Joke's On You

I was preparing to write a long post about the current World War Bee and the possible outcomes, but that freaking robo-blogger Ripard Teg came out of retirement and wrote a two parter on Crossing Zebras covering the same ground as I was going to only far more eloquently and better.

Die in a fire (in game), Ripard. ;)

This is must-read material: Part One - Bee Careful What You Wish For and Part Two - Bee Prepared

End of an Era

This past weekend an Era ended for the EVE Online blogging community as Ripard Teg ended his blogging at Jester's Trek in a post called No tank lasts forever:

Tank in EVE Online is a balance between buffer, resistance, and reps on one side, and damage and neuts on the other. Enemy ships rage at you, your native resists apply, and they slowly chew through buffer. Reps build buffer back up and make the process take longer. But the reps are usually at a disadvantage because they are few in number... and the attackers are many. And if there's a fundamental truth in EVE Online it's that if enough people want your ship dead, it will die, and all the reps in the world won't help.
No tank lasts forever. And today, I am shutting down Jester's Trek.

These has already been much digital ink from other bloggers spilled over the assertion in his goodbye post that "[o]ver that almost four years, the tenor of the game has changed remarkably... and not for the better" so I'm not going to wade into that pool1 but instead I'm going to provide some perspective since that seems to be my main function these days whilst surrounded by all these youngsters.

* * * * *

EVE blogs had been around for a long time but I count the official beginning of the EVE blogging community when Crazy Kinux started to pull the bloggers together into a single list at the beginning of 2007. From that point over the next couple of years blogging exploded into hundreds of individual blogs and things like Blog Packs and Blog Banters and websites like Evebloggers.com formed to tie the community together and help each other expand our readership.

And then, in January of 2011, Jester's Trek dropped into that community like a huge boulder dropped into a small pond. His blog would produce posts on mechanics, null sec politics, guides, philosophical questions, and more at a rate and depth that far exceeded anyone else.2 That's not to say that those topics and types of posts didn't happen before his arrival; quite the opposite in fact. And there were blogs that covered all the same types of posts as well, but Ripard did it at a rate and consistent quality that blew past all other contenders. He earned the nickname "Roboblogger" as a result.

The quality and quantity did not go unnoticed. Not only did the EVE blogosphere marvel as he developed his brand, players outside the community who never paid attention to blogs before bookmarked and subscribed to his feed. His influence grew and his shadow changed the environment around it. Look at the comments on his goodbye post and you will see person after person claim that his was the first and only blog they read as they started EVE. Despite only being a single blog of a style different from so many, for a generation of pilots he represented the EVE blogger archetype.

A lot of things have contributed over the years to the changing blogosphere; the rise of EVE News conglomerates, Podcasts, Twitch Streaming to name the big ones. But Jesters Trek was one of the first to shatter the tranquil surface of our little pond.

Of course, being such a standout over the years has painted a target on his chest. Since every topic in EVE has more opinions than players in the game, it is no surprise that when Ripard placed his opinions and analysis up for public consumption that he suffered an usually high number of slings and arrows from the hostile parts of his audience. Even if a silent majority agreed with his points and positions on issues, the comments could be overrun with angry disgreement and ad hominen attacks. As Jester's Trek became syndicated on Evenews24.com the hostile audience would only grow more vocal. Sad as it is, people don't understand the concept of arguing a point even if you don't necessarily agree with it.

Now, to be honest I didn't always agree with everything that Ripard posted. But I appreciated that he rarely posted from the hip but rather put thought and research into everything with his name on it. He forced you to think on your opinions and positions when confronted with his posts. He was not afraid on controversy or being in the middle of a heated discussion. And I think he was an excellent CSM 8 member.

However, I can understand how being in the firing line of so many for so long can wear a person down. I'm glad he's still playing but the EVE blogging community has a big hole to fill in its ranks. Hopefully he can find some peace and quiet to enjoy this game away from the hustle and bustle of constant blogging.

Fly safe Roboblogger.

1 - Partially because I am not sure if I agree or disagree. :/

2 - Its worth noting that Jester's Trek did not cover all types of blog posts. For example, he almost never posted After Action Reports from his own PvP experiences.

Of Monuments and Pilots

CCP never seems to go small when it makes the decision to try something new.

