The threadnaught is in siege mode

Hitting news in the world of MMORPGs lately is the story of eve online turning into vancouver. Its... well... interesting. To sum it up, it shows how damaging information is to a company, and how not to talk to your players if you are that company. I'm not posting this really for any reason other than the fact its news.

I believe its on major sites like massively, which I will not link to as I believe it may not be allowed to link to a news site... (correct if I am wrong..?)

Cliff notes edition:

1. New expansion comes out. Players voice concerns over a cash shop, how some people cannot run the new content at all, and worse yet: it has burned out graphics cards by making them run too hot.
2. Internal document is leaked. It is a newsletter titled 'Greed is Good?' and details the possibility of introducing non vanity items to the cash shop.
3. Players who read this become angry. A thread pops up from the devs asking for the players to calm down.
4. That thread becomes an angry frothing at the mouth threadnaught. As the north american players go to bed, more than 60 angry pages are added by europeans.
5. Dev writes a blog to the players, the tone is essentially 'screw off' and details how if you buy $1000 jeans you are admired by everyone around you. Attempt to fan the flames backfires. Brutally.
6. An internal email leaks. Further enrages players in flipping the bird to them.
6. Players at this point are unsubscribing en masse. A loss of nearly $500,000 USD yearly in subscriptions at current for just the noisy unsubbers. There is bound to be two times more people who have also stopped paying but said nothing. This adds up to an estimated loss of $1,500,000 USD in subscriptions a year.
7. Players riot. Trade hubs are still clogged in protest and they've crashed it a few times through firing at monuments. Devs still have nothing to say.

Ouch, that sounds really nasty. O.O

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Originally Posted by RuneDragoon

Attempt to fan the flames backfires. Brutally.

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I don't think this means what you think it means. x3 Having your attempt to fan the flames backfire would essentially mean your attempt to make things worse instead made things better. ;P

Looks like this expansion included the ability to walk around stations and what not. I don't believe Eve Online was ever really designed to handle an environment that is empty space surrounded by models rather than models surrounded by empty space. Funnily this is something that players have consistantly requested left and right for almost the entire existance of Eve Online, partially because 'That's what Earth and Beyond let you do'.

Would appear that CCP's crazed drive of making new things over fixing old things is beginning to catch up to them. I had played the game for a bit earlier this year and quit by the 2nd month because there's almost no diversity in PVP anymore. Once upon a time you could go out to 0.0 and encounter people roaming around in vagabonds, megathrons, ravens, typhoons, vindicators, astartes, deimos', curses, etc. And now all you see are hounds and tengu's with the occasional vagabond. Roaming groups are no better, gone are the mixxed fleets and in their place are nothing but drake fleets with shield logistics.

Also, the loss of $500,000 a year may seem like a lot, but really that's just a number made over the course of a year, and not a month, simply for the sake of making it look big and dramatic. Ultimately that's only roughly 41,600 a month, or 2600 accounts. If it were 1,500,000 in yearly losses, that would be roughly 7800 accounts. That's 7800 accounts out of more than 400,000 that quit in the light of an entire year. CCP will more than likely see twice that if not more in new players over a year. Honestly CCP probably sees well more than 650 accounts a month come and go.

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Originally Posted by Akrion

I don't think this means what you think it means. x3 Having your attempt to fan the flames backfire would essentially mean your attempt to make things worse instead made things better. ;P

Looks like this expansion included the ability to walk around stations and what not. I don't believe Eve Online was ever really designed to handle an environment that is empty space surrounded by models rather than models surrounded by empty space. Funnily this is something that players have consistantly requested left and right for almost the entire existance of Eve Online, partially because 'That's what Earth and Beyond let you do'.

Would appear that CCP's crazed drive of making new things over fixing old things is beginning to catch up to them. I had played the game for a bit earlier this year and quit by the 2nd month because there's almost no diversity in PVP anymore. Once upon a time you could go out to 0.0 and encounter people roaming around in vagabonds, megathrons, ravens, typhoons, vindicators, astartes, deimos', curses, etc. And now all you see are hounds and tengu's with the occasional vagabond. Roaming groups are no better, gone are the mixxed fleets and in their place are nothing but drake fleets with shield logistics.

