Pointy ears and tights have it all wrong!

Tobold, the WOW blogger, has gone on a rant about how RMT ruins EVE Online. His thesis is that in EVE, you can buy success which breaks the game.

I think that if you are used to playing a game like WOW, LOTRO, or EQ this might seem possible. The important point that the non-EVE-playing "analyst" misses is that EVE is not just about running up to something and pushing 4 keys in a specific order while dodging/changing positions at key times that you can learn from watching You Tube Videos with no risk of losing your stuff if the group or raid wipes. While one can certainly get into a big ship by buying PLEX, one can also lose that ship VERY fast if they do not know exactly what they are doing. Even in High sec, expensive ships are ganked all the time. Just ask Helicity!

I fully support new players picking up a few PLEX to get started with EVE. It helps with skill purchases and getting going with ships early on and also helps established players play for free as they sell ISK to the new player. This RMT does not affect my gaming in any way except in moving ISK to people who are looking to spend it, which is good for my market orders. The only flow of cash is from players to CCP, avoiding the problems with supporting macro-slime or botters.

Tobold is concerned about fairness, "You being able to boost your power with money is even worse if you directly compete with other players in PVP."

At the level of low sec or 0.0 play, buying PLEX does not give one any significant advantage over the other players who are out killing each other. Any decent PVP player can fit and fly T2 to get an edge in battle when that is called for. Having deep pockets will enable you to afford to lose more ships, but it will not make you a better pilot. In WOW, purchasing expensive gear will "twink" your toon and give a tremendous advantage over players with cheap gear. Conversely, a T2 fit Taranis could easily go down to a cheap Rifter if the pilot doesn't know what they are doing.

The skill system which Tobold maligns allows a very young player to be highly useful in gang and fleet warfare with veteran players within a week or two of starting the game as a tackler or scout. I certainly don't think a 2 week player on the WOW rails would be able to interact meaningfully at all with lvl 80 WOW players in a PVP situation.

In EVE, you cannot buy your way to easy mode. Using specialized and expensive ships makes you a tremendous target. You fly ships like that for a specific purpose or role with great understanding of the risk and appropriate fleet backup. There is no uber-unstoppable ship for every situation! (Sorry Tengu pilots...)

To break it down clearly for any traditional pointy ears and tights MMO players reading this: You cannot "buy your way to power" in EVE. You can "buy your way to providing expensive loot drops for the rest of us" in EVE. In fact, I strongly encourage Tobold or any other MMO player to jump into EVE and prove me wrong by buying up some PLEX and becoming "powerful" to demonstrate this uninformed claim. Just be sure to update your clone before you leave the station!

P.S.

There is no easy mode in EVE.

H.T.F.U.