A couple weeks ago on twitter CCP employees started pointing people to a webpage with a timer but no hints as to what it was timing down to. There was lots of excited speculation and when the timer hit zero we found out it was for... a MONUMENT!

No wait, come back! Its a real life monument. Being built in Iceland. Aren't you impressed?  ;)

My reaction when I heard the news was a disinterested shrug, a comment that "it wasn't really timer-countdown worthy", and I went along my way. The reaction of others, however, was not as impassive:

"Underwhelming. Please do not use timers for this kind of stuff, would have thought it was cooler if I wasn't disappointed." 

"Awesome proof of how shallow CCP has become. Game is broken, few (if any) noobs subscribe after trial, new content is beyond lame, sov is ****, lag is hellish but uh oh let's build a monument using customers money cause we are amazing."

"I think this boring and featureless statue symbolize EVE expansions." 

"I can't really imagine anyone caring. Couldn't the money put into erecting this thing have paid a dev to fix some of the abandoned content in this game :/" 

"what a giant waste of money typical ccp wasting money on things not related to eve in any way even when the game is broken"

It was not all negative, but a significant portion is. Ripard Teg wrote a post about this negative reaction and called those people out:

The vast overwhelming response from those players on the forums and on my blog here was overwhelmingly negative both about the monument itself and about the unveiling. Negative about the cost. Negative about the perception. Negative about just about everything.
Some of us really are bitter, aren't we? Shame on you. Seriously. Shame on you.
Let's address the two basest, meanest, crudest, most cynical criticisms first. And I can destroy both of them in just a few words:
- If this monument causes only a few hundred old unsubbed players to spend a PLEX... and they see all of the changes that have made EVE a better game over the last few years, and they resub, stick around, and start playing again, the money spent on the monument will have been worth it.
- If this monument causes only a single EVE developer to look out over the Reykjavik harbor and see the permanent representation of the stories, aspirations, and fun EVE stands for, and that moment of good feeling inspires him to design and develop a better game for the rest of a single day, the money spent on the monument will have been worth it!
And for you EVE players out there whose thinking is that low or that petty, those two thoughts alone really ought to be enough to make you understand what this monument really means. That really ought to be enough.

 While I don't completely agree with the naysayers that the monument is a complete waste of time, I don't think Ripard's chastising is altogether warranted either. Some people might be overly negative about anything CCP does but other's have a valid point.

This monument feels like hubris, as if CCP felt its ego needed to be stroked and decided to do the deed itself. I'm not opposed to that in principle as a for-profit company should be allowed some chest beating for investors and employee morale from time to time. But this, this, .... this just feel over the top to my Canadian sensibilities, not a proclamation or a statement but an attention demand of monumental proportions. (HA!)

I'm all about celebrating EVE's players and content and achievements, as was done in the Skyward Sphere events. But a massive monument in EVE's harbour? I have reservations. I hope, as Ripard says, it will inspire and  celebrate rather and mark another dark chapter in CCP's story of hubris and pride before the fall.

And yeah, I will probably use the web app to find my character's names when its done.

Bottom of the Slippery Slope

Over at Jester's Trek, he has a post called Slippery Slope in which he asks the question if providing out of game services for ISK is the start of a slippery slope:

Let's take it a step further. I don't own a hosting company. But I do have $500. Let's suppose that I'm willing to pay the hosting charges for this massive EVE gambling site. I go to the operators of this gambling website and they're amenable to giving me 50 billion ISK per year for website hosting. I go to a hosting company I know, and I buy a dedicated hosting server. I then advertise it in Sell Orders with a somewhat misleading post title. The operator of this gambling site then replies to my post saying that he wants to buy my services with ISK. We then let the post fall far down into the invisible pit of thousands of other Sell Order posts.
The gambling site gets their hosting. I get 50 billion ISK -- $1500 worth of ISK -- for $500. Is this legal? Or is it RMT?
Not so fast.
When you buy a kill-board from EVSCO (which hundreds, if not thousands of EVE players, corps, and alliances have done), you pay ISK for the in-game service, which is legal. The owners of EVSCO then pay for the website hosting of your kill-board. As their in-game business has expanded, I'm quite sure they've had to pay more RL money to their hosting company to host all those kill-boards and deal with the demand. EVSCO pays RL money and in return receives large amounts of ISK from hundreds of EVE players, corps, and alliances. Same question: is that legal? Or is it RMT?
Don't be alarmed. That sensation you're experiencing is just the slippery slope.

