Back through the wormhole: rediscovering New Eden years later

A funny thing happened when I started cleaning up my blog a few weeks back. I was just “archiving” old EVE Online posts, fixing dead links, swapping in updated YouTube videos… totally innocent stuff. Right... And then, somehow, I found myself dropped straight into the deep end of the nostalgia pool. One minute I’m fixing a broken link or looking for a working link to an EVE Fanfest video, the next I’m getting bombarded with “Come back to EVE!” ads like Hilmar had personally noticed my footsteps into my EVE archived content.

And honestly? The pull was too strong. 

Mix in that "Making of EVE Online" documentary, and the full-on marketing push for Catalyst, CCP’s latest expansion, and resisting New Eden became a losing battle. So I took a peek. Just a tiny one. And, well, you can guess where this is going.

I’ve only been back in the game for, what, the better part of a week now? But it already feels like that surreal combination of coming home and discovering someone completely renovated the place. Sort of like driving by your childhood home. The neighborhood layout is the same… everything else has been upgraded.

Hey CCP, for your next trailer, this is what I'd like to see...

Yeah, Mike! You tell them! :p

Come on CCP! Where the frack is my Beer Ship? [VIDEO]

As we head closer and closer to Fanfest 2011, I thought I'd remind those who've been, and those who'd like to attend, at the sort of geeky humour we're soon to witness!



Now, seriously, forget Incarna CCP, and give us all Beer Ships next Christmas!

Speedlinking New Eden & more - The January 17th, 2010 Edition

With part 3 of Incursion coming later this week, we've got a bonanza of posts today. Hope I didn't miss any this time! Also, be aware that the recording for the next New Eden Chronicles is scheduled for the 28th, once Sansha's shown his face in Empire. Finally, I'm off to Las Vegas for the remainder of the week. Fly safe till then!

• CrazyKinux's Musing: EVE Blog Banter #24: Be, all that you can be, and so much more!
• EVE blogs examine CSM discussions on nullsec warfare | Massively
• Tiger Ears » Blog Archive » Aiming quick and low
• EVE Evolved: Mining 101 -- Mining efficiency | Massively
• Sins of a Solar Spymaster #55 - Choice Paralysis in EVE | Ten Ton Hammer
• Bring Me The Head Of Kirith Kodachi Live Event TONIGHT ~ Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah
• Should EVE use the word “expansion”? » Ecliptic Rift
• Freebooted: Who Do You Think You Are Kidding Mister Sansha...
• Pets Win Prizes!- Chocolate Heaven
• EVEOGANDA: Getting Fit: The Falcon
• Freebooted: My Sister the Rookie: Trial Period, Part One
• Episode 51 - Fly Reckless – EVE Online
  
  
• YouTube - EVE Online: Incursion Devblog #15 - Why Sansha?
• Character Portraits
• Contracts Improvements
• CSM December Summit - Meeting minutes (Part 1 of 3)
• CSM December Summit - Meeting minutes (Part 2 of 3)
• CSM December Summit - Meeting minutes (Part 3 of 3)
  
  
• The Escapist : Stolen Pixels #241: The Gaming Afterlife
• Five Reasons Why I Dislike PvP « Bio Break
• Drunk scientists pour wine on superconductors and make an incredible discovery
• What else did I miss?

EVE Online: Tyrannis Trailer [1080p HD]

I love the voice over!

You can download the video on the Tyrannis feature page .

Murder, plunder and betrayal in EVE Online

I took a break last night from my usual time spent in EVE, to do some clean-up in my PC game collection, CDs, boxes and game manuals. I tried re-installing a few just for the fun of it, only to realize that many of them just don't look as good as I remember them, or simply can't display well at my current default LCD resolution (1280x1024).
Looking at all the CD cases, I came upon the original case for EVE Online. The original game published by Simon & Schuster Interactive back in 2003. Looking at it I started reading the text on the back and was amazed at what I saw.

Some of what I read still applies today: Explore a vast Universe - Develop your Character - Choose a Profession - Join the Community - Player Driven Economy. All of these can still be used to describe EVE 5 years later.

Then I read the finer text and realized how blunt and gory they were pushing EVE at the time. This isn't a place where you'd expect to find carebears. It sounded a lot more hardcore PvP to me. Listen to this,

"Immerse yourself in the vast virgin territories of EVE where power is the Holy Grail and the ultimate aphrodisiac. Conceive a new life without boundaries, where murder, plunder, betrayal, and delusions of grandeur will lead you to boundless glory or the brink of ruin. The galaxy is yours to control if you have the brains, strength, and cunning to succeed."

