EVE General Discussion

So 1 article amongst the 100's of them about EvE in various forms of marketing material substantiates the whole argument.

I placed them as a contra argument to the claims being projected, mainly as we have seen significant evidence in the forums of the differences in opinion represented to the Goons, not as an absolute factual representation.

But I don't want to explore the Goon hate phenomina beyond what is needed to make a point, as I don't have or want to see any motivations for seeing Goons not being a relevant part of EvE. But I'm not going to simply swallow the BS either.

"A fool and his money are easily separated."

Every time someone comes here and QQ's about getting recruitment scammed I have to listen to them ***** about how they lost billions as a "sign up deposit" or something. How one gets that much money and sp's and doesn't think to research a corp before joining, especially if they ask for buttloads of cash, is beyond me.

While I think these stories are hilarious, I do think that the channels should be used for what they are designed for. Using the recruit channel to scam people with no intention accepting them is really no different than WTB/WTS spamming the channel.

I hope you're aware that time progresses from right to left on those graphs.

Try hovering your mouse over one. They were kind enough to label datapoints, even if they didn't have the foresight to properly label their axes.

Read them again.

Everyone knows Incarna bombed. Subs are climbing now.

Incarna doesn't explain the stagnation since late 2009.

Think it's way too early to call whether the current growth is the start of an Apocrypha-like development (which lifted subscriptions from the level they were starting to stabilize at in 2008 to the current one) or just a temporary rise as we saw with Incursion.

Maybe Apocrypha was the exception to the rule and the level subscriptions stayed at through 2008 was the "natural" path of growth for EVE? Empyrean Age and Quantum RIse were not super exciting but weren't bad expansions either... (and with Empyrean Age came the first EVE novel which could have brought eve to a larger audience)
one could argue that only the Apocrypha surge introduced the high levels of volatility we see today^^
maybe the pool of "customers willing to be loyal to a niche game of varying quality" was simply exhausted in late 2007 and since then all CCP did was step up advertising efforts and complement its subscriber base with "customers hunting after the latest flashy".
Remember that while generally well-received Apocrypha was also an irresponsible expansion that not only diverted resources from other projects but also left a large technical debt that had to be paid for in its aftermath (due to shortcuts, ugly hacks, ...) - CCP throwing everything into one (successful) attempt to gain more subscribers while setting unrealistic expectations for the future and decreasing the overall quality of its codebase.

As for "you really want to look at subscribed accounts, not logged in characters" - nope, that's what CCP wants to look at, not what I want to look at. I care how many other characters are in EVE that I can interact with, not how much money ends up in CCP's coffers.

I was directed to this thread shortly after I updated the current MotD of the Recruitment Channel a few minutes ago.

To be succinct:
1. Scamming is not forbidden in EVE unless they are facilitated through bugs, exploits and the like. Likewise, if they are conducted in such a manner as to violate the ToS or EULA they will be stopped.
2. The onus of responsibility was always on the shoulders of both parties involved in recruitment. It was stated so in the MotD even, although it did not receive much attention. If the recruit or recruiter got scammed or betrayed in any way, it would be their responsibility for having entered into the deal.
3. For the simple purpose of keeping the channel somewhat usable, posting scams into it was considered off topic and therefore forbidden. Updating the MotD to emphasize this then spun into the current situation, which should now be (hopefully) clarified.

Thank you for clarifying the situation, friend! I'll buy you a beer when I go to the post-Jove expansion Fanfest.

You can be scammed.

But people are not allowed to post anything outside of legitimate recruitment advertises in the channel, which means if a Goon writes "Join Goon NOW! Convo me for details" he can get punished for that, just like someone writing "goons stink" or "WTS 10 Hulks only direct trade" as its all off topic

Im a little torn here...
I hate scam....
but....
ppl that want to join goons getting scamed ....
I have no problem with that

"A fool and his money are soon parted"

It's not CCP's fault, nor is it the fault of the rest of the EVE community, that the above statement holds true. That is just human nature. Rather than try to make a world that encourages foolishness by artificially removing the consequences of acting without thinking, how about leaving things the way they are. If you are stupid enough to fall for a scam then you did not deserve to have that ISK anyway. If you rage-quit because of this then the EVE community will be -1 stupid player and will benefit as a whole.

Think of it as a sort of Darwinistic mechanism where fools tend to weed themselves out over time. If you remove that mechanism then we will simply accumulate more fools who will require more rules, more special treatment and more pampering. This is the road to Hello Kitty Online, where nothing matters because the Good Nanny CCP will always fix things anyway.