The summary of what I'm going to write can be written as thus: We are at the bottom of the slippery slope already, the issue has been decided. We have been at the bottom for so long some of us don't even recognize it and are taken aback when they look around and see where they are.

OK, now that the conclusion is out of the way, let's write the post.

Real Money Trading, aka RMT, is both legal and illegal in EVE Online. Legal RMT started with the allowed selling of Eve Time Codes on the forums back in the history of time, at least 7 years ago, and continued with the allowed selling of characters in the bazaar and more recently the allowed selling of out of game services. The fact you can get 600 million ISK for about $15 or, as in Ripard's example above, 50 billion ISK for $500 is irrelevant. Its legal in this game and the start of the slippery slope was the eve time codes; everything thereafter was simply applying the same principle.

What is that principle? Quite simply put, CPP is OK with someone giving money for ISK as long as someone else cannot sell ISK for money. As long as the transactions do not make a profit for a person in the 'community', then its a legal transaction.

The reason people are not allowed to sell ISK for real money profit is that it quickly becomes a business more interested in acquiring ISK to sell in greater quantities and thus encourages game damaging behaviours like farming, botting, and account hacking. In Ripard's example above, no one's real money wallet is at a higher balance other than the hosting company who is not part of the community and sold server time and thus has no interest in engaging in game damaging activities.

So RMT is alive and well and legal in EVE in certain scenarios, even if the implications of that bother people as they look at the scope it can take on.

Now the far more interesting question is if the legal RMT, all of it from time codes to hosting-for-ISK deals, is good for the game or not.

Agile Development Revisited - Rebuttal

Ripard Teg wrote a post yesterday that I'm going to have to disagree with. In COTW: Agile Development Revisited he is complaining about the speed at which the overhaul of ship balancing is occurring:

And yeah, I'm forced to agree. Best information says that frigates and destroyers will be done for winter, with the addition of one new destroyer for each race and the new logistics frigates being major features of the expansion. With the mining ship updates, that's roughly 40 ships rebalanced in 2012. Which means that at this pace, CCP will be getting around to balancing T2 battle-cruisers sometime late in 2015 and Black Ops, other T2 battleships, and maybe the T3s the following year. So as much as it sounds like an exaggeration at this level of resources, "a half decade" to get the re-balancing done is pretty much on-the-nose.

I started composing this post prior to the release of this dev blog which basically proves my point, but I'm going to write it anyways.

I work in an Agile software development shop, doing 2 week sprints and about 10-12 sprints per release. Hell, I even took scrummaster training and am a scrummaster of an eight person team and we've been doing Agile/Scrum for about 3 years. One thing that becomes apparent if you do it all right is that initial stories (i.e. pieces of work) take more time and effort than subsequent stories in the same development area. There is always ramp up effort to learn the existing architecture, determining the known unknowns, and making a task plan. Then there are refinements after the first couple stories as earlier designs and ideas get proven out or thrown out altogether.

Subsequent stories can build on the groundwork and lessons learned of previous stories. Backlog grooming for future stories can take these lessons into account as the picture becomes clearer. The end result is that no matter where you start, early stories take a lot more effort than later stories as the variables get nailed down.

The dev blog Ship Balancing Winter Update kind of proves this out, lucky for me. Instead of only the logi-frigates and new destroyers we are getting all 16 cruisers revamped, putting on the step of the all important battlecruiser and battleship classes.

So why was the initial ramp up of the first few frigate so long? Well, the plan of how to go from tiers to roles must of have been controversial and had a lot of false starts and revisions within the planning of CCP itself. How to make ships distinct without covering the same roles is a difficult proposition as I can attest to in my ponderings. But now that the framework is mostly set in the 24 frigates, it will be easier to take that model as a base and apply it to the other classes. Plus the devs have a better feel for what works in balancing and what does not work with the players and ships. Less trial and error, more forward development.

When I first started writing this post, I was going to say in reply to Ripard's post that "yes, the winter update is not a lot for ship updates but I expect the rest of the classes (crusiers, BCs, BSs, Tech II) will be a lot faster". However the dev blog shows that the acceleration is already begun.

I predict that the summer update will see all 24 battlecruiser and battleships done and discussions for what Tech II ships need love to have begun.