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EVE Evolved: The Sleepers are coming!
Ever since the announcement of 100 new wormhole systems and the unique Thera wormhole hub system, some interesting things have been going on in EVE Online. A new star appeared in the night sky and began rapidly growing in brightness like a supernova, and curiously, the light from that star was able to be seen from every star system in New Eden simultaneously in clear violation of the laws of physics. Two days prior to the event, Sansha's Nation were seen scattering from an Incursion site and leaving the area without using wormholes, hinting that something big was happening in their home system. Combined with the intruiging story of Thera, this has had even non-roleplayers scrambling through the EVE lore to come up with theories about what's to come. Players slowly set apart picking the mystery to pieces, conducting a galaxy-wide search to find the origin of the bright star and sending people into the test server to get clues. The mystery intensified when players discovered that the star was likely near or within restricted Jove space, and soon after they began finding strange cloaked structures throughout known space. While observing these structures, players even found that an all-new form of Sleeper NPC called the Circadian Seeker was periodically warping into the site and using some kind of scanning beam on the cloaked structure. All of this comes in anticipation of the public release of the Rhea patch on Tuesday 9th, which will introduce hidden Sleeper sites in known space and kick off the arms race to discover tech 3 destroyers. In this lore-heavy edition of EVE Evolved, I look at everything we know of EVE's new Sleeper storyline event and try to figure out how it all fits together.
EVE Evolved: What does Thera mean for EVE?
If you've been keeping up with the recent news updates on EVE Online, you've probably heard about the upcoming Rhea update scheduled for December 9th. This mega patch will introduce the new tech 3 Tactical Destroyer ship class, Sleeper incursions into normal space, hands-on WASD flight controls, and 101 new wormhole systems (including 25 that are limited to small ships). The new wormhole systems have had all of their planets shattered by an as-yet unknown stellar phenomenon, and clues as to what transpired there will be hidden in the rubble. This infusion of new content and story will mark the first time the wormhole storyline and gameplay have been significantly expanded in over four years. Each of the new shattered star systems is guaranteed to have at least one outgoing wormhole leading to normal space at all times, increasing the likelihood that pirates will catch you exploring or farming them. And since these systems won't have any in-tact moons, you won't be able to put up a permanent starbase to retreat to if hostiles appear. I'm pretty excited for exploring this new lawless frontier, but it's a unique shattered star system called Thera that I'm most looking forward to finding. Thera will be the first and only wormhole system to have fully kitted NPC stations and will serve as neutral ground for anyone who wants to live there. It's been described as the Mos Eisley of EVE, a permanent home to pirates, PvP corps, and smugglers looking to make some quick ISK. In this edition of EVE Evolved, I look at how the Thera system could revolutionise EVE for a lot of players and where the EVE storyline could go as a result.
EVE Evolved: Wormholes should be more dangerous
When unstable wormholes began forming all over the EVE Online universe in 2009's Apocrypha expansion, players approached them with extreme caution. The promise of riches in the form of new loot and Tech 3 cruiser components was balanced by the incalculable risk of facing a powerful new enemy in untested circumstances. Between the Sleeper AI that had been reported to melt players' ships in seconds and the player pirates taking advantage of the hidden local chat channel to sneak up on unsuspecting victims, we had no idea whether any ship we sent into a wormhole would ever make it back out again. The risk of venturing into something truly unknown made wormhole exploration the single most exciting thing I've ever been a part of in an MMO, but the past five years have completely eroded that danger. Farmers now know exactly what to expect in every wormhole site and can efficiently farm Sleepers with the minimum of effort or risk, and PvP alliances can rapidly cycle through systems to find weak targets to attack. We've mapped and tamed all of the wormhole frontier, systematically reducing the risk to the lowest possible levels under the current game mechanics. Tuesday's Hyperion update aimed to shake things up with a few disruptive changes designed to keep wormholes dangerous, and I think it's a definite step in the right direction. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at some of the changes in Hyperion designed to keep wormholes dangerous and ask what more could be done to keep things interesting.
