Mark WalkerWallace's great blog has a really wonderful post about a player-created structure within EVE, that was funding through a player-created share offering. Some really great observations about the nature of EVE, the difference between it and other VWs, and the possibilities of emergent economic activities in various worlds.
From the introduction:
"Once again it seems the MMO EVE Online enables and encourages some of the most robust economically and socially oriented gameplay of any massively multiplayer metaverse out there. In this case, it's the EVE galaxy's first player-concocted initial public offering, of shares in a neutral player-owned outpost that is to provide services to warring player factions deep in the lawless reaches of what is often known in EVE as "Alliance space," where there are no NPC police to protect you from PvP. From a game design perspective, the question, of course, is what ingredients EVE has that makes this kind of thing possible for its players."
Thanks for the link, Dan. Although I should point out that it's Wallace, not Walker. Walker is the first name of Walker Spaight, my alternate/extended identity -- speaking of names and narrative.
:]
Posted by: Mark Wallace | Dec 05, 2005 at 15:02
Jeez, you think that I would know that by now. Sorry. Cognitive dissonance, or something. Will fix.
Dan.
Posted by: Dan Hunter | Dec 05, 2005 at 15:34
Food for thought:
Between EVE's highly specialized, organized economic system and WOW's one-man-shop economy, which one is better in reducing farmers' activity?
My first impression is that EVE's system enables a higher "entrance barrier" for farmers. However, a well-organized farmer corporation with workers working 24/7 will be very efficient in making money in EVE.
Insight please.
-Ron
Posted by: Ronald | Dec 05, 2005 at 16:48
The difference is that farmers are hunted in EVE.
There are several ways for players of EVE to profit by destroying/reporting/griefing the macro miners.
As soon as you find one, you send out a petition to cover your butt, then steal all their ore if they're doing jet-can mining (where they jettison an open container and drop their ore as they mine into it). The jet-can is considered "trash" and you can very easily steal it.
If they're doing it in Empire (high security) space, and they shoot at you (this is quite common since oftentimes they're not "up" on the game system), you can then shield boost and wait for CONCORD to blow them away, allowing you to then pick up whatever high-end components are left of their ship(s).
Macro miners are PREY, and EVE is full of hungry predators. Quite funny that they've been turned into targets by the rules of EVE.
Posted by: Repub Arnaz | Dec 05, 2005 at 23:13
The difference is that farmers are hunted in EVE.
Yeah, I was going to say this.
That's the fundamental point, in WoW you are protected and farming is just about tapping resources and waste your time.
In Eve you are exposed. The farmers would be excused right in the game and have to bend their behaviour to the game rules. They become in-game entities and won't be able to disrupt the game through external intervention. So they are somewhat "digested" by the game.
This happens when you simulate a world in all its parts.
I actually commented something similar here a couple of months ago ( in the comments in particular).
Posted by: Abalieno | Dec 06, 2005 at 01:20
Ah, forgot the link.
When I wrote that I wasn't aware that the model already worked in EvE. Glad to see it proven correct :)
Posted by: Abalieno | Dec 06, 2005 at 01:24
From the in-game news:
ISS Marginis: Outpost shows stability after opening
reported by: Daven Vasser | 2005.12.06 14:01:57
Over a month has passed since the opening of the
ISS Marginis Outpost on October 26th. The area
reportedly has seen little conflict or open
disagreements. Dividends have been issued on time,
and the commitment to the project continues
unabated.
Peace, often difficult to attain and sustain, appears
to be the result of an open-door and welcoming
policy that is keeping the ISS Marginis outpost in
operation. Practices of “active diplomacy”, as said by
Count TaSessine, involves keeping any piracy or
unrest under control at the location of the outpost in
the KDF-GY system.
Recently dividends of over one-billion ISK have been
paid to the holders of the initial 3600 share offering.
The shares, purchased at ten-million ISK per share,
have been reportedly re-selling for 70% over their
initial market price. The ISS Marginis business plan
focused on receiving income from the various
docking, repair, and clone fees as well as the
available facility rents.
