Nothing Comes Amiss; So Money Comes Withal

I was going to write about interstellar mayhem and space battles of epic scale; or perhaps write a bit of EVE telenovella, featuring manly space men and delectable space piratesses twined together in star-shattering coitus.

But no.

In response to my last post about the goings on in nullsec between Atlas, RUS and Pandemic Legion, Mynxee raised a question about the impact of real money trading (RMT) on the politics and events in nullsec. The question struck something of a chord among followers of The Edge. Emails have arrived with some extensive comments and interesting questions. A response if called for. So, once again I am called upon to hold forth on virtual world economics. 

Thanks a lot Mynxee. 

Now, in order to set up a discussion of RMT as an in-game driver of events, I need to preface a bit about RMT as a phenomenon so we're all on the same page.

RMT is, in essence, the exchange of real world currency for virtual in-game assets. Most people involved in playing EVE or any other popular MMORPG with a virtual economy are familiar with RMT in the form of currency trading. This usually takes the form of a player paying real world currency for in-game currency.


In the case of EVE (as with a number of the larger MMORPGs) the sale of in-game currency on the open market has been forbidden for some time. Players caught so doing can be banned for life from the game. In its current effort to combat RMT (Unholy Rage) , CCP has combined enforcement with partial legalization of currency trading  in the form of PLEX sales. As most readers of Fiddler's Edge know, player may purchase PLEX with real world currency. A PLEX  can then be sold in-game for EVE Interstellar Credits (ISK) and used by the buyer to pay for EVE subscription time.

Despite the best efforts of game developers like CCP, RMT outside of officially sanctioned means persists. In fact, RMT is, at present, a multi-billion dollar business in which some participants make six figure incomes. Given that sort of incentive, and with no real-world consequences if caught breaking the rules, RMT is proving exceptionally hard to control.

The currency trading manifestation of RMT drives a lot of activities that make EVE less fun for the recreational player. Macro mining or missioning, running mining or missioning ships 23/7 using programmed routines, generates a lot of isk for the person running the Macros to trade for real-world cash, but depletes in-game resources and depresses the financial rewards for recreational players.    

But, isk is only one in-game asset that can be exchanged for real cash. Characters are routinely bought and sold via a number of outlets. In countries where labor is cheap, character farms, where rooms of players work long hours grinding missions and training up characters for sale, are common. The same is true of of any purchasable asset in game - from spaceships to POS to space stations to systems to entire regions.

Anything that can be possessed by an EVE character, including the EVE character, can be purchased for real money. And all such activities count as RMT. And in this context, RMT can devalue in-game currency and interfere with in-game market mechanics. Scarce items, such as Titans become scarcer still if the preferred buyer is someone paying Euros rather than isk, driving their price in isk upwards, and drawing more players into the RMT black market.


But wait, there's more.

The sale of services is a part of any country's gross domestic product (GDP). In other words, services are an asset that can be bought or sold. As with real economies, so to with virtual economies. In addition to EVE things, an EVE player's services can be bought for real money.

Think about that for a second:

Lets say you're a really, really good fleet commander - a very Napoleon of New Eden.  Everybody wants you to join their nullsec alliance and lead their fleets to victory.  You're getting offers from everywhere offering you all sorts of in-game goodies to get you to join up. And then someone contacts you, offering you $1000 a month to be one of their fleet commanders. $1000, just for playing a game you already love. And if you're the right kind of player, that sort of money might relieve you of the need to keep a real world job. Your job? EVE Fleet Commander. You can stay online all day long, planning and directing operations while your competition, the poor slobs, can't log on until their work day is over.

The same holds true of any profession in EVE (CEO, Directors of Industry, Spy) where a highly skilled player, free to operate on a professional rather than recreational basis, gives his corporation or alliance a profound edge over the non-professional competition.

Finally, lets talk bribery.

Bribery is no stranger to New Eden. Isk and other in-game assets are often used to bribe other players. If I offer an alliance director 10 billion isk to attack my enemy, he might be tempted. However, if I happen to know that the director in question is a 16 year-old with limited access to cash, or forty year-old guy who can't hold down a job, offering five hundred dollars is going to be a lot more tempting.

