# EVE Online battle makes the BBC News



## Gramm838 (Jul 30, 2013)

I read on the BBC website that a 4000 player battle for control of a null-sec system took place on Sunday evening...CFC against TEST.

They worked out that the real money cost of the ships destroyed in the battle was around $15000 (I dread to think how much ISK was lost in a fight that size!)

I've been subbed to the game for the last three months without ever logging in - I must be CCP's perfect subscriber!


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## thaddeus6th (Jul 30, 2013)

I think I heard about that somewhere else.

Those sorts of games aren't my cup of tea, but it's pretty interesting from a behavioural perspective.


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## Warren_Paul (Jul 31, 2013)

I've heard about the amount of real money players drop into that game. As far as I'm concerned, they are all insane! It's seriously in the thousands. Played another MMOs with a person who has spent over 10k on that game during his time playing it, he claims.

I'd rather go buy a new car, or put a deposit on a house... or at the very least build myself a new PC. To spend ten _thousand_ dollars on virtual currency and ingame items... crazy.


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## Venusian Broon (Jul 31, 2013)

Yeah WP totally agree, spending 10k on an online game, nuts! Especially one so mercenary as EVE online. 

I suppose he was just hooked on it, and demanded instant gratification

Having gave it a go for 6 months or so I found it almost impossible to grind out enough ISK to get where I wanted to go with it - and this was taking up a minimum of 2-3 hours a day. It would have been easier in a corporation or with buddies - but there was no way I could commit to any regular times. 

Hence I burnt and crashed without even getting close to the ships/weapons etc... that I first tried to aim for. Which means there's a hanger in EVE somewhere with probably tens of billions of ISK. (And no, I'm not giving it to anyone )


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## Gramm838 (Jul 31, 2013)

Venusian Broon said:


> Yeah WP totally agree, spending 10k on an online game, nuts! Especially one so mercenary as EVE online.
> 
> I suppose he was just hooked on it, and demanded instant gratification
> 
> ...




You misunderstand the real world money aspect - it's not that someone spent $15k or whatever - its just that the value of the subscriptions for the 4000 players was worth about $15k. The real world money sink tends to be WoW from what I've read - I've never played it

I've played Eve Online for 4 years now and although you can buy some stuff for real money, it's only clothing and so on - you can't buy weapons, ship upgrades or skills with real money (not directly anyway); in fact there was a massive player revolt when CCP tried to introduce RMT into the game - check for Jita protest on YouTube.

I just dip in every now again, like you I can't commit too much time to be able to run in nullsec where the real ISK is made. Of course what people outside the game fail to understand is that there is no win in Eve -it's a real sandbox

Can I haz your stuff lol?


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## Venusian Broon (Aug 1, 2013)

Gramm838 said:


> I just dip in every now again, like you I can't commit too much time to be able to run in nullsec where the real ISK is made. Of course what people outside the game fail to understand is that there is no win in Eve -it's a real sandbox
> 
> Can I haz your stuff lol?


 
I assumed WP was talking about the game and I knew about PLEX, so I thought that was the way of getting real money directly into the game. Can you not sell PLEX in the market for Isk? It's been a while since I've been there, so maybe you can't.

Yes it's a brilliantly designed game in terms of what a gamer can get out of it. I like the 'wild west' aspect of it with anything goes, ponza schemes, back stabbing and unprovoked attacks in 1.0 space. Plus a nice core of anarchy, (Eris is constantly throwing golden apples about). Is there still a week where there is a competition to attack and destroy as many of the peaceful mining ships as possible? Of course not good if you are a miner, but it's hardly the most exciting of roles to take in the Eve universe, so I can see why people might like to annoy them! 

However despite me starting to get that horrible itch - _'well maybe if I just reactivate my account, and take another look..._' I still remember the hours and hours of 'space accountancy' that the game made me do plus even after a good 6 months or so, a learning curve so steep, I felt less experienced and more of a n00b at the end of my time there compared with right at the start . 

As for my stuff, I don't know how long they keep it intact - I haven't been back in years. It may have evaporated. I'd have to subscribe to find out... a_nd then the hooks bite into me again... _


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## purple_kathryn (Aug 1, 2013)

YOu have to pay for your subscription to WoW and you can buy certain vanity items from their store (for example pets) - but I'm not sure that it's a money sink. There has been talk about being able to buy rare items from the store as well (that would be) and you do have the illegal gold sellers. 

Did they specify in what way they meant it was a sink? (Unless they're just talking about the sub side of it)


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## Dozmonic (Aug 1, 2013)

The ships have a value in ISK. ISK has a real life monetary value, because you can use ISK to pay for your subscription. That's where the conversion for the loss of this battle comes from. The loss of ships equealled a set amount of ISK, which would indirectly convert to the $15,000.


