Line of Fire

When I started in EVE one of the biggest disappointments was that asteroids did not block line of sight to targets, nor block weapon fire either. I found it immersion breaking; it was nonsensical that lasers and missiles would fly straight through a mass of rock with ease.

Before I played EVE I was in love with Star Trek: Starfleet Command and in that game the objects in space meant something. Get too close to an asteroid and *BOOM* you crashed. Go through a small asteroid debris field and see your shields deplete. Lose an opponent's lock on you by skirting behind a space station. It allowed a certain degree of tactical consideration and environment awareness in the heat of battle.

And then in EVE?

*BOUNCE*

The only thing that structures and asteroids changed was the path of your flight, and even then you simply bounced off them. Sure, sometimes you could get caught up on the asteroid field and lose valuable velocity and transversal, but that's about it. I understand that CCP needs to make concessions to multi-player environments and processing limitations and gameplay accessibility, but it still sucks.

Over time I got used to it and adapted as we all have who have stuck around in this game. But I still lament the sameness of space. The new nebulae went a long way to breaking that monotony but it is still unfortunate that environmental effects are limited to one space mission where waves of a gas cloud damage your ship, deadspace pockets that limit warping abilities (and used to disable Microwarp Drives), and a few systems in wormhole space.

The ones in wormhole space interest me the most. I like the idea of all the common and well known rules of PvP combat being turned on its ear due to the system you just jumped into. It adds some spice to otherwise well known rules of engagement. I wish every region had one or two similar systems where things were just not quite the same. Something to give fleets a decision point: do we try and fight here where everyone's X module won't work, or next door? Does that hinder us more or less than our opponent? I like decisions, it makes life more interesting in game.

And yeah, I still wish asteroids blocked line of fire.

Blog Banter #59 - Terrain

Welcome to the continuing monthly EVE Blog Banters and our 59th edition! For more details about what the blog banters are visit the Blog Banter page.

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This month's version comes from commenter Zappity who asks:

Probably been done before... What about local force projection (as opposed to the longer distance force projection that is often talked about)? I think of 'terrain' in EVE to be how systems are mapped together by gates. Strong tactics which exploit terrain have historically been extremely important in deciding battle outcomes. How does this apply in EVE in the presence of cynos?

Related to this, you have the option to explore the topic of wormhole systems with effects (Black Holes, Cataclymismic variablestar, etc) and if similar environmental effects on certain grids/deadspace or system wide should be explored for known space?

Get writing!

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Participants:
Evoganda - Hiding in Plain Sight
Sand, Cider and Spaceships - I'm Behind the Grassy Knoll
Zappity's Adventures - Terrain
Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah - Line of Fire
Stabbed Up - A fleet commander's guide to bookmarks
Morphisat's Blog - Terrain

Post Great Jump Nerf 2014 Blog Post:

Dog's Breath - Force Projection and Terrain
Warp Drive Active - Terrain

Apropos of Nothing, Here is a Lego Star Destroyer with My Kids

Bonus question: can you determine which two are the 6 year old twins and which one is the four year old "little" brother?

ISBoxer is Botting

In the latest Derping Through War podcast, episode 11, the hosts get to debating if using ISBoxer, a program that allows your mouse and key commands to be replicated to multiple application, is acceptable in EVE Online or not. Currently CCP has allowed this application to fall under the list of acceptable utility applications to use, like macro keys on fancier keyboards and mice.

Well, CCP is wrong. Using ISBoxer is still botting and CCP should disallow its usage.

Botting

First off, let's look at the reason that ISBoxer is currently allowed while normal botting is not.

I am a bot.

A "bot" is a pilot in EVE who is operated by a third party program operating via a script that the program follows. This is primarily seen in tasks that don't require a lot of decision making like belt ratting or mining, although some bot behaviour can be very nuanced.

CCP has been waging a war on banning accounts that use botting and any associated accounts as the activity has several deleterious effects on the game world. For one, because they can sustain operations much longer and more consistently than a human can, they can generate more resources/wealth and this impacts the economy in the long term with widespread bot use. Secondly, it creates the imbalance where pilots/organizations that utilize botting have an advantage over competitors forcing players to operate at a disadvantage or join botting themselves. Thirdly, since botting is used to amass in game wealth quickly and efficiently with the fewest humans involved, it is a common tool of Real Money Traders who can be shady and dangerous to their customers.

So CCP has rightly declared botting an exploit and bannable offence.

