

How Eve Online went to the edge of apocalypse and back - omnibrain
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/may/12/how-virtual-world-edge-of-apocalypse-and-back-again

======
larzang
It's extremely odd that the article completely fails to mention the real
apocalypse that almost broke Eve, and was the real motivator for the
establishment of the CSM years before the Summer of Rage: staff cheating. In
an MMO, not having staff play the game often leads to a strong disconnect
between the company's interpretation of the state of the game and the reality,
but in an MMO like Eve where the entire game is built on forging long term
interpersonal relationships on a massive scale, having staff play the game can
present a great danger too.

The most successful of the early 0.0 power alliances was fueled in part by
having a developer who revealed his identity to the alliance leadership,
funneled limited rare items (blueprints) to them which were used to fund the
alliance's growth, and abused their GM powers to threaten other alliances.

The revelation was a massive blow to the playerbase's faith in CCP and the CSM
was established in large part to increase the transparency and communication
between CCP and the playerbase, as some of the foul play was long-suspected
but the concerns unheeded.

~~~
tinfoilman
The T20 incident was massive but I would like to make make some points.

T20 never gave bob the t2s he keep them in RKK yes RKK was in bob and one of
the original 4(5) depending on how you look at it.

Originally he just rented them to bob for a cut via his corp (which was very
common in bob to share Tech). Yes Bob got access to some T2s they might not
have otherwise but in no way is it the reason that bob got where they were in
the EvE world. In the upper levels of bob (I cannot say 100% as I only spoke
to those in my corp) people were not aware until the incident broke. A few
people in his corp knew based on the originally leaked emails. I think CCP did
mess up by not removing the T2 BPOs and being slow to deal with the issue but
that is not what we talking about now

That being said you say "abused their GM powers to threaten other alliances."
I have never seen this claimed or proven, I would be very interested if you
can show me anything on this. T20 was never fired from CPP, the idea he was
threatening alliances based on his job(GM powers) would have been instance
dismissal

On a side note, the T2 lottery had meant that it was very possible he did have
these BPOs. I had one friend have 3 alts, 15 research agents and he himself
got 2-3 T2 ship BPOs and 10+ items. I got 2 from 1 research agent

The worst out of all of it from my point of view was that this derailed BoB
and made us look like cheaters. Bottom line is we did not need those T2s to
achieve what we did, they did not give us the edge. What gave us the edge was
the trust between us all (Band of Brothers) which started to erode with this
incendent and was smashed when bob was disbanded over night a few years later.

All Hail BoB and SirMolly. the true creators of the political/military
structure we see today in eve.

~~~
Squarel
All hail SirMolly for his bbqs of awesomeness!

~~~
tinfoilman
I never went to the bbqs being young and poor when I was in bob but damm was I
jealous about not being there. Sitting in IRC as people were there was fun tho

Anyway I logging out, even a thread about eve is taking up my frigging day.

~~~
Zenst
o/ Still playing though left BOB and ended up in PL for a while now pretty
much play the skillpoint game.

Also never had time or when I did the money for the BBQ's, certainly looked
fun.

Sadly only a Havoc missile T2 bpo on my 6 agents, pretty meh one as well.

Yip, it can be a time sync, more so dependant upon the FC, fun times.

~~~
adamgray
I wonder how many other PL members are on HN.

Hello from Snigg.

------
eloff
I was on my way to being an eve trillionaire once. I hacked the game client to
make a network of market arbitrage bots. They had human reflexes and took
frequent breaks, ate, slept, even took vacations. I had a quarter trillion isk
in assets and cash by the time I was detected and banned. OracleOfJita was my
main account. Eve is a pretty crazy game with an insane learning curve. Thanks
to being a python veneer over a bunch of network services, it's also very
amenable to automation.

~~~
orf
I did something similar thing with Python and Guild Wars 2, probably not as
advanced though. It would place buy orders for under priced wood logs which
were brought very quickly, and then sold them when the market price fluctuated
higher.

