We read about these things happening periodically, an EVE player pulls a runner with some huge amount of ISK and all sorts of drama ensues. It makes me wonder, what has the real life impact of this theft been on those of you involved with EBANK?

If you are to trust the forum trolls, EVE is JUST a game. But having spent 2 years on this project, real-life money and a lot of sweat and tears, it hurts to see EBANK's name being dragged through the mud, and putting up with the drama. It of course causes a huge amount of real-life stress, and makes you wonder about a few things. I even almost managed to miss 2 exams, due to having to deal with this. But it also gave us the opportunity to realize just how many people EBANK have helped.

2% of EVE's playerbase has an EBANK account, and we came to be the biggest investment venture in EVE, peaking at 2.5 TRILLION ISK. That, to me, is a pretty big thing, which I'm proud to take part in. But I can't answer this question on my own, hence here's my new CEO's take on it:

EVE Online is a deep sandbox game with the most complex player-driven economy found in any massively multiplayer title. There's enough depth, in fact, that players can establish their own financial ventures in-game, in the forms of bonds and IPOs, and even institutions like banks. However, EVE Online is a game where some players create while others undermine or outright destroy. Trust is a valuable and rare commodity in EVE's setting of New Eden; there are always risks of deception and betrayal. But those willing to take risks are generally the ones who are most successful. Of the player-run banks presently operating in the game, EBANK has billed itself as "the largest financial entity ever seen in EVE."

The secrets of its success? A solid Board of Directors and knowledgeable staff, various safeguards preventing any one individual from accessing all bank assets and, yes, some of that rare commodity called trust.That trust was damaged recently though, when EBANK's (now-former) CEO Ricdic, well-known to the game's playerbase, embezzled the virtual funds he was entrusted with. Although this is permissible by EVE's developers CCP Games, selling in-game currency for real-world cash is not. Ricdic has been banned from the game but his actions triggered a run on the virtual bank, and have shaken the faith many players have in EBANK.

Massively spoke about the incident with LaVista Vista, a former member of the game's Council of Stellar Management who sits on the Board of Directors of this virtual bank in EVE; he also provides commentary and analysis of virtual worlds and EVE on the Eveconomics blog. LaVista told us about the parallels that can be drawn between a banking crisis in the virtual galaxy of New Eden and that of the real world, and how what happens in a game can impact real lives.

Gold farmers. We know you hate them... We know. And we've mentioned the associated gold spam as being the bane of many MMO players' existence a number of times in the past. But is the situation ever going to change?

Perhaps, given the new legislation coming out of China this week. Of course while all gold farmers certainly aren't based in China, a substantial percentage of gold farming operations are in fact run from the country. Such operations may now find themselves under greater scrutiny by the Chinese authorities; the government has now established its first official rule on the use of virtual currency in China.

Essentially, it states that virtual currency cannot leave the sphere of influence of its issuer. (Exact wording: "The virtual currency, which is converted into real money at a certain exchange rate, will only be allowed to trade in virtual goods and services provided by its issuer, not real goods and services.") If the law is actually obeyed and enforced, it would curb all manner of black market activities in China connected with the virtual.

We all sort of knew that virtual worlds usage would continue to grow over the years, but a new report put out by Strategy Anayltics has given us some numbers to think about -- and they're pretty darn big. They've predicted that by 2015, the overall population of virtual worlds will go from what it is now at 186 million people all the way up to 640 million, or more than triple today's userbase. Here's the firm's breakdown of the populations today and in the future:


"Kids" in this case refers to those aged 5 to 9, and as can be seen in the above table, this group is predicted to grow the most over the years. As for how companies will cash in on all this growth, subscriptions are still listed as one of the key drivers of revenue, but 86% of revenue in 2015 will come from microtransactions -- this equates to a growth from 2008's microtransaction figure of roughly $1 billion, to $17.3 billion in six years time.

[Via Virtual Worlds News]

EVE Online's in-game economy has been the subject of intense study over the years. The markets of EVE react very effectively to accomplish goals with the same economic laws that apply to many real-life marketplaces. The game's developers CCP even hired a professional economist to analyse the in-game economy, advise them on problem issues and deliver interesting quarterly reports. The driving force behind EVE's markets is often assumed to be basic supply and demand but this isn't always the most potent component. In the hyper-capitalistic universe of New Eden, all bets are off and the only rules are those players enforce themselves with an iron fist. Cartels, market manipulation and theft run rife in EVE, with far-reaching consequences.

In this succinct article, I examine the hidden forces pushing and pulling EVE's markets and show that EVE's economic sandbox comes complete with quicksand and land mines.

While online economies can seem to be (and often are) fundamentally different from AFK economies, there's a key component that makes any online economy function in ways that are all-too-familiar.

That's us. You and me. People.

Whether bags of treasure fall out of dead rats, or the economy is reliant on texture artists, modelers and scripters, it's people that make online economies with fundamentally alien premises work in some very surprisingly quotidian ways.

Dr. Eyjólfur Guðmundsson from CCP has released another quarterly EVE Online economic newsletters, this time for the 1st quarter of 2009. Despite the quarterly name this is the first report since the one for Q1 2008. This time the PDF weighs in at 48 pages of editorial, graphs and images. The first graph in the document show the number of active paying accounts that the game has had from launch up until March 2009, ending shortly before the point at which CCP announced they have passed 300,000 subscribers. Interestingly although the graph shows strong growth from November 2008 onwards, which is when CCP released the Quantum Rise expansion, the actual numbers before that showed a slight decline in subscriptions that is not addressed in the commentary.