EVE Evolved: Stepping through the EVE Gate
Though EVE Online is often lauded for its rich decade-long player history full of wars and complex political dealings, the NPC storyline and New Eden's ancient backstory have always held my fascination. I started playing in early 2004 after reading dozens of fiction chronicles and mock scientific articles on the EVE website that painted the picture of a real living universe where incredible things could happen. Sure enough, my first years of play were punctuated with compelling live events and storyline arcs like the Crielere research project that led to the development of cloaking devices, the theft of a Federation Navy titan by Serpentis pirates, and the Blood Raiders taking over Delve. CCP has frequently stated that its goal with EVE is to create the ultimate sci-fi simulator, and the core of a compelling sci-fi setting is a living universe that grows and changes. The best sci-fi TV shows are those with a constant cycle of revealing compelling mysteries and then solving them and of encountering escalating challenges to be overcome. EVE has done this extremely well a few times in its life, such as with the release of wormholes or when the Sansha incursions events were kicking off, and each time the concurrent player numbers have spiked. Guild Wars 2 has shown the power of an evolving living storyline to get people into the game and keep them actively playing in the long term, something that should be the norm for MMOs and that EVE Online could take much greater advantage of. In this edition of EVE Evolved, I look at some of the big NPC mysteries revealed in EVE Online's decade-long history and ask why they were abandoned and where they could go now.
EVE Evolved: Expanding on wormholes
It's no secret that I'm nuts about wormholes! Last week I looked at the reasons why EVE Online's Apocrypha expansion was such a big success and rejoiced at the recent announcement that CCP will be developing similar laterally designed expansions from now on. In the announcement, developers wrote that they would ideally have liked to iterate on Apocrypha's wormhole gameplay for several releases, which got me thinking about how that gameplay could be expanded on now. Wormholes were a massive catalyst for exploration, small-scale colonisation, industry and PvP, but would it be possible to recapture that magic in an expansion? The Sleeper storyline certainly evolved with the Incursion expansion as it became known that Sansha forces were able to control wormholes and had invaded Jovian space, but that story sadly didn't translate into gameplay for people living inside wormholes. There's no risk of running into the Sansha home system on your travels, and Sansha forces will never lock down a wormhole system and attack your starbase. That feels like a bit of a wasted opportunity to me, and I worry that a new wormhole expansion could similarly pass up the opportunity to add interesting new gameplay. Adding more hidden wormhole systems and combat sites would be fun for a while, but the underlying wormhole mechanics and NPC capabilities are already common knowledge. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at various ways that a future wormhole expansion for EVE could recapture the magic of Sleeper space.
EVE Evolved: Adapt or die
When EVE Online was first released in 2003, it sold mostly based on its future potential. Everyone I played with in those early years got into EVE in order to be on the ground floor of an awesome space game that was getting more awesome by the month. Features were undergoing continual revision, and new content was released regularly, making EVE a radically different game every six months. Players met this design strategy of continual iteration head on with an "adapt or die" attitude, and it kept the game interesting for years on end. Fast-forward to 2011 and the story looked very different. The Dominion, Tyrannis and Incursion expansions introduced new gameplay but didn't heavily iterate on any other features. By the time Incarna released, most of EVE's gameplay and content had been the same for two years and players had nothing new to adapt to. For the Crucible and Inferno expansions, CCP finally iterated on hundreds of small features and even introduced new modules to reboot EVE's "adapt or die" PvP ship design metagame. With a lot of the small things now covered, I think some of the game's big features are due for iteration. In this week's EVE Evolved opinion piece, I look at how EVE players adapt to new challenges and explore several areas of stale gameplay that are in dire need of iteration.
EVE Evolved: Five awesome carrier tactics
The world of EVE Online's capital warfare is most often a numbers game. Alliances commit forces to a fight knowing that victory is almost assured if they have significantly more ships than the enemy. But not all capital pilots and corporations are created equal; some can pull off incredible tactical plays that act as force multipliers, increasing the effectiveness of every man on the battlefield. Rooks and Kings alliance has a long history of fighting above its weight by employing highly effective cooperative strategies, so it's no surprise that four out of my five top capital tactics come from the alliance's awesome PvP videos. I think it's safe to say that if Rooks and Kings brings fewer capital ships than you to a fight, you're still vastly outnumbered. In this week's EVE Evolved, I showcase videos of five awesome carrier tactics, each with a video of the tactic in action.
