Gindar
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Posted - 2005.11.30 19:09:00 -
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said it before i'll say it again, but to me the problem is quite clear.
the farming/macro concept was created before ccp was ever a company. eve was probably targetted because it offers some risk-free farming situations where isk can be made (0.9 mining). mining was probably targetted as primary choice, because the risk factor is 0.
many of you may have read "the great scam" about the zzzbest apoc bpo pool, that was done years ago. you might remember, that in it the author mentions how he encountered a guy running a macro on several accounts. that was in beta, late 2002/early 2003.
for a long while i think, these macro people lived underground and were few in number. it's easier to make isk doing other things like missions, pirating etc. the main goal was always simple... easy isk. a goal shared by many players. the macro is just a kind of person who didn't have too much time to play the game, or just wanted to make the isk without so much effort.
that is why the risk-free, high sec mining was targetted, it was the easiest way to do it. so it stayed like this for over a year.
then, when exodus was released, there was a chinese version of the game (complete with mandarin unicode support) that made it possible for chinese players to play without having to know any english. most chinese don't know any english, at all. between europe/usa and eastern asia it is the largest culture gap and literally and figuratively on the other side of the world.
this is by no means racist. in fact i love the chinese culture and have been studying the language for over a year. but there is just a couple things you should know. china has a population of over 1 billion. of that great mass of people, over 200 million have access to the internet. and that number is growing. the chinese economy is creating a class system by accident, divided by wealth. similar to american capitalism, the past 10-20 years have been a boom for industry with a huge working class. yet most people are still living in poverty, put up with very bad working conditions, and in general do not have the civil rights that western nations take for granted.
in the "interview with a macro miner" thread, the macro miner says to the curious interviewer in broken english, "i need money"
just because they're running automated accounts that don't reply when you convo them doesn't mean these people are mute.
1.00 USD United States Dollars = 8.07600 CNY People's Republic of China Yuan Renmenbi (Source: XE Currency Converter http://www.xe.com/ucc/)
americans and europeans will pay good money for that isk. multiply that by 8 or 9. it's like a whole other world there in the people's republic, financially, culturally, prettymuch everything. their cultural isolation is comparable to the poor, urban, predominantly black ghettos here in the united states.
"man, moment, machine..." (pardon me for quoting history channel)
the stage has been set. the right kind of person, and lots of them. the moment, present day captialist communist china. the machine: the macro.
they didn't invent the macro. as i said it has been around eve for years. and if you wanted to know, the technology is over 15 years old. it's c++ manipulation, probably involves some basic virus/*****ing programming methods to manipulate the eve client.
someone probably heard of it, found one of the websites that distributes it, began using it, and saw how it is profitable. they tell their friends, who in turn tell their friends (social networking is intrinsic part of chinese culture) and that's how you've seen it spread like a virus.
the real remedy is to shut down these distribution websites, and get the message out that isk farmers are not welcome in eve. simply banning them or kicking them out of the game doesn't tell them that. threatening, punishing doesn't tell them that, just as a kid won't undersand when their parent yells at them.
in conclusion, the setting was ripe for this all along. fix it plz 
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