Do As We Say, not as we say

By now, most have heard about the fiasco surrounding the drama about Nashh Kadavr’s Titan event held the other day. For those who’ve been living under IWantISK’s foot lately, you can visit the thread here.

Notwithstanding my already public disdain for Eve News 24 and their less-than-dimestore market effort of a tabloid, Bobmon has officially gone and made the first (and quite possibly last) blunder of his CSM quest by stating in the title of his article up on EN24 that Nashh INTENDED, (yes Bobmon, when you say that the host used the event in nefarious ways you’re intending to defame, you immature fucktard of a wannabe paparazzi shit stain) that none other than Nashh Kadavr – INTENDED to take all the ISK from the Titan Event and rig the whole thing…

…granted there was no PROOF, but that’s never stopped EN24 before, am I right? Oh and in your URL?  it’s spelled SPONSORED you illiterate, half-witted douche bag. Who on God’s green Earth put your opinion as the be all end all of authority on a subject you CLEARLY intended as a way to draw traffic to your site? And while we’re talking about your site on The GRN Show on Eve Radio, you tried to place partial responsibility for the context of the title and article on your editor(s)? Are you that fucking dense? The same people who edit and can’t find a simple spelling mistake easily caught by spell check? Here’s a clue: Look for the red, squiggly line thingies below words. Nashh may have not wanted to stir up shit with you because of the public format, but I certainly will.

I think that covers Eve News 24. Now on to the real double-talking, butt-hurt whining, carebear-cuddling try-hards over at IWantISK:

When the story was getting sorted, there was not a clear conception of both sides of the story. IWantISK was getting all hot and bothered about the event but eventually “Saw the light”…

“We have come to the conclusion that the Titan Smash event was not hosted in an ill-manner and that the defense fleet inadvertently killed the titan but did not want the prizes. They fitted the titan with their own ISK and they acted alone when they stripped the titan fits before letting it be killed by the left over players in local. Unfortunately, some things were done with a ‘sketchy’ tone leading to the defense fleet killing the titan and we will not be hosting any similar events with #EVE_nt in-game however, we will continue to sponsor their live event in Nottingham UK which some of our bankers attend and CCP should be attending this February 7th, 2015.
We were upset that the defense fleet got the final blow on the titan but we do see the great feat they have performed in defending the titan against an onslaught of players, giving many players a chance to experience large fleet warfare. Something all players should experience.
Just because we would have hosted it differently does not mean #EVE_nt hosted their game incorrectly. Many people enjoyed the prolonged event and you can’t make everyone happy.
We do appreciate how much work Nashh kadavr has done to get this event as well as the live #EVE_nt organized. He was very upset when this went down the way it did.”

So there we have it. Eve Nottingham was perceived to be safe…or so we thought…

“We have retracted our current sponsorship for #EVE_nt in Nottingham UK both in-game AND out-of-game. We are protecting the ISK of our users by not allowing this entity to award sponsored ISK to what COULD be players related to the host.”

Yes, IWantISK. Taking away your precious sponsorship will have a traumatic effect on the Eve nerds’ beer consumption. I’m sure after praising Nashh for the effort he put into the event, then stabbing him in the fucking back in NO TERMS will reflect badly upon your word and your “business”. If I had an account with your site, you’d be winning easy ISK by betting that I’d be closing it post-haste. Not only that, but sponsorships that you do put out there will be publicly linked to this story and your outright abusive behavior by you and EN24 over a man who was simply attempting to throw a successful event in the shadows of many that had failed in recent history.

Personally, I will not participate in any events sponsored by either of these parties until a public apology is issued, apologizing to Nashh Kadavr for printing libel, going back on your word, being a willfull general trolling nuisance to the real content creators of this game, and being less than reasonable given the subject and the several opportunities given to the parties to clear the air.

Fuck it Nashh. I don’t care if it’s an event where we spend all day in Thera hunting a couple little shuttles named “IWantISK” and “EN24”. Based on your character throughout this whole circumstance, count me in. I’ll fly with you.

