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What a little Snow revealed

Published on 03. Jan, 2009 ... written by Jacob Mei.

So Christmas came and went and I decided to be a little naughty in EVE, seeing as the fat man had already delivered the goods. I logged into EVE, got into my assault frigate, put a snowball launcher on, filled my hull with snowballs and went out on my mission.

My mission was simple, to see what sort of reaction I could get out of people, not just any people, but miners. I randomly jumped from belt to belt, looking for targets (a side note, this was Friday and most of the belts were already bone dry, geez). I spotted a retriever chewing on some rocks as I entered the belt, no drones deployed. I set orbit for 1,500 meters, far enough not to bump but close enough that your personal space starts to feel violated. I orbited for a few rounds, nothing happened, however when I locked on him that’s when he let his drones out (three tech 1 hammerheads).

“Ah, someone is home.” I thought. Now I used to be a miner, I know what makes miners nervous. An assault frigate orbiting you at 1,500 meters with a lock on you will make any miner nervous. As soon as he started to turn and his engines started to glow, I opened fire on him, and laughed as a bunch of snowballs hit his ship. I quickly took my leave to find other victims in my harmless fun.

I exclusively targeted miners (anyone who was in a belt with active mining lazers was a target) and soon found an interesting pattern emerging. Out of about twenty “victims” roughly seven reacted the moment I started to orbit them in some way. Be it to deploy drones, line up to warp to a safe spot or what have you. Only six did something when I put a lock on them, be it to deploy drones, put shields up or begin to warp out (only about three actually warped away even after receiving a snowball, they either didn’t know what it was, panicked when the concord message didn’t appear and quickly left or just decided to move on to another belt). The rest did nothing, from approach, orbit, lock on and ultimately snowball up the engine they did nothing, likely vets, AFK miners or worse. In short, thirteen players out of twenty actually reacted to a potential threat before that threat acted.

It is a shame that I hadn’t the opportunity to do something similar as it would have been interesting to see the difference in numbers between say before the infamous Jihad Swarm campaign and today. What is apparent however is that a fair number of miners WILL react to any perceived danger that gets in their face.

In the end though this was all a bout of harmless fun, no ships were destroyed in the making of this article though I’m sure a few miners got a micro dose of adrenaline when they heard the bleep, bleep, bleep of a target lock.

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The Orca is a double-edged Sword

Published on 04. Dec, 2008 ... written by Jacob Mei.

by Jacob Mei …

Picture credit: h.jumpers

As I said in a previous article: The Orca: More than meets the Eye!, the Orca would eventually become a feared sight in the space lanes and pvp oriented players have not wasted any time in putting the Orcas ship bay to devious use. Already a rather lengthy thread has surfaced in which miners have, rather ironically, been assaulted with the assistance of the Orca functioning as a pirate carrier for their aggressors.

In a nut shell, according to the OP, the pirates are using the Orca to hold their readied ships in a safe spot. The pirates, all with a -10 sec status, warp to the Orca in their pods, get into their ships, and quickly warp to the miners where they then kill them all (and in several cases inadvertently pod them due to the pirates use of smart bombs). Concord comes in, blows away the pirates ships, pirates retreat back to the Orca and wait to repeat. Also according to the OP it would seem the pirates are using industrials to salvage the wrecks, likely bringing the booty back to the Orca with its massive storage bay.

This sort of activity echoes recent pirate activity in parts of the world in which pirates are using speed boats, launched from “mother ships” to quickly over take and capture target vessels. Perhaps the pirates here in eve got the idea for their Real Life counterparts (a rather humorous thought).

It should be noted that this is not new as pirates have done this for years but their mothership of choice have been freighters. What they would do is take the ships via freighters to a target system, dock up at a station or POS and then move the ships one at a time to the safe spot. The only difference to this tactic now is that the Orca provides mobile transport as well as gang bonus.

CCP has not yet commented in the article about this tactic and one would hope that any comments they do make will be stating that the Orca is working as intended as any nerf would likely result in the complete removal of the Orcas high sec Carrier potential and would only force pirates to return to using freighters to move their ships to target systems.

Miners should take note of this tactic and instead of complaining should adapt. Always watch local, be aligned to a safe spot so the moment combat ships show up your already away, have a tank on your ship, fire off 360 degree scans every few minutes looking for strange Orcas and a large number of combat ships that would typically fit in the Orcas bay and always be aware of your surroundings. The moment something seems out of place you should be getting ready to hit that warp button.

I honestly hope CCP allows the Orca to remain as it is, as I cant see any sort of mechanics they would introduce that could not easily be circumvented (such as the Orca being a loner as opposed to in a gang if CCP were to make a chance where all ships that are part of a aggressing gang are flagged.)

