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EVE Evolved: The end of EVE Evolved
By now, you will have heard that Massively is being shut down along with Joystiq and countless other blogs run by AOL. That unfortunately means this will be my final article for Massively and marks an end to the nearly seven-year run of the EVE Evolved column, which now holds over 350 articles on topics ranging from ship fittings and opinion pieces to guides and expansion breakdowns. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank all of you for your readership and to express just how much playing EVE Online and writing for you really have impacted my life. I've been asked by so many people over the years for tips on breaking into the games industry as a journalist or MMO blogger, but the truth is that I lucked into this gig. When a post on the EVE Online news page said that some site called Massively was hiring an EVE Online columnist, I almost didn't bother applying. I was a prolific forumgoer back then and had written some guides for EON Magazine and my own blog, but I wanted to get into game development and had very little confidence in my writing ability. What I didn't know then was that writing for Massively would help improve my writing skills immeasurably and even help give me the confidence to launch my own game development studio. Massively gave me a platform on which to talk about EVE Online and an eager audience to share my game experiences with, but it turned into something much more profound. There have been low points dealing with trolls and organised harassment and tough times with budget cuts, but there have also some incredible experiences like attending the EVE Online Fanfest, investigating monoclegate, watching CCP redeem itself in the eyes of players, and collaborating with some of the best writers in the games industry. In this final edition of EVE Evolved, I look back at the start of the EVE Evolved column, break down my top ten column articles of all time, and try to put into words how much this column has meant to me over the years.
EVE Evolved: The top five most dangerous solar systems
EVE Online is a PvP game at its core, with conflict built in at a fundamental level. Pirates lurk around key trade routes and stand ready to pounce on unsuspecting victims, while vast nullsec alliances protect their territories with watchful vigilance and never-ending bloodlust. Wander into the wrong solar system as a new player and your precious ship and cargo will be turned into molten slag and a few points on a killboard quicker than you can say, "Hello, new friend, and what does that red square on your ship mean?" The original map of EVE was generated one evening by an Icelandic developer who could scarcely have known he was deciding the fates of thousands of gamers for years to come. New systems have been added to the game over the years, and a few manual changes have been made to the stargate network, but most of the universe has remained the same for over a decade. In all that time, a few solar systems have stood out as brazen bastions of bastardly behaviour and made their marks on EVE's history. In this week's EVE Evolved, I run down a list of the top five most dangerous solar systems in EVE's long history and delve into why each has earned its reputation as a no-fly-zone for newbies.
EVE Evolved: Designing EVE Onland, part 2
When it comes to living sandbox MMOs, there really isn't a bigger name than EVE Online. Throughout its decade-long history, EVE has produced some huge gaming headlines, delivered record-breaking in-game thefts and heists, and played host to the complex political machinations of dozens of warring alliances. EVE's sandbox design has even made it remarkably resistant to changes in the market, with subscription numbers remaining relatively stable in the face of new releases and the free to play phenomenon. It comes as no surprise then that the sandbox genre is seeing a triple-A revival, with games like Star Citizen, EverQuest Next Landmark, and Camelot Unchained on the way. With the sandbox genre due to explode back onto the fantasy scene, I've been left wondering how much of the core gameplay that makes EVE tick could be easily adapted for an avatar-based game on land. Even features such as EVE Online's trademark territorial warfare and player-run economy have roots in classic fantasy MMOs like Ultima Online, so they should be easy to convert to modern fantasy equivalents. Last week I started this game design thought experiment with a territorial warfare system and free-for-all PvP with harsh consequences for attackers, but there's a lot more to a good sandbox than smashing people's heads in. In this week's EVE Evolved, I delve into the hypothetical world of EVE Onland again and tackle issues of realistic world scale, exploration, economics, and the evils of global banking.
