In yet another extraordinary piece of foot-in-mouth community management, CCP's community manager denies that the company fix the results of role-playing events by, uhm, admitting that they fix role-playing events. I've reposted it here as it's not very easy to find, and I don't think it is even available to non-subscribers to view. The thread, however,
is here:
Following up with the results of our investigations as they come available, we
would like to present the following in regards to the allegations of rigged
events.
This was investigated
previously, the results of which were posted here. Nothing new has been presented that
merits re-opening the investigation into the events following the actions taken
against the player/volunteer who violated a Non-Disclosure Agreement in regards
to the Cult of Tetrimon event arc.
Concerning the allegation of event rigging in particular,
the document referenced in the 'Open Letter' is not a finalized script of
events, but a proposal and living document based on player interaction with the
event arc. The paragraph he refers to states:
“As said earlier, we can have the ending open if allowed by
you or we can stack the cards in favor of Theology Council so that we after the
arc go back to a T2 status quo for the Empire, but without any Tetrimon Cult
(who will be forever branded traitors of the Empire and utterly wiped out).”
In short, it simply gives CCP the
option of deciding which direction to move EVE’s Prime Fiction at the end of the
arc or to allow unfolding events to determine what is to follow. The claims of
CCP rigging events to benefit a player, corporation or alliance are
groundless.
kieron
Community Manager,
In other words, Kieron says that the claims of rigging are "groundless", while admitting that the events are rigged, apparently to give CCP "the
option of deciding which direction to move EVE’s Prime Fiction". Extraordinarily incompetent spin: I wonder if he even reads what he says. Or perhaps the dissimulation, while poorly done, is intentional: forced to admit to rigging events, Kieron weasels his way out by claiming that these are not done to "benefit a player, corporation or alliance". Presumably, when an alliance now known to be closely tied to the developers, and in regular, back-channel contact with them, received a mothership in such an event, turning out to be in just the right place at just the right time, this did not, in fact, benefit them?
I don't really go in for the whole Eve-Online roleplaying thing myself: I like the pew-pew and don't much want to challenge people to prithee mount their space-steeds and verily to do space-battle with the wicked dark space-knights or whatever. But CCP's events team have long been notorious as the most corrupt in a corrupt organisation: even their fiercer defenders on the Bob side of this argument, like MahrinSkrel on F13, admit that this is the case, with massive prizes awarded without competition to developers' friends (a mothership was then the biggest and most expensive object in the game). I had hoped that they would sieze the chance to make a clean sweep now, and to show good faith at the least in an attempt to turn their practises around. It appears that this is not to be.