Unlike isk, or ships or other virtual bribes, that five hundred dollars has instant utility in the real world.  And, while CCP will allow me to change real money into isk, there is no way for me to legitimately transform isk into dollars or Euros without risk of being caught. The offer of real money addresses the bribe target's real life needs of the bribe target without leaving in-game footprints.

Given its advantages, and without an effective means of detection and sanction, real world money must be finding its way to New Eden. Therefore, it's reasonable to assume RMT is influencing EVE to some extent.

The question is, how much?

Is the influence of RMT on EVE marginal - mere playing around the edges? Is RMT a cancer eating away at the game we love? Or, is RMT a tool in the hands of a malevolent group of so-called "players" - a New EVE Order threatening to turn EVE into a money mill for a few at the expense of the EVE community at large.

We'll take that up next time.

The Man Who Wasn't There

Yesterday, upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today
I wish, I wish he’d go away...
     - Hughes Mearns

CVA has a talent for getting its friends to piss in their own Corn Flakes. 


A few weeks ago rumors began circulating in various forums of a vast capital and super-capital fleet was assembling in Misaba, poised to take Providence from the New Providence Holders installed there by Against All Authorities (AAA) after the Great Eviction.  Sometimes the fleet was Northern Coalition. Sometimes it was Pandemic Legion. A second rumor, that Atlas Alliance was joining the Northern Coalition and would open a second front against the NPH from its systems in northern Providence, began to circulate soon after.

CVA partisans were gleeful, assuming AAA's vassal alliances would soon be driven from the region. They weighed in with the odd "Ammar Victor" and waited expectantly to  for deliverance from AAA. 


Now, sensible folk would take such rumors with a grain of salt. The absence of any uptick in Misaba of NC or PL traffic or other activity might be taken by some as a sign that the rumors of a five hundred ship capital fleet in that system were, in fact, rumors. 

Sensible, it appears, is not in Opticon Alliance's vocabulary.  

Opticon Alliance was one of the New Providence Holder alliances. Several of its larger corporations were formerly of Aegis Militia, which had held space in Providence from CVA prior to the Great Eviction. Rather than follow CVA into exile, Aegis' corporations merged with Enforcers of Serenity (EOS) to form Opticon Alliance, and were granted a constellation in Providence by AAA under the New Providence Holder terms and conditions. 

It appears that, with rumors of the phantom fleet and Atlas' defection swirling in the forums, CVA leadership managed to convince some of their old Aegis friends in Opticon's leadership that the New Providence Holders were about to be swept from Providence and that the smart money was on switching sides while there was still time. Casting aside common sense, Opticon bet the house on CVA. Opticon renounced all agreements with AAA and the New Providence Holders and declared themselves CVA allies. 

And immediately shed half their membership. 

It seems some of the Opticon corporations are well aware of CVA's track record where its friends are concerned, and were not swayed by unsubstantiated rumors of super-cap armadas. Within a week of the internal announcement, twelve of Opticon's twenty-five corporations left the alliance, taking 405 of the Opticon's roughly 750 pilots along with them. Several of the larger departing corporations, such as Leather Knights, were former Aegis corporations, indicating a sharp split among former CVA allies as to how far CVA could be trusted. 

Needless to say, the vast invasion fleet never materialized, evaporating into the mists of political fiction. When an NC capital and super-capital fleet did appear, it was in Venal rather than Providence. That fleet, lagged and caught in an apparent log-off bug, was badly mauled by it's opponents. Meanwhile Atlas Alliance has made no move to join the Northern Coalition.

Opticon, having cast aside the sovereignty protection of its AAA agreements is under attack. As of this writing it has lost one of its systems and, with its membership fractured, doesn't appear to be well positioned to defend the rest. As with Paxton, CVA has been able to convince a friend to sacrifice itself on the altar of CVA's ambition. 

Why would CVA do such a thing to friends? 

