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EVE Video Corner: SuperTwinkey69 vs Dominion
The EVE Online community is known for producing some incredible videos, from epic cinematic compositions to some awesome alliance recruitment videos and films showcasing PvP at its best. We've seen amazing videos like the Clarion Call series, Kale Ryoko's Future Proof and Ian Chrisholm's Clear Skies I and II effortlessly merge a passion for EVE with cinematic direction that puts official game trailers to shame. The official Dominion trailer was released back in 2009, depicting an epic clash between warring fleets in the far reaches of nullsec. CCP went to significant lengths to ensure the action and dialogue in the video weren't completely out of sync with actual war in the game, with several real in-game alliances inspiring the fleets in the video. Nevertheless, players complained that the dialogue wasn't enough like actual fleet voice communication. While some people voiced their dismay on the forum, one player took the trailer as a challenge. By stripping the vocals out of CCP's official Dominion trailer and replacing them with recordings from actual fleet communication, Kaar of Triumvirate alliance produced a hilarious satire on fleet combat with his fleet commander SuperTwinkey69. Although the video was made back in 2009, it slipped under a lot of players' radars and didn't really get as much attention as it deserved. In true EVE style, this video contains swearing throughout and so is absolutely not safe for work. Skip past the cut to watch this hilarious re-imagining of the Dominion trailer.
Ask the EVE developers any question you want
Back in 2008, EVE Online developer Arnar "CCP Zulu" Gylfason started a forum thread in which players could ask him literally any question about EVE and development at CCP Games. The response was overwhelmingly positive, with Zulu answering over a hundred questions on topics ranging from nullsec warfare to ship balance. As part of an ongoing effort to communicate more with the EVE playerbase, the devs at CCP have decided to revive this old habit with a brand new Q&A thread. If you have a burning question on anything related to EVE Online, you can post it in the question forum thread or on the official EVE facebook page. Questions will be posed to a think-tank of developers consisting of senior producer CCP Zulu, lead game designer CCP Hammerhead, producer CCP TomB, senior programmer CCP Tuxford, community developer CCP Guard and senior game masters GM Spiral and GM Lelouch.
EVE Evolved: Corporate benefits and new players
In a recent article, I explored the effect that power players have on EVE Online's subscription retention. In particular, I suggested that CCP has stopped developing features with EVE's power players in mind and that this could be the cause of a worrying downward trend in new player retention. It's the responsibility of corp leaders and organisers to give players a place in EVE, to provide them with something to do and to instill them with the ambition to continue playing in the long term. I believe that CCP has let those organisers and leaders down by failing to provide the updated tools necessary to give players a purposeful place in the universe or give them a good start to the game. A similar issue I've touched on before is the importance of corporate goals in EVE. I've always been amazed at the willingness of EVE players to donate their time and effort to achieve a collective goal rather than a personal one. People are far more likely to join a corporate mining op, for example, if the proceeds will be donated to the corp funds or the minerals will be used in a corp production scheme. Similarly, I've found players to be much more enthusiastic about a mission night or wormhole op if the intent is to fund the production of a corp capital ship or the purchase of starbase fuel. With CCP's summer focus aimed at helping new players get into good corporations, this week's opinion-filled EVE Evolved examines some of the developments necessary to make that goal possible.
EVE Online giving players tasty beverages!
As we reported before, EVE Online is celebrating its 8th anniversary! As a great big thank-you to all of their loyal players, the fine folks at CCP are gifting everyone a six-pack of delicious Quafe Zero. What is Quafe Zero, you ask? According to the devblog, "Made from compounds found only in Sleeper vessels, each can of Quafe Zero promises to boost your Speed and Scan Resolution 5% for one hour, with zero booster side effects. Tastes great, won't fill you up, and makes you a better pilot." Can't wait to get your hands on this tasty beverage? Just log into EVE tomorrow and click the Redeem Items button in the lower right corner. Select the character to receive these refreshing libations and reap the revitalizing rewards. For full instructions and a small note of thanks from the EVE Online devs, click on through to the full article!
