If you ask anyone where did our prehistoric ancestors lived, he'd answer "in a cave". Most of what we know of them is from cave painting, fireplaces and graves found in caves. However caves are in short supply and completely non-existent in plains areas. The available caves simply couldn't support significant amount of population. Therefore only a small percentage of the prehistoric men could live in caves. Yet we call them cavemen, because we found nothing about the non-cavemen, their remnants were washed away by the tens of thousands of years, while the caves preserved the relics of the tiny minority who actually used caves.
Why is it important in an MMO? Because of the long-standing stereotype of player "intelligence" in different games. "Intelligence" rather mean to being informed and prepared than actual IQ. The consensus is that players of hardcore games like EVE are much smarter than of player-friendly games, especially WoW, which is dubbed as a collection of retards.
The above consensus cannot be explained by self-magnifying group bias ("the players of my game are awesome, so I'm awesome too"), as it extends to all players. I mean a skilled WoW player would accept without question that he is a rare breed and most WoW players are dumb like a piece of rock.
Most would ignore the question itself, claiming that the explanation is simply "this is the truth". Maybe would add that even a medically declared retard could level up in WoW if he is capable to press buttons without breaking the keyboard, while only a smart and well-informed person can survive in EVE.
I believed that too, but the "Burn Jita" event forced me to rethink. This was a ganking event when several players - lead by the player group Goonswarm - went to the "capital city" of EVE, the Jita star system and killed everyone they found there if he was in a weak ship or carried worthy cargo. More than 10000 players were killed during the event, granted it includes gankers killed by the NPC police. But still thousands were slaughtered. The event was all over the EVE forums and blogs for a month, so everyone with more than one brain cell could avoid Jita.
Who were killed then? People with one brain cell maybe? But how can be so many idiots in the "game of highest IQ"? Similarly how can anyone gank a Hulk in a small destroyer? With the fits and advices available, no destroyer-ganker should kill anyone. Actually a solo Tornado-ganker shouldn't kill anyone. The fact that people in throwaway ships can effectively gank means that there are lot of idiots in the game. And unlike in "Burn Jita" you can't even pull the newbie-card. Learning to drive a Hulk takes more than a month.
I believe that the average knowledge of players in EVE is one of the lowest while in WoW one of the highest! The reason while people believe the direct opposite is the caveman bias. In WoW, due to the random group finding and the fact that people of your faction cannot harm you in any way, people are mixed very much, pugging missing people or the whole group. They are exposed to large amount of players which include terrible idiots.
This has two effects: at first the bad players are often called on their mistakes, therefore given a chance to learn. If you are a fire mage spamming nothing but ice lance, I'm 100% sure that within an hour someone will tell you that you are doing it wrong. Maybe he won't use nice and friendly terms but you will be told to stop it. In EVE you can fly an Amarr ship equipped with railguns and nothing but warp stabilizers in low slots for years without anyone telling you to stop it. Therefore the average player in WoW, while mediocre (by definition), isn't so terrible. "Bad" in WoW is defined as 50-60% effective. I don't say they aren't bad, considering the amount of resources available, but they aren't 5-10% effective like in EVE.
However the second effect of mixing players of different skill is that you are often exposed to the failures of other players. You regularly see yourself on the top of the damage meter, followed by the tank and 2 "idiots" who do half of your damage. To make it worse, they can't be removed after exposing themselves, you can't even kick them from your group, let alone blowing them up like you would in EVE after their first line in the chat. While a semi-competent player makes no impression, an epic moron is remembered. Therefore you come to the conclusion "this game is full of idiots".
In EVE and other "hardcore" games players avoid each other. They play solo or with their known friend group, considering every stranger a possible ganker or spy. This means that informed, intelligent players (who are the opinion leaders on blogs and forums), are surrounded by other good players and even their enemies are similarly good ones otherwise they couldn't even play against them. The swarm of idiots are invisible as they live in high-sec, doing solo missions or mine. This also means that the idiots are not called on their idiocy, they keep remaining idiots while being sure they are great.
This is exactly the utopia I mentioned as perfect design of MMOs. This is the recipe for the ever-growing happy MMO: players stay with their own kind, everyone in your sphere is someone like you. Why EVE is not the #1 on the market?
Enters the ganker. A good player, who for some out of game reason (mostly because he is a slaving underdog in real life), choose to spend his time harming other players, despite the game punishes that. And he is terribly successful. He can devastate targets with 100x more expensive gear and could do it endlessly if the NPC Police wouldn't take him out after every gank for a some time. Ganking is the living example of the utter stupidity of the average EVE player. I mean how many times have you seen a WoW-player with no combat gear, equipped only with a fishing pole or mining pick farming semi-AFK in the middle of a PvP area? And how many times you see Hulks with no combat fitting, semi-AFK mining during Hulkageddon? Any more question which playerbase is dumber? As a general rule, as long as grief-ganking is not a sporadic event, we can surely say that the average EVE-player is dumb like a piece of rock.
Another evidence: I did pretty well in WoW, making 5-10K gold/week. That's about 2.5-5 Euro at the goldsellers. And I reached this peak after years of playing. In EVE, only after three months I can get 3B ISK/week, that's 90 Euro. OK, official shop prices are higher, but even if we half it, I still make 10x more ingame currency in EVE than I did in WoW. That tells a lot about the ratio of smart competitors vs mindless grinders in the two games.
This is the reason why CCP should make high-sec (or rather part of it, the 1-0.8 systems) totally safe. It would soon be populated by swarms of happy morons, skyrocketing the subscriber count. Just don't make low-null safer or the people will start to mix and the magic goes away!
The UI suggestions page has been turned into a permanent page, feel free to discuss and add.
