Dev blog: The Handover Of Serenity – Thank You & Farewell

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Well the Nazis in West Germany predicted the separation wouldn’t stay until 1960. They knew Soviet Russia lost a lot of infrastructure (and around 20 Million people) during the war and didn’t have enough ressources to build up East Germany anywhere as economically strong as the US could afford to do with West Germany, since the US lost about as much as they profited (for instance with American companies selling to the Nazis during the war). Also the East had problems to re-create social order, while in the West, the Allied forces simply let pretty much all old Nazis stay in their position. So they had high hopes for rather soonish re-acquiring the East.

It was not so much about the Wall though. The Wall was wanted by all sides when it was erected. The separation of Germany as a direct consequence of World War II and after that the confrontation of Capitalism vs. Socialism aka Cold War, made Germany into potentially hot territory. The Wall was the only way to avoid escalation of the War, something which most people didn’t want considering the availability of Nuclear weapons on both sides. East Germany simply came first to building it in order to have control over the demarcation line.

Later on the “West” of course pretended that the Wall was just the invention of “evil” east. Lol.

How people can believe the lies of countries (especially one) who pretty much started every war after WW2, mass murdered hundreds of millions, created modern day terrorism by building up the islamists in Afghanistan and supporting those in Saudi Arabia, waging war against their own population… this… this is mind boggling. Not the Wall coming down. This was just the consequence of Socialism and especially the inhabitants of East Germany being a bit foolish in believing that the two states could peacefully live together while accepting each others way.

2 years after the Wall came down poverty struck East Germany. People suddenly had to worry about how to get food on the table, how to have a home. The companies didn’t belong to everyone anymore, they belonged to the West. Let me tell you this: East Germans have been f*cked over by the West. They wanted more democracy in their state, not the cold-hearted brutality of Capitalism. :slight_smile:

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The Wall coming down isn’t the mind boggling part to me, it’s that the Wall was a reality only 14 years earlier.

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Studies show that conditions (real life) can indeed be, and often are, part of what enables / feeds / uses RMT, as well as automation/botting.

But that is but one part of it, and it is a transient part of it. When players from Russian beyond Moscow and Petrograd started to join it introduced a lot of people who could barely afford or be able to play EVE. Conditions were ripe for subversive behaviour, organised or otherwise. But that did change. Not just because of changes in local conditions, but also through exposure in game. Even in those days you did not need to buy ISK in order to play for free. You could get there by being smart, having a good team, insights and experience.

The triggers diminished. And as pointed out earlier, CCP was on the ball.

But here’s the thing. It impeaches on basis and required functionality of the dynamic. So whatever causes and variables, as sad or painful as it may be, these lay beyond a hard line of rulesets.

So yes, botters are judged, harsly and rightly so. Regardless. Because it is not just a human perspective, it is also a business perspective. On top of that, every human perspective in the mix depends on the health of the whole, and thus on the behaviour of all the little human gas molecules in the mix.

Dude, don’t. Honestly, just don’t. It’s not Reddit here. Way too many bad hooks there.

Anyway, back on topic.

Did Serenity have severe issues, yes. It shows in the state of conditions, economics as well as in RMT and Plex prices. I mean, it’s a little different still from TQ, but for purposes of analogy, consider your montly plex consumption to cost the equivalent of a supercarrier.

Is that relevant to the situation Tiancheng / CCP, maybe, that falls outside of the scope of players.

Will CCP continue Serenity, most likely, they’ve had close to two years to prep after the agreement to wind things down and end the arrangement.

Will that Serenity become more like TQ, or be more in tune with a different business model - which might be more suitable to local markets compared to other standard games (but which would take it away from deep stories and mythologie and creating experiences), we’ll see.

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I have faith that CCP will handle the challenges of Serenity and the Chinese market in a way that will eventually benefit Tranquility and all of Eve Online. I really want CCP to succeed. I hope that CCP will succeed and keep Eve Online active and available and interesting to play to as many different types of cultures and English language players; and also especially to non-English language players and players from non-Western aligned cultures as technically and financially and politically possible.

The real world is a very diverse place and most everyone living sees and experiences life in the real world very differently from everyone else who lives on this planet. Differences in language and culture and tribal affiliation usually do not bring real world nations and tribes and individuals more into harmony and cooperation with each other, but usually just provide more excuses for conflict and aggression. This often makes life in the real world challenging and frustrating and dangerous and unfair and complex to the point of often being overwhelming.

In the real world, violent and non-violent aggression towards anyone and everyone who speaks a different language or who belongs to a different tribe or who has a different set of values or culture seems to me to be a very bad thing that has resulted in horrible human suffering for thousands of years. But I think that in a fantasy video game that allows violence and aggression and specifically rewards and encourages violence and aggression, the more diverse everyone playing is from everyone else in terms of language and culture and ways of thinking and doing things (and even timezone differences); the more diverse and disunited everyone is in the real world is who wants to play this game, the more interesting and fascinating this game will ultimately be.

Bring all people who are from all real world nations and tribes and languages and cultures into Eve Online however it can be possibly done. And let everyone vent their innately programmed propensity towards selfishness and violence and self interest within our own favorite video game. And maybe this will eventually help teach people how to cooperate with and understand and be tolerant towards all of our many neighbors in the real world.

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I disaggree. People who do RMT in games are professionals, they will use any game profitable to gain money. And like any business they run business in multiple games simultaneous to reduce risk, and won’t mind if one of them died.