For one thing, I suspect CVA's leadership would rather see its friends destroyed than to see them prosper in a Providence controlled by CVA's enemies. Further, in order to stave off its growing irrelevance, CVA seems determined to exercise any control it retains in Providence affairs. If that control is limited to persuading friends to self-destruct, so be it. However, CVA is running out of friends to throw on its own funeral pyre. 


As I've pointed out elsewhere, CVA's combat effectiveness is limited, even by the standards of much smaller alliances. On paper it boasts nine hundred members, however pilot activity and fleet sizes indicate a large portion of those members are alt or inactive pilots, left unculled in order to keep up appearances. CVA members themselves admit that retaking Providence is a distant dream. And that dream slips further away as CVA continues its slow, relentless failscade.


Even CVA's sole hope of regaining Providence; that a major nullsec player, in order to spite AAA, will retake Providence and re-install CVA to its former place, has all but evaporated.


Let's say the stars totally align for CVA's ambition. Let's say AAA becomes completely occupied with matters elsewhere, implodes or is otherwise unable or disinclined to intervene in Providence. Let's also say cooperation among the New Providence Holders in the face of a mutual threat breaks down and those alliances are at each others' throats. Finally, a major player in EVE nullsec decides to twist AAA's tail, comes down upon Providence like the wrath of god, and sweeps the New Providence Holders away.

Ammar victor? Not bloody likely.

The assumption that an alliance like Pandemic Legion is going to hand Providence over to CVA, who's leadership has already pissed away one nullsec empire, betrayed CVA friends, and generally shown themselves to be incompetent, both militarily and administratively is, to be polite, idiotic.

Even if this weren't the case, CVA is not the alliance they once were. One could argue that they haven't been that alliance for some time - even before the Great Eviction. Empires tend to rot from the inside out. They survive on reputation long after their ability to back up that reputation has been spent. Finally events conspire to expose the internal weakness; the empty vessel CVA has become. Given Providence on a platter, CVA could not hold it. 


Incapable of anything but minor mischief, more a threat to its friends than to its enemies, CVA has become the proverbial "man who wasn't there"; doomed to in-substance, but unable to leave and rebuild its fortunes elsewhere.

The Hail Mary

During the Great Eviction, CVA (Curatores Veritatis Alliance) was not only pushed out of their Providence systems, they shed pilots at a furious rate. After the shooting died down, while CVA’s former holdings were divided up among AAA (Against All Authorities) vassals, CVA numbers stabilized at about 1,065; about a twenty-five percent loss in all.

Unsatisfied with one debacle, CVA persuaded their ally Paxton (Paxton Federation), who’d survived their alliance with CVA during Great Eviction with Paxton's holdings intact, to follow them into a second lost cause. This time the results were never in doubt. Despite some heroic stands by Paxton, the new Providence holders prevailed and Paxton was forced to retreat from their Providence systems.

While Paxton began to look for other opportunities CVA, ever the role-playing zealot, vowed to fight on and take back the Providence (Amarrian sacred ground, you know) no matter how what the cost. Roughly fifty more pilots left CVA, having decided that losing causes, while fun for a while, are a bit of a bummer in the long haul.

People don’t pay CCP every month for a bummer. They pay to have fun.

And this is a very important game mechanic. Like the Romans of old, capsuleers have only one leader: Victory. If your guys are getting their ass handed to them every other week, losing expensive ships and watching as the isk in their accounts dwindle and golden memories of their null-sec past dim, they are not having a good time.

And if you, as alliance leader, just keep yelling “On you cowardly dogs, once more unto the breach,” you quickly become part of a bad gaming experience.

Then your guys will go be somebody else’s guys. 

So, with 1,016 pilots remaining (based on fleet turnouts, I’d venture that only half that number are combat effective; and that may be optimistic), CVA is stuck on the horns of dilemma.

The smart strategy would be to temporize. Cut loose useless systems, use the sov funds to rebuild the fleets and rehab the remaining CVA pilots’ morale and numbers. Make some new allies. Wait for current Providence love-fest to end. After all, the presence of CVA is the glue that holds the new Providence holders together.