EVE Evolved: Designing EVE Onland, part 1
When I'm not playing or writing about EVE Online, I can usually be found huddled over my computer typing lines of code into a compiler and chipping away at bugs that make varying degrees of sense. Designing my own hardcore space game is a really fun challenge and very fulfilling work, but I have a dirty little game dev secret: I've actually always wanted to make a fantasy game. While the budget and personnel required to take on a project the scale of an MMO remain quite far outside my grasp for the moment, it's still fun to think about how I might design such a game if the opportunity arose. The MMO genre seems to be heading for a sandbox revolution this year, and there's no bigger sandbox than EVE Online, but could all of EVE's gameplay translate to a fantasy game? EVE is probably the most atypical MMO out there, maintaining a subscription-based single-shard PvP sandbox in a genre that's typically headed in the exact opposite direction. There are several new sci-fi sandboxes on the way that may or may not qualify as massively multiplayer titles, but the vast majority of MMO gamers still prefer to keep their feet on the ground in fantasy lands. I often find myself wondering how much of EVE Online's core gameplay is possible only because of its setting -- and how much could actually be applied to a fantasy MMO. Not only should it be possible to adapt most of what makes EVE great to a modern land-based game, but many of the mechanics sandbox gamers now attribute almost solely to EVE actually started life in classic fantasy MMOs like Ultima Online. In this week's unusual EVE Evolved, I'd like to start a game design thought experiment as I delve into the hypothetical world of EVE Onland.
The Soapbox: Actually, that really isn't an MMO
In last week's edition of The Soapbox, Mike Foster argued that online gaming has evolved over the past few years and that the term MMO should be expanded to cover other online games like MOBAs. He examined the blurred dividing line between new online games and the classic MMOs of yesteryear, and he made the controversial argument that Call of Duty and League of Legends should now fall under the MMO umbrella. I found myself disagreeing with many of Mike's arguments and wanting to make additional points of my own, so this week I'd like to offer a few counter-points on the same topic for debate. The MMO market has certainly evolved since Massively was founded, with some pretty big innovations in gameplay and new ideas like the free-to-play business model taking hold. As much as people like to complain about a lack of innovation in the games industry, the same level of experimentation and evolution has hit industry-wide. Call of Duty has borrowed unlock and XP systems from the world of orcs and dragons, and League of Legends came from nowhere to be at the forefront of a global MOBA revolution, but neither of them is an MMO by any stretch of the imagination. In this in-depth opinion piece, I break down the definition arguments surrounding the term MMO, offer a reasoned view of where the line can and should be drawn, and look at why Massively covers games other than MMOs.
EVE Evolved: Colonising deep space
If you were watching the news coming out of this year's EVE Online Fanfest, you no doubt heard Senior Producer Andie Nordgren's incredibly ambitious five year vision. The past few expansions have been mostly filled with bug fixes and improvements to existing gameplay, but the goal is now to begin delivering an epic vision of deep space exploration, colonisation, and PvP raids on enemy infrastructure. The five year roadmap toward this goal includes the addition of player-built stargates and completely uncharted solar systems to locate, explore and build an empire in. If the very idea of that doesn't make shivers go down your spine, something may be wrong with your central nervous system. CCP has opened new space before with the addition of the drone regions in nullsec and some new lowsec systems for faction warfare, but it wasn't until 2009's Apocrypha expansion that we saw a true exploration and long-term colonisation effort get underway. I think the intoxicating draw of wormhole exploration was primarily due to the fact that the new systems were hidden and the information on them wasn't public. Just adding new solar systems to the existing stargate network wouldn't have had the same effect. Nordgren's vision may take up to 10 expansions to fully realise, but what kinds of features will we need in those expansions to recreate true exploration and deep space colonisation? In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at some of the challenges CCP will have to overcome to make deep space colonisation a reality and what small steps could be taken in each expansion to get us there.
The Soapbox: On your deathbed, you will not regret gaming
In last week's edition of The Soapbox, Mike Foster reminded us that the grim specter of death comes to us all and asserted that when your time comes, "you will not wish you had spent more time gaming." Mike took the stance that gaming provides temporary joys that can't replace real-life experiences and that it's our inherent responsibility as human beings with finite lifespans to seek out those experiences. He argued that "gaming is a hobby and not a replacement for a life well-lived" and that it's not our gaming achievements but our real life ones that we'll proudly tell our grandchildren. I think we can all agree that it's important to have offline hobbies and interests that help you keep active, but I take exception to the notion that we might regret time spent gaming on our deathbeds. Published data on the top five regrets of the dying actually seems to directly refute this idea, and my life experiences have shown the exact opposite of some of the points Mike makes. MMOs have given me some experiences that I'll probably treasure for a lifetime, and gaming as a hobby has provided me with much more than just temporary joys and escapism; it's helped me discover talents I didn't know I possessed, given me the push I needed to get a good education, led me to employment, and put me in contact with lifelong friends. On my deathbed, I'll probably wish I'd spent more time gaming rather than less. In this opinion piece, I look at evidence that suggests we won't regret gaming on our deathbeds and make the case that gaming can be just as worthwhile as offline pursuits.