Hopefully this use of the Orca is proof of concept and we will soon see high sec fights with Orcas functioning as carriers way off in the distance as opposed to station hugging combat.

Related articles:

• The Orca: More than meets the Eye!
• Thread in the EVE-O forums
• EVE’s ‘Orca’ mining vessel facilitates suicide ganks against miners @ Massively.com

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China Man ask, you want ISK?

Published on 23. Nov, 2008 ... written by Jacob Mei.

by Jacob Mei …

This week I am talking about the most common problem we have in the MMO world, Gold Famers and sellers. I did a bit of research on this to determine where exactly the general community considers this sort of behavior falls into and most individual feel that it falls into the area of cheating.

In EVE we have something called Macro Miners or ISK Farmers, though both achive the same thing the former uses a program to perform its tasks, such as targeting an asteroid, activating the beam, releasing a jetcan for the ore, and resetting when the asteroid is popped. At some point either a player or another bot arrives in an industrial to collect the ore and leaves to drop it off at a station only to repeat the process. The ladder however, can be described as a sweat shop situation. Some countries, such as China and North Korea have entire companys setup with children at computers for eight hours a day playing the game, typically either mining or doing missions in CNRs (Interesting tidbit about CNR’s later in this article).

The How:

For bots it’s relatively simple. A player sets up several accounts to perform actions in game that will make money for him while he is not actually at the computer or actively watching the game. I recommend watching this video from Markeedragon from Shattered Crystal where he interviews a gold farmer, in which both he and the farmer goes into detail over how lucrative it is for them to do this, namely in WOW (again, that word, I feel dirty, shower time!). See it here (note I don’t actually support this sort of thing but thought it might be interesting).

For farmers, it’s more complicated, and moral dilemmas come into play. The thing about China, North Korea and so forth the laws of child labor are different or non-existent. As a result, instead of a child in school learning or playing with friends, you have them sitting at the computer for eight-hour-days. Think about that for a moment, playing a game for eight hours a day doing nothing but missions.

The thing is, you can’t tell who is using what. You may buy ISK from a bot user, or you may buy from one who uses child labor. If the latter, your purchase is in support of child labor.

The Why:

It boils down to players just not wanting to spend the time themselves to get the ISK or goods but have a surplus of cash on hand. As a result, demand for the service starts and before you know it, people are getting ISK for money.

Why you shouldn’t:

You may ask what the big deal is. After all, it’s your money, you should be allowed to spend it as you set fit right? The deal is that:<

1. You may be supporting Child Labor.
2. The money may be going to those using Child Labor.
3. Its not fair to players who put in the work as the game intended
4. It’s a breach of intellectual property laws (games are considered property, by someone selling you something from in game with real money you are essentially receiving stolen goods)

Another, rather good reason you shouldn’t is the approach CCP has taken. The first is ETC codes. These codes can be bought for real money and then sold to other players for ISK legally. Though some may ask what is the difference in terms of the games economy the facts are that the money goes to CCP and not a potential child labor user, the money is gathered for those looking to get, to them, free time to play the game, and generally the prices are controlled by the community.

The second thing CCP has in place is, rather comical for those who hear about it, is that CCP monitors the ISK transactions of known sellers. When they see someone has made a purchase they go in and take the money back, should someone use that money they will give you a negative balance, meaning your in the red and spent however much real currency for basically asking CCP to take your ISK away.

The final reason you shouldn’t is that for some time, several gold seller sites have been putting keyloggers into their customer computers. As a result, not only have you given these criminals your CC information but also your username and password. Imagine what would happen if a CEO or someone with hanger access to an alliance bought some ISK only for the site owners to go in and clean not only him, but the corporation and alliance out?

Lets wrap this up:

Earlier I said I had some interesting info about CNRs (Caldari Navy Ravens). According to several pirate and low sec runner friends of mine, it would appear that CNRs are typically left floating in space.

The reason for this is twofold. When you consider that a child labor using company is likely going 23/7 they likely have their employees share the ships to cut down on costs. When one farmer logs off he ejects from the ship in a deep safe for another farmer to come and use it.

The second reason is that should CCP ban the account when it is logged off, because the actual money making ship is in space and unmanned, therefore up for grabs, it cannot actually be removed unless the GM or CCP does it themselves. Because it seems to be a common practice it is likely that CCP does not do this often enough, which likely explains why account thieves go after the stuff in your hanger and not just your wallet (deploying it in GSC’s in space until they can move it elsewhere).