ISBoxer

ISBoxer, on the other hand is not considered and exploit mainly because (1) is it human-directed therefore does not have a bot's ability to operate consistently and for long periods of time, and (2) is currently not a main tool of wealth generation so is not noticeably affecting the economy or being used by RMTers.

One example of the use of ISBoxer is a single man mining fleet where the human uses the program to order multiple mining ships to mine the asteroids. Another example is the one given in the DtW podcast where a single human operated a small fleet of ships for PvP purposes. In these cases the operated ships have to be virtually the same and the client layout of each account needs to be near exact with the same overview settings and everything, but once setup you basically operate any number of ships your computer can handle clients for as if they were just one.

Its not widespread yet but I think it will be over time as pilots move to min-max their experience as the majority almost always do in order to be competitive. Why have a fleet of 5 guys when everyone can ISBox 3 accounts easily and have 15 ships? Why mine by myself in one ship if I can increase my profit by mining in 5? And CCP says its ok.

Isn't ISBoxer just like Multi-Boxing?

Not Me.

No, its not. Multi-boxing, i.e. having multiple clients open at the same time and doing things in each of them, is different because as a human you can only really pay full attention to one at a time. I cannot give an order at exactly the same time to both clients, I need to switch back and forth and while working on one, the other is unattended and essentially vulnerable to mistakes.

One could argue that an improperly setup interface for ISBoxer can lead to mistakes as well but that is more of a mechanical setup issue and not a human mental error issue. Once perfectly setup, multi-boxing can still allow for human error, ISBoxer cannot. The number of times I've heard someone on comms say "just wait, I need to move my other ship" or "dammit, I missed warp because I was on the other client" from multi boxing players is very high. Multi-boxing is human-intensive, ISBoxing is not.

In essence, ISBoxer is just a bot that doesn't have a preset script to follow, but rather follows you.

-THIS UNIT IS WATCHING MASTER-

This is why I think CCP is wrong on this issue and should change their stance. A bot is a bot is a bot. It shouldn't matter if the bot is independent or dependent on the player for their instructions, it still allows a single human to sustain larger operations over long periods of time with fewer mistakes than a human without using ISBoxer would be able to. It doesn't matter that it does not affect the economy or is not a tool of the Real Money Traders. Its a bot, and CCP should make it an exploit.

Guest Post: Your Hypothesis Is Not Correct

Originally a comment by Axloth Okiah on my Hypothesis on Wormholes post.

As a "professional wormholer" pretty much on top of the whole foodchain (ie. diplo and leadership of one of top alliances), please allow me to correct some of your inaccurate assumptions.

The biggest one is that there is some preferential space one needs to "break ïnto" in order live in wspace. Your text suggests that we somehow block off entry to these systems - in a similar manner to sov-holding alliances in null which prevent newcomers from taking root. By this you probably mean C5 and C6 systems where capital escalations are possible.

But in reality, there are dozens of free and unoccupied systems like this and even bigger number of semi-inactive and poorly defended ones. The infamous "fortress systems" with 10+ POSes and tons of capitals are at most 10% of the total. In this respect, situation got even better for "newcomers" with Hyperion and number of good systems went up because of the wh-effects and C4 static rebalance (Black Holes for example used to be basically uninhabitable, now they are actually good and desirable).

There is simply no way and, perhaps more importantly, no incentive for us to prevent others from settling in. There isnt any competition for resources going on because escalations are same everywhere and most of publicized evicitons happen because of grudges and enmity. Coming into wspace is in practice extremely easy. What is hard is actually living here longterm which is a result of shit POS design and shit corp role management that make growing, recruitment and ship security a total nightmare. Start-up groups often dwindle and die because they cannot sustain any growth as result of pressure from the environment and game itself, not because of other wormholers trying to remove them.

The income is not that stellar either. Prices of salvage have been dropping for a long time, which unfortunately disproptionately affects lower-class wormholers. On top of that, all of the income must be divided among the membership, so bigger groups earn less. While 3-men farming groups earn a ton of isk, average membership of professional wormholers earn less then hisec incursioners while facing significantly higher risk (regardless of Hyperion release).

In the end, the current slumber is nothing new and is a result of overall eve slowdown and less players logging in - it will hopefully pick as the summer ended. Similar concerns about wspace dying and groups being too big, evil and entrenched crop up every couple months, regardless of whats really going on. But its been the same and roughly cyclical in nature for several years now as strong alliances form and then disintegrate into smaller ones.

