
Eve-Online player loses a $9000 digital spaceship - iwwr
http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidthier/2013/07/09/eve-online-player-loses-a-spaceship-worth-approximately-9000/
======
rcamera
Some background facts, there is only 3 of those ships in-game so far (iirc).
That one belonged to the best mercenary alliance in-game, Pandemic Legion (PL
for short), which are very notorious for having the best and largest spying
network in-game (EVE metagaming is pretty unique), some of the best players
and are not only one of the richest alliances, but one that has many of the
largest ships in-game.

That guy, with a few other corporation mates, were trying to hunt some enemies
who were in expensive ships (not a 9k dollars ship though), while there was an
entire fleet from Black Legion, another alliance, trying to hunt that guy.

There are two fun facts to all of this... Pandemic Legion has 12 spies in
Black Legion, and many of the people online during that time in PL knew that
Black Legion were trying to hunt something (they just didn't know what). That
guy lost his very expensive ship because he didn't make use of the spy network
PL has, by not asking people if there was anyone trying to hunt him. The
second fun fact is that the commander of the fleet that guy in the expensive
ship was in, was actually a spy for Black Legion! He commanded the fleet right
into a death trap. EVE metagaming is pretty unique.

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nicholassmith
I'd love to play Eve, because it seems like a pretty intense sort of game but
it also seems like you need to _really_ commit a lot of time and resources to
it. So instead I live vicariously through battle reports like this.

~~~
SeanDav
I played EVE intensely for a few months, fairly soon after the game came out.
I stopped because it is not a game you can succeed at without being part of a
corp. Effectively you have a "boss" in game that tells you what you need to
do.

If you have plenty of free time and don't mind taking orders as to what you
should do in the game and with your free time - then this is the game for you.
Seriously, it is a great game but not for solo players.

You better be a "company man" if you want to get ahead in EVE.

~~~
tome
Is it really not at all possible to be a sort of lone-ranger?

~~~
nazka
A big part of the best PvPers are lone-rangers. It is possible to do it, and
when you start to be one of these you are like a god in the system. I
remembered a guy named Ephemeron, he had two accounts with two incredible
ships. They were the Formula 1 of Eve online, costing more than a fleet of 20
pilots, each. When he entered in a system, it was like Darth Maul was here.
Awesomely fitted, awesomely skilled. Everyone wanted to kill him to harvest
his items and also to fight him because he was a master in PvP. But at the end
everyone died every time. His main vessels had an mean of 500 ships destroyed
before he lost them... Famous across a good 1/4 of Eve.

So yes it's possible and it's even one of the most fun part of Eve.

~~~
baddox
Why couldn't an organized fleet from one of the big alliances just kill a lone
ranger as soon as they gained the slightest notoriety?

~~~
nazka
When you are a lone ranger, PvP is 4 times harder. In fleet it is easy to warp
out when you start to be the current target, but when you are alone you are
the target, if you do a mistake they will catch you and the only solution will
be to fight to the death or to know several technics to disengage. You gain a
lot of experience and it's a huge advantage to defeat your enemy. You will
learn by yourself which ship should be killed first, how to outmaneuver your
enemies, how to devise them, etc. Many pilots have an excellent k/d ratio but
they can't compete against a lone ranger even with a lone ranger with a "bad
ratio".

So he had two Formula 1 but the real key to his success was because he knew
each law of the world and he was a master when he fought. It is one of the
best point of Eve, you can have a Formula 1 but if you don't have the
experience to use it, you will die at the first engagement. And at the same
time, when you are excellent you can engage enemies even by being outnumbered
by 10, and this is awesome.

(Another key point on Eve is: each ship have different size with different
role. It is like to have catapult to greek titan in World of Warcraft. And
even with one of most hardest task in any games, Eve stays balanced and
coherent for a 800 vs 800 as well as a 1 vs 1 with different tactics at each
size)

There are many many things to know in Eve. For instance, only after 4 years I
could say I started to see the whole thing in PvP. If you want to see
"Hackers" in Eve at fleet level, you have all the Rooks and Kings videos.
[1][2] For lone rangers' videos, you have the Garmonation series, or Eve is
Easy's video [3], and Darkness' videos with the Dark Perspective 3 and 4. [4]

[1]
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xwql_Sp0QG8](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xwql_Sp0QG8)

[2]
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrYe_4vHzgE](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrYe_4vHzgE)

[3] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcRAx-
uwk40](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcRAx-uwk40)

[4] [http://dl.eve-
files.com/media/0904/Dark_Perspective_4_final....](http://dl.eve-
files.com/media/0904/Dark_Perspective_4_final.wmv)

------
zaroth
Tried to watch the video of the battle, couldn't understand a thing that was
happening. MMORPG has seriously advanced since the last time I played ;-)

