Can MA Employees Play?

[Konve]

Originally Posted by Centech

There are rumors about members of a certain society being largely MA employees (...)

Well for rumors I only know one avatar. Of course it was Knuckles who told me and proved it, but that was years and years ago.

Originally Posted by burnsey

There are some MA employees in the top societies.

I don't doubt that, though.

[kalanen]

mr double strikes back

edit: triple

[Jimmy B]

Originally Posted by Frigid

I'm going to err on the side of human nature and *guess* that there are avatars controlled by MA employees that MA doesn't know about.

Originally Posted by Kimmi

Like Mindark having avatars to win some ATH for Mindark to make more money if deposit times are low???

Let me get this straight then:

As we know, there are known MA avatars. These are MA avatars we know MA knows about. We also know there are unknown MA avatars. That is to say we know there are some MA avatars that MA don't know about. But there are also unknown unknown MA avatars - the ones we don't know MA don't know about.

And am I right in thinking that the suggestion is that some of the MA employees who are controlling avatars without the knowledge of MA are winning some ATH for MA to make more money if deposit times are low? Brushing aside the headache that is rapidly consuming my capability for reasoning, if MA were to give themself an ATH to make up for lack of deposits would it not just be quicker for them to get the money from the bank rather than officially looting it in EU?

[ragethecorp]

Originally Posted by Jimmy B

Brushing aside the headache that is rapidly consuming my capability for reasoning, if MA were to give themself an ATH to make up for lack of deposits would it not just be quicker for them to get the money from the bank rather than officially looting it in EU?

But putting an ATH in game would give people hope, which would lead to more money spent on hunts, which would lead to more people depositing. In the long run they would make more money giving themselves an ATH.

EDIT: Not to mention the fact that big loots in this game is nice PR.

[Frigid]

Originally Posted by Dion Red Strike

And I almost thought you were leaving the dark side.... still obviously on the conspiracy theory bandwagon tho...

Don't give up on me!

This is in no way directed to MA only, per se, but at HUMANS in general, and I would be incredibly naive if I thought it was not, never had, or never will at MA. No bartenders ever drink after work? No professional athletes bet for or against their own teams?

If there were no cops dipping into evidence lockers, if there was no insider trading, if there were no lobbyist getting fat government contracts, no cashiers palming $20 bills, no mechanics siphoning gas from the cars they work on, no deposed princes of Zimbabwe emailing me to help them, no bankers using bank funds as a personal piggy-bank, nobody stealing identies, and on and on with a laundry list of crimes which are mostly petty and white-collar, then I *might* believe that nobody could be guilty of a slight nudge in their benefit.

Originally Posted by Dion Red Strike

Would you like to lose your job 'trying' to make some extra cash?

Not me...I'm a standup guy, but the world is littered with people who would and have done so. To speak quite honestly, if I had a chance to make serious cash with a few keystrokes and thought I could get away with it, I'd have to wrassle with my conscience, but in the end I know which side would win...

Look me in the eye (virtually) and honestly tell me that you cannot see the temptation that a single item(made essentially from thin air) that might fetch $30K USD or more could hold over many, many people. Even moreso in an online game where the anonimity is high. Do this 10 or 20 times and you think they'd give a fuck if they got fired if they weren't prosecuted?

As long as HUMANs work at MA, it could happen. These are tech-savvy guys to begin with and proxy servers are only one way they *could* cover their tracks.

That is the caveat of having a successful game where the value of single items have risen to the level of annual salaries...

[Sarah Hawkwood]

{DELETED}

So do NOT... Sheesh... And honestly, when you come up with something like this, quote your sources.

Every game developement company has and needs to have their own avatars. Even for testing. But EU, which is far more complex than most of MMORPGs, needs avas not only for testing bugs and various systems, they probably need some to adjust the market if something goes terribly wrong. Actually I would find it kinda unresponsible aproach if they had not such avas.

[Frigid]

Originally Posted by Jimmy B

And am I right in thinking that the suggestion is that some of the MA employees who are controlling avatars without the knowledge of MA are winning some ATH for MA to make more money if deposit times are low? Brushing aside the headache that is rapidly consuming my capability for reasoning, if MA were to give themself an ATH to make up for lack of deposits would it not just be quicker for them to get the money from the bank rather than officially looting it in EU?

Whoa, whoa, WHOA! My most fevered conspiracies never touched on that.

"Ok..I'm and MA employee. I get to play a couple hours a day and I work on the game myself. It's a fun game...I like playing it....I can do a proxy...they can't track that. Hmmm...I'm getting away with playing and they haevn't caught me...what else can I do?"

It's a slippery slope. I guess I should back up and bit and say that I don't think that every MA employees that is playing a non-MA sanctioned avatar is breaking any other rule than just playing a non-sanction avatar.

BUT...I am saying that if they *are* playing on their own the temptation to nudge a hexidecimal value here and there would be very real, and could be very hard to resist. Human nature: gaining a big benefit with minimal effort. Sorry...I'm jaded. My world isn't filled with ponies that eat rainbows and poop butterflies

I can only hope that MA runs duplicate databases that are constantly compared to check for odd changes...

[Jimmy B]

[removed]

Originally Posted by ragethecorp

But putting an ATH in game would give people hope, which would lead to more money spent on hunts, which would lead to more people depositing. In the long run they would make more money giving themselves an ATH.

EDIT: Not to mention the fact that big loots in this game is nice PR.

All true, but totally irrelevant. MA don't need employees playing EU to do this. They could just send a fake ATH message through the chat window to a made up avatar.

But I doubt the local authorities would approve of such measures, and in any case if I thought it vaguely possible they did such things I wouldn't still be around here to talk about it.

Originally Posted by Frigid

Whoa, whoa, WHOA! My most fevered conspiracies never touched on that.

"Ok..I'm and MA employee. I get to play a couple hours a day and I work on the game myself. It's a fun game...I like playing it....I can do a proxy...they can't track that. Hmmm...I'm getting away with playing and they haevn't caught me...what else can I do?"

It's a slippery slope. I guess I should back up and bit and say that I don't think that every MA employees that is playing a non-MA sanctioned avatar is breaking any other rule than just playing a non-sanction avatar.

BUT...I am saying that if they *are* playing on their own the temptation to nudge a hexidecimal value here and there would be very real, and could be very hard to resist. Human nature: gaining a big benefit with minimal effort. Sorry...I'm jaded. My world isn't filled with ponies that eat rainbows and poop butterflies

I can only hope that MA runs duplicate databases that are constantly compared to check for odd changes...

Well hopefully you realised my post was rather tongue-in-cheek.

In any case I think you're scaring yourself with ideas that probably are not even possible. These are obvious problems that MA will have thought about long ago and resolved. Just because we don't know how they are resolved doesn't mean they aren't. I find it highly unlikely MA would leave themselves in a position where it would be anything other than very difficult for an employee to take advantage of them in such a manner.

[Centech]

Originally Posted by Frigid

Whoa, whoa, WHOA! My most fevered conspiracies never touched on that.

Yeah its funny.. believe it or not my original question was pretty innocent. Some of the things people are wildly speculating I'm accusing people of are WAY worse than anything I really thought.

[slupor]

Originally Posted by burnsey

There are some MA employees in the top societies.

Some top-10 societies even have non-MA emp