[WMCoolmon]

http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/26703

[NGTM-1R]

Oh crap. Much.

[Nuke]

geekdom died with the 486!!!

i remember i could play quake, on the net, for free (minus the cost of the game and your net connection), on such a machine. and it was fun. the concept of pay for play always seemed unnacceptable for me, cause up to then every single pc game supported some form of multiplayer, with communities for each game that maintained their own set of servers. then theese super-corprate mmorpg games came along that raped a players wallet, as if games and hardware didnt cost enough. not only did theese games rip people off, they managed to make every other developer cut back on multiplayer features. quake 3 and unreal tournament really pissed me off. i liked the old way in unreal and quake 1 and 2, and of course starcraft, play single player, learn the game, then get online and apply that skill. but then of multiplayer-only or singleplayer-only games came around. it felt like a step backwards in game technology, and i felt i was getting half a game for the price of a full game. so now we have everquest and a million copycats (which i will continue to boycott) all costing a fortune to play, and the games which are supported by independant servers dont seem to be progressing any any sence other than graphics. then if this isnt bad enough we hve people wasting human effort making real money off of fake markets, binifiting society not one bit, while most people actually work for a living. it makes me sick.

 

[Descenterace]

I've been recommending this book to people quite a lot lately...

Accelerando, by Charles Stross. It's quite an interesting look at the implications of blurring the line between 'virtual' and 'real'.

[Flipside]

The problem is defining a crime in the Digital sense, I think. After all, a crime is the violation of another persons' rights. Does paying your monthly fee to CCP for Eve Online grant you rights regarding property that is not your 'property', what are these rights, can taking something that wasn't, in the strictest sense of the word 'Yours' in the first place be considered as theft?

Since situations like this can and do lead to killings, this is really something that needs to be sorted out.

[Colonol Dekker]

I'd cash in the £££, or invest in starting up several more scams, Its harsh but true.

[an0n]

The way I see it, EvE is another country.

You exchange your currency, head off in your crappy Honda Civic through the mountains and if banditos attack you and steal your wife within the borders of EvEistan it's entirely the domain of the ruling powers to deal with it.

I mean, technically, he didn't steal from real people. Even if everything in-game weren't explicitly stated as being the property of the EvE-Gods, the money would still only be the property of the character, not the account owner.

[Fineus]

If you're going to commit a crime in a game world then the other players should rapidly form a police force of their own running, hunt the little sod down and reclaim the stolen moneys / kill him. After all, EvE is role playing is it not? You pretend to be these charachters?

So don't break charachter and run out into the real world screaming how unfair it is. Form yourself a sheriff and his posse, ride out and bring the man to justice for yourselves.

[Colonol Dekker]

That sounds quite appropriate retribution............It is a frontier after all isn't it........

[Unknown Target]

Kal, if they had those, I might consider joining EvE. I don't feel like joining a $100+/year economic simulator as it is though.

[an0n]

The problem with that is that EvE is basically prohibition-era Chicago.

There's too much money to be made by breaking the law.

Any policing alliance would have to face off against dozens of huge alliances that control thousands of systems and can make infinitely more cash running slaves, pirating newb sectors and podding people than the policing forces could by claiming bounties, escorting convoys and enforcing the peace.

Even with the support of most of the major alliances, their ability to police actions inside and around the territory of those alliances would be soley dependant on the alliance in control allowing them to do so. They'd have a fraction of the firepower an alliance weilds to begin with, and if any alliance simply decided to ignore the policing patrols and local law and start attacking neutral systems full of newbs, the policing forces would be crushed and no other powerful alliance would care enough to back them up.

It'd be a ****ing massacre.

The closest thing to a unified policing force in the EvE universe are the battleship patrols of the alliances and the treaties they abide by with the other alliance powers.

[Colonol Dekker]

Oooh, i wanna pick a fight now........

[an0n]

Hmmm.

Y'know, if there was a universal policing force, it'd also crush innovation.

If you had the police forces patrolling neutral space attacking pirates and whatnot, it'd stifle the main method of power-mongering among the newer corporations and alliances.

[Colonol Dekker]

Black Lance springs to Mind on that statement.......

[Fineus]

So create a force of soldiers of fortune... or an "assassins guild" ala Discworld.

Guns for hire, basically. They're paid to do a job, and paid well. But have no affiliations. A corporation could bid to have them attack an enemy corporation, and the enemy corporation could make a higher offer if they didn't want to fight. Highest bid wins the services of the SOF. All bids are anonymous so they could go to another corporation and say "we've been offered X amount to kill you, can you out bid that?".

Whatever the solution, it shouldn't go to "real world" decision making unless someone is actually cheating.

[Darkage]

Been in Black Lance for a while, didn't realy like it there so i applied to another corp. Mainly killing goons on my own lol.
Might eventualy go the pirate way.

So create a force of soldiers of fortune... or an "assassins guild" ala Discworld.

Guns for hire, basically. They're paid to do a job, and paid well. But have no affiliations. A corporation could bid to have them attack an enemy corporation, and the enemy corporation could make a higher offer if they didn't want to fight. Highest bid wins the services of the SOF. All bids are anonymous so they could go to another corporation and say "we've been offered X amount to kill you, can you out bid that?".

Whatever the solution, it shouldn't go to "real world" decision making unless someone is actually cheating.

There are already a great amount of corporations that can be hired to attack enemy corporations prety much the same way as you have just said.

[Night Hammer]

Been in Black Lance for a while, didn't realy like it there so i applied to another corp. Mainly killing goons on my own lol.
Might eventualy go the pirate way.

So create a force of soldiers of fortune... or an "assassins guild" ala Discworld.

Guns for hire, basically. They're paid to do a job, and paid well. But have no affiliations. A corporation could bid to have them attack an enemy corporation, and the enemy corporation could make a higher offer if they didn't want to fight. Highest bid wins the services of the SOF. All bids are anonymous so they could go to another corporation and say "we've been offered X amount to kill you, can you out bid that?".

Whatever the solution, it shouldn't go to "real world" decision making unless someone is actually cheating.

There are already a great amount of corporations that can be hired to attack enemy corporations prety much the same way as you have just said.

the merc thing is fun, im doing that now for a bit, prolly go back to random harrasment after this contract is over though



Darkage go join WoR if you wanna do the pirate thing, Flip you too



and as for this being a crime, thats ****ign dumb, he out smarted the people that gave him the money, to the victor goes the spoils. I just wish he'd buy me a Rattlesnake or a Mach

[NGTM-1R]

The problem with EVE lies in the unenforceable nature of contract. You can only enforce a contract with literal force of arms. Those without force of arms at their direct disposal ultimately have no recourse.

This situation is, frankly, stupid, and the result of CCP's gross oversight regarding the interactivity of the NPC portion of the world. They don't even have a paid events team, much less anyone who considers these things.

[an0n]

It was a conscious decision.

They couldn't possibly police 20k players daily contracts and dealings, or actively enforce the law in all the thousands of systems, so they just made it open and let the players sort **** out themselves.

And they probably wanted to force people to work together in corporations. Which turned out great, as now you've got the huge alliances of corporations acting like proper, player-controlled, fully-interactive systems of government in the game universe.

[Colonol Dekker]

Absolute power etc etc,

Give it time, I wanna see a Taidani Imperium formed on EVE.