I have 11 EVE accounts. I also “pay” for the account of my girlfriend. I placed apostrophes, because CCP saw $60 from me all together, making EVE my cheapest game. I subscribed for the game with my main account and then used a “pay for 3 months, get 6 months on a second account” feature. After these payments I could earn enough ISK in game to PLEX my accounts. I currently sit on 220B cash and another 100B is invested into capital BPOs (my first batch of Naglfar BPOs sold in a week). 5 of my accounts are also investments: supercapital pilots for sale. As my current activity (ganking) pays for itself, I have no ISK needs, I can run the accounts for 8 years. All 6+1 of them. It seems I’m not the ideal customer for CCP.
Actually – as I pay nothing – I am not a customer at all. “But someone paid for your PLEX-es” – you might say, and you are right. However if someone else pays for my in-game actions, I’m – by definition – a content creator. Let’s not argue over the question if the content I create worth $15*7*12 = $1260/year for other people or not, if they pay that much, it worth that much. Let’s also not argue if CCP could create the same content itself for less than I cost them (not $1260, I don’t get that money, only the traffic cost I generate).
The problem I want to discuss today is having content creators who enhance your game for connection costs is nice, but you need to have customers too. Also, the game must cater to your customers and not to your volunteer content creators. Let’s ignore PvP here, because that doesn’t create ISK that you could use to PLEX your account. Quite the opposite.
While most vocal players claim EVE PvE is horrible, vocal players are just a minority. Ganking miners gave me a great overview on mining and the results are the very opposite of what you’d expect: most miners I see are not in a multiboxing or bot-mining operation. Most miners aren’t even in a solo AFK ship with a 1M SP pilot earning ISK while the player is doing his laundry. Brace yourself: most miners are actively piloting their mining ship. They try to warp out when they are attacked (it doesn’t help as I have scram), many warps out when my scout enters the grid (it doesn’t help as I can scan them while they align out, note their EHP and next time I just enter grid cloaked) and many of them has comments on local or convo to me – hopefully only after they upgraded their clones. These are real players of EVE Online who have to like mining otherwise they wouldn’t do it actively. On the other hand, the Orca + 4 Hulks + Obelisk combos never move and never chat. They either don’t warp out at all and keep mining while one of their members blow up or they warp out exactly in the second my ganker pilots enter local. I also see another minority, the solo Mackinaw with tank modules in lows. He is clearly AFK, left his ship running while he is sleeping or in school.
What is the point? Inefficient, solo PvE players are probably customers who are paying for their account and spend their game time with an activity they find fun: PvE. However fun cannot be multiboxed. If you like warping around and getting rocks, you won’t have more fun because you have another ship doing the same in the background. You have more income though. A solo PvE account can be used for fun, but multiple PvE accounts are good for one thing: earning ISK to PLEX your account or fund your PvP (instead of funding it from PLEX). Having multiple PvE accounts that cannot even pay for themselves is plain stupid: you get no extra fun for your $.
My point is that having multiple PvE accounts is probably the best sign of someone not being a paying customer. So changes that close down PvE alt accounts aren’t cutting into the budget of CCP. Of course closing them down has no point in itself (connection costs are low), however if a change would get more customers, it’s not a problem if it would also mean bittervets close down some accounts.
Could the economy turn upside down if enough multibox or bot accounts would be closed? No. They farmed ISK and then sold the ISK to the real customers. Sure, these customers wanted to pay for the ISK, but the ISK injection could be coming from CCP directly in some form of game mechanic change (like the halved ice harvester cycles) or even an item shop. The buyer doesn’t care who sells him ISK for his PLEX. The sellers do care, but they aren’t customers. Before you’d comment, please think about what is the difference between these scenarios:
The Goblinganks channel gets more and more lively as the newly started gank accounts reach the point where they can actually gank:
Actually – as I pay nothing – I am not a customer at all. “But someone paid for your PLEX-es” – you might say, and you are right. However if someone else pays for my in-game actions, I’m – by definition – a content creator. Let’s not argue over the question if the content I create worth $15*7*12 = $1260/year for other people or not, if they pay that much, it worth that much. Let’s also not argue if CCP could create the same content itself for less than I cost them (not $1260, I don’t get that money, only the traffic cost I generate).
The problem I want to discuss today is having content creators who enhance your game for connection costs is nice, but you need to have customers too. Also, the game must cater to your customers and not to your volunteer content creators. Let’s ignore PvP here, because that doesn’t create ISK that you could use to PLEX your account. Quite the opposite.
While most vocal players claim EVE PvE is horrible, vocal players are just a minority. Ganking miners gave me a great overview on mining and the results are the very opposite of what you’d expect: most miners I see are not in a multiboxing or bot-mining operation. Most miners aren’t even in a solo AFK ship with a 1M SP pilot earning ISK while the player is doing his laundry. Brace yourself: most miners are actively piloting their mining ship. They try to warp out when they are attacked (it doesn’t help as I have scram), many warps out when my scout enters the grid (it doesn’t help as I can scan them while they align out, note their EHP and next time I just enter grid cloaked) and many of them has comments on local or convo to me – hopefully only after they upgraded their clones. These are real players of EVE Online who have to like mining otherwise they wouldn’t do it actively. On the other hand, the Orca + 4 Hulks + Obelisk combos never move and never chat. They either don’t warp out at all and keep mining while one of their members blow up or they warp out exactly in the second my ganker pilots enter local. I also see another minority, the solo Mackinaw with tank modules in lows. He is clearly AFK, left his ship running while he is sleeping or in school.
What is the point? Inefficient, solo PvE players are probably customers who are paying for their account and spend their game time with an activity they find fun: PvE. However fun cannot be multiboxed. If you like warping around and getting rocks, you won’t have more fun because you have another ship doing the same in the background. You have more income though. A solo PvE account can be used for fun, but multiple PvE accounts are good for one thing: earning ISK to PLEX your account or fund your PvP (instead of funding it from PLEX). Having multiple PvE accounts that cannot even pay for themselves is plain stupid: you get no extra fun for your $.
My point is that having multiple PvE accounts is probably the best sign of someone not being a paying customer. So changes that close down PvE alt accounts aren’t cutting into the budget of CCP. Of course closing them down has no point in itself (connection costs are low), however if a change would get more customers, it’s not a problem if it would also mean bittervets close down some accounts.
Could the economy turn upside down if enough multibox or bot accounts would be closed? No. They farmed ISK and then sold the ISK to the real customers. Sure, these customers wanted to pay for the ISK, but the ISK injection could be coming from CCP directly in some form of game mechanic change (like the halved ice harvester cycles) or even an item shop. The buyer doesn’t care who sells him ISK for his PLEX. The sellers do care, but they aren’t customers. Before you’d comment, please think about what is the difference between these scenarios:
- you run a ratter account who gets ISK bounties and uses it to buy a PLEX to fund the account.
- the same amount of ISK is sold for 1 PLEX worth of Aurum in the item shop.
The Goblinganks channel gets more and more lively as the newly started gank accounts reach the point where they can actually gank:
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