The Great PLEX Explosion: Best Comments from the Forums

To set the scene, yesterday a pilot got his Kestrel (a very small, cheap ship) blown up outside of Jita (a major trading center) while carrying 74 PLEX, an ingame value of 22 billion ISK. PLEX can be redeemed by the holder for 30 days of play time. Like all ship cargo, there is a random determination as to whether the loot survived the explosion or not. In this case, it did not.

PLEX are created when the owner of a Game Time Code (GTC) worth 60 days play time decides to convert that GTC into two PLEX as ingame items. So the real world dollar value of those PLEX was roughly $1300 US.

I'm reading a big thread on the Official EVE forums, and I thought I'd share with you some of my favorite comments:

• If anyone has the heart, contract that pilot a new Kestrel


• [Quoted Comment:] You are being naive. There are warnings and the guys losing them on kills like these are mostly traders and not people interested in the gametime. The long discussions are going to happen no matter what at this point. Just lean back in your comfy chair and enjoy the trolling and idiocy.
  
  [Response:] HAHA! So if there IS a warning, he knew the risk of undocking with them... even if he's a trader. Perfectly legitimate kill then. Sounds like trading isn't this guy's strong point.
  
  BTW.. how do you know my chair is comfy? you got eyes on me??
  


• yes. !!PLEXes do drop.!!
  
  It's just this was a stack, and as you remember stacks get processed all at once instead of individually. some people loaded up a frig with 4 million PLEXes (unstacked) on Sisi [SISI is EVE's test server-T.] then blew it up... 99%+ of them dropped.
  


• I had lost much of the faith I once had in CCP. There has been endless threads about lag, imbalanced weapon systems, and the way in which CCP works, so there is no reason to go into detail here.
  
  But then, something wonderful, something so beautiful as this happens. Making plexes movable was a great decision. It's things like this that makes me love EVE; this cold, harsh, and completely unforgiving universe.
  


• There is this saying amongst developers:
  
  Originally by: Rich Cook "Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning."
  
  I guess it doesn't only apply in programming.
  


• You can call it greed if you wish, but they are no different than 1000's of other vendors that offer physical gift cards that can be lost, stolen or destroyed instead of doing so purely by electronic means.


• Here is the BIGGER point that you are all missing. If you take said gift card and get mugged and it is stolen you can CALL Bestbuy or almost any other retailer who offers gift cards and have a replacement issued and the old card canceled if you have the receipt. This is stated and posted in a number of stores and I know for a fact Bestbuy and Futureshop do it (they are the same company now anyway) as I used to work there years ago and have done it.
  


• I worked for Best Buy myself, and still have friends employed there. It doesn't work that way. Wink
  
  There are a lot of variables that you aren't bothering to include in your scenario above that would end in Best Buy denying you redemption of your gift card. In fact, it wasn't all that long ago that they stopped having expiration dates on their gift cards. Meaning that if you didn't redeem the gift card quickly enough it lost all value. And they are only 1 of thousands of merchants with similar policies.
  


• So I've got a question. What's keeping, let's say, a CCP dev/gm alt from actually "buying" said Plex(s) and accidentally it/them?


• P.S. This is exactly the kind of issue that Americans sue over.


• Good thing CCP ain't American.


• EVE: a cold, harsh universe. Stupidity has consequences. Essentially, you people are arguing that there should be exceptions to THAT.
  
  Go play Farmville. It's clearly your kind of MMO.
  

So, from reading forums and killboard threads, the following picture emerges:

Aystra was carrying the PLEX to Jita, presumably for sale in a arbitrage bid. The value of the PLEX (22b ISK) represented the bulk if not the entire sum of his Alliance's (Small Alliance) Sovereignty fund. That is to say, the money that they use to pay for SOV upkeep, and for space upgrades and new Territorial Claim Units, and so on. He was popped by war targets who were not aware of his cargo, as he was attempting to dock. The ships that popped him (the killboard post is here.) were a Tempest and a Hurricane. No doubt they were fitted for fast locking. I would presume that one volley was sufficient to kill, it certainly looks that way.

One of the pilots on the kill has posted: I didn't even wanna post this kill.. I was like whatever it's just a kestrel... and when finally got
posted [which allowed him to see what the cargo was - T] I started to make squicky sounds I didn't
know I was able to make lol

According to ISD, the wreck was destroyed immediately after the kill, to prevent scavenger looting.

"I would probably be kicked out [of the alliance] if [PLEX] were to drop... I was the one that killed the wreck," concluded slickdog.

Interesting times we live in...