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New EVE Online: Econ Dev Blog - The hidden numbers behind corporations
Eve Online's, Dr. "Eyjo" Guðmundsson, head of the Research and Statistics Team, is charging full steam ahead after putting the finishing touches on EVE Online's ground-breaking statistically-crazed quarterly economic newsletter. The good doctor has posted a new econ dev blog that focuses on corporations and some interesting numbers relating to them. Travel inside the doctor's mind as he delves into explicit detail and bombards his EVE students with insightful charts and graphs on various topics relating to EVE's corporations. Some highlights include: 34,658 active corporations (Player + NPC) 205,000 characters are in NPC corporations 1950,000 characters in Player corporations Characters in NPC corporations average 2.7 million skill points Characters in Player corporations average 13.5 million skill points Frigates are the most popular ship piloted by characters in NPC corporations The tax capsule cometh (details on different corp taxes) 227 player-owned outposts divided among 114 corporations in 0.0 space The EVE development team is looking for player comments form some of the data mines. Any capsuleers wanting to see the questions CCP is asking, and join in on the discussion can do so over on the official EVE Online forums.
EVE Online: Trinity expansion preliminary patch notes
While the EVE Online: Trinity expansion prepares to take the world by storm beginning on December 5th you might as well get a jump start reading the preliminary expansion patch notes. Important notice: The EVE Online servers and official forums will be unavailable for the duration of Trinity's deployment -- scar it into your brain to keep from forgetting! Everything will shut down at around 6PM PST and will be brought back online by 6PM PST the next day. We'll have you covered with reminders prior to the launch. Hint: Train a skill that takes longer than 30 minutes, preferably with one that takes over a day! (This hint was brought to you by CCP). The patch notes are over 8,000 words in length; don't let them scare you off! The wall of text has been wonderfully formatted and broken into two pages.EVE: Trinity Features, Improvements, and Balance http://myeve.eve-online.com/updates/patchnotes.asp?patchlogID=156 EVE: Trinity Changes and Fixes http://myeve.eve-online.com/updates/patchnotes.asp?patchlogID=155 EVE: Trinity Quick Highlights:
EVE Online passes the 200k subscription mark
CCP announced earlier that EVE Online has surpassed the 200,000 subscription count, (a number CCP has been flirting with for many months now) which does not include more than 45,000 trial accounts in effect. I'm not sure how many trial accounts were active six months ago, but given the release of the Mac and Linux clients there a lot of new capsules floating out there in space. Not to diminish this accomplishment, it's important to note that these are subscriptions and not unique subscribers. CCP has been pushing "The Power of 2" heavily on their current playerbase and hundreds if not thousands have several subscriptions. I also believe CCP could have already hit their ultimate goal to have a bigger subscription base than Iceland's population, 300k, if they had retuned the newbie experience. Free game client; free expansions; decent rookie help channel; all this ease-to -accessibility is fantastic, but it still isn't enough, and I'm sure CCP has some telling numbers on how many players didn't get past the tutorial. CCP is addressing a small part of this problem in 2008 and beyond with a planned in-game EVE-pedia, but I am a bit surprised they haven't emphasized more focus on improving the newbie experience aside from the newbie tutorial revamp, which could be a lot better. EVE may not be the behemoth WoW is, but EVE has proven to keep a slow steady growth since it launched in 2003, which normally isn't the case for most MMOGs. The last true pinnacle point in overall subscriptions occurred in early 2006 when EVE reached 100,000 subscriptions. The players drive this game. The players are the content. I'm looking forward to the day when EVE actually breaks 300k unique subscribers.
