Forbes: EVE Online Player Loses a Spaceship Worth Approximately $9,000

Basically what happened was Black Legion. (a mercenary alliance of about 4,000 people) had several spies in Pandemic Legion, another alliance, and those spies managed to catch a Revenant while PL had their backs turned focusing on the war in Fountain (which I personally am partaking in) And dropped a large fleet of Dreadnaughts and Super Carriers on it.

The ship is only one of three that's ever been built and the kill was the first ever Revenant kill.

In addition to the Revenant kill, Pandemic Legion lost another 8 Nyx's and 2 Aeon's trying to rescue it, but to no avail.

Here's a video of the kill:

[video=youtube;6E1mL0h6z2I]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=6E1mL0h6z2I[/video]

Here's the conversation of Pandemic Legion (thanks goes to the confederation of pizza) during and after the incident (warning bad language ahead):

https://soundcloud.com/nan-6/xxxgrath-ragexxx-full-version

 

Wow, that is EPIC!!!

Wait for it...

An EPIC WASTE OF TIME!!!

 

Wow, I'm so glad I don't play EVE, otherwise I might care. But still, it seems big so, good for EVE.

 

I feel sorry for anyone married or in a relationship with people who play EVE. The game can literally suck up every moment of your life. There are people who just sit in the space stations and play the commodities market. That's all they do, and they rack up trillions of dollars in imaginary money. I feel like saying to them, "Take these skills and go to Wall Street, and make real money."

 

What, 9000?!

 

There is no way to evaluate an imaginary ship in EVE as worth $9000, so I don't know where that figure comes from.

If you evaluate the manhours it takes to create this ship, my guess is its closer to $100,000. And that is because a person playing EVE would have to forego hundreds of hours of income potential in order to gain this very advanced ship.

 

There is a way.

You can buy an item called PLEX(Pilot License Extension) which you can do one of two things with.

1) You can use it to add 30 days of game time to your account

2) You can sell it on the in-game market for in-game money.

PLEX costs $19.99 US dollars and sells in-game for anywhere between 490-530 million ISK(the in-game currency).

So, if you average out the sell price of a PLEX at say, 500 million, you can then divide 300 billion by 500 million to find out how many PLEX's it would take to reach that amount. Then you multiply the amount of PLEX's by $20 and you have an approximate real money value of an in-game item.

Estimating what the ship would cost in lost wages assumes a person is spending all their time playing the game. That's false, because with Eve, your skills build in real-time, whether you're playing or not. This person could potentially have trained, or bought, the character that flew the ship and funded the purchase with real money through the PLEX system. I have no idea if that's what happened.

Having played the game myself, I can tell you there are quite a few adults who play including many current and former military members. I've run into people who own their own businesses, who work from home, who are in college. One person from my corporation was completing his master's degree for some type of advanced chemistry field. He personally designed a computer program that tracks certain chemical precursors that occur during reactions within a living body. That's honestly the best of my understanding of it because he used many technical terms that I just didn't quite know. Two brothers from my corporation were Iraq veterans, including one who lost most of his leg in an explosion during the convoy he was in. There are many people in my corporation that are current/former military or work in fields that go along side the military, like private security contracting, weapons and equipment engineering, etc.

You seemed to know more than a little about the game. Did you perhaps play at one point?

 

Wow...coming from someone who plays D&D(and I have played D&D and have nothing against it) that is rather ironic.

 

I prefer Star Trek Online ship gets blown up, wait a bit at the respawn point, respawn and fight on ... I buy a high end premium ship I don't lose it.

 

I have played the game, but I can't possibly dedicate the time and energy it requires to amass imaginary money in an imaginary world. And that's all EVE is, making money. There is no roleplaying aspect to it.

 

it's over nine thousaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnnnnndddddddddd!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Well, my first inclination is to berate folks who devote so much time and energy to what is essentially...a time waster...
however after careful self-examination...I also, am a "gamer"...in that I play multi-player flight sim games...typically for no added cost aside from the initial price of the sim software itself. Patches and other downloads are typically free of charge and there are no added fees for going online or online support. Admittedly, peripheral hardware devices that enhance the sim experience, like rudder pedals and joysticks, video cards, et al. are not all that cheap.

Having said all that...the key here is moderation.

If you've invested so much time and energy into amassing this "imaginary" supercarrier....odds are other aspects to a well rounded life have suffered....maybe time devoted to actual relationships with friends and family, not just on-line escapism.

I fully understand the need to occasionally "escape" into a fantasy realm...whether it's futuristic outer space carriers or WW2 dogfighting over the English channel...but one has to moderate between escapism and real life responsibilities.

Take a break from the games once in a while and watch a sunset guys.

 

I used to play an MMORPG called Dark Age of Camelot. It was player vs player , was pretty fun for awhile but it required too much of a time investment to remain competitive and It didnt require near the time EVE online seems to require.

 

You don't pay to play Dungeons and Dragons. If this story is real then why would anyone pay $9,000 for a 'spaceship' in a video game. You could buy over 150 brand new games, and 3 latest generation game consoles for that kind of money.

Not to mention a college degree.

 

I didn't read the whole thing but these games are crazy- people spend tons of money on these fantasy items.

There was a IRS case a few years back about whether online money could be considered real money. There is a game I play where there people sell online coin for real cash- it is crazy.

But hey- if people want to waste their money like that- they are more than welcome to.

 

I had absolutely no idea what they were saying or what was going on.

 

Nobody said that the person actually paid that much real money for it, just that if you converted the in-game value of the ship to a real money value going off the price of PLEX units, that's how much it would be. It's 100% possible to get everything needed to build it just by playing the game, and depending on how the player and his corp/alliance make money, it might not even be an Earth shattering amount. The major price factor about this particular ship isn't just how much it cost to actually build, but also that the blueprint to construct it is extremely rare. That factors into the price of the ship. So, it's highly probable that the person who lost the ship didn't accrue all the materials involved in it's construction. Ships like that tend to be corporation wide projects to some degree, so it's not all the personal investment of one person.

 

I look at it as a hobby. Some people build muscle cars, some people collect stuff, some people travel, etc. I think the fact that computer games don't really give you as physical object to show for your time affects the perception of them as actual hobbies, but I feel that what you get out of them, especially games with a progression factor like Eve, is similar to a real hobby.

 

I think that's my beef with online games in general. It pretty much requires a minimum playtime per week to be able to enjoy the social aspect. If you aren't "levelling" at the same rate as your peers, you cannot do things with them online. So either you play 10-15 hours a week, every week, or you don't get to do the social stuff at all. That's why I love the single player games. Personally, Elder Scrolls (hence user name), but at any rate, since I'm not trying to stay close to my buddy's level in order to play with him, I'm not forced to put in time in a game just to be able to have fun with it. I could stop playing for months or a year, and everything will be just the same.

 

Star Trek online is free and lifetime subscription is like €160 , mmos are fine way to waste your free time , socialise & meet new people .

 

Now I play World of Tanks I'm happy in that to spend some real money, for things I want say I want a premium tank and elite crew it might cost $20 but I like the game and choose a vehicle say a tank I like. I spend some money on other games I play. But nothing I get goes away if destroyed it respawns or returns after a match. But I got better use for that much time and money than play one game.

 

I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but a lot of corporation accountants are actual accountants. Additionally one of the in-game diplomats for Goonswarm (one of the more notorious alliances), Sean Smith aka "Vile Rat", actually worked for the US Foreign Services and was killed in the Benghazi attack. A lot of professionals play the game in their off-time and use their insider knowledge of their practice to their advantage in-game.