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CCP Games announces Quantum Rise expansion for EVE Online
The next major expansion to EVE Online, known internally at CCP Games as 'Midas', now has a name: Quantum Rise. The winter expansion will bring with it a number of new features and enhancements for the industrial and economic side of EVE, which we've just gotten word about from CCP, as well as confirmation of the rumored "Orca" capital industrial ship:"Players have great things to look forward to in EVE Online: Quantum Rise. Corporations will be able to set their products apart from the rest by building trust in their goods through customizable storefronts. The backbone of EVE's vibrant economy, industrial ships are being rebalanced and optimized to better suit the needs of haulers and industrialists-including the latest addition to the fleet, a massive capital industrial ship dubbed the Orca. A new certificate system will give a quick and verifiable means to discern a pilot's skill level in trading, gunnery or countless other professions, providing plenty of bragging rights. Meanwhile, the introduction of a medal system allows corporations to distinguish their most valued pilots and honor them for their achievements."Quantum Rise is being released in stages, some of which we've already seen and experienced, such as Stackless IO and EVE64. But other aspects of the expansion will include weapon linking, continuations of the Trinity graphics update, and other as-yet unannounced features. Keep an eye on our EVE coverage at Massively; we'll be watching closely to see what the Quantum Rise expansion will bring to EVE's players.
Mac and Linux client improvements roll out today in EVE Online
EVE Online has a much smaller playerbase than some of the other top-tier MMOs on the market. Despite this fact, CCP Games was willing to provide an even smaller subset of players -- Linux and Mac users -- with an EVE client, via Transgaming's Cedega (Linux) and Cider (Mac). While the 'premium' Trinity graphics are only supported on the Windows client, this writer can attest that the Mac client has improved a great deal since its release. That said, there have certainly been some issues with providing a stable client for multiple operating systems. The Empyrean Age 1.1.2 patch for Mac and Linux, which was scheduled to deploy during downtime today, should bring with it numerous small fixes to these clients. On the Mac side, Empyrean Age 1.1.2 changes how autopatching works, improves issues with international keyboard layouts, and especially resolves the issue with how station interiors display. If the changes go through smoothly, this funky anomaly will be no more. This gallery may be a last look at the black, translucent interiors of stations that some Mac users have been reporting:%Gallery-33952%
EVE Evolved: The making of EVE Online, part 2
With all tech 2 modules now released into the game and their blueprints handed out to players, the tech 2 blueprint lottery officially shut down during this expansion period and was replaced by the Invention mechanic. Invention allows players to create their own inefficient limited-run tech 2 blueprint copies, putting the supply of tech 2 ships and modules into the hands of the general EVE populace rather than those lucky enough to have won the original tech 2 blueprints. This patch also brought in the entirely new contracts system, which replaced the escrow system that was starting to show its age and was becoming a lot less useful for finding what you wanted.
EVE dev blog charts much improved customer support experiences
Long petition queues, particularly related to expansions, has long been a problem in EVE Online. These long waits may very well be a thing of the past, according to GM Nova, Senior Game Master for EVE Online. GM Nova's latest dev blog, "Such stuff as dreams are made on," deals with the deployment of the Empyrean Age 1.1 patch in early September, as seen from a Customer Support perspective. "We at Customer Support, being at the front lines so to speak, are in a unique position to judge or evaluate whether a patch was successfully deployed and if ther is any fallout or unexpected problems involved, as the potential torrent of problems are directed at us to pass on," he said.GM Nova points out how that 'torrent of problems' has slowed down to a trickle, using graph data of the Trinity expansion deployment (predictably an insane amount of petitions), the subsequent Empyrean Age 1.0 patch (so smooth they thought their petition system had crashed), and finally Empyrean Age 1.1. The trend evidenced by the graphs is that their patch deployments are becoming less fraught with complications, meaning happier players in the long run. GM Nova goes on to discuss some of the structural changes made to CCP's Customer Support department that improve petition response time, saying,"We are happy to announce that our average petition age is currently two days with most normal requests handled in hours. We hope our efforts shine through in the level of support we are able to offer." Would you agree with GM Nova's assessment, and have your own petitions of late in EVE Online been resolved in a reasonable amount of time?
