EVE Online at Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMOG Gamers to the Next Level!

Say what you will about EVE Online, its players are crafty as hell. The Faction Warfare system received a revamp with the Inferno expansion, providing changes that have yielded a very profitable venture for a group of players that came up with a plan to exploit the system and a bug within it to net trillions of ISK.

In a post to the EVE Online forums, Aryth, a member of the notorious Goonswarm, laid out the entire plan in great detail along with a bit of boasting for good measure. It was a multi-part plan that shows just how deep some players will dive into the game’s mechanics to make huge amounts of ISK in the great space sandbox.

Inferno’s big design mistake was that it was released with a literal currency fountain, very nearly without limit. Unbeknownst to themselves, CCP had accidentally delved into the world of forex, providing a way to exchange one currency (isk) for another (LP) with only a few checks and balances built into the system.

After making a hefty bank, the group later informed CCP of the issue for a long-term fix.

The goal was to make a bit of profit. and figure out how to fix it long term. CCP was informed and they moved quickly to address the issue. The party came to an immediate end after the T5 cashout occured. So this is over, and you will no longer be able to do this. If you somehow did find a way, CCP is watching and will probably take action against anyone doing it in the future.

CCP made some changes to help address the issue and plans to make further adjustments. In the meantime, CCP has posted this message to the community about the exploit and a forum response that seems to indicate that those hefty rewards may be getting adjusted pending their investigation.

As you might have seen from the news today we, ‘made an adjustment to the average price of some items in order to curb a situation whereby the average price of an item could be manipulated in order to create a disparity between the value of an item in ISK and its value in Loyalty Point payouts.’ It has come to light in this thread that certain players had been manipulating price differentials to amass vast amounts of Loyalty Points. CCP Sreegs and Team Security are in the process of carrying out an investigation and we will publish the findings in a Dev Blog at the earliest opportunity.

It should be noted that this investigation may take several days as it is important to ensure that we are thorough with our findings. We do not prejudge investigations and cannot comment on what any potential remediation may entail until we have determined the entire scope of the problem.

Love it or hate it, that’s life in the space sandbox. Tell us what you think in the comments below.

Update: CCP Responds to EVE's Faction Warfare Exploit

Source: EVE Online Forums, EVE Exploit Discovery Announcement