Fifa Ultimate Team is easily gameable as well, the web frontend uses a
surprisingly well made API which makes it super simple to automate trading of
cards. It was interesting to see how the PS3 and XBox economies differed (a
lot).

Python is surprisingly awesome for such tasks I find.

~~~
juzzcurious
If you don't mind my asking, how did you go about mankind this? How did you go
about unearthing the API?

This type of tinkering seems like something I'd REALLY enjoy playing with! But
I've no idea how to get started. I'm just a back end developer who lives
tinkering but doesn't quite have the expertise.

~~~
getsat
If the website has an API, just use it directly. If not...

Load up the website in question, open your browser's debug tools' network tab,
and perform each action that you'd like to be able to programatically do.
Record the destination host/path, request type, and all the params that can be
sent to it. Then, implement a function in your language of choice for each
action that you want to be able to do (some actions require multiple
requests).

Package up the functions into a class/library/whatever and extract out common
functionality. Then post it on HN for lots of karma and feedback.

For a simple starter task, create an account on
[http://www.nationstates.net](http://www.nationstates.net) and write a bot
which logs in each day and randomly picks a choice for each decision you are
asked to make for your country.

~~~
fastball
Even easier way to log requests is to use something to man-in-the-middle your
own connection, like MITMProxy (which, coincidentally, is written in Python).

I've used it a lot to unearth APIs and make programs that utilize them.

[https://mitmproxy.org/](https://mitmproxy.org/)

~~~
getsat
Wow, nice. Bookmarked. Thanks for the link!

------
xelfer
Great article. One of the best video game trailers I've ever seen has come
from Eve:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdfFnTt2UT0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdfFnTt2UT0)

~~~
mfringel
That is five percent of EVE.

The other 95% is spreadsheet manipulation and waiting for your kitchen timer
to go off.

~~~
jarvic
Join a PvP corp, fly cheap ships, do just enough
missions/exploration/pirating/trading/mining/whatever to keep yourself in
ammo, and have a blast shooting people. EVE only turns into Spreadsheets in
Space if you make it that way.

~~~
mfringel
In all seriousness, my theory is that the more you want to solo in EVE, the
more it turns into Spaceships and Spreadsheets.

------
cjslep
> [...] Low Security, a more dangerous patch of cosmos where unscrupulous
> bandits hijack vessels to sell them on for profit. The third, final and most
> notorious territory is Null Space, the galactic wild west where even the
> most well-tooled characters live in a state of constant peril.

When I played a couple years back, low-sec was considered the most "wild west,
dangerous, insecure" space you could be in, even when with fiendlies. It was
made no safer due to my participation in FW, so Amarr/Caldari FW fighters
could be added to the usual troves of pirates and gate campers.

The reasoning was for null sec if you joined a major alliance and stuck to
their space, the actual realized danger was no greater than that of high sec.
While null and low-sec both don't have CONCORD (NPC police), low-sec was
typically teeming to the brim with pirates and gate campers due to the lack of
sovereignty and major alliances kicking them out like null-sec has.

FW was major fun in low sec, heard they revamped the system, hope it's been
revitalized!

------
erikb
The stories from Eve certainly are awesome. I always feel I want to be part of
that, but at the same time I'm also sad that this amount of energy is not put
into something more meaningful. The main part is building a huge community
right? That you fly around in space ships is secondary at some point. Then why
don't people exchange that secondary part with something like organizing free
food for homeless people, or building shelters instead of space stations, or
making computer cheaper so every school can afford to put one on every desk?

*edit: That nobody has to become defensive here: All time spent on that kind of activity is time lost for humanity at all, in my books. It does not mean someone else need to have the same priorities. I can be sad about it without wanting to tell anyone that they need to change their ways. Keep your ways. But allow me to be sad about it.

~~~
TeMPOraL
It's a good question, but I guess the answer is - people just don't work that
way. You can't separate the form (community) from the content (space ships).
These are not substitute goods, you can't just replace Eve with World of
Warcraft or with helping Red Cross.

