As an Empire miner (Veldspar, Scordite, Pyroxeres, Kernite) I make approx 50-60mil a day. Yes, I sit for 4-5hours in front of my pc listening to the hum of the strip miners. I currently have two toons, one is industry and one is combat (pvp/pve).

Sometimes I buy two PLEX to pay for my time, others, I pay good ol' fashion American $$. With two accounts at 14.95ea. and a $2.00 forgien transaction fee as well, I pay roughly $37 a month to play EVE. And I'm happy to do it, too. My wife, not so much.

Even with all the screaming and hollering about how broken the game is with nullsec sov mechanics or with the supercap issues, or even with the Goons trying to corner the blue ice market. I love this game. I love the community of it. For better or worse, I will always be here to play.

What does concern me, tho, is all this talk about real money transfers and bots. I don't pretend to know if those out in nullsec do use bots. I don't pretend to know that the Goons are the biggest user of bot programs. But, what I do know is that CCP has started a player driven organization called the Council of Stellar Management. The CSM was started as a way for the players to voice their concerns with CCP about game related issues. If the CSM is comprised mainly of players from the Goons, and the Goons are one of the largest, if not the defacto largest player base in the game, then its not hard to come to a conclusion that somewhere along the way the CSM has lost the voice of the players, and become the voice of the Goons.

On any other subject I wouldn't care less if the entire CSM was comprised of all Goons. But, with all this talk of moving more mining related stuff out of Empire space to nullsec, where the Goons control most of it anyways, then we are just putting more ISK into the Goons wallets. By itself, its nothing, and I could give two ***** about it. But, with all this talk about RMT's taking place out in nullsec, and CCP wanting to put more ISK into the Goons hands, or any other large alliance out in nullsec (Sorry Goonies, I'm just using you guys as an example), I have to begin to wonder if some sort of duplicity, whether intentional or not, on CCP's part isn't taking place.

If CCP is oblivious to the fact that quite possibly they are being taken advantage of for RMT's, then the best solution for them, so there is no question in anyones mind, is to immediately do away with botting. I know they can trace their own clients from their servers, so its not an unrealistic ability. However, if they are complicit in their dealings with the Goons, or any other large alliance out in nullsec, who are using bots for the sole purpose of RMT's and if they are in some fashion getting returns for this, then this is nothing more than perpatrating fraud on the player base, which is against the law, everywhere in the world, except for Somalia.

I'm not accusing anyone of botting, and I'm definately not accusing anyone of RMT's or CCP's hand in any of it. I'm just drawing a possible conclusion based on what I've read in the last two weeks here on the forums and in the blogs by the Devs about moving mining related stuff out of Empire to nullsec.

I love my sandbox, and I love the other kids that play in it. Goons too. They add a spice to the game that you can't find anywhere else. But, it scares the hell out of me that quite possibly CCP is being taken advantage of all in the name of "better game mechanics".

You may commence flamming this post now. Enjoy. I know I'm going to.

Which is disappointing. We're shooting for 8/9 next time. Trebor can stay so we can continue to make fun of "crowdsourcing".

In a weird way, the Goon campaign is proving that moving ice into null and allowing it to be controlled (like moons) causes prices to skyrocket and access to drop.