The Soapbox: How to run a successful Kickstarter campaign
The past few years have seen an absolute revolution in the games industry, with an explosion of studios securing funding through crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter. In a time when banks worldwide are tightening their belts, Kickstarter represents a lifeline for indie developers and a way for the bigger studios to work on their own projects free from the need for outside investors or publishers. But with the growing number of projects seeking funding each year, developers are facing stiff competition and the rising challenge of running a successful campaign. Most developers don't release all of their stats or write up advice and insights following a successful crowdfunding campaign, and those who do are often lost on obscure blogs that don't appear when you Google for advice. But I'm in the unusual position of both being a games journalist and having successfully Kickstarted a small game project (unrelated to MMOs and my work on Massively). Six months ago, I ran a campaign for my new sci-fi 4X game Predestination, and in the process I learned some valuable lessons on what works and doesn't work on Kickstarter. We've since published the campaign stats and gone on to help a few other campaigns hit their goals. In this article, I run down the lessons I learned the hard way during the Predestination Kickstarter campaign and give some advice for developers hoping to get funded.
The Soapbox: Diablo III's auction house ruined the game
After his departure from the Diablo III development team, Game Director Jay Wilson released a statement that the introduction of an auction house "really hurt the game." While players predicted doom the moment the Real Money Auction House was announced, Jay argued that the gold auction house was equally to blame for the game's fall from grace following its absolutely stellar launch sales. I don't normally agree with what Jay has to say on Diablo III, but in this case he does have a very valid point. Diablo II was consistently popular for over a decade thanks to its immense replayability. At its core, D2 was a game about building new characters and gearing them up by any means necessary. Every enemy in the game was a loot pinata just waiting to be popped, and players farmed endlessly for a few sought-after unique items. You almost never found an item that was ideal for your particular class and build, but you could usually trade for what you needed via trade channels and forums. Blizzard claimed that the auction house was intended just to streamline this process, but when Diablo III launched, it was clear that the entire game had been designed to make the auction house almost necessary for progress. The fault here lies not just with the concept of an auction house but with the game designers. That's right: I'm here to argue not only that Jay Wilson was right about the auction house ruining Diablo III but also that it was his own damn fault.
EVE Evolved: Five years of EVE Evolved
About five years ago, on April 27th, 2008, I joined the Massively team and wrote the very first issue of the EVE Evolved column. Five years later, the column is still going strong and delivering its weekly dose of EVE Online to thousands of readers. I used to worry about running out of ideas to write about, but regular game updates and hilarious player shenanigans mean there's always something interesting going on in New Eden. When EVE hits its 10th anniversary in May, this column will have been running for just over half of the game's lifetime. In that time, I've written over 250 in-depth articles, guides, in-game stories and opinion pieces on EVE Online and a few on DUST 514. As usual, I'll be celebrating this anniversary by rounding up this year's column highlights and giving away two 30-day Pilot's License Extensions to two lucky readers. To enter the competition, write a comment explaining which EVE Evolved articles from this year you liked best and what topics you'd like to see covered in the coming year. You will need an active EVE account to claim the prize, so be sure to include your character name in your comment if you want to be in with a chance. If you'd rather not give out your character name or don't have an EVE account but would like to give the game a go, you can sign up a new trial account and use the name of your new character. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look back at the highlights from the column's fifth year!
EVE Evolved: Has EVE Online boxed itself in?