If you see a CNR just floating there in space, do the community a favor and grab it. Not only did you just get yourself a nice bonus but you put the dent in some S.O.B’s child labor operation. Granted not enough to hurt him but enough to annoy him.

This wraps up my little pair of criminal articles. While it is unfortunate that such things are a part of our way of gaming, by avoiding those back alley dealers you will generally keep your nose clean for the most part.

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No, you can’t have my Username and Password!

Published on 19. Nov, 2008 ... written by Jacob Mei.

by Jacob Mei … I will be doing a special pair of articles detailing the scourge of the MMO Genre, virtual criminals, for the next few weeks. Not those of us who scam others via legal in game means but actual criminals who seek to gain your username and password to rob you blind. These articles will explain the hows, the whys, and the ways you can protect yourself.

This happens once every couple of months in Eve and likely almost weekly in World of Warcraft (I feel so dirty after saying that name now). Someone gets it in their mind of the brilliant idea of sending out emails to individuals who have their emails in public locations messages claiming to be from CCP or the game Developer stating that due to an internal error that they ask them to log into their accounts with the link provided to see if their accounts were affected. Usually it has something to do with the website only and not the individual’s ability to log into the game itself. To try and not raise any red flags with the actual company, they will even say not to send in any messages for the next 48 hours.

Welcome to the world of phishing attempts

A phishing attempt is where an individual attempts to make themselves appear to be from the company that the game is from, for example CCP, either by in person or by email or other means for the purposes of obtaining your private information. Now to the noob, or 13 year old reading this, you may ask what’s the big deal, all they have is my user name and password right, not my CC info or anything of grave importance.

The How

For those types, do me a favor. Go to EVE-Online.com, click My Account, enter your user name and password and look at the options you have. Account details, subscription details, account services, update sub interval, change password, new CC, cancel Sub, etc. Again, you may be going “Yeah, so?”. Let me direct your attention to the following: Account Services and Change Password.

Account Services: This button has 3 options in it, Transfer Character, Swap Character Portrait and Securely Sell EVE time codes. The thing a plisher would want is to Transfer Character. This is a 20 dollar charge per character but the sticker is that it’s on your dime. Phisher gets your Username and Password, jumps on right before down time, transfers the character, puts a 20-60 dollar charge on your CC and before you know what has happened the character is moved over to a new account, drained of its value, and the materials moved around making it difficult for CCP to track it down.

Change Password: Why move the character when they can just change your password, leaving you out in the cold until you can get a hold of someone at CCP to correct the issue? By the time you have gotten back into your account your ISK and goods are long gone.

Alternatively, they may just jump in and hope you don’t either: Finally we have the case of where the thief just jumps on, hoping you won’t do the same, and steals as much as they can as fast as they can.

As you can see, there is a lot of damage someone can do to you by getting your username and password, both in game and financially and all they need you to do is to sign into their site.

The Why

Now that we have established the how, let’s look at the why. Quite simply, it boils down to the money and in an ironic twist the MMO Community has only itself to blame, or at least a portion of its players to blame. The thing about MMOs is that their premise is that you build your character and to do that you need to make in game money. This of course takes time, with some items in such high demand that the numbers of zeros in your wallet can represent months of work. Naturally this creates a supply and demand situation with certain suppliers willing to go the less than honest route in obtaining their goods to sell. On the flip side of that coin you have the buyers who are willing to look the other way as to where the suppliers came across those goods.

For an example, if I happened to have a T2 BPO of a Hulk that would mean I would have an item highly sought after. There are players willing to pay hundreds of dollars for that BPO no matter what and because of this, you have sellers willing to do things that are not legal to get that buyers money. The irony of this of course is that there are reports of ISK-selling sites that then implant a keystroke logger in their customer’s computers, go in, and take the ISK back after the real money has been transferred to their accounts. So long as there are individuals willing to use real world currency to get goods and in game currency so they don’t have to spend the time themselves, the darker side of capitalism will rear its ugly head in MMOs.

Now that we have covered the how’s and whys, lets look at how to protect oneself.

First, it has been said before and should be said again, CCP, or any other MMO company, will never ask you to do anything regarding your username or password. It just won’t happen. They have that information already so why would they ask you to provide it? This should be the single biggest red flag to be raised for you. If you receive a message asking for your username and password, don’t do it, report it to CCP and inform the community ASAP.

On top of this, you should never use the same email as you used to sign up to the game on a public site, such as forums (community, faction, they are all the same). Why? Well CCP knows what email you used right? If you got an email from someone claiming to be from CCP from an address you didn’t use to sign up for a game, you will know right off the bat it’s a phisher.

What if I made a mistake?

Well we are all human so I will cover this. There are 6 things you need to do to try and save yourself.

