Ragnar
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Posted - 2003.08.08 07:41:00 -
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I posted this on another thread but thought perhaps it should go here. Incidentally, as always, Taggart has role-played the entire incident to help maintain the integrity of the game and the story line. See http://oldforums.eveonline.com/?a=topic&threadID=23341 for that.
Original post below:
As CEO of Taggart (TTI), these are my first public OOC statements on the matter.
What Saruu said in his original post is entirely true.
Taggart bases its reputation on being solid and reputable businessmen. Yes we may be a so-called ômegacorpö, but our rising tide raises all the corps that conduct business with us. We have a symbiotic relationship with countless other good corps in EVE. A majority of the ones you see deriding us in public have many private deals already in place with us.
It seemed PERFECTLY plausible to me that GMs were out there doing ômini-eventsö, having role-playing sessions in deep space, slowly distributing unique Jovian items here or there. This matches with the ômysteriousö Jovian theme the gameÆs RP is based on, and a slow introduction of this race into the gameÆs culture is expected. Furthermore, it is natural economic sense how the best items end up in the wealthiest corps. (As someone in another thread correctly posted: There is a reason the finest Alaskan Salmon ends up in New York City 24 hours later.)
I found Saruu to be a wonderfully nice guy and an excellent role-player. In fact, most of my dealings with him in game were all very well role-played, as we discussed the nature of the Jovians and this strange encounter we had. Sure, he could have made up this elaborate story to ôtrickö me into buying a hacked item or whatever, but, again, the idea the GMs were out there introducing a few Jovian items made perfectly good sense.
Every game has unique items here or there. Not enough to completely unbalance the game, but a few. Naturally we were gonna try to reverse engineer the thing, but I assume that when Rev Eng comes into the game that certain items have a very low likelihood of being reverse engineered.
It also seemed reasonable to me that CCP wanted the Jovians and mysterious encounters to be discussed in a public forum, to add to the role-playing depth and the technological future of the game. In that belief, I worked on a few stories (http://oldforums.eveonline.com/?a=topic&threadID=23341) about the incident in a pure role-playing manner for the intergalactic summit. I even included a picture of the Jovian ôt0rfifransö (btw, itÆs a shame Jovians have to use numbers in their names like late 1990Æs l33t Quake players) that Saruu emailed me to enhance the story I wrote. I have been accused of ôname droppingö, which is completely absurd because, to me, if a Jovian appears in game to hand out items and introduce the race, they can expect their name to become well known. You better believe the first alien that lands on Earth will have his name pretty well known, even if it can only be properly annunciated by dolphins. I didnÆt claim to be sitting at Starbucks having iced frappucinos with T0rfifrans every evening, I just simply included him in the story for the benefit of the role-playing community that was interested in this mysterious race, as this may have very well been ôfirst contactö, and Saruu had every reason to be excited by the prospect.
So the usual cast of idiots and Taggart haters came out and called us cheaters and photoshoppers and exploiters then paraded around their cause du jour, only to be proven completely wrong less than 12 hours later by both CCP and Saruu. Yes, the story of Ragnar/Saruu conflicts with the story by CCP, and I am sure it will be settled at some point (Edit: thanks to Torfi it is now cleared up). Both stories certainly agree that that was no cheating, photoshopping, exploiting, or favors from people affiliated with CCP. With that salient fact, all you forum trolls with no life can go back to your Taggart-hating meditation pods and invent some other nonsensical reason to hate us now.
Thank you again to Jade Constantine who has worked tirelessly with me in this matter to conduct herself in a professional and role-playing manner. I also thank the Venal Alliance and the few other supporters we had that new all along that Taggart was above reproach in the matter.
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Ragnar Danneskj÷ld
Taggart Transdimensional, Inc.
http://www.taggarttransdimensional.com |