Hi all
Ok, so I used to spend a decent amount on the Blink scam 
To be honest, I can’t remember why that site was shut down and anyway I’m not here to judge.
I thought it was a fun experience to buy tickets for the lotteries and I’m wondering:
Does any Blink like site exist out there today?
… Or did CCP permanently outlaw those kinds of services?
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Lotteries with CCP’s assets (aka: everything in the game) as a prize are now forbidden by the EULA.
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Aw man…
Yeah, it sucks. One bad apple spoils the bunch.
Something, something RMT
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Worse is so many AT ships vanished with that muppet
Somer was hardly a muppet. Having been screwed over by CCP and their inability to make a similar decision more than once in a row, he ensured his team made good all outstanding contracts to winners before the site went down. He was a decent guy
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Since his assets and isk were forfeit, what else can he do? Might as well go down making people think youre a good guy.
Also, did you ever think to realize that the reason he wanted to “pay the winners” before being banned was because he had alt accounts and accounts from friends who had “won” things from his site? And that this would allow him and his friends to keep the exhorbitant amounts of isk and items that he had earned?
All of his accounts were banned. He had no access to the eve servers. Outstanding winners were not “friends” or “alts” merely players on the site. What use is isk to a player that had no access to any of his accounts.
Unlike other copycat sites, Somerblink was never rigged or favoured any one player over another. All wins were randomly generated including the free ones.
CCP had to be part of Somer. The rate at which Capital ships, especially super carriers and Titans were given away, it would be impossible for the entirety of Eve players to produce them that fast. The only way it was feasible would be for CCP to be dropping them into Somer’s hangars. The time necessary to produce even a carrier, much less a titan just makes it impossible to have been player-made.
Yeah, cause theres no way to change your IP address, VPN doesnt exist…
And you know this how?
The problem with gambling sites that have no oversight, isny rigging. Its the inclusion of alts and sock puppet accounts.
Lets say there are 5 items that are up for betting. If somer had placed an alt account to take 40 percent of the slots of each bet, even if the selection is random, he basically recieves 2 of the 5 items for free at the cost of everyone else who bet on the item.
I mean, can you name all my alts? ALL of them? How wpuld you know which of my characters are actually my alts?
That would depend on whether somer was paying out the ships, or just the cost of the ship in isk. But there were, and even now, are a lot of titans and capital ships out there, so ita not necesarily impossible.
Do you know how long it takes to build a Titan? A battleship even? A BS is the better part of a day with full bonuses. The titan is ~1 month, at least was at the time SomerBlink was live. Don’t forget they were also giving away subcapitals many many times over what they were giving away in capitals. And each one of those ships has to have it’s own production slot… of which players are limited. So you can either suspend reality and accept that every production slot in the game was exclusively reserved for SomerBlink or you can come back to reality and understand that the entire thing was impossible without CCPs involvement. It was an ISK sink for CCP to suck up money from players in order to increase the demand for buying PLEX with IRL $$$$.
I preferred evebet.
Subcapitals have been completely flooding the market, so i dont understand your objection. Its not like there was a megathron shortage in the past couple years. There have always been thousands available on the market.
Also, i very much doubt the winning of a titan was both very common, and almost ever paid out instantly. Infact, if i remember correctly, almost every single item in somer blink had the option to be paid out in the isk value of the item. Its not like there were a lot of people requesting to have a titan insterad of a hundred bill. I mean, how many players could actually pilot one? And had a spare alt to sit in it all day at a pos? And were they sitting in jita, or were the winners told that it would take time to transfer a titan?
I would be surprised if even 1 out of every 100 titan winners actually ever opted to go for the item itself rather than thre cash equvalent.
I’m laughing that you believe Somer made the ships given away ( thanks this made my day)
Contracts were made for the winners, a team of fulfilment staff fulfilled those contracts by purchasing the item in Jita or as close as possible for capital ships. ( delivery was made by a team of haulers) If someone took the isk value instead of the ship the isk was paid directly to their wallet.
It’s a shame it was removed, the team was great.
Do you even know when SomerBlink was happening?? Yes, Titans and Supers were given away and played for often. When I was out of work and had all day every day to play Eve, I had a corp mate who played SomerBlink religiously. On TeamSpeak… A dozen times an hour… “I just won a Dread…” “I just won a Rorq…” “I just won an Orca…” “I just won a Nyx…”
One day of his winnings would take 5 accounts with maximum industry skills months to fulfill his winnings alone. While, yes, he did at times take ISK instead, he would more often take the ship and sell it at discount compared to market prices, while still making his profit because the entry ISK was a fraction of the market price. But the point is that when he chose the ship, he got the ship, no matter the size.
I played it dozens of times myself on sub-capitals and won some and lost some, but you could order up any ship at any time and within minutes the bets were full and everyone was on to the next.
Production for SomerBlink would have been absolutely impossible without developer intervention. There is no other way to look at it.
So, when he won a nyx, how was it delivered, and how fast?
I mean, titans and supercaps are notable in the fact that they cant be docked(back then). Rorqals and dreads can be docked and were even listed on the market for a very long time.
My understanding is lotteries are allowed if they’re in the form of a giveaway. There’s one called The BIG Lottery.
Entry is completely free.
Also Eve Radio regularly does giveaways.
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I never asked or played for a super myself so I don’t know. Are you suggesting that titans and super-carriers weren’t played for on Somer??