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Tune into EVE's live dev blog on fiction and content design tonight
Back in January, EVE Online developer CCP Games revived a much-loved old habit by bringing back regular live dev blogs. Up until a few years ago, live dev blogs were used as a way for players to chat with developers directly and ask them questions about upcoming changes or features. As EVE's playerbase grew, it became impractical for the devs to host live chats and answer the questions of players directly. At the start of this year, CCP took advantage of EVE's integrated voice chat service, EVE Voice, to bring back live dev blogs. The first developer chat on game design in the Incursion expansion was a big success, with a large number of players tuning in to participate. Tonight at 5:00 p.m. EST (22:00 EVE Time/GMT), CCP Shadow will lead a new live audio dev blog session on EVE fiction and game content. Developers t0nyG and Abraxas will be talking about the Immersion project, which aims to link EVE's powerful backstory with gameplay. CCP Soundwave, Gnauton, and Big Dumb Object will then be tackling the topic of content design. Players have written in with plenty of questions for the team on EVE's backstory and content development, which will also be answered in tonight's session. To join in, just log into EVE, join the chat channel "Live Dev Blog" before 5:00 p.m. EST tonight and join EVE Voice.
New EVE chronicle tells a tale of revenge against the Sansha invasions
EVE Online is currently buzzing with news of the Incursion expansion, which is being released in three parts over the coming months. The final release in January will be bringing the expansion's key feature, constellation-wide incursions by Sansha pirate forces. The incursions themselves began as a live event several months ago. After discovering the secrets of controlling the formation of wormholes, Sansha forces began using them to invade populated systems across EVE and kidnap citizens of the four empires. The abducted people were brought back to Sansha territory to be converted into mind-controlled slaves of the nation. In a new EVE chronicle, CCP loremaster Abraxas tells the tale of one man's dealings with the pending Sansha invasion. It's a chilling story of a Sansha scout sent to talk to the leader of an asteroid colony and one man's dark revenge against the Nation. For those of you who have been following the Sansha lore with interest, this latest Chronicle "The Plague Years" will give an interesting glance into the inner workings of the Nation.
New EVE Online novel "The Burning Life" released
Storyline is an important part of any MMO and EVE Online is no exception. New Eden is steeped in story-telling, from the regularly released fictional chronicles to the countless blogs, battle reports and dramatic events recorded by players. EVE is a game that lends itself very well to creating immersive stories, videos and other creative efforts. Back in June of 2008, CCP commissioned author Tony Gonzales to write a novel set in the EVE universe. The novel, titled "Empyrean Age," came at the same time as the expansion of the same name and gave some background story for faction warfare. June 2009 brought the announcement that CCP's own fiction-writer Hjalti Daníelsson had begun work on a second EVE novel entitled "EVE: The Burning Life." Hjalti is better known as CCP Abraxis, the pen behind most of the EVE chronicles and the current driving force behind the game's storyline.
EVE Online novel The Burning Life to focus on pirate factions
For many players, EVE Online is a game where the developers provide the galactic setting of New Eden but it's them, the playerbase, who makes their own stories. They join together or band against their rivals in alliance warfare, drug cartels, pirate organizations, and industrial powerhouses. The complex interplay of involvements that allow the game's players to establish and destroy invariably triggers cascades of drama. This is the point of the sandbox design of the game, what you do in New Eden affects other players on some level. For some players, EVE is just about their interactions with one another and the fiction underpinning of the game is of marginal concern. While not all players choose to immerse themselves in the game's backstory, the setting is actually quite rich -- built on roughly six years' worth of lore fleshed out in the Chronicles, short stories that provide snapshots of the various levels of activity in New Eden.
