EVE General Discussion

As I have said before, all the CSM are doing right now is shooting themselves in foot and CCP are laughing their asses off.

The longer there is silence from CCP the more fail posts CSM members will make and the more the community will turn on the CSM.

All that has happened is that the CSM thought they could play with the Big Boys and instead have made themselves look like the little tiny fish in a big ass pond that they are.

@OP

Wow, what a wall.

Surprisingly though, an excellent read. Concise and pretty much to the point. A few faults (to which you admit not being 100% sure about), but everything else you have written is hard and factual. That, unfortunately, is what most people do not like to read or see - Hard facts, about their situation and themselves.

Thank you, some common sense abounds afterfall. Pity you're not still playing, but c'est la vie.

Cheers.

Spaceships...
Pay to win...
Easy...

Star Trek Online!

The CSM is severly underestimated by the community in my opinion. They have considerable clout because in the eyes of the media they represent the community in its entirely. When Mittans speaks, as far as any media outlet is concerned he speaks on the behalf of the entire community. The old saying any media attention is good media attention doesn't really apply to a situation where your own staff and community representitives are intentionally leaking documents and speaking out against the company villifying its upper management.

Sure CCP may choose to ignore it and truck on, but that doesn't mean that the impact on their bottom line won't be felt.

What the CSM is doing right now will ultimatly work, negative attention on a company at a critical moment in time as they attempt to stay afloat long enough to release new cash cows. With debt up to their eyeballs, their one and only cash source in decline and an outrage community soiling their reputation CCP has their work cut out for them.

I hope that icelandic pride has some humility or its going to be the NGE all over again.

Thanks. Now this is taken from The CSM's statement after the summit




see the bolded parts if you need any more info.


EDIT: I mean how can anyone take this **** seriously?

...

Well written. Agree with most stuff. Boatmurdered is awesome
CSM not being under NDA would be impossible in reality tough.
I think CSM has made themselves look like fools with the 'joint' happiness statement with empty promises that are (suprise, suprise) completely ignored by CCP. Great move by Hilmar.
Mittani starting to cry now months after the fact is frankly hilarious and just makes them look weak.
All in all, well played CCP, well played.

Sure. Beyond common sense? The financials someone linked me earlier were pretty useful in that regard.
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=2G7AMIAW

DUST and WoD were not funded by loans, they were funded by equity financing. While there do appear to be loans on the book there is nothing on said books that indicate that there was a larger payment coming up for 2011. Someone in the thread said there was, but if that's true then it's not apparent in the yearly financials (it turns out that it is and that I can't read). Furthermore, if it's true that DUST is entering beta in 2012 then it stands to reason that the primary work on Carbon is nearly complete and that a bulk of the capital costs for that project have been concluded - thus, lower expenditures for 2011.

CCP also does all its finances in USD and is in all likelihood state-side. I do seem to recall when the Iceland banking crisis (yes, I was aware) broke out, people were concerned about CCPs ability to survive and CCP pointed out that their finances are based in the US. So really, the only difference here is that I look like an idiot somewhere in the thread where I mentioned an Icelandic bank. It has no effect on my conclusion.

CCP made $57m from Eve-O last year. That's 310k accounts. If they lose however many subscribers 15k accounts add up to, that's 2 million off their bottom line. They cleared 8m in net profits alone last year! And don't forget that they'll have a "bumper crop" of income this year because of the NeX launch. Finally, later in the post you chastise me for being woefully ignorant of the "Icelandic male" complex. So you think that somehow HELPS your argument? What if they just decided in their arrogance to say "**** 'em" and not care, and lose half of their player base and have to tough it out for a year or two at half the income for the money they'll make down the road? Or are they going to play the numbers game? Which one is it?


This is incorrect. LucasArts released a statement a few days after the closure announcement stating that it was "no longer a sustainable business".
http://www.gamepro.com/article/news/221126/lucasarts-message-to-star-wars-galaxies-fans


I was aware of this. I omitted it not because it damaged my conclusion in any way, but because I figured that it was more common knowledge than the current things going on, and my post was getting long enough already. Its absence doesn't really change anything, in my opinion.


Do you? Would you care to enlighten me? Or is this just going to be yet another episode of a forum poster being more interested in proving someone wrong than contributing to a discussion?

As for the rest, I don't even understand what you hope to accomplish by taking this position that you're the victim here in my eyes. I don't understand why not knowing about The Mittani and his antics somehow disqualify me from pointing out that he's acting like a clown when it comes to things that affect more than just him, and the statement that this behaviour of his is somehow "content" is probably one of the most overblown exaggerations I've heard since someone told me that they thought Carrot Top was funny.

I didn't say that you guys "don't have a clue", I said further into the thread that you guys were acting "like chumps" and you shouldn't. I mean really? I'm not trying to be insulting to anyone here; on the contrary, I've been working to keep the tone civil. But can you not see how JUVENILE people are acting? I mean, come on, you have the CSM out there blowing their media load on.. flexing muscles?! The media only listens for so long before they stop paying attention, and Eve-O player angst becomes "old news". People come into the thread and complain at what I've said because they are inconvenient truths, and people would rather think they have more power than they do. Do you think I want to empower CCP to do their P2W crap, that I somehow enjoy having to pick a fight between charismatic and influential people in Eve-O? No. I'd rather do other things with my time. And yet when presented with intelligent thought all that comes from the CSM delegates that have deigned to comment has been condescending remarks and contemptuous mocking. The CSM needs to take Consensus Building 101 if they want to play media and political games with CCP - they get the community behind them, and THEN they bring the issue to the public eye through the media; not using it as a bully pulpit for a preening putz.

^ That was a rant. I'm perfectly fine with people pointing out my inexperience with the game systems, but I am acutely aware of general politics and have built my arguments on those points. That, and the fact that I too play this game and don't want to get my space ship fix get screwed, is the only reason I've bothered to undertake the fool's errand of forum posting.

Admittedly, this is a fairly valid criticism and it's one reason why I took care to point out at the same time that the community that feels the same way as the CSM should back them up (logically), and that the people that don't should let them do their job unless they're trying to do something like.. screw everyone over. Which is unlikely.

That being said.. I think that things haven't escalated to the point where they have to be doing things like.. busting out of NDA agreements, or mass-quitting, or raging.. but they also shouldn't be going to the media. The media is a powerful thing, but it has "ammunition" and it shouldn't be squandered on stupid ****. They should be doing things like.. oh, I don't know.. telling CCP that they are going to start getting rowdy and get the media involved if they aren't going to play. Or hell, even not doing ASININE things like telling your alliance what you're going to be doing and then having it get let out of the bag prematurely. Or rallying the community to their cause.

And if THOSE things are blocked by NDA, then it raises a pretty important question. WTF? And, why would you agree to "serve as player advocates" if you're not allowed to communicate with them without getting CCP's permission? That makes it seem like they just want to be there for the game design part of the job and lord it over other people, and that's pretty dumb - hence what I said.

Also, you're commenting on my TL;DR, which was vastly simplified from all the crap I spit out. But your point is still quite valid.

l2r


So yes, they have a $ 11.7m/1.35b ISK loan coming due in October

(and personally I don't think it is too outlandish to suspect that the recent NeX and PLEX promotions might be attempts to make the books look a little nicer and shave a few points off the interest rate when it comes to rolling over that loan.
If CCP can demonstrate that their newly expanded business model actually works - i.e. that people use the NeX and buy more PLEXes from them than they did before its introduction - that would certainly help the bank's assessment of risk.)