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Tweet While many of us haven't actively taken part in EVE Online's territorial warfare, news routinely surfaces of the massive alliance wars that take place in the game's lawless nullsec regions. As the number of players subscribed to EVE increases, so too does the size of the average nullsec fleet. Since there's no disadvantage to bringing additional pilots, each side in a heated war will try to bring as many people as it can physically get to attend. At a certain point, however, the server hardware strains under the weight of hundreds or thousands of players, and lag sets in. The point at which this happens has been rising over the years as CCP performs server upgrades, with previous expansions seeing fights as large as 500-1000 per side with quite manageable lag.

A landmark battle is currently raging in the system of LXQ2-T, with thousands of pilots fighting for control of the system. The number of players in the system peaked at over 3,110 pilots, with alliances from the Northern Coalition political conglomeration facing off against the Russian power block from the drone regions. Lag began to set in at around the 2,400-player mark, with pilots facing several-minute delays on warp commands and module activations. Several pilots have launched live video streams of the event, though much of the action has ceased for the moment as the server begins to recover from a severe clash with the lag monster.

As a reader of Massively, you should have a pretty good idea what MMORPG means. Not just what it stands for, but what it feels like, looks like, and behaves like. The problem is, despite common definitions, the games keep coming in different shapes and sizes -- and from all over the world. While I receive many comments about the Western coverage that Massively features, I would only be doing half my job if I reported on only the latest half a dozen games to break the multi-million-dollar budget mark in America.

The world is a smaller place, especially now. And across the world there are MMORPGs that are being played and enjoyed in many different ways. There are PvP games, games that place players into instance after instance with only a handful of other players, all while offering the potential to hang out with thousands of other people. Is an instanced combat game still an MMO? How about a game like Mabinogi, which maintains a persistent world, but is broken into several invisible channels for players to skip in to and out of?

This is impossible, but I think I will try to define exactly what MMO means -- now, in this current market.

Two very large names have joined forces to help battle the illegal (and increasingly annoying) digital Black Market that exists to sell virtual in-game goods. Backed by $24 million in investment money, Mitch Davis (the former Massive in-game-ad firm founder) and Sony Pictures Digital vet Andy Schneider will launch Live Gamer, a publisher-supported service that creates a secure platform for real-money purchase and the sale of virtual goods.

Already on board are MMOs and virtual worlds from Funcom GMBH, Sony Online Entertainment, 10Tacle Studios, Acclaim, GoPets and Ping0 Interactive (the company that provides access to the online, multi-player component of Hellgate: London), and they're willing to work with any publisher. With backing such as this, we may soon see a siesmic shift in the virtual goods landscape.

Nearly every MMO is now plagued by these despicable gold farmers and Real Money Traders bent on selling their warez, regardless of their legality. Even my beloved City of Heroes and Villains has recently been targeted with endless spam that fills in-game Email boxes and brazen "live" players (often named "jkjkljlkj") who will approach you trying to offer their services. A concerted effort from within the industry itself to stop these griefers is long overdue. Hopefully this will be the spark that ignites a widespread change.