EVE Evolved: Eight years of EVE Online
In last week's EVE Evolved column, I celebrated the third anniversary of the column with a competition to win one of three prizes worth over 500 million ISK. Congratulations go to Uniqdragon, mdubs28 and Thorium88, who will be contacted via email to arrange receipt of their prizes. In a bizarre twist that I can't believe I haven't noticed for three years, it turns out that the anniversary of my column occurs just over a week before EVE Online's own birthday on May 6th. With that in mind, this week's column is dedicated to the game's anniversary and to looking back at another successful year. The past eight years have been a wild ride for EVE Online and its developer CCP Games. EVE has grown from a fledgling niche game with under 40,000 launch subscriptions to a global melting pot of over 360,000 actively subscribed accounts. The company itself has seem similar expansion, starting from humble beginnings as a small independent studio in Iceland and growing into a multinational monster with offices in China, Iceland, North America and the United Kingdom. In this huge two-page anniversary edition of EVE Evolved, I look at how EVE Online has kept up with the industry over the years and then go on to examine this past year in detail, from the highs and lows to all the scams and awesome events.
EVE Spotlight: An interview with GM Guard
EVE Spotlight is a new bi-weekly feature in which we interview prominent members of EVE Online's player community or development team. Twice each month, we'll be shining the spotlight on a player or developer who has a significant impact on EVE to highlight the efforts of EVE's most influential people. It's an inherent part of MMO development that certain employees must take on a very visible role in the game's online community. This is especially true in EVE Online as developers are encouraged to communicate with players through the forum and write detailed devblogs on what they're working on. In that sense, GM Guard needs very little introduction. Along with GM Grimmi and others, Guard has been a very public face for GMs in the community for as long as I can remember. While Guard has made huge contributions to EVE behind the scenes as a lead GM, he's probably most well-known for his role in CCP's internal band Permaband. He has now moved on from the GM team to become EVE's new Community Developer. The role of GMs in any MMO is pivotal, and yet they so often come under fire from players who don't get the response they're hoping for or who have to wait too long for an answer. Many EVE players are also unaware of the procedures for escalating petitions, reporting exploits, contacting internal affairs or other important activities. In this EVE Spotlight, we got together with former Lead GM Guard to pick his brains on these topics, find out a little about CCP's support division, and ask about Permaband's next song.
EVE Online Fanfest 2011: Final video roundup
Just over a month ago, the EVE Online Fanfest was in full swing and some exciting new information on EVE's future was being released. Massively was there to bring you all the big news as it came out, but most EVE players were unable to attend the event. Thankfully, most of the Fanfest panels and events were filmed and the main ones were even streamed live to viewers at home. For those who missed all the Fanfest excitement, CCP Games has spent the last few weeks preparing those videos for launch and uploading them to YouTube. The team has also sent us 150 professional photos from the event to include in our Fanfest gallery. In this final Fanfest roundup article, we've put together a handy list of every video from the Fanfest along with a handy summary of each. Not included in the list are the very technical Dev Tracker workshops designed to inform third-party app developers. Many of these videos contain swearing and some are definitely not safe for work. Talks definitely worth watching include the CCP panel, the EVE keynote, the content panel, incursions, words words words and live events. Things you absolutely don't want to miss are the hilarious but not work-safe alliance panel, the PvP tournament finals, the war on lag talk, guest lecture "Who Needs a CEO?" by Battleclinic founder Chris Condon, CCP Sreegs' talk on security, and of course, the EVE: A Future Vision trailer. Skip past the cut for a full roundup of all the videos from this year's EVE Fanfest.