First Steps of an Aspiring Podcaster

It’s an incredible journey of nerves, trial and error, and dedication. For about the past year, I’ve been running around the idea of doing an Eve Online podcast for several reasons. Firstly, in a creative sense it’s easier for me to get an entertaining format together rather than taking the time to blog. Secondly, I wanted something more to explore some newly-found creativity with audio media. That said, there’s several hurdles that I had to conquer before I could even sit down and record.

Doing a podcast is far from easy. I knew this going in, but I continue to be confident that as I get more experience, it’ll become easier. So, the first hurdle in doing a podcast is yourself. Are you disciplined enough to keep improving yourself? Do you have a unique idea for show content or format? Are you willing to accept failure? Most importantly, are you willing enough to say, “yes I suck at doing this, but I’ll get better.” – aka, humility. Lastly, are you willing to ask for help? I guarantee you that if you’re doing your first podcast, you’ll have a much easier time if you accept help.

The first thing I learned from various podcasting mentors while creating this monstrosity was that my first attempt was going to suck. The quicker I accepted that and tried not to overcompensate for it, the better. This in of itself will cause more people not to even attempt podcasting. They feel they have to come out swinging and knock it out of the park or they’re doomed. This isn’t the case y’all. The Heat Sink probably is a short-lived endeavor at least until it finds it’s own path and eventually gets relabeled because the origins are unrecognizable. In other words, it’s going to eventually fail but in a metamorphic sense.

Personally, I don’t like the sound of my own voice over media, but I’m confident that as I invest in some better equipment, I can tune it better and not sound like I’m talking in a tin can. Once that happens, I’ll probably get more comfortable with it. This is especially true as I compare my recorded voice with that of people like Zendane, Random McNally, and Mike Azariah. I’m not trying to reach Barry White or Morgan Freeman levels of voice quality, but I will continue to work on tone, personality, and tempo to attain a semi-radio quality.

I’m learning to accept constructive criticism and put it to work. I think that was made apparent between episodes 1 and 2. In response to feedback, I toned down the volume on the background tracks, brought in live guests, and worked on not chasing so many squirrels during commentary. The difference between the episodes is astounding to me, but I still see many areas I can improve on:

1 – A more solid closing. In Ep. 2 I didn’t give my own shout-outs.

2 – Didn’t plug myself for iTunes, Stitcher, EvePodcasts.com, or FeedBurner

3 – Didn’t adjust closing music levels once my voice track ended in Audacity.

It’s a work in progress, y’all. 🙂 The commentary and satire is for entertainment. If anyone takes anything I say seriously, you may need to just not listen. LOL

The Heat Sink Podcast – Episode 2: Dry those tears…

DOWNLOAD NOW

Find us on iTunes

Now available on Stitcher!

Show Notes:

We’re joined by several members of the Brave Dojo:

Cagali_Cagali, Hegheghegheg, Stealtooth Slicewind, Kira Tsukimoto, Thomas Markov

BRAVE versus Pandemic Legion updates

Special music request by CCP Punkturis

Operation of the Brave Dojo

Solo kill of the week: https://zkillboard.com/kill/41135614/

Thomas Markov’s Battle Venture: https://zkillboard.com/kill/42619877/

Final Word Segment: The Mittani’s “gift” to HERO: http://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/2meuvn/mittens_just_revealed_on_his_twitch_show_that_bni/

The Heat Sink Podcast – Episode 1

Show Notes:

Intro What I’ve been doing in game lately. – Not a whole hell of a lot.

BRAVE versus Pandemic Legion

Latest TEST and BRAVE propaganda videos:

Parody: Rixx Javix Warp Stab commercial

T3 Destroyer Theorycrafting

Solo kill of the week: https://zkillboard.com/kill/42372352/

Final Word Segment: Podcast PvP

Special message regarding your real life health.

Shoutouts:
Random McNally
High Drag Podcast Crew
Connall Tara and Turtle
Whole bunch of folks.