Also, the loss of $500,000 a year may seem like a lot, but really that's just a number made over the course of a year, and not a month, simply for the sake of making it look big and dramatic. Ultimately that's only roughly 41,600 a month, or 2600 accounts. If it were 1,500,000 in yearly losses, that would be roughly 7800 accounts. That's 7800 accounts out of more than 400,000 that quit in the light of an entire year. CCP will more than likely see twice that if not more in new players over a year. Honestly CCP probably sees well more than 650 accounts a month come and go.

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Thanks aki. I don't think I'm a good journalist, heheh. Not only did I make that one typo, but just posting things I've read without knowing facts or doing math because... well.. bad at that too. Thank you.

However in a recent development, the developers finally cracked after a rumor was spread on them being bought out by Sony. Within an hour of posts about it hitting the forums, they posted a response. Then realized that in doing so they made a mistake - they still left the real questions unanswered for players and they were quick to call them on it.

They finally apologized and have realized that they've really broken trust. Would you believe the players are still rioting?

The mob mentality has a momentum that is hard to counter.

CCP should have apologized at step 5, avoiding 6 and 7. :p

Trying new things isn't inherently bad. Pushing through with them after customers say "NO" is.

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Originally Posted by Steelclaw

Trying new things isn't inherently bad. Pushing through with them after customers say "NO" is.

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Kind of like removing Nadia, or more notably, the attunement to Bristugo and racial cities? ;) Those were pushed through rather vigorously despite pretty strong opposition. (Removing Nadia still hasn't solved what it was supposed to solve, btw).

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Originally Posted by Akrion

Kind of like removing Nadia, or more notably, the attunement to Bristugo and racial cities? ;) Those were pushed through rather vigorously despite pretty strong opposition. (Removing Nadia still hasn't solved what it was supposed to solve, btw).

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Removing Nadia is only bad for those that rather farm coin then components like I did in the past. Before Nadia was removed the droprates should have been increased to make the whole farming less tedious... Max 5 mobs for 1 component is good, everything more becomes tedious and very annoying.

How can a game burn out a graphics card? It's just a computer. Surely the problem is an inadequate cooling solution on the card. It's normally extremely hard, or involves you doing something extremely stupid, to break hardware with software.

I wonder what would happen if you went in to the middle of such a mob and shouted... "it's just a game!". :D

Rakku

A game burns out a graphic card by pulling so much energy/power etc. from the card it overloads the fans.

Now, yes, if you have extra cooling you can probably control for that somewhat. But if your average computer person, average gamer (now), has their stock cooling and nothing else then YES, games can burn out video cards.

Istaria? No. But I know other games that have done so. Esp. when a new generation of video games comes out, meaning the new "generation" uses some type of video rendering/technology/etc that is mechanic only found on brand new cards.

Least that is how I understand it.

Keep your fans up kids! :)

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Originally Posted by Frith-Rae

A game burns out a graphic card by pulling so much energy/power etc. from the card it overloads the fans.

Now, yes, if you have extra cooling you can probably control for that somewhat. But if your average computer person, average gamer (now), has their stock cooling and nothing else then YES, games can burn out video cards.

Istaria? No. But I know other games that have done so. Esp. when a new generation of video games comes out, meaning the new "generation" uses some type of video rendering/technology/etc that is mechanic only found on brand new cards.

Least that is how I understand it.

Keep your fans up kids! :)

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This has much more to do with the GPU than the game. If a GPU burns out from the load of a game, then that's the fault of either the card being old and not as capable of cooling down anymore (or its clogged with dust), or it wasn't designed well enough to handle full load at factory clocking speeds, and it would have burned out on another equally intensive game. On top of this most GPUs have failsafes that shut themselves down before they reach critical temperatures. Unless CCP some how got their update to override the device drivers and overclock the card without users knowing, there's no way they directly caused GPUs to burn out.

Basically a game can't pull more from a GPU than the GPU can, or has been set up to, provide unless its firmware/drivers are compromised.