EVE Fan Fest 2007 videos - Make your weekend an EVE-flix one
How would you best describe the EVE Online 2007 Fan Fest? I'd say it was filled with players that talked about ships, consumed copious amounts of alcohol alongside the developers, drooled over the Trinity II expansion, drank more alcohol, some pew-pew and a few bruised hairy man boobs egos afterwards, and it all went down in Iceland. I'll sum it up as a frozen mixture of freakishly-EVE debauchery. I'm still bummed, no "mozom" Fan Fest action for me this year; not that I would want my corporation to obtain proof I mingled with some hostiles, and later use said evidence to black mail me as a spy unless I paid a lofty 25 billion space-bux fine. Thankfully, for those of us not in attendance or those wanting to relive the panel discussions, CCP came through on their earlier promise to feature full-length videos from this year's EVE Online Fan Fest. Currently, 12 videos are up for viewing, and length times vary, some go for 20 minutes and others that last a little longer than 60 minutes. It doesn't cost a dime to watch them either. If you are too lazy to click over and to see the EVE-TV guide, I have you covered with the line-up below. If you would rather read coverage from the Fan Fest, I recently updated the ultimate EVE Online Fan Fest link wrap-up with a few more links. Day 1: EVE History; Oveur on Trinity Expansion; Hilmar on World Domination; CCP Panel, Dev Q&A Session Day 2: Council of Stellar Management; Alliance Panel Discussion; Dr EyjoG on EVE's economics; Ambulation Info Day 3: Tuxford on the development and history behind the in-game ability Heat; How to PvP like an expert with Eris Discordia; Pann gives tips on running an EVE fansite; Tony G discusses his work on the EVE Novel
The first EVE Online quarterly economic newsletter has some interesting facts
The one world server in EVE Online is pivotal to the monstrous and dynamic economy that only enhances EVE Online's appeal. Players in nearly every system engage in a tug-of-war with different drains and faucets to get the most out of their investment, that being time, and look to increase their fortunes. With such a complex dynamic (player versus player) economy that is integral to the overall well being of EVE's universe, CCP needed an economy care-taker, and hired Dr. "Eyjo" Guðmundsson, formerly Dean of the Faculty of Business and Science at the University of Akureyri, Iceland, to lead up the Research and Statistics group. Dr. "Eyjo" Guðmundsson is more or less known as the "EVE Economist." One of Dr. "Eyjo" Guðmundsson responsibilities is to evaluate, scrutinize, parse the EVE'economy and its inhabitants, and report back the team's findings in a quarterly economic newsletter. The overall purpose from this public data-mine is to inform pilots about the status of the in-game economy from a behind-the-scenes look and glean the information therein. The first in a series, dubbed the 3rd quarter 2007 economic newsletter, covers EVE demographics, macroeconomics, price levels, economic and market snap shots. [.PDF link] The graphs and charts alone make it worth downloading for any EVE player. There are a few glaring erroneous parameters that were used for some calculations such as including inactive accounts as pointed out in this discussion thread, but overall, this information is fantastic and with the right feedback will only get better. Some highlights from Q3 include:
EVE Online: Mac and Linux clients available for public testing
Yes! Time to delete Windows partition, throw it out with the putrid garbage where it belongs, and save some hard drive space for more cowbell. EVE Online players waiting for the Mac and Linux clients can now test them on Multiplicity, the test server, before they officially go live on all servers when Revelations 2.3 deploys on November 6th. You might as well get an early start and get everything up and ready, prepare for the rats and skills and what about EVE Mon. I like to play with that too. The bad news is that the Linux client does not support ATI graphic cards, which probably has something to do with driver support. (heh. I've had more problems with ATI cards running EVE Online than Nvidia cards. The 8800GT just launched and the reviews look sick and it doesn't cost a kidney and an eyeball either -- it will be my next card). The Mac client supports either Nvidia or ATI graphic cards, but to run the Mac client an Intel based Mac that is 2 Ghz or better is required. Further system requirements and how-to-install for both Mac and Linux clients, including download links to the EVE Online Mac and Linux clients are after the jump:
EVE Online: Revelations 2.3 preliminary patch notes
If you Build 37459 to 41698, EVE players will download it, available November 6th. The 2.3 Revelation patch notes are trickling in and the listed updates so far read like a bunch of mumbo-jumbo -- behind the scenes dealings -- this patch will scratch your computer gears to make EVE purr or something. There is one change that stands out and slaps me in the face:If an office's rent expires while a BP is in production and is not re-rented before the job is completed, the BP's will return to the impound.That could be bad, so yea, those crafty players better make sure they aren't evicted because there is nothing more fun than your landlord tossing billions invested into a black-hole when the lowly office rent payment doesn't clear in time. The patch notes seems small on the surface, but the big news that isn't listed in the official patch notes yet is the addition of the Linux and Mac game clients, and because of those changes the server will see an additional three hours of downtime. Boo, infidels -- keeping the server down longer than necessary! It is important to note that the Linux and Mac client use Cedega/Cider wrapper and won't run on older PPC Macs -- Intel or bust. Sorry guys, I was wanting to rock EVE Online on my Apple Performa with you. I'm starting the save our Mac friends from WoW campaign. We all have that 1 Mac MMOG friend still playing WoW, tell them about the EVE Online Mac client. You will get a whole lot of nothing and bad jokes in return. The 2.3 Revelation patches notes are still sketchy and incomplete; more information will be added as the developers make them available. If you want to stick around, I copied the patch notes after the jump:
EVE Online Mac and Linux game clients to be released on November 6th
They're here... new clients at long last, well almost... There is word from Erlendur S. Thorsteinsson, Software Director at CCP Games, that the upcoming Revelations 2.3 patch will contain formal support for Mac OS X and Linux. The new patch will also include a few other minor fixes for those left in the dark ages with the Windows XP client. The new clients use Cedega, but this version has better functionality since it will be directly integrated into the game for Linux and Transgaming's Cider portability engine for the Mac client. I pity da-foo with no EVE Online client. The twenty or so players waiting for the official Mac client can breathe a sigh-of-relief and start gloating about how shiny EVE Online will play on their Macs, and how it's an infinitely better playing experience because EVE is running on a Mac. Sweet, I can't wait. Earlier today, I attempted to play EVE Online on my brother's MacBook Pro via CrossOver and the results led me to punish my G4 tower, a sad carcass languishing in a corner left to serve only one function -- my kicking post. I was taunted and shunned away thanks to some duplicate trial account error when attempting to get my capsuleer on. Three trial accounts later and junk gmail accounts added to the fodder; one activated EVE account; some tissue boxes; I threw-up my arms in disgust. After some soul-searching, I found that I wasn't the only one suffering with this problem and no one had posted a solution. This news makes it all happy fun-times again. I'm going to go hug it out with my dead G4 now. The full post deets after the jump: [via: Linux Games]
EVE Online: Trinity's Tech II ships and works revealed
CCP Games has unpackaged all the rowdy details on the new Tech II pew-pew ships that will launch with EVE Online: Trinity, the upcoming expansion due out later this year. I must... remain... calm.... Screw it, new ships! Look, new ships! Before the hardcore EVE hot-shot pilots interrupt my spastic outbreak with a target lock; these ships are advanced versions from their Tech I counterparts. Only brand-spanking new ship classes get the distinct honor that warrants a new design. There, I hope you're all happy. The four Tech II class combat ships declassified fall into: Electronic Attack Ships, Heavy Interdictors, Black Ops, and Marauders. Buckle-in, the ships are available for crash testing on Singularity for a limited time only. The current Tech II ship models are not the final models, those will be implemented once the graphic update rolls out. The final ship models will use current Tech I hulls but with different textures and shaders. Onto the details -- incoming Tech II ship data transmission after the jump:
Download details for EVE Online's Trinity expansion
It's time to make sure you got room on your hard drive as CCP Gamesis planning on dumping incremental bits to help ease Trinity's digital distribution, which is being estimated to be over 1 gigabyte in size. Trinity is the next expansion in the EVE Online universe that will be free-to-download and features an ultra new shiny graphics engine and numerous updates to the cosmic battlefield in the form of combat advancements; New Tech II ships; hundreds of missions; and metric tons more. CCP developer, 2kay has posted a slew of details on how this distribution will work and the need for a separate client that utilizes the improved graphics engine to its full potential. It is important to note in order to use the new graphical content players will need a graphics card that supports Shader Model 3, a format newer graphic cards already do. To help determine if your card supports this technology CCP put together an application to help players check, available here. Another alternative is to check in the device manager under display adapters or if you already know your video card make and model, do an internet search to make sure it has SM3 capability, it only takes a few minutes so get off your butt and do it before it's too late. If your graphics card does not support this technology you will still be able to play via the classic client and the patcher will not force you to install the higher end client. The new graphics look absolutely breath-taking, sadly I'm running antiquated video technology so I'll be upgrading shortly after Trinity launches. Crazy Kinuk is a screen capping maniac and has over a thousand Eve screenshots available for your viewing pleasure on his blog -- be sure check out his flickr for some comparisons of old and new ship graphics as pictured. I drooled.
PC impressions: EVE Online
Three years after its launch, EVE Online has racked up 100,000 players and a dedicated fanbase. Developer CCP is in the midst of a graphical revamp, upgrading the game's look and feel without increasing its system requirements. As a game where it takes months to even learn to fly a ship, let alone build it, there's a refreshing contrast to the instant gratification of some other MMOs. Skills are learnt in real-time, rather than based on level, but specialisation options and the power of numbers mean new players can stand alongside older ones.