Everyone Loses Their Minds…

Without sounding melodramatic, I just want to make sure I’m clear about something. You’re free to make any assertion outside of the following conclusion regarding Clockwork Pineapple’s RMT scandal if you want to put forth the effort and back it up:

RMT isn’t RMT because it was only around an estimated $15,000 USD over a course of just over two years. RMT is also not RMT because it happens all the time in most large alliances in game. Also, I want to make sure I’m crystal clear that RMT isn’t RMT because only going after bigger entities like Somerblink count due to them getting cash for Markee Dragon referrals rather than avoiding the PLEX system altogether like Groons.

What a bunch of hypocritical, standard-bending cop outs. Your kind went on podcasts, spurged on the forums, and gave a grander stage to the Somerblink scandals than any prior scandal in Eve’s history. There it is for you now, RMT in it’s purest form. No fancy flowcharts necessary, lengthy posts from Nosy, or hour long lessons from DNS Black on Podside describing how something is RMT.

There was more debate and more uproar when we had to decide if Somerblink intentionally dodged CCP’s original intent for the implementation of (or bypasses) the PLEX system.  What the problem here was that no matter where Somer trod, there was an army of Eve media out to bury the shiv deep in his back until it all boiled over because Somerblink was giving incentives for returning customers. Isk was used as an incentive to continue to buy timecodes through Markee Dragon using his referral. Much the same way as McDonalds uses the occasional free Big Mac to keep you playing the Monopoly game. But again I have to digress as this is a horse that’s been beaten, buried, exhumed, beaten some more, ran through the glue factory, and devoured by a kid in preschool. My focus is the increasing toxicity of the vocal minority of this community.

Recently, I posted up to Twitter raising concerns over what I dubbed “Groons and Roses”. Raising that subject certainly wasn’t a Paradise City by any stretch of the imagination. I wanted to see people responded to a clear case of PLEX dodging RMT committed in it’s purest form. For those not familiar with Clockwork Pineapple’s alleged RMT scandal discussed on Failheap-challenge, you can get the TL;DR version over at [redacted].

Now I went into this expecting a somewhat divisive result in comments and support, but overall I expected the same kind of lynch mob mentality that erupted over Somerblink. What I got was the exact opposite.

“I don’t think a small NPC alliance RMTing is a bigger story then what was effectively CCP-sponsored RMT”  – Lord Blaze

“You’re an idiot. These guys are small time.” – pepper2k

Wow…nomad please. On the positive side of things, I did find some gems over on the Reddit thread posted by Duckslayer. Overall, I’d have to say that the one fixation that people seem to want to raise first is how much Pedalar made. Apparently, $15,000 was unimpressive. Personally, I don’t care if it was only $15. RMT is RMT, right? I mean we went after Somer after flowcharts and economic interpretations finally convinced the community that they were RMT’ing again. This doesn’t need flowcharts or a degree in economic theory. Right there, in front of your face, and the low life keyboard Rambos can’t put down their flag for two seconds…much of the SAME ones that (if they could) would have probably hamstrung Somerset personally and danced a jig around the tree from which the rope was hung.

TheMittanidotcom, who by their own admission “We tend not to run stories with ‘alleged’ in the title.” – @DanDanikov

Really now? You were quick to let Angry Mustache pin that nasty ‘alleged’ word to Somerblink back in August.  The term ‘allegedly’ appears at least six times in TMC article titles. As a point of fact, I pull up ten pages of results (approximately 100 stories) where the word alleged, in one form or another, was used to describe certain details in stories where all the facts were not yet known. So save us all the uppity and holier than thou attitude. If you don’t want to run it, just say you aren’t going to run it. But for heaven’s sake, don’t hide behind arrogance as if reporting on alleged illicit activities is somehow below your pay grade. Seriously, it doesn’t become you.

Double standards aside, I have to give credit to [redacted] for posting the story. In the past, I’ve been very critical of both the type of stories they run and some of the staff writers (especially posts made by [redacted]). Whether or not CCP chooses to do anything about it now is up to them. Duckslayer, EN24, and myself did our jobs. No, I don’t believe the “nobility” of Duck as the whistleblower in this case, but it doesn’t matter. An alliance in this game who is arguably associated by standings and alt sharing with the largest coalition in the game has some damning evidence to answer for.