EVE Business report: Friday morning 20.6B. Oops! I either made an accounting error and tomorow I'll have a peak, or I made some epic fail that you can soon laugh on. (2 PLEX behind for second account, 0.3B spent on Titan project)
Remember that you can participate in our EVE conversations on the "goblinworks" channel (60-80 people on peak time)
Why is it important in an MMO? Because of the long-standing stereotype of player "intelligence" in different games. "Intelligence" rather mean to being informed and prepared than actual IQ. The consensus is that players of hardcore games like EVE are much smarter than of player-friendly games, especially WoW, which is dubbed as a collection of retards.
The above consensus cannot be explained by self-magnifying group bias ("the players of my game are awesome, so I'm awesome too"), as it extends to all players. I mean a skilled WoW player would accept without question that he is a rare breed and most WoW players are dumb like a piece of rock.
Most would ignore the question itself, claiming that the explanation is simply "this is the truth". Maybe would add that even a medically declared retard could level up in WoW if he is capable to press buttons without breaking the keyboard, while only a smart and well-informed person can survive in EVE.
I believed that too, but the "Burn Jita" event forced me to rethink. This was a ganking event when several players - lead by the player group Goonswarm - went to the "capital city" of EVE, the Jita star system and killed everyone they found there if he was in a weak ship or carried worthy cargo. More than 10000 players were killed during the event, granted it includes gankers killed by the NPC police. But still thousands were slaughtered. The event was all over the EVE forums and blogs for a month, so everyone with more than one brain cell could avoid Jita.
Who were killed then? People with one brain cell maybe? But how can be so many idiots in the "game of highest IQ"? Similarly how can anyone gank a Hulk in a small destroyer? With the fits and advices available, no destroyer-ganker should kill anyone. Actually a solo Tornado-ganker shouldn't kill anyone. The fact that people in throwaway ships can effectively gank means that there are lot of idiots in the game. And unlike in "Burn Jita" you can't even pull the newbie-card. Learning to drive a Hulk takes more than a month.
I believe that the average knowledge of players in EVE is one of the lowest while in WoW one of the highest! The reason while people believe the direct opposite is the caveman bias. In WoW, due to the random group finding and the fact that people of your faction cannot harm you in any way, people are mixed very much, pugging missing people or the whole group. They are exposed to large amount of players which include terrible idiots.
This has two effects: at first the bad players are often called on their mistakes, therefore given a chance to learn. If you are a fire mage spamming nothing but ice lance, I'm 100% sure that within an hour someone will tell you that you are doing it wrong. Maybe he won't use nice and friendly terms but you will be told to stop it. In EVE you can fly an Amarr ship equipped with railguns and nothing but warp stabilizers in low slots for years without anyone telling you to stop it. Therefore the average player in WoW, while mediocre (by definition), isn't so terrible. "Bad" in WoW is defined as 50-60% effective. I don't say they aren't bad, considering the amount of resources available, but they aren't 5-10% effective like in EVE.
However the second effect of mixing players of different skill is that you are often exposed to the failures of other players. You regularly see yourself on the top of the damage meter, followed by the tank and 2 "idiots" who do half of your damage. To make it worse, they can't be removed after exposing themselves, you can't even kick them from your group, let alone blowing them up like you would in EVE after their first line in the chat. While a semi-competent player makes no impression, an epic moron is remembered. Therefore you come to the conclusion "this game is full of idiots".
In EVE and other "hardcore" games players avoid each other. They play solo or with their known friend group, considering every stranger a possible ganker or spy. This means that informed, intelligent players (who are the opinion leaders on blogs and forums), are surrounded by other good players and even their enemies are similarly good ones otherwise they couldn't even play against them. The swarm of idiots are invisible as they live in high-sec, doing solo missions or mine. This also means that the idiots are not called on their idiocy, they keep remaining idiots while being sure they are great.
This is exactly the utopia I mentioned as perfect design of MMOs. This is the recipe for the ever-growing happy MMO: players stay with their own kind, everyone in your sphere is someone like you. Why EVE is not the #1 on the market?
Enters the ganker. A good player, who for some out of game reason (mostly because he is a slaving underdog in real life), choose to spend his time harming other players, despite the game punishes that. And he is terribly successful. He can devastate targets with 100x more expensive gear and could do it endlessly if the NPC Police wouldn't take him out after every gank for a some time. Ganking is the living example of the utter stupidity of the average EVE player. I mean how many times have you seen a WoW-player with no combat gear, equipped only with a fishing pole or mining pick farming semi-AFK in the middle of a PvP area? And how many times you see Hulks with no combat fitting, semi-AFK mining during Hulkageddon? Any more question which playerbase is dumber? As a general rule, as long as grief-ganking is not a sporadic event, we can surely say that the average EVE-player is dumb like a piece of rock.
Another evidence: I did pretty well in WoW, making 5-10K gold/week. That's about 2.5-5 Euro at the goldsellers. And I reached this peak after years of playing. In EVE, only after three months I can get 3B ISK/week, that's 90 Euro. OK, official shop prices are higher, but even if we half it, I still make 10x more ingame currency in EVE than I did in WoW. That tells a lot about the ratio of smart competitors vs mindless grinders in the two games.
This is the reason why CCP should make high-sec (or rather part of it, the 1-0.8 systems) totally safe. It would soon be populated by swarms of happy morons, skyrocketing the subscriber count. Just don't make low-null safer or the people will start to mix and the magic goes away!
The UI suggestions page has been turned into a permanent page, feel free to discuss and add.
EVE Business report: Friday morning 20.6B. Oops! I either made an accounting error and tomorow I'll have a peak, or I made some epic fail that you can soon laugh on. (2 PLEX behind for second account, 0.3B spent on Titan project)
Remember that you can participate in our EVE conversations on the "goblinworks" channel (60-80 people on peak time)
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