As you may know, EVE Online has an economy that’s entirely player-run: banks, trading, the whole nine yards. Stealing and fraud are not banning offenses, so people can go hog wild. Which they do, to varying degrees. This is a game where one guild infiltrated another guild, then literally killed all the leaders and stole all their assets.

Still, this latest fraud is impressive even by those standards: a Ponzi scheme that netted them over a trillion ISK, or $50,000 in real money, if you could sell ISK, which you can’t under the rules of the game.

So were these guys griefers? Con men? Jerks? No, they just wanted to beat the game in a different way, and demonstrate that it was possible to do so within the rules established. They even feel kind of bad about ripping people off. They’re not in legal trouble because no real money ever changed hands, and the rules are pretty clear that in-game fraud is allowed.

In other words, they’re just very good at the game. Of course, now they’ve got thousands of players gunning for them to get some revenge, so we’re sure that’ll add a little spice.

[ via the pyramid schemers at Boing Boing ]

You probably know professional-nerd-girl Felicia Day from her small but annoying role in Buffy The Vampire Slayer, her somewhat larger role in Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog or her endlessly flogged World-of-Warcraft-esque webseries The Guild. Well, she has another line to add to her nerd-resume, as she’ll be writing producing and starring in a webseries for Bioware’s Dragon Age 2 game this summer.

She unveiled a teaser for the series on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, but there’s not much to see apart from Day jumping around and throwing daggers, so who knows how good it’ll actually be. All we know is that it’s coming this summer and Day plays an elf, or at least a woman that needs some serious ear plastic surgery. Either way, we’ll probably watch it.

Watch the teaser after the jump:

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I’d argue that most people could find a lot of cool things to do with $15,000 (Charlie Sheen excluded). For starters, you could finally take an expensive trip, remodel the kitchen, donate to charity, invest in your child’s bank fund, finally take an expensive trip, etc. -the possibilities are endless, really. Of course, if you’re the kind of maverick who just can’t stand the thought of some extra cash at your disposal, I suppose you could always drop your 15 grand on renting out Asia’s largest LED screen (and the world’s second biggest LED to date). But what could someone possibly need a 250 meter long X 30 meter wide screen for? My friends, if I told you the truth you probably wouldn’t believe me anyways: it was all in order to play an MMO game on a PC laptop…wait for it… for ten entire minutes.

My favorite part of the story is, as mysterious as it sounds, nobody really knows for sure who the Chinese gamer is/was. Somehow it’s been determined that he’s the guild leader of a famous (unnamed) online game, but anything outside of that is unknown -so for now, I guess we’re all just going to have to continue referring to him as The Beijing Pimp Slap.

Witnesses say that on Sunday, November 21st, sometime around 8:40pm a car pulled up and parked near Beijing’s The Place, host to the 820 foot long screen. The man walked up, laptop in hand, and entered a roped off portion directly below the screen, where a lawn chair was already reclined and waiting. Using the wireless network access code, duder logged on, laid back and tuned out hella hard.
*attempts to start slow clap*

Oh yeah and Happy Thanksgiving, all you savages.

More pictures of the sky screen, along with video from the gaming session, after the jump:

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EVE Online has an odd status among MMOs; it sounds like an Objectivist science fiction novel, but it’s actually an MMO with a player-driven economy. Basically, if you’ve ever wanted to play a game where you can defraud a large corporation, or violently overthrow the CEO, oh and also fly spaceships, have we got a game for you!

The unique feature of EVE is that behavior in most games that would get you booted is instead rewarded, like killing noobs and blowing up other people’s stuff. This dovetails nicely with the fact that EVE money, called Isk, actually has a small amount of real world value. In other words, for people who live to pee in someone’s punch, every day, this game is the MMO equivalent of Yahoo! Answers.

Why are we bringing all this up? Because there’s a hilariously overdramatic video of one corporation destroying another corporation’s stuff, to the tune of $15,000 in real money flushed right down the tubes. Video of this conspicuous consumption, as well as Yahtzee explaining EVE, under the jump:

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Here’s a perfectly normal English sentence: There will be a Michael Jackson MMO called Planet Michael.  Hang on.  *huffs gold spraypaint, puts on “Warriors” T-shirt* Okay, I’m back.  That’s right, a free online game trying to squeeze more money out of the Michael Jackson legacy through the sale of in-game add-ons of some sort (buying sidekick monkeys, hiring virtual lawyers, and changing your character’s nose shape every week, I would assume).

Rock my world with the press release, CrunchGear:

[Planet Michael] will be an immersive virtual space themed after iconic visuals drawn from Michael’s music, his life and the global issues that concerned him. Entire continents will be created that will celebrate Michael’s unique genius in a way that underscores his place as the greatest artist of all time. Michael’s longtime fans will feel at home as they find themselves in places that seem familiar and yet unknown at the same time, and new generations will discover and experience Michael’s life in a way never before imagined. At its core, Planet Michael is a massive social gaming experience that will allow everyone, from the hardcore fan to the novice, to connect and engage in collaborative in-game activities with people worldwide.

It’s taking all my willpower not to mention that the places seeming familiar yet unknown to a new generation might include the back of a windowless van.  Whoops, just did.  Anyway, SlashGear is saying there will be objectives, tasks, and challenges in the game (Spending a billion dollars without owning two of the same object? Spiking a Diet Coke with just the right amount of liquor?).  They also say the players will combat each other through dance battles.  That’s right.  Saving the Rec Center, the MMO.

It’s become hack to talk about the Star Wars prequels being horrible. With so much already said about the clumsy dialogue, wooden acting and just plain Lucas-Why-Should-I-Care-About-All-This-Stuff nature of them, who wants to hear about them again?

And then another trailer for the Bioware’s Star Wars MMO The Old Republic comes out and is so much more watchable than all those three film combined.

Video after the jump: Read the rest of this entry »