How EVE Online builds emotion out of its strict in-game economy

Keeping virtual resources hard to get lets players craft their own value.

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[Bluefinger]

Well, I'm currently in a corporation who's alliance is collapsing, and we are doing are best to protect our assets by moving it all out to a safe place. In one region of space, instead of expending money/resources moving my stuff, I've simply sold it all off at a slight loss since it was more cost effective to liquidate those assets. For all of my other stuff, that's now been organised to get shipped out, making sure it doesn't get accidentally lost by opportunists looking for easy targets (which a few corp members have already have gotten caught).

And this is just another chapter in the game for me. I may have missed out on that exceedingly huge battle (it started after I went to bed), but I've had my fair share of awesome moments. I just look forward to where I'll end up next (or at least until some other MMO manages to grab my attention).

 

[Bluefinger]

fivemack[/url]":4ppi6wd0]

Bluefinger[/url]":4ppi6wd0]Well, I'm currently in a corporation who's alliance is collapsing, and we are doing are best to protect our assets by moving it all out to a safe place. In one region of space, instead of expending money/resources moving my stuff, I've simply sold it all off at a slight loss since it was more cost effective to liquidate those assets.

How well-protected is money in EVE? If I have a fish-processing factory in the Central African Republic, and observe that the place is now a horrible war-zone, selling it just gives me a briefcase full of CAF Francs located in my hand in the Central African Republic; turning that into Euros in a bank account in Holland is quite a difficult job in the real world. I get the impression that in EVE people can break your stuff, and they can take your money in payment for services and not deliver the services, but they can't just beat you up and take your money.

Pretty much, once your assets are in liquid form (aka, just a nice big number on your wallet), nobody can take it from you. However, they can swindle you out of your coin by all sorts of scams, fraudulent contracts, or outright ripping you off on the open market. If you don't buy anything or contract any services/exchanges/etc, then no one can force you to cough up money.

... unless they've caught your ship during travel through insecure space and are holding it hostage (through jamming your warp drives). Then they can and often do demand ransom (though again, whether they honour this after taking the ransom money is completely up to their whims). But that still requires you to send the money yourself to them, and you might decide to just lose your ship instead of paying.