Thursday, October 29, 2009

CVA Disbanded?!?

Yesterday afternoon the Eve Tweetfleet erupted with news that CVA has been disbanded. I ran to the forums and through several sources put together a picture of what apparently has happened. Read about it here from ISD.

The story ends on a happy note this time compared to the BoB fiasco: CCP is rumoured to have agreed it was a account hack and will reinstate CVA today at downtime. Some people will get their nose out of joint and claim that the director that got hacked was sloppy and irresponisble and it should not be up to CCP to clean up his mistakes. To which I respond: "bullshit".

First off, we don't know how he got hacked and I prefer to go with innocent until proven guilty.

Secondly, hacking someone's account is beyond the pale in terms of metagaming. It is an invasion of privacy, illegal in some countries, and definitely against the EULA for Eve. Its still illegal to steal an unlocked car with the keys in the ignition.

Thirdly, if you think its ok for an alliance you don't like to be taken out like this then maybe you are taking this game a little too seriously and should seek some other hobbies.

Finally, let's quote myself from back in February about what I said when BoB got nuked:
No matter how it turns out... this will be bad for the game.

Either:
1) it was a legitimate spy sabotage within proper metagaming mechanics and CCP will not step in; or
2) it was a bug/hack and CCP steps in to reverse it.

If its (1) then it highlights CCPs shitty design (vote to declare war versus a single director in the executor corp presses a button to kill the alliance?) and the corporation and game loses a lot of credibility with a major faction of influential longtime players.

If its (2) then there will be howls of rage from BoB-haters for months that CCP favours that alliance and the company and game are corrupt.

Regardless, a perfectly balanced situation (i.e. BoB versus Goons in POS wars) has been severely upset and CCP can't come out looking good either way.

The more things change...

4 comments:

  1. If nothing else, it afforded a display of community I don't often see in EVE. I spent a few hours with a couple hundred of my friends camping gates last night.

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  2. Anonymous8:39 am

    I agree with you mate, hacking an account, forums, kilboard etc...is taking it too far. Meta-gaming has always been a seriously wide gray area but I think we can all agree that taking things this far out of game is just plain wrong and should not only be frowned upon actively discouraged.

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  3. Anonymous8:49 am

    it appears CVA is being/has been restored - apparently sir Molle (ex-leader of bob) said this somewhere in that thread:

    "The exact difference in these 2 cases are the following;

    1) CVA could get a hold of the person who owned the account in RL, we could not, since he was in the Canadian army.

    2) CCP could apparantly pinpoint where the connection to the account was made from, in our case, CCP could not, since the offender used a proxy.

    The difference is slim, but clear.

    Good to see CCP taking action, and ffs, FIX this broken mechanic already."

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  4. Testified Kirith. Corporate/Alliance espionage is one thing... Account hacking is quick another.

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