TBH organized mobsters always scared me far less than random lunatics.
Mobsters are predictable and generally leave you alone unless you decide to place yourself on their radar.
Random lunatics are, well, random. I feel I am in more danger from them.
YMMV
Yes but I think that glosses over the point. By the letter of the law they were fine but not by the spirit of it (as evidenced by CCP changing mechanics). When Privateers (not Goons I know) abused the war dec system they got CCP to change the mechanics because it was clearly not intended to work like that.
Funny thing is when Goons and such howl when the mechanics get changed…because THEY abused the mechanic!
I would wager that the method of disbanding an Alliance will get changed over the whole BoB thing. It was within the game rules and will stand but is a rather over-the-top power for one person to wield. Hell…takes me 24 hours to leave a corp and yet it is appropriate to pull the plug on thousands of players with a proverbial push of a button?
So, more mechanic changes.
I was sitting on the gate, we had scouts on the other side, I’ll explain what happened and you tell me if it was intentional… We were defending the warp in gate in a dead end system, it happened to house our main shipyard. The Goons/RA were amassing on the other side. They had two fleets, one with their Battleships and one with a mass of T1 frigs and rookie ships. Their rookie/frig fleet kept jumping in in larger and larger numbers while their BS fleet just sat there. Eventually the node crashed and all the defenders got kicked out. As the defenders tried to log on; the Goon/RA BS fleet jumped in as one and took the gate, killing the defenders as they logged on. Entrenchment was our main defence (once RA had their dreads and BS in place they were bastards to dislodge), they bypassed it. Yes, I think it was intentional and we didn’t have enough space to set up buffer zones like BoB did.
It’s not hard to think of a blatantly illegal out of game activity the goons took part in. They used to use a modified client that would show the standings of characters on their portraits in local chat. Long before such a feature was introduced by CCP.
Look. I realise that BoB’s hands are far from clean. I don’t care. They were over in Delve, we were in the east, we only met when we were bored. We could have been playing separate games for all the interaction we had.
Erm, what language is this in?
I’ve been periodically intrigued by the thought of playing EVE, but this post just scares me 
Hehe, don’t worry. You only need to know that the big alliances have massive egos and a lot to lose. They will try every trick in the book and push every boundary to try and get ahead. It’s like real politics but with even less accountability and more propaganda. If you stay out of CAOD (Corporation, Alliance and Organization Discussions forum) then you’ll be a lot happier and your doctor will thank you.
There is a lot more to EVE than massive alliance warfare.
Don’t feel bad. I have been playing it casually for 3 years now and didn’t understand most of that.
I’ve been playing almost a year and have no idea what he said either.
“Well Molle [the leader of Band of Brothers, now KenZoku alliance] would be on Shrike 6 [Molle’s titan alt, killed numerous times, would be on yet another titan, titan number 6] if a node hadn’t happened to crash and save him [the server resources which were being used to host a battle dun crashed, and Shrike’s titan was saved from going boom]. That’s not even the worst of their abuses. [BoB did it, the bastards!] T20 [a dev who gave BoB free tech 2 blueprints that he cheated to get], devs on MSN [BoB didnt’ have to go through the petition queue like normal players, and had developers on their MSN accounts who they could talk to for speedy resolution and/or possible preferential treatment], POS bowling [smashing super-capital ships into player owned stations in order to bump enemy ships out of the forcefield, later declared an exploit] , aggro abuse then killing logged off titans [using spies and in-game mechanics to tag a titan with a micro-smartbomb without him noticing and then probe him down and kill him while he thought he was safe], DD inside shield [totally legal game mechanics whereby if you have the POS forcefield password, you can use a super-weapon that’ll breach the forcefield and fuck up shit inside of it], hell their ASCN leaks got so bad that CCP made a rule banning further forum leaks on CAOD [CAOD is the Corporation Alliance and Organization Discussion forum, a wretched hive of scum and villainy. BoB used their spies to publicly post one of their enemy (ASCN’s) private forum communications on CAOD].”
This post has been Finned by the Finnist.
T20 = A game developer with an ingame character in BoB. He spawned T2 blueprints for BoB.
devs on MSN = I assume that means BoB talking to developers over MSN
POS bowling = When you warp a ship to a POS it bounces off the forcefield if you don’t have the password. If you use a very big ship it also bounces out some ships from inside the shields. It was invented by AAA.
aggro abuse = I think I remember (it was after I quit)… When a titan killed someone it created wrecks belonging to the titan owner. By shooting the wrecks you keep the agro timer active allowing you to kill the titan if it logs off (ships with an agro timer don’t just dissapear).
