This is an extremely cool story about an elaborate "virtual heist" in an online multiplayer game that illustrates how elaborate the social structures in these massively multiplayer onling roleplaying games can be.
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Thank god for color scanners. MMODIG refers us to this simply amazing PC Gamer article by Tom Francis about a simply amazing PvP coup/heist pulled off in Eve Online (which is a game I find simply amazing anyway).
Through a months-long ruse, one player corporation infiltrated another top to bottom, assassinated its CEO (who had a bounty on her head) and made off with about $16,500 worth of virtual goods. Francis's story chronicles the heist and provides great insight into what makes Eve such a rich galaxy.
The thing that's so great about the piece (besides its being written in a serious narrative style that completely works) is that it illustrates the best thing about MMORPGS: the complex social interactions that can spring up within them. Despite a couple of people who will cry that this constitutes some kind of real-world theft, everything that happened was well within both the letter of Eve law (i.e., the Terms of Service) and the stated aims of the game. It was a despicable act by a known criminal organization, but this is exactly the kind of sophisticated PvP conflict Eve is meant to generate. The fact that things like this are happening in the game is testament to the success of its design.....
Written by Mark Wallace
- carpe noctem