EON Magazine issue 24 looks back at EVE Online's Apocrypha expansion
Issue 24 of EVE Online's quarterly official magazine EON hit the shelves this month, bringing a fresh dose of internet spaceships to coffee tables and bathrooms everywhere. Produced by MMM Publishing and written by a growing cast of writers from within the EVE community, EON provides something solid for fans of EVE to hold on to and acts as a snapshot in time or record of the game as it evolves. Recent big news stories and nullsec wars are detailed in each issue, along with editorial pieces, fiction, interviews and guides. The latest issue is a wormhole special, with a huge focus on 2009's incredibly successful Apocrypha expansion and the hidden wormhole systems it brought to EVE. In addition to the second part of Pottsey's background on the ancient Sleeper race locked away in wormhole systems, the magazine contains testflights of the four strategic cruisers produced from materials discovered in wormhole space. A fantastically insightful article on the making of Apocrypha also delves into the gritty details of how CCP put its entire weight behind one incredible expansion during a time of real world economic turmoil. Skip past the cut for a breakdown of everything in EON Issue 24 and my impressions from reading through it.
The Guild Counsel: To vent or not to vent
As we've looked at the ins and outs of managing a guild, one issue that's often overlooked is whether to vent or not to vent. No, not the Minus 50 DKP type of vent -- I'm talking about Ventrilo and voice chat in general. Ten years ago, guild leaders didn't have to worry about this, because the choice was between typing text or hosting a LAN party. But today, with the rise of voice chat clients like Ventrilo and in-game voice services like Vivox, the culture has changed quite a bit. In this week's Guild Counsel, we'll take a look at the benefits of type vs. voice chat, and we'll look at what role each plays in guild management. Whether you sleep with your headset on or cling to your keyboard, read on for a look at why both have their merits.
EVE Evolved: Mining 101 -- Advanced mining
Because it is stigmatised as a boring and inactive activity, mining is perhaps EVE Online's most overlooked profession. While it can be a repetitive and sedate affair, mining is a good way to make ISK during low points in your game time. A lot of miners use the profession to make a little ISK while they chat with friends in-game, read the forum or do some other activity. In the first two parts of this three-part guide to mining in EVE, I looked at some of the basics of solo or group mining and how to make the most ISK for your invested time. Over the years, I've learned a few tricks and strategies for mining that have come in handy. If the local asteroid belts are stripmined clean and you need somewhere nearby to mine, for example, it's possible to use the mission system to spawn a practically endless supply of low-end ore. If setting up camp in high-security space isn't your thing, it can also be very profitable to run a nomadic mining expedition. Using a starbase as a base of operations, you can set up ore depots and refining stations in either normal space or wormhole space. In this final part of the EVE Evolved guide to mining in EVE, I look at spawning asteroids using the mission system, using a starbase as a base of operations in outlying systems, and running a wormhole mining expedition for massive profit.
EVE Evolved: Group PvE in EVE Online
EVE Online is often thought of as a strongly PvP-based game, with player conflict and competition at the heart of practically every activity the game offers. Competition for resources, power, and notoriety routinely drive players to disintegrate each other's ships, but this effect isn't limited to just PvP. Miners compete with each other for ore on a daily basis, for example, and traders fight for market supremacy. EVE's competitive sandbox element is such a headline feature that PvE often takes a back seat in discussions about the game. EVE's combat-based PvE comes in the form of repeatable agent missions, hidden exploration sites, and deadly Sleeper encounters. While most of these can be completed solo by experienced pilots with a well-designed ship, they're often much faster and more fun when done in groups. The lack of a limit to how many pilots can be brought on PvE expeditions even makes it feasible to take newer players along to tough missions, something that doesn't happen in most MMOs. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at why EVE's PvE is so inherently soloable, which types of PvE encounters are well suited to group play, and what the future holds for EVE's possibly neglected group PvE content.
EVE wormhole exploit is fixed
Two weeks ago, we reported the news that a new exploit had been uncovered in EVE Online. Players in a hidden class 6 wormhole system with a rare magnetar anomaly discovered that they could abuse the anomaly's effects to gain infinite tracking and range on typically short-range turrets. The exploit was uncovered when they used it to defend their home system from attack against Rooks and Kings, a corporation that wormhole-dwelling corps have learned to fear for its precision invasions of colonised wormhole systems. On September 21st, a hotfix was rapidly deployed to temporarily remove the offending electronic warfare effects from magnetar anomalies. This prevented players from pushing the effectiveness of tracking disruptors over the magic 100% mark that caused the bug. EVE developers CCP Games have announced that after some internal discussion, they've decided to make that change permanent. Removing the effect from all magnetars and not just the currently exploitable ones ensures that similar problems don't occur in the future if new equipment ever raises the effectiveness of tracking disruptors. The only question left unanswered is what will happen to Aperture Harmonics, the corporation that has been using this exploit for some time.
