Circle of Two and its Legacy of Betrayal

We are at the five year anniversary of Circle of Two Alliance (CO2) and its betrayal of the Imperium at the battle of M-OEE8.  Much digital ink has been expended in defending CO2’s actions on that day when, after fighting all day… as the battle was still going on… CO2’s leader GigX sent one of his FCs… not having the guts to do it himself… to tell the Imperium they were leaving the coalition.   They didn’t just leave coalition either, they aligned themselves with the Moneybadger Coalition and took up arms with our enemies to attack us.

One particularly whiny correspondent over at EN24 seems especially invested in pitching a scenario where CO2 was not simply justified in their betrayal, but trying to force that square theory into the round hole of it being the only real option they had.  They couldn’t wait until the fight was over to leave, as decency might have suggested, or couldn’t just exit the war without joining the enemy, as other alliances in the Imperium somehow managed to do.  They did everything exactly as they should have, according to at least one revisionist scribbler.

But here, five years down the road, with the distance that provides, you can decide for yourself if CO2 made the right call.

Certainly things went better for them initially.  The Moneybadger coalition, lavishly funded by the soon to be banned RMT bankers and their casino money, was certainly welcoming.  CO2 got to keep their stuff as they joined in attacking the erstwhile allies.  Meanwhile the idea of the undying enmity of the Imperium, by then living in the back of the Quafe Factory Warehouse in Saranen, seemed of little concern.  We were soon in retreat to Delve in the south.  There was a threat to follow us down, but we were beaten and shrunk and not deemed a threat.

And then the Moneybadgers turned on themselves which, to give them credit, they said they would do.  PanFam set itself against CO2 and TEST, now allies in Tribute and Vale of the Silent, a conflict that built up slowly but which culminated in another battle in M-OEE8, this time to witness the destruction of the CO2 Keepstar and the exit of CO2 and TEST from the north.  CO2 simply postponed their fate by betraying the Imperium.

In the south the Imperium setup to support the Russians in the regions where CO2 and TEST were attempting to invade, but after one big fight the Russians decided they did not have it in them and came to an agreement with the invaders.  Soon the Imperium and TEST were neighbors, with CO2 on the other side of TEST.  But TEST viewed PanFam as the real threat and came to an accommodation with the Imperium.

The Imperium, however, was still eyeing CO2 and happily worked with PanFam when the opportunity arose to knock out some CO2 titans.

And then came Judgement Day.

Sitting around on the former CO2 Keepstar

The Imperium orchestrated the betrayal of CO2 by The Judge, who was unhappy with how GigX had been running the alliance.  Even TEST,  their allies from the north, were happy to jump on and help out in the dismantling of CO2.  This seemed to be the end for the alliance as GigX was caught in game threatening The Judge with physical violence… something about cutting off his hands… which got him banned from EVE Online.

But the tale was not quite done.

Through subterfuge and CCP complacency GigX managed to get back into the game using an alias for his account, though he was quite open about it with the game itself.  He tried to get the band back together and set up shop in Fade after Pandemic Horde decided it was a bad neighborhood, what with the resurgent Imperium now in control of Fountain and roaming around next door in Cloud Ring.  But GigX didn’t mind.  He seemed to feel that his new allies… he was now running with Darkness and Guardians of the Galaxy… would have his back.

Their presence brought the Imperium north with CO2 as the primary target.

They held out for a bit, but soon enough they were losing structures, including their home Keepstar.   The war saw five Keepstars blown up in a single day, though only two of those belonged to CO2.  The war went badly for them, the lost their space and were in full retreat into the arms of PanFam for protection when CCP finally got around to applying GigX’s ban to his new account, effectively killing off the alliance once more. (They are still trying to rally support to get GigX unbanned.)

It remains an open question as to whether or not you can kill an alliance in EVE Online against its will.  Alliances tend to die from internal collapse.  That may be helped along by external factors, but many alliances have suffered huge defeats but had some nucleus of members stick with them to see them restored to some stature within the game again.

But the tale of CO2 going forward from the betrayal at M-2OEE does show that your behavior and reputation as an alliance, and as an alliance leader, does matter.  GigX and CO2 showed themselves to be fair weather friends and continued to pay a price for it over time.

So if you see somebody thrashing away with some rationalization about CO2 doing the right thing five years back, just remember what came of that choice.  When you make the bed, you get to sleep in it.

Skill Point Hand Out in EVE Online This Weekend

I guess skill points are the new incentive of late.  We used to get them as an apology present from CCP now and again, the last batch having arrived earlier this month because of the chat system issues.