While the outpost does draw a fair number of
toerists, the majority of traffic appears to be people
going about the regular actions of daily life,
encouraging the opinion that the outpost functions
as well or better than any other station would be
expected to. Representative Serenity Stelle of the
Interstellar Starbase Syndicate (ISS) has stated that
based on the success of this outpost, the ISS,
would consider building other outposts believing in a
bright future on the outpost business.
A laborious undertaking, the location and construction
schedule for the ISS Marginis was a well kept secret
until just before the launch. Secrecy and security
were considered paramount to the success of the
operation. When asked what Ms. Stelle would tell
others attempting to build an outpost she had this
advice, “Be very careful in your planning, it's 80% of
the challenge solved. The biggest security risk for
establishing your outpost is loss of materials
en-route. My advice is getting your POS setup with
all the materials, delivered at your leisure, to your
hangar arrays. Then you only need to haul
in-system when you launch your platform.”
With recent reports involving the ISS and some
Alliance tensions speculation started regarding the
policies of the outpost. However, the ISS stated that
there are no plans to change the existing open-dock
policy that makes this outpost available as a trading
hub for the region. But if anything tensions would
result in a possible expansion of the demilitarized
zone (DMZ) and greater enforcement of the peace.
Posted by: Essi | Dec 07, 2005 at 02:42
I now hear they're considering opening a second one as well. The share price has apparently doubled since the IPO.
Posted by: Mark Wallace | Dec 07, 2005 at 13:42
ISS Is indeed opening a new Outpost this time in the northern regions of Alliance Space far from ISS Marginis.
It's due to begin construction in early January. Shares went on sale today to ISS member corporations and the local alliances. Soon they will be made available to the public but I doubt there will be many left given the success of Marginis.
The in-game site for the new outpost is here: http://www.eve-iss.com/borealis/index.asp
Posted by: Rob Hale | Dec 22, 2005 at 15:44
If you guys want to see farmers in action check out lineage II.
This game is infested with adena farmers. These farmers normally run 9 man bot parties that go 24/7.
The game seems to be designed for farmers. With armor and weapon drops very rare and money is very hard to make. Items are so expensive in this game that players are forced to buy the adena on-line just to survive.
Posted by: Roy | Dec 26, 2005 at 00:03
Does anyone know how the new rules on tampering with people cans has effected macro miners. It seems to me that it could work in their favour as you're flagged 'criminal' as soon as you touch their can?
Nothing makes me more happy than stripping all the 'hard-earned' ore from their cans.
BTW, as I understand it macro-ing is done offline so the chances of you getting them to shoot you is negligible.
Damn their eyes!
Cheers,
Chris
Posted by: Chris Graal | Jan 04, 2006 at 10:01
With the new patch, macrominers are much safer. Jettison cans are no longer trash, and are maintained as property of the ejecting player/gang/corp for up to two hours before expiring.
Wandering by and stealing ore is now a slight criminal offence, and flags you to the player/gang/corp as enemy and are attackable. And marks you as criminal to concord, though they do NOT jump to you like if you shot someone. Minor offense apparently.
Now, the main non-aggressive way of dealing with a bot miner is to slam into them at high speed and push them away from their can. What this does is stop their macro from accessing the can; thus filling their personal cargo hold; thus shutting down their mining. --Till the 12year old looks and sees his mining lasers offline. And hurriedly repositions and begins again before the beatings begin anew--
Personally, i think its a huge step backwards for antimacroing. But this same antimacro exploit stealing was directly affecting normal miners, and i believe needed stopped anyways.
Posted by: Joe | Jan 06, 2006 at 14:39
What ever happened to "Live and let live?"... I really can't beleive you guys are advocates for theft. Have you nothing better to do?
What we do in life is a reflection of who we are, and apparently most of you people are thieves.
Posted by: Will | Feb 13, 2006 at 12:08
I'm not sure Will gets the "gist" of this. This is about causing macro-miners problems. They generally SELL their stuff in direct violation of the EULA out of game.
