The scythes wide swing.

We investigate how the recent changes to the Drone regions may have solid repercussions for all of us.



You'd be hard pressed to form a solid argument that botting wasn't rampant throughout EVE Online. A common and more or less socially acceptable practice in larger Nullsec Alliances, botting involves using a program which effectively takes control of your character and proceeds to perform actions that net you ISK without you ever having to pay attention to the computer. Ultimately it seems that botting has no significant effect on the markets despite is remarkably high prevalence. We can measure this effect by measuring the price of PLEX's, or Concord Pilots Licence Extensions which has remained relatively stable over the course of the last year with an exception being a spike in prices in late 2010. This was mainly the result of CCP's announcement that they would introduce a 'PLEX for remap' system which would allow you to perform a neural remap in exchange for one PLEX. I can't say that I personally objected to the idea, but many did. So many in fact that CCP rolled back their plans and shelved it for another day. But I can see this feature rearing its head again in the future.

It appears, however, that botting is more common above all else in the Drone Regions, where the majority of CCP's Russian player-base reside. CCP has seen fit to dramatically reduce the salvageable and lootable materials that drop from the Drone NPCs as a result. Having once lived in Cobalt Edge, the furthest Eastern region in the game, I can assure you that making life harder for those living there won't drive them to abandon their bots - in fact it may serve to reinforce their desire to use them. Consider for a moment that you already live in a region in which you need to work twice as hard as everyone else to extract a means to survive. Add to this the fact that with no bounty ticks, ISK may only be acquired from the marketplace, which can significantly hinder the speed at which you acquire the funding you need to live and also the amount of income you actually make.

On the flip side, this may work as a two pronged attack on two serious problems that CCP feels it needs to address. The first is RMT, or 'Real Money Trading'. Apparently - and this is entirely hearsay - the most RMT that occurs in EVE does tend to come out of the Drone Regions. There are individuals making a comfortable living in the real world from vendoring off their ISK to the highest bidder. CCP objects to this greatly, and they're not alone. Activision Blizzard, developers of World of Warcraft also see this as a significant problem and routinely take steps in order to prevent it from occurring. These changes are not as drastic as destroying an entire corner of their games markets, but it's hard to make contrasts between World of Warcraft and Eve Online, given that they're so dramatically different.

The second issue is that it could help to rustle the feathers of the drone regions and work to dispell a great amount of stagnancy that exists in Nullsec. I've addressed this before, but the Drone Regions suffer from indifference in the face of sovereignty warfare in the same way the northern regions do. Add to this the large flexible mercenary groups that act as guns for hire, fighting sovereignty warfare for the oligarchy as they count their space gold, and the map doesn't tend to change too much. But this may ultimately result in groups like Legion of xXDEATHXx and Solar Fleet eyeing the north as a more profitable resource, and should that happen - One of the most dramatic wars in EVE's history could break out.

In the end I'm not sure if I agree with CCP's angle on tackling this problem. Given that the punishment for actually being caught botting is so soft (a mere 3 day suspension of play) all of this action seems somewhat tongue in cheek. Perhaps CCP's penalization of our Russian friends is somewhat heavy handed and how this affects us all in the long run, only time will tell.

~ WT