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EVE Evolved: Controversy brewing over removal of shuttles
On February 20th 2008, EVE Online's economist Dr Eyjo published his fourth quarter economic newsletter for 2007. The newsletter discussed issues ranging from deflation to what ships players use and methods for estimating the total production of Eve. Among the pages of the economic newsletter was a small section commenting on the purchases of shuttles relative to tritanium prices and the ensuing discussion seemed to focus on this. In his more recent devblog, Dr Eyjo informed pilots that following a recent patch, the infinite NPC supply of shuttles was being removed from the market in order to alleviate what he calls "an artificial price cap of 3.6 ISK per unit".It's no secret that shuttles and tritanium prices are linked. The effect that the supply of shuttles on the market has had on tritanium prices is a well-known and well-documented phenomenon that was even included in the second economist dev-blog back in September of 2007. If prices of tritanium ever increase above 3.6 per unit due to the laws of supply and demand in action, it becomes profitable to buy shuttles at 9000 ISK per unit and refine them into tritanium for sale or industry. The fact that there are people with perfect refine skills willing to do this for profit means that the price of tritanium can never rise any more than fractionally above 3.6 per unit before the shuttle-refiners push it back down. Read on for a breakdown of the controversy and to find out how this change has affected the EVE markets.
Rogue Signal: The unwritten rules of EVE PvP, part 1
EVE Online is a PvP driven game. It is not merely PvP oriented, nor does it only contain strong PvP overtones. The game, its politics, and its economy, are all controlled by the ever-present PvP that takes place. No matter your path in EVE, you are participating in PvP, be it through market competition with another trader, competition for ore rights with another miner, or the time-honored tradition of turning your opponent into space dust. Staying out of the PvP environment requires a conscious effort. Even the most casual PvE enthusiast is contributing to PvP by selling loot or minerals, and may well become the target of some non-consensual combat. Suffice to say, even though this guide will have some things that will apply only to those looking for a fight, there is something for everyone, since you will get killed, someday. Ignoring these bits of advice is a surefire way to make that inevitable ship loss that much more painful. Also, bear in mind that each and every one of the things I am going to cover here is something that I myself have done in the past. This is not just a guide for noobs, but also a cheat sheet for those of us who get so busy preparing the bigger picture battle, that we forget things that end up making us look like total noobs in the end.
Ambulation project closer to reality
"So... it's an MMO where you fly a ship through space, but you can never really get out?""Well... yeah. Pretty much." This is how it plays out, almost inevitably, when I show my friends EVE Online. For some, not being able to see yourself as a 3-D avatar creates a barrier to immersion. For others, the game is too much of a departure from how player characters are depicted in most other MMOs. That's due to change soon, with the forthcoming release of CCP's Ambulation project. Ambulation will allow players in NPC space stations to walk outside of their ship hangars and interact with each other in a number of new ways. CCP clarified some information about the Ambulation project at the recent New York Comic Con.
GoonSwarm takes on the Beatles with the "Little Bees" video
Ahh, the Goons. As an entity, they are arguably the largest gaming collective in MMO history, with presences in Second Life, World of Warcraft, and EVE Online, with doubtless many other MMOs inhabited. EVE, in particular, is home to the GoonSwarm, or GoonFleet, which is infamous for its combat tactic of harassing larger ships with a rush of smaller, less-powerful vehicles. Cheap? Maybe. Effective? Definitely.In a testament to the power of its alliance, they've created a music video that's sure to stir the hearts of Goon-loving forces everywhere. Entitled 'Little Bees', based on the Beatles song 'Let It Be', and featuring lyrics like 'And when the system's laggy/You could lay the blame on CCP', it's got our vote for Best New Artist Video of the Year. [Thanks, Hortinstein!]
Anti-Aliased: What are we doing?
Click. 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 5, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 5, 1, 1, 3, 4, 1. /cheerSitting next to my friend in his room littered with Diet Mountain Dew cans, reports past due, and his girlfriend passed out on the bed, I slowly came to a very scary realization. Some of our best loved MMOs can be boiled down to not just pressing different buttons, but pressing the same button repeatedly. What really drove this home was me and a bunch of his friends were in the other room adjacent to his room, yet he was neglecting to join our roleplaying session and hang out. He'd rather sit in his small, cluttered room and farm a raid he's done at least 20 times, somehow finding enjoyment from pressing the button "1" repeatedly.So... what are we doing? Are we drinking the proverbial Windex because someone said it was a good idea?
