6 Responses to EVE: Gevlon is still losing at EVE even when he is pretending to no longer play

1. Victor Barreiro Jr. (@vbarreirojr) says:

   September 12, 2016 at 2:43 pm

   Hi Syncaine,

   Victor Stillwater here, saying hello again.

   I didn’t even realize Gevlon still blogged, and for the life of me I can’t even remember his URL.

   That said, he still makes me remember the term “Morons and Slackers” whenever I hear of greedy goblins and Gevlonian ethics.
   • SynCaine says:

     September 12, 2016 at 4:11 pm

     Ha, my favorite part about the whole “M&S” thing is the only morons are people who read Gelvon in a non-ironic way, and Gevlon’s entire basis for ‘success’ is because he does the bot-like work (hauling skill books) for ‘slackers’ who would rather not spend their free time digging ditches in a virtual world.
2. Esteban says:

   September 12, 2016 at 8:03 pm

   I am pretty sure most of his cash came from station-trading – certainly boring, but rather more efficient than ditch-digging – and he is actually quite adept at assessing markets and maximising cash/hr within MMO economies. Has been ever since vanilla WoW. If he hauled Badgers or skill books early on, it was probably close to the optimal thing to do at his wealth level at that point.

   He does have a paranoid streak, and his misanthropy makes him more or less my own direct opposite ideologically, but he is an intelligent man. Perhaps not quite well suited for EVE, where one good stroke of psychology (and what is a casino if not a glorified scam?) can earn more wealth than months of excellent mathematics, but you are being rather hard on him.
   • SynCaine says:

     September 12, 2016 at 8:48 pm

     Hauling badgers is never, ever the best option for anyone. And he was told that when he started it, but being a moron, he kept at it until he slowly figured it out himself, and then went back to edit his blog and pretend it didn’t happen, which is a deliciously social thing to do to try and protect a fragile ego. Same deal with all his Titan fit theorycraft; it was and is pure garbage, he was told that, and yet he kept posting new ‘awesome’ fits that were a trainwreck. Wonder why he never actually got far enough into EVE to fly a Titan and try those fits out…

     His making money in an MMO (be it at a kiddie pool like WoW that had (has?) a gold cap or EVE where he made pocket change in terms of real wealth) isn’t because he is smart. Someone who is smart doesn’t haul badgers for weeks. He makes his money because he is literally a human bot who does the dumb clicking most don’t want to do in their spare time (digging a virtual ditch, only in the virtual world that pays well because everyone else doesn’t want or need to do it), and like a bot he basically does it 23/7. Ever notice how often Gevlon points out how long something takes him, but never initially? Its always 2-3 months after that suddenly his hauling or trading is ‘only’ 2-3 hours of work per day. Why do you think that is? Why do you think Gevlon had 12+ accounts in EVE yet never achieved even one week’s worth of wealth that Lenny spent in four years, when all Gevlon did was attempt to make ISK? Why is it that Gevlon doesn’t have ONE post about making ISK that showed him making real (100s of billions, if not trillions) of ISK? Why are all his ‘how to be rich’ posts the equivalent of collecting cans to return them for pennies financial advice?

     There is a very valid reason 99% of EVE laughs at Gevlon, and most of that comes from the fact that he has a loud bark with zero bite. And the perfect cherry on top of his zero bite cake was Lenny coming in, dropping his wallet on his head, and everyone watching laughing about it.
     • Esteban says:

       September 13, 2016 at 3:10 am

       The man’s entire approach to games is to get rich without grinding, so I doubt he spent a lot of time on updating his orders. I think his multiple accounts were assorted experiments that ended up as SP-farms. As to what’s fun and what’s no-life, we could have the pointless old argument about F1 this and structure grinds that. You’re a strategy gamer yourself, so you are familiar with the satisfaction of beating a system or having a plan come together even if the process itself is kind of dry.

