As I was finishing up that last post about DBRB’s sleepy op, Jabber popped up another opportunity.
reelism: Big Things to Kill real quick right in VFK YAY!
A quick kill seemed like just the medicine to ward off the lingering effects of that last fleet, so I jumped into the game and got in the fleet.
It turned out that somebody had lured a carrier pilot to come out to VFK to join the Goons. It was, of course, a scam. And while this pilot jumped out to VFK, we assembled the reception committee.
The initial plan was to have everybody stay docked up in the station and, when he jumped in, have everybody surge out at once and attack. However, some people were not on coms, some people were not even in fleet, and a bunch of ships were loitering outside of the station. So the word was given to just undock and wait for the carrier to jump to the cyno in our midst.
Surging from Mittaningrad
Since this was sure to be a quick kill, people were trying to get as many different types of ships on the kill mail as possible. I toyed with the idea of using the Ibis I had in station, but decided to play it safe and go with my Drake. And so we sat outside the station while the cyno went up. And then Captain Dragotahl jumped in.
Carrier sighted!
A bubble went up around him and we all tried to lock him up. The Chimera was invulnerable and could not be targeted for a bit, until Captain Dragotahl moved. Finally he was no longer protected and everybody locked and opened up.
Fire!
And he quickly blew up… and was looted and salvaged in what must have been record time. I don’t think the ship had time to actually run the explosion animation before it had been stripped bare.
The kill mail shows a wide variety of ships in on the kill. The top damage dealer was a titan, while at the far end of the list there were badgers, rifters, and other small ships. But not one ibis. I should have gone with that. I could have been the guy in the rookie ship.
The carrier destroyed
This is the first time I have been involved in what was clearly a gank, a setup to kill somebody with somebody overwhelming odds.
I have no idea what the full story was as to how he got lured out. All I know is that I have a capital ship kill on my killboard for June and that somebody out there is pretty pissed at losing a 1.3 billion ISK ship.
Welcome to EVE Online, govern yourselves accordingly.
Addendum: Passed along post-gank. I’m not sure what it really means.
incident report
From: Captain DragotahlI’m sorry if this letter comes off a bit dickish but please bear with me.
a few hours ago I met someone named Elecktra Blue in the recruitment channel who said he needed help in his Stain ops. Being an avid lover of the space, and a huge fan of Goonswarm I of course jumped at the opportunity to join up with you guys
I paid a 1 billion isk security deposit to Nikos Iscariot, contracted all of my belongings to one Tanya Belle, and then set about trying to get my Chimera cynod down to VFK.
When I jumped into VFK I was raped by your fleet, and quickly podded. I feel completely scammed at this very moment, but several people have reached out to try and make me feel like this is not the case. I’m getting a bit drunk at the moment to ease over this assfucking you guys have placed on me.
Items lost:
Chimera: 1.14 bil
full set of plus 5 implants: 525mil
shield leadership implant: 109mil
plus 5 percent heavy missile implant: 100mil
buzzard with full sisters setup: lets say 100milAs far as the rest of the items on the chimera im sure you have a better idea of the cost with the kill mail you have.
Id like to apologize in advance for the drama. Believe me this is NOT the entrance I had in mind when I sought to join your alliance.
The Ancient Gaming Noob 
There was one rookie ship on that killmail, a Reaper. No Ibis, though, it’s true.
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Welcome to the Dark Side. When can we expect the casual racism and misogyny?
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Another big step on your descent into the dark side Wilhelm.
It beggars belief that someone could have been playing the game long enough to fly a carrier without hearing about goon recruitment scams. Nevertheless the point remains.You participated in f’ ing someone over.
Has your reaction to stuff like that changed since you joined up with the goons?
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To put it in perspective, how much does a plex cost . . . have you done the conversion to real world money to see what this cost the victim?
At the time you didn’t know what was going on, how has your thoughts on this gank sshifted since you discovered how the gank was set up?
m
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I’m not sure what to say here as many times in EVE there are 2 sides to a story and often only one side is mostly known.
Reading the “Incident Report” it seems to me Captain Dragotahl was recruitment scammed into another of the classic Goons recruitment scams so to say by several seemingly Goons Members based on the Incident report. Which was probably also why there was also a heads up with him getting Cyno’d in also with the Carrier and deciding to turn the tables on him for any reasons the Goons deemed humorous to them. Even I know VFK is goons capital and I highly doubt anyone just out the blue gets Cyno’d into to VFK without some good reason.
But then if you’ve lived in New Eden long enough to have a Carrier you should be aware that Goons can’t be trusted at such things by reputation and I guess he should of been aware of that. As well him taking a risk of getting an expensive ship blown up by Goons assuming he got recruited also by making first appearance to Goons by going to their capital.
For some things in EVE, some days i don’t know exactly what to think.
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A 1 billion isk security deposit?
I am almost inclined to believe this is a Goon alt, for lols.
Can someone *really* be this stupid?
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Sadly, most people are that stupid.
