My Loot, Your Tears

Carebear loses a CNR to aggro extension from a ninja. Carebear admits that he saw the aggro timer and undocked anyway, but still petitions his loss. A senior GM gives him his ship back.

Since aggro extension has been a valid mechanic for some time, I petitioned to see if it was now considered an exploit.

This has come to my attention:
http://stabbedup.blogspot.com/2010/08/eve-exchange-of-views-with-ccp.html
A missionrunner undocked with aggro from a ninja salvager, lost his CNR, petitioned it, and got it back. Is extending aggro now considered an exploit? Will my future targets now be reimbursed after I kill them? It is very important for me to know if carebears are getting unequal treatment: It may well determine the future of my subscription.

Hi,
At this point in time we will not take any action against anyone using this. Please be aware however that we reserve the right to change our policy on this in the future should we deem it necessary.
Best regards,
GM Kaliastra
The EVE Online Customer Support Team

Hey there,
I do appreciate your swift response, but it does not answer my question. Is it now policy to reimburse ships lost due to ignorance? Will my targets have their losses replaced by GMs?

Hi, senior GM Spiral here.
We are currently not taking action against anyone doing this at the current time although this is not an advertised nor supported feature. We at CCP do reserve the right to adjust this policy at any given time in the future should the situation warrant it.
Customer Support does consider this something that may be reimbursed for pending an investigation into the situation of a given incident.
If you have any further questions or concerns regarding this then please do not hesitate to ask.
Best regards,
Senior GM Spiral
EVE Online Customer Support Team

So the summary is that CCP is giving ships back to players for losses that are not due to exploits.

On the Stabbed Up blog, "Reasoned Discourse" has broken out, and the author in question has started deleting all but the sympathetic comments. As an aside, note that we have not and will never squash comments from those who disagree with us, provided those comments are on-topic and don't break any laws in our jurisdiction.

CCP: If I wanted to play a game where my actions in PvP had no consequences, I would go play WoW. If aggro extension is an exploit, then call it such and fix it. If it's not an exploit, then don't coddle players who fall victim to it. If in this case the ninja had lost his ship due to combat derived from aggro extension, I have trouble believing that you would have been so sympathetic. I play this game because actions are meaningful. If you remove the meaning, I will take the money from my subscriptions and go do something better with my time.

Related links: Crime and Punishment Thread - Likely to be locked. Note plenty of carebears calling it an exploit, which CCP has explicitly denied. Also note the "tears" accusation, which is true. When one sees that his successes are being invalidated and his failures are being allowed to stand, there will be tears. Why should I risk ships that won't be reimbursed to kill ships that will be replaced by a GM?

By way of my own insignificant protest, I will not be ninja salvaging/ganking until either aggro extension is called an exploit or I receive assurances from CCP that my victims won't get their mistakes reversed by CCP. I'll still work my infiltration alts and wardecs, but I have no motivation to continue my primary profession when it's so likely that the work will mean nothing.

This will be the post where everything comes to close, where all the fun stuff we've been storing up for later gets to come out and see the light of day. This has been delayed a bit, but we do have real lives... amazing, isn't it?

Our wardec against Ludi Sacerdotales is still active, but we have suspended most activity against them. Why? We reached one of our end-game goals: The target is disbanding. Ludi has shed more than half it's membership in the last few days and is down to 14 members from an original high of 40.

In case you think that I'm speculating about their disbanding, let me explain: We had an alt on the inside the entire time. Both Captain Charismatic and I applied and joined the corporation. When Charismatic's character was outed, Ludi believed they were in the clear and my spy character was able to follow every move they made. With my access to their corporate chat and Paul's new intel sharing tool, all of Jerks was able to listen in on the corporation in real-time.

We had a blast seeing all of the internal tears, horrible fits, completely wrong statements about game mechanics, and the reactions to our manipulating them from the inside. I will be posting a new series called "The Ludi Files" from time to time - because the amount of material is just too large to cover in any single post.

I'll start off the series now by talking about Ludi's attempts to determine our alts. They correctly identified a few of our very obvious alts, but they fingered a number of characters as our alts which were either (a) only people we were friends with or (b) characters that had no relationship with us at all!

This list has all of the actual Jerks members, but that's pretty easy to find. It has three of our actual alts and one former alt (character now sold); none of this is too difficult to figure out if you read this blog and checked out some corporate history.

Now the lols start: BM Dublyoo, Clantyn, Elias Tarmarr, Kel'airy, and Merktlhu are either friendly with us, or from our days in Suddenly Ninjas - but these guys weren't involved in our war with Ludi and most likely didn't even know about it. The real hilarity is the rest of the list: Britney Tears, Casiella Truza, Eliason Phasmatis, Miyamoto Mushai, and Novail. These guys are ENTIRELY UNRELATED to us in any way. At all.

Essentially what happened is that if someone in Ludi saw one of the Jerks on a gate, with a neutral also there, they assumed it was an alt. *facepalm*. They harassed some of these guys, including poor Britney who just wanted to ice mine in peace.