So... I think your hypothesis is not correct and hopefully I managed to explain why ;)

Hypothesis On Wormholes

I've been listening to the excellent Down the Pipe podcast ever since it started in November 2012 so it provides an excellent perspective on the state of Wormhole space from pilots living there for the past two years.

Things have changed, and I don't mean just recently. There has been a malaise sneaking into wormholes for the past year and the recent changes in Hyperion release have exacerbated the issue into stark contrast from two years ago.

From an outsider's perspective of both wormhole space and null sec space, I'm going to put forth a hypothesis that I've been thinking on for a week or so that might be completely wrong... or might not. Here we go.

Hypothesis: What is happening in wormhole space right now is a microcosm version in both scale and time of what has been occurring in null sec for years, and can be predictive of what is coming in the next year in null sec.

Now to support my position.

About two years ago wormholes appearing to be booming with large corps and alliances battling it out constantly for resources (i.e. good systems and the sites in them) or for fun and profit. Then about a year ago I noticed a change in the winds that perhaps might have been there for a while but was definitely becoming apparent through blog posts and podcasts like Down the Pipe. Wormhole space was becoming less vibrant and started to, dare I say it, stagnate. The entrenched forces in the C5 and C6 class wormholes became larger and richer and the barrier to entry to these lucrative systems became higher.

Let's be clear, wormholes with their different rules and systems with special effects and no local or stations already have a large barrier to entry for the common pilot, add on to that large numbers of professional wormhole pilots guarding the entrance way to the best space with fleets of capitals and T3s and hundreds of pilots at the disposal, and new groups are dissuaded from attempting to break in.

This creates a cycle wherein to access the riches available to these powerful entities a pilot or group of pilots must join the existing organization. These powerful and growing alliances start to strangle out smaller groups that cannot compete financially and the overall population begins to drop and activity starts to dwindle.

Then along comes CCP with changes.

Before we can talk about the effect of these changes, let's talk about the paradigm of wormhole space which is that the risk is a lot greater (i.e. no stations, dangerous rats, no local to warm you of other pilots, no easy entry and exit, etc) but is compensated by high rewards. This dynamic was fine early on in the wormhole timeline since Apocrypha but over time the rewards remaining mostly constant while the risk decreased as pilot proficiency for the ins and outs of the region improved. Eventually groups mastered wormhole space and became experts at controlling the holes into and out of their systems to the point where sites could be run in rather extreme  safety by the professional wormholers for the same rewards. And let's be clear, these are some of the best rewards in all of New Eden at the end of the day. Listen to Down The Pipe episode 39 and sit agog when they talk about what ships they use to run their PvE content.

So, back to CCP's changes. Its obvious that the thrust of the changes were to decrease some of the control the of holes that the professionals had acquired in order to break down some of the walls that the professionals had erected around themselves. As wormholers themselves will state, the risk was subsequently increased as it was harder to close holes, and harder to close them safely, AND there are more of them, while the rewards had not changed at all. The fact that compared to most of all other space the rewards in the best wormholes are still miles above is lost on these professionals who only see their comfortable and known situation being disrupted. I don't blame them too much as any of us would balk at similar types of changes in our preferred area of space. Personally, I don't think CCP communicated the intent behind the changes well enough.

Regardless, the impact of those changes will require months to play out. Will there be an exodus of players from wormhole space as the changes to higher risk and less hole control and stagnation caused by the invested professional organizations drive them away? Or will these changes plus future changes trigger a wormhole renaissance where new players/returning players adjust to the new tactics and rules? We should know over the next year.

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In null we are at the part prior halfway in the changes to space phase. On the horizon is the promised sovereignty mechanics changes and the "new space / building stargates" promise. Once these changes are done, null sec will face the same question that faces wormhole space right now: Is it the beginning of a new age, or the final long decline of the old one?

Seven to Go

So eight years in EVE this month and I'm approaching another milestone: only 7 more killmails until I hit 1000 on zKillboard.

I know that is not a lot compared to a lot of old veteran PvPers like the awesome Rixx Javix but I'm happy with it nonetheless given my extreme time constraints per week. I took a moment to graph out the kills into a little chart (sorry it runs right to left, I'm too lazy to switch it around).

I highlighted a few milestones. You can see the first two Bring Me the Head of Kirith Kodachi live events in 2010 quite easily, and you can see why I fondly recall my time in Paxton Federation in the original ProviBloc back in 2009, but the most striking change in the chart starts when I joined the Gallente Militia in June of 2012. Even in a small insignificant corporation practically by myself, with the same limited playing time, my PvP activity started to climb dramatically.