But we’re also getting them as straight up handouts to incentivize people to log in.  There was the login event back in November.  And in December there were skill points given away for logging in during the 13 Days of EVE event.  And now we have… sn April Fools event I guess… where you get some free skill points for just logging into EVE Online.

Log in Friday, Saturday, and Sunday

As before, the skill points will be doled out over several days, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday this time around, and be split into Alpha and Omega rewards.

Alpha clones will be able to claim 25,000 skill points on each of the three days, for a total possible claim of 75,000 skill points.  Nothing to sneeze at.

Omega clones will get an increasing rate of rewards, earning 25,000 points for logging in on Friday, 50,000 for Saturday, and 100,000 skill points for Sunday.  Plus, Omega clones can claim the Alpha clone rewards as well, stacking up to a total of 250,000 skill points for just logging in three days running.

The skill points can be applied to any character on the account that logs in.

I am not sure what prompted this event, though the cynic in me does note that it is landing at the end of the first quarter of 2019.  Perhaps CCP has some monthly active user (MAU) goals it needs to achieve, so it is incentivizing getting people to log in to boost that number.

Whatever.  I’ll be logging in to claim my skill points.

The MER and Too Much ISK

The EVE Online monthly economic report is out for activity in February and I am not all that excited about it.

It has been two years since I started posting regularly about the EVE Online monthly economic report, this being the 24th such post.  At the start it was about charting the growth of the economy in Delve after we fled there following the Casino War.  Then it became an attempt to watch the economy over time, to chart the course, not anomalies, and to see if changes CCP made would have any impact on things.

Over time the monthly post became formulaic.  You can look at the last few months and see that I have noted a little rise in something here, a little decline in something there, that and event or a war meant people spent less time ratting and mining and more time blowing things up, but otherwise there hasn’t been all that much dramatic.

Basically, the idea has become a bore.  Not very exciting to write and, I suspect, even less so to read.

The New Eden economy is still important and is fairly unique in its pervasiveness in an MMORPG and I still want to write about it.  So, instead of the same dozen charts every month I think I will try to focus on one of two things that are indicative of some problem or change.

This month it will be a problem, and the problem will be that most wicked of problems, money… as in there is too much of it in the New Eden economy and somebody needs to turn down the taps.  The CSM minutes section the economy brings this up, both that it encourages botting and that it is driving up the price of PLEX.

They [CCP] say that the biggest problem is botting which is an ongoing for a long time. In general, CCP wants to tune down the faucets for ISK and minerals which they think are a bit high right now.

Even Hilmar was on about ISK during his AMA on the EVE Forums earlier.

I think the situation with the ISK economy is out of control. There are too many ways to create risk free ISK income streams.

There is a lot of ISK pouring into the game every month.

February 2019 – ISK Sinks and Faucets

Of the 107 trillion ISK that entered the economy via various faucets, 65% of it was from NPC bounties.  And February was a bit of a down month for ratting.

February 2019 – Top Sinks and Faucets over time

The month before it was 130 trillion ISK coming into the economy, with NPC bounties holding the same percentage.

CCP has been taking money out of the economy by chasing botters and illicit RMT, as covered over at The Nosy Gamer.  But that is a labor intensive effort that isn’t as easy as you probably imagine it, made even harder by the fact that a false positive… banning the wrong person… is more than a minor faux pas.  Meanwhile clever botters carry on undetected.  So CCP seems to be targeting anomaly ratting again.   I recently demonstrated how that could be a pretty hands off activity, making it a ripe avenue for bots.

While the Spring Balance changes coming in on the 9th of next month are headlined by a rework of remote repairs, there are a couple items in there likely aimed at botting and ISK generation.

The Vexor Navy Issue, the most favored sub-cap hull for null sec anomalies, is having its drone velocity boost removed, so anoms will take a bit longer, and its signature radius increased, so NPCs will be more likely to hit it.  Likewise, the Gila, more of an abyssal space boat, is having its drone hit point bonus reduced from 500% to 250%.

While cast as a PvP change, the planned nerf to fighter damage application versus subcaps will also have an impact on ratting, where the super carrier money machines lurk in relative safety.  This, and the March update to anomaly respawn times could have an impact on ratting income.

Maybe.

We’ll see.  I’d have expected more for such a high priority item.

And we won’t be able to see until May, which is when we’ll get the ratting data from April, so I will have to mark this down as something to come back to.  But I guess that was the idea.

Which leaves what to say about next month’s MER.  I think I will look into mining for that, taking a final measure or the rate of rock crunching in the report on March.

Anyway, all the usual charts and data are still available in the MER dev blog if you want the bigger picture.