Wow! Where are the miners, traders and other industrialists in this description. This sounds very dark and almost suicidal! And talk about the sexual undertone also - immerse, virgin, aphrodisiac, conceive, life! Who wrote this stuff!!!

Thinking about it, I do recall that way back in 2002, before EVE came out, it did give off a kind of ruthless-cutthroat-industrial-hardcore-spacer feel. It was exotic, different & mysterious. The game also seemed simpler back then. Now, it's become so complex, it's beyond anyone's reach to master it all. I can't believe anyone out there masters everything about EVE.

If you want to see the back of that CD case, I've put it up here on my Flickr account.

So how did you get into EVE? Through the CD or a digital download? Direct download of the game, or through the 14-day trial? And have your initial impressions of the game changed since you became a capsuleer?

I'd love to know!

EVE Online Video: Inside CCP during Empyrean Age deployment

CCP just released a time lapse video of what it looks like inside the QA Department when a patch is released. In this case the patch was Empyrean Age.

The video is available on the Facebook EVE Online group. If you're on Facebook, the you've got to join that group. If you're not, then hurry-up and register like the rest of the 90 million of us, and join the EVE group - and while you're at it, there's also an EON group you'll need to join!

P.S.: Can anyone tell me who the dude with the white t-shirt is?

[EDIT] "...the clown in the white t-shirt is CCP Luzvel." CCP Hypnotic

5 Common Misconceptions about EVE Online

The RPG Vault has a great developer interview where they look at the five most common misconceptions people make about EVE Online. Head over and have a look. Here's their lists before you head out:

1. Newbies will never stand a fighting chance against old players
2. EVE is only about combat
3. Mining is the only way to earn money as a rookie
4. You can't enjoy the game if you aren't in a major alliance
5. EVE is not meant for casual players

Here's a few more you could add to the list:

• EVE is just a good looking spreadsheet
• New players can't make a difference
• The EVE Community is a bunch of ruthless hooligan

Can you think of any others?

EVE Online CSM - Have you chosen your candidate?

I've done it! I've cast my vote. I've given a stranger my vote of confidence to bring a level-headed discourse to CCP and improve the game I love so much. I just hope he (or she) stands by his (or her) word.

But I won't tell you who I voted for. I will though, narrow it down for you. You see, I want you to do as I did, and take the time to go through each players profile, read up on his (or her) views and make up your own mind as to who should have the honor of being elected to the 1st ever Council of Stellar Management.

Having gone through the full list of candidates, 14 caught my attention. Of those, I chose one. I'll admit, I'm a little disappointed that I wasn't able to vote for all 9 of the candidates I thought should, in my opinion, make up the CSM. That's what I would have expected. Everyone votes for their 9 candidates and in the end, 9 candidates that (out of the 61 who offered themselves) get to fly to Iceland in June. Doing it that way should have avoided polarized votes, which is likely to happen with the current implementation CCP has chosen. We'll just have to wait for the results now.

Though I won't tell you my choice, I will give you the names of those 14 candidates out of which I made my pick. All of them, had a website, and each showed some effort in trying to convince me that they should get my vote. They took the time to go over their platform and all seemed serious about the CSM. Though EVE is just a game, it's also a hobby in which I invest a good chunk of my time. I'd like whoever will represent me in front of CCP to do it intelligently, convincingly and respectfully. Each of the following candidates convinced me they would.

Here they are, in no particular order:

• Alison Wheeler - Inanna Zuni
• John Richardson - Max Torps
• Brendan Reid - Ben Deridar
  
• Shawn Pilkington - Gritt Pebbledasher
• Paul Mumby - Arduron
• Eva Jobse - Ankhesentapemkah
• Jeremy Jankie - Omber Zombie
• Andrew Cruse - Jade Constantine
• Michael Rasmussen - TornSoul
• Andrew J. Goodwin - Goodwin
• Charlie Erikson - LaVista Vista
• Niall Dologhan - Hardin
• Leanna Jane Evelyn Fulford - Shatana Fulfairas
• Shayne Smart - Serenity Steele

So there you have it. Fourteen dedicated players, who've put considerable thought on the CSM and why they should get our votes. They've done their parts, now its all up to us! Happy voting!

The CSM, the Candidates and You!

It's been a few days now since the Call for Candidates ended and the voting begins in less then one month - on May 5th to be exact. Do you know who you'll vote for? Do you at least know who the candidates are? Do you know what there platform is?

