So I spent a lot of time in Thera yesterday, dodging people mostly. It seems to be working, at least in the short term, as a place to bring people together for a good bit of killing. If you look at zkillboard for Thera, there’s already 1500 kills that have taken place in the system which is pretty good. The market as you can imagine is pretty terrible at the moment. It’s difficult for people to get a lot of volume in there without getting thoroughly killed, but I expect that to start picking up eventually. I don’t suppose it will become the next Jita like CCP hope, it might rival one of the null sec hubs for size one day. I found some sort of intel channel being advertised in Jita called Thera-Intel. It seems to be pretty empty of people, but there’s links in there to see current wormholes to Thera which seems to be kept moderately up to date, so it’s worth a look. I’m hoping soon we’ll get a nice big clash to rival the size of fights they get in nullsec. It would be amazing to see a free for all on that scale.
Rhea Released!
The latest release in EVE development cycle was released yesterday, Rhea. The official patch notes can be found here. Notably, this patch removes the need for jump clones, a new freighter, the Bowhead designed to carry fitted and unpackaged ships and adds a new type of wormhole, one with a station called Thera alongside 100 extra standard wormholes. This is designed to be a new Jita like hub, with free combat right outside.
Along with these notable changes, there are countless fixes, and the introduction of their new physical rendering system which will help them improve graphics quality of objects in space. A lot of work has also been done in expanding the lore around sleepers and Jovian tech, hopefully signally an imminent release of further new and exciting content.
Now, I’m not sure about the rest of you but I’m off to find Thera!
CCP Greyscale Leaves CCP
According to an article on themittai.com, CCP Greyscale has left CCP. Strangely there’s be no CCP announcement of the news yet, but according to TMC, another CCP developer has confirm this is the case. This comes as quite a surprise, and is quite unfortunate. It’s Greyscale’s team which has been working on he recent null sec rebalance, of which the jump changes were the first step. While yes, his team will be quite capable of continuing without him, it’s still quite a blow to lose a dev with as much knowledge and drive as CCP Greyscale. I’ll post an update if and when we receive more information.
“This is EVE” Trailer Competition
If you’ve not yet seen it, CCP have recently released their “This is EVE” trailer, which is their best one yet. It uses recordings of players voice comms to give the viewer a taste of what it’s like to actually be playing the game rather than a standard theatrical trailer. The video can be seen below.
Alongside this, CCP are now running a competition for players to submit their own “This is EVE” style videos. Submissions need to be in by February 2015, and the prizes include large volumes of PLEX, Second Decade collectors editions and subscriptions to Adobe Creative Cloud. Full details can be found in the dev blog here, and in the forum posts linked at the bottom of the dev blog.
Rixx Javix and Hats!
Over at EVEOGANDA, another EVE relate blog, Rixx Javix has recently posted about hats in EVE Online. I wasn’t aware he was doing this, but he has been editing peoples EVE avatar pictures to give them hats, and the results are spectacular. I urge you to take a look.
He also talks about the idea of hats being added to the character generator in EVE. Hats in EVE Online I think is a brilliant idea. It adds further depth and personality to characters allowing people to display their own flair. I’d be fully in support of hats as an option, but there would have to be considerable variety in style and color to stop it from becoming too samey. The ability to alter the primary and secondary color of a hat would be a good idea.
CSM 10 Elections
So the time for electing a new CSM is coming up. Important choices will need to be made all round. I’d recommend looking at the campaigns of Mike Azariah and Sabriz Adoudel as they both have some interesting ideas of how things should be done in CSM 10. You can see all of the campaigns in the CSM campaigns section of the EVE Online forums. Remember that your vote matters, so make it a good one!
The Basements Dweller’s Need for Respect
Through reading blogs of players like MoxNix, I’ve reach the conclusion that there are certain types of player – likely living the the basement of their mother’s house like MoxNix – who are incapable of socializing with others yet have and intense desire to be respected by other players. If you read though his blog it’s clear that the reason he lies, posts common topics repeating other players and blocks comments which go against him is because he’s desperately clawing, not to be liked by others, but to give the appearance of being agreed with by others.
