Usually I would have too much self-respect to post a link I pulled from GameTab, but this was too interesting to pass up.
http://www.pq5.com/Nightfreeze/
It’s the story of an Eve Online player who tries honest play and gets burned so badly by pirates and an ill-timed nerf that he turns to scamming people out of their credits. It’s reasonably well-written, flows properly and forms a fairly interesting story. Just make sure you read to the end of the epilogue.
That’s great stuff.
And man, does that game sound awful. Really, really awful.
That’s pretty fab. Reminds me of my UO days.
Pathetic on so many levels.
I’m glad I never bothered with the game after beta. it’s gotta be the dullest game imaginable (except for business majors perhaps)
The story appears to be false. I’d rather people just present the truth rather than Hollywoodizing it.
Wow, what a moron. Maybe he’ll have learned now to read the fucking patch messages instead of blowing past them like a nimrod. Even moreso than that, most of the shit that happened to him was his own fault for being inattentive, being careless, being lazy, and not paying attention. And even by the bottom-of-the-barrel standards of an MMORPG, that guy’s a pathetic piece of crap - the first half of ‘The Great Scam’ is him whining his ass off about how horrible other people are for getting their kicks without caring if they hurt other people - and then the last half is him laughing about how good he is about doing the same thing. He’s worse than the brain-dead kiddie griefers - at least they don’t have the intolerable aura of smug self satisfaction about their grade-school playground bully tactics. Oh, and they’re usually decent enough not to intentionally try to rip off people who’d helped them earlier in their virtual lives, unlike these two scumfucks.
I think the thing that’s really annoying is just the sense of entitlement. As if this shit, by virtue of all the time he spent catassing his way around that virtual world, had the god given right to go prey upon anyone and everyone he possibly could - and moreover, feel good about it, because the mean horrible pirates (who played by the rules) had FORCED him to become a piece of shit.
With all those fake posts, this douche bag probably thought he was one amongst a hundred others asking for a chance to be a part of this great and wondrous business arrangement.
I mean, that basically says it all. “Hah hah, look at this pathetic piece of shit, he actually failed to realize I was a worthless lying loser! Oh MAN, am I gonna rip him off and ruin his enjoyment of the game!”
Blech. I shouldn’t bother wasting the valuable contents of my spleen on shits like this, but it’s really pathetic, and even moreso to see it held up as an example of anything but how low folks will happily sink when they feel wronged and justified.
Also, WOW I can’t believe people still voluntarily play Eve Online. Why isn’t that bankrupt yet?
Did you just condemn this guy and defend the kiddie pirates in the same breath?
Only comparatively. I loathe them both in general terms, but kiddie pirates are, in griefer terms, mild - just unfocused, undirected, general malice. This guy actively sought out his friends, people who had helped him and liked him, and went out of his way to give them an extra special deep assraping - for no fault of their own whatsoever. It’s like this - I dislike both muggers and serial rapists, but I dislike the serial rapists significantly more. Make sense, threadcop?
Scary. Very Scary. And long. But worth it for the Harhead epilogue. “Dude, we were friends!”
When you put it like that, Captain Excitable, no. Not really. You can’t really say that it’s this guy’s fault for not keeping up with the whining of the kiddie pirates that screwed him over and turn around and act like the same kind of half-assed “What a moron. Maybe you’ll learn to watch for obvious scams.” argument couldn’t be applied to the people who got bilked for their credits.
What are you talking about? He was careless and inattentive for being too dumb to look at the patch messages and figure out what was going on with the game he supposedly was addicted to, and dumb for voluntarily charging a larger formation of experienced fighters with a shit-for-brains sidekick who had no fucking idea how to fight.
Well, the kid’s certainly impulsive as all hell. Note that he did this twice, not once, except the first time he was the shit-for-brains sidekick who had no fucking idea how to fight. And didn’t have any backup. It’s rather cruelly amusing that this kid risked death threats and destroyed his ability to play the game (however much it might suck) for a “reward” that lost all actual value and purpose.
Most people just didn’t like that he scammed HardHead. Being the trailblazer you are, you fault him for not immediately reading some patchnotes and not being SUP4R 1337 P3333K4Y. Where, exactly, are you going with this?
That’s pretty despicable. Granted, the poor game mechanics aren’t helping, but it still shows a major lack of character.
I thought the scam was awesome.
I loved UO because at all times during your mining sessions you were on edge, and even going to the bank to deposit money to a safe place turned into a trial because of the hordes of thieves that would interlope about.
I never was a PK nor a thief. I simply enjoyed the extra edge and challenge having them present provided.
NOTE: Trading routes as described in EVE online sound boring if there’s no possibility for major blunders.
I usually afford myself a smirk for every good griefing story I read, because the imagination employed is often worth more than the harm caused, but I think there must be a line to be drawn somewhere, upon crossing which you enter the world of a small time crook. As far as I can see the pirates in Eve Online are a planned part of the gaming universe, and while annoying for “honest” traders, perfectly acceptable behaviour. After all, what would a space trading game be without pirates? How boring would it be if getting from A to B was completely without peril? It could also be argued that in a simulation of futuristic corporations that scamming other users is also acceptable, but I think the manner in which he went about this, while fascinating to read about, is nothing but reprehensible. He went outside the gaming mechanics and deprived people of their hard earned credits, credits that have a real world value on ebay. Being as you can buy a 100 ISK on ebay for $100, he basically ripped people off for $500, which makes him small time crook in my view.
[size=2](the above reply assumes that the story is actually true)[/size]
I applaud this guy for his excellently planned and executed scam. Eve is mostly about pissing contests and pushing around littler fish anyway, he did the same only a lot more elaborately. As for going outside the game mechanics to screw people, you could make the same argument of a large alliance that plans its wars on a web forum, or a group of pirates with a teamspeak server to coordinate their shakedowns.
Sparky: Making other people miserable is something you want to praise? If you were playing an MMORPG with a friend that you chatted with frequently online, and he asked to borrow a large sum of money from you, then mocked you via chat, blocked you from messaging him, and made a new character to use the money he’d stolen from you by abusing your good nature, would you be praising him for it? There’s a reason that, as a society, we deplore people who run these kind of thieving scams in the “real world” and lock them up whenever possible. They’re scum, and for their own benefit, they not only victimize people but damage the very thing that makes the economy function - trust that the system will work. At least in the real world, you can argue that they’re doing it for a profit, for a tangible reason - this guy did it just for cheap thrills and the sheer joy of malice. Hell, he even tried to rip off his real friend, the guy he plays games with on a regular basis, and only a fear of getting the shit kicked out of him kept him from doing so. Do we really want to praise people who accomplish nothing but the victimization and hurting of other people?