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## Gramm838 (Aug 2, 2013)

Venusian Broon said:


> However despite me starting to get that horrible itch - _'well maybe if I just reactivate my account, and take another look..._' I still remember the hours and hours of 'space accountancy' that the game made me do plus even after a good 6 months or so, a learning curve so steep, I felt less experienced and more of a n00b at the end of my time there compared with right at the start .
> 
> As for my stuff, I don't know how long they keep it intact - I haven't been back in years. It may have evaporated. I'd have to subscribe to find out... a_nd then the hooks bite into me again... _



Yeah I get that itch every now and again, but having been a CEO of a Corporation for a while, the game became 'spreadsheets in space', so I might wait dip in a coupe of times until the Xmas expansion before I decide to play for a real again.

As far as your stuff...I think it just stays there forever. They have occasional 'play for a day' offers so that might be a way to get back in and check for your stuff


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## Karn Maeshalanadae (Aug 2, 2013)

See, this is one reason I don't like MMOs-and why I absolutely hate most DLC.


There are exceptions to DLC however; like expansion ones. It's actually a lot more convenient to have DLC expansions than to have to buy physical copy ones.


But games where you have to use real money to purchase in-game items? I don't do that, and in MMOs, that means you fall behind the players that do, a huge disadvantage, especially in ones where there's a heavy PvP element-and I absolutely despise PvP.



And strangely enough, I tend to get a bit of flak for being a single-player game enthusiast-people call me old-fashioned and whatnot. Say what you will, my favorite system ever was and will always be the SNES.


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## Warren_Paul (Aug 3, 2013)

It wouldn't be so bad if you didn't actually lose the ships when they are destroyed. The problem this story is pointing to is that all that hard work and money is gone, lost forever, over a matter of just a few hours.

I'll stick to my non perma-death mmos, thanks!




Gramm838 said:


> You misunderstand the real world money aspect - it's not that someone spent $15k or whatever - its just that the value of the subscriptions for the 4000 players was worth about $15k. The real world money sink tends to be WoW from what I've read - I've never played it


 
Real money sink in WoW? Played that game for years and the only money I spent on it was the monthly subscription. You make plenty of gold ingame to cover everything. People spending real money on that game are just lazy. There are ways to dispose of gold ingame, rather than it just changing hands though, like repairs, but it's miniscule.

In the situation I was talking of -- and this is just how it was explained to me, I've never played EVE Online past the 15 day trial -- the costs of items ingame are so extreme that people spend real money to get Plex and then turn that into ISK on the marketplace so they can afford the huge prices. Pretty much, its TOS acceptable money trading.

From what I've heard, Perfect World International is the only game where people spend more real money than EVE Online. I think the whole reason it is so bad is because of the perma-death aspect of space battles.


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## Gramm838 (Aug 3, 2013)

For most EVE Online players you are correct that once a ship is destroyed, it is gone; but in the massive battle which is the subject of the thread, certainly one side (the CFC, which is short for The Clusterf**K Coalition) have a ship replacement scheme paid for by their various scams and piracy antics - the biggest, most active and most 'professional' group in the game, GoonSquad, are the major players in CFC.

If you're a casual player you can end up paying for PLEX with real money - I think it's around 30 Euros for 2 Plex which you can then sell on the market for around 300mil ISK each to spend in the game - but if you get in the right location, and do the right things such as nul-sec complexes and ratting, you can earn millions per day in game without spending any real world money


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## Dozmonic (Aug 4, 2013)

Perma-death can be harsh in games, but having death have some meaning adds real value. Meridian 59, Ultima Online, Darkfall and MMORPGs of that ilk have always held more interest for me than WoW where death is nothing but a minor, minor time sink.

Of course, WoW is built from the ground up not to handle death consquences. Other games where you can loot items from the people you kill have items with value, but the items don't define the character. In WoW, your character is almost entirely defined by your items because they just add so much.

Two different flavours of the same thing - but I prefer the one that feels like it has more meaning. EVE falls into this category, but I've managed not to play or I'd get no writing done


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## Gramm838 (Feb 1, 2014)

There's been another huge battle in Eve Online spread over a number of systems - around 2200 people this time but the value of the ships is by far the highest ever.

One of the Titans involved had an in-game cost of around 222 bil ISK, and CCP are saying that the real world equivalent of the in-game value is around $220k.

As usual Goonswarm were involved, and they admit to having lost around 23 Titans


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## jonsey80 (Feb 2, 2014)

Used to love playing eve, spent 3 yes playing it....most fun I have had online, wish I had the time to still play


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## Nick B (Feb 14, 2014)

I played Eve for around 7 years, CEO'd a very good pvp corp for almost all of that, fought for the CFC and honeybadgers coalitions over the years as well as siding with some smaller organisations at times. I loved my time in Eve but suddenly last year just.. stopped and havn't been back.  After all that time I just completely lost interest.

Looking forward to Star Citizen though.


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## Dozmonic (Feb 15, 2014)

My cousin has spent far too much on Star Citizen already. It does look like it'll be interesting. In larger games we tend to play with a decent group, but they've not really done EVE. If you played any UO or Darkfall, you're likely to know them


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