When I was first introduced to EVE Online in 2004, it was an empty shell of a game. There were only three classes of ship, no alliances or starbases, and neither exploration complexes nor level 4 missions existed yet. EVE consisted of 5,000 systems of almost completely empty space populated by less than 50,000 players. The user interface was an order of magnitude worse than it is today (if you can imagine that), and the tutorial just dropped you in the middle of space with the ship equivalent of a pea shooter and a less-than-enthusiastic "good luck!" Though much of the game was empty, it sat before players like a blank galactic canvas. Not only could players paint their own stories into the game world, but EVE's highly active development team was updating the game at lightning speed. Players instinctively filled the voids in the game with their hopes and dreams, projecting all the things that EVE could be into the gaps. People shared ideas on the forum directly with the developers, and practically anything was possible. Things aren't quite the same today, as new ideas have to be compatible with over nine years' worth of updates, and developer CCP Games really can't afford to rock the boat and potentially lose subscriptions. In this week's EVE Evolved, I consider whether the past nine years of development has boxed EVE in, forcing the gameplay down an ever-narrowing branch of choices.
Why I Play: EVE Online
Sci-fi MMO EVE Online is possibly the most polarising online game in existence. It has some of the genre's most loyal fans and spawns some of its biggest news stories, but most people just can't stand the user interface and gameplay. It's been called boring, overcomplicated, and a griefer's paradise, but even those who don't play it often still watch from the sidelines as each insane story of theft or corruption emerges from the sandbox. Most games can only keep my attention for a few months at a time, but somehow I've played EVE for over eight and a half years. I've heard it said that EVE is a long-term commitment, a statement I find hard to argue with as at only 26 years old I've been playing EVE almost continuously for a third of my life. It's not just been a game to me; at times it's been a way of life, a refuge from stress, a way to stay in touch with friends, and even a place to learn skills that can apply to the real world. Thanks to Massively, my attachment to EVE has even grown from a hobby to a career in writing and games journalism. I've had numerous periods of low activity in EVE and even quit for months at a time, but something always brings me back to the world's biggest sci-fi sandbox. In this article, I look back at what drew me to EVE initially, some of the unusual factors that have kept me playing EVE over the past eight years, and the reason I'm still motivated to subscribe to this day.
The Soapbox: League of Legends is the new World of Warcraft
Disclaimer: The Soapbox column is entirely the opinion of this week's writer and does not necessarily reflect the views of Massively as a whole. If you're afraid of opinions other than your own, you might want to skip this column. Every now and then, a game comes out of nowhere with such incredible financial success that it causes the games industry to completely lose perspective. All it takes is one game to start raking in the millions for developers, publishers and investors to stumble around with dollar signs in their eyes for years to come. Innovation grinds to a halt and everyone starts blindly copying whichever game just hit the jackpot. It's like some huge industry-wide superstition takes over and convinces people that if they do the same dance the same way, it'll rain again. World of Warcraft has consistently had this effect since shortly after its launch in 2004. To this day, several studios per year excitedly announce yet another fantasy MMO that lifts its entire feature set and every gameplay mechanic wholesale from World of Warcraft as if it were a model for automatic success. The same thing is happening again in online gaming today, not from MMOs but from MOBAs, a new genre based on the competitive gaming classic DotA. Developers are still chasing the massive money made by yet another hugely successful game, and this time it's League of Legends.
EVE Evolved: Four years of EVE Evolved
On April 27th, 2008, I joined the Massively crew and published the first edition of a new weekly column dedicated to the world of EVE Online. It's hard to believe that the EVE Evolved column is now four years old, spanning nine major expansions and predating CCP Games' transformation into an industry giant with three games in development. Since the column's first crude scribbling about shuttles, I've written over 200 in-depth articles, guides, stories, and opinion pieces. With its free expansions and iterative updates, EVE is a rapidly changing game that provides a constant supply of things to write about. To celebrate the fourth anniversary of the column, I'm giving away two 30-day Pilot's License EXtensions to two lucky readers. To enter the competition, leave a comment stating which EVE Evolved article from this year is your favourite, and why it's your favorite, and what topic you'd like to see covered in the coming year. You will need an active EVE account to claim the prize, so be sure to include a character name with your comment if you want to be able to win a prize. If you're not comfortable with giving out your character name, use an alternate character or sign up a new trial account. The winners' names will be revealed in next week's column. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look back at some of the highlights from the column's fourth year.
