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Massively interviews EVE executive producer Andie Nordgren
If you've been following the development of EVE Online lately, chances are you've heard of Andie 'CCP Seagull' Nordgren and her mission to make deep space colonisation and player-built stargates a reality. Andie has spearheaded the direction of EVE's development over the past few expansions and has gathered a considerable following in the EVE community. At EVE Fanfest 2014, we heard her plans to overhaul EVE's outdated sovereignty and corporation management systems, and to eventually introduce new deep space colonisation gameplay. Today CCP announced that Andie Nordgren has been promoted to the position of Executive Producer on EVE Online. I caught up with her for a chat about development on EVE and to find out what this promotion means for the future the game. I've pulled together the important details from the interview in this article, and if you still have burning questions for Andie Nordgren, she's doing an AMA thread on Reddit right now!
EVE Online explains its new expansion model, opens store testing
If you followed EVE Fanfest 2014 closely, you already know that CCP is planning on reworking EVE Online's twice-yearly-expansion schedule, but today's dev blog aims to flesh out that plan. Writes CCP Seagull, Instead of doing two big expansions per year, we are moving to a model where we do about 10 releases per year, or one release every 6 weeks. In general each of those releases will be smaller than what you have seen with our expansions, but overall we will get you more per year and an overall better EVE Online because of the two big benefits this new model brings: Smaller and medium size features get to you faster, and we can make bigger features and changes to EVE Online because these can take the time they need to mature before going out, without needing to time a rare expansion. Seagull further explains that the new expansion cycle will help the team deliver speedier content for a wider variety of playstyles. In other EVE news, CCP has announced that EVE's store is open for testing on the Singularity server. "The new store will be instrumental in the future for offering ship skins, and other character and account related services," says CCP Falcon.
EVE Fanfest 2013 final day: Trailers, EVE's TV show, and a vision for the future
We usually don't expect to see much from the final day of the EVE Fanfest, but for this year's tenth anniversary celebration, CCP isn't doing anything by half measures. The first two days of the event had a strong focus on DUST 514 and EVE Online, delving into the specific details of DUST's upcoming Uprising update and EVE's Odyssey expansion. I went into the convention centre today expecting a nice slow wind down with the usual CCP Presents keynote looking at the state of the company, but I left with several huge reveals that seemed to come out of nowhere. Not only did we find out that EVE Online is finally getting a collector's edition box full of goodies, but CCP revealed that a new EVE comic book and lore compendium are both on the way. As if that weren't enough, there's also an EVE TV series in the works based on player-submitted stories of true events inside the EVE universe. I couldn't help escaping the feeling, though, that this year's CCP Presents talk was more than a little marketing-oriented. As one of the press put it to me after the talk, it felt at times like watching an infomercial. On the plus side, we did get to see more of CCP's future vision for the EVE universe and an amazing new trailer showing the game's core storyline. Read on to check out the incredible EVE Universe Origins trailer and my summary of the final day of Fanfest 2013.
EVE Evolved: Bring on the big expansions!
I don't normally jump out of my seat shouting "hell yes!" to an EVE Online dev blog, but this week's announcement on the direction of future expansions has me a little bit excited. In two somewhat dry and lengthy posts, Executive Producer Jon Lander and Senior Producer CCP Seagull detailed the approach they intend to take to ongoing development in 2013. Instead of announcing any big headline features or making vague promises, the developers looked back at the success of 2009's blockbuster Apocrypha expansion. Apocrypha was hands-down the best expansion EVE has ever had, adding 2500 hidden solar systems accessible only through shifting unstable wormholes. We saw a renaissance of exploration, collaborative research, and colonisation efforts that defied EVE's war-like reputation, and moreover, we saw a rebirth of small-scale PvP. The magic sauce that made Apocrypha work was lateral design: Rather than add one massive vertical feature, the expansion offered a little something for everyone. Apocrypha was EVE at its best, and hearing that developers are going back to that style of expansion honestly makes me a little giddy! In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at the future for EVE's expansions, why the Apocrypha model works, and why I'm optimistic for 2013 and beyond.
