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

[Sutro]

I think Dave's spot on with his analysis. Not saying it's impossible, but it would be obviously dumb to lend BoB blanket support since they're already winning - EvE is a game that if one corp takes dominance, people start desubbing. It's happened a couple of times in the past. As with all things, the empire does eventually dissolve, but not without loss of population before hand.

-Sutro

[Arthur_Parker]

What's Sharkbait's position at CCP?

Some form of customer service, he's the blue text.

http://i43.photobucket.com/albums/e399/tasadar1/SharkBigger.jpg

[MahrinSkel]

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?

Generally not.  For example, at Mythic I had no direct access at all to the in-game data, except for the ability to make GM characters (and if I showed up on a live server with one, I usually had to explain why to the head of Customer Service).  I did all my datamining on copies of the Herald database (with some fields that were never shown to the players, and cross-referenced against a copy of the Account database).

Also, even if you can play Eve from an SQL front end, I doubt they let anyone do so.  Bad Things can happen if you let people routinely enter their own SQL.  I once deleted the entire Camelot Herald dataset, because I pointed my datamining programs at the wrong server.  That was just inconvenient and embarassing, the same mistake on the live servers would have been a disaster.

--Dave

[Arthur_Parker]

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

The rigged RP events and the firing of the reporter via a msn communication from BoB to the devs were brought to light because the reporter contacted the Kugutsumen.  It wasn't the goons who posted about it on eve o, it was a smash member, he posted twice and had his threads deleted.  On the same day darkstar1 who are in (goonswarm but not goonfleet) had posted about the dev joining their corp.

Mittani is taking full advantage of this, but all this hasn't all been created out of thin air as a war tactic.  If CCP put in place a system to ensure members of BoB can't msn their dev buddies to help them, then I'm sure goons would give up every single piece of space they currently own.

BoB do contact devs via msn while playing, the BoB 2nd in command confirmed this.  So saying goon's think there is a systematic conspiracy to make Bob win is um for want of a better word, untrue.  Goons do think individual members of CCP are biased towards their friends in BoB, the past evidence and current issues show that to be true for at least some individuals.

[Endie]

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

Since you're always telling us how BoB and Fix are BFF and exist in a tight-knit, absolutely non-abusive relationship, I am terribly surprised that Dianabolic hasn't seen fit to tell you that at least one of the three issues is undeniably true: that BoB circumvent in-game channels by chatting to their developer friends via phone and IM.  Assuming his line isn't busy as he comlpains about ISD members, you should totally phone him up and ask him why he didn't let you know.

And you, yourself, admit that a second accusation was true: that the RP events are rigged.

So 2/3 of the accusations are true.  That leaves only one in the balance: the DS1 executives say there were no petitions and no bugs, CCP say there were.

And as I'ev said all along, the worst element is the unprofessional relationship between certain, senior BoB players and CCP staff members, to the extent that ISD members lose their positions as a result.  That's what stinks of filth and corruption.

[Simond]

About the DS1 thing - the BPO petition was filed in February, and Kieron claims that Sharkbait acted due to a petition filed in early May. Different petition, it seems.
Mind you, Kieron also says that petitions cannot be deleted which is utter bollocks anyway.

[TripleDES]

Kieron says a lot when the day's long. His damage control with the last big incident were pure lies, too, then T20 came out of the closet trashing everything kieron said.

Hey Mahrin, how about you stop clamoring about Mittani all day long, because your slave owners aren't exactly better about it. The smoske thing was proof enough. The only difference here is that there aren't our spies leaking all and everything, apart from the unfair CCP fuckups, they can find into EVE-O. Except Kugutsumen, but he's a faggot and not with us.

Also, even if you can play Eve from an SQL front end, I doubt they let anyone do so.  Bad Things can happen if you let people routinely enter their own SQL.

No, but with a game as fragile to change as EVE, you'd think they'd have proper QA and diagnostics tools. Hell, how long is it ago that they introduced POSes? And how long are they ridden with bugs that commonly show? Yet they (supposedly) still have to log into the game, get into your corp, just to be able to take a look at it? That's a load of unprofessional crap in my opinion.

