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EVE Evolved: Six years of EVE Evolved
Six years ago to this exact day, I joined the Massively crew and published the first edition of this column dedicated to the ins and outs of EVE Online. The column has been home to over 300 featured articles since its creation, offering everything from guides and expansion reveals to opinion pieces, fiction, and tales of real in-game events. It's been my pleasure in the past six years to offer the Massively readers a digestible glimpse into the ordinarily somewhat impenetrable world of EVE Online and to introduce new players to the only game (other than Master of Orion II) that's managed to keep me hooked for over a decade. It's been a fantastic year to be a fan of EVE Online, with CCP announcing its long-term vision for deep space colonisation and the game being revitalised through the Odyssey and Rubicon expansions. I've had the opportunity to explore both expansions in this column and to share some hands-on experience with DUST 514 and CCP's upcoming dogfighter EVE Valkyrie. There's been no shortage of opinion pieces this year either, with articles on everything from PvP consequences and twitch controls to whether Star Citizen and Elite are a threat to the sandbox giant. In this edition of EVE Evolved, I round up the best articles from the column's sixth year of operation in one place.
Happy 10th birthday to Mac OS X Hints
Because we veteran Mac sites have to stick together, we're sending congratulations out to the good folks over at Mac OS X Hints, who yesterday turned the ripe old age (in blogging years, anyway) of ten years old. The site, created by Rob Griffiths and now run by Macworld, continues to be a terrific source of hints, new and old, about cool things to do with our favorite operating system. OS X Hints is just one of the many storied pillars of this wild and crazy Mac community, and we're glad to have them around. It seems like just three years ago we wished them well on their seventh birthday. Here's hoping we can do the same and congratulate them on all of their great work 10 years from now (when we're all playing with the iPad X and the Mac micro).
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Places to go, questions to answer
It's hard to believe that in just two weeks, all of the debates about whether or not Going Rogue will revitalize City of Heroes will be out of the land of theory and into the realm of practice. And while we've still got another week in the land of theory, right now we're taking a trip... well, still into the land of theory, but into the land of theories you asked for. Which is different, in a way! I have a hard time writing these introductions. Haggs asked: "...now that you're getting new lower-level content, why would you want to go through it as fast as you're going through the old content?" It's not always a question of "want." Levels 1-20 in City of Heroes are not nearly as slow as the later levels -- they don't start to really feel long until you reach the 30s, but it's much faster to go from 1-20 than from 20-30 even if you're just playing casually. The flow of leveling appears to be tuned so that players will be able to hit a level of moderate competence fairly quickly, spend a bit of time fleshing out their powers, and then spend quite some time filing off any rough edges via the 40+ powers.
A walk through iTunes history
Recognize the software above? The brushed steel, the rounded buttons, the liquid digital-style display. If you said SoundJam, you're right. But if you said iTunes, you're right, too -- SoundJam is the app that Apple originally bought to turn into the multimedia/handheld software juggernaut we know today. This is the first (public) iteration of the software, as told in this interesting history of iTunes over at Mac|Life. The program actually started as a Winamp-style (oh man, remember Winamp? Justin Frankel's now doing stuff with Reaper, which is the app artists will use to release their songs in Rock Band. But I digress...) media management application, and it's really interesting to see how it turned into a real keystone of Apple's media plans over the years, from the "Rip. Mix. Burn." idea to the home base for the iPhone, up into the current iTMS (complete with music, movies, TV shows and even audiobooks) and of course the game-changing App Store. If you'd told the SoundJam guys that their software would one day revolutionize the music and smartphone industries, not to mention be at the center of a multimillion dollar software delivery system, they'd probably have told you to keep dreaming. And we're only at version 9. Who knows what we'll see in the next ten years of iTunes?
Celebrating a guild anniversary in style
Pink Pigtail Inn has what is probably the most involved guild anniversary I've ever seen. We've seen quite a few anniversaries and events come through Guildwatch, but this one takes the cake: a huge competitive scavenger hunt, complete with out-of-game clues, banned class abilities (so teams could be balanced out), and even self-made quests involving the guild's lore. It's probably rare to find a group of officers that can be this committed to something normally considered "an RP event," but obviously it worked out, because the whole guild really enjoyed it.The context Larisa puts this in, however, is even more interesting. According to the Daedalus Project (a series of surveys of MMO players -- we've mentioned their work before), the majority of players can't celebrate a guild's anniversary anyway, as they haven't been in their guilds for even a year yet. I've never considered it, but it's true: while we are very attached to our guildies when we do find a good guild, we aren't really attached to them for very long, relatively speaking. There are stories of guilds going on for decades, but even those guilds have players coming and going -- if your guild has the same group of people playing together for a few years, you're probably in a smaller group than you think. PPI's example is a great one for any guilds who have been around long enough to celebrate it.
"I Hate You, E3," declares Escapist writer
Okay, so maybe not hate completely.The eye-catching title of an essay from the latest installment of The Escapist puts the emphasis on the negative aspect of the love-hate relationship many industry vets have with E3, but there's surprisingly a lot of love for the trade show here, even if you don't subscribe to the hardened "I hate E3 because I love it" theory of convention devotion.While the Joystiq staff hasn't been to quite as many E3s as the founder of the International Game Journalists Association (IGJA), we can certainly empathize with the world-weariness that might accumulate after years of weeklong death- press-marches and working in overcrowded, sensory-overloaded spaces. We just hope our love of the game(s) will stay with us as it has for Mr. Thomas, whether we're watching from home or working the show floor in person in post-apocalyptic L.A. The parties will be sure to be awesome.See also: Joystiq at E3 2006 mega-site The Escapist's big E3 issue this week, with references within to Joystiq's Paris Hilton story and some E3 party pics orig. from Joystiq The Game of Journalism -- the IGJA's official web site
