EVE General Discussion

Brain cancer.

We're legit though. Turn around, you might be surprised.

Here's a cool trick if you want to pass off a massive pile of BS on people.

Accuse anyone that doesn't buy it of being a "conspiracy theorist".

Works just about every time, and is considerably more effective then calling them a communist, stupid, or just laughing like an idiot.

it goes back waaaaaay before the T20 incident .... who remembers the Miner2 lasers incident ????


awwww such happy friendly days back then

Doesn't CCP have a history of their staff "misbehaving" in the past? I seem to remember reading about at least two separate events that raised many eyebrows, and one of those I think was even proven true? If so, that's where conspiracy theories come from - there's precedent. If it happened before, who is to say it won't happen again, or isn't happening now?

And this is true for many MMOs. I can give you an example from my days in another MMO. The player cities were won and lost by sieges in that game (FFA PvP, player loot, etc.). Well, our guild's city was sieged. We won, that is successfully repelled the enemy. But instead of keeping our city, we lost it. And we gained the attackers' hamlet, which can only happen if we won, in which case we should not have lost our own town! See the problem? We contacted the devs. They said too bad, so sad. Why? Because none of us were buddy-buddy with them.

A few weeks later, the guild they were buddy-buddy with, and several devs were reportedly members of, was attacked. Overwhelming odds against them, with multiple guilds (including ours). They were defeated and lost their town fair and square. What happened? Devs said it didn't count, because there was an issue, and flipped the ownership back to their buddies.

So, in our case, there was an obvious breakdown in game mechanics, but nothing was reversed. In case of their buddies' guild, there was nothing broken (visibly), the siege went by the book, and the results were overturned. Suspicious? You betcha. Proof-positive of anything? No. But that didn't stop a lot of us (myself included) from quitting the game, because there was little point in doing anything if all your actions against a specific group would be reversed immediately. And there were quite a few conspiracy theories flying around. But as far as we were concerned, since we actually saw it happen with our own eyes, it wasn't a theory, it was fact. Nothing we could prove, but it was good enough for us.

So, since then I've always looked at any potential conspiracy theories with a little more interest. Simply because if they can happen in at least two MMOs that I played, they can happen in any other just as easily.

EDIT:

I can also pose you a hypothetical question. Consider the following, 100% fictional, scenario from a nonexistent MMO:

Suppose you're a developer running an MMO. And a single guild holds 50% of the subscriptions. Now, this doesn't mean 50% of the players, the guild is only 15% (or so) of the total player base. But because they each hold many accounts, the guild de-facto accounts for 50% of your revenue.

Now, suppose the leader of that guild is displeased with whatever you're doing, and wants you to do something else. If you don't, the guild leader threatens to get all of his underlings to close their accounts. Even with just 50% compliance rate, that means your revenue will drop by 25%.

Now, you can call his bluff. But what if this leader's compliance rate is closer to 100%, and he can keep his horde unsubscribed for 3+ months? Can you handle a sudden 50% revenue drop for an entire quarter? Are your profit margins strong enough to pull through it?

Think about that one. Can you ban this leader? Sure, but aside from a possible backlash, his replacement would move up from the ranks, and present you with the same dilemma. Can you ban the entire group? And lose 50% revenue? Not bloody likely. So, pop quiz, hotshot - what do you do? What DO you do?

Worse yet, if the leader doesn't log in anyway and has a fancy news website and Jabber.

Nullsec lemmings vote en masse, and they vote for whoever they are told.

High sec entities are not usually that big, so the combined votes of one or two coallitions with 3K members can steer any election.

When The Mittani got to be Chairman, the second most voted one got barely over 4.000 votes, and two got into the CSM with less than 2.500 votes. Null alliances get better representation because they are bigger and they tell their members to vote for the leadership. Quite simple.

Mostly... because it's happened before. That one incident, however, doesn't instantly verify every single conspiracy theory out there, but it certainly helped fuel the paranoia. And it didn't help CCP's image none, either.

However, I'm sure they're keeping much closer tabs on their GMs these days, but no one can ever be certain of their transparency.

For CCP to use players to manipulate the game is just good business.
That way they can change parts of the game with out being accountable.
That allows for more extreme experimentation in search of what people like and will pay for.

Besides half the fun of having power is to abuse it.

The larger the number of people (players and devs) involved, the more the population mimics real life populations.

So are we talking about crazy conspiracy theories, or unproven accusations of corruption, abuse of power, favoritism, cronyism, unhealthy obsessions, egotism, money, vendettas, personalities, emotional investments, character assassinations, and other human conditions that carry the polite moniker of "politics" instead of disparaging term "conspiracy theory?"