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@Guest – You’re soaking in it!
Oh, and you forgot casual anti-semitism. Those were clearly space Jews who looted the Chimera so quickly.
@MikeA – A PLEX costs $17.50 and sells for 450-500 million ISK in game. Call it 500 million for easy math. He lost about 2 billion ISK, so it cost him about $70 using the PLEX measurement. However, that assumes he used PLEX and that you could get your money back out of the game, which you cannot.
I did not know the details of how this guy got lured out to VFK. I did know he was coming out and not expecting to get ganked, so the details are really irrelevant to any moral judgement you care to make. I did hear that one of the guys running the scam pretended to be female and that this helped move the scam along.
@Mbp – Well, I was hit up by a Goon recruitment scam at one point… there is a post about it around here somewhere… ah, here it is… and managed not to get scammed.
Mostly I managed not to get scammed because the guy said I needed to move all my crap 20 jumps over to be carried to null sec and I really couldn’t be bothered. Lesson to scammers in there. Laziness saved me yet again. And then when I posted about it people said it was a standard scam.
So I feel superior to this guy… in a lazy-based sort of way… having successfully navigated this EVE rite of passage.
The odd thing is, if you read this guys incident report, is that he seems to be more “well played” than “nerd rage.” Which makes me feel better, as he clearly gets it, what ever “it” is.
So the primary take away: Goons do not recruit players for their corps in the recruitment channel. They recruit victims.
Oh, and that I apparently will shoot strangers given the promise of an easy kill mail. But our rules of engagement in CFC space are “shoot all non-blues.” I vas only following orders.
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Two thoughts on the addendum:
1) How did a billion ISK deposit (to someone claiming to be from Goonfleet – one of the classic Eve scams) and contracting all belongings to another player NOT set off the scam alarm I tend to assume all Eve pilots have in their heads after the first month?
2) How is this particular phenomenon seen as fun, from the Goon side of things? I don’t get it.
(Seriously, not sarcastically. Despite seeing it from the early MUD days, I have yet to figure out why griefing strikes some people as an enjoyable goal in and of itself. Surely trying to get other players to ragequit a game you love to play is counterproductive?)
Any insight on this after spending a while with the Goons?
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@Aufero – As for the first, some people want to be Goons so badly, they seem to be blind to the possibility. I mean, this guy sounds like he really wanted to join the Goons.
As for the second, I have no idea. Our own corp actually has a rule against scamming, but doesn’t need one as far as I am concerned. It seems like a tedious thing in which to engage.
But I feel about the same way when it comes to Hulkageddon. Blowing up somebody’s Hulk might be fun once or twice, but unless it is a personal thing, something in the name of revenge or honor or some such, isn’t really something I can get behind.
But all sorts play EVE, and the fact that these things are allowed attracts those who enjoy it to the game.
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If you really wanted to join the Goons, would setting yourself up for something like this and then being a good sport about it get you any nearer to your goal? Might you at least make a contact or two out of it that you could use as an “in” at some stage?
Or would you be forever marked as a dumb patsy, only good for scamming again if the opportunity arose?
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@Bhagpuss – As far as I know, there are only two ways to join Goonswarm. (TEST Alliance does the same, just replace “Something Awful” with “Reddit.”)
First, be an active member of the Something Awful forums and apply. There is a set of criteria to determine who can get in that way that is meant to filter out people who join the forums and bad post for a couple months with the sole intention of getting into Goonswarm. How they can tell genuine bad posting from faux bad posting is one of those mysteries of life.
Second, be sponsored by somebody who is an active Goonswarm member. And if you sponsor somebody and they screw up, you take the blame. So nobody is going to sponsor a stranger.
So when you join Goonswarm, you are a member of the community or at least know somebody well enough to have a chance of becoming part of the community.
I do not think getting scammed would preclude him from either route, though it probably reduced the chance that some random individual in Goonswarm would sponsor him.
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Why people prefer to shoot red crosses or asteroids all day when a little social engineering can net you vastly higher profits is a mystery to me. It’s a lot of fun to outwit people, and more importantly it makes you huge amounts of money. It makes some people feel dirty so they don’t do it – that’s okay, too.
Goonswarm is very blessed to have high media penetration and notoriety within a game that also happens to contain a good deal of ignorance. If you check the EVE thread on Something Awful, every day or two there’s someone who pays $10 to register and post something like “Hi I want to join u goonies o7” and is immediately blacklisted. As Wilhelm says, GoonWaffe wants active members Something Awful community, not ‘join for guilds’.
Incidentally, nobody wants anyone to quit the game – it’s just an efficient way to make isk and usually provides laughs. Scamming has always been a profession. Exhumer ganking is fast becoming one. The uninformed or incompetent tend to have a rough time, whether by contracting all their posessions over to a 3-day-old GoonSwarm newbie or just getting blown up.
I’m not sure why e-bushido ‘space knights’ react so negatively. After all, if we insist on viewing ingame actions through a real-life moral lens, grift and robbery are more ‘honorable’ than murder.