1. Change your Password the moment you realize you were dooped. Doing this will buy you time.
2. Run a deep virus scan for any virus or keyloggers. Many plishing sites also install keyloggers just in case they can only get you to the front door. These programs record every keystroke and periodically send the information back to the phisher. These are in many ways worse than just giving them your username and password information as if you have done other things, such as check your bank account online or typed something deeply personal, they will now have that information as well.
3. Re-change your password the moment you remove any virus or keyloggers. Changing it the first time bought you time in case they plisher attempted to get into your account while you were scanning for his keylogger. If the keylogger fired off a data burst before you could find it, and you had used a username and password, then the phisher will have the new info. As soon as the keylogger is removed go back to the real site and change the info yet again.
4. Contact CCP and inform them of the situation. Let them know you were the victim of a plishing and that any strange activity that might occur on your account despite your best efforts should be viewed as if you were not the one doing it. This may not actually help recover anything lost but it will at least establish for CCP that anything you report was done with the pretense of a phishing attack.
5. Contact your bank or CC company and inform them someone may have gotten your information. This should not mean that they need to change your info (though they may insist on it, depending on the bank or CC) but that it will alert them to monitor your spending habits for the next few weeks. If they see anything strange, such as a 60 dollar drain all going to CCP as a result of a character transfer, they will block it and inform you, at which point you will need to change your info.
6. Hope that steps 1-5 were a waste of time. If you’re lucky, you nipped any keyloggers in the butt before they could get your username and password. Just keep the fingers crossed and remember not to be so gullible next time.

Lets wrap this up

Due to a combination of MMO popularity and players not willing to play legitimately the dark underbelly of capitalism has shown itself in our game. It’s sad but it’s a reality that you need to live with. Remember, CCP will never ask for your info and anyone who does, report them. Next week I will talk about Gold/Item Famers.

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PLEX, the moral dilemma

Published on 15. Nov, 2008 ... written by Jacob Mei.

by Jacob Mei … When Quantum Rise hit us earlier this week a new feature was added to game. Players could buy 60 day ETC codes, take them into the game, and then split them into 30 day blocks. Not surprisingly we are already seeing things like a 50 mill for ever 300 million. While those who have been able to afford ETC’s up to this point might not see the reason for a system that makes them pay more for a 60 day block of time, the system, while charging more for 60 days, this makes ETC more accessible to players in a lower income bracket by only requiring 350 million a month or so. However this is not the point of the article.

It would seem that there are two camps forming due to interesting, and some would say confusing, choice by CCP in that PLEX’s, being in game items, may be used to get individuals to part with their hard earned isk via dubious means. In short, CCP has stated they can be used for scams. Almost immediately there are WTB requires in the contract system using the little trick of making 450 thousand appear to be 450 million.

The pro scam camp in this situation argues, and CCP supports this, that because it’s an in game item, like everything else, it’s okay to try to scam people with it. There have not yet been any reports of people falling for any of these scams but the fact that this is allowed has naturally given rise to the anti scam camp.

The anti scam camp claims that, in not so many words, that CCP is doing a double standard. ETCs, prior to this new system, carried the very strict penalty of a ban for anyone caught trying to pawn off an already used ETC code, using false advertisement (such as claiming that the card was 60 when it was 30 days) and generally anything less then total honesty would mean a ban stick between the legs being flung upwards at great speed to the scammers netherds.

The issue seems to lay in the fact that the PLEX itself remains under the rules of any other in game item even though these items can never leave a station (basically a special item that is spawned from the direct result of spending real world currency but that has to obey the ordinary rules for all items). The Anti Scam camp feels that because actual money is involved in these tokens creation and use that CCP is siding with the wrong camp on this one. There are even some posts going so far as to question the legality of the issue, mentioning that some courts have made ruling in regards to the value of in game items and so forth. The pro scam camp however argues that, because the item is an in game item, regardless of how it was spawned into the game, they should be allowed to do with it as how they please because the EULA and TOS says they can.

CCP has stated that the policy is subject to change if they deem it necessary, which in my opinion means only if courts get involved or if scamming becomes so rampant or someone exploits the system in such a way as to effect CCP’s bottom line.

Regardless though, CCP needs to explain why this extra step of splitting a 60 day card into 30 day blocks negates the very strict rules that have up until Tuesday been in place, and are still in place, in the timecode bazaar forum.

In the end though many people are simply saying to check the price tags on the PLEX prior to buying or selling. Given that PLEX has its own unique icon, both in the market place and contract system the only thing one has to check is if the proper number of zeros are there. Only time will tell where the PLEX system goes for both CCP and the players who use ETC’s.

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