If you answered no to any of these questions and you consider yourself a dedicated member of the EVE Online Community, you need to do your homework! You're taking part in one of the most interesting MMO experiment, one where an elected body from the player base, has a chance to influence the developers of an MMO. You need to give this the time it deserves! This is for YOU the players.

A while back I mentioned the Candidate Infozone which Winterblink had put together to try to make some sense of it all. Today, I came across two new EVE-Forum threads which should help us all in choosing our representative within the CSM.

First is the Special CSM issue of EVE Mag. This issue has interviews with about half the candidates, each going through a series of questions, giving us a good idea as to where they stand and what the believe in. Candidates which have not gone through the interview can still contact Ikki Phoenix, EVE Mag's editor, to get theirs in. He will update the magazine as new interviews become available.

Last, but not least, we have the Council of Stellar Management website, brilliantly put together by Serenity Steele, who is also the one behind the EVE Strategic Maps! The site lists all the candidates, with links to their blogs, information on their platform, forum statics, etc. Very well put together and a must for anyone considering to vote intelligently - which is all of us, right!

So suffice to say, we've all got a lot of reading ahead of us, if we're going to make this CSM work and do a proper job at representing us.

The CSM's success will be a result of our efforts and our will to give it the chance it deserves.

EVE Citizens, you have a duty to fulfill!

EVE TV's Live Broadcast of the EVE Fanfest 2007

For thoses of us who could not make it to this year's fanfest, EVE TV had a special gift for us. This past Saturday, at 1200GMT, EVE TV started broadcasting Live from Reykjavik. Though family responsibilities prevented me from watching the broadcast from start to finish, I was able to sit through most of Nathan's (aka Oveur) presentation and managed to see Hilmar's full presentation.

The first impression I got from viewing the broadcast was a sense of belonging, a strange sensation that though Iceland lay an ocean away, somehow through the magic of modern communication part of me was there. Call it virtual eyeballs or whatever, but I felt a touch of the excitement of my fellow EVE citizens.

Thank you EVE TV for gave us the opportunity to witness all the exciting news as it was divulged to the fanfesters (is that a word?). Speaking of which, I do recall that spiralJunkie mentioned that the clips and broadcast would be available next Saturday. So for those that missed the entire show, or for those like me that missed a few, we'll get our chance to relive the magic (ok, enough of this pixel dust sensitivity!).

I thought I'd share with my notes which I jotted down while listening to the broadcast.

Nathan's Presentation:

• Trinity Upgrade represents 50 man-years Ambulation - decadently gorgeous
• Planets - nowhere near
• Ambulation, but it'll be kick ass
• Bloopers - especially those of Nathan, were funny as hell

Hilmar's Presentation:

• Spoke about the growth of CCP and player base
• iEVE – Transgaming President, Vikas Gupta’s presentation
• Ambulation – drop dead gorgeous
• CCP working with IBM and Microsoft to build Europe biggest supercomputer by mid-2008
• Council of Stellar Management – a council of players

This doesn’t give justice to the fun I had watching these two, but it still is fun stuff to know. So make sure you take the time to watch when EVE TV releases them – hopefully by next week-end, as promised!

Fly safely!

Heading to Atlanta...

...for TeclcoTV that is, not CCP North America! I'll be at the Georgia World Congress Center for the next three days for the trade show, to meeting with clients and look for new ones. And since I'll be walking distance from the convention center, I'll have a chance to visit Atlanta.

Unfortunately, since I'll only be there on for a short time, I won't have a chance to visit the new offices of CCP North America since it's not exactly close to where I'll be staying. Well at least we've got this article over at TenTonHammer, with some great photos of the opening day.

Maybe next time I'll have more time.

CCP opens North Americans offices

Looks like our favorite Vikings are busy continuing the North American expansion.

They plan to hire 100 new employees over the next year. Read the article over at Gamasutra!

A great video interview with EVE Associate Producer

The guys over at MMORPG.com have a great 15 minute interview with Arend Stuhrmann done during the 2007 Games Convention in Leipzig. There's a lot of great pieces of information in it, and a cool video comparing the before and after implementation of Trinity II, EVE's upcoming improved graphic engine - out by the end of the year. Here's a list of the major points covered in the video, though I encourage you to go over and take the 15 minutes to watch it.