Overall, I’m disappointed with the community response to this. Apparently, someone needs to be both space rich and have a micro-lottery site in order for people to care whether or not someone might be committing RMT. Next time, I’ll make sure to post flowcharts.

 

GROON Link to RMT?

(This is a developing story. Any corroborating accounts and sources have not been verified. Due to the nature of the subject, it is being discussed due to the severity of it’s implications. The evidence presented has not been verified for authenticity or accuracy. All sources and material are to be taken at their own merit.) 

If the provided evidence by Duckslayer is to be proven accurate, a bomb may have just been dropped on the Failheap Challenge forums. Supplying HTML sources and screenshots from the Greater Goon forums, it would appear that “A Rose Pedalar” has been engaging in RMT for some time (as much as over two years) by grinding rats and missions with the aid of 2 PCs running 11 virtual machines.

 

The FHC forum thread can be found HERE.

From the forum HTML that appears to have active links to current information, it would seem that operations were on a temporary hiatus due to someone fumbling the ball about the codeword used to discuss the ill-gotten PLEX. Ironically, the codeword is the same used by escorts – Roses.

 

Verification from either parties or by CCP is not available at this time. However, the heated discussions of why this suddenly came out now rather than then is a subject of much discussion going on in the failheap thread. Speculation or discussions regarding the specific details can be found there.

(More on this story as it develops)

Normally, I don’t do news. As I said in my preface, the only reason I post this is so we can get to the bottom of it. We don’t need another Somerblink ragefest full of drama that hurts our community. I ask that we give the matter due diligence and not jump to conclusions. This is a CCP matter and should be investigated accordingly. Thank you all.

~Proto

The Voices Have Spoken. But To What End?

Making it’s rounds today was the masterful piece of grandstanding by TheMittani that garnered support quickly throughout null sec leaderships at an astounding rate. When you look at the list of names, you could get easily impressed by the political clout that stepped up to “put aside” feelings and unite around TheMittani for the greater good of null? Call me a bit pretentious, but nothing null blocs have done or supported could ever be construed as less than self-serving, in my opinion. Not that I don’t disagree with some of it’s points, but when I see remarks such as:

“…remove the current need for vast coalitions”

I have to start calling suspect to the true intentions of TheMittani.  I was further spurred by my initial thought that this was rather reactionary and sudden when I caught Tales from Taz‘s blog who brought up some of the very suspicions I had myself. In retrospect, I think Taz is right on the money and what we are seeing is a knee-jerk reaction that we all knew was coming when CCP Greyscale warned that his sledgehammer of doom was going to come down again on the subject of force projection.

To go a bit deeper, if we went into an occupancy-based system of sovereignty, what would be the downfall to owning space? Is it going to be more of a time sink rather than isk? Would this mean that these large alliances would NEED  carebears from high sec to come rat and mine for them? Serious PvP pilots aren’t going to want to spend a whole hell of a lot of time ratting, much less mining.

Up until now, it’s been an isk sink. Before Dominion, one had to litter the area with towers. In present day, we have so many structures like SBUs to grind through that it makes pre-Dominion look like the appetizer before the main meal. Now, along with all the towers, the isk sink to maintain sov is more expensive. This was a design mechanic and once we got the Tech moon nerf, the situation became more desperate. Instead of pushing the edge of the envelope and the scattering of those moons causing more conflict, the opposite happened. B0tlrd came into being and suddenly the large alliances lost the willingness to risk the R64s. Publrd put a lock on assuring that everyone’s renter income would be secured. The riskiest area in the game had now just become the most risk adverse.

In an occupancy based system of sov, renters wouldn’t have to rent. Instead, the landlords can save all that isk from having to pay for sov and just make like the Mafia, shaking down lesser corporations and alliances for protection money. They could charge the current day amount and not have ANY of the bills to go with it. This is why I believe that there will be some form of mechanic in place if one wants to fly their flag on a map. By limiting force projection, the threat to the lesser entities diminish the further away one is from reach. Not to say that it still can’t be done. The idea to put NPC null stations in every region gives large entities clone bay options to put their foot in whatever region they choose. Who needs force projection when you can just clone jump there and wage guerrilla tactics on whomever you want?