~~~
udp
Why do they seem to repeat everything they say? I can't work out if it's
automated or not.

~~~
cdash
They are giving commands to possibly hundreds of people that might not speak
english as a native language. In addition sometimes there is more than one
voice talking at the same time and their mic might not exactly be clear. Also,
many times they are calling a persons name out and then people have to
remember the name and search for it through a list of hundreds of other names.
It's repeated so they don't have to remember the name.

~~~
lflux
People are also drunk / sleep deprived / have an attention span of a goldfish,
or doing several things at once so you might miss who to shoot, where to point
your spaceship et c unless it's repeated. I don't know if this is normal for
Black Legion's voice chat, but when killing high-value targets the commander
can sometimes get riled up over potentially missing the kill.

~~~
dedward
He was repeating every small phrase three times though, it was hard to tell if
it was automated or habit.

------
Udo
I never understood the allure of having a real-money economy (or something
that is closely tied to real money) in a game. On that note, many MMOs seem to
be structured like actual work places, complete with command hierarchies,
politics and territory. This must be immensely appealing to a lot of people,
but it's pretty far removed from my understanding of a fun pastime.

But once you're past that, does it really make a difference if that item is
worth $90 or $9000? There will always be really rich and influential players
around and I'm sure it's not that big of a deal to them. After all, if there
was no risk of losing that item, they wouldn't have bought it in the first
place. In a real-money game, the material worth of an item is a direct measure
of what's at stake, and if the stakes aren't high people aren't having fun.

~~~
kmfrk
Ever played poker? Playing with and without real money are two completely
different games. As long as we aren't talking scummy DLC tactics like Zynga's,
I think it's a great idea, but it's obviously only something skilled
developers should use.

~~~
berntb
EVE I can see myself playing enough to destroy my life, money or no money. It
scares me. Poker is a different _kind_ of money game.

Poker seems fascinating, but the problem is the money.

If poker wasn't about money, the ideal players to play with are a bit better
than me. Since it is about money, the ideal players to play with are
overconfident drunks/halfwits with money. Just not fun.

~~~
FireBeyond
EVE: Very true. It's a game that's entirely possible to get involved in to a
level that is a different kind of obsessed than, say, WOW.

EVE is all about people, interaction, politics, planning. WOW Raids, however
complex thy get at higher levels, just can't ever compare. I've started, and
stopped playing, many times, because of it.

------
cheald
Mumble recording after the event:
[https://soundcloud.com/marxismftw/mumble-07-07-18-15-42-mumb...](https://soundcloud.com/marxismftw/mumble-07-07-18-15-42-mumble-1)

That is some _quality_ rage right there.

~~~
dfc
Elsewhere in this thread I said that Eve was so different from CoD that its
hard to believe they are in the same category of leisure activities. However,
I immediately felt right at home when I heard that the level of rage. Can I
bother you for a couple of quick questions:

Around 5:10 into the mumble recording someone says "the cougars posting is so
bad i cant even read this." Do you know what the post is that he is referring
to?

In a discussion of the leak someone wrote:

"6) I didn't leak the sound cloud to the eve press. My laptop barely is able
to run multiple Eve clients let alone fraps and record soundclouds are the
like."

What is/are "fraps"? And why would one player need to run more than one Eve
client?

