[loramin]

Originally Posted by Lhancelot [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I just think if it were being done it would have to include only a very small percentage of the population to keep it secret and with such a small active population that really narrows it down to very few people who would be actually doing RMT.

A scientist actually researched this sort of thing once and found:

For a plot to last five years, the maximum was 2521 people. To keep a scheme operating undetected for more than a decade, fewer than 1000 people can be involved. A century-long deception should ideally include fewer than 125 collaborators. Even a straightforward cover-up of a single event, requiring no more complex machinations than everyone keeping their mouth shut, is likely to be blown if more than 650 people are accomplices.

Those numbers might seem high, but he's talking about major conspiracies not RMT in an elf sim. Also he over-estimated:

the number of conspirators and the time before the conspiracy was revealed were over-estimated to ensure that the odds of a leak happening were a 'best case scenario' for the conspirators - around a four in one million chance of deliberate or accidental exposure.

And that doesn't account for the information imbalance either: the staff has access to way more information about what's occurring on their server. It also doesn't account for the fact the conspiracy has to grow: RMTers can't keep making money off the same people forever. When you factor all those things in it looks increasingly unlikely that any RMT "conspiracy" could last very long.

However IF Rogean himself was involved in such a conspiracy it does not seem inconceivable that he could keep it secret ... but you'd have to wear a tinfoil hat to believe he'd put all that effort in to building P99 only to jeopardize it all with something stupid like that.