EVE Evolved: Three years of EVE Evolved
A few days shy of three years ago, I joined Massively and published the very first edition of this column. Since April 27th, 2008, EVE Online players have received their weekly dose of EVE Evolved every Sunday at 6 p.m. EDT. I still remember the first few articles as if they were published only a few months ago, and three years on I'm almost surprised that the column is still going strong. I often worry about running out of ideas, but as the column's name suggests, EVE is continually evolving and providing new things to discuss. The column now houses over 150 articles on a huge range of topics, from in-depth multi-part guides drawing from first-hand experience to expansion speculation, opinion pieces and even stories. As usual, I'm celebrating the anniversary of the column by running a competition for readers. With the column's readership having grown a lot over the years, I'll be expanding the prize pool this year by giving away three massive mystery prizes worth over 500 million ISK each to three lucky entrants. To enter, all you need to do is leave a comment stating what your favourite EVE Evolved article this year was, what topic you'd like to see covered in a future edition of the column, or what in-game player or organisation you'd like to see featured in an EVE Spotlight interview. You will need an active EVE account to claim the prize, but there's no need to post your character name here. The winners will be contacted via email and their names will be announced in this post on Sunday the 1st of May. UPDATE: Congratulations go to Uniqdragon, mdubs28 and Thorium88, who will be contacted via email to arrange receipt of their prizes. In this week's retrospective EVE Evolved, I look back at some of the highlights from the third year of the column.
EVE's anti-lag Time Dilation concept explained
Lag and server performance have always been important issues for MMO developers, but they've always had a special significance for EVE Online developer CCP Games. With EVE's entire population living on one non-instanced server, CCP needs to support scenarios in which a large percentage of them get together in one place. Back in August, CCP published a series of devblogs detailing the issues inherent in combating lag and what was being done to combat it. Though developments like the thin client and character nodes have proven very successful, the server still struggles when massive battles take place in nullsec. In a new devblog, CCP Veritas explains a potentially revolutionary idea for resolving lag in massive battles -- Time Dilation. Commands on the server are currently added to a queue and processed in order. If the load is more than the server can process, this queue grows at an alarming rate and the server is unable to catch up. Under time dilation, actions in the game such as firing weapons or moving would be slowed down to ensure the queue remains short and so the server stays under its maximum load. Instead of fights becoming laggy and unplayable, the entire battle would go into slow motion and remain responsive. It's no silver bullet with which to kill the lag monster, but time dilation could make massive battles a lot more playable. For more details on how the system will work, head over to the official devblog.
Massively interviews EVE senior producer Arnar Gylfason on Incarna, PvE and more
Some fantastic news came out of this year's EVE Online Fanfest. CCP Soundwave's talk on Incursion provided some insight into past and possible future development of EVE's often-neglected group PvE activities. We also got a first look at the captain's quarters coming this summer as a first massive step toward full-blown avatar-based interaction with Incarna. Finally, CCP presented the company's vision for the future of EVE -- a video showing the potential interaction between Dust514's ground combat, Incarna's station environments and EVE Online's typical space-based PvP. In his keynote speech, EVE senior producer Arnar "CCP Zulu" Gylfason brought together all the new information that had been released at Fanfest over the last year. We caught up with Arnar at the EVE Fanfest to ask some followup questions to his speech. In an EVE Spotlight article last week, he answered questions on the role of live events in future expansions and other topics. In this second interview, we asked Arnar about incursions, the future of PvE, captain's quarters, the new player experience, Incarna gameplay, and more. Skip past the cut to read our full interview with Arnar Glyfason, a man in whose accent the word "awesome" sounds seriously awesome.
