How a guild invested 10 months to overthrow a massive organization in MMORPG EVE Online

EVE Online is a massive space MMORPG and aims to offer its players a true sandbox where everyone can be the spaceman they want. Or something like that. Hardly any example shows these freedoms as well as an old story of a spy guild. She spent 10 months on a bounty and stole over €15,000 worth of content from an organization.

The MMORPG EVE Online has been on the market since 2003 and is notorious for its incredible depth and a dedicated community that also enjoys hosting large-scale space wars that burn tons of real money.

The developers made it clear early on that we would not interfere. We want everyone to have a good time whenever possible – but it’s a community sandbox: players can help each other, but they can also destroy each other.

MeinMMO would like to introduce you to a story from EVE Online that would certainly make a good espionage thriller. It’s about revenge, honor, a great treasure and the knowledge that nobody in space should be trusted but yourself.

Spy Guild takes bounty missions extremely seriously

The story is from the early days of EVE Online. On April 15, 2005, the guild “The Guiding Hand Social Club” eliminated the CEO of the organization “Ubiqua Seraph” and gave the corpse to a client.

But getting hold of the remains of such a highly decorated player takes preparation, collusion, and a healthy dose of ruthlessness. So Guiding Hand were the best people for the job.

An unknown client threw in a billion ISK (EVE Online’s in-game currency) and demanded the head of Mirial, CEO of Ubiqua Seraph, one of the most powerful organizations in EVE Online at the time.

This led to a large-scale infiltration of Ubiqua Seraph. It was supposed to take a good 10 months and in the end Guiding Hand was able to complete the job and loot over 20 billion ISK in assets.

You can see which even older MMORPGs continue to excite many players in our video:

Revenge, honor and the greed for more loot

It is not known why the client asked for Mirial’s head. The CEO was also known to be involved in some shady dealings. Revenge seems the most obvious motive here.

For the guiding hand, it was also about a hefty sum, at least at the time the contract was signed. However, honor also played a role: if the job went smoothly, they would receive plenty of credit for completing the bounty. A good way to earn money and fame.

In order to get to the CEO, however, one had to separate Mirial from the herd. Gaining her trust and taking her to a place where she can expect little or no help.

It should last 10 months and yield a lot more loot.

Ubiqua Seraph infiltrated at all levels

The then CEO of Guided Hand, user Istvaan Shogaatsu, called the process “multi-vector infiltration” (via pcgamer.com). A spy is usually not enough for such tasks. They attacked on a large scale and smuggled many agents into Ubiqua Seraph.

After 10 months, the entire organization had been infiltrated – there were double agents of the Guided Hands everywhere, some of them with high official positions.

And one even managed to gain the CEO’s trust and become Mirial’s top lieutenant: Arenis Xemdal.

Arenis, the master spy

Istvaan Shogaatsu calls Arenis a “Valentine Spy” specializing in gaining the trust of other players. For your own benefit, of course.

It was Arenis who was supposed to isolate Mirial. He led them to a deserted sector while everyone waited in the background for the signal. The code word “Nicole”.

The action almost went awry, other ships in the sector almost frightened Mirial. But when the time finally came, “Nicole” echoed throughout the EVE Online universe. And it’s a vile bounty job that turned into a full-scale heist.

“We had the key to Fort Knox in our hands”

A billion ISK for the bounty was a lot of money at stake back then. But Ubiqua Seraph had been completely infiltrated: “We held the key to Fort Knox,” said Guided Hand CEO Shogaatsu.

And they cleared the safe completely.

The Spy Guild had access to every office of the Ubiqua Seraph, access to all shared storage facilities and accounts of the great organization. You took everything with you and just left a note that referred to “The Guiding Hand Social Club”.

Shogaatsu calculated that the entire operation flushed nearly 20 billion ISK into the Guided Hand’s coffers. At that time the values ​​were over €15,000.

Overall, Shogaatsu estimated the damage to Ubiqua Seraph at more than 30 billion ISK – including an extremely valuable Amarr Navy Apocalypse-class starship, Mirial’s ship.

Mirial’s escape pod was destroyed and her frozen corpse given to the customer as requested. This ended an action that, many years later, still makes astonished faces and stimulates the imagination.

With such incredible stories, EVE Online proves again and again that it is one of the best games that hardly any of us will play.

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