~~~
BigKRex
> the cougars posting is so bad i cant even read this

He's talking about kugutsumen.com, an Eve meta-gaming/trolling forum.

> What is/are "fraps"?

video capture software

> And why would one player need to run more than one Eve client?

Many, if not most, Eve players multibox more than one account at a time (the
average number of accounts/person is probably ~2). Especially people who own
supercarriers (such as the focus of the article), as those ships can never
dock, thus one for all intents and purposes needs another character to fly
other ships.

Other common uses for multiple accounts are dedicated support characters
(haulers, boosters, healers, etc.) and mining fleets (some people will run
dozens at once, crazy I know).

~~~
dfc
Many thanks. Can I bother you with one last question:

Around 1:20 into the replay a little cat picture comes up that says "Get
Dunked." Is that the Eve equivalent of a tea bagging? Can someone explain the
significance of what proceeded the Eve Bagging?

~~~
cheald
Nah, it's just a "bam, you got owned" image macro. The GIF plays right as the
Revenant is destroyed.

------
fu9ar
Historical note: the Mittani has been Goonfleet's spymaster and head of black
ops since 2006 or so.

~~~
redthrowaway
He's been their CEO for years. Mittens is probably the single most powerful
person in the game.

~~~
fu9ar
That shows how long I've been out... I played off and on as Goonfleet combat
pilot until the culmination of the B.O.B. war.

------
contingencies
If a spaceship is eviscerated in virtual space, but nobody cares, was anything
really eviscerated?

~~~
yvdriess
If you lose $9000 in poker, I would not care, but you and the people at the
table certainly would.

~~~
gambiting
Did other players of Eve gain $9000-worth of resources as a result of
destroying that ship? Genuine question, never played that game.

~~~
lreeves
Generally not. You can salvage wrecks of ships to regain some cost (a very
small fraction of the metals used to manufacture them). Oh and if the ship is
carrying cargo then you can sometimes snatch up what's left, but there's about
a 50% chance I think of each item that a ship is carrying being blow to bits.

------
rschmitty
I've never watched an EVE battle before... was anyone else expecting a battle
like in Star Wars?

I dunno, felt kinda weird, all zoomed out, no aiming, just a big coordinated
zerg ball

~~~
Shish2k
You /can/ zoom in, and turn off the UI to just see spaceships in space blowing
each other up, and it is beautiful. However, the spreadsheet view with zoomed
out camera is more efficient for actually getting things done, which is why
all the serious players in serious battles do that.

(It would be really nice if some of the big alliances could spare one guy to
be dedicated cameraman when landmark events happen, but I'm not aware of
anyone doing that :P)

~~~
alex_c
They often do, it makes for great material for propaganda videos. It's easier
to do for pre-planned battles though, and/or they may have felt they didn't
want to spare any ships and risk sacrificing firepower. Or most likely just
nobody thought of it.

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jeswin
Does anyone know which tracks are being played in the bg
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=G5Cph...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=G5CphHMLVeg#at=35)

Sorry, not exactly on topic. I couldn't find this info among comments.
Recommendations appreciated too.

Edit: Just messaged the creator. Will post if I hear back.

~~~
arscan
According to the description in youtube:

    
    
      Shady Business - Mr. Nagasaki
      PrototypeRaptor - Drive Hard
      Flo Rida - I Cry

~~~
jeswin
Are you referring to the same video? I can't see it in the description. The
video I posted isn't the one from the article.

~~~
arscan
Sorry, I incorrectly assumed that the youtube link you provided was a direct
link to the video in the article.

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mathattack
Here's what I don't follow... Did he lose a spaceship worth $9000, or did he
actually pay $9000 for it?

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llgrrl_
9000 USD is OK. When you get OVER 9000, it's ridiculous.