• Trinity II will be out by the end of 2007
• It will require XP and DX9, not Vista and DX10 (woohoo!!)
• Dynamic Lighting (how sweet it looks)
• Trinity II lays the ground work for future DX10 improvements
• Moves a lot of the processing to the GPU, thus improving game performance (crosses me fingers)
• It'll be big at over 2Gb - a mother of a patch!
• Trinity II and the upcoming Revelations III patch might be separate patches (god, lets hope so)
• Revelations III's Factional WarFare is still being worked on
• Revelations 2.2 will have the new Rorqual Industrial Capital ship (this is one badass Carebear ship)
• A bit on the EVE economist
• "Avatars walking in station" feature is also being worked on

Told you is would be juicy!!

Here's a screenshot of a Scorpion as rendered in the new Trinity II graphic engine.

More CCP Interviews: Revelations III, Avatars and books

There's a great interview over at Gamespot. Game Journalist Emma Boyes, from Gamespot UK, interviewed Hilmar Petursson and she's got a ton of juicy bits of information for us. I've summarized them here, but I suggest you head over to Gamespot and read the full article.

• No Factional Warfare in Revelations III
• New graphic engine will be released soon
• Avatars are there mainly to attract new (female) players
• Of the 250 CCP employees, 200 of them currently work on EVE
• EVE Online novels by the first quarter of 2008
• The RPG books are coming along nicely
• The Art of EVE Online book is almost upon us
• EVE mobile is not a priority
• No playable Jovians any time soon

It answers a lot of the questions I've had over the past few posts. Still, I'd like to see some firm dates on a lot of this stuff - EVE Mobile, RPG books, new graphic engine. When are they really coming out? Oh well, we will just have to wait for them I guess.

And to bare that wait a bit more easily, here's a video interview with Torfi Frans Olafsson, CCP's Technical Producer for EVE Online. It was done way back in December of last year, during the last EVE Tournament I believe. It was put up on YouTube by Xyliana, who's now producing EVE TV for MMMPublishing. Torfi talks mostly about the avatar project, and so it's a great interview for those, like me, who long for this new feature in EVE. Enjoy!

EVE Online news from the Edinburgh Interactive Festival

The Edinburgh Interactive Festival was being held today and yesterday and CCP's Hilmar Petursson was there to give a session on the past, present and future of EVE Online. Some news started to trickle down to us unlucky enough not to attend the Festival.

The one piece that caught my attention is CCP's goal to have 3D character avatars (yes, that's the walking kind) some time by end of 2008. How realistic is that in view of the complexity most likely involved (hardware, lag, game play, purpose), only time will tell. Still, I can't wait to see this happen. This, and Trinity II will be the only reasons why I upgrade this PC to be able to run Vista and DX10.

Here's a few links I've put together for your perusal:

• EVE Online Adding Human-Form Avatars
• EIF 2007: Hilmar Petursson explains why EVE Online “will never stop”
• EIF: CCP's Petursson On EVE Online's People-Powered Universe
• Summary of Hilmar Petursson's session
• CCP Games CEO on how Eve Online differs from WoW
• Black Company: EVE Online, Hilmar Petursson

Enjoy!

P.S.: I'll keep editing this post, adding new articles as they appear. So keep an eye on this one!

Customized ship exterior to be added to EVE

In a startling development, CCP has just announced that in a yet to be announced patch, a feature that will let users customize the exterior of their ships will be added to the game. Basically, we're talking about custom paint jobs for ships here folks! Take a look at this following Kestrel in all its beauty!

(Original link to image is here)

Ok, so this isn't exactly true. But you've got to admit this is one feature that a lot of you, including yours truly, would love to have added to the game. Maybe not to the extant of the ship above, but you get my point. I mean corp and alliance logos on ships would be a good start, then maybe color schemes. All of these could be done within certain boundaries or color pallets for each race.

Now, I'm no hardware-bandwidth-tech-whatchamacalit-guy, but I figure that one of the reasons this hasn't been implemented yet has to do with the quantity of new data that would need to be networked if every ship flying nearby would have one of those custom paint jobs. Still, I look forward to the day when the hardware/network/client can handle this and we can start to customize our ships. Until then, we can only dream of Hello Kitty Krestels.

EVE TV Episode 2

During yesterday's downtime, I watched the second episode of EVE TV, and I think that you'll agree that those of us who tuned in were all pleased with this one.

The quality of the editing, the presenters and the material covered was above the pilot of last week. Added to the fact that both StevieSG and spiralJunkie seemed a lot more at ease and comfortable in front of the camera, and you've got yourself some quality TV experience.

In terms of content for episode 2 they covered:

• Game 07 (where an EVE CCG tournament took place)
• CCP's 10 year celebration
• PVP Tournament (late August early September '07)
• Ship Profile - Caldari Rokh
• BoB's lost titan (video 1) (video 2)
• EVE Contest (the answer was Valerie "Pann" Massey - see interview here)

All in all, a much improved episode over the first, which was nice to see. I look forward to next weeks!

