killboards for carebears

I seem to be on a roll of ideas, maybe this one not as bad as the last: Would there be any benefit by having regular financial accounts generated by the API that focus on certain types of corporations or alliances? I’m not suggesting entire rosters are released, or day-by-day trades, or locations of all resources and assets, just a basic balance sheet and a profit and loss statement.

I ask because I was reading the latest QEN and it was interesting to find out that 88% of wealth was in the hands of 10% of the population. However, beyond discovering that the average account has 500m ISK, we don’t really know where all that wealth is. The QEN hints at personal wealth, but how does personal wealth compare with that of organisations?

If corporate accounts were generated periodically (either for corps over a certain size, or corps within alliances – or just the alliances themselves), and could be publicly scrutinised via the API, might it provide another level of competitiveness, as well as transparency? Or would it take away a much-needed layer of secrecy that organisations need to operated within in order to be competitive?

I know this question has been put forward many times over many years, and even addressed by Dev panels, but given the detailed information increasingly (though all too infrequently) handed out by the QEN, without some specifics it perhaps lacks the context that would make the data more meaningful and useful.

in remembrance

Every issue in EON we have three single-page articles called In Character, that basically profile the famous (and often the completely obscure) residents of New Eden. The articles are always written from a role-play perspective and even those who aren’t role-players are treated as characters rather than gamers (which isn’t always easy when some we’ve profiled are more active on the forums than in game).

I had a thought earlier today about devoting the In Character profiles in a future issue to being more like obituaries. Actually, effectively they would be obituaries. They would focus on player-characters who have actually – to crassly borrow from Monty Python – expired.

I would of course get information from corporation buddies of the deceased rather than hire a medium, and it would remain in character rather than be stuff like “he was so funny on Teamspeak”. But I’m curious if the idea is as tasteless as this proposal is turning out to be, or whether it is a good way to honour EVE’s tragically and permanently fallen? As ever, your thoughts are welcome.