This is why I sing the praises of faction warfare and Aideron Robotics; it has allowed me to turn a limited weekly game time budget into a modestly successful PvP and Fleet Commander life.

This Sunday, time to get 7 more.

Gamification

On a recent Declarations of War podcast (sorry, can't remember which one) Faction Warfare was discussed and the issue of null sec sov mechanics was tangentially mentioned. Using a version of FW mechanics for capturing systems was dismissed as "too gamey" to work in null sec.

While I can see what they are driving at as the mechanics in FW have elements that are obviously designed for a space PvP game and not based in any sort of reality whatsoever (i.e. "orbit this beacon for 20 minutes, do that a hundred times in the system, and then shoot this McGuffin, and we win the system!"), I take minor issue that any part of the existing null sec warfare mechanics, or for that issue any future mechanics, have any less claim to fame in terms of being not "gamey".

Think about current mechanics as modeled by this flowchart from TheMittani.com:

How is this model any less of a game mechanic as opposed to reality? To call FW mechanics as more gamey than the null sec sov mechanics is a pot calling the kettle black. Both systems are artifices of EVE being a game looking for balance between attack and defense in terms of system control.

Consider what a real war set in EVE's universe would be like...

"We want that system."

"OK, we'll blockade the gates with the fleet and negotiate the station's surrender."

"They refuse to surrender the station sir."

"Well, we can't wait for months for them to run out of food, so prepare the boarding ships, we'll send in the marines."

"Why not assault the station with our capital ships, sir"

"Are you mad? We want the station intact, not in pieces!"

End of an Era

This post is non-Eve related so move on if you don't care.

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Yesterday, I sold the last of my warhammer 40K models.

I started selling them this summer and I have made back about $1800 on thousands of dollars worth of models collected over 25 years of my life. I've sold my Eldar, my Epic Chaos, my Battlefleet Gothic Chaos, and finally the last of my 40K Chaos. I poured thousands of hours into playing and painting and modeling and its all gone. My terrain for hosting games, my posters I saved for years for the warhammer room I will never have, future modelling projects that will never be, everything(1).

Even though its been six and half years since I last played a game or even had the models out of the crawlspace, the waves of nostalgia tore through me with each sale. Each item handed over for soulless cash, each package dropped in the mail for electrons on Paypal.

Its the end of an era in my life.

1 - Well, almost everything, I kept two models to keep me company on my desk at work.

Aideron Open Fleet This Sunday

Aideron Robotics is having an open fleet this Sunday with Yours Truly as Fleet Commander where anyone curious about Aideron or Faction Warfare or even PvP in low sec can join us.

We'll be flying an armour doctrine and have ships available for your purchase, including super cheap Atrons we can give away (limited quantities). Please feel free to join us in any ship you want, just be prepared to lose it!

Rally point is Fliet FDU station in Essence and fleet assembles at 0015 EVE Time. Hope to see you there!

8 Years

On October 3rd 2006 I had a post that included my first ramblings about EVE:

3) EvE. I admit it, I'm right damn hooked. So hooked that this blog is now going to see some EvE blogging along with the warhammer stuff. Its my gaming blog after all, its just been that warhammer was my main fix.

Sigh. I decided to start posting my EvE ramblings here because I noticed today that on a corp forum board I am part of I amassed 48 posts in less than a month, putting me in fourth place of the most posts. First has only 99 and he's been on since June 16th. I am sick, sick, sick.

I started EvE after many weeks of waffling and browsing the web for info on it. What finally convinced me to join was the method of increasing your "level" by learning skill points. Basically, you set a skill to train and it takes a set amount of time based on your attributes and the skill in question. This training even occurs when you are offline so I can get a more powerful character without playing constantly. The lower time commitment required to get into the game sold me and I love it.

I started on Sept 9 and followed the tutorial over a couple sessions. It took about 2 hours to complete everything the tutorial had to show but it was so worth it. By the time the tutorial was finished I was comfortable enough to set out on my own. Being a Caldari pilot my first non-newb ship was a Heron which I later realized was a mistake. The Heron is more for electronic warfare and not straight up fighting, but I didn't know that. I died after a few missions in it. I upgraded to a Merlin frigate which is much better suited to fighting and I had some success in it. After about 10 days, I was ready to join some friends like Adam out in the low security (low sec) space, home of pirates and outlaws. Woot.