Changes and new features in EVE's latest Empyrean Age patch
The next EVE Online update is the Empyrean Age 1.1.1 patch, which deploys on September 30th. It brings with it a number of fixes and a few new features as well. These features are centered around the Jita problems, with three new jumps being added to help players avoid the laggy system: Muvolailen-Maurasi, Maurasi-Perimeter, and Veisto-Sarekuwa. An 'avoid system' option has been added to the autopilot, with a default setting to avoid Jita. Taking the population cap issue a step further, CCP Games is also rolling out an Auto-Move feature to the login process. In the event a player attempts to log in to a system which has already hit its population cap, the player will have the option of moving themself to a neighboring system. The rest of Empyrean Age 1.1.1 is comprised of smaller fixes and improvements, namely to the user interface and EVE's communication channels -- Voice, Mail, and Chat. In addition, they've fixed a problem where Stabber Fleet Issue ships wouldn't display (or cloak) properly due to an issue with the ship's model in the Trinity graphics engine. These are the changes announced at this time, but see the full patch notes for additional revisions made by CCP as the deployment approaches. Until then, the devs are discussing the changes -- both announced and unannounced -- with players on the official forums.
EVE Online patch restores dual boxing alt play
CCP Games released an optional patch for EVE Online today that should improve performance issues for players who opt to dual box. While the Trinity graphics engine brought new eye candy to EVE players, for some it came with a real downside: it became difficult, if not impossible, to run multiple clients on one machine as they did in the Classic graphics engine. The fix does seem to be a work-in-progress, as CCP is eliciting feedback from players who've applied the patch, but so far the response has been positive. For those players who run into any snags, removing any optional patch in EVE is a simple uninstall accessed via the ESC menu; no harm done. If the patch does as CCP claims, it looks like it's time to drop the Classic environment altogether and fire up those alts in high-res Trinity.
CCP and EVE need help testing the new networking layer
When flying through space in EVE Online, without a care in the world, things can often go wrong rather quickly. For example, when jumping through a stargate on the way home from a successful trading expedition, the game decides to freeze. The stargate then disappears, the UI becomes completely useless, and the only thing on the screen are twinkling stars. What happened here? A massive battle between alliances just took place and the node decided to choke. This means lag, waiting, re-logging, and the never ending cycle of keyboard smashing. Oh what a wonderful world it would be if this did not happen.Well, with the next Trinity patch, a new networking layer that may ease the suffering of cosmic travelers is being tested. EVE and CCP are requesting some extra players, about 200 or so, to help test the networking layer on singularity. You only need to log in between 1830 GMT and 2100 GMT on the 29th of April to participate in the test. Sound easy? Well it is just that simple. CCP will have a channel devoted to test results and updates throughout the testing period. Hopefully, if successful, we can all avoid the lag when corporations decide to crush one another or when you make that evil trip into Jita. In order to make sure your ship does not implode when you try to log in, be sure to check out the singularity installation and FAQ page to be ready to test and make the universe a better place.
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.
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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.
EVE Trinity: Preliminary "Boost Patch" notes
Most EVE Online players are heavily anticipating Tuesday's patch, one that is so massive in size it is bound to take over your computer and brick it. Surely, I jest. The unlucky few that won't ever be satisfied or pleased are Amarr players. I can't say I blame them, during an older EVE live-dev blog the devs insinuated the miracle patch would fix everything. "High-five guys, this is going to be so awesome that even the Amarr players will shoot space rainbows from their asses." That's not an exact quote, but I remember the overall tone from the developers being very enthusiastic. With such a huge patch CCP wants to make sure that every change listed makes it in this installment. The notes were pulled from the official site until further notice. That's not stopping us from posting them anyway. If you'd like to get a jump start on reading there's over 7 thousand words to mull over after the jump. Disclaimer: the following notes are preliminary. The notes might see various changes, but I'm sure these are solid. The final notes should be published on the EVE site sometime tomorrow.
