EVE General Discussion

I was a productive member of society, nice apartment, job, car, wife....

now I'm just a silhouette of my former self

I now live at home with mom, divorced, on disability, obese and worse of all ive become a hebephile



Eve can do strange things to a person



:P

Op read this slowly, morals don't exist in this game. most of the time

I think if it wasn't Eve then it would be alcohol or drugs or porn or self mutilation; maybe Eve saved you from something worse.

no...its a game

Unlike EvE, other worlds police their environment of the most antisocial elements.

Other games don't allow thieving, for example, as it can interfere with gameplay and be abused (plus a way to end subs for the annoyance factor alone).

Closest thing WoW has of thieving is ninjaing, and the general consensus is it's bad behavior. Blizzard allows it as a concept that anyone can gear up their offspecs as needed, but allows players in groups to police it (allowing players to be expelled because it's considered rude). This is why things like player voting of raiders behavior won't catch on in that game, because the drama of policing it among players (instead of Blizzard policing it as policy).

EvE is designed for almost anything goes. It attracts players who enjoy the "no rules" game play. Other games police it more as they prefer more law and order in their games. The result is EvE has 15 year-old smack talkers and worse. That is snuffed out in those other games (don't need to kill them or hire mercs to teach them a lesson, they find themselves isolated or even banned as the community rejects their behavior, instead). If they keep at it, only games like EvE they can play, as their behavior isn't tolerated in "good housekeeping" games.

EQ/EQII is even stricter, as they believe in social isolation as a method to combat antisocial behaviors; or for the truly bad apples, exposure (EQ2Flame's wall of shame).

The overall rule is: "Time is money, friend", and if behaviors violate either or both, it's nipped. And that's common sense, as no one has the right to force others to waste their time and money in a game.

In EVE I had to invent some kind of dogma to delude myself, so I can kill others that have done nothing to me.

This did not change how I behave in rl, but it told me a lesson on how easy it is to trick myself into thinking i'm doing the right thing by holding to a dogma and ignoring other viewpoints.

The only thing you can do within a virtual world that is immoral is any action that breaks the magic circle.

This would include things like:
Cheating (i.e. Exploits, Hacks)
Breaking the rules of the game (i.e. CCP's prohibition on certain forms of speech)



An MMO (or any Virtual World) is distinct from the real world in that it is a constructed, intentional society. That leaves it free to have its own explicit set of rules without reference to real world rules (legal, moral, or whatever). Everybody has the choice to abide by those rules (and accept the consequences thereof) or not take part in the society.

So if I play Monopoly, where the goal is my own profit/asset maximization at the cost of driving the other players all bankrupt, and I choose to do exactly that instead of sharing the wealth, it means I've become morally bankrupt IRL? Ridiculous. If you signed up to play Monopoly and I beat you by driving you bankrupt, it doesn't reflect on me as a person once the game is over. If you decide to forego rent and "share" your properties throughtout the game until your inevitable loss, that's fine as well. The only "reflection" on anyone as a person arises when you choose to flip the board after your loss, decry the other players as immoral bastards, and run out of the room. Take a guess which player is the one carrying inherent shortcomings.

Similarly, if you're virtual white - knighting in a game like EVE expressly advertised as a dystopian, dog - eat - dog world, that's your prerogative, the choice you made in a virtual sandbox. That's fine. What is not fine is when you decide that other players playing the game as it was advertised have somehow become moral bankrupts just because you disliked that they played the game as it was meant to be played. "Flipping the board", as it were.



It's unbelievable that this even bears saying, but - There's a large difference between a virtual world meant as a game, and a virtual world meant as an extension of real life, like Second Life. What you're doing is is essentially the equivalent of claiming that war games and actual wars in real life are indistinguishable, just because both of these activities took place "in the real world"

If you give me 500 spirit points I'll give you 1000 in return. Works at work as well as in Jita.

I've always like this little excerpt related to this:



Yep, the games and general media we view/use have no effect on us. None at all.