EVE Evolved: The great wormhole heist, part 2
One of the most common things I hear from people who don't play EVE Online is that they don't like the game itself but they absolutely love the stories that come out of it. There's something inherently brutal and visceral about the stories players act out every day in EVE's colossal sandbox. Tales of high-profile thefts and political intrigue occasionally creep into the media and grab our attention, but stories of that sort are a lot more common than you'd think. Last year, we told one such story of a player's descent into criminality and revenge taken too far. In last week's EVE Evolved, I began to tell the true tale of that same player in one of his biggest heists to date. If you haven't read the first part of this story yet, head back to last week's EVE Evolved before reading on. A matter of time Having discovered an opportunity for theft much greater than expected, Scott recognised that he would need help to pull off a successful heist. With the wormhole corporation's assets within Scott's reach, a sense of urgency began to overtake him. Based on discussions with his new corp members, he knew that the group's wormhole tenancy had just begun and that they were still in the process of clearing the starbase up following a frantic move-in. This explained the secure containers littering space -- a temporary measure to be used until an adequate hangar permission scheme could be created. In this week's conclusion of the story of the great wormhole heist, Scott discovers allies in some unexpected places and finds out first-hand whether there really is no honour amongst thieves.
EVE Spotlight: An interview with CCP Zulu
EVE Spotlight is a new bi-weekly feature in which we interview prominent members of EVE Online's player community or development team. Twice each month, we'll be shining the spotlight on a player or developer who has a significant impact on EVE to highlight the efforts of EVE's most influential people. It's almost an unwritten rule of game development that someone from quality assurance should never be promoted into a game design role. Game testing and QA are said to be so fundamentally different to design that it's argued the roles require incompatible skillsets. Arnar "CCP Zulu" Gylfason has definitely proven that this isn't the case, successfully migrating from QA to game design and finally being promoted to senior producer on EVE Online. Taking over from CCP T0rfifrans, Arnar has become a very public figure for CCP in the EVE community. Older players will remember Arnar as CCP Zulupark, that horrible guy who nerfed their carriers back in 2007. Alternatively, you may remember a fantastic forum thread from 2008 in which he personally answered countless player questions on game design and balance issues. Since becoming senior producer on EVE, Arnar has been a strong advocate of this kind of heavy communication with players. Through devblogs, interviews and interactions with the Council of Stellar Management, he's helped to fill the information vacuum players have become accustomed to. We caught up with EVE senior producer Arnar "CCP Zulu" Gylfason several weeks ago at the EVE Fanfest. In this EVE Spotlight, I ask him about communication with players, the role of live events in future expansions, and other topics.
EVE security devblog explains recent forum exploit
When EVE Online's new forum went live on Thursday, April 7th, it wasn't long before someone discovered a gruesome exploit. The cookie used by the forum wasn't encrypted, putting the user's character ID and signature in plain text. The forum software also didn't have the required validation procedures, meaning users could change the user ID in their cookies to any character's ID and they'd be able to post as that character. Moderator tools and private forums for EVE developers, volunteers and the CSM were also allegedly exposed. In a new devblog, CCP Sreegs has explained the extent to which the exploit compromised security. In addition to being able to post as any user and edit any post, users abusing the exploit were able to inject arbitrary HTML into their forum signatures. Several players have been very vocally outraged by this, as the potential for someone to insert javascript into a forum page could be extremely damaging. Sreegs assured players that javascript inserted into the signature was sanitized and would not execute. At least one player who reported the exploit was banned for subsequently abusing the exploit in an effort to force CCP to take action. In his devblog, Sreegs re-iterated the correct steps for getting in touch with CCP's security department if an exploit or security hole is discovered. Player response to the devblog has been largely positive, but questions still remain. CCP has yet to comment on why it decided to base the new forum on open source software Yet Another Forum and why it didn't inform players that it was using a pre-made package.
New EVE Online forums get off to a bumpy start
As part of EVE Online's Incursion expansion, players were due to get a new set of forums with a powerful new search feature and other handy tools. A beta version of the forum was released for testing by players at the end of February to help CCP collect feedback on its design. On Thursday, April 7th, the new forum was officially launched and the old forum was set to a read-only archive. It wasn't long, however, before problems began to crop up with the new forum. With so many people now using the new forum, it was only a matter of time before someone found a security hole in it. Players discovered a cookie-based exploit that allowed them to authenticate as any EVE player without knowing the user's password, including forum moderators and CCP developers. Although user login data wasn't revealed, players abusing the exploit were able to edit other users' posts, access moderator tools and post as developers. A similar exploit was found that allowed players to post arbitrary Javascript into their forum signatures, which could have led to serious security compromises. Web developers at CCP disabled the forum for several hours to develop and deploy a fix, but were ultimately unable to resolve the problem. For now, the new forum has been disabled and the old one has been reactivated in its stead. A devblog on the issue is due to be posted tomorrow.
