How I made 53,5 Million by Trolling

[21:49:58] Malachi Finn > us carebears may not have teeth but what we do have is money enough to buy dentures : )

So. Vov. Yeah. Vov. He is still out killing miners. What started as an afternoon amusement has mutated into a fantastic and somewhat mind boggling war between himself and the miners of Gulfondi, Molden Heath.

The story thus far is contained in this paste bin. It goes on for hours so I will not paste the entire thing into the blog. Basically, Vov killed several people yesterday. One brave soul, Abrams Elisium has decided to hunt Vov back. He has encouraged others to fight back against the ganker. They are doing a terrible job of it but I applaud their efforts.

Basically, Vov ganked a bunch of people and they got mad. They decided that they would stop his ganking. They have camped the station that he is killing out of. There is a Thorax on the undock. They are out announcing when he drops probes. They are alert and aware. They send out warnings. Align! Warp to station! Ganker logged in! Ganker logged in! It is exactly what I want to see in Eve. They have risen up to stop him. I'm kind of sad that it is not working out as well as I'd like it to.

In a way, this drama Vov has started is a window into the gap between those that PvP and those that do not. Vov is one pilot with an alt and a stack of catalysts. The miners are a good number of people. Yet, they are startlingly ignorant of game mechanics. These are game mechanics that they do not need to know to mine and live a basic life in Eve. They are game mechanics that they need to know to defend themselves and take the offensive.

I parked Chella in the system when Vov logged on and they started to call him out in local. For some reason, they think they have him trapped in the station. Until he undocks, goes to kill someone, and redocks and they fail to stop him. They seem surprised that he keeps slipping by them to gank again and again. I have some suspicion as to the problem:

[21:07:54] Abrams Elisium > watching for idiot on eve, watching Macgyver on Hulu, and playing skyrim on Xbox. multitasking at it's finest

I'm not saying I am the best hunter in Eve. I'd leave that to people like Kaeda who does amazing things when it comes to finding people to kill who want to not be killed. I do think that if you are sitting 4k off the undock in a Throax and can't catch a flashy Catalyst when it undocks and warps to a belt, your multiboxing may be one of the reasons you are having problems. Not that Vov isn't being sneaky. He's dropped probes by a group he can't gank. The defenders run to defend them and he ganks the lone retriever.

Abrams is in a Throax on the undock. I undocked, in my Viator, to see who the 'we' on the undock was. There was just Abrams in a Throax that Vov cargo scanned to find a 400mm plate and a medium shield extender. He was looking for sensor boosters. Of course he was accused of using his alt to bait them at that point.

[22:46:30] Abrams Elisium > the looter is off station tyingto bait
[22:49:00] Abrams Elisium > it's more valuable to get the bounty too
[22:49:35] Abrams Elisium > then chase something I can't catch out of range. not stupid

And then Vov kills someone else. By the time he got tired of it he had killed seven people while being camped in station. They vow to kill his ganker and his scouper. They have decided he has a Noctis to loot with. They have formed a fleet. They spend their time insulting him and telling him that he is not man enough to come out and fight them face to face. When his timer is up, he undocks, ganks someone else, and redocks.

[20:05:09] Talathel Avalhar > Fabulous. I'd put a bounty on him, but I saw his security status was already pushing -5 and he had close to 500 mil on his head already.
[20:05:34] Talathel Avalhar > At least I got my drones and a couple of my modules back. Time to go shopping for a new Retriever...fucker.
[20:05:37] Abrams Elisium > any more and he'll collect on himself with his alt
[20:05:49] Talathel Avalhar > I'm sure that's his plan. Either that or a corpmate.

I've written extensively on bounties. Yet, here are a group of players who do not understand that the bounty system has changed. Vov's bounty is also at 84 million and he is only losing Catalysts.

There was a swift descent into tinfoil hattery as well.

[22:07:32] Virtueorvice > hey abrams you missed it
[22:08:39] Abrams Elisium > yea, jogging my DNS and IP is a cute hacking stunt, tell me how'd you break EVE security on that, or did you just run a bypass
[22:09:38] Virtueorvice > what?
[22:10:53] Abrams Elisium > I really need to keep an active tracer running for that.
[22:11:25] Virtueorvice > i dont understand
[22:12:14] Abrams Elisium > so how got gacked by this idiot.. least I can do is sent some of the isk so help since I got log bumped

Vov has magical powers. He is ganking because his home connection is out of commission so he is hanging out at starbucks, using bad public wireless while drinking coffee. Also, it seems that he has voodoo powers. But the real qustion is how did I make ISK off of this? Well, this popped up in local.

[21:30:47] Malachi Finn > 50m to the one who shows me a kill mail on him

I couldn't resist that. I have multiple kills on Vov. Now, they are all rookie ships from clearing his kill rights months ago but no one put any rules except that it needed to be a kill mail on Vov. I was overcome with the desire to troll them.  I hoped Sugar out of low sec and ran the two high sec systems to go dock where Vov was and announce my kill mails in local.

[21:36:04] Sugar Kyle > I hear there is 50 mil being given out for Vov killmails
[21:36:05] Sugar Kyle > I have some

I posted my stack of rookie kills on Vov in local. They told me that the terms had changed. Bu then...

[21:36:58] Malachi Finn > but I'll give you 50 m just for killing him lol

 Oh my. He really gave me ISK. I left the system giving them the Drake that Vov called me in to help him kill the other day. I'm not sure that they made the connection between us because they started reimbursing each other and buying each other new ships. At that point Vov asks me to have Chella say she was ganked. I decided to go for it. I was curious if they had taken the time to look at my show info. I expected to be called out on it but I figured, what the hell.

Chella said she was in the station and she didn't know why. At first I got .10 ISK so I thought the gig was up. Then I received 3.5 million for my lost Retriever. Oh my. I felt both bad and amused at the same time. It is a strange conflict of emotion. Very similar to when I assisted in robbing the wormhole corporation. I also felt as if I was abusing their ignorance somehow.

At some point the Throax docked and it was replaced by two Hurricanes and lots more talk in local.

[01:40:11] Sean Pshyco > but there is only one wy for Viceorvirtue to lurn and that is to pod him
[01:42:10] Sean Pshyco > because he will loose big time if you pod him

Sadly, Vov was not able head the warning because he had logged off twenty minutes before this was announced. He has some plans for the next level of this journey.  I find myself rather fascinated with the entire thing.