Spring Movie League – Gnome Country for Old Men

The fourth week of our Spring Fantasy Movie League has now come and gone.

This week saw the long awaited downfall of Black Panther from the number one spot in the box office as well as another shake up in the overall Meta League standings.  The options for the week were:

Pacific Rim             $340
Black Panther           $251 
Sherlock Gnomes         $223
I Can Only Imagine      $176
Tomb Raider             $157 
Paul, Apostle of Christ $155
A Wrinkle in Time       $126
Love Simon              $98
Midnight Sun            $66
Unsane                  $58
Game Night              $56
Peter Rabbit            $50
The Strangers           $34
Red Sparrow             $34
Deathwish               $24

Way back at the start of last week, when the 5pm unlock happened on Monday, my opening gut pick was two screens of the upcoming Pacific Rim Uprising, five screens of Game Night, and one screen of Red Sparrow.  And had I fallen into a coma until 9:01am on Friday morning I would have been in very good shape… so far as Fantasy Movie League went at least… because that turned out to be the perfect pick for the week.  I had it in one.

Spring Week Four – Perfect Pick

Instead I had to watch the forecasts and predictions and weekday numbers and ponder what might come to pass.  I keep my own box office estimates in a spreadsheet and, looking at last week’s spreadsheet, I was pretty much spot on for most of the titles.  That is all very nice, but if you’re off by a fair margin on just a couple of key titles it can offset being right on all the rest.

On one end, the forecasts for Pacific Rim seemed to keep going down and down over the course of the week.  On Monday night $28 million seemed like a pretty reasonable estimate, but by Thursday there was so much hedging that $22 million seemed to be about what people would commit to.  At that price it wasn’t worth the screen space.  There were better options, including Black Panther.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the spectrum, I wouldn’t have given Sherlock Gnomes a second glance on Monday.  But for reasons still unexplained forecasts for it kept getting more and more rosy.  There was a nut case outlier calling for $18 million for it, but that only made the $16.5 million estimate seem that much more reasonable.  At that level, in a world where Pacific Rim might only make $22 million, four screens of it seemed like a sane choice.

And, I will admit, there was a bit of contrariness that made it attractive as well.  I spend most of the week looking for the non-obvious pick and, more often than not, outsmart myself.  And so it was that I went with 4x Sherlock Gnomes, 3x Deathwish, 1x Red Sparrow.

Spring Week Four – My Picks

And I certainly outsmarted myself this week.  When the first estimates came in on Saturday I knew I was sunk as they were calling Sherlock Gnomes at $10 million.  That sank to $9 million on Sunday, but rose back up to just past $10 million in the final count.

That was just enough for me to finish last among those who remember to pick for week four.  The final scores were:

1. Kraut Screens (T) – $81,618,699
2. Biyondios! Kabuki & Cinema (T) – $80,549,594
3. Darren’s Unwatched Cineplex (T) – $80,262,319
4. Po Huit’s Sweet Movie Suite (T) – $80,262,319
5. Dr Liore’s Evil House of Pancakes (M) – $79,892,432
6. Ben’s X-Wing Express (M) – $79,892,432
7. Paks’ Pancakes & Pics (T) – $79,281,301
8. Vigo Grimborne’s Medieval Screening Complex (T) – $78,686,090
9. Logan’s Luxurious Thaumatrope (M) – $75,464,430
10. Miniature Giant Space Hamsterplex (T) – $71,240,111
11. Joanie’s Joint (T) – $70,984,791
12. I HAS BAD TASTE (T) – $67,544,214
13. SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights (T) – $67,082,981
14. Skar’s Movies and Meat Pies (T) – $63,601,432
15. Goat Water Picture Palace (T) – $62,525,059
16. Bean Movie Burrito (T) – $55,069,114
17. Dan’s Decadent Decaplex (M) – $51,834,287
18. DumCheese’s Cineplex (T) – $50,625,047
19. Corr’s Carefully Curated Cineplex (M) – $48,323,514
20. Aure’s Astonishingly Amateur Amphitheatre (M) – $48,323,514
21. Wilhelm’s Broken Isles Bijou (T/M) – $48,323,514
22. JHW’s Cineplex (T) – $22,429,804 (Did not pick)

The Meta League Legend:

• TAGN Movie Obsession – players from it marked with a (T)
• MCats Multiplex – players from it marked with an (M)

Somehow the Gnome madness spread and there were three of us who bet it all on Gnomes, and together we sit at the bottom of the stack for week four.  Technically, of those three, I am the only one that qualifies as both “old” and “male” but this week’s title was the best I could come up with.  I wasn’t going to waste it just because it didn’t match the facts.

