[Eve Online] Biggest Exploit in MMORPG History Unearthed?

[Felonous]

Player makes claim that he has abused a exploit in Eve Online that generated him 2500 - 3000 billion isk over the last four years....

The expanse of this so far is probably lost on most people so I would like to make a few facts clear. In the past 4 jears we are talking about ISK in value of 2.500.000.000.000 ISK to 3.000.000.000.000 ISK. That’s 2500 – 3000 billion. Everyone that owns a T2 item can bet that it was build in part from resources due to this phenomenon. At this point I would like to thank CCP for making it possible to buy GTC’s with ISK.

So lets do the math...

You can buy 30 days worth of game time in eve for about 300,000,000 isk. A 60 day GTC goes for about $34 dollars, or about $17 per 300,000,000 isk. 3,000,000,000,000 / 300,000,000 = 1000 * $17 = $17,000 dollars. And that is just from the one player, it is looking like a good number of large alliances in the game were abusing the exploit over the years.

The fallout has already begun on the Eve forums, as CCP has admitted to an investigation of the exploit and has already started banning players as of today: http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingamebo...hreadID=945010

Players are buying up Tech 2 items in game over the fear that their product is about to become much more expensive now that the exploit that supplied unlimited amounts of the materials has been plugged.

[Heretic Machine]

That is probably not the biggest exploit in MMO history, but it could easily be the most devastating to the game. That game is built on the integrity of it's economy, and if that was compromised for so long... well, I expect that shit might unravel pretty quickly.

[jeffbax]

Wait, so the exploit was what?

[Felonous]

Originally Posted by jeffbax

Wait, so the exploit was what?

From the first link in my post:

After our first try we were aggravated that we could(n't) [sic] get it working and decided to try again the next day to finish our project. The next day to our amazment we found that the silos in our unfinished POS chain were full. After a short time we found out the reason for this phenomenon. The POS system was BUGGED.

In other words, in their failed attempt to get a moon harvesting POS (Player Owned Station) to gather moon resources, they found a bug where it would fill the silo with goods completely full after a nightly downtime... Something that normally would take months...

And if what I have read about the exploit is correct, the POS didn't even need to be fueled as they normally do (in order for a POS to mine moon resources they need to be maintained with fuel).

The player basically had a resource printing machine he used to generate trillions of isk from over the years. And we don't know yet just how many people had abused the exploit since they found it four years ago.

[OldeWolf]

Ha...Ha-haha, I'm so glad I quit EVE.

[Disgustipated]

Awesome. Conspiracies are so cool.

[Jeffool]

And this is why I love Eve, despite having never played it. The drama is insane, and it is real.

[Savok]

This may very well have killed the game...

[Narradisall]

lol, it'll be like the credit crunh of EVE where suddenly the expanded income from the exploit vanishes.

I'm impressed they managed to keep it quiet ON THE INTERNET for 4 years. Though if I was using it to print real money you bet I'd kep my mouth shut.

[OldeWolf]

There's not really much to EVE since everything is like DragonBallz; everything has to stretch out for months at end before you see any results. Not even real life is that slow.

[Crowe]

So this is going to have some far reaching in-game ramifications right?

[DangerousDaze]

FFS. This is getting ridiculous.

[Ten19]

Awesome to hear that these greedy fucks finally got caught, and it sounds like they'll be taking out as much of the ill-gotten money and materials as possible.

Oh and

Originally Posted by Savok

This may very well have killed the game...

Uh, no. Hardly. The other hundreds of thousands of subscribers will barely feel this. Especially since they've introduced Alchemy a few patches ago to help with the rare materials crunch. Life will go on for the economy, this will just be something else for the idiots to bitch about.

[Alkanos]

Originally Posted by Savok

This may very well have killed the game...

Nah, it's really doubtful this is game-killing. Though it's gonna hurt for a while, especially if you were someone who really benefited from these exploits. I don't mean the folks doing the resource-making, but what about the people who bought the resources and relied on them as suppliers? Those people are gonna have to find new ways to get what they need.

It's kinda funny, in the US we've got the whole Economic Crisis, and now there's one in EVE. I wonder if anyone'll get a bailout there?

[Shrinn]

Except suddenly removing a ton of ISK or materials can bump the economy vastly in one direction. And since the game is reliant on the strength of it's economy, it'll effect some people.

[Felonous]

More fallout and details from CCP regarding their investigation:

http://myeve.eve-online.com/news.asp...nid=2608&tid=1

On December 7th 2008, a date which will live in infamy, a petition from a concerned player alerted us to a serious problem with Starbase reactors. The petition had been filed five days earlier, a far longer waiting time than we can accept with our current queue status and we have now taken measures to fix that. We immediately started investigating the issue and found that there was indeed a problem and that it was being exploited to gain unfair advantages.

We discovered seven corporations with multiple Starbases set up for the express purpose of exploiting the issue. Three of those corporations were members of two alliances. We took immediate action against the offenders and banned over 70 accounts and destroyed all the Starbases run by the corporations in question. All the offending corporations are now effectively inactive as a result of our actions.

The corporations were producing high end materials for T2 production. Working with the Research & Statistics team we have established that the effects on the markets have been considerable and far reaching. The effects of our actions against the exploiters will also be felt on the market as the production of the materials has been cut substantially. However, supply should increase again once players have mastered the alchemy process.

December 7th is also the anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941. But this bombing is in a virtual world and it's impact on the virtual citizens should be quite interesting to follow.

So they have banned over 70+ accounts that were found to be involved in the exploit, and they found two large alliances to be involved. I'm sure there will be more to follow, but it's fun to already watch the finger pointing in the Eve forums.

[biosc1]

From what little I played of EVE last year, one thing I did notice was the sense of scale of everything. It's sort of nice to have some corruption in such a large place and then watch how it plays out, etc...adds a nice hint of the real world to it

[Goronmon]

Originally Posted by OldeWolf

There's not really much to EVE since everything is like DragonBallz; everything has to stretch out for months at end before you see any results. Not even real life is that slow.

Playing EVE is only slow at the very beginning. It's amazing how fast the playing complexity increases as you get into the more advanced stuff. It really becomes like a second job. Not in the "grind for 6 hours a day" type of way, just in the "So much shit to do that I can't stop playing" way.

[Telefrog]

Originally Posted by Felonous

More fallout and details from CCP regarding their investigation:

http://myeve.eve-online.com/news.asp...nid=2608&tid=1



December 7th is also the anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941. But this bombing is in a virtual world and it's impact on the virtual citizens should be quite interesting to follow.

So they have banned over 70+ accounts that were found to be involved in the exploit, and they found two large alliances to be involved. I'm sure there will be more to follow, but it's fun to already watch the finger pointing in the Eve forums.

They should've just had an in-game bombing by GMs and players on the offending sites. That would've been awesome.

[Felonous]

Originally Posted by Telefrog

They should've just had an in-game bombing by GMs and players on the offending sites. That would've been awesome.

Yea, it would have been cool if they used NPC titans to swoop in and bomb the shit out of the offending POS stations and players, and then put it all on video for everyone to watch.