Finally, they missed a very obvious alt character. During our kill of the CEO's Scorpion we warped in one of my alts with ECCM fitted up. He was on the field long enough for the CEO to have noticed, and would have turned red to him. No mention of this guy ever shows up. Fail corp is fail.

While CCP are trying to put the magic smoke back in the servers - which apparently are now on a 36-hour downtime instead of a 6-hour downtime - I have been reading the Eve Blog Pack.

Mail Lite over at The Beginnings of Piracy has written about his alliance leader who was permabanned for being associated with another player who was ISK buying:

A few weeks ago Gilgamesh1980 and his other 2 accounts got banned for 14 days for breaking the EULA. When he first started the game he had a RL friend who asked him to put up some hard earned ISK to go towards a POS network in exchange for monthly/quartley payouts down the line.
He missioned, saved and bought a few GTC's to donate to this friend in return for a stable revenue to help him in his EvE career. So far so good. It lasted a 3 year period.
Then one day a few weeks ago he got a message from GM Nova. His accounts had been banned as his 'friend' had been selling and buying ISK for real money out of game. He had also been selling high end items for real life money.
Gilgamesh knew none of this and when he got banned for the 14 days he asked the GM for a full investigation to clear his name. The outcome? Permanent ban of all characters.

So to follow the connections:

1. Gilgamesh1980 gets ISK from missioning
2. Gilgamesh1980 buys GTCs with ISK
3. Gilgamesh1980 donates GTCs to Other Player
4. GM Nova contacts Gilgamesh1980 and informs him of ban, due to Other Player buying ISK

I'm going to first assume Gilgamesh1980 is totally innocent (or believes he is innocent - no attempted bad behavior). The question that arises here is the EULA and mechanics of "buying GTC with ISK" and "donate GTC to Other Player". Was what was done here a) possible and b) EULA allowed?

All the Eve Online forums are currently down, so I'm linking to this cached copy of the "Secure GTC trade 101 - Updated" thread in the Time Code Bazzar.

Q) What do I do?
A) If you are selling a GTC for isk, you open your account management page;
https://secure.eve-online.com/login.aspx
My account >> Account services >> Securely sell GTCs
# Select the character selling the code (receiving the isk)
# Enter the name of the character you are selling to.
# Enter the code.
# Enter the amount of isk you want to sell the code for.
# Confirm the selection
The seller will see an open sell order in the account management page as well as finished orders.
The buyer should receive an EVE mail detailing the offer. (Could be bugged at the moment) In any case, all the buyer needs to do is log into the account management page and accept the trade. It should be listed under, "Common Tasks." The offer is valid for 48 hours.

This confirms that Gilgamesh1980 could acquire GTCs, by buying them through the Time Code Bazaar - another character sends him the offer and he accepts. So far so good. The next question is about "donate GTC to Other Player". As far as I can tell, there is only a few ways this can happen:

1. Gilgamesh1980 converts GTC into 2 PLEX via the ESC menu "Convert ETC" button, and then trades/contracts the PLEX directly to Other Player
2. Gilgamesh1980 "sells" the code to Other Player for 0 ISK, the same way he purchased it

The first method is clearly EULA allowable. Buying a GTC for ISK, reconverting it to PLEX and transferring the ISK does not break any rules of which I can find. I might wonder why Gilgamesh1980 just didn't buy 2 PLEX and trade, but I guess in 0.0 stations are more of a pain to get into.

The second method also does not appear to me to be any sort of EULA violation. Gilgamesh1980 has a legally acquired GTC that he is legally reselling for 0 ISK. Other Player can then do with the GTC whatever he wants.

This brings us to Gilgamesh1980's ban. The reasons behind this was that Other Player was buying ISK outside the GTC system (EULA violation) and also selling game items directly for real currency (EULA violation). Nowhere is there any mention of Gilgamesh1980 acquiring any ISK or real-life currency from Other Player as a result of these sales.

We might include Other Player giving ISK back to in return for a stable revenue to help him in his EvE career because of the line "in return for a stable revenue to help him in his EvE career", so it seems likely ISK was transferred from Other Player to Gilgamesh1980 at some point - but the usual penalty for goods acquired from ISK buyers is that the unfortunate player has the ISK directly removed from their account.

So to conclude, I first of all see no EULA violations by Gilgamesh1980. I also do not see why, if illegally-acquired ISK was transferred to Gilgamesh1980's account (without his knowledge of the source), it was simply not subtracted from his account as is usually done.

A permanent ban for this is, as we say in the computer world, a chilling effect. If this can happen to him, can I be banned for buying an item (PLEX, ship, anything) that was bought with illegally-acquired ISK? Apparently so.

Every purchase in Eve just became an excuse to ban your accounts. Petition for it to be escalated, and the result is apparently permaban. CCP, you need to make this right - or explain exactly how Gilgamesh1980 was breaking the EULA.

I will be listening really carefully.

This bug is merely annoying for industrial users of Orcas, but it can be catastrophic for those who use Orcas as mobile bases out of which to stage combat ships. It happens to me about one in ten ship changes. CCP, two suggestions:

1. Fix the bug.
2. Add an "Online All" button to the fitting screen.