Thousands of EVE online players riot over microtransactions • Hacker News Board

Re: Thousands of EVE online players riot over microtransactions

#41

Post by protomyth » Sat, Jun 25, 2011, 6:06 PM UTC

ajacksified wrote: post #12

MaxGabriel wrote: post #9

When I played Runescape, we had similar massive riots over the removal of free trade and the old pvp system (wilderness pking). The pkers were on average decidedly less mature than the average player, so there was really poor communication from them, but also from the company Jagex, who struggled to explain the 'why' behind the changes. Can anyone who plays Eve comment on how the company is responding?

I'm a (retired) director of one of the larger corps in EVE, and I've been discussing the points of contention with members today. Most of it stems from the fact that those rioting feel the prioritization of the walking-in-stations expansion and the addition "vanity items" is poor judgement. There are bugs, missing features, and new changes that are viewed by the rioters to be of far greater importance than the time s…

Going by what CCP said, their internal newsletter really is a collection of position papers not necessarily reflecting the true views of the authors. This is much like internal position papers to a political campaign (argue the other guy's side so we can hone our argument). That is truly something I would not want leaked and could cause some serious damage.

Re: Thousands of EVE online players riot over microtransactions

#42

Post by Periodic » Sat, Jun 25, 2011, 6:17 PM UTC

dekz wrote: post #18

> for people not familiar with EVE: Jita is the main trade hub of the game. Since EVE only has one server, that makes Jita the de-facto capital of the game, and it's main system. There are other simmilar (but smaller) trade hubs (Amarr and Rens, among others), and those are seeing protests as well. Those systems have a hard limit to their population, and when it's capped, the gates close. The protests seem to have ca…

This has a much bigger impact than canceling your own subscription. It raises the danger that you might impact other players to quit. If I were a new player and I found that the servers were too clogged over protests, I might be inclined not to continue. If I were a more casual player, I might go outside, go play another game, or do something else and find I have better things to do than play Eve every night.

This is actually how I quit MMOs in college. When it started to feel like a job when I logged in every evening due to the commitments the game placed on a guild for "serious progression" I stopped logging into avoid it. Then I realized fairly quickly that were many other things I'd rather be doing and I cancelled.

Get someone to stop logging in for a week and you could very well lose them.

Re: Thousands of EVE online players riot over microtransactions

#43

Post by rcxdude » Sat, Jun 25, 2011, 6:30 PM UTC

bastiat wrote: post #40

FiddlerClamp wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case, it's what the market will bear. If people buy $500 designer clothes in EVE, the management will continue to sell them.

There are NO prices without scarcity.

yes, and in this case it's an artificial scarcity. CCP controls access to the items, and thus has complete control over their price and scarcity.