I think it’s a lot easier to find corps in EVE than that. You don’t really have to prove yourself in that way. Many good corps are happy to take in newbies. TEST Alliance have made quite a name for themselves in EVE and they take in a lot of new players.

I have actually played sandbox games before, but I’ve never seen one that’s so specifically unfriendly to new players. It’s interesting. Castle Marrach was probably the closest and it wasn’t that you’d get ganked and scammed but that no one would trust you enough to involve you in any of their schemes and stories until you’d somehow proven yourself, which meant for at least your first month and possibly more you’d be wandering around making smalltalk and that was about it.

Sad to hear that you’ve only had bad experiences though. I will say the same thing as I said on Claims of the Normal this Sunday: You sadly trusted the wrong people. EVE is a harsh mistress and it’s hardly a game for everyone.

And I’m guessing you mean shot out of space in Empire. Yes, that happens too. Being shot out of space in nullsec shouldn’t come as any surprise if you venture out there without an alliance.

So, lacking that part of the ‘sandbox experience’, I had no positive experiences out of EVE: poor, repetitive missions; messy progression; poor connections with other players and constant fear of being shot out of space without provocation even in null spec (that happened, too).

C out

I going to also agree with Gordon on his blog in that all the players that got scammed probably and clearly knew that there was a possibility they would be scammed. They went ahead and did it anyway in case it actually worked the investment and paid out and in the case that it didn’t work and indeed was a scam no biggie to them if didn’t and they wouldn’t be bothered either. I believe that is what happened.

I clearly remember months and months ago reading the MD forums (Market Discussion) forums when Phaser Inc made a thread about their new Investment in a page thread for their investment. I clearly remember many people in MD making suggestions that is was a possible scam because they were no details of how it would invest anything to make the payouts on investment with allot of unanswered questions. I clearly remember many others in the that forum thread and several pop up threads doing analysis on Phaser Inc as a investment clearly calling it out as a scam in the works and not for others to invest.

Clearly all of this couldn’t of just been ignored by many sensible players. However despite all that many players in EVE and MD still went along and played the investment game in Phaser Inc which indeed turned out to be a scam that they probably knew from the beginning was a possibility just wondering how long the scam would last.

Investment in EVE or MD Investment IPO’s Bonds, Banks, Loans can be like a forum mini game of investments and scams going either way. Many knowing about the last big scam still go ahead and invest in something that looks like a scam and turn out to be the next latest scam hoping to get in and out the scam before it falls apart. Some players in EVE have so much ISK sitting in their EVE Wallet that they probably hardly miss it investing in the scam of the week.

I’m more inclined to believe that many that did invest in Phaser Inc ponzi investment scheme clearly knew that it was a possible scam.

Which actually likely didn’t happen. Don’t fly what you can’t afford to lose translates very well to don’t invest what you can’t afford to lose either, so I doubt any individual actually lost much.

Really, I don’t think it went as far as Gordon seems to think in his post. I think the attitude of anyone who invested was probably more along the lines of “Sounds too good to be true, probably is a scam, but wth? I’ve got some extra isk lying around and if it turns out to be real, awesome, but if not, no biggie either.”