Some form of customer service, he's the blue text.

http://i43.photobucket.com/albums/e399/tasadar1/SharkBigger.jpg

Yeah, someone that professional might surely not be tempted to work for the advantage of one of his friends.

[VickeVire]

I don't post much here so you can ignore me as you see fit but anyone thinking it's 'OK' for a small part of the community to have a batphone to the devs cuz they have 'been here making the game better for a long time' needs to step away from the computer and have a sniff of fresh air.

I don't even think a deeper explanation is needed...

[Ironwood]

Spell Check.  Just beside the Post button.

But you make a point.

[VickeVire]

Spell Check.  Just beside the Post button.

But you make a point.

thanks, I found some errors

[Furiously]

So - anyone want to buy two timecards? Come on....

[Slayerik]

Character sold and transfered!

Now I can just keep up with the f13 Eve drama threads and war updates and I get to be in the best part without the sub!

[d4rkj3di]

Mr. Rickey is still pissy and bitter because he lost 3.5 billion ISK fighting against Goonfleet over a year ago. Any posts by him regarding EVE will always be just this side of full blown internet nerd rage meltdown about how his little space toys got broken.

Also, he's from Butte, Montana. HA!

In all seriousness, I'm going to Iceland tomorrow for 5 days to see a guy about a thing, and I'll be sure to ask about EVE drama.

Oh shit, Devswarm ITT!

[Lum]

Dave's wiping my database still makes me full of NERD FURY.

Oh, and CCP came out with two chainguns blazing in response tonight:

http://myeve.eve-online.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=472

Short version: In their eyes, this was all due to Goonfleet manipulation and they're PISSED. I'm fairly certain I've never seen developers tear into a huge chunk of their users like that before.

[Dravalen]

Yikes, they do everything short but name goonsquad. They are pissed indeed.

[Sutro]

Pretty sure they just lost more subs than if they'd ignored it.

The whole "social engineering effort" claim strikes me as very tinfoil.

-Sutro

[Comstar]

For the benefit of any CCP employees reading this: I am not,  and have never been, a member of goonswarm. You do not need to be a member of one corporation to post on digg, slashdot or anywhere else on the internet, including the 150+ page thread on CCP's own fourms.

Wonder if Remindel (ex-leader of GS and laywer) will defend against the threatened lawsuit.

CCP approves of metagaming, and now they are shocked, shocked I tell you, to find out it's not much fun? ha!

Next time there is a dev scandal in EVE, it'll be like "quick, round up the usual suspects and ban some goons".

[MahrinSkel]

Wouldn't you be?  If this organized smear campaign doesn't cross the line into libel, it's damned close.  The Mittani may have been *too* clever on this one, on several counts:

1) Having set out to make as big a splash as possible, he may very well have set himself and Something Awful up for a lawsuit.

2) The only people *in* the game that are buying it are the goons and some of their allies (not even all of them).  Most of GoonSwarm is not true Goons, they're Eve players who wanted to go into 0.0 and thought a $10 admission fee was better than a 10M SP requirement.  He may wind up debunking his own propaganda just to keep his army from evaporating.

3) A lot of people are being reminded of the real reason Goons play games: To grief, in this case at the developer level.

--Dave

[ajax34i]

It's not social engineering, it's metagaming and politics that involved CCP rather than just regular alliances.  They encouraged this sort of stuff between alliances on their own boards.  The T20 issue created an opening, and their handling of it, as well as their seeming reluctance to sever tiers to player "friends" and delete compromised dev accounts has resulted in this.

Not fun, yeah.  Surprised that they expect their playerbase to behave differently, after all the conditioning.

[MahrinSkel]

It's not social engineering, it's metagaming and politics that involved CCP rather than just regular alliances.  They encouraged this sort of stuff between alliances on their own boards.  The T20 issue created an opening, and their handling of it, as well as their seeming reluctance to sever tiers to player "friends" and delete compromised dev accounts has resulted in this.

Not fun, yeah.  Surprised that they expect their playerbase to behave differently, after all the conditioning.

