EVE Online, a sci-fi MMO that’s full of scheming players, is famous for its many ridiculous stories of dedication, betrayal and intrigue. And the story of how some players became obsessed with someone who had one of the most expensive ships in the game feels emblematic of what the game can turn into for the most hardcore players.
Rock Paper, Shotgun’s Rich Stanton has an excellent report about “big game hunters” who target ships with jump drives, or in other words, the big, powerful ships that players spend forever trying to attain. The story chronicles how the hunters took note of a specific ship (a Ragnarok Titan) they wanted to bag, which was worth $US3,000 — but the problem was that the player who owned the ship would never log in, making those plans difficult.
The group started stalking the player’s alternate accounts nearly 24/7, in the hopes that they’d be able to predict his moves. Eventually, after 20 months — nearly two years — the player signed in and was promptly attacked.
This is a part of a chat log from the event:
[01:11:28] FomkA > i have not be loggin for 3 years
[01:11:29] FomkA > how the ufck
[01:11:31] FomkA > lol
[01:11:35] waris good > lol
[01:11:39] waris good > we been watching you for that long
[01:11:40] FomkA > i m serious
[01:11:47] BlueMajere > 🙂
[01:11:50] Jassmin Joy > it’s been a long three years
[01:11:54] waris good > yea
[01:11:55] Fainaru Wada > welcome back m8
[01:11:59] waris good > slumber parta
[01:12:07] FomkA > gg
[01:12:12] BlueMajere > we stalked u
[01:12:14] BlueMajere > 3 yrs
[01:12:18] BlueMajere > thank u for logging in
[01:12:27] FomkA > cant believe tbh
[01:12:41] BlueMajere > its fact
Amazing. Note that even though the player, denoted in the log as “FomkA,” hadn’t logged in in three years, that’s not necessarily how long the hunters had been following him for.
You can read the story in further detail, including interviews with some of the folks involved in the hunt, as well as the story of what happened to the pilots involved, here. It’s a doozy.
Picture: RPS
Comments
25 responses to “EVE Player Stalked For Nearly Two Years By Very Patient Punks”
Man, so many interesting stories come out of EVE online, I’m ever so tempted to give it a try one of these days…
What most of these stories fail to mention is the hundreds upon hundreds of hours you have to pour into it to be even a minuscule part of these stories.
My enthusiasm is dying now
I did underestimate in my previous reply.. it’s more likely to be thousands of hours.
Would you prefer to read about the cool stories afterwards or spend 3+ years stalking some guy every day….
Some people refer to this game as the spread sheet simulator. I tried the game and I don’t disagree.
My enthusiasm is dead…
So, very life like!
By the dev’s own admission (http://evenews24.com/2014/05/10/jesters-trek-the-seven-percent-solution/), only 10% of players who decide to pay for the game (not simply use the 14 free trial) actually end up in player to player gameplay. 40% run solo missions (grinding but more boring) and the rest (50%) leave for good.
The guys mentioned in this article are an exclusive hardcore group (PL bigwigs) within a hardcore group (PL) within the 10% who join player groups, so your chances of a similar experience are small without the time investment @tofuzombie suggests.
I got this on the steam sale but the patch was huge and i never played it. Is it any good?
Beautiful looking game. I met some hardcore players though, they had multiple accounts just to be able to grind enough to do anything. No thanks.
After reading the full length article, I felt less impressed. The impression I get is that each player has multiple accounts where some of those accounts and probes do all the tracking automatically and autonomously? It’s not like each guy takes turn manually waiting for the ship’s owner to log back on.
The guy who owned the titan had at least two accounts, one sitting in the titan (once you board a titan you can’t get out until it’s destroyed) and the other to deploy the cynosural field (or “cyno”, which basically creates a beacon in space that the titan’s jump drive can lock on to). The guys doing the hunting had the cyno pilot on their watchlists (you can add a small number of pilots to your watchlist, and you’ll get a notification when they log on or off), and then paid NPC locator agents to find the location of that pilot.
Then while they waited for the cyno pilot to deploy the cyno, they took turns with other pilots in their corporation across all timezones to watch and wait. Finally they all worked together to catch the titan, some flying scanning ships, others flying ships equipped to immobilise the titan.
“(once you board a titan you can’t get out until it’s destroyed)”
You can eject or board another ship from your hanger or in nearby space
Eve is indeed a great game. But its a game where you cannot just expect to log in and have fun. Being that its a sandbox you have to make the fun for yourself with others. Often, this fun requires planning and thought to execute. It can be some of the biggest epic fun you can have in game, but it most certainly isn’t a casual game that requires a level of intelligence (and I do not mean this as a troll or insult). At no point does Eve hold your hand like other MMOs.
