Assembly Hall

So I glanced over this article about how a scam related to this topic went south, and after going back over it more carefully there were several "events" in the course of this scam that were violations of the ToS as it was relating to impersonation. For one, you can't say you are another in-game character. I learned that when I tried to make a char and corp that looked very similar to EvE Texas Hold'em or whatever they're called and held a "special event" in which players of the eve poker site sent my alt a lot of cash to buy-in, all of which was returned to them, my account and it's corp got generic name changes, and I was given a warning by the GMs. I didn't know the policy at the time, and the GMs agreed it was vague and changed the policy description on eve wiki... We went back and forth on it a bit, the ticket got escalated, blah blah blah... I was angry that what seemed like a legit scam to me just by reading the ToS was not. However, as long as the rules are universally applied, I don't have a problem with it. The GMs took the time to thoroughly explain the policy to me using a number of examples I came up with. They were patient and in the end I got a standing warning, but now that I know what the policy is (at least I think I do) there's no risk that I'll make that mistake again. As I understand it, suggesting affiliation with ISD, GMs, or CCP is a violation of the policy, just as impersonating another player is a clear violation. Those are all things that the guy in the article linked above did. So that's the easy part.

The part I don't care for is how CCP handled this. If CCP can't adequately describe their position on a policy, or if that policy is vague, as the impersonation section of the ToS was, it is NOT our fault as players!! It's CCP's fault, and they should take the time to properly explain their position to people who have been petitioned for the violation to adequately explain the rule, as they did with me, or take the 20 minutes to just correct the fickin' policy. How hard is that? Hell... how many lawyers and skilled writers play this game? If you can't be bothered and whomever is in charge of writing is on vacation, have us do it for you, CCP.

Now if you want a suggestion on how to fix this going forward, it's relatively easy:

• Create a sub-wiki on eve wiki and call it "legal precedent"


• Write out every "rule" for the game under it's own heading.


• Allow players, of their own volition, to post examples of incidents where they violated those terms and what the consequences are, then allow GMs, Devs, ISD, and players to comment on individual policies and events for clarification.

In this way, we please a lot of people. CCPs marketers can go circle jerk over "video game legal system adopted by genius video game developer" as an oft repeated headline. Scammers and scammees can look over these policies and see if it's worth filing a petition for, saving GMs a lot of time having to re-explain the rules over and over. Players will know what the rules are. As more invalid/bannable gameplay gets explicitly detailed in the wiki, you can expect to see fewer players making these violations.

If CCP wants to build a virtual society, I think that's awesome. If CCP wants to make a virtual society and botch up some of the fundamentals of ANY society than there's only so far you'll be able to take EvE. The problems CCP is facing right now and have for ages via petitions could be easily resolved by implementing this. Time to nut up or shut up on the CCP legal system, imho.

Yes to some codification of clear "yes/no" cases that have been brought to the GMs.

No to a court of appeals.

I probably wouldn't let capusleers edit the wiki pages. Since GM communications are confidential, it needs to be up to the GMs and ISD to update the page accordingly with scenarios that they solve. Therein being the issue: making sure that GMs update the wiki based on novel decisions as they pop up.