And the reasons people choose games instead of life? I guess it's complicated.
I am guilty of that too; I could be building real rockets and learning real
aeronautics instead of wasting 400 hours in Kerbal Space Program and I'd be
probably much more qualified than I am now. But I know that I wouldn't find
the strength and willpower to pursue "the real deal" instead of a fun game
that approximates it.

I sometimes am sad too, just like I am sad about the world's focus in general.
Most people waste even more time on even more useless things that Eve players
do on Eve. It took 12 years from first artificial satellite to putting a man
on the Moon. If people could maintain that kind of focus and channel it to the
right goals - ending poverty, illness and death itself, we'd live in a
paradise before the end of this century.

(IMO it's actually a huge mistake that a lot of people in the field of
educational games make - they try to make education apps pretending to be
games, instead of making games that educate as a side effect)

~~~
pavel_lishin
> * I could be building real rockets and learning real aeronautics instead of
> wasting 400 hours in Kerbal Space Program and I'd be probably much more
> qualified than I am now.*

I think part of it, as well as EVE vs. feeding the homeless, is the ability to
walk away when it's not fun.

If you walk away from three years in college studying aeronautics, you're
throwing away everything you sunk into it. If you're walking away from a
homeless shelter, a family might go hungry.

If you're walking away from Eve or Kerbal, well, some bits don't get
exchanged, and I guess maybe someone might lose a fake spaceship. No guilt.

~~~
TeMPOraL
True. You approach the game out of interest, stick to it as long as it's fun,
and take a break with no guilt if you don't feel like playing or are busy
doing something else, only to maybe return to it later. The lack of real
responsibility can be (and in my own case, very often is) really motivating.

------
baldfat
I always am entertained by Eve Online stories. It is always amazing that
months and years of work are thrown into battle and the stories of betrayal
and demise are epic.

I played in beta for 6 hours and sadly I was done with the game. I am spoiled
by RTS and now MOBA were the fun is quick hectic and doesn't require so much
patience.

------
edem
This is a rather old post. I think last year there was a space battle where 70
titans perished:

[http://www.pcgamer.com/eve-onlines-biggest-ever-battle-
trill...](http://www.pcgamer.com/eve-onlines-biggest-ever-battle-trillions-of-
isk-in-damages-and-over-70-titans-lost/)

I don't playe EVE anymore because of the (80% preparation 20% fun) rule but I
did nearly everything in the game (trading, mining, pirating, exploring) and
it was fun but I don't have the time to do so anymore.

~~~
Squarel
It is not an old post, it was published yesterday.

I do not play eve anymore because I found myself just sitting in the chat
channels, and not even bothering to trade anymore, so now I just hang around
in the IRC channels instead.

~~~
edem
This is just niggling. The post _was published yesterday_ but the event it
describes _was almost 10 years ago_.

~~~
Squarel
If the entire article was about that one incident, I would agree with you.

However, the incident is one part of the article, which goes on to describe
events up to recently. So yes, if you only read the opening, then this article
is old news, and is only about the event.

If you read the rest of the article, it is about how Eve and the community
have developed over time.

~~~
edem
I see your point.

------
IkmoIkmo
Might be a tiny bit exaggerated, losing 1% of your subs is no joke... but it
wasn't the edge of apocalypse. Eve had 50k users around the time of this event
in April 2005. Losing 500 players isn't exactly the end of the world. In fact,
despite subs cancelled, the amount of subs never dropped during that time and
grew to 100k before year's end.

I know there's a bit more context to it but this is just another hyperbolic
title to an otherwise fun and interesting article :-/

~~~
technofiend
Not sure where you got 1% from? The cancellations at the time seemed much
higher based on player login rates and I saw much larger numbers bandied about
in the press.

I played during monocle-gate and during TEST's holding sovereignty down when
they lost it all. Login rates went from peaking around 50,000 online at a time
(and averaging above 35,000) to about 26,000 today. That's a huge drop.

But don't take my word for it, read The Mittani's blog - he was mentioned in
the article - [https://www.themittani.com/features/graphing-eve-online-
hist...](https://www.themittani.com/features/graphing-eve-online-history-
retribution-kronos) \- for yourself.

