While waiting for Apocrypha I came across this...

If I can't play the game at this very moment, I can at least watch this trailer and drool!

EVE Ghostbusters!

It's well known that the EVE Online Forums are full of whiners! CCP unleashed a wild crowd of EVE Loonies on the forums when it announced that it would disable the ability to train skills on a suspended account.
This ability is - or actually, was - known as ghost training.

In EVE, characters train in real-time. A skill may take just a few minutes to train, or up to over a month to complete - a calendar month that is! Ghost training players would start to train say a 30-day skill on an account about to expire, then re-activate that account say, 28 days later. They'd conveniently get a free month of training on that character. It seems this practice was starting to look like a revenue-loss for CCP, and so, logically they changed their policy.

No active subscription, no training, thus no more ghost training.

I, along with my fellow EVE bloggers (Kirith, Ga'len, Ebonezer and Karox), agree with CCP's decision on this. Which isn't the case with the EVE Online forum trolls and their conspiracy-theory-lunatic-buddies. But we all knew they'd go banana over this didn't we!

It was about time CCP went Ghostbusters! And if these whiners threatening to leave New Eden over this actually do, I say good riddance!

Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got some ghost zapping to do!

The Lag Monster - CCP Oughta Know

In view of the recent patches to cap the number of players in certain systems due to lag issues or reroute them around problem areas, as well as the similar problems faced by huge fleet battles, the video above is quite funny.

I just can't help but sing along, reading the authors alternate lyrics and having a blast at it!

I'm reassured though, knowing that CCP is working hard to try a kill the monster!

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

EVE Online Speedlinking for March 15th, 2008

Direct from London UK, here's the EVE Online news, blog posts and article that caught my interest during the last week!

• TurpsterVision: Don't tell Adam but I've been fooling around with EVE - Marc Turpin takes a ride in EVE and tells it all in a nice little video! More please...
• Urge…to…play…EVE…rising… - Syncaine needs a small nudge from us to get back full time into EVE. Anyone?
• Trinity 1.1 Boost Patch Being Deployed. Sorta. - Dr. Winterblink plays therapist for fellow players who face EVE withdrawal syndrome due to the extended downtime.
• Trinity 1.1 Patch: A New Button! - Finally, a logoff button!
• Learning curve - Is EVE really that tough?
• So what do you do when Eve is down? - Homeworld 2 anyone?
• Making Factional Warfare Work In EVE: Realistic Politics - A better EVE lore?
• Under The Hood: The Depths of Space - James over at Massively explores space-based MMOs

So how did you survive the extended downtime? Let us know!

Fly safe all!