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Organized boting exists because TianCity turn a blind eye on RMT. I can’t comment on why but it certainly wired. After all anything is possible if you can profit from it.

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Well, it’s not exactly a secret. It came to be because people did not think about consequences. It came to be beause people were used to making business on the side. And, let’s be honest, it also came to be because CCP got a bit of the same dual treatment any western business got in those days. These are more or less the factors at play in regards to TianCity’s (employees) getting down in their trenches.

On a player level it’s less clear. There’s socio-economic conditional elements, there’s differences in gaming industry perception, there’s variables of different expectations of how games work or should work, and there is a lot to be said about the choices in player organisation over the years made by players themselves.

On both levels it is a bit of a warning sign for CCP on TQ. When you focus in individual botting/rmt activity, you miss the organised variants of that kind of thing. On Serenity, that got the support (both active and passive) from TianCity (and I suspect they still haven’t been honest about these things to CCP). On Tranquility, CCP is a lot closer to things, so there has traditionally been less overlap between individual/organised subversive activity, and that is a big factor in introducing or steering direction of general behaviour within a game dynamic.

It’s something a lot of people seem to forget in TQ’s discussions on botting and CCP focusing too much on the individual levels of that. It is a dire necessity to do so. If CCP didn’t do this, they would allow subversive behaviour to become normalised. And that would put TQ on the same road as Serenity. But as mentioned by quite a few people in topics here and elsewhere, they should also figure out the issues of organised subversive activity. Because that is the other half of it. It may be a much bigger half in terms of ripples and footprint, but EVE is not just a game, it is a pressure vat of emergent behaviour so that first half of behavioural normalisation processes is a fight they will always have to fight relentlessly.

TianCity simply didn’t. And some of TianCity did something worse. But there is also a bit of responsability for CCP to take in that regard. The agreement to disagree and say farewell is from longer ago than just last month or so … Leaving a vacuum is never a good thing when it comes to humans.

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@CCP_Falcon Little error in the Article about the Serenity Handover [Picture of said Paragraph linked below]
“We also offer our thanks to Tiancity for their continued efforts to host events in order to offers as much new content to our pilots on Serenity as possible”

offers -> offer

Flies Away

image
19b0f85f50.png878×161 64.9 KB

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Well serenity doesn’t even have free to play, i think you’re reading this blog wrong as serenity is an entirely different server, to gank over there they would need paid subs, nothing on TQ really changes as a result

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Despite all the botting issues and how Tiancity was being irresponsible.

As a former player：
o7 Serenity

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Well I don’t like if people talk about the history of my country as if some nice uncle on the other side of the ocean made it all good in the end. It’s not true. You’re right, it isn’t reddit. The forums are a place for less circle-jerk and more in-depth discussion. Anyhow back to the topic…

It’s important to not immediately think of botting connected to RMT. CCP stated that the majority of RMT-related bans had their origin in accounts being compromised. It seems also realistic. Botters will have cost in terms of equipment and electricity and they are limited in throughput. RMTers, in most western countries at least, are probably commiting real crimes, by not paying taxes on their profits.

Botting seems to be more of way for in-game poors who don’t know how to make proper ISK/hour.

I’ve done a bit of research on the topic and came across people who offer bots via a forum. What I found totally astonoshing is the pity amount of profit they promise with their “product”. I’ve read about something like 3-4 Billion a month for some ratting bot that runs a couple of hours per day. There were quite a lot of replies to this offer, people asking questions and giving reports. Now I’m asking: why would anyone risk their accounts, especially or this kind of pocket change?

I think they want to avoid the learning curve and obstacles at the beginning. They don’t enjoy the grind part of EVE and they either don’t know or aren’t in the position for non-grindy in-game income. There are many players like this, but most will simply buy PLEX from CCP to even out the devide between in-game rich and in-game poors in their favor.

Those who bot are either unable to pay the extra or they think they’re extra smart by paying the bot-makers instead of CCP. About the guys who can’t afford PLEX: at least CCP made it cheaper to buy a subscription in certain countries with an income far lower than western average.

Wasn’t it that players successfully sued TianCity so they had to leave botters alone?

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A six year licensing agreement comes to an end.

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I’m pretty sure Codeites existed before Alphas.

–Sure Gadget

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Yeah… we already had that and the crybabies wailed and gnashed their teeth until it got nerfed.

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Did someone say “bot immigration to Tranquility”?

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Personally I never thought the separate server should have existed. If China feels the need to isolate itself then let them. If they want to open it up to let their people play games with the rest of the world then that would be ideal. I’ve never understood the idea of capitulating to people who will let you do your thing but only if you do it their way cause at that point it’s not really yours any more is it?

Originally CCP stated the reasoning behind the server in China was to expand their market to fund projects and based on what people are saying here it was basically milked by the people who bought the license and has such a small base of players that the odds of it suddenly taking off and doing any better is null. I mean someone said their player base is literally asking for cataclysm so give it to them.

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On the other hand - it isolates most of the bots and cheaters to a separate server.

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What?.. Uh, will we be getting a commemorative skin to mark this occasion?

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I know we will merge with the serenity players in china once they ( up grade )catch up with all the rest of us on tranquility in the future , maybe 20…
8)…8() A thought … can we both meet through a giant wormhole some were in gemini . with gifts of bpc’s , ships , upwells,fireworks , to welcome our new friends to the new culture we already have.

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I wish it was that simple but it isn’t anything we can do as player or ccp can do why people do RMT the only ccp and we can do report botter and hope ccp does something about the botters I see a lot of stats this many botter been banned from game but I see more and more around

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