The only one I can think of was Shadowbane, which had it’s share of turncoat drama.

The deal is, in UO me knowing where you keep your stuff is pointless. In DAOC, me knowing where your scouts were was slightly pointless on a grand scale (though holy radar exploits in that game for a while). Eve has enough crap going on (and things need to stay cooking/crafting long enough) that you have a metagame of hiding what you’re up to on a grand scale. So you have a meta metagame of finding out what they’re up to. And per usual, some people will do anything to get that information.

I find it absolutely no different as a personality trait than people who will commit corperate espionage or scam people out of money. Just because it deals with bits on a computer doesn’t make it less worth doing for some people. Risk/Reward ratios remain about the same. Though you’re not getting money out of it, you’re not risking jail time either (it’s not hacking someone’s forums to be given an account because you were a spy, kids!) You gain a large benefit in a game for little risk. You’re a dick for doing it, but some people don’t mind being dicks in general.

Personally, as I said, I don’t have the mean streak to take over in EvE, so I don’t play it much. I find it a fascinating experiment however, and it shows that some people will stress the limits of acceptability in order to win in any competetive environment. If it would have given you an advantage in DAOC to hack someone’s forums and listen to their vent servers, people would have done it. But the game was too small geographically and too large player wise to really have the ability to make sure the entire enemy army was somewhere else for an operation to succeed. But there was a lot of relic raid drama about OMG SPIES when you tried to ninja a relic.

“The Game Within The Game Within The Game”.

Only it’s not like that. It’s not in the game, it’s outside, in real life, interfering with real assets, things that were and are considered out of bounds by most people playing MMO’s. I believe even most of the true PVPers would consider their real life to be not part of the “playing field”, and even less so consider it “even”, since the game is a simulation, where you can, for the most part, even things out, real life isnt.

But it’s not just the PVPers i want to mention. Basically, we always wished for something like the Intelligence Operations etc. etc. described in that story to be in games, to be a mechanic, to be “a game within the game”, yet EVE has done it differently, in what i consider a malevolent way, because it forces you to wager more than you’d expect to. It’s not the same kind of game as the other MMOs, it’s more akin to gambling in real life, where you might possibly lose a months worth in salary, or performing risky acts in relationships with people close to you. Yet in these activities, there’s the possibility of gain. Monetary, social, whatever, while in a GAME, because that’s where EVE doesnt go BEYOND being a game, there is none. (Though people will argue that there might in fact be social gain to this.)

I’d love to see things like the stuff described to be in games, but as part of the game, or only touching things related to the game. If it goes beyond that, it can not and should not be viewed or treated as a game, and personally i would stay away from it, because what i’m looking for as a recreational activity is a game, and nothing else.

A specific kind of vision of pvp utopia that creates the perfect ground for breeding this sort of evil.

No, most pvp players aren’t evil. They’re just having fun competitively. I can have fun pvp’ing myself most of the time that way. As soon as someone is framing me for an exploit and my account gets suspended because I won a battle, though, or they spoof me and get my guild leader angry at me, it’s not in the realm of competitive fun, anymore.

It’s clear enough that there’s a sizable minority of players, Mittanis and xaldins, that have a Tonya Harding view of sportsmanship. And if they have any success, they attract hangers-on and imitators. And fans. Joe – did you even read the article? or did you just read my comment? lol

So you’re saying nobody should play any games or take part in any other sorts of recreational activity, then?

No. I’m explaining to kalain that mean gamers are mean because it’s more than just a personality trait when it comes to games that blur the line between game and reality, like eve, where invasion of privacy is encouraged outside the game.

This does seem like the usual carebear hate against free for all pvp jerks, but the key difference is free for all pvp jerks stick to their game. Rarely do they defend the honor of their beloved games outside their community anymore (lum’s talking points on darkfall was the most recent invasion I’ve seen in several years), and even fewer of them would commit so far as to fake/hack their way into private forums or irc/vent channels to fuck with them. Yet this is what Eve encourages pvpers to do against their enemies. Spy and disroupt them at all costs to better your chances of virtual victory in electronic outer space.

Or, you could be taking land in a war, gaining power in a workforce, etc. Not all goals need to be noble, nor physical gain. People will lie, cheat and steal for reputation (even if it’s reputation with a group that doesn’t share the same moral concepts as we do).

I’m saying this isn’t some magical gamer illness, it’s a mental situation in which you value something (anything) and are willing to do shady shit to attain or improve it.

In this game’s case, CCP pretty much encourages the behavior and creates systems that allow for it to be easily exploited (cough cough pos passwords cough. There’s no gameplay reason that your turrets know who your corp doesn’t like no matter what, but your forcefield entirely relies on something a spy can give away except to encourage espionage)

I’m not saying this is a GOOD ideal, I’m again simply stating it’s not a gamer thing. It’s a human thing. People do stupid, mean and petty shit when they feel it’s worthwhile. In business, romance, or games. I mean, why cheat in sports? It’s just a game. People still do it all the damned time, even in little league, which is completely meaningless in the grand scheme of things (in total dollar worth, you could sell your EvE assests for more than winning a little league tournament really means tangably.)

You seem to be insinuating that because something’s online, it’s incapable of having any emotional attachment to anyone, and I just don’t get that any more than the idea that a piece or artwork or a poem isn’t anything special. It’s something you worked to create, you should have some minor level of emotional investment in it.

But please, continue.

And this is why PvPers think carebears are idiots. PvP has nothing to do with rewarding evil. PvP utopia is just about letting people compete for a prize on a fair playing field. Something like guildwars. There’s no evil involved.

I read this article about ingame intelligence gathering in Eve recently and it made me think once again of the question of skill in games. As games become more complex and more realistic (not just graphically but in the way that they allow complex inte…