Vast Goon Conspiracy Ensnares Even Its Foes!

The Goons, not content to infiltrate CCP and subvert democracy, have apparently co-opted their foes on and off the Council of Stellar Management as well.

Take CSM member Tredbor Daehdoow, who was, in his own words, the target of Goon smear campaign as part of the last CSM election.

Tredbor, who had this to say about the Goon’s CSM goals.

And that is exactly why The Mittani and his buddies are running for CSM. He’s realized that it is actually very, very effective at influencing CCP, and he wants to try to use it as a vehicle to advance his own petty in-game interests, at the expense of the vast majority of the players of EVE.

And while he managed to overcome the Goon onslaught and get elected to the 6th CSM, he is probably in the corner of, “Goons are bad, mmkay?”

And yet Tredbor seems to be pretty much on board with The Mittani’s views about the lack of focus on Flying in Space (FiS) development in the game, as stated in the now famous/infamous Nuclear Winter Goon CEO update.

The Mittani speaks... and he has a cool icon!

And there is Shadoo, who is not on the CSM but who is, The Mittani says, “…at the moment, my enemy,” and who seems to see merit in the goals of the agenda of the Goons.

Apart from the first few paraghraphs feeding the new found pubbie empire, that is a pretty good stab at where EVE is at and what needs to be looked at. A good CEO update for sure.

Microfixes are no longer enough to keep this aging game afloat, radical changes are needed which I have no doubt CCP will not have the balls or the resources to commit to without a strong as fuck kick in the ass.

Nerfs focus on fixing shit in isolation, but unless you address the core of the issue the imbalance will simply shift to something new. Just like it did with supers.

So you have to admire the guile and power of the Goons and their CEO/Spymaster, The Mittani. They are apparently unstoppable in their drive to get what they want, able to turn their foes to their point of view and subvert the company itself.

We might as well just change the company name from CCP, Crowd Control Productions, to GCP, Goon Controlled Productions and declare the age of  Pax Goonicana… Goonaria… Goonatopia… hrmm… the Empire of the Goons!

Unless, of course, they actually have some sort of legitimate point that resonates with their friends and foes alike in 0.0 space. (Along with some people at CCP who care about that aspect of the game.)  In which case this might just be another example in the long, long tradition of a specific sub-group within a game complaining as loudly as they can manage that the company just doesn’t get it.

But EVE is a sandbox, and especially so in 0.0 space, so the content is all player driven.  They couldn’t possibly need anything beyond the most minor changes related to FiS.

It is obviously a Goon conspiracy.  Damn them!

[Addendum: More on “What The Mittani Wants” in an interview over at MMORPG.com.]

[Addendum 2: And there is a humorous take on the whole thing.]

The Drop in WoW Subscribers Means Changes All Over…

Rather than the usual round of WoW phishing attempts, I have seen a batch of these lately…

Greetings!

It has come to our attention that you are trying to sell your personal RuneScape account(s).
As you may not be aware of, this conflicts with the EULA and Terms of Agreement.
If this proves to be true, your account can and will be disabled…

All with the same message, the same badly disguised bogus URL, and all delivered to the same email address that gets all my WoW phishing attempts.  (Which, of course, is NOT the email address I use for WoW or Battle.net.)

No doubt handiwork of the same trolls.

Of course, I’ve never played RuneScape, so this is even less worrying that WoW phishing.  Oh no, an account I never had in the first place is in danger of being banned!

RuneQuest, Yes, RuneScape, No

Meanwhile, in the same batch of email, I received a note from Perfect World Entertainment, makers of… nothing I can recall ever playing.  I guess they are publishing Torchlight now, which I have played.  But I did not buy it from them.  Still, at some point I created an account there, I just cannot remember why.  It certainly wasn’t for Rusty Hearts and a discount gamepad.

That email said:

You are receiving this email because your account may have been accessed without your authorization. We have changed your account’s password and are requiring you to change your password before you can log back into our games. Please go here to reset your password:

And there was a URL below on which you were invited to click.  Only this one looked legitimate.  I still didn’t click on it, going rather directly to the Perfect World site and resetting my password via the interface they provide there.

I wonder if Perfect World has some sort of incident or if this was just another, slightly more clever phishing attempt.

How about for you?  Any rise in non-WoW related phishing attempts at your end?

Were you getting that many WoW related ones in the first place?  At one point I was getting one or two a day.