I tried EVE Online after a friend started playing a few months earlier. The moment I logged on he pulled me into nullsec. I was playing a Minmatar character in Caldari Nullsec, up where Northern Coalition used to be. I would spend my day salvaging scrap to sell and save up ISK to buy a Hurricane. I was the only Minmatar in the alliance so I felt special flying unique ships in fights, only problem was my ships also carried premium prices since nobody else used them. This was back in 2010.
Less than a week after I got my Hurricane (And before I had trained to use it’s guns) Goonswarm came knocking and started hunting down the Alliance I was in. We managed to secure comms on one of the Russian pirate alliances that were at war with the Goons, they warped in and engaged in this massive fight I’d never thought I’d ever see, over 1000 ships in system.
I bolted from the station and managed to escape the system but the Goons had patrols out through some of their other alliances. I happened to run into one of their scouts, which happened to be my friend, he had left the alliance earlier before the war began and now worked for Goons. I told him I had literally just gotten the ship, and it stored all I had (Not much but I was new so I hoarded). I must have hit his soft spot cause he called my co-ords going through the opposite gate I was travelling and I slipped through my route while the patrol was preoccupied following my mate who was leading them off trail.
While I stopped playing 2 years ago I still have that Hurricane locked away, that ship holds many stories for me and it’s one reason why I’d consider going back to EVE.
I highly recommend EVE if you’re looking at making some interesting stories because I can tell you now it’s much more fun being there than reading about it.
I read the full article linked to in this one. I feel bad for the guy who owned the ship.
EVE players, is the ship gone for good? No repair or recourse or respawn or anything? How many hours does it take to get something like this? Ganging up on him like this feels like a dick move by griefers.
Yeah its gone for good, permadeath (for assets anyway) is the norm in Eve, and it was a big asset. While its a bit crappy, there’s things he could have done to avoid it. Then again, most people wouldn’t have expected such a long game by the aggressors.
Eve players love destruction, its what drives the game and is the core of its economy. When you are an Eve player you know and understand this 🙂
Once something’s destroyed in EVE, that’s it, it’s gone. Some of the modules installed on the ship will drop in the wreck (spoils for the victors) but the ship is lost.
Building a titan consumes billions of ISK worth of materials, and construction can only occur in null security space, in a system that your alliance has sovereignty over, and has installed the appropriate infrastructure in. For this reason, titans are usually alliance-level equipment, beyond the capability of an individual pilot to build but well within reach of an alliance of many players. That said, some titans are then on-sold to certain, very-rich independent buyers.
It takes about eight weeks to build a titan, and about seventy are built each quarter in the whole of EVE.
Yikes. Not my kind of game, then.
Thanks for the explanation.
If you go in aiming to fly the biggest ships you’ll have a bad time. Everyone who flies the big titans are only flying them because of a collective need from the alliance. You could still aim to fly one but you’d be looking at about 2 years from being effective (a year to learn the game decently and then a year dedicated to training to fly the ship). You could however learn to fly a battleship and have a decent number of skills for it in about 2-3 weeks. While in the meantime using lower frigates and cruisers to earn money, pvp, fool around etc.
In eve its all about Risk vs Reward * Time. Mining in high sec is low risk, low reward and times consuming. The same in low security space or null sec space is more bankroll with the risk of losing your ship. Find a niche in the market and exploit it. I found a neat little market exploiting the laziness of people and made a decent buck off it too. Then threw $15 into a plex, used the capital to make another plex and started playing for free. Was buying a certain ship people usually sold in an area, loaded the ship up with resources that a particular area needed, flew to it, sold the resources and the ship i flew there too as both were profitable (up to 50%). Id but another type of ship in that area, fill it with resources and fly it back to repeat the process. Then bought a bigger ship to transport stacks of ships in its hold to transport them back n forth. was really really rewarding and felt like i was getting away with somerthing
Flying supercapitals is the absolute extreme end of the spectrum however. Many of the most enjoyable activities in the game are done in ships available to players from their very first day of play.
Actually reading the article is disturbing they stalked this guys for 2 years, the guy was trying to sell it and they fucking kill the ship and the pod for the giggles. These people are not people i would game with, They are Psychopaths.
I would say, if you don’t enjoy or at least can’t tolerate PVP, find another game.
Most MMOs you can avoid PVP to at least some extent. With EVE completely avoiding PVP is more or less impossible. Even in highsec you can be attacked, if the attackers are willing to lose their ships, or if your corp (guild) has been wardecced.
The only way I can see to be “safe” is
(1) Drive a ship with a deep, DEEP tank, so no conceivable assembly of ships can kill it in the time before Concord can respond
(2) Do not join a player corp. NPC corps can’t be wardecced.
(3) Stay in highsec so that Concord can be counted on to respond eventually.
Of course, that’s a fairly boring way to play (much like highsec mining – although highsec miners are regularly ganked.)
Wow, imagine how much real cash they could have earned in that wasted time…..I’m sure it would have been a lot more than $3,000.