Two ways to MAKE! MONEY! FAST!

Posted on August 23, 2006 by Scott Jennings| 19 Comments

Farm it! Tales of economic manipulation on EQ1′s new Progression servers
Scam it! Eve players discover the joys of embezzlement

This entry was posted in Design, _. Bookmark the permalink.
  • Vleskoe

    I don’t see how anyone got rich. Certainly not fast.

    Sounds like a shitty time doing the worst part of one of the worst MMO’s out there.

    The Eve story seems to fit the bill, though.

  • http://www.slydesblog.com Slyde

    I always get a chuckle out of these people who scam, rob, or asassinate others in EVE.

  • http://www.thisisnotacommunity.org D-0ne

    “Sounds like a shitty time doing the worst part of one of the worst MMO\’e2\’80\’99s out there.”

    Truth has a sting to it. Crafting in EQ reminded me of having an athletes foot itch attack, in dress shoes, at a high level business meeting. No. Really. It. Did. Feel. Just. Like. That.

  • Bobwl

    Thats not economic manipulation, thats Old School Carpal Tunnel Crafting like I did back in the days where I had to walk up hill both ways in a snow storm to make Mesh Body Stocking’s for Blue – large breasted dancers at the Moeina Cantina :)

    PS waves at Psyra and Ersa :)

  • http://hgamer.blogspot.com Heartless Gamer

    pffft everyone is acting like the EVE guy stole hundreds of billions of ISK or something…. lolerskates.

  • Tony H.

    Okay, with the Everquest article, Where does it start to say that the people who wrote it started to get effected but IGE and other currency traders? It seems to stop at some point where the group involved are becoming fabulously wealthy and powerfull in terms of Tradeskills. Did it crash? DId the game hit a wall? What’s going on, I’m missing something here.

    In Eve, how easy is it to turn the in game currency into cash? That’s something I don’t fully understand. I’m kind of clueless as to how this goes about? I’ve never played the game but let me tell you, stuff like this makes me glad I haven’t started. Goes to show, never trust anyone online. Hehe.

  • http://www.orbisgames.com/ Dave Rickey

    It’s actually pretty damned difficult to turn isk into cash. IGE won’t handle it, for example. Not only is CCP pretty aggressive about investigating anything that looks like it might be a cash for isk transaction, but there’s a lack of demand for buying isk because there’s a legitimate way to turn real life cash into isk: Selling Game Time Codes.

    You get a code, either from a card you purchase from CCP or electronically from another vendor (there are several that CCP has authorized to sell them). You advertise it on the sell orders forum or haunt the appropriate channels in game, the going rate is roughly 110M for a 30-day code (US$17.95) or 300M for a 90-day code (US$44.95). This is up around 10% from what it was 6 months ago when I sold a couple of codes to finance an in-game business venture. Apparently there are more people willing to trade isk for gametime than will pay real money to get ISK.

    A big part of why this trade has flourished is because where reporting being scammed on a cash-for-isk deal will get both accounts involved banned, CCP will enforce a isk-for-GTC deal, banning a scammer’s account and giving you your isk back (the *only* circumstance under which they will ban someone for scamming isk).

    –Dave

  • http://cnn.com ubvman

    Actually the EQ1 thing, its “working as intended”. Carpal Tunnel syndrome being one of the intended effects. Proof positive that the devs actually hate players designing that sort of stuff in.

    /insert smiley somewhere around here…

  • http://tidehorizon.blogspot.com Tide

    right, but the reality is we have no way of knowing what CCP does or does not do, or will do in this case. It still comes down to one guy stealing from other players, wasting their time, and there is no condemnation or “rails” to stop it. I’ve heard in some cases scammed people get some of their money returned, but that could be just wishful thinking. What sucks about this is that there is no retribution possible for hurt players — the guy can launder the money across whatever accounts he wants. Also, I don’t see the game design in it — it happens on the forums, amidst RL activities. It seems like a bad side effect or just an ugly ornament on the game. And since the real advancement metric in Eve is money, someone getting this amount of cash feels pretty unbalanced.

  • Talorc

    I dont think the EVE developers will do anything about this. Its working as intended as far as they are concerned.

    The guy has not abused any in game bug or anything. He has executed a classic pyramid scheme scam! I say good on him, it absolutely fantastic that the economic system in EVE is robust enough to support ideas like Banking.

    Pretty soon some guys in Eve are going to start meeting in a Space coffee house and start trading stuff…. An then issuing Stocks and Shares and prospectus :-)

  • http://www.warcry.com Vandemar

    There’s already a stock/shares system in EVE. As I understand it, it’s pretty screwed up, but it’s there.

  • Comstar

    There is nothing in Eve to support banking, thats the problem. Eve only supports *scamming*. The so called banking asepcts are mearly scams that havn’t been closed down and the money launded yet.

  • TPRJones

    right, but the reality is we have no way of knowing what CCP does or does not do, or will do in this case. It still comes down to one guy stealing from other players, wasting their time, and there is no condemnation or \’e2\’80\’9crails\’e2\’80\’9d to stop it

    Tide, you are completely missing the point. CCP is not going to stop it, they are high-fiving each other about how cool their game is because of it. If someone can scam you out of your ISK, then it’s your fault for falling for it, and scamming people for ISK is a very valid way to play the game. I would agree completely (it’s a good mirror of real life that way) except for the fact that you can’t use PvP to get your ISK back. If there was a way to kill someone and get ahold of their ISK, then it’d be the perfect ruthless game system all around.

    As it is you have to scam them to get your ISK back, and that won’t work because the odds are they are smarter than you already or they wouldn’t have your ISK.

  • TPRJones

    Hmm, that last post of mine there is poorly phrased. I meant to say that you can’t use brute force PvP to get your ISK back in Eve. You can do it with PvP in the sense that in Eve scamming is a valid form of PvP. Which is the one thing I really like about Eve, is that it’s PvP isn’t limited to simple brute force. There’s Social PvP and Economic PvP going on in there that is every bit as cuthroat and ruthless as any Fighting PvP system ever made.

  • Tony H.

    So when it comes to the recent Economic PvP Scam that just happened, if the guy just wanted to use that ugodly amount of in game currency, he could just transfer it to a new account and junk the old one, right? I mean, that amount of starting money is just insane, it sounds like. But it sounds like he can’t exactly transfer that into real cash money. Just has a very big in game bank account and doesn’t have to be hold accountable for anything he said or did in game.

  • TPRJones

    Correct. Because Eve not only doesn’t discourage such activity, in some ways it actively promotes it. Because CCP believes it makes for an interesting game, and they’ve got enough subscribers to back up that belief. So far, at least.

  • Merkwurdigliebe

    Mmmm… less than a year’s work, and about $100k worth of in-game monies… I could pay off some student loans.

  • Talorc

    To Comstar re Banking -

    What do you think in “Real” life protects Mr bank manager from setting up a Bank, taking deposits and running of to Bermuda afterwards?

    There is no “code” that prevents him from doing that.

    What theoritically prevents it in real life is strong government, which has created a banking regulation law, which it enforces, for the economic protection of its citizens.

    If a psuedo government starts to form in Eve, it could start enacting Banking regulations.

  • Aufero

    Interesting speculation on
    LawMeme     today about this, and the possible legal implications of running a scam involving in-game currency that can be reliably tied to real world currency.