Rumors surface of extras included with EVE Online retail release
Some of the biggest news to come out of EVE Fanfest 2008 was the publishing deal struck between CCP Games and Atari. The March retail release will mark the first time the game can be seen on store shelves since EVE Online's launch over five years ago. Players have wondered what benefits there might be in purchasing the game at a store, versus the game most of us have always known, which has been a purely digital distribution. While this is still relegated to the category of "rumor", images of the box and descriptions of its content have begun to turn up on the sites of retailers.
One UK game retailer lists the details what's included with the box: 60 days of game time, instant access to factional warfare (i.e. automatic standings via an in-game certificate), a guide to the game's careers, a VIP Pass (essentially the Buddy Program), and a special edition ship -- which, in this case, is listed to be a shuttle with increased cargo space. Fair enough, but is it real? Well if your German isn't too rusty, you can also see details of the retail release as they're listed at Amazon in Germany.
EVE dev CCP Sputnik commented on the game's forums that players may be reading too far into this. Sputnik stated, "... I have to tell you that this is outdated box art which was done before the features for the box were even defined. Sorry but you spend your conspiracy power on a fake. About the game time, I asked around a few weeks back and nothing was decided at this time but I was told there will be a Dev-Blog about this before the box gets released which will explain everything."
So there you go. It may be that the retailers jumped the gun, or it may just be that CCP Games is still in the process of finalizing these details. But we wonder, for you current subscribers, would these extras tempt you to pick up a retail copy of EVE Online? What do you think about the extras as they're listed on the sites of these particular retailers?