Adam flew out to meet me on the edge of high sec space and I packed up my meager belonging and entered the unknown. Many jumps later, I was secure in the headquarters of the Interstellar Privateers of Res Communis, aka IPoRC. The gents there helped me outfit my Merlin for real combat and my training began.

Over the next week I developed my skills and ratted ("to rat" means to hunt NPC pirates) while building up the skills to fly a cruiser. Meanwhile our corporation (aka a clan) got involved into a war and moved our headquarters into the warzone. This past Sunday night was the last convoy that got my stuff safely installed in the new HQ in Murethand system. After that I took off to our second base in a system called 9GYL so I could build up some capital by ratting in my brand new Caracal cruiser, outfitted with Heavy Missiles and an awesome shield.

That's where I am now and its going well. This morning I was on for 30 minutes and got to kill some rats (NPC Pirates) with two allies from other corps and earned about 2 million ISK (ISK = EvE money). Nice! I was able to pay off my debt to the corp for the two Caracals they provided me with.

Eight years ago today, Sept 9, 2006, I started EVE Online. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

The Frog, the Squid, and the NullBear

Last night's fleet proved that the best enemies can make for good friends.

The Sunday night fleet was growing and rumours of juicy hostile fleets prompted us to ship into Rogue Squadron (TM) cruisers: Vexors, Vexor Navy Issues, and a few Ishtars backed by a squad of Exequror logistics. W set out looking for trouble.

At first, the only trouble we found was that all the target fleets we started to move towards disappeared quickly. But then, while chilling on the Eha gate in Oicx awaiting reports from scouts on a hostile cruiser fleet in Mochlimaud, we got surprised by said fleet jumping into us. And it was bigger than we were.

We scrambled our warp out and lost a Vexor Navy Issue that got tangled on the gate and an Exequror got probed down in a safe in the confusion. We finally got a dingo scan on the Circle of Two and friends fleet and determined that their 24 Arty Ruptures and 7 Scythes with 2 Scimitar logistics, accompanied by a number of miscellaneous cruisers and a couple battlecruisers, led by a Claymore command ship, was too much for our 13 Vexor based hulls and 7 tech 1 logi.

So some cat and mouse occurred while we tried to drum up some numbers and a plan to take on this larger force. Eventually we brought our DPS cruisers up to 16 (later 15 as one pilot fell asleep and got caught separated from the fleet) and supported by 9 Exequrors and proceed to setup inside a Medium plex. The enemy fleet setup outside the plex but refused to come into us.

I can see why: Although they had the numerical advantage, we had high ground inside the plex forcing them to warp directly into our guns which was against the best interests of their fleet comp which prefers to fight at an arm's length with artillery's high alpha strike. We were hesitant to leave the plex and allow them to warp at range to us where our DPS would be hampered. We were at an impasse.

Around this posturing our old enemies in Templis CALSF were haunting many systems away in Fliet and were poking us in our public channel for a fight. We chatted them up and negotiated a temp blue agreement if they came help us in this fight, figuring that 10-12 more cruisers on our side could be the buffer we needed to get to the Ruptures outside the plex and win the fight.

Unfortunately, just as we were all in position to launch the attack the Co2 fleet scouts detected the Caldari, put two and two together, and wisely decided to avoid that two pronged attack. We caught the hostile Lachesis pilot of the Co2 fleet and killed it in retribution for our three cruiser losses, and that kill plus the pod balanced the scales somewhat for us.

We bid adieu to the Templis guys that came to assist us and it was late so I logged of.

An Idea Whose Time Has Come

Meet the Small Tranverse Bulkhead I rig:

This little rig, relatively new in the scheme of things, is starting a little revolution in the fleet operations of Aideron Robotics. When used on a ship with proper hull tanking in mind, its proving to be effective at providing sufficient Effective Hit Points and resistances from the Damage Control II mod, while allowing the ship to be fast and agile. Its a good third option to Armour Tanking and Shield Tanking paradigms and something I've argued for in the past.

We are currently experimenting with a hull tanking doctrine on small frigates and destroyers and I'm hearing a lot of praise for it. I'd love for hull tanking to take a more prominent role in PvP as a viable doctrine so we're going to explore this to its fullest.

Remuneration

Consider, if you will, the entire EVE Online universe. Not just the game, but rather the game and the metagame that extends beyond it and spills out in great gobs on the internet. Alliance and corp forums, fitting tools, mapping tools, industry calculators, guides, wikis, blogs, podcasts, news sites, artwork, fiction, gaming sites... If you step back far enough the actual game seems like only half of the game's universe!

