orbital-bombardment
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EVE now lets you nuke entire DUST 514 sites from orbit
CCP has completed its downtime migration of the DUST 514 beta onto EVE's live Tranquility server. The company has published an extensive FAQ entry that aims to answer everyone's questions, including how capsuleers can rain fiery hot death down on their terrestrial mercenary counterparts. As it turns out, ground forces can't fire back just yet, but it's also not possible for EVE pilots to hop from planet to planet sowing wanton destruction in their wake. Orbital strikes must be requested by DUST 514 players. After the request is made, any EVE pilot allied with the relevant militia and possessing the appropriate tactical ammo may answer the call. There's much more to it than that, of course, and the EVE wiki has all the specifics.
DUST 514's latest build lets you bring the pain from EVE Online allies
If you've been waiting for DUST 514 to show off its integration with EVE Online, your wait is over. Now when you're in the midst of pitched fighting for an area, you don't have to wade through enemy fire and struggle against overwhelming odds. No, you can just call in your allies from outer space, bring down an orbital bombardment in the area, and take possession of whatever survived the initial blast. That's the big takeaway from the game's new build, Chromosome, and it's one that's very welcome. Admittedly the orbital bombardments are currently limited to players on the test server, but seeing as the game is still in beta that's rather appropriate. The latest development blog discussing the update also mentions that this will be the last major push before open beta, and while it's not as flashy as destroying your foes from orbit, there have been a number of bug fixes and improvements. So there's a lot to like in this update, but the best thing is raining death on your enemies with arsenals from the heavens. At least, it's the best thing until the other side has better friends.
EVE Evolved: The great ship overhaul
One of EVE Online's most important features is that the game is constantly updated to avoid falling behind the development curve and being overtaken by new titles. The EVE we have today bears little resemblance to the primitive sandbox released in 2003 thanks to major graphical overhauls every few years and iteration on gameplay systems. I think that's a big part of why people start playing EVE; they know that the game will still be alive and kicking years from now and will look as good as anything else on the market. EVE remained largely unchanged from March 2009's Apocrypha expansion until Crucible at the end of 2011, but since then, CCP has made huge leaps in iterating on ship graphics and gameplay. This week we saw an impressive new video of the revamped Drake model, and CCP announced details of a complete mining barge and frigate revamp due to hit the servers before this year's winter expansion. These changes seem set to put a sizeable dent in EVE's notoriously steep learning curve. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at the recent graphical updates to EVE's ships and explore the upcoming ship overhauls in more detail.
Taris announced for Star Wars: The Old Republic
Fans of Star Wars: The Old Republic are most likely veterans of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, for reasons that should be immediately obvious. So the announcement of Taris on the official site is no doubt going to bring back some warm feelings of nostalgia... or irritation at the planet that you had to spend roughly seven years on to find Bastilla. Maybe a little of both. Of course, by the same token players might remember that Taris didn't exactly make it through the end of the game intact. Being leveled by an orbital bombardment left the planet a smoldering ruin for the rest of that game, and according to the planet's official dossier, the better part of three hundred years. The Republic is attempting to re-colonize the planet in a show of defiance against the Sith, but they're running into a few problems. The rakghouls and plagues that marked the planet's lowest sectors remain amidst the ruins, along with the Sith attempting to block the Republic from the obvious symbolic victory of retaking the world. We're still a year out from Star Wars: The Old Republic, but with a few of the sites we can look forward to visiting, some players might feel as if they've never left.
