Assembly Hall

I just want to say, for all the rocks, glass, nails, and disease in our Eve Sandbox, this game has proven (so far) to be EXTREMELY resilient. Despite CCP's other projects tanking (other MMO and the err planetside clone that was great in theory but terribly implemented for PS only), and countless massive and terrible cluster-f's that have caused mass anger and in many cases, hysteria, people still love Eve.

In Eve's time, a metric ton of other 'new and brilliant!' MMOs have come and gone, or ended up being free to play. Eve has kept going and the company isn't bankrupt or broken- pretty darn great! Even the peanut-butter-and-jelly MMO World of Warcraft has had massive (millions of players) abandon it for other games, but Eve is still -fairly- going strong to its fans.

This said, Eve has gotten worse in terms of player interactions. Trust between players -not just between players and CCP- could be considered to be pretty much terrible. People expect the worst from one another, and are even mildly paranoid of their friends in-game.

The paranoia from rumors over the years of: scamming, hacking (rumored), DDoSing (rumored that people would DDoS other alliances coms or forums), and all other forms of meta-gaming, and let's be honest the in-game stuff too, has really eroded the community as a whole. The forums are a generally terrible, full of trolls and etc with everyone -or most- looking out for their own good and how to get the edge on everyone else. In a way, a lot of this is what sets Eve apart from any other game. It's not for the faint of heart and the learning curve is insane for a new player. Jita is essentially scam central, and you can expect that people can and will try to rip you off, and it's become an accepted part of the game that some might consider just another way to make in-game money. There's also stuff like this where folks find themselves in crappy situations and there's little or no support for them, and coming from their perspective it must suck.

Whether there should be ANYTHING done about it? I'm not sure. I don't like a lot of what happens in Eve, so I don't take part in those things, but I certainly try not to judge people for it. CCP doesn't police a lot of this stuff and all the meta-gaming stuff is essentially outside of their control. Plus, a lot of the 'reasons' for this meta-gaming, is that there is real life value (RMT?) assigned to in-game resources and while this doesn't make it 'right' it does create an environment where people are inherently competitive on a level that even MOBA's can half-hardheartedly imitate.

One could argue that Eve is a perfect place for sociological, psychological, and economic studies to be done, and there's a metric ton of data. Plus, Eve is inherently a social game, in some form or another players have to interact with other players and for better or worse, these interactions make Eve what it is.

I'm not saying I agree with the stuff that happens, but I will say a lot of it is just the nature of the game. I guess at the end of the day one needs to decide what kind of player they want to be.