Alas, time is precisely what CVA doesn’t have.

Bad CVA decisions have been compounded by more bad CVA decisions. Now, for good or ill, they’ve boxed themselves into a corner. The longer they sit in place, the weaker they get; the best PVP pilots don’t want to sit in low sec playing pirates. After two full scale debacles, CVA’s got to get a win on the board if they’re going to hold onto any sort of a coherent fighting force. And by win, I mean they have to take and actively hold Providence systems.

In American football parlance, CVA is forth and long on the CVA twenty yard line, with only enough time on the clock for one more play.

Yesterday, CVA threw a Hail Mary pass and took X-R3NM from Chaos Theory Alliance. 

Smack-talk on Kugutsmen’s suggests this may have been made possible by internal divisions within Chaos Theory. There may be some truth to this as U’K (Ushra'Khan), rather than Chaos Theory seemed to be leading the system’s defense.  CVA, meanwhile, is claiming support from Core Factor and Paxton.

Paxton, however, having been burnt twice in following CVA’s lead seems disinclined to shed still more blood on CVA’s behalf for old times’ sake. Kill-boards from the dust-up in X-R3NM show very limited Paxton involvement. 

A notable exception was Tarkina Koslix who was a one-capsuleer wrecking crew in her stealth bomber. Unfortunately, one of her bomb runs caught fellow Paxtoneer and interceptor pilot, Giana Malakia, in the blast range. So she has the honor of being listed as a member of a U’K fleet on a kill mail.

The few Paxton pilots who made the battle were likely waiting for relocation orders from their leadership and tagged along for the lulz.  While Paxton is still blue to CVA, I’m guessing most Paxton pilots are happy to be making decisions that don’t involve CVA.

All things considered, unless CVA has some big guns behind it somewhere, it’s doubtful they’ve the strength to keep X-R2NM. Taking it is not enough for CVA. If they can’t hold X-R3NM CVA may be in a worse situation than if they hadn’t taken it at all.

Sadly, it’s not enough to throw the Hail Mary pass; someone has to catch it.

Friends Like These

The kid is having fun in nullsec.

The kid's a young HellForge pilot who’s made the trip to Providence with me and is having his first experience in 0.0 space since joining the game. He’s having the time of his life. Most corporations in the Lucky Starbase Syndicate are friendly and professional. The kid’s been out ratting and hitting plexes with his new buddies. He’s been having so much pew-pew fun, he burned through half the ammo he brought with him from empire space in the course of an afternoon.

He was downright gleeful when he convoed me yesterday to request I bring BPOs for his preferred ammo type. “I’m never going back to high-sec,” he said.

Good stuff to see. It’s why we’re in new Eden.

The level of cooperation among the alliance corporations is very good. We’re all of us in the same boat – everybody’s made an investment of one sort or another in the move to Providence. Whether it’s a small operators like HellForge or big 100+ pilot corporations with deep pockets, we’ve all put ourselves out on the line. The Lucky corporations seem to recognize we’re invested in each other’s success. After all, this is nullsec and there’s a lot of black hats out there.

Black hats like Curatores Veritatis Alliance (CVA).

They’ve been haunting the borders of Providence nullsec ever since being evicted by Against All Authorities (AAA). CVA's been making sorties into R3-K7K, a nullsec entry point system held by Systematic-Chaos, but I’ve yet to hear of any major fleet actions. I expect CVA is recovering from the capital fleet losses they took while losing Providence. I expect the light incursions into R3 are harassing actions to keep Systematic-Chaos off balance. Meanwhile, if CVA plans on getting back into the nullsec game, they’ll be building up for a capital fleet strike.

But they have to make their play soon. Time is not on their side.

First of all, time is money.

CVA still holds twelve systems in nullsec. Those are, however, scattered systems. They are islands deep in enemy territory, occupied by Against All Authorities' vassals. As such, they return no income to CVA. Meanwhile, CVA must pay all the sovereignty costs for those twelve systems. That rips big gobbets of money from CVA’s reserves every month – money that can’t be used to build capital ships to use in taking back lost systems. By leaving these systems in CVA hands, AAA has tied a very large financial millstone around CVA’s collective neck.