This was PRECISELY the complaint when I was with Li3 and FA. FrFrmPukin and other CFC voices were very verbal in their objections to the fact that here we had guys launching fight after fight against  us and there was no way we could totally push them out because they staged in NPC stations. Now suddenly, the CFC puts forth an idea to make that possible in every region of the game??? Ya, I got reservations about that. Call me skeptical.

Larger forces such as Pandemic Legion will always have a motivation to helicopter-dick whomever they choose as long as there’s a fight. If you force the lesser entities to fight and lose, you’ll drive the lesser entities out. The other option? Batphone. There’s quite the possibility that going to this kind of sov mechanic will put more Batphones in more hands and build more alliances out of need rather than convenience. In this way, Coalitions will NOT be forced out of existence, but rather more Coalitions of smaller entities with a Batphone to whatever “big boy” is shaking them down to provide said protection. In this sense, publrd can still continue. Renting doesn’t make one bit of difference.

Overall, this “agreement” MUST be construed as reactionary since it was drafted AFTER the CSM Summit. Otherwise, this would have been the perfect ammunition to arm the CSM with as they sat down with CCP. Instead, TheMittani is acting as a de facto CSM representative, but legitimizing his spearheading by gathering CSM support. I asked TheMittani via Twitter why this was not drafted prior to the CSM summit. He has thus far not responded, nor do I expect him to.

In short, please don’t jump on the bandwagon without taking an objective look at the consequences of precisely what we’re asking for…we just may get it.

Let’s conduct an experiment, shall we?

Well, I certainly got a lot more than I bargained for when I talked about the need to clarify RMT, especially when it comes to out of game activities like Twitch streaming. In the preceding article, Don’t Blink  I offered up an argument for RMT based on a solid argument given by the crew of the High Drag Podcast. It struck me as a curious and powerful argument despite the fact that I LOVE Twitch streamers like Fintarue who inspire me.

I thought the point was just a little more powerful than Ashterothi realized. Setting out to answer the question of Twitch streamers giving in-game prizes to subscribers and it’s relation to the Somerblink Pt. 3 scandal, I blogged about it and hoped to get a few nibbles. Next day, I discovered traffic from Reddit so I set out to see what was being said.

Firstly, I’d like to thank “SeriousSpaceships” for the linkup. This also appeared to be a first poster, so take that with a grain of salt. That said, the title of the linked post on Reddit was a bit out of context. In my fascination to get the topic out, perhaps I came across as accusatory. Let me assure everyone that this was definitely not the case. Again, I support our communities out of game (with notable exceptions because of content or drama). But out of the haze of typical Reddit crap posts, some nuggets of enlightenment and understanding of the context were starting to surface on the gold pan. I decided to take control of the Reddit thread and try to steer the helm on topic, despite it’s rocky start.

Now, I’m not saying that Reddit is a be-all-end-all definitive source of information and scientific accuracy, but some of the responses honestly took me aback. The people who raged about the post were just sick of the RMT issue and didn’t want to hear any more tinfoil (and honestly, I don’t blame them). But the few who were actually trying to help me defend and give reasoning against Ashterothi’s argument just made absolutely no sense to me:

“The whole thing has to be extremely repetitive and consequential. If a guy gives me ISK which he expects to be repayed at a time and place, sometime in the future, maybe, if i want to, in IRL money… That’s not RMT.”

“But it isn’t “for every X ISK I give away I gain Y $” the giveaways, contests and the like hopefully attract viewers and subscribers however they do not promise either. The Somer RMT plot was based on “buy this item from the dude who pays me, I will give you X amount of ISK for the item you used $ to pay for.” thus direct ISK to $.”

“Yeah because lowtax is swimming in money from Goonwaffe J4Gs, and J4Gs are unequivocally accepted into Goonwaffe.”