Some of these external metagame things are small, like this here blog, and others are huge undertakings with many moving parts and functions like Dotlan EveMaps. Some are the results of individual effort and others are the results of many hands sharing the load and responsibilities as suits their strengths. The larger enterprises even end up developing their own corporate power structures with bosses at the top and "employees" at the bottom.

The width and breadth of the metagame is astounding.

Imagine, just for a second, if EVE did not exist outside the game world. No EVE University wiki; no Dotlan maps, no killboards, no EveNews24.com, no Hydrostatic podcast, no Rixx Javix artwork, no Mumble servers, no Jabber channels, no corporate forums... imagine everything had to be done in the game. Not a pretty site, is it? Imagine setting up a fleet op with a certain doctrine using only the in game calendar and fitting tool and then running the op on EVE Voice and the in-game map. Not a pretty sight, is it?

The fact of the matter is that thousands, if not tens of thousands of person hours per year have been put into this metagame universe and its almost all been done for free. And its been going on for about 10 years.

Well, not quite for free. Operators of out of game sites that qualify as Fansites can get their account paid for by CCP as a promotional gift. For example, my main account with Kirith Kodachi has been paid for by CCP for the past 3 years for running this blog. I don't get a second free account for the podcast I run and I pay for my other two accounts normally. I don't know exactly how this works for sites with more than one operator, like a podcast or a news site, but its safe to assume that all the major contributors to qualifying sites get a free promotional account.

Does this cover the cost of the effort and expenses of running such a site? Except for the most simplest blogs, probably not. Between my blog and podcast, I have yearly fees for the domain and storage space that are covered by the free account, but that does not cover the time the creative effort takes to write and record podcasts. That's OK, its a hobby and its a price I'm willing to absorb as a cost of getting the creative juices flowing.

But consider the effort some of the larger sites require. Not only webserver costs, but admin maintenance, development costs, storage costs, security, and creative effort. Some of these projects require many hours of planning and implementation to get off the ground and run effectively. A single $150 account per year is a drop in the bucket in comparison.

The point is that its not surprising that a large complex site with multiple people involved sought to turn the project into a money-making venture. I don't know if it started off with that goal or it was considered an objective later on after it possibly became a time-sucking second job, but somewhere along the line someone probably said "I work harder on this than I do my real job, I wish I got paid for it!"

I'm not excusing any rule breaking that occurred, nor am I trying to whitewash anyone's motives. I am not privy to what really what on behind the scenes with any of the involved parties. What I am saying is that I don't find it surprising that a major project tried to get some remuneration for their effort that was consistent with the effort.

I know some sites try to get some return from their effort by selling merchandise like Eveoganda does. Of course, you have to be careful not to run afoul of CCP's legal department in the process.

At the end of the day I think major undertakings should have a method to help pay for the costs beyond the free account, and I think it should be done in cooperation with CCP instead of running around them. I don't believe RMT is the answer by any stretch of the imagination as I believe RMT ruins the gameplay for everyone. These out of game services need an out of game solution and I think it behooves CCP to think hard about it as it the benefit to the game these sites brings is immeasurable.

Blog Banter #58 - Money

Welcome to the continuing monthly EVE Blog Banters and our 57th edition! For more details about what the blog banters are visit the Blog Banter page.

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"SHOW ME THE MONEY!" - Jerry Maguire

The SOMERBlink fiasco from last summer and then again this summer (link: https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=367505), resulting in the service's ultimate shutdown has opened the floor to the discussion or monetization of services once again.

Do you think CCP was right in its reaction? Was SOMERBlink justified in trying to monetize its service via plex sales kickbacks? Was it true RMT or grey area RMT?

More generally, where is the line to be drawn when a service attempts to monetize in order to offset costs and/or make a profit? Is asking for donations in Real Life cash too far (I realize CCP considers it unacceptable right now)? Selling non-EVE trademarked goods acceptable? Asking for money to pay for efforts in setting up EVE meetups? Should these all be scrutinized?

And should you want to dig deeper, should players be allowed to reverse redeem plex for cash? Does this already not exist in programs like Plex for fanfest packages or video cards? Is it right?

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Participants:
Sand, Cider and Spaceships - Show Me the rMONEYt
Rinn's Rants - Money
Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah - Remuneration
Pilgrim in Exile - The Root of All Kinds of Evil
Pod Pilot's Perspective - Universal Greed 
Deep in EVE - EVE and RMT