PerPLEXing Behavior

A few days ago, in some miraculous alignment of the stars, karma, and pure comedy, a certain aystra cemented his place in the annals of Eve by managing to lose 74 PLEXs at once while trying to move them all together out of Jita. With the recent changes to PLEX, something hilarious like this had to happen at some point sooner or later, but seeing it at this scale is absolutely mind-blowing. Current in-game prices have PLEX trading at around 320 mil each, making this a loss in the range of 23 billion isk.

Lets just all take a moment and collectively say in our most humble gamer-lingo what we’re all thinking: “lolz”.

While I would normally be more than content to sit back, sip a cocktail, and enjoy the sweet and tangy tears flowing freely, the sheer amount of ridiculous feedback on this one makes me feel compelled to respond.

The biggest complainers (those fun-hating naysayers, downers, and general party-poopers) have essentially said that in allowing aystra to lose his 23bil isk ($1,200, or six years of game time!) without compensation or reimbursement, CCP have in fact been paid for a service they did not in any way actually provide. This is definitely a debatable point, but take into account the game we’re talking about here. Eve is the cruel bitch-mistress of the MMO world; the place where literally years worth of time and effort can be lost or taken in moments. So, fun-haters, I see your pseudo-point and raise you one “welcome to Eve”.

You can cry all you want about broken game mechanics and CCP greed (no really, keep crying), but this ultimately comes down to pure, unbridled stupidity. Go ahead and ask yourself what state of complete brain disconnection you’d have to be in to undock 23 billion isk in an untanked frigate. In Jita. WHILE AT WAR. Exactly. I’m honestly having trouble coming up with a dumber move.

Of course, this highly amusing turn of events also begs a larger question: are PLEX worth more than simply the 320mil or so isk they trade for in game? Well, yes and no.

In theory, no, PLEX are in-game items that may be bought or sold or lost like any other. You can at any point turn that PLEX (like for instance a piece of faction loot) into isk, which in turn can buy you a shiny new ship, which you can of course, lose. The one distinction that PLEX have over other items is that whatever state the market is in, you can be sure that they are ALWAYS good for one thing: 30 days of paid game-time.

However, at some point, someone, somewhere, payed actual money for this “game item”, beyond their basic monthly subscription. So yes, in allowing PLEX to become a trade-able, move-able item, CCP has in fact created a middle zone, a gray area of “RL worth”. This makes getting a PLEX blown out of your ship, theoretically, a RL monetary hit. $14.95 is a 1/2 tank of gas, a new record, or a bus ticket to see a friend, and the fact that CCP has just opened the floodgates for people of extreme stupidity to actually lose real life money in a game is in my opinion, totally awesome.

Obviously, to a certain degree, I’m a little biased. I’m inclined to see gigantic losses in this game due to stupidity as highly entertaining. It’s my nature, and its the nature of the way I play this game. Also, PLEX have no real bearing on my game as I don’t use them at all. Beyond my monthly subscription, I see no reason to spend real money on in-game currencies, and as an adult with a full-time job (well, two actually), $15 a month for each of my accounts isn’t really bank breaking, and I would much rather sit on large piles of ill-begotten isk than spend it on game time.

So let the tears flow I say! “Broken game mechanic”? “Receiving payment for services NOT rendered”? Please. CCP, I thank and tip my cap to you for imposing the most hilarious Darwin-threshold on a game that I’ve ever even heard of. Bravo.

o7,

-Aiden

p.s. pardon the post title, it was just too obvious a pun to ignore 😉

~ by Aiden Mourn on August 12, 2010.