EVE Evolved: The great wormhole heist, part 1
Several years ago, EVE Online's Community Manager CCP Wrangler made a statement that I felt really crystalised the sentiment behind the game. He said that "EVE isn't designed to just look like a cold, dark and harsh world; it's designed to be a cold, dark and harsh world." Although most of us are content to indulge ourselves in PvP, market games and other traditional modes of gameplay, a criminal underworld runs beneath that innocuous surface. A significant few carve their own illicit destinies from the void, stealing and cheating their way to the top. Whether these space-faring cyber-criminals are in it for fame and riches, political influence, or their own personal goals, the stories of their actions in EVE's colossal sandbox never fail to grip us. High-profile thefts like the Guiding Hand Social Club heist of 2005, the closure of EBank, and last year's Titans4U scandal have been made very public, and smaller-scale crimes occur every day in New Eden. Last year, we brought you the true tale of one player's revenge taken too far -- a story of corporate infiltration, social deception and utter destruction. Although this was Scott's first foray into criminality, it was most certainly not his last. The events in this week's story are true, but the names of the players and corporations involved have been changed. In this week's EVE Evolved, Scott returns as I begin to tell the true story of his huge wormhole heist.
Newest EVE Online patch pushed live with controversial anomaly changes
The latest update to EVE Online has gone live, with Incursion 1.4 hitting the server today. Like any patch, this one has issues to be ironed out, ones that have already prompted an announced maintenance tomorrow to deploy a fix. But bugs are understandable with the wealth of updates in the new patch, which makes far-reaching changes to several parts of the game including a plethora of quality-of-life improvements. Parts can now be stripped from unpiloted ships, extra outpost information has been added, and you can see the portraits of other pilots in more places as well as zoom in for a hi-resolution look whenever you want. But the patch isn't all cosmetics and convenience; some functional changes have been rolled out as well. Chief among these are changes to the workings of anomalies, which were announced some time ago and caused something of a stir within the community. Whether or not players will be slightly more happy with the changes in actual play remains to be seen; for the time being, EVE Online players will need to start logging in and experimenting with the patch to determine how good (or bad) the net effect has been.
EVE Evolved: Power players and player retention
As I mentioned in our coverage of the EVE Online Fanfest, the best part of the experience for me was discussing EVE with players who are as involved in and enthusiastic about the game as I am. On my first night there, I got into a fascinating discussion with a few players on a topic I hadn't really considered before -- power players. Every MMO has players who get heavily involved in their chosen game. EVE's Fanfest really highlighted this, as around a thousand of EVE's power players flew to Iceland just to talk about the game, contribute ideas in roundtable discussions and find out what the future holds for the game. Ultimately, the fate of EVE lies in its community. EVE's main strength as an MMO is the fact that with so many players in one game universe, people form very real ties with each other. Corporations and alliances are more than just collections of people; they're sub-communities with their own aspirations, internal politics, playstyles, personalities and even senses of humour. These organisations give people support and a place to call home in an unforgiving universe, and it's the power players of EVE who make all of that possible. In this week's EVE Evolved, I explore the importance of power players in MMOs and what the concept means for EVE's development.