EVE's economy is a very real and tangible beast, and macro'ers do damage to that economy by their very actions.
Causing them problems and disrupting what they are doing is not only a good THING, but in a small sense helps the economic balance of the metaverse, as it is NOT designed nor desirable to have it working in the real world for cash, which circumvents what is trying to be simulated.
Posted by: Casey | Mar 02, 2006 at 07:26
With the new patch (Red Moon Rising - RMR) macrominers are far, far less safe.
I must also correct Joe about the system's response to stealing from trash (jettison) cans - Concord (the automated police force that keeps newbie areas relatively safe) do not respond in any way at all when you steal from another player's can. They only suspend their normal response when the person you stole from attacks you.
Furthermore, in practice the only person who may attack is is the character you stole from, because farmers are in the NPC corp and gang-flag rules do not apply to NPC corp members.
When Farmers Attack...! Once in a blue moon I'm afraid. Their ships are full of mining lasers, their drones are on automatic and easily dealt with. They seldom have the skills required or even the understanding of how to heal themselves. Furthermore if they do attack you, you can fight back and destroy them, again with no Concord penalty. (It took the farmers a little while to cotton on to this, which is a shame. In the early days they used to fight back a lot because they thought their big ships = win).
Some other things that mitigate farming in Eve:
(1) Client delay trick. My personal favourite - simply transfer the ore from the macro's can to your own jet can while the macro is trying to collect the same ore in his hauler. Hauler ends up taking out of your can (for some reason - to prevent dupe bugs?) and is therefore flagged to you. Needs timing, works extremely well especially on fully automated/unsupervised macros.
(2) Gang rules. Even deadlier and more costly to the farmer. If the macro automatically clicks "OK" to any pop-ups that appear on the screen, or the operator doesn't understand what the pop-up says and clicks "OK" anyway, they may find they have just accepted an invitation to join a gang who is at war. Wars are sanctioned by Concord anywhere, hence the macros are now legitimate war targets to someone. Guess who they are now at war with? Oh yeah, my other (alt) character!
(3) Cheap suicide. 4 players can start new alt characters from scratch and can even make net profits from suicide on a macroer's mining barge, again in any area of the game and regardless of Concord (who will kill their ships and eventually lower their security status enough that they may not enter the newbie areas - the alt character is then simply deleted and a new one made).
(4) Necessity of using jet cans. Farmers simply must use the jet can, it is not feasible to farm efficiently without them. Therefore any and all the ore they mine in the whole Eve universe is in theory available to be stolen by players.
(5) Smaller market for ISK.
Firstly, there's the relative pointlessness of being rich in Eve. I am extremely rich in Eve (10s of billions), it means relatively little because I could have the best ship and all the best mods and lose it in seconds to players with hardly any ISK and the worst ships (see suicide example above). Three out of the four biggest and most expensive ("capital") ships require another player or account just to move it between systems. They are also very vulnerable despite their pricetag when used incorrectly against a group of much cheaper ships. The biggest and most expensive ship when it's built will persist in the world even when its owner is logged off, how's that for vulnerable?
The other very expensive thing in Eve - blueprints - are again fairly useless unless you can spend time manufacturing or copying them and then selling them. They will in most cases lose their value if you don't exploit them properly. In no sense at all in Eve do you really need ISK to play the game like you might need Adena, although people naturally think it is very important.
And secondly, there's still only about 110k subs in total.
The developers recently stated there are between 1K - 2K farming accounts out of these 110k, but of course are far more visible to the average player because they are in the most populated systems 24/7.
Personally I almost feel this lack of farmers is a shame because I enjoy killing them so much - to me, as a rich character, I consider it "sport" in the old medieval sense of the word - a fairly safe activity of the rich and bored, carried out for the enjoyment of the community and the glory of the participants. Emergent gameplay...?
Posted by: Krumpit | Mar 31, 2006 at 04:37
best site
http://www.printingworld.org/
Posted by: printingworld | Oct 13, 2006 at 10:31