Certain parallels to the PK/Anti PK of pre-Trammel UO leap inescapably to mind (especially Siege Perilous).  Not to mention the Camel's Nose or Broken Windows when it comes to treating in-game breaches of trust (scamming, corp theft) as acceptable gameplay.  You let your griefers organize themselves into a community, you treat them like any other organization, and sooner or later you're going to hear "You knew I was a snake when you picked me up, dumbass."

--Dave (ain't I just full of the cliches today?)

[Megrim]

Hey what now? Can someone do a short version of what the Goons are being accused of?

[Raging Turtle]

Pretty sure they just lost more subs than if they'd ignored it.

The whole "social engineering effort" claim strikes me as very tinfoil.

-Sutro

You lose the subs that 'orchestrated' most of this, and CCP wins. 

While CCP is far from perfect, this was certainly blowing small situations way out of proportion.

Good response, IMO.  But then, I'm rather drunk at the moment.

[MahrinSkel]

Hey what now? Can someone do a short version of what the Goons are being accused of?

Short synopsis:

You're GoonSwarm, an organization that is widely reviled and distrusted in the game, possibly because your recruiting page tells newbies to go out and grief/scam other players.  A year ago, the strongest military power in Eve (Band of Brothers, BoB) declares their intent to remove you from the PvP areas of the game and very nearly succeeds, cutting your numbers in half and driving you to the opposite end of the map to take shelter with the second-strongest military power (Red Alliance), who finds you a useful meatshield.

6 months ago, you whipped up outrage over a year-old scandal involving a senior CCP employee and BoB, when someone hacks their forums and discovers that the employee had created several lucrative assets (known as T2 blueprint originals) for himself and given them to BoB when he was "outed" and forced to quit the alliance.  You also out the leader of RA's primary local enemy as a CCP employee (although not one who can be shown to have abused his position).  Said local enemy collapses, and 2/3 of the PvP population of the game joins a lynch mob to destroy BoB.

Only the war hasn't gone well.  The lynch mob is getting their ass kicked, in fact, and many of the members are trying to cut their own deals with BoB while others are just trying to wander nonchalantly away, whistling.  One whole group representing half of your allies is getting beat like a drum by a small portion of those allied with BoB, while BoB themselves is implacably marching forward against you.  Morale is fading, in-game resources are dwindling, things don't look good.  You desperately need something to stiffen the resolve of your troops and allies, while hopefully dividing the enemy camp.  You need another scandal.

Except....  You've got nothing.  So, you make stuff up.  You take an intermediate working draft of an Event script several months old and point to it as evidence the Event was rigged.  You take a 3-week old case of a GM joining a corp to fix a bug, and get the person who asked for it to happen to agree to say he didn't.  And you get a volunteer for the game to provoke his own termination at the instigation of BoB.  In the process of the last one, you get a gift, one of the BoB leaders says he's got CCP employees in his MSN contacts.  You bring all of this forward during a three-day weekend, sending your hordes of hardened forum warriors out to spam it all over hell and gone while nobody from CCP will be able to coordinate an official response.

That's what GoonSwarm is being accused of.

--Dave

[Sutro]

Occam's Razor just disintegrated into its molecular components.

-Sutro

[Simond]

Hey what now? Can someone do a short version of what the Goons are being accused of?

Pointing out that there is, in fact, a man behind the curtain.
Also, minor detail: It's not libel if it's true.

[MahrinSkel]

Occam's Razor just disintegrated into its molecular components.

Apparently, so did GoonSwarm. unless this is just more forum dramabombs for giggles.

--Dave

[Arthur_Parker]

That's an interesting response from CCP.

[Ratadm]

Occam's Razor just disintegrated into its molecular components.

Apparently, so did GoonSwarm. unless this is just more forum dramabombs for giggles.

--Dave

If it's posted on caod and about goons it's true. 

The above text is so green it appears normal.  However at least now caod is a good source of humor rather than terrible alt trolls.

[Arthur_Parker]

Fun times ahead.