So the reasoning that we were given depended greatly on circumstances such as:

1. Amount of revenue
2. Frequency of revenue
3. The inherent stability of the revenue stream.

Overall, at about a 50% margin throughout the day, people seem to be divided among the responders to the thread. The Reddit topic floated all day from +5 to -3 and stabilized by tonight at a +1 51% rating. That tells me that despite the typical Reddit flak cannons, this does seem to be a concern of a random sample of people about just how far CCP COULD feasibly go if it chose to take up this subject as an RMT issue. Again, this is totally NOT scientific in the least, but the results are fascinating to me.

Now. Do I think CCP would ever get involved in Twitch revenue? Hell no. Then again, I didn’t think Obama would get a second term so there you go. I want to thank Ashterothi and the crew of the High Drag Podcast again for the inspiration of this little social experiment. Fintarue and all you other Twitch streamers: Keep doing what you’re doing. Give those prizes, make some pocket cash, and may you always have targets to publicly blow up. Thank you all for participating and we’ll see you next time!

7o

Don’t Blink

Proto

I was never good at these things anyway to be perfectly honest. I’ll admit I blew a good PLEX worth of isk of more playing the micro lotteries offered by SomerBlink. This is surprising to me because I haven’t dropped a dime on other sites like Evebet or some other out of game site. Yes, and I did so after the first Somer fiasco. Sue me. I just never saw the big deal.

So this time the argument about SomerBlink boiled down to the fact that Somer was giving in-game isk benefits through their PLEX buyback program if you bought the time codes through Markee Dragon, thereby giving Somer a few real life bucks for the referral. Offer a good buyout price on the PLEX after they were converted from time codes and people will use you for all their cash for isk needs. Brilliant.

In simple terms:

1) You bought time codes from Markee through Somer’s referral link.

2) Somer received their share of the referral revenue from Markee.

3) Somer gave you an extra few million isk for your PLEX if you used the referral.

So this basically translated into RMT because Somer gave you something in game to use them as your PLEX megastore. Hmmm… so you’re not allowed to give an in-game item for real life monetary gain. Interesting. Because I’m pretty sure that Twitch streamers have been doing that for some time – getting subscriber revenue by giving away ships and PLEX on their channels in return for the real life revenue they generate through subscribers.

Now I know this sounds just argumentative on the surface, but if we’re going to call RMT every time someone makes a buck by giving out stuff in game, the circumstance that I just explained must be taken into consideration. This is why CCP needs an iron-clad RMT policy to explain why one form of in game prizes for real life revenue is okay, but another isn’t. Don’t misunderstand me, I support people who stream games on Twitch. They’re entertaining and bring people into the game. I think they SHOULD be monetarily rewarded for their efforts. But if I’m going to stay objective, I have to bring all possibilities under the same scrutiny.

This isn’t going to be a popular argument. Then again, my opinions are usually pretty contestable. I’m curious to know what the community thinks.

 

7o

Ghost In The Game

I want to apologize to everyone. It’s taken me a very long time to come to grips with the reality that I couldn’t handle the present-day society in Eve. In essence, I rage quit; but not because of some in-game plans that went awry. It wasn’t due to a substantial lossmail, corp drama, real life interference, or interactions with certain players.

I quit out of disappointment.

I was disappointed in the current state of the community and the decisiveness the Erotica1 scandal caused and the gasoline poured on the fire by trusted voices of the community out to make a name for themselves. I did submit a final article into the team at Crossing Zebras, but I did not expect it to get ran. As a matter of fact, I hoped it wouldn’t get published. It was a tirade of broken feelings, hurt, and shock at what we had become.

So I gave up. I left without saying a word. I let a few people down in the process, and I’m sorry.

I’ll spare you my last submission to Xander and Jeg. It’s of no relevance as the incident is long past us. I don’t know if I’ll be returning to the game, but I am continuing to keep my ear to the floor in the community through podcasters and bloggers when news breaks. Just think of this as an “I’m still thinking about you all” letter. Hopefully, when I do return, I can save some face and get back to business as usual.

7o Gang