Crime & Punishment

So CCP said a while back that suicide ganking with Alphas shouldnt be much of a problem and they were keeping the option turning Safetys On for Alphas if there was a lot of abuse or ganking got out of hand.

Does the fact that the Goons are now doing this on a fairly large scale by using disposable cost-free and consequence-free Alpha alts in the latest Burn Jita mean this is now likely going to happen?

The issue isnt with Burn Jita itself, its with the use of free Alpha alts to carry out the ganking during it

You don't understand though there is right now thus it's an epidemic

Fair enough burn juts is only once a year but it is still a pretty major incident of abuse of Alpha clones. Many billions of isk getting destroyed. And if people see this sort of thing working successfully this weekend then chances are it will be used more frequently.

Use and abuse are different things.
I don't see how the alphas are going to make a significant difference, to be honest... other than letting some folks who would not otherwise participate enjoy the festivities.
Or are you suggesting that alpha characters be denied access to types of gameplay within their skillset simply because they're not paying accounts?

Given that Burn Jita has been happening annually for a long time, I don't really see how anything is different now with Alpha clones. They used to use newly minted trial accounts to suicide gank. In fact, I'd argue that alpha clones make it harder than it was under trial accounts because you're limited in what skills you can train. With 2+ weeks of unlimited training on a trial account you could get a much stronger gank alt than you can with an alpha clone.

If CCP was okay with it before, I don't see any reason why they'd suddenly stop allowing it. Nothing has changed. Besides, I kind of get a kick out of it. I think most people do.

meh. i alpha, and i burned a little piece of jita. is ok i tell you.

The only potential issue I see with this is that using an alpha means you don't need to care about sec status, etc. If they're just rerolling brand new alphas every year then I think it would fall under similar rules as biomassing characters to lose negative sec status. If they're just creating alphas that they use only for ganking and nothing else, I don't see the problem. It's basically the same as creating another character used only for ganking.

I was tempted to join the goons there with my main. I don't care about sec status nor killrights, since i live in nullsec. What would i have to lose?

I fail to see a problem here, to be honest. As it was mentioned previously, Burn Jita wasn't remarkable for the use of apha clones. It's the sheer number of people involved that has made it possible. You don't see 200 to 300 characters on a single gank every day. Anyone who's taken at least one step beyond being a lowly F1 grunt knows that it's a big pain in the ass to rally such a large mass of people and make them do what you want them to do for a long enough period of time, especially when most of those people aren't accustomed to the given type of activity, like highsec ganking. Entities like Spectre Fleet could also organize a 300-man op with alpha characters and just roam the galaxy in free disposable ships, kicking ass wholesale (and I suppose, they did), but no one would complain that alphas are disposable and imbalanced in that instance. It's a matter of perception, really.

Besides, it's very important to mention that alphas can't be multiboxed, not without breaking the EULA, at least. It means that whoever signed up for Burn Jita with an alpha had to sacrifice a lot, dedicating their entire EVE time to the event. They couldn't rat or mine at the same time, only gank. Neither did they have any financial incentive (none that I'm aware of, at least), the killmails and the memories of "being there when Jita burned" being their reward.

We professional gankers don't use alphas in our everyday activities, since we rely heavily on multiboxing to scout and loot and don't have the numbers to make any significant use of the crappy T1 DPS more often than not. Being one of the people responsible for CODE.'s recruitment efforts, I have observed that the majority of alphas coming to us are either brand-new players or someone who's decided to try something new in EVE. After we show them how to gank, they either bring in subbed chracters or get filtered out, because the entry barrier into the trade of gankng is relatively high.

To sum up, Burn Jita has had a tremendous effect on the community, and threadnoughts like this one are yet another testimony of it. However, the success of the event can only be attributed to the gank fleets' FCs and all the players who've helped to build and deliver the ganking gear and bring together massive numbers of participants. Those people are truly gods among men.