Proximity alerts controversial in EVE Online
EVE Online is a brutal game. There should be no question in a player's mind about this, regardless of whether or not they believe themselves to be completely safe in Empire space. The first podding or two pounds that lesson into your head. Still, for most, life in Empire is relatively safe. But there are two main threats that loom large for carebears these days, particularly for industrial-types. One is JihadSwarm, the GoonSwarm effort to suicide bomb as many Empire miners as possible, which they've drenched in zealotry. The other threat is receiving a wardec from another corp. Once war is declared upon a corporation or alliance, they are fair game to all aggressors and Concord will not intervene to protect the war targets. In effect, nowhere outside of a station can be 100% safe to a war target. But, what if you could run a program that gives a proximity alert when hostiles enter your system?
The Wikipedia of EVE Online
CCP Games has officially announced a player-driven wiki project called the EVElopedia which is to be integrated into EVE Online, as well as a new division of the ISD volunteer program, The Yulai Archives & Record Repository Team (YARR). YARR will oversee the upcoming EVElopedia- a project which aims to create the definitive EVE wiki. Although there are already a number of sources of EVE-related information available to players, the EVElopedia is CCP-sanctioned. The woefully outdated item database will be revamped through this project, and numerous player resources will be added, essentially creating a Wikipedia for the EVE universe.
The Main Man
EVE Online is a game where collective action trumps individual action. It's certainly a game that can be played solo although nowhere near as effectively as when your main's activities are supported or enabled by an alt. CCP provides 3 character slots per account, but skillpoint training can only progress on one character at a time. So where the real alt-play comes in is with dual boxing -- running two accounts at once to facilitate an activity. The main/alt duo can take a number of forms, by no means limited to the following basic examples:
Breaking down the CSM candidate process
Voting will begin very soon for the highly-anticipated Council of Stellar Management. EVE Online's first democratically elected player representative orginization has been in the works for some time, and votes will finally be cast as of May 5th. They're slated to run for two weeks, but how did the field of applicants shape up? The official EVE site has a run down on the applications, reasons that some were rejected, and a bit of statistical analysis.There were a total of 97 applicants, and of those 64 were viable. They were fairly upfront about the reasons some of those applications were rejected. A few failed to follow instructions regarding passport scans, others had broken the EULA, and two specifically requested to be withdrawn. Of the applicants, 4.687% (or three people) were women; this apparently matches their internal statistics of a 4.46% female player population. A final interesting statistic: more than half of all the applicants had more than one account, double the ratio for the general EVE populace. We'll be following the EVE elections very closely next month, so keep your eyes peeled.
One Shots: The Emperor Family Academy
As shown in a recent One Shots, there was a gathering of Amarr in memoriam of a thousand days passing since the death of Emperor Doriam II in EVE Online. This is another image from that in-game gathering, sent to us by Rodj Blake, that we wanted to show off today. The large structure in the center of the planet is the Emperor Family Academy, where the memorial was held, and if you look at the full-size image, you can make out some of the approximately 70 ships in attendance as a semi-circle of dots on the right-hand side of the station. (And to think -- most of the "dots" are larger-sized ships!) Do you have a screenshot of an in-game event that you attended? Perhaps just some fun RP event that you and your guild sponsored? If so, send those screenshots in to us at oneshots AT massively DOT com. Yours could be featured next!%Gallery-9798%
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EVE approaches fives years of virtual adventure
"I hope they take the servers down so I can go get a shower." It is good to see EVE has not changed since it first blinked into existence. So many memories, so many destroyed ships, so many hours spent hauling ore from can to station. As EVE approaches the five year mark on the 6th of May, public relations and communications director Valerie Massey docked her ship and logged off. Why did she log off exactly? To chat about EVE of course! What else is there to do when not playing EVE?At five years, EVE is getting a bit on the old side in terms of MMOs. That didn't stop CCP of course. They gave EVE one hell of a Botox injection, hired an ex-commando for a trainer, and put the game into damn fine shape. Trinity was a huge testament to the ability of CCP and EVE to change and grow in very good ways. As Valerie says, the company itself started off with a handful of team members watching their dream become reality on a projector screen. They now employ over three hundred people and can claim a playerbase of over 200,000. From all of us at Massively, happy birthday! We hope the pod popping and ice mining continues for years to come.