EVE Evolved: The EVE Online that could be
Each of us has a different idea of the perfect game, whether it's an existing game with a few tweaks or something completely new. Game designers work tirelessly to make their own vision of the perfect game a reality, but there's no telling what players will think of a feature until it's finished. In the process of transforming a feature from a gleam in the game designer's eye to a finished product, something is unfortunately often lost in translation. Limitations in the technology being used or the manpower available can render the ideal implementation infeasible. As players, we don't really see that full development process. That doesn't stop us from painting our perfect vision of an upcoming or potential feature and how awesome it could be. In the coming years, the EVE Online developers will be going through the process of making some of their most incredible visions a reality. Ideas like walking in stations and integrating the upcoming MMOFPS Dust 514 with EVE's planetary interaction feature will be put through a potentially brutal development process. We can only hope that as little as possible of those visions we've heard from EVE's developers gets lost in translation. In this speculative opinion piece, I look at a few areas in which EVE is sure to be expanded in the coming years and discuss what I'd consider to be the ideal way they could be implemented or handled.
The Daily Grind: What's the hardest boss you've ever fought?
The video game boss is as traditional as it is feared. From the earliest days of the console generation to our fancy-schmancy Eminem-Os, gamers have cut their teeth on challenging villains such as the Sleeper, Mallyx, Tarinax the Destroyer and the Watcher in the Water. Boss battles always seem impossible at the outset, punishing parties with a complete wipe at a single mistake. Strategies are memorized, patterns are ingrained and teamwork polished until that big baddie hits the floor, sobbing like a baby. So what's the hardest boss you've ever fought in a MMORPG? Was it an epic one-on-one battle, a harrowing party fight, or even a raid boss so mighty that its mere gaze stopped you in your tracks? What made this confrontation so difficult -- the sheer pool of hit points, the complex strategy or the way it almost seemed to cheat to win? And no, "Hogger" doesn't count for this Daily Grind. These memes have a statute of limitations, you know.
EVE Evolved: Medic ships, part 2: High-end healing
In the first of this two-part guide, I looked at some of the more affordable entry level ships and modules available to dedicated healers in EVE Online. I went on to examine an effective strategy for using medic ships as part of a PvE gang, whether you need some help on a particularly hard mission or you're trying to crack one of EVE's hardest exploration complexes. This week, I look at high-end healing as I explore capital ships and the role of medic ships in both PvP and wormhole operations. Healing in missions and exploration sites is a largely passive affair, with the healer permanently locked to the main tank. NPCs in these sites never switch targets but the same can't be said for players or the advanced Sleeper AI that roam wormhole systems. Repairing your gang-mates in PvP or a wormhole operation is a completely different affair, made all the more complicated by the fact that the dedicated medic ship is sure to come under fire. In this article, I look at capital ships and the remote assistance strategies players use in PvP or wormhole operations.
EVE Evolved: Five useful starbase configurations
Player housing is one of those features we love to see in an MMO but every game that has it seems to implement it differently. Sometimes it's limited to instanced rooms the player can decorate and sometimes it's a little more functional like shared guild halls. In EVE Online, the closest thing to widely-available player housing would be anchorable starbases, which can be configured to serve a variety of functional roles. Originally, their primary purpose was to mine moon minerals and react them to produce advanced materials for Tech 2 production. Starbases can be very useful as tactical staging points for PvP operations. With the right modules anchored around them, they can also be configured for use in other industries, from mining and manufacturing to research and deep space exploration. Until recently, they also played a critical role in EVE's alliance sovereignty warfare as the alliance with the most starbases in a system gained control of it. With that role now fulfilled by Outposts, Infrastructure Hubs and Territorial Claim Units, starbases have mostly returned to their former industrial and tactical uses. In this article, I look at five different starbase configurations that can be very useful to organised corporations.