The SOPAbox: Defeating online piracy by destroying the internet
Disclaimer: The Soapbox column is entirely the opinion of this week's writer and does not necessarily reflect the views of Massively as a whole. If you're afraid of opinions other than your own, you might want to skip this column. Unless you've been living under a rock, chances are you've heard of SOPA and PIPA. The Stop Online Piracy Act and PROTECT IP Act are two radical pieces of copyright legislation currently being pushed through the US government. Although the stated intent of the new legislation is to provide companies with additional tools with which to combat piracy, the bill's loose wording has raised some serious alarm bells. Opponents to the proposed law say it would give corporations the ability to shut down any almost any website under the guise of protecting copyright infringement. Gamers will be affected worst of all, as the loose wording of the law makes any website with user-submitted content potentially vulnerable to a shut down order. That could include YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, any blog with a comment section, or even any online game with a chat system. Perhaps the scariest part is that you'll be affected even if you're not in the US, as one of the new law's enforcement mechanisms is to remove a site from the DNS records, a move that assumes the US has jurisdiction over the global Domain Name System. AOL is among many huge companies strongly opposing SOPA, and so naturally Massively opposes it too. In this week's massive two-page Soapbox, I make the case for why you should be worried about SOPA, and I suggest what can be done to tackle piracy in the games industry. Comments can be left on page two.
EVE Evolved: Returning EVE to the Crucible
When EVE Online launched in 2003, it was a barren game without many of the comforts we enjoy today. The user interface was abysmally worse than today's (if you can imagine such a thing), players with cruisers were top dog, and practically the only activities were mining or blowing up miners. The culmination of years of hard work by a small indie studio, EVE Online sold almost entirely on its future potential. When I was introduced to the game by an excited friend in early 2004 during the Castor expansion, he encouraged me to get in on the ground floor because he believed the game was going to be huge. Years later, I find myself introducing the game to thousands of readers on the same premise. EVE's continual success over the years transformed a fresh-faced CCP Games into a multinational game development giant. And yet, for all that growth and all the updates to EVE over the years, the fact that the game sells largely on future potential is still firmly embedded in both players and developers. Players subscribe not only because they like the game but because they want to support development to reach EVE's true potential. Two years with very little iteration on existing features sent the message that developers weren't trying to reach that potential, but it seems that trend is soon to be completely reversed. With the newly announced Crucible expansion, CCP will be adding countless small features, graphical updates and iterations that put EVE firmly back on the path to reaching its full potential. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at CCP's plans to return EVE to the crucible and reforge it into something awesome. Those waiting for the third part of my look at the new player experience can catch that in next week's column, as Kajatta is enjoying his final week in EVE before delivering his verdict.
EVE Evolved: Upgrading to a PvP cruiser: Gallente and Amarr
People come to EVE Online from many different gaming backgrounds, and for one reason or another, the game doesn't click with most people the first time they try it. Two weeks ago, I encouraged people who have tried EVE but never got it to click with them to approach the game from a new angle -- to grab a few friends and charge head-first into PvP with guns blazing from day one. In last week's EVE Evolved, I advised new players on getting into their first PvP frigate, preparing for PvP, and staying financially ahead of the inevitable ship losses. I also put together two frigate setups for each race that will fit and function well with only a few days worth of skills trained. While frigates are fantastically cheap ships in which to learn the basics of PvP, their effectiveness on the battlefield is limited. Most tech 1 frigates struggle to deal anywhere near 100 damage per second, and if caught by enemy tacklers they die quickly. While the next step up is the destroyer class, I strongly advise PvP-oriented players to skip it and move straight on to cruisers. Although cruisers have less mobility than frigates and are easier for large ships to hit, they pack a big punch for a relatively low cost and can take a bit of a beating. In this week's extra large EVE Evolved, I share effective and battle-tested setups for the Thorax, Vexor, Arbitrator, and Omen that new players can use with less than two weeks of skills trained. I also suggest skills to train and give a few tips for keeping costs down. If you're a fan of Minmatar or Caldari ships, tune in to next week's EVE Evolved for the continuation of this article.