DD inside shield = Not sure…
ASCN leaks = BoB used spies to post information from the ASCN alliance forums.
Edit: Well bugger, not only beaten but beaten by much better information! At least I got in a AAA dig 
.
lol…
I’ll try and parse it for you. These things are more interesting when they make some sense.
"Well Molle would be on Shrike 6 if a node hadn’t happened to crash and save him. "
Shrike is an ALT of Sir Molle, leader of BoB. Shrike has lost more Titans than any other player. Titans are the biggest ship in the game, fantastically expensive (IIRC around 60+ billion ISK each) and take literal months to build just one. I count the losses at four Titans but I easily could have missed the fifth one. I do not pay that close of attention.
“That’s not even the worst of their abuses. T20,”
T20 was (is?) a developer at CCP. It was found he spawned a few BPOs that BoB made use of. None were really spectacularly juicy BPOs but still quite the scandal when it came to light. BoB has never lived it down although it is rather old news (two years) now).
“devs on MSN,”
I heard rumors that some BoB members would regularly chat with some CCP developers via MSN chat. Supposedly this allowed them preferential treatment. I do not think CCP did anything they wouldn’t have but supposedly at the least an end-run around the petition system where you may have to wait for days for an answer. Not sure if that was all true though…CCP employees do play EVE afterall so are bound to talk to someone out there.
“POS bowling,”
This was a funny glitch in the game. People would leave their spaceships parked at a POS without any pilots in them (they remain in space). The POS (Player Owned Structure) has a forcefield around it preventing an enemy from entering. Players learned that by warping in to the POS they would temporarily bypass the shield. Their ship would immediately be shoved out of the shield but as it passed by ships parked there those other ships would get bumped and fly out of the forcefield. At which point waiting pilots would steal those ships. 
CCP eventually deemed it an exploit and I think fixed the mechanics eventually so it could not be done.
“aggro abuse then killing logged off titans,”
I am guessing this is one where BoB had a spy in some enemy corp. The spy was flying as a friendly with a Titan. Unnoticed by the Titan pilot his “friendly” buddy had targeted wrecks the Titan created in combat and “owned” thus keeping the aggression timer running. Pilot logs off and Titan stays right there and proceeds to get owned. Bit fuzzy on the details of that one though.
“DD inside shield,”
DD=Doomsday Device which a Titan uses to blast a whole grid in one go. Dunno what the scoop is with doing it in a shield though.
“hell their ASCN leaks got so bad that CCP made a rule banning further forum leaks on CAOD.”
ASCN is a corp (Ascendant Frontier). No clue about why they were banned from the forums. CAOD is a part of the EVE Online forums dedicated to Alliance stuff. It is a pure hell hole of flames and other nonsense. Do not go there.
ETA: Crap…doubly beaten!
Sorry for all the jargon, and thanks to the translators.
I like Goons better than BoB.
This patch is angrying up my blood like you would not believe. My laptop will no longer run EVE because I don’t have “Shader 2.0” or some other damn thing that wasn’t required 24 hours ago. Look CCP, it’s my laptop! I don’t need graphics on the thing. All I use it for is to sit in station and watch trade channels while I do other things about the house. Seriously, why can’t I just turn the graphical interface off if you are going to increase the minimum system requirements so abruptly?! Yarr, this is so unnecessary of a change I could scream!
Heh, I downloaded the patch twice and it was corrupted. 2.27 gig download.
This is not meant to make you feel better as I’d be pissed too.
That said CCP has been advertising this change for awhile and it is not unnecessary. Well, they probably could have kept going with the original client but they had good reasons to switch (not least that supporting two models created considerably more work for them).
You can see their original blog about the switch here and their follow-up blog last January here.
The third download was also a wash. This one was done through the website. So I think it’s something in their Mac client. Anyone else here running it on a Mac?
I still don’t understand why there isn’t an option for a station-only client. I sometimes go weeks without undocking, as most of my time I spend haggling over mineral prices in the trade channels, setting up contracts, running production orders, and shooting the breeze with my corp. If any game could benefit from integrating a web-based interface and an actual graphical client, it’s EVE.
I still pine for the day I’ll be able to check the market from work in a web browser. One can dream…
Captain_C That would be totally useful.
Nice idea. I know some people can interact using mobile phones somehow. Maybe that would work?
The only thing I am aware of that you can do on a mobile phone is a client that let’s you see your character details and current skill training status. Nothing you can do though except view it. This is done via the data API available to all players (which allows things like EVEMon to work).