EVE Online brings back live events with Tyrannis
Read that title for a second. No, you're not dreaming and you haven't stepped into a time machine and emerged on April 1st. EVE Online is finally bringing back live in-game events that players can participate in. Any player old enough to have participated in EVE's live events should be as giddy in their seats as I am right about now. In years gone by, CCP ran short sequences of events that pushed an important storyline arc in the game's fiction. Developers would take on the roles of key figures in the story, acting their part according to a guideline script.
The idea that if you were in the right place at the right time you could become embroiled in a terrorist plot or find yourself in the midst of an epic battle between NPC factions was as intoxicating back in 2005 as it is today. This is sure to be a huge boost not just for EVE's role-playing community but for the everyday player that wants to get involved in the great stories of New Eden.
Skip past the cut for more details.
Past events
Memorable storyline arcs of the past include the Crielere event, in which Caldari and Gallente research corporations co-operated to unlock the secrets of a new Guristas pirate prototype cloaking device. Another that players who were around in 2005 will remember was the theft of a titan belonging to the Federation Navy by Serpentis operatives. Players got involved in events on every level and often took sides in the conflict, pitting themselves against each other to genuinely affect the outcome of the story.
It was every role-player's fantasy but the events were unfortunately plagued with difficulties. One of the main issues CCP couldn't overcome was with ensuring player participation without attracting enough people to cause server issues. You had to be in the right place at the right time to get involved and events were often over by the time you heard about it and had reached the staging area. Events lasting mere hours also took weeks or months to plan and get approval for. A team of volunteer players named AURORA was assigned to organise and run events. Unfortunately, a few bad apples on the team were reportedly caught leaking information and the team was eventually shut down. EVE's story was relegated to sporadic fictional news stories that are detached from the game we all play.
Events to come
In a new devblog, CCP Headfirst explains that live events are set for a dramatic return with the Tyrannis expansion. Rather than starting up a new volunteer group, CCP will be leveraging their Atlanta division's writing talent to produce and run the events in-house. To avoid issues that have occurred in the past, a new set of guidelines for actors has been drawn up forbidding them from attacking players in high or low security space unless fired upon first. Actors won't have access to any special heal or teleport commands to remove the temptation to save their ship from destruction. Their ships and fittings will also consist of only items that other players can normally access.
According to the devblog, the first events have already been set in motion. The story is being started through out-of-game mediums such as news articles, the forums and "other places you may not expect". When the event kicks off, encounters will apparently begin taking place in-game all across the galaxy. Being careful not to give too much away, CCP Headfirst mentions that the story will involve "one of New Eden's oldest and most insidious threats" and that when these events kick off, that threat "will become increasingly real". CCP will be looking to players for feedback on how the new events are going so that they can improve them for the future. It's looking like an exciting time to be a fan of EVE Online!
UPDATE: The original blog entry has been updated with a link to classified CONCORD data files. We've had reports of wormholes opening near planets in Stain region and Sansha pirates emerging from them to attack. Have the Sansha's Nation pirates discovered a way to control the unstable wormholes that have been appearing across EVE for the past year?