EVE Evolved: Getting into your first PvP frigate
In last week's EVE Evolved, I encouraged new players to grab a few friends and charge head-first into PvP with guns blazing from day one. Whether you join a faction warfare militia, form a corp to declare war on other corporations or head out to lowsec or nullsec, starting your PvP journey is an important part of enjoying EVE. Several readers requested help with picking a ship, putting together a viable ship fitting and finding the funding for it. So many players asked for help that this week's column is entirely dedicated to the messy business of putting together your first PvP frigate and learning to fly it. Although the ship of choice for most newbies is the agile Minmatar Rifter, each race has a range of frigates that can perform well in PvP groups with minimal skills. In this article, I'll suggest fittings for two frigates from each race that new players with as little as one day of trained skills will be able to fly. One of the core concepts of EVE Online's PvP that often discourages new players is the idea that your ship is irreversibly destroyed when you die. While this may seem like an extremely harsh death penalty, deciding how much you risk in PvP is part of the game's tactical gameplay and even the best active PvP enthusiasts lose at least one ship per week. Death in EVE is essentially a financial loss followed by the inconvenience of having to buy and fit a new ship. Most of the financial penalty can be countered by using cheap and effective tech 1 equipment and insuring your ship, and the inconvenience of death can by bypassed by building up a stockpile of disposable PvP ships. With that in mind, this week's absolutely massive EVE Evolved is dedicated to getting you and a few friends into your first PvP frigates after as little as one day in the game and helping you mitigate the financial loss of death.
EVE Evolved: Learning to let go
Bombarded by the epic stories emerging from EVE Online's colossal social sandbox, thousands of MMO addicts per month give in to temptation and pick up a free trial. Most drop the trial for one reason or another, but those who continue on to a full game subscription often fall into a common trap. Some enjoy the concept of the game enough to subscribe for a month, and a portion of those get invested enough in skill plans and the mission grind to stick about for two or three months. It's rare for a new or trial player to actually get into PvP or start creating the same epic sandbox stories that drew them to the game in the first place, but this is exactly what they should be doing right from day one. New players often spend their entire trial or first month of gameplay attempting to grapple with the enormity of EVE, absorbing as much information as they can in order to make informed decisions for themselves. It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking months of training skills and learning the basics of the game through reading or PvE will be required before you can PvP competitively or begin crafting your own epic story. I firmly believe that the real learning curve of EVE is in learning to let go of these ideas and to accept the loss of ships or items as part of the game. I believe new players need to discard their pre-conceived notions of death penalty, what skill points represent, and the idea of preparing for endgame. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at how EVE is actually very forgiving for new players getting into PvP immediately, I challenge the learning curve myth, and I encourage new pilots to drop themselves into EVE at the deep end.
EVE Evolved: Losing yourself in EVE Online
Of all the things EVE Online has to offer, exploration is perhaps its most attractive lure. With around 7500 solar systems to visit and seven years of history enshrined amongst them, EVE offers players a very real and tangible universe to explore. There's something inherently attractive about getting lost in the depths of space and being absorbed into the stories woven around those thousands of little points of light on the map. While the official storyline of most MMOs can be seen all across their respective worlds, the sandbox nature of EVE adds significant player-determined influences to the usual developer-created storyline. In the colossal sandbox of New Eden, key battles and events have drenched areas of the game in a player-made lore that's ripe for discovery. In the past, several players have capitalised on EVE's potential for exploration in order to craft for themselves a truly unique gameplay experience. In 2006, a new player by the name of Innominate Nightmare went on a roaming tour of EVE's lawless nullsec regions. In his travels, he talked with the locals and reported on daily events as they unfolded. The intrepid explorer soon discovered a New Eden fraught with war but at the same time bonded by it. Every space station and alliance-claimed system held stories of the blood spilled over its liberation, the good times pilots had together there, and the monumental efforts alliances had undertaken to carve a home for themselves out of the void. In this week's EVE Evolved, I immerse myself in some of EVE's most unique exploration experiences and look at how you can become lost in New Eden's awesome sights and stories.