New EVE Online novel "The Burning Life" is on the way
There may be big things on the horizon for the lore of EVE Online with the forthcoming release of a second novel for the game, "The Burning Life". The sci-fi novel is written by Hjalti Daníelsson (aka CCP Abraxas) who has written many of the EVE Chronicles -- short, gritty tales that show readers the various facets of life in New Eden. The Chronicles have been a way of driving the game's lore forward for years, so we're wondering what to expect from The Burning Life. Could it possibly be tied in with the new directions that CCP Games wants to take with EVE's lore? At this point we don't know have much information about the novel, or whether it will be tied in with an upcoming expansion as the Empyrean Age novel by Tony Gonzales was in 2008. There are paperback release dates listed for 2009 in North America (Tor) and 2010 in Europe (Gollancz).[Via Ga'len]
EVE lore blends sci-fi with horror in Blood Raiders pirate faction Chronicle
The sci-fi game EVE Online is well known for being a title where player-driven activities like corporate espionage, piracy, and sweeping galactic warfare are daily occurrences. The game has a rich backstory behind it though; EVE's setting of New Eden continually gains more depth and new dimensions through bi-weekly Chronicles written by EVE developer CCP Abraxas. Since EVE's players are ship-bound in actual gameplay (until Walking in Stations is released), the game's lore adds something that a number of pilots have gotten into, with player corporations and alliances siding with a given faction discussed in the backstory. A fair amount of the Chronicles focus on New Eden's four (playable) races and regimes -- and the Empyrean Age expansion brought factional warfare into the game -- but there are also a few notable criminal organizations presented in EVE's lore. Perhaps the most disturbing among them is The Blood Raider Covenant, a pirate NPC faction in the game that many EVE players know as their enemy through mission running, exploration content, or simply 'ratting' in asteroid belts. EVElopedia describes them as "a particularly gruesome sect of the generally reviled Sani Sabik cult. While all modern Sani Sabik rituals use blood in some manner or another, the Covenant places particular value on the blood of cloned humans, and is utterly ruthless in obtaining it, regularly boarding other spacecraft and abducting all aboard. From their base in Delve they launch lightning raiding parties and surprisingly well coordinated incursions deep into Empire space in pursuit of their goals." Their place in the game's lore provides fertile ground for mixing horror with sci-fi. Some EVE players have even established corporations and alliances aligned with the Blood Raider Covenant and the latest addition to EVE's lore focuses on this bloodthirsty faction.
Latest EVE Online Chronicle a moral tale of sabotage and retribution
EVE Online differs from other massively multiplayer online games out there in that it's as much a setting as it is a game; its galactic setting of New Eden isn't divided across shards. This helps the game's lore creators conjure up a sense that the stories of New Eden echo throughout and define a single expansive galaxy, at least for those who choose to get into the game's backstory.EVE's lore has been building up for years as short Chronicles and even in novel form, creating a substantial yet growing body of work that fleshes out the gritty setting. We don't cover all of the Chronicle releases at Massively but we do tend to highlight those that have a direct bearing on the game's lore, rather than those that add flavor. Still, now and again a story comes along that really stands out. That was the case with this week's Chronicle titled "All These Lives are Fit to Ruin" by CCP Abraxas, the description of which was one simple word: "Sabotage". This caught our interest and, in this writer's opinion after having read the Chronicle twice, "All These Lives are Fit to Ruin" may be one of the best stories Abraxas has written thus far.
EVE Chronicle puts players at the center of factional warfare
The latest EVE Chronicle is called "The Dark End of Space." This installment connects the events seen in the full Empyrean Age trailer (namely, Jamyl Sarum's utter obliteration of a greater Minmatar fleet) with the lowsec militia conflicts and missions that have embroiled EVE Online's players in factional warfare. Indeed, "The Dark End of Space" focuses on how each of the four races -- despite having conflicting goals and ideologies -- view the capsuleers... the actual players in EVE Online: "A group of people so powerful they're practically a faction unto themselves. Immortal, fearless and wealthy beyond imagining. Born of all four empires but beholden, in truth, to no one but themselves. And utterly untapped, in this little skirmish of ours.""The Dark End of Space" shows how each of the races face similar difficulties, and how the players of EVE are thought by each faction to be the solution to their problems. EVE dev CCP Abraxas says of the newest Chronicle: "... this one breaks rank and instead focuses on the capsuleers. It explains how we went from the end of the novel to the onset of factional warfare, and how you guys got pulled into it." This could get very interesting if factional propaganda enters into the game, with each race's militia trying to further sway the capsuleers to their cause and tip the balance of power in the Empyrean Age. But for the time being, the Empyrean Age novel, the trailer, and the Chronicles are intertwined, and it seems that EVE's players are firmly at the center of what is to come.
