Banter 20: Scamwiches

Welcome to the twentieth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed to crazykinux@gmail.com. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

With the recent completion of the 3rd installment of the Hulkageddon last month, @CyberinEVE, author of Hands Off, My Loots!, asks: “Griefing is a very big part of EVE.  Ninja Salvaging, Suicide Ganking, Trolling, and Scamming are all a very large part of the game.  What do you think about all these things?  You can talk about one, or all…but just let us know your overall opinion on Griefing, and any recommendations you may have to change it if you think it’s needed.”

Take a facepalm, or some “d’oh!”, or even some ragequit, and place it between two freshly baked slabs of stupidity, and you have a scamwich. You can even spice it up a little with a few slices of ‘over-tired’, a dash of ‘drank-too-many-beers’ or even a healthy ‘it looked good on paper’ salad. The constant here though, is the bread, which in this analogy is the stupid (in case you missed it).

In order for scams to work, someone needs to be stupid. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the victim is stupid, but rather they have to have a stupid moment, or act stupid. This happens to everyone at some point. From playing when overly tired and buying that expensive shuttle because it looked like it was 9k rather than the 9m you got billed (*raises hand of shame*), to investing billions into banks that eventually go belly-up when a disgruntled caretaker/director has had enough (*retracts hand of shame*).

Your isk, and your time in the game are your responsibility. There literally is no point in crying over spilt milk. Once you’ve fallen prey to a scammer, that’s it. That isk, or that [insert asset type here] is something you’ll never be seeing again. Even the months you invested in training that promising young recruit only to have them go all Mr Hyde on you and nick the contents of the corp hangar – assets and time – all gone.

I suppose this is the antithesis of a previous post where I proudly proclaimed that you should trust everyone within reason and just use your common sense more. The most important parts of that sentence are common sense and within reason. There is – and always should be – various degrees or levels of trust. You generally trust that when you’re crossing the road with the green man/walk sign that nobody is going to run you over. Likewise, you generally trust that in high-sec space, nobody is going to shoot at you without sanction to do so (or without sufficient reward to negate the punishment for trying). But, if you invest in that not-a-pyramid scheme Yvonne from marketing said was a sure deal, or invest your isk in an IPO, you run a reasonable risk that you’ll never see your money again.

Who is to blame in these latter examples? Is it Yvonne from marketing? Nope, its you, ya big ninny! Use your noggin! As I said before; scams work because people have moments of stupidity. As Eve has grown, there’s been more people to have stupid moments, and so there’s more scammers. You’ll never be rid of them because they ply their trade by perfectly legitimate means, and people are inherently greedy. This in turn leads to them taking risks that they ordinarily would not.

Other stuff

You’ll find that a little common sense (and occasionally some spite) goes a long way for other ‘unfair’ things in New Eden.

  • Griefing – Don’t rise to it? Go somewhere else for a while, or play something else for a bit. There’s other games than Eve, or even (le gasp!) the outside world. I hear pubs are a great place to socialise and get drunk. Its like Eve, but with less PVP.
  • Ninja Salvaging – This is the one I don’t get. So many people whine about it. Just shoot your salvage as they get near it. You don’t get the profits, but you do get the satisfaction of denying them the same. They’ll soon find someone stupider and/or whinier to bother.
  • Suicide Ganking – This won’t happen unless you’re stupid enough to fly a kestrel filled with PLEX or similar, but really… Who’s stupid enough to do that?
  • Trollololololing – A bit like griefing, but easier. Just ignore it. Sometimes trolls are not immediately obvious, but it usually becomes clear after a short while. This is when you should just walk away, do not under any circumstances attempt to feed the troll unless you are a) baiting it, b) a cannibal troll.

That’s all there is to it really. My down and dirty overview of naughty things in Eve… Not those naughty things, you pervert!

I wanted to do something much longer and more in-depth about human nature and anonymity, but last week my computer sort of melted and I didn’t have the time or motivation to do some kind of epic, so I’ll be saving it for another time – you lucky, lucky people!

Comments for this Post

5 thoughts on “Banter 20: Scamwiches”

  1. 31st Aug '10 at 6:52 am

    Damn you, Yvonne from mar­ket­ing!

    • 19th Sep '10 at 12:27 am

      She is such a bitch!

  2. 14th Sep '10 at 1:34 pm

    Short but pointed. I think people need to be reminded every now and then of how stupid they can be (*slowly raises hand*)

    • 19th Sep '10 at 12:27 am

      Oh aye, we all do sometimes. 🙂

  3. Pingback: Blog Banter 20: Suddenly Ninjas, Hundreds of Them! | TheElitist

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