EVE Evolved: Tech 3 Strategic Cruisers
With EVE Online's Apocrypha expansion came an entire new class of ship. Tech 3 Strategic Cruisers represent a new wave of technology in EVE. Rather than being simply improved versions of the existing Tech 2 ships, Strategic Cruisers are modular ships reverse engineered from ancient Sleeper and Talocan components. They allow players to design their own ship from a base hull and a set of five subsystems. Each subsystem has four options, with a fifth possibly in the works. Original designs called for the ship to improve as it was used, but this was replaced with a set of rank 1 skills and you lose a level of one of them if your ship is destroyed. A fully fit Tech 3 ship originally would have cost you upwards of two billion isk but prices have since dropped to around the 600 million mark and they're still falling. As these ships have become more affordable, I've had a chance to see some of them in action and see first hand what they can do.Join me in this visual gallery article where I dish out some information on Strategic Cruisers and then examine a few of the different ways these ships can be fit to fulfill different roles. If you have a particularly inventive setup, feel free to post it as a comment. %Gallery-71984%
EVE Evolved: Wormhole piracy 101
If it seems like I've gone wormhole crazy lately, that's because I have. The wormholes that arrived with the Apocrypha expansion have infiltrated and enriched many different aspects of EVE Online, from exploration and corporate goals to small gang PvP and piracy. In previous articles, I looked at preparing for an expedition, untangled the mystery of the Sleepers and told the story of a tense week for Total Comfort alliance in the Sleeper's den. After a week spent hunting wormhole-dwellers for fun and profit, this week's EVE Evolved is dedicated to the fine art of being an interstellar cut-throat as I delve into the world of wormhole piracy.Wormhole piracy is one of the few professions where small gang warfare is most prevalent. While many pirates have already begun including wormhole systems in their roaming gangs, our corporation (and I'm sure others) have come across a much more effective method. By setting up your own pirate staging base inside a wormhole system, your corp can use its regular outgoing wormholes to wreak havoc in systems all across EVE. Using this method, it's possible to spring attacks on people without anyone even seeing you coming. Whether you're planning surprise attacks on 0.0 systems or hunting in the 2500 new unknown sleeper systems, wouldn't you like to run your own pirate way-station?Read on for an informative guide on using wormholes to wreak havoc around EVE and make a profit in the process.
EVE Evolved: Just another week in the Sleeper's den
Following last week's reassuringly popular article "Untangling the mystery of the Sleepers", our little expeditionary alliance has had an extremely action-packed week. In addition to several PvP encounters with roaming gangs, there's been a POS siege, a system invasion and a lot of drama. At the end of it all, I'm left with a renewed sense of awe for the unique experiences EVE Online can deliver if you're just willing to seek them out and actively involve yourself. At times I can truly immerse myself in EVE and feel like I'm taking an actor's part in a kind of intergalactic play scene, an experience I've never come close to in any other MMO. Taking part in these events is almost like being painted into an illustrative chapter of some historic record. In this article, I hope to solidify that record and share a glimpse of what it's like to immerse yourself in this part of EVE. What follows is a storytold account of Total Comfort alliance's deadly week in the Sleeper's den.
EVE Evolved: Untangling the mystery of the Sleepers
When EVE Online's Apocrypha expansion was released, details on how wormholes and the 2500 new systems that came with them worked were sketchy. The advanced Sleeper AI found protecting these systems were a force to be feared, unknown and mysterious. There were no guides, no stories of encounters on the forums and anyone that had mounted a successful expedition was keeping their closely guarded secrets to themselves and raking in the ISK.My corporation (Pillowsoft) were among the first to launch their expedition, having previously prepared an Orca with a medium POS, fuel, equipment and everything else we thought we'd need. We set up in an unknown system and explored this new frontier with a cautious optimism. Over the months that followed, we learned a great deal about EVE's new wormhole systems and the Sleepers that lived in them. After striking gold many times and making each of our expedition members over a billion ISK richer, we began telling our story and giving up those secrets we had been so careful to protect. Today, a great deal is now known about the "unknown" wormhole systems and with ever more corporations launching their own expeditions, it's now more important than ever to research the Sleeper menace before venturing into the abyss.Join me for this extensive three-page article where I dole out the fruits of my research on wormholes and begin to untangle the mystery of the Sleepers.