Everyone vs Everyone Online: The End is Nigh
I'll be the first one to say it: the Great War is over. What once began as a campaign of conquest has become something none of the original participants could have conceived in their wildest imaginations. Anyone who has had any real exposure to EVE will know who the major players are; the GBC, or Greater BoB (Band of Brothers) coalition and their allies on one side, and RSF or Red Swarm -- most commonly called Goonswarm -- the "Something Awful" forumites on the other. Now that BoB has beaten back the RSF's invasion, a sense of calm and serenity has come to New Eden. Along with it, there is a renewal of an older form of hostility. Small scale alliance warfare is springing up, which makes this peace tenuous at best. The bonds made out of necessity during the Great War are now dissolving and a different type of peace is materializing. The peaceful shooting of one's neighbor. The universe is still at war, but the sides have blurred, everyone is involved in a great melee that in EVE is the only true peace. While it's possible, even likely, that most of the major powers that formed The Coalition (RSF) will remain as players in the broader galactic conflict, things will never truly be the same. To exasperate matters, the North -- to quote a popular post from the official EVE message boards -- is "on fire." Wary players watch the Triumvirate's recent escalation of hostilities, which if the forums are to be believed, are drawing a lot of parallels to the ignition of the BoB/Goon war. Combine that with a growing destabilization due to the anticipated all out Mercenary Coalition / BoB conflict. (Most of the player-base has assumed this will occur since MC overtly back-stabbed BoB in their moment of need.) War once again threatens to engulf EVE, and who will win is anyone's guess.
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CCP responds to EVE source code concerns
News that the source code for EVE has been hijacked has been traveling faster than the speed of light. Damage control units in tow, the CCP crew is making a valiant attempt to clear the space lanes of hazardous debris. This effort reached Massively in the form of a kind note and a link to a press release published earlier.In response to allegations of a galaxy wide crack down on posters in the EVE forums, CCP announced that "there have been no mass bannings." They wish to remind everyone that discussions concerning compromising the source code on the forums are a violation of the EULA and Terms of Service. They are actively enforcing this policy and any attempts to violate it will be met with a torrent of anti-matter and pulse lasers.As for the possibility of a security breach, CCP stated that they have completed an internal investigation. They have determined that the code was not leaked by an employee nor stolen. EVE, which is coded in Python, could easily have been decompiled. CCP says there is nothing to worry about since they have systems in place to protect the game. Your billing is safe, your stores of rockets and missiles are not at risk, and you can continue the business of destroying one another at any time.
EVE Online source code stolen, seeded
Space piracy has transformed into actual piracy, as source code for EVE Online has been stolen and unleashed onto the web via torrent. While it may not be the full source code -- one Slashdot commenter said it was just Python source -- developer CCP is expectedly none too happy.According to Community Manager "CCP Wrangler" on the official forums, "Anyone found distributing or discussing decompiled client code will face an in game ban." As to how they know who's distributing the code, various reports say CCP is seeding the torrent themselves and using the associated IP to ban the related accounts. Now that's just dirty.[Via Massively]
EVE's source code has been stolen and seeded
It was a rather peaceful day in the world of EVE. Ratters happily uncloaked and went searching for a few vessels to destroy. Pirates were eagerly tracking down their prey. Miners were digging into asteroids and hauling their goods back to station. Just when you thought it was safe to log in and join your fellow capsule pilots in a quest for money and power, news reached us that the source code for EVE had been stolen. The code has now made an appearance in the form of a torrent on a few notorious websites. Luckily for us, in space, no one can hear CCP scream.The anonymous soul behind the theft supposedly flaunted the achievement to a CCP employee. If this is the case, sad memories of stolen lunch money and taunting bullies come to mind. As they brace to control the impact of the theft, CCP has stocked up on turret ammunition and kicked in the afterburners. They are reportedly seeding the stolen source code in an attempt to ban anyone downloading the file who also maintains an EVE account. This merciless tactic comes as quite a shock and some claim that this is a classic example of overreaction. In addition to this, users on the EVE forums who even mention the torrent are having their posts edited and locked or simply deleted. Bans are flying around the forums and EVE players are warned to do their best to avoid a collision. Keep an eye out for more details as they arise.