~~~
IkmoIkmo
[http://users.telenet.be/mmodata/Charts/Subs-2.png](http://users.telenet.be/mmodata/Charts/Subs-2.png)

500 cancelled in 2005 is 1%. It certainly were more than 500, don't get me
wrong, but still the subs rate never dropped and in fact doubled that year.

I can't find anything about the loss of players due to that event in the link
you sent. But you mentioned monocle-gate... we're talking about two different
things here. I'm talking about the 2005 event when 500 players cancelled their
sub which the article talks about. Monocle gate was more than half a decade
later and not something I said anything about, the article does mention it but
not in reference to the article's hyperbolic title which referred to the 2005
event after which, the article said, EVE was on 'the brink of destruction' and
'skirted apocalypse', which I'm disagreeing with.

Monocle gate was different, they actually lost significant subs (including
myself, for that and other reasons). But even then they didn't skirt
apocalypse. Subs didn't drop more than a few percent and they ended the year
with more subs than they started.

EVE is definitely struggling with online users. But that's a function I think
of the game's design and the nature of MMORPGs. Few people play for a decade,
and there is an easy character transfer mechanism, and an easy way to buy ISK
legally through plexes. In other words, it's relatively easy to buy characters
and money nowadays. And when you do train, you may get a sub and just keep it
offline to train. The entire entry game and mid game is basically useless for
95% of players. So you get high-end gameplay, which is mostly people who login
every now and then to run some builds off a blueprint, fuel a tower, jump
drive some freight, or login for a large alliance battle. You can sustain all
this gameplay on very few logins. The days of many thousands of people mining,
trading by traveling through gates instead of jumping around the universe, new
players doing lvl 2-3 missions, piracy and small corp warfare etc are gone. It
still exists, of course, but not at the scale it used to. It's too easy to
mine & trade & build with fewer ships and in less time, leading to fewer
logins, and fewer targets for pirates.

------
FLUX-YOU
>The most famous of Eve’s players is Alexander Gianturco, alias the Mittani.

Ugh. Way to keep a low profile, CIA:
[http://www.gameranx.com/updates/id/9639/article/glenn-
beck-t...](http://www.gameranx.com/updates/id/9639/article/glenn-beck-thinks-
eve-online-is-a-front-for-the-cia/)

------
golemotron
There should be a fanfic about Eve's universe raiding SecondLife or vice-
versa.

------
arkem
If this article interested you, keep an eye out for an upcoming book "A
History of the Great Empires of Eve Online"

[http://evehistory.com/](http://evehistory.com/)

------
vasticles
Istvaan Shogaatsu ended up in my WoW guild. Never quite realized the magnitude
of what he did in Eve (though to be frank, I never bothered to care at the
time). What a badass! Thanks for the nice read, OP.

------
outworlder
> It presents a cosmos of 7,500 interconnected star systems

Is that counting the Wormhole systems? Don't think so.

------
vog
Could anyone tl;dr that?

I guess those "The long read" articles are not for me. That one is a very long
article with almost no visible structure. It only has paragraphs, but no
sections, summary, or anything like that.

~~~
ghshephard
It's a medium read at 5,000 words. Took me about 10 minutes to read, and even
a slow reader should get through it in about 15-20 minutes.

It's an excellent review of the history, mechanics, people, and themes
associated with Eve Online. Worth the 20 minutes of your time if you have
interest in online communities, and aren't already well versed in Eve. Might
be and interesting read for people who are well versed in Eve anyways.

~~~
alexc05
I actually started reading it, but was rather bored with it quite quickly. It
just didn't appeal to me.

I do however, greatly respect the HN community and if this was interesting
enough to get to the front page, I found myself curious as to the reason it
got a significant number of upvotes.

"Edge of Apocolypse" is VERY hyperbolic and meaningless, but the TLDR; that
was eventually posted at the very least satisfied my "curiosity gap" I for one
am thankful that the TLDR has been posted.