       Regarding his early experience, I cannot claim with certainty that he hasn’t edited anything – I don’t follow his blog quite that attentively and I can’t boast that kind of memory – but here’s a Badger post: http://greedygoblin.blogspot.ca/2012/03/fly-badgers.html and a number of the Titan posts are still there. http://greedygoblin.blogspot.ca/2012/04/elitism-endgame-and-my-titan.html is a pretty good example of the breed, including evidence of the stubbornness you speak of in the face of good advice. In http://greedygoblin.blogspot.ca/2016/04/the-long-march-to-deklein-dark-years.html , a partial summary of his experiences in EVE, he freely admits that his titan dreams were dumb.

       On a purely human level, I understand the impulse to push the envelope, make one’s own mistakes, and try to outsmart the conventional wisdom of veterans. It can make you look stupid, particularly if you blog, but it’s essentially how you learn and find the silver bullets. I know I had a lot of wild and crazy and laughable notions about the game before I learned about EVE’s correct progression path of solo-levelling a Caldari Navy Raven.

       Why no Gevlon titan in the end? He decided that trying to make a difference in null by proxy, using improved killboard metrics and hiring mercs accordingly, would be a better use for his ISK than trying to fly an unsupported sitting-duck status symbol. Which… was entirely correct. Though it is a pity he wasn’t a nimbler diplomat.

       Pocket change? His wealth in EVE stacked up fine against industrialists and others who actually play the game. He gave away something like 700B just to MoA over the course of his campaign and something like 2T when he quit. There are people who are richer than he was by orders of magnitude, but they got there by non-gameplay means. Like Lenny with the rather dodgy external gambling site and, say, Chribba being in the unique position of a trustee. Compared to the 99% of EVE that laughs at him, he’s done exceedingly well.

       Where he did go off the deep end was the paranoia about CCP corruption and bitterness about Lenny finishing the job for him and taking credit. A true asocial would simply revel in the job getting done.
       • SynCaine says:

         September 13, 2016 at 7:12 am

         He had those alt accounts long before skill injectors were added to the game, he used them to ferry goods between the trade hubs. And like I already said, the reason he writes as if he doesn’t straight-up grind is because otherwise it would be painfully obvious to everyone that the brilliant ‘goblin’ is just some random thin-skinned social immune to the tedium of hauling goods and updating market orders for 4 years to ultimately no result. In that regard his self-admitted autism is his greatest weapon.

         Look at that badger post; would someone who ISN’T grinding 23/7 post a screen shot showing they intend to haul, one by one, almost 100 badgers 4 jumps to make trivial amounts of ISK per trip? And again, most random new players might do that once or twice, realize the effort/reward is terrible, and stop. Gevlon was hauling badgers for weeks, if not months (again that lying and editing thing always makes it hard to pin down just how long Gevlon was doing something dumb).

         Gevlon wasn’t pushing a single envelope beyond establishing himself as the king social of the tinfoil brigade (though I admit being so batshit crazy that even CCP recognizes it is impresses levels of insanity). Every theory post was initially explained to him by people who knew better, but rather than learn quickly like someone with actual intelligence, he kept banging his head into the wall and after enough damage, would convince himself of facts that didn’t exist in the first place that ‘proved’ he was right. He did it for industry, he did it for ship fitting, he did it for Corp management, and he did it in his failed attempt to dent Goons.

         Also people like Lenny and Chribba aren’t as rare as you imagine. Be it the PLEX cartel, plenty of members in PL, NC., Goons, etc, or god knows how many vets that avoid the spotlight, but spending 700b (for MoA, no less) is indeed peanuts for someone who spent 4 years focused on literally nothing but trying to make ISK. Lenny spent 1t per week during WWB, and that spending didn’t put him in the poor house. (I also think its pretty silly to discount his wealth as just coming from a casino; if it was easy to run one as well as IWI runs it, more people would do it, including people like Gevlon.)

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