Let me tell you the story of Caroline, an tale of white knighting, love and treachery. This story took place a few months back in the terrible universe of EVE Online. What you have to realize is, that in EVE most older players have several accounts and it is common practice to have at least 2-3 online at any time. Introducing the main actors of our little adventure: (names changed to protect the guys who are still playing) Caroline - One of my newer characters, a throwaway account for one specific job who got much more done than she was ever supposed to. Steve - A newer player, and too caring for his own good xxDeathLordxx - DeathLord was everything his name leads you to believe, a 14 year old kid with too much money and too little common sense Alex - my main character, even though in this story he plays a very minor role.
The story starts with something, a lot of people in EVE hate: Suicide ganking. The way of destroying someones ship with a cheap throwaway ship, not for profit but for tears. You might think "Oh wait, this is so terrible that this guy writes a story about it?". Oh no, ganking is boring, but it gets people emotional and that is what is important.
The scene: An asteroid belt in high-security space, full of miners new and old, chatting happily and making their money. Enter Caroline, I created her less than an hour ago and with one goal in mind: Scouting the miners, looking for expensive ships to then shoot and laugh at with my friends. So the usual stuff happens, i sit there waiting until a shiny ship comes to the belt, position Caroline next to them and let Alex and friends do the dirty work. The ship explodes. Our ships get blown up by the police. Caroline watches silently, nobody but me knows that she is involved in any of this. Suddenly a conversation window pops up:
Steve > WATCH OUT PIRATES! //now Caroline is very new to the game, she obviously could not understand what just happened, right? Caroline > OH MY GOD WHAT JUST HAPPENED!? Why did they explode? Steve > Those shitty pirates want to kill miners, lets leave before they get us too!
Interesting, development i think to myself, if he invites me along that gives us the perfect opportunity to kill him later, that would be fun wouldn't it? So i follow him, he starts to tell me about how evil, evil pirates used to hunt him, about his great adventures and most importantly: His great Corporation. Corporations are in many ways like the guilds of other MMOs, but with one distinct difference: If you acquire certain roles within the corp you are able to manipulate assets owned by them, find what valuable materials and ships they own and if you reach the highest ranks, freely take those. This is why normally corporations in EVE have very strict hierarchies and security policies to prevent gankers and thieves from getting into those positions. Normally they do. But a lot of newer players do not realize completely how that works and can make pretty big mistakes, giving people way more access than they should have.
Enter xxDeathLordxx: The CEO (or Guild Leader of how ever you want to call him) of Steves corporation. Steve has told him that he has just rescued this new player from evil pirates and wants to protect her. At this point i realize something: Caroline is a female avatar. Now it may seem obvious to you reading the story but when i created the character i just took a few random presets and slapped a name on it. I expected the Character to be deleted later that night after people found out what i used her for.
But now there are two guys, seeing a girl in need and suddenly their egos start taking control. They show me all their amazing ships and shiny equipment, and i act as you would expect from a newbie. Pretending to be really impressed and making them feel like they are the greatest players ever. All the while wondering how far they would go.
xxDeathLordxx > So would you like to become as aweosome as we are? Caroline > Ahaha i just started but man, you guys are impressive. xxDeathLordxx > You know you could join us, we own a wormhole and have access to the best ships in the game.
At that point i could not believe my eyes. They were obviously young players, trying to impress me with their toys but they owned a wormhole. Wormholes are strange systems in EVE that unlike the others, do not have static connections to neighboring systems and no open starbases to dock up at. Living there is a very hard and dangerous way of playing and generally reserved for the more experienced players. Living in that space requires your corporation to own a POS (Player owned starbase) which is set up by a corporation and is generally the only safe place in those systems. In wormholes, anyone can freely attack, there is virtually no way of knowing if somone else is in the system with you, just outside the range of your scanners. In general: very dangerous, but HIGHLY profitable.
So obviously i jump on the opportunity:
Caroline > That would be great!
They invite me to their corporation, i accept and we head to their home. Now maybe the most important part of this whole story: I mentioned earlier that wormhole space has no static connections to normal space, you need special equipment to scan down exits and they only last for about 24 hours. At this point it is getting late, we arrive at their base, i let them ramble on a bit about their amazing accomplishment and wait for them to log off. Checking what roles i have in the corporation it turns out they actually were pretty careful. I could not access much of their equipment, but i could see what they had and this is where i formulated a plan. They only had 2 ships capable of scanning exits out of their wormhole. Usually someone scans the exit and makes a bookmark in space for their friends so that they can use the exit until it collapses, but what if they had no scanning capable ship? What if i destroyed those ships and left them stranded in here, no way out, forced to self destruct all of their ships and destroy their equipment. Now THAT sounded like fun. So they log off and i bring caroline to the exit of the wormhole to scout Alex in. My main character would remain cloaked in the system for a couple of days before i was ready to execute my plan.
Over the next couple of days i gain their trust, watch their habits and observe something even more fun. They gave me access to the hangar with their ships. Some basic cheap ships but also the jackpot: an "orca" capable of transporting lots of valuable goods and most importantly, ships. The plan has changed, i wait a few more days until my character is ready to fly the orca and i am confident enough to pull it off.
The next evening, they start making money and i am just sitting around waiting for a good opportunity. I sit around scanning our wormhole for connections until i find something curious. We have a connection to null security space, a part of space my corporation owns! So i log in Alex, find the connection and inform my friends of the wormhole. Steve and xxDeathLordxx are doing their thing while we assemble a small fleet on the outside. As they start a new site, we strike. Jumping the fleet into the wormhole, holding their ships ransom. While this is going on i switch to Caroline and prepare the Orca. Scanning ships go in, all their valuable assets disappear in my cargo and i set off. I jump out the orca and dock it up in friendly space, just to return in a scanning ship and re-enter the wormhole. While i am doing this, my friends have made short work of Steve and xxDeathLordxx. They are holding their escape pods while i finish my job. I deny them access to their POS, delete the bookmarks to outgoing connections and tell my friends to let them go. The fleet leaves their escape pods alive and disappears back to our space, having made good money of looting the ships but slightly confused why i am not leaving with them. I tell them to collapse the entrance behind them, so they do.
Now Steve and xxDeathLordxx warp back to their POS, realising they can't access it and seeing a lot less ships than they are used to. And they see something else. Caroline sitting there. I want to say with a smug grin, but sadly that doesn't work to well on spaceships.
A message pops up:
xxDeathLordxx > CAROLINE! some retards just killed our ships! and they must have a spy in our corp! We can't get back in!
Caroline > Killed! Oh no!
xxDeathLordxx > Yes ... Please can you check for the new password, their spy must have changed it.
Caroline > Would be a bad spy if he left you back in wouldn't it?
I closed the conversation. Warped to the last exit in the wormhole and collapsed it behind me. I have never heard back from them again in person. But EVE has a very nice tool to see kills and losses of corporations. Over the next few months i watched all of their assets inside the wormhole being destroyed without resistance. They had been completely locked out and lost everything. I transferred all the stolen good to my main account and deleted Caroline. I don't know if those guys still play. I should try to get a hold of them some time.
This is the worst thing i have ever done to someone in a video game.