

0) CCP employee with direct db access doesn't fucking need to join your corp to spy your titan fetus - he can use his
1) CEO of D1 admitted that their corp was only running two small POS. Nothing to spy there.
2) Director of D1 admitted filling a petition with stuck bpo.
3) There are multiple, independent cases where Sharkbait have joined player corps to verify and resolve bugs.


Goons filed peition and asked dev for help. Then after a month they attempt to frame him into cheating.
We all know Coalition is losing hard ans they are simply trying to create an excuse for losing the war.

Thanks for clearing all this up.  Did you PM Oveur himself to make sure of that, or just one of the GMs?

[Simond]

He just fired up MSN.

[Krakrok]

In frozen Iceland MSN fires you up!

[Chenghiz]

1) CEO of D1 admitted that their corp was only running two small POS. Nothing to spy there.

So the fact he couldn't have found anything proves him not a spy?

2) Director of D1 admitted filling a petition with stuck bpo.

Not according to him.

We all know Coalition is losing hard ans they are simply trying to create an excuse for losing the war.

We do? According to whom, exactly? As far as I can tell it's in a bit of a deadlock.

[Trippy]

What's Sharkbait's position at CCP?

[Merusk]

They must have made enough money to last for a lifetime, because they certainly don't work towards customer retention.

They don't need to work on customer retention.  Look at the people here who actively play.  They'll sling terms like "catass" and "asshat" at PvE game raiders who pull less time in a weekend actively doing stuff then turn around and justify sitting on their asses for 4-8 hours doing NOTHING at a gate camp to 'secure the border.'

Oh no, these guys are so addicted it's not pretty.    CCP could be caught red-handed, and they'd still play.  Goons MIGHT quit, knowing their efforts were futile, but I suspect enough would turn around and join some other corp that didn't have BoB run-ins.   Fuck, Mahrin's in here justifying behaviors he himself said he wouldn't tolerate out of his own employees or players. If that's not an indicator of how fucking addicted they are I don't know what is.

[TripleDES]

We do? According to whom, exactly? As far as I can tell it's in a bit of a deadlock.

According to BoB, we should also be dead, gone and kickboxed from EVE, since the smoske thing.

[Arthur_Parker]

2) Director of D1 admitted filling a petition with stuck bpo.

Not according to him.

There are at least two directors, one talked about a petition with a stuck bpo, he neglected to mention this was back in February according to the other.  The 2nd director refuses to clarify the events on the eve o boards because he is absolutely convinced CCP will ban his account if so much as breaths there.

In summary CCP sharkbait joined darkstar1 because a member of darkstar1 filed a petition, CCP will not release details of the petition & darkstar1 still denies a petition exists.

[MahrinSkel]

The simple fact is, there's a lot of ambiguity here.  Goons are predisposed to interpret those ambiguities in the worst possible ways, those aligned with BoB in the opposite direction.  Add in that many don't trust the veracity of anything the Goons say, that it's clear that the war is *not* moving in the Goons favor (north collapsing, Omist fallen to BoB) and this is right out of The Mittani playbook, and I don't think you're going to change anyone's mind with this.  This isn't 3 months ago, there isn't anyone left in 0.0 that hasn't already picked a side.  This may boost fading morale for a time, but in the long run if you convince your allies you're right, they'll just give up because if CCP really is rigging the game, what's the point?  The truth is: CCP hasn't done a very good job of disengaging themselves from their original community, hasn't done enough to promote professionalism in their employees, and there's an overall failure to draw a bright line between playing the game and working on the game.  But that there's a systematic conspiracy within CCP to make BoB "win"?

The fact is, it's not true, and the goon leadership *knows* it's not true.  But it's useful propaganda in the short run, and they're desperate.

--Dave

[Fmar]

-Has dev/BoB friendships interfered with the game?

For instance T20?

Well yeah, but that was an isolated incident by a rogue dev...right?
I was more thinking along the lines of 'was MSN used to circumvent the official ingame petition systems'.
It appears like it might have, but unless CCP internal affairs is monitoring instant message traffic, I don't think they will ever truely know.


Maybe I'm way off base but don't employees/GMs have varying levels of internal database access?
Meaning that they maybe don't all have full admin access with all dev commands.
If all CCP employees had full access to everything, one guy could have a bad day & shut the whole thing down or worse.

At my workplace, we are not given willy nilly access to the entire database, we are given access to what we will be working on.
Basic security practice.

Maybe that CCP employee doesn't have the ability to simply look into the actual database & had to circumvent that by actually joining the corporation?

I don't work in the MMO industry so maybe one of you guys can answer this...
Are all employees/guides/GMs given the same access to dev commands/database?