There’s a follow-up thread in Letters of Marque & Reprisal, Wilhelm Arcturus, if you’re interested in how this went down.
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@Alikchi – What? You mean it might not be completely moral to wipe out a village of kobolds just because some dwarven land developer tells me they are standing in the way of progress and offers me some money?
I start quoting Platoon when we get those quests. Maybe there should be a way to sell the kobolds some prime real estate in Oklahoma or some such as an alternative? Though I imagine the dwarf has already tried that if he is hiring toughs to slaughter villagers.
I think a lot of people are just stunned when it happens and CCP declares “no foul” to their petition. It takes people a while to get the hang of what is allowed in EVE. All the more so because it doesn’t happen to you the minute you log in. I can go for ages… if I ignore local and the now common double negative contract scams… without running into anything of the sort.
I loved the EVE forum thread angry about CCP endorsing Goon behavior by putting up the warning splash screen during the Jita event. There are some people you just can’t help.
Thanks for the tip on where to find the story. I will have to take a look. I generally only read the War Room posts as I tend to be more interested in fleet ops.
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Don’t get me wrong – while scamming people out of everything they’ve built up in the game isn’t something I could ever find enjoyable, the freedom to do that (and the danger of having it happen to me) is one of the reasons I continue to play Eve.
Despite being a confirmed and dedicated carebear, I still think the fraud, theft, spying and ganking are part of what makes Eve an endlessly fascinating game to play.
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Oh god, great reading. Space jews. Hahaha.
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I’m not sure why e-bushido ‘space knights’ react so negatively. After all, if we insist on viewing ingame actions through a real-life moral lens, grift and robbery are more ‘honorable’ than murder.
The difference being that those kobolds Wilhelm mentioned have nothing behind them but 1’s and 0’s. Behind the ships that get scammed, ganked, and podded are real people.
Not that I am looking for CCP to handcuff the goons or anyone else, and not to say I am a space knight (heck, I don’t even play anymore…), but since I would never scam someone or do something that would waste large amounts of their time and money in real life, I have a hard time justifying doing it in the game.
Conversely, you can see why some people would not think it much of a stretch that someone who is doing it in a game probably wouldn’t mind doing it in real life.
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The way i see it, you just killed one of your own. You not only lost a carrier, you lost the pilot too. What a waste, imagine what he could have contributed. Amazing how goons have survived this far, and amazing I’m blue to them
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Good job Wilhelm. Hi5!
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This is why I would never join the goons. I’m not interested in ganking people. Plus, I don’t think I could ever trust them.
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@Anders – This guy was never going to be one of the Goons. And yet this guy’s follow-on communications seem to indicate he still wants to join. And,he won’t be let in, because as I noted above, the Goons do not recruit strangers in game. Such recruitment offers are always a scam.
@scotth – Not sure joining would be an option for you. See my statement a few comments back about who is eligible to join the Goons. It isn’t quite like saying “I would never join the College of Cardinals” when one isn’t even Catholic, but it is in the same region of space.
And the Goons do have pretty definite rules about screwing over their own. That gets you banned. The same protection applies to allies (like me), though after every war they kick some alliance out of the coalition. And this is usually less severe than it sounds, as most of the non-scrubs find slots in other alliances pretty quickly.
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I think we all know how and on what basis goons recruit. We also know that this guy was not accually in goons when this happend. But still at least to him you we’re “blue”. Je was willing to fight for you ect ect and that’s a resource, that was waisted IMHO. I guess goons don’t need that though. Even criminal gangs understands this, why not point him to another alliance in CFC instead?
On the other note I dont know what comes first in your book. But in mine not wanting to apply for a job or refusing to work for a certain company comes way before, in the end not getting that said job
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@Anders – And I am saying it is easy to say you wouldn’t do something if it isn’t really an option whether you applied or not.
But if we want to look at it from your perspective, that is fine. You said you were blue to them, an ally, just like me. You’ve already taken the job, just as a contractor. Commence rationalization.
And clearly, as demonstrated by this event, we do not all know on what basis the Goons recruit. The fact that they can pull recruiting scams over and over indicates a lot of people… people with many skill points and lots of time in game… people who should clearly know better… do not know how the Goons recruit. This wasn’t some noob, fresh in the game. This was a guy with the time in game and the ISK to fly a carrier.
As you say, there are a lot of other options out there, but this guy put a couple of billion ISK in assets at risk not because he wanted to be in just any null sec alliance, but because he wanted to be a Goon. He wanted to join the organization that did this to him, and still does according to some of the post-scam convos I’ve read.
I wouldn’t put a good word in with my corp for this guy. He’s a stranger in a game where strangers work against you, and has never done anything for me to see him as otherwise. He was just another non-blue pilot in our space.
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Thats not looking at it from my perspective, but you are prolly right, Im on their “pay roll” and I’d prolly have done the same thing as you, F1..
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