This is what happens when you kiss a stranger in the Alps, Donny

One of the things that intrigues me about EVE is the metagame. Not only are pretend spaceships being built and destroyed, but real people are creating alternative characters to infiltrate pretend corporations.

The latest scandal goes beyond that, where it has come to light that one of the pre-eminent groups, Band of Brothers, has had help from developers. In June 2006, he created many Tech II blueprints (recipes for making equipment) and gave them to the corporation, where he also had a character.

In World of WarCraft terms, this would be like somebody spawning epic equipment and giving it to his guild, only moreso. Those blueprints are a license to print money. Plus, as an added bonus, the guy who figured all this out had all of his paying accounts terminated.

Meanwhile, because of various factions, the entire EVE world is at war right now. I cannot help but wonder what this news has done, whether it's the Archduke Franz Ferdinand incident that leads to the Somme, but this weekend has been lagtastic in fleet battles as corporation fleets march to war.

I really hope CCP gets their act together on this--they've bungled the investigation and their handling of the facts. They may be distracted by their recent merger with White Wolf (I'd expect to see an announcement about a new World of Darkness MMORPG any day now). Still, these shenanigans predate any negotiations between the two companies.

Coming down with a cold this weekend and I have a major release at work on Thursday. I'm going to continue to try more frequent updates, though.