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EVE Evolved: Alliance Tournament XI Grudge Match
The largest alliance war in EVE Online's history is currently underway, with the latest battle to hit the news reaching over 4,000 players and shattering the world record for players involved in a single PvP battle. While massive battles like are becoming a regular occurrence in EVE and have dominated the news lately, the strategy of just throwing thousands of ships at the enemy and seeing if it works doesn't work in every corner of New Eden. Wormholes, for example, limit the mass of ships entering a hidden Sleeper star system at once, promoting smaller-scale conflicts that are more about deep strategy and execution than scale. So it is for EVE Online's annual alliance tournament, a fairly matched drawing that attempts to simulate what would happen if small squads of ships from opposing alliances met on equal terms. Teams are drawn randomly against each other and put together squads of ships within the bounds of an imposed point limit. This year's tournament involved only 64 teams and had no elimination stage but still managed to pump out 128 action-packed matches with full commentary and studio coverage. The grand final even played host to the biggest grudge match in Alliance Tournament history as Pandemic Legion faced off against Hydra Reloaded. In this week's EVE Evolved, I round up all the matches in this year's massive Alliance Tournament and discuss the explosive final that saw old tournament rivals face off for glory and huge in-game prizes.
EVE Evolved: Losing yourself in EVE Online
Of all the things EVE Online has to offer, exploration is perhaps its most attractive lure. With around 7500 solar systems to visit and seven years of history enshrined amongst them, EVE offers players a very real and tangible universe to explore. There's something inherently attractive about getting lost in the depths of space and being absorbed into the stories woven around those thousands of little points of light on the map. While the official storyline of most MMOs can be seen all across their respective worlds, the sandbox nature of EVE adds significant player-determined influences to the usual developer-created storyline. In the colossal sandbox of New Eden, key battles and events have drenched areas of the game in a player-made lore that's ripe for discovery. In the past, several players have capitalised on EVE's potential for exploration in order to craft for themselves a truly unique gameplay experience. In 2006, a new player by the name of Innominate Nightmare went on a roaming tour of EVE's lawless nullsec regions. In his travels, he talked with the locals and reported on daily events as they unfolded. The intrepid explorer soon discovered a New Eden fraught with war but at the same time bonded by it. Every space station and alliance-claimed system held stories of the blood spilled over its liberation, the good times pilots had together there, and the monumental efforts alliances had undertaken to carve a home for themselves out of the void. In this week's EVE Evolved, I immerse myself in some of EVE's most unique exploration experiences and look at how you can become lost in New Eden's awesome sights and stories.
EVE Evolved: Exploration -- The basics
When we talk about EVE Online, it's often about PvP or the latest political intrigue in the sandbox. Less talked about is the game's core PvE gameplay, which for many players is the entire scope of their interests. I've covered a number of great ways to make ISK in previous guides, from my three-part series on trading and extensive four-part guide to research to the similarly thorough three-part guide to mission-running. Most recently I tackled the age-old art of asteroid-belt ratting in nullsec. Another of EVE's most popular PvE pastimes is exploration, where players scan out hidden mission-like sites hoping to strike it rich. Exploration is one of those things that spans players of all skill levels, with new players able to make a useful contribution and group up with older veterans. Within a week of starting the game, new players can be locating hidden complexes, doing battle with the local NPCs and hopefully finding some valuable loot. Although exploration sites use the same deadspace dungeon and combat mechanics as missions, there are a few key differences. While missions can be created at will by going to an agent NPC, exploration sites spawn randomly in space and have to be manually scanned down using probes. In this week's first part of the EVE Evolved guide to exploration, I look at the ships and equipment you'll need, and the scanning techniques typically used to find hidden exploration sites.
Facebook MMOgraphy: First impressions of The Agency: Covert Ops
Every two weeks, Facebook MMOgraphy brings you the latest news, guides and analysis about MMOs on Facebook and Facebook apps associated with MMOs. SOE's upcoming spy MMO The Agency has been long in the making. We've been covering it at Massively for quite some time now. Though it's not quite ready to launch yet, SOE has surprised us this week with a Facebook gaming app, The Agency: Covert Ops. Though Covert Ops is a Facebook app based on an MMO, it's not an MMO itself. There is no real time interaction with other players, for example. However it does provide light entertainment for those who enjoy the spy genre and has the same tone and feel of their upcoming MMO title. The Basics The core of the game is leveling your spy via missions. The missions follow a storyline and some of them are accomplished simply by having the correct resources needed, others require you to complete a minigame. Rewards include in-game cash, experience for your character and components to build better equipment. Every mission requires a certain amount of Cover to complete and when you run out of Cover, you need to allow it to replenish over time or buy more through a microtransaction store. Pop ups provide a tutorial to walk you through the gameplay flow and videos explain minigame play.
SOE unveils The Agency Facebook game, announces The Agency will be at E3
var digg_url = 'http://digg.com/pc_games/SOE_says_The_Agency_will_be_at_E3_reveals_Facebook_game'; Hey, remember that time Sony Online Entertainment trademarked "The Agency Covert Ops" and we all wondered why? Now we know. It turns out that you're going to be able to play The Agency while you wait for The Agency to launch. No, really. Covert Ops, the newest Facebook app from Sony Online Entertainment, serves as a tie-in to the upcoming secret agent MMO The Agency. Don't dismiss this as another boring mafia-style Facebook grind until you check it out, because our friends at Mashable scored an interview with the developers and Covert Ops goes way beyond "ask everyone on your friends list for two nails and a board." Customization is king here right from the start, offering a unique look from the tattoos on your character to their overall living space.
EVE Online player circumnavigates the game's world
The game world of EVE Online is vast, a galaxy of over 5000 charted solar systems called New Eden. EVE's explorer-types, like Jeran Tek, have successfully visited every solar system in New Eden. Jeran Tek isn't alone in such pursuits, however. This past week saw another player establish a new exploration milestone; DevilDogUSMC of The Helicon Alliance circumnavigated EVE's galaxy. It took him four days, on a journey with 118 waypoints and 502 jumps in a covert ops frigate (capable of warping while cloaked). DevilDogUSMC spoke with EVE's volunteer in-game reporters (Interstellar Correspondents), stating why he even attempted this. He said, "Since I became a pod pilot five and a half years ago I wanted to explore this universe, but I was put into action with fleet after fleet not ever having the chance. So I decided to take a break from... politics and working with our alliance fleet and went for it. This was a chance for me to show the rest of New Eden that anything can be done as long as you commit to it and work for it." The full story on DevilDogUSMC's journey was reported by ISD Aeterna Vitae on the EVE Online site.
EVE Online exploration video tutorial
EVE Online blogger Morphisat recently unearthed a good video tutorial on the profession of exploration, by a player called SRRAE. In a vast, open galaxy like EVE Online's setting of New Eden, the option of becoming an explorer is an appealing one. However, despite the name 'exploration,' players cannot actually discover new solar systems. They can, however, find hidden content throughout space, both in highsec and lowsec. This can include hidden asteroid belts (presumably with rarer ores to mine), hacking and archaeology sites, harvestable gas clouds used in drug production, and numerous combat encounters. Admittedly, exploration is not an easy profession to pick up for beginners, but with enough skills related to scanning and covert ops, paired with a decent understanding of game mechanics and the value of a cloaking device, exploration can be lucrative -- particularly in 0.0 space. Of course, there will inevitably be times where an explorer is simply burning off scan probes in the futile hope of finding something new. Perhaps SRRAE has become a victim of his own success, as he recently lamented the downside of exploration's growing popularity among New Eden's capsuleers.[Via CrazyKinux]
