The price of everything and the value of nothing

Last week a special Awful Lost Of the Day entitled ALOD: CREDIT CARD WARLORD surfaced. As it happens the ALOD covers more than just the one loss and spans more than a single day.

Superficial reading suggests that Dagbog Fokin was remarkably persistent in losing expensive ships with questionable fittings.  As the losses mounted he seemed more and more determined to somehow bolster the fits with faction and officer modules.  At the time of writing his "kill" board included 27 losses in all to the tune of 14.35B isk.

I'm not writing this to  indulge in schadenfreude - on the contrary, this is the kind of verve and firmness of purpose that your author admires.

I do wish someone will assist this guy.  Looking at the kill board, the majority of his losses had no CONCORD involvement, indicating Dagbog actively engaged in fights - duels/shot at suspects, whatever.

He even managed to whore on one kill.  For such a new character he shows remarkable willingness to engage.  In that respect, kudos to you sir!

Normally I would take no heed of the apparent pay to win strategy of Dagbog or Jalrek (made famous by the bonus room saga) - the money was theirs to spend and the game theirs to play however they choose.

Except in this case it hits a little bit close to home.  You see your author is in the (space) poor house. In order to fully justify his pathetic excuses explain, a bit of background.

Due to RL circumstances your author is relegated  to little playtime and to playing on a 15' (work) laptop (going on eight months).  He can run the EVE client, but he can't scan (sucky graphics card).  He cannot multibox (PC gets really hot). So no scouting, no probing.  No exploration, no wormholes.

With limited options, he resigned himself to a bout of light highsec work and playing some skill-queue-online (learning clones!)

Which brings him full circle back to the credit card, the poorhouse and the problem.

In order for a EVE to remain a game I don't want to have to excessively grind ISK, so I fund my first two accounts with real money.

Any additional accounts has to be funded by PLEX (with in game ISK) and would lapse if no ISK is available.  This also holds for any additional multi character training certificates.

With the price of PLEX now at 1.2 billion ISK, am I tempted to fund multi character training with the credit card?  Certainly.  At that price I am tempted to buy a couple of PLEX to sell in the market.

But no.

In order for a game to matter, stuff has to mean something.  Losses should sting.  Officer mods should be fitted with care.  A shiny ship should be just that - a shiny ship for a special occasion.

To me the value of an in game item is tied directly to the in game effort I have to expend to acquire said item.  Any short cuts in any way only serves to erode that value and by extension my ultimate enjoyment of the game.

This more than anything else is my wish for messieurs Jalrek and Dagbog:  I hope that they will stay in the game long enough to eventually be able to appreciate the value of the ships that they fly and the modules that they fit.