I'm sorry but this borders on the surreal.

The game client has been hacked. Apparently there are commercial bots that no longer need to run the eve client to operate. As exposed in the eve news article, this sort of botting isn't only widespread, it goes unchecked and pumps trillions in the economy.

Entire 0.0 power blocs are demonstrated, through dotlan anecdotal evidence and other reports, as being strictly supported by RMT and botting.

Trit and Ice are at an all time low. It's the players themselves doing the investigation and exposing to the rest of you the full the extend of botting in the current EVE universe.

And you give us what? Plenitudes, and a "heck of a job brownie" pat on the back for petitioning? Is this supposed to be a joke? Don't you realize that botting is the biggest threat to EVE as a game? As players come to the conclusion that they are competing in a rigged environment, that spending those 4 or 5 hours ratting or mining for a couple of extra million actually makes you look like a fool when the guy next door just runs his bot and is never short on isk?

Who wants to play in this sandbox? Why would any sane person ever rat or mine for isk when the payoff competes with 23/7 bots?

I really don't thing CCP even realizes the impact bots are having on their game.

• Renting 0.0 space now surpasses the 10 billion mark simply because bots set the new standard, shutting real players out.


• Nobody actively mines. Prices are so low that you need a bot to actually pay off the effort.


• Missions rewards (implants) have recently returned back to the pre unholy rage price range, negating its effects completely.

I know a good portion of the EVE player base couldn't care less about botting. The PVP crowd just needs cheap ships and a steady income to replace them so they aren't going to make a lot of noise about this. Same for CCP. I'm sure Hilmar nearly collapsed when he realized that unholy rage would mean 15k less paying subs. Bots buy plexes and plexes pay salaries.

But my biggest gripe is with the CSM. Everyone threw a hissy fit due to neural remaps for plex, when those would still be available free to the player (once per year) and could be purchased through in game isk. But botting, which completely distorts and cripples this game, and is something that CCP has been ambiguous about (due to their own $ interest) doesn't top the discussions every single meeting?

We are nearing a threshold here folks. When real players, specially new players, cannot compete in the sandbox unless they bot, and whats going to become of EVE then?