Mobile EVE Skill Planner is now mobile
Accessing EVE skills while away from the computer is a dream for many players out there, and with some recent developments, this dream is a little bit closer to being realized. The "Eve Mobile Skill Planner" by Jaabaa has been updated and now runs on phones, provided that they support MIDP 2.0 and CLDC 1.1. The embedded video was made in July last year, but gives an idea of what to expect from EMSP. While this program doesn't give you the ability to alter your skills, it's a good way to keep an eye on how everything is going -- and we can only hope that its functionality can be increased in the future, with co-operation from CCP.[Via CrazyKinux]
EVE Trinity 1.2 patch notes: Junk In Space!
NASA must be envious. They'd probably pay billions to just set a timer to their space junk and have it poof out of existence in thirty days. The difference between NASA and CCP is that CCP can do something about their junk. According to the EVE Trinity 1.2 patch notes, starting April 16, anchored containers which are not in the vicinity of a starbase and have not been interacted with will be given a thirty day timer. At the end of that, if nobody has touched them, they will just be given a short trip through a wormhole into the Dimension of Unwanted Trash. Further, at the first of every month, abandoned drones, fighters, shuttles and rookie ships will be scrapped as a hazard to navigation. With the trash gone, bookmarks pointing to them will become invalid. To save y our bookmarks that point to junk, go through the list and redirect them to coordinates in space (right-click in space next to the container) instead of some random orbiting piece of space debris. Be sure to do this before Downtime on the 16th, because they will be poofed when EVE comes back up if you have not switched them to coordinates before then.If your ship takes more time to undock in the morning, it may just be getting old. Or it could just be that in a re-balancing, your ship had fewer equipment slots than it had the night before. You may no longer leave a station until you remove the excess equipment. Along with the Junk In Space initiative, EVE Trinity 1.2 also includes a huge number of UI and game fixes. They even managed to close a few exploits -- and the world is a better place for us all.
One Shots: Warp drive active
One of the things that can prove most imposing about playing EVE Online (at least to this blogger who is a relative newcomer) is watching a pile of ships drop out of warp right next to you. One moment you're relatively alone, the next, you're surrounded by ships. (And there's always that moment of "am I about to get podded?" that goes through your head....) This image, sent in to us by Rodj Blake, shows a pile of ships -- from tiny to enormous -- warping to a planet together as part of a recent RP event in the Amarr system. So very cool to see!Do you have a great screenshot of you and your friends playing together, RP world (universe) events, or perhaps a great PvP battle? If so, drop them in a mail to us here at oneshots AT massively DOT com. Yours could be one of the ones featured here! %Gallery-9798%
EVE PCs offered to eager pilots
Just in case owning a future proof rig that also makes you breakfast is not enough, CCP has announced an offer through Commodore Gaming to purchase customized EVE computers. Even if you don't play EVE, the custom schemes that Commodore has created are mighty impressive. These cases feature scenes from the game universe and motifs representing the four playable races. If your system is already enough to have you popping ships in nanoseconds, you may purchase the case by itself. For those of you in need of a new rig, Commodore offers a gaming setup with the following configuration: Intel® Core™2 Quad processor Q6600: 2.4 GHz 8MB Cache 500GB 7200 RPM 16 MB Cache SATA hard drive 2GB Corsair™ XMS2 Twin2x2048-6400C4 memory NVIDIA® GeForce® 8800 GT 512MB graphics card Choice of 1 out of 6 EVE Online C-kins 2 year warranty Commodore is offering their artwork for a limited time only. Only five hundred pieces are available, so if you plan to get one, warp over their fast! Those cases are bound to find a happy home in the hands of some enthusiastic space pirates relatively quickly.
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Website helps get EVE players to the polls
Dock those ships and prepare for a truly extraordinary event! The Council of Stellar Management election in the EVE universe is fast approaching, with voting being held on the 5th of May for those players with active accounts. The call for candidates has already ended and candidates are hitting the campaign trail in an ongoing effort to win a seat on the council. The elected representatives, selected from the player base, will have a great deal of influence in the design and daily operation of the EVE universe. In case you were mining asteroids and were unable to follow the events as they unfolded, a CSM information website devoted to helping you choose the right candidates has been created for your viewing pleasure. Players or curious onlookers can find links to candidates websites, manifestos, and some background information provided by CCP on the history of the CSM. The official documents linked by the site describe CCPs outlook on governing MMOs and their communities. The website provides a very interesting glimpse into a concept that will give players a unique opportunity to shape the world they enjoy.[via Crazy Kinux]