EON Issue 008 on its way soon

Here's a sneak peak at the next issue of EON, which is shipping on July 7th. As always, I'm excited about this next issue. One thing though that I've had in mind for a number of month now, is to write something up for the next issue. And I keep pushing it to the next one. And the next.

I do have got a couple of ideas for articles, but I really have to put myself to it, get some discipline and start working on them instead of just letting go of the thought. Which brings me to ask you this: have you ever thought of writing for a gaming magazine? As amateurs, we're always afraid to take the plunge, anyways I am. But I think this time, I will.

If you were to write an article for EON, what would write about? A short story, an article on PVP tactics, or on the political aspects of the corporate and alliance life? I'm curious to know. I think we all are.

PIRATE FACTION BATTLESHIPS

E-ON has featured Testflight since the very first issue, but with Faction ships becoming evermore popular, and more affordable, it seemed the right time to get our ship expert, Farjung, to go into the ins and outs of fitting and using each of the five Pirate Faction Battleships. Until Tech II Battleships arrive, and even after, these ships are seen very much as EVE's high-performance muscle cars, and whilst that fact would hardly be likely to impress a potential mate, the ships are imposing enough to impress a potential enemy.

E-ON AWARDS WINNERS

The ceremony didn't quite go to plan, but that hasn't stopped the voting in E-ON's first EVE player awards. We've tallied up the votes (or, rather, a computer did) and inside we announce who the winners are and who will be receiving a specially designed laser-etched award, of which only a few will ever be made. Read who you voted for as the Alliance of the Year, who is the best CEO, writer and ultimately, who has been crowned EVE Idol. No acceptance speeches, sadly, that will have to wait for a future edition of EVE TV

INSIDER GUIDES

As well as part 4 of our guide to The Second Genesis CCG, Nyphur follows up his previous guide to Rigs with an in-depth look at finding the raw materials required to make them. And if that hasn't got you salivating, how about Ifni's guide to living in the evil realms of 0.0, with its relentless pirates, mired politics and deserts of empty space just waiting to be claimed.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY CCP!

Having recently turned 10 years young, we go back to the dawn of EVE to find out how it was during EVE's big bang, the grand ideas, what the development process was like, all the way to the game's first release in 2003.

PLUS

Hellmar on EVE TV, Profiles of FREGE Alliance and INVICTUS, Stavros talks caps, Gnauton and TomB open up and we have three new E-ON Chronicles profiling love, money, lies, betrayal and slavering hounds.

Looking forward to this next issue.

Democracy sweeps EVE Online's universe

The universe is in flux and unless you've been hiding in an asteroid belt somewhere in a far away low sec system you've probably got word of it. Over the last few weeks CCP has been under fire from part of the community over allegations of, dare I say, corruption and political maneuvering within the delicate in-world Eve ecosystem.

The most recent allegations have been the most hurtful, whether they a true or not. I first read about it through a CCP dev blog in which they explained that their investigation had found no basis for Goonfleet's accusations - the corporation who had made the accusations. As expected, Goonfleet responded to the dev blog. Story started pupping up on various blogs, but it was my opinion that things would die down over the coming weeks. How naive that was!

I then got word through my Google EVE Online alerts of an interesting post over at 3dpointD.com which mentioned that CCP might be introducing some sort of community governance to help prevent future allegations of corruption. And this New York Times article which mentioned the creation of an elected player body (we now know they'll be 9) to be flown to CCP's headquarter to review and make sure that their operations were beyond reproach.

I an optimistic. I tend to believe the glass is half full and that CCP's effort demonstrate their willingness to show that they try to be impartial to the best of their abilities. The effort is genuine and I believe, will be well received by the majority of the community.

In the meantime, we'll just have to wait until this fall, to see how that goes. And if the player body will truly restore the faith of the community with CCP. I for one am of the opinion that it has a good chance of working.What do you think?

For those of you looking for further reading, here's a list of posts and articles that were covered by the gaming community:

• In a Virtual Universe, the Politics Turn Real (NY Times)
  
• EVE Online to have a council of elected players oversee the game (QJ.Net)
  
• CCP to Hold Ombudsman Elections For EVE Online (Gaming Today)
  
• EVE Online Players to Elect Anti-Corruption Inspectors (ShackNews)
  
• CCP to New York Times: We Will Hold Elections for EVE Online (The Escapist)
  
• CCP Bring Democracy To Eve Online (Kotaku)