Shut Up We're Talking #51

Whenever I was losing at tennis to Andrew in our weekly games, I could always think "at least I've been on SUWT and he hasn't". Well, now I've lost that one solace has he got to be the guest on this episode much to my dismay.

In this podcast they talked about the Ricdic stealing money from Eve bank and white collar crime in Eve in general. I don't have much to add that they didn't cover but I will say that I have vacillated back and forth from more developer control of financial institutions to less. Right now I'm at the "leave it alone" stage and I'll tell you why.

In the Lore, players represent people who are, for all intents and purposes, above the law of man. They are an immortal elite class of super rich that care very little for the happenings of the billions on the planets below. The faction governments are at best peers and at worst annoyances to be dealt with as the capsuleers see fit. There is no government organization that could run a bank for them and enforce any punishment should the pod pilots steal from them. In the end, the pilots have to provide the service for themselves and police it themselves.

In regards to player run banks, the operates of Eve Bank have learned from earlier failed banks and set it up so that if a teller like Ricdic went bad and stole from the vault the effect on the bank as a whole would be mitigated. Despite losing hundreds of billions of ISK to Ricdic and have a run on the bank, it remained solvent and operational and is still doing business. Dynasty Bank however was not setup as well and people lost money when it went south.

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In regards to the Guiding Hand Social Club theft, I want to clear up the incident as it got a little muddled in the podcast. Here is an article about it from PC Gamer. This event happened in 2005, not 2008. The theft occurred of assets in the corporate hangers and corporate wallet, not the targets personal wallet or hanger even though the assets stolen could be considered hers. And they did not take her out to null sec and kill her, they lured her out and then turned on her as the theft occurred.

Minor points, but it supports Andrew's statement that ISK in your wallet and assets in your personal hanger are safe from theft. You have to be scammed out of your money and stuff.

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Finally, I want to say I totally agree with Andrew that what Blizzard is doing with gender changes, hair and facial changes, and even server changes can be considered micro transactions. Not only can be, HAVE to be even though they don't fit the word micro very well. They are not Account Services; account services is updating your payment details or paying for more game time. Perhaps in the past once could consider moving a character from one server to another an account service, but I think that time has past for me. They are microtransactions, players paying for upgrades/alterations to their character with real money.

All in all a great podcast!