Any hardened Eve Online player is all too familiar with the odd server hiccup and the occasional extra 10 minutes of existential dread with brief visions of all the lost life they have poured into a simulation where the only respite is a couple of increasing numbers on a screen and at best a vague notoriety within a small social group which outside of the game is as meaningless as a leaf blowing in the wind before the happy colours on the screen say the server is back up and the nightmare ends as the login screen progresses.
Lately, we have seen a slightly higher amount of server and game unreliability which, of course, players seeing any possible opportunity for free goodies as their lives have irrevocably been impacted by that lost fraction of a cent paid subscription time. CCP usually offer a number of free skill points for the inconvenience, but in a brief Twatter exchange it would seem that times have changed and the company has decided that new approaches to player demands are in order:
The tongue in cheek response did not go down well on the popular social platforms where at least five individuals say they will be unsubscribing as a result of this brazen lack of respect to long-term customers taking their business to Runescape or Ultima Online. CCP responded in a few cases with sadness and they will be at a loss where to get a few tens of dollars of extra income to make up for their lost business.
CCP Mirage later issued a more formal response:
“Seriously guys, it was just 10 minutes of additional downtime and a few chat channel problems. If you really want we can break down the exact dollar per minute cost of that time lost and issue you a coupon for next time you pay for more game time. You guys aren’t going anywhere, we know you have invested too much in this game to walk away, go back to your mining belts or anomalies and be happy we let this click similar even continue! You guys are lucky we don’t ‘accidentally’ delete all the databases and reset the server from scratch. We know you won’t leave.”