There is also an extensive analysis of skill points, with the difference in the number of points in each skill point group for each race showing correlation between the race of the character and the skills trained. Interestingly Gallente characters tend to have more points in drone skills, while Caldari characters have the highest missile skills. This seems to indicate that players are following their racial ship choices for their skill training, which is not something that the game enforces. There's a lot more information in the report itself, including detail on ship prices over time, Tech 3 production for the first month and mineral trading.

You can read the full document at the dev blog, and follow the comments from players on the EVE Online forums.

The Apocrypha expansion for EVE Online introduced wormhole exploration to the game and with it, the potential to reverse engineer advanced technology from the Sleeper NPC race. The goal for many such explorers is ultimately to produce the next iteration of ship technology in the game; these Tech III strategic cruisers feature modular designs that can accomplish some impressive things. This, coupled with their rarity and sky high prices make Tech III ships into everybody's favorite multi-billion ISK gankmagnets, and it's that scarcity that EVE game designer CCP Chronotis addresses in his latest dev blog.

He writes that CCP Games will make some changes in the next Apocrypha patch that will affect the supply of Tech III materials. Specifically, they're going to boost reverse engineering while also balancing out the types of salvage gained from Sleeper NPC wrecks, and increase the availability of Tech III production materials in general. If you're involved in wormhole exploration or Tech III production, consider this dev blog from CCP Chronotis a heads up as to the changes on the way.

The store is a fairly ordinary store in Second Life terms, except that it appears to sell objects that are mostly available for free elsewhere in the virtual environment. Reselling 'freebies' in Second Life is generally considered to be a reprehensible practice, but it does happen. This particular store is one of the places we routinely check out to evaluate the effectiveness of Linden Lab's harder-line policies on gaming traffic (and thus search-rankings) within Second Life.

In front of us are a row of 53 avatars, camping out. The provision of such camping facilities being one of the things that are prohibited under the new policy. We tried for a little while to get the attention of one of the camping avatars to see what they might think, and finally succeeded. As it happens, the avatar who responded was a bot – actually one of 70 bots being controlled by a single user who declined to give us a name. The bot-operator was, however, happy to answer a few questions for us, through the remotely-controlled avatar.

With only two months of operation under its belt, fantasy game Runes of Magic already seems to be enjoying a great deal of popularity. Runes of Magic uses the free-to-play business model, which is discussed in an interview with community manager Jörg "Kerensky" Koonen. Sam "Azerian" Maxted from ZAM caught up with Koonen to discuss the game's launch and where the title is headed in future updates, but their talk quickly turned to some of the details of how the game's economy operates.

Koonen discusses how players have responded to Runes of Magic's microtransaction system through the in-game Item Shop, and that by design the Item Shop doesn't sell certain types of items. "We do not sell any weapons or armour or such," he says. "All of this has to be collected by the players through the game." However, Runes of Magic also uses non-microtransaction currencies and some players are concerned that their gold lacks real value in the game. Koonen says that the developers are looking into this. They're presently gathering feedback from the playerbase and are willing to introduce other measures, if necessary, to ensure that non-microtransaction currencies serve a purpose in RoM.

As we come up to the time of year when the long-awaited Second Life Homesteads price-rise is due to hit, Linden Lab has announced that any Homestead simulators owned before 1 July, 2009 will continue at the old monthly rate of US$95 instead of US$125, before the price-rise finally kicks in for those too on 1 July, 2010.

The deal essentially saves owners of Homestead products a once-only total of US$360 per simulator, if the simulator is owned or purchased before 1 July this year (a bit less than the cost of a new one). If you've abandoned your Homestead simulator this year, you can have it reinstated at no extra charge. Homesteads have a limit of 20 agents (avatars, if you prefer), and 3,750 prims, and will still be subject to as-yet-unspecified script-limitations before the end of the year. Homestead simulators cost US$375 each to purchase.

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	Are you a part of the most widely-known collaborative virtual environment or keeping a close eye on it? Massively's Second Life coverage keeps you in the loop.

In a future where unfathomably large sums of money are spent trying to get you to buy things, only one man can make a difference. We haven't found that man, so until he shows up we're going to buy a new Dell and maybe some Pepsi. We don't know why this urge has struck us -- maybe it has something to do with all those ads we just saw in [INSERT LATEST ACTIVISIONBLIZZARD TITLE HERE].

We know not what fate awaits us in this future, but since everyone will be too busy buying stuff it probably doesn't matter. It's not like the machines will rise up or anything, right?

Linden Lab, as you probably already know, has started to take action against the use of bots to game Second Life traffic (which is still the most influential of the sorting criteria in in-world search results), although with somewhat lackluster results so far.

Yesterday, it was indicated that the action would be extended to other means of artificially boosting traffic figures, such as camping-chair installations.

Game Set Watch have posted an opinion piece by James Portnow, founder of Divide by Zero Games, that looks at the design approaches to creating unsharded MMOs, and the advantages that they can bring.