Meanwhile, the top end of the range is led by those who went with two screens of Pacific Rim, with Kraut Screens winning the week overall.

That led to some changes at the top of the season rankings for the Meta League.

1. Po Huit’s Sweet Movie Suite (T) – $423,783,431
2. Biyondios! Kabuki & Cinema (T) – $401,503,523
3. Ben’s X-Wing Express (M) – $401,405,223
4. Paks’ Pancakes & Pics (T) – $391,997,325
5. Dr Liore’s Evil House of Pancakes (M) – $377,484,414
6. Corr’s Carefully Curated Cineplex (M) – $374,380,118
7. Wilhelm’s Broken Isles Bijou (T/M) – $366,186,625
8. Goat Water Picture Palace (T) – $361,492,396
9. Joanie’s Joint (T) – $356,860,877
10. Logan’s Luxurious Thaumatrope (M) – $355,908,410
11. Dan’s Decadent Decaplex (M) – $353,564,566
12. Aure’s Astonishingly Amateur Amphitheatre (M) – $350,018,641
13. Vigo Grimborne’s Medieval Screening Complex (T) – $348,854,529
14. Kraut Screens (T) – $315,800,182
15. I HAS BAD TASTE (T) – $306,905,644
16. Darren’s Unwatched Cineplex (T) – $303,038,502
17. SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights (T) – $293,170,471
18. Miniature Giant Space Hamsterplex (T) – $282,526,179
19. Skar’s Movies and Meat Pies (T) – $271,907,602
20. DumCheese’s Cineplex (T) – $257,389,679
21. JHW’s Cineplex (T) – $213,011,790
22. Bean Movie Burrito (T) – $190,959,777

Po remained on top overall, but Corr and I fell back in the pack chasing him.  Meanwhile Liore, who went from 21st place to 10th place last week, continued her climb by hitting 5th position this week.  You troll her at your peril.  Fortunately for us gnome fanciers, overall it wasn’t a huge box office weekend.  There have been weeks in the past where a pick like that might have ended up with us being $140 million behind the perfect pick rather than just $40 million.

That brings us to week five, where the options look like:

 Ready Player One        $522
 Tyler Perry's Acrimony  $219
 Pacific Rim             $167
 I Can Only Imagine      $153
 Black Panther           $148
 Sherlock Gnomes         $91
 God's Not Dead          $75
 Love Simon              $71
 Isle of Dogs            $69
 Tomb Raider             $65
 A Wrinkle in Time       $54
 Paul, Apostle of Christ $41
 Game Night              $41
 Midnight Sun            $28
 Unsane                  $23

Deathwish, The Strangers, Red Sparrow, and Peter Rabbit all dropped off the list, the latter seemingly bad timing due to it being East this coming Sunday.

Showing up this week are Ready Player One, Tyler Perry’s Acrimony, God’s Not Dead, and the latest from Wes Anderson, Isle of Dogs. (If you aren’t sure about Wes Anderson, try this Honest Trailers video.)

Ready Player One is clearly expected to take the week.  Hell, it was directed by Steven Spielberg which guarantees it some box office exposure on that alone.  So my Monday evening 5pm pick was 1x Ready Player One, 2x Pacific Rim, and 5x Midnight Sun.

Then again, it is something of nerd culture thing, there seems to be something of a backlash about it in the very core of the audience one would expect to be embracing it, and Spielberg hasn’t exactly been delivering what his reputation might lead you to expect in the 21st century.  I mean, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls made a bunch of money, but I didn’t feel the need to buy a copy or even see it a second time.

Anyway, we’ll see if I stick with that pick or change up based on the misguided whims of various prognosticators again this week.

Flying Comes to WoW Legion

Today is the day, the day that the Tomb of Sargeras update, Patch 7.2, goes live in World of Warcraft.

Available now!

The update has been a while coming.  Blizzard was talking about it back at BlizzCon in early November.

But the patch delivers quite a bit of content.  The release notes are full of details.  The Broken Shore is now available, there is a new dungeon, pet battle dungeons, new incentives to grind reputation, new class campaigns, and, most of all, flying.

I haven’t played WoW for a while now.  I tapped out of WoW Legion before BlizzCon, having done all the main zone story lines and being otherwise uninterested in the daily rep grind or queuing up for random dungeons.  Flying makes me think about going back, but then I think about all the items on the list to get there and any thoughts of whipping out the credit card to re-subscribe fades.

Still, for those who remain invested, there is a bunch of new content available now.