EVE Online players raise over $44,000 for Japan relief fund
Never let it be said that gamers don't have big hearts. When Japan was hit by an earthquake and the ensuing tsunami, people around the world stepped up to donate to disaster relief programs. Several MMO developers have made substantial donations using profits from their games. NCSoft made a huge donation of 500 million yen (6.3 million USD), and Sony Online Entertainment donated 300 million yen (3.6 million U.S. dollars). SOE, gPotato, Perfect World Entertainment and Hi-Rez studios have all been running schemes to help players donate, ranging from special once-only microtransaction items to just donating a percentage of all cash shop proceeds to charity. EVE Online's developer CCP Games has encouraged donations through their unique PLEX system. Players who couldn't afford to donate cash were encouraged to buy PLEX in-game using ISK and donate them to the relief fund. CCP would then scrap the PLEX items and donate their full purchase value to charity. The scheme has been very successful at raising money in previous disasters, raising over 40,000 USD for the Haitian earthquake fund and roughly a further 20,000 USD for the flooding in Pakistan. In a new devblog, CCP Fallout has released the final results of EVE's charity drive. A total of 2549 PLEX, each worth 17.5 USD, was donated to the scheme by players. CCP will be donating the full value of 44,607.50 USD to the Red Cross in the name the EVE Online community, and will be paying for all of the tax and management costs themselves. EVE players have now donated a total of 108,000 USD through the PLEX for Good scheme. Head over to the devblog for the details of the charity drive and some interesting information on three players who helped make it a success.
Proposed changes to EVE's nullsec regions cause a stir
At the end of 2009, EVE Online's vast and lawless nullsec regions were given a complete overhaul with the Dominion expansion. System sovereignty mechanics were changed, and a new infrastructure system was put in place. Through an infrastructure hub interface, alliances were given the ability to upgrade the systems within their borders. Areas of space near EVE's empire systems that were rarely fought over suddenly became prime real-estate, ripe for conquest and development. The difference in quality between the best systems deep in nullsec and poor systems nearer empire was significantly lowered. The hope was that by increasing the carrying capacity of each individual system, CCP would cause large alliances to contract into smaller areas of space. The result hasn't been exactly as CCP had planned, since huge areas of nullsec are now being dominated by massive coalitions of alliances. In a new devblog, CCP Greyscale has explained steps that CCP plans to take in order to rectify the situation. The quality of cosmic anomalies provided by system upgrades will soon depend largely on the system's true security rating. Systems that were highly sought before Dominion will now be significantly better for making ISK. CCP hopes that this will cause high-end alliances to concentrate in higher-end space, leaving power vacuums near empire space for smaller alliances to fill. Player reaction to the devblog has been fierce, with the comments thread reaching over 65 pages, the vast majority of it negative. Whether the changes are a good idea is debatable, but the one thing players have widely agreed on is that the changes will not achieve the goals CCP has set out in the devblog. As the changes are part of the official Incursion features list, however, it's highly likely that they'll go to the live server in a future patch deployment.
EVE Evolved: Incarna and the captain's quarters
When we first heard about Incarna, it was as "Walking in Stations" back in 2006. At the 2006 EVE Online Fanfest, details of the ambitious project were released to excited fans, which was followed by a lengthy devblog from CCP t0rfifrans on what would be involved. The sheer scope of Walking in Stations seemed immense, but in-engine screenshots of what came to be known as "Ambulation Man" created a sense that a lot of work had already been done on it. Over the years following that announcement, we saw snippets of information and work-in-progress screenshots from various prototypes. Players saw those prototypes as the current state of the feature in development, and it became reasonable to expect a release in the near future. Miscommunication In reality, CCP's insistence on doing the feature right has caused several prototypes to be completely scrapped. Walking in Stations became Ambulation, and we were shown a full work-in-progress demo of a character walking around in a bar and playing a minigame. That prototype was similarly scrapped, being reborn as Incarna at the 2009 Fanfest. In developing each of these prototypes, CCP quickly discovered that the underlying technology to do it the way the team wanted to simply didn't exist. In this opinion piece, I look at the summer expansion's planned captain's quarters event and what it could mean for EVE Online.
