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EVE Evolved: Have wormholes revitalised EVE?
It's been just over a week since the Apocrypha expansion went live and EVE Online is already starting to see the impact of the new content on gameplay. Wormholes in particular have revitalised gameplay for so many individuals that Apocrypha may just be the best EVE expansion to date. Everything from piracy to low security space, system ownership and exploration have been affected by the advent of unstable wormholes. But how could something as simple as unstable wormholes revitalise other areas of gameplay?In this article, I examine the far-reaching effects of EVE's newest gameplay addition – wormholes.
Apocrypha expansion for EVE Online launches Tuesday, March 10th
As CCP Games rolls out the most significant expansion for EVE Online to date, Apocrypha, players should prepare themselves for an extended 13-hour downtime, lasting from 03:00 GMT to (est.) 16:00 GMT on Tuesday, March 10th. Storyline updates in the form of news reports will continue throughout downtime, kicking off the backstory of the Apocrypha expansion. Massively has a solid overview of Apocrypha for you, most recently a visual tour of the expansion and a hands-on with the developers, explaining EVE's new features. Patch Notes for this 10th EVE expansion are up as well. Updates to the patch notes will be made in green, and you can follow the highlighted links to all of the relevant dev blogs explaining the various facets of Apocrypha. We've covered much of this content at Massively, but two recent dev blogs from CCP explain how the new exploration system will work and what exactly makes the Sleeper NPC race's AI so formidable.
EVE Online Apocrypha expansion trailer kicks off storyline events
CCP Games just dropped the trailer for EVE Online's Apocrypha expansion, which sets the tone for the storyline players will soon experience. The trailer depicts a cataclysmic event which creates rifts in space-time throughout the New Eden galaxy, affecting all of the races. We see fleets of ships investigating the anomalies and take their first journeys through wormholes, emerging in unknown space. There, the explorers find bizarre structures whose design is unknown to New Eden's races. These space stations house the technology behind Tech III, advanced modular ship designs, but seizing technology potentially thousands of years beyond that of the capsuleers awakens long-dormant defenses: the drones of the ancient Sleeper race. We've got the YouTube embed of the Apocrypha trailer in HD for you below the cut.
Massively's Apocrypha expansion hands-on: The Sleepers
The Sleepers The inhabitants of these uncharted solar systems may take offense to your encroachment upon their territory, however. The Sleepers, an ancient race of NPCs known for their mastery of virtual reality and cryogenics, will provide the greatest PvE challenges players have ever faced in EVE Online through their guardian drones. Their AI is far beyond what players are used to going up against in PvE. The Sleepers will have varying levels of strength and adaptation to player threats. They do seem to have a particular hatred for their creators at CCP, given their ultra-violent response to Ward's arrival at a structure the Sleeper drones constructed in space. They move in on him, dishing out *all* damage types: beams sizzle for EM and Thermal damage; warheads obliterate for Kinetic and Explosive damage. Fortunately Ward's Proteus is set up to deal with this ("I'm going to put on a GM shield extender, or when we go through there I'm going to get wasted!") making his ship virtually impossible to kill, letting us witness the Sleeper offensive in safety.
EVE Online developer explains new AI for the Sleeper race
One of the major new features to EVE Online's forthcoming Apocrypha expansion is the introduction of an ancient race of NPCs called the Sleepers. They're a breed apart from any NPCs ever seen in EVE, largely because of their AI. They react intelligently to threats, focusing fire on primary targets but diverting their attacks to counter whatever else they're faced with. They can 'spider tank' or protect and even repair one another as combat ensues. Added to their tactics is evasive maneuvering, making the Sleepers even deadlier. We recently showed you video footage of the Sleepers in action and while taking them on will, in some cases, be a daunting experience, this is not to say that they can't be defeated. EVE developer CCP Incognito wrote on the forums, "If you try to use the same-old, same-old tactics against Sleepers then you will have problems. Think out of the box and you will win." CCP Incognito's comments were in the context of his dev blog on the new AI, which discusses the challenges that the Sleepers will pose for players seeking fragments of their advanced technology. More than anything, the AI revamp is designed to make PvE more like PvP. Anyone planning to venture through EVE's wormholes should abandon their mission-centric ship setups and be prepared for PvP; that's what fighting the Sleeper NPCs will be like -- fighting other players.
Video shows EVE Online's Sleeper NPC race in action
The ancient NPC race in EVE Online known as the Sleepers will soon come into conflict with EVE's capsuleers in the Apocrypha expansion, only a few weeks from now. Explorers willing to discover wormholes and take the risk of engaging the Sleepers within will be able to obtain some of their technology, provided they manage to survive the encounter. This could bring wealth by selling the tech outright, or reverse engineering it to create EVE's strategic "Tech III" cruisers -- modular ship designs based in part off of Sleeper technology. CCP Games has said that the Sleepers will be unlike any NPC type that pilots in the game have ever faced, and that was no exaggeration. Their AI makes fighting these particular NPCs more like fighting other players. That is to say, they react to immediate threats and change their tactics to counter what's thrown at them, to some degree. The video embedded below (captured on the Singularity test server) shows what the Sleepers are capable of against a mixed fleet of players -- with capital ships no less -- that had great difficulty withstanding the ancients. Check out the raw power of the Sleepers in fullscreen HD, with their sizzling blue beams and warheads absolutely melting battleships and any other threat that demands their attention:
EVE Online developer explains how to build Tech III strategic cruisers
For many players of massively multiplayer online titles, the crafting side of these games is especially appealing. Quite a number of EVE Online's players are drawn to the crafting side of this particular sci-fi MMO, and those in large corporations and alliances have learned how their collective efforts can allow them to produce vast quantities of items and reap equally vast sums of ISK.EVE's crafting system is also very much the backbone of the game. Almost every ship and module used by players in the game was created by another player. Those who are into the combat aspects of the game are reliant upon the producers to supply their tools of destruction, and that destruction in turn creates demand (and fuels profits) for EVE's industrialists. It's an interesting bit of symbiosis (despite that animosity towards those on the other side of the fence) that keeps New Eden thriving.
EVE Online to introduce new NPC race with Apocrypha expansion
PvE gameplay in EVE Online can be profitable, but blasting apart NPC ships can also get repetitive after a while. Anyone who's run a solid week of missions knows this all too well, and the combat dynamic between players and NPCs is something CCP Games will start remedying in the next game expansion: Apocrypha.EVE dev CCP Ytterbium's dev blog "When Evolution Leaps Forward" has some big news about what's in store for players as of March 10th in Apocrypha. The devs tasked with revamping the game's PvE experience are making some substantial changes to the distribution of bigger and badder NPCs. They're also introducing a new NPC race to New Eden: the Sleepers, an ancient race with technology beyond what is currently available to players, but whose secrets can potentially be unlocked.
Top 10 not-so-sleepy sleepers
TeamXbox has posted a list of the "Top 10 Next-Gen Sleepers." The problem is most of these titles aren't all that starved for attention, at least not in the minds of internet trolling fanboys. It causes one to wonder, in the era of RSS feeds and 24-7 hype, can any 360 game truly be considered a sleeper?
