war-declaration
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EVE Online releases 17th expansion, Inferno
CCP is a pretty polarizing topic in MMO circles these days. Whether you love or hate the studio's flagship EVE Online title and the community that surrounds it, one thing you can't say is that the devs lack a work ethic. Today marks the release of EVE's 17th expansion, and when we say expansion, we don't mean a glorified content patch that's been dipped in PR sauce. Inferno boasts a reworked war declaration system, substantial faction warfare updates, a new mercenary marketplace, enhanced graphics, new missile and launcher effects, and a host of other features focusing on everything from inventory to new modules and ship balancing. CCP has also released a slick new Inferno trailer, which we have for you right after the cut. [Source: CCP press release]
EVE Online declares war (more efficiently)
Team Super Friends is hard at work living up to its name by bringing liberty, justice, and wholesale carnage to the EVE Online community. As the team prepares for May's Inferno expansion, it's tackling a reworking of the War Declaration system. According to a new EVE dev blog, the system wasn't exactly broken, but it was underutilized and wasn't always working as intended. As a result, the team took the system apart, examined it thoroughly, and put it back together with a few improvements aimed at making the act of declaring and waging war between corps clearer and easier to understand. These improvements to War Declaration include modifying how costs are calculated, eliminating automatically retracting wars, and putting a time limit on conflicts. Wars will go on for a week, after which the declarer can choose to pay to prolong it or end it right then and there. An informative War Report will help players understand the forces engaged, losses sustained so far, and the history of a corp's past wars. The blog ends with a FAQ on the changes culled from the recent Fanfest.
EVE Evolved: Dealing with a war declaration
At its heart, EVE Online is primarily a PvP game. Gangs as small as a few ships and gigantic fleets with thousands of players routinely lock horns and turn each other into pretty explosions. Even if you stick entirely to a PvE playstyle, the PvP-centric nature of EVE is almost unavoidable. Trading, ratting and exploration involve direct competition with other players and can sometimes escalate into hostilities. Even high-security space isn't so secure, with players able to launch suicide attacks to kill valuable targets before CONCORD arrives on the scene to police matters. If you're in a player-run corporation, there's also always a risk that the corp might become the target of a war declaration. As part of the Yulai convention, capsuleer corps can pay a small war fee to convince CONCORD to look the other way when the missiles start flying. With high-security space turned into a war zone, everyday mission-running or hauling can become a very risky endeavour. There are hundreds of corporations whose sole purpose is to declare war on any corp that looks like an easy target, and becoming the target of one of these frivolous war groups is an event that tests what a corp is made of. In a previous EVE Evolved article, I looked at the best way to prepare a PvE corp for war and fight back against a wardec. Since then I've received a number of requests for a guide for those players who don't want to fight back and would rather avoid wars entirely or bring them to a swift conclusion. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at some ways to deter frivolous war declarations and what to do if your corp comes under fire.
A look at hiring mercenaries in EVE Online
The galactic setting of EVE Online is always buzzing with conflict, somewhere. The game is very PvP-centric, although not all players have an interest in the violent side of EVE. That's all fine and good, even those who concentrate on industry (EVE's take on the crafting system) have a powerful weapon at their disposal to fend off, or spark, hostilities from other players -- their in-game currrency. The power of the Inter Stellar Kredit (ISK) makes many things possible in EVE, and there are a number of mercenary corporations active in the game that are willing to kill or die for you, for the right price. While many players are aware that mercs can be contracted for industrial warfare, to force retractions of war declarations from aggressors, to secure territory, and complete a wide range of objectives for their clients, the protocols involved with making this happen are less transparent. That's where the Guide to Hiring Mercenaries comes in, written by Alekseyev Karrde, founder and CEO of the mercenary corp Noir.
A newbie's first war declaration in EVE Online
It's almost guaranteed that at some point in your time as an EVE Online pilot, you'll encounter a war declaration from another corporation. In some cases, the wardec may be provoked -- another corp's pilot killed or harassed, perhaps one ninja salvaging too many, and the next thing you know Concord sends you an email notifying you of hard times ahead. Then again, wardecs can also simply be used for kicks and consequence-free highsec kills. Potentially, a war declaration can also be a form of ransoming, a way for aggressors to extort money as a 'fee' to retract the wardec. Regardless of its cause, the situation remains the same: your opponents are free to fire upon you in high security space without triggering a response from Concord. For a newer player, a feeling of panic can sink in. That warm, comfy security blanket of highsec no longer offers its sheltering protection from harm. Perhaps for the first time, there's real risk involved in playing the game. That's an angle of war declarations that writer Sam Guss discusses in a piece for MMORPG.com called "EVE Online: Surviving Your First War." (Guss is also a writer at EVE-Mag). But that's really just the backdrop. He recounts his own experience with being wardecced, from the surprise of the initial wardec to the sobering 24-hour countdown to war against far more experienced PvP-ers.
EVE exploit warning affects corp infiltration practices
War declarations are an essential part of EVE Online. They allow corporations and alliances to fight for control over resources, territory, or simply to get revenge on their rivals. Then again, others declare war for the opportunity to grief in Empire space. Perhaps it's this latter tendency that prompted the latest announcement from CCP Games. They're branding the monkeywrenching of rival corporations during wartime as an exploit. GM Grimmi states: "The practice of insta-joining/leaving warring corporations for the purpose of surprising war targets, or getting them in trouble with CONCORD, is considered an exploit from here on. Reports of this will be investigated on a case by case basis and warnings will be issued at the discretion of the GM. Repeated incidents may result in bans on accounts involved." This doesn't seem to apply to 'normal' corp infiltrations, though it does beg the question of why a corporation at war would even be accepting new recruits at all. What's the protocol in your corp, do you continue to accept applicants into the fold during a wardec, or is the risk of alt spying and sabotage too great?