You’d think letting the systems go would be a no-brainer for CVA. Cut them loose and invest the money in the ships needed to engineer a come-back. But, as has been pointed out, CVA is a role-playing alliance. Providence systems are holy ground. And that’s got to be hard for CVA’s leadership to let go of.

Secondly, time in exile is bad for morale

The longer CVA plays the role of low-sec refugee from null-space, the more corps and pilots they’re going to shed. CVA corporations are holding the line at twenty-five. However, the cracks begin to show when you look at the pilot count.

CVA has shed roughly 350 – 400 pilots since January, easily a quarter of their pre-eviction force.

Now they’ve still got a healthy membership with 1,067 pilots on the roster, however, they continue to bleed pilots, albeit slowly. CVA’s got to staunch that trickle of departing pilots before it turns into a steady stream.

Like the kid, CVA's pilots were having fun in nullsec. Like the kid, they don’t want to leave nullsec. And if CVA doesn’t show them a little nullsec love soon, they’re going to find someone else who can. 'Cause CVA isn’t the only Amarr roleplayer alliance in Providence.

Has anybody else noticed that Paxton’s pilot numbers are ticking up at about the same rate CVA’s are ticking down these last few weeks?

Hmmm. More on that next time.

Jack of all trades

When does it begin?

Two years and change after my arrival in New Eden. That's when. This morning, to be precise. 10:00 hours Eve time

How does it begin?

With a wake-up call.

I've fought fleet actions in Fountain and run with small gangs in Black Rise. I've flown nullsec, lowsec and wormhole space. However, most of my days in Eve have been spent running solo. And in New Eden, that restricts your options. Nobody has your back and there's nobody on your wing. You get in a scrape, you get yourself out. Mind, the hours are my own. I play in my own time and on my own terms. No politics. No emo.

It's simple. Dangerous too.

Solo PVP is a rich pilot's game, because to be successful you need to be flying the best. Best ship. Best fitting. The best costs a lot, and it's an iron clad guarantee you're going to lose that pricey hardware you're flying. A rich pilot can shrug it off. Siigari Kitawa is rich. He's lost something on the order of eleven tech 3 Proteus - all faction fitted up to the overhead. For those that don't know, that's an awful lot of isk. Siigy takes the losses and laughs.

Me, I'm not rich.

So I find my way in new Eden as best I can. I PVP when I find friends I can trust. The rest of the time I mine, I mission, I build, I trade and I research. Jack of all trades, that's me.

I just finished up a stint with HellFleet, who are as fine a bunch of cads and scoundrels as you'll fly with. Trouble is, they're pirates. And not just your helling-around shooting things up for the lulz delinquent types. HellFleet's the genuine pirate article. They plot, they plan, they lift, heist and ransom. If it ain't nailed down, they'll steal it. If it is nailed down, they'll pry it up off the deck and then steal it. Hellfleet has a roguish style, a certain elan. They're a fun crew to be around when they aren't taking your stuff, and very professional about it when they are.

But I'm not a pirate. Just not wired that way. Don't get me wrong, if I'm supporting NBSI in low or null sec, you'd better be blue. If you're on the other side during a war, I'll hunt you down. You cross me and I'll go after you. Ditto if you attack my friends or my stuff. I hold a grudge and I have a long memory. But I'm not the sort to jump some guy going his own way 'cause I covet his stuff - or just for lulz (see Hulkageddon). Not that I haven't a talent for piracy; I'm just not, as they say, that guy.

So, about two months back I bade Mynxee and HellFleet farewell, and went my way.

10:00 this morning, I run into a week-old player who's trying to mine in high sec with an Imcus. I gave him some advice and a few isk to buy an Atron and send him off to finish the industrial training mission set.

It made me think how far I've come in those two years in change. It reminded me how much I miss the mayhem (if not the thievery) of running with trouble. I've spent a good bit of time learning the game. Time to start playing.

Tomorrow, I head for null-sec again.