By lying, he can put up false claims, such as his attack on an innocent competing trader he claims is botting. By posting about common topics blindly repeating what others have said he can use them as a test to ensure things he talks about will be things others generally agree with. Unique topics are difficult for him as successfully posting about a unique topic for yourself requires intellect and enough social skills to convey your thoughts. Moderation of comments speaks for itself. It’s easy to look like many people agree with you if almost everyone who doesn’t has their comments refused.
It’s a real shame that people have to live their lives like this. I pity you MoxNix, I really do.
Market Morons
It’s funny to watch players (like my counterpart, over at the other, less intellectually stimulating Merchant Monarchy) getting all excited and acting as if they have vastly more knowledge than they do.
Right now, MoxNix is looking at Plex prices. At first he seemed to just miss the fact that multiboxers were getting the nerfbat and started talking about the “Plex bubble” exploding. In itself, that’s retarded because there is no Plex bubble. The in game economy simply doesn’t work that way. With no drastic outside changes – like the nerfing of thousands of multiboxed charaters – Plex prices will only ever go up.
Then he’s moved on to “Plex price manipulation”, which is another way of saying “I don’t know what’s going on, so I’ll cry that other players are doing something!”. It’s a repeat of the “everyone I don’t like is botting” scandal all over again. Listen up Mox, it’s not price manipulation. It’s simply people far more educated and wealthy than you chucking down their wallets to hedge bets on where the dip from these announced changes is going to stop.
It doesn’t end there though. He was wrong, then he was wrong again, and now he’s made a third wrong assumption. He’s talking about the Plex prices as if on 1st January we’re suddenly doing to see a massive drop in the Plex price where all the multiboxers stop buying them. What he’s forgotten to consider (probably because he’s a fat, unemployed neckbeard sitting in his mother’s basement dreaming of being popular) is that the Plex for multibox characters will be bought and applied before the 1st. It’s not like every multiboxer in the world was going to apply plex on exactly the 1st of January and now they won’t, it will be any time from last week right up to January, and the impact will reduce the closer we get to the live date.
Remember though, if you want to tell him any of this, you can’t do so on his blog, since he gets upset and deletes out any comments he doesn’t like (which includes anything that proves him wrong).
The lies about botting
Over at the site run by Moxnix, there’s been posting about an EVE player he thinks is botting. He likes to keep saying how the bot *always* undercuts in minutes, emphasis on the always, getting real mad every time someone suggest he might be wrong and the guy might just be a nolifer. This will not do.
So I logged in one of my spare traders, took a trip to the region cut the price on the “botter”, and watched. I was expecting it to be cut within minute, since he *always* does that. But it didn’t happen. 25 minutes passed, and I thought, “well this isn’t a few minutes at all”, so I took a screenshot and posted it up on his site. Did it appear? No, it did not. And this is just one of many. At least 10 posts with clear evidence or good arguments about the “botter” possibly not being a botter at all just never materialised.
So it appears that if you have anything to say that is against what moxnix is posting, the likelihood is he will moderate out your comment. Freedom of speech is a wonderful thing, and people should be able to exercise that right wherever they want, not get silenced when it shatters someone’s argument because they’re too precious to be proven wrong.
As for the “bot”, with further playing about it became starkly obvious that this was no bot at all, just a player with way too much time. This was easy to tell as there were emotionally driven responses to changes in the orders if you posted yours quick enough, even with a margin trade order from one of his alts trying to inflate my prices without risk, as well as the order in the screenshot above reach 45 minutes in age before a different player sold to it with the “bot” still not cutting the order. A bot would not do this. Moxnix is just an angry rookie trader who gets mad at people undercutting his prices, and figures he can use his blog to push out lies against another player rather than simply improving his trading ability and beating him fairly.
Pathetic…
Update:
He’s now come back on his site once again infuriated at the allegations laid against him, now claiming above all else that I’m another poster on his blog, and that somehow a bot not instantly cutting is somehow further proof of a bot.
MoxNix: The player you are attacking is *not* a bot. Bot’s don’t respond in the way this player has responded, and I’ve seen no evidence of any cutting that is beyond the realms of a human nolifer (and you claiming he *always* cuts you instantly is not evidence, it’s hearsay, and it’s biased). You are obviously just furious that another player dares to compete with your market orders and compete well, so you slander him hoping that he will be scared off by your threats of CCP action. Well CCP won’t act because he’s not a bot.
Merchant Monarchy 