[Trippy]

I don't see that they addressed the issue where BoB has a direct connect to EVE developers. In other words, to borrow their phrasiing, this:

It is worth restating here that there is absolutely no categorical CCP preference towards anything that transpires in the EVE political landscape.

Has also been proven FALSE

[Ubvman]

Hey what now? Can someone do a short version of what the Goons are being accused of?

Short synopsis:

stuff.....

That's what GoonSwarm is being accused of.

--Dave

THAT! is a dang good plan! Really.

Its an attempt to force CCP devs to cut ALL ties to BoB, removing a huge (if not game-winning) resource from BoB.
Even if there is "no meat on the bones" on the allegations, I'm thinking the Goons have the advantage on the Propaganda front. CCP has nothing to complain about, its the gameplay they have designed and encouraged - even if it starts spilling into RL. It makes for really great "roadside crash" entertainment for the rest of us.

BRING ON TEH LAWSUITS I SAY!!!!!1!!  :-D      :mrgreen: 

[Simond]

Comedy, part 1: CCP's repsonse is basically 'We're not cheating because we say we're not. Trust us. Would we lie to you (again)?"
Comedy, part 2: No mention about BoB's self-admitted hotline to the devs, for some reason.
Comedy, part 3: Please CCP, don't throw me into the briar patch start a lawsuit.

And for any BoB/BoB slaves out there - congratulations, you 'won' EVE due to direct help from your friends at CCP. Enjoy the ashes.

[Ironwood]

Hey what now? Can someone do a short version of what the Goons are being accused of?

Short synopsis:

You're GoonSwarm, an organization that is widely reviled and distrusted in the game, possibly because your recruiting page tells newbies to go out and grief/scam other players.  A year ago, the strongest military power in Eve (Band of Brothers, BoB) declares their intent to remove you from the PvP areas of the game and very nearly succeeds, cutting your numbers in half and driving you to the opposite end of the map to take shelter with the second-strongest military power (Red Alliance), who finds you a useful meatshield.

6 months ago, you whipped up outrage over a year-old scandal involving a senior CCP employee and BoB, when someone hacks their forums and discovers that the employee had created several lucrative assets (known as T2 blueprint originals) for himself and given them to BoB when he was "outed" and forced to quit the alliance.  You also out the leader of RA's primary local enemy as a CCP employee (although not one who can be shown to have abused his position).  Said local enemy collapses, and 2/3 of the PvP population of the game joins a lynch mob to destroy BoB.

Only the war hasn't gone well.  The lynch mob is getting their ass kicked, in fact, and many of the members are trying to cut their own deals with BoB while others are just trying to wander nonchalantly away, whistling.  One whole group representing half of your allies is getting beat like a drum by a small portion of those allied with BoB, while BoB themselves is implacably marching forward against you.  Morale is fading, in-game resources are dwindling, things don't look good.  You desperately need something to stiffen the resolve of your troops and allies, while hopefully dividing the enemy camp.  You need another scandal.

Except....  You've got nothing.  So, you make stuff up.  You take an intermediate working draft of an Event script several months old and point to it as evidence the Event was rigged.  You take a 3-week old case of a GM joining a corp to fix a bug, and get the person who asked for it to happen to agree to say he didn't.  And you get a volunteer for the game to provoke his own termination at the instigation of BoB.  In the process of the last one, you get a gift, one of the BoB leaders says he's got CCP employees in his MSN contacts.  You bring all of this forward during a three-day weekend, sending your hordes of hardened forum warriors out to spam it all over hell and gone while nobody from CCP will be able to coordinate an official response.

That's what GoonSwarm is being accused of.

--Dave

Are you fucking kidding ?  That's the most biased shite I've ever read and I used to write copy for the SNP.

[Ironwood]

Actually, I take that back - I've just read the CCP 'findings' and it's worse.

 :-D

[Reg]

Are you fucking kidding ?  That's the most biased shite I've ever read and I used to write copy for the SNP.

He's not kidding. Reading anything from Mahrin on this issue makes me sympathize with the Goons supposedly terrible "it's just an internet spaceship game" attitude.