EVE gets a Boost on Tuesday
In case you've been too busy ratting, mining, or you've been offline training up those long-duration skills, we thought we'd point out that there's a new patch for EVE Online coming this Tuesday. The patch, called "Boost", is chock full of database fixes from what we've been given to understand. Sadly, the patch notes aren't currently out according to the official thread, or we'd have them for you here.As to why they're doing such a long downtime this Tuesday, Erlendur S. Thorsteinsson, EVE's Software Director, jumped out to answer:
The Daily Grind: What's your favorite archetype?
It seems like no matter what game you spend time in, the majority of classes fall into the "trinity" of archetypes. You have your damage-soaking tanks, standing on the front line, drawing aggro and taking a beating. Then you have the DPS classes, who can generally DoT, fear, kite, sneak, stab, shoot, and a myriad of other nasty things to bring the pain. And without the third part of the trinity, the healers, the other two would spend most of the time dead on the floor or fighting mobs while using lots of bandages, med-packs, potions or the like. Once in a while you'll find one class that are a "hybrid" these abilities, taking one or all of the three unto themselves, making for a more solo-friendly character.Personally, I've played all three primary archetypes as well as hybrids. While I've really enjoyed them all, my heart keeps coming back to pure DPS classes, with a close second in hybrids. Whether with stabby knives, flowing robes and fireballs, or carrying a gun, the straight damage classes are fun to me when I've got a good group to run with. When I need to get into a game and see how it works, I tend to go hybrids for their self-reliance. How about you? What's your favorite class archetype (or archetypes) and why?
CCP releases EVE QEN, says 250k subs by Q2, and plans Gross User Product report
CCP has released their Quarterly Economic Newsletter for the 4th quarter of last year in EVE Online, and the word is "growth." They saw big increases in trade volume and value all over the place on the market. Which isn't surprising, considering how much their population surged late last year, thanks in large part to the well-received Trinity expansion. And the growth isn't done -- CCP expects to see 250,000 subscribers by the end of Q2 2008.There are lots of great numbers in here -- apparently only 9% of players are out in low sec space (much lower than I'd thought). Jita is still a madhouse (no duh -- you'll already know that if you've ever tried to go in there on a weekend). Finally, they've introduced a new tracking variable, called Gross User Product, that is the value of all services and goods produced in a period of time, minus the amount of goods and services consumed. In other words, a GDP, but for a virtual world. They don't have a figure yet (because it has to be tracked over a period of time), but the next QEN should have some even more interesting information on how we might track virtual economies in MMO games.
Making five wishes in EVE Online
After playing EVE Online for half a year, The Ancient Gaming Noob has revisited his five wishes for the game. Reading through the list reveals it to be pretty reasonable and quite thoughtful -- focusing on functionality over pipe dreams. The last item on the list asks for a simulation mode, which is less about functionality and more about making the learning curve in EVE Online less harsh for newer players. We're inclined to agree here, because it would be nice to have a no risk/no reward system that would let players experiment with their setup. Something like that certainly could save a lot of people several headaches in the long run.Another item on the list has to do with Trinity and the graphical enhancements that came with the update. The wish -- or complaint, if you want to look at it that way -- concerns performance on lower-end systems. While the new graphics are certainly lovely to look at, many people just don't have the horsepower to pump them out at a smooth pace. CCP will hopefully tweak the classic mode graphics in the future, because we're sure that the Ancient Gaming Noob isn't the only EVE player with this particular wish.
AIAS nominations for MMO of the year announced
You may have heard that the Academy of Motion Pictures announced their Oscar nominations (how about that Ellen Page? And I definitely need to see There Will Be Blood, as soon as my wacky work schedule allows me the free time) this morning, but the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences also announced their Academy Award nominations for videogames earlier this week, and they picked five nominees for MMO game of the year.And the nominations are: EVE Online: Trinity, Guild Wars: Eye of the North, Richard Garriot's Tabula Rasa, Lord of the Rings: Shadows of Angmar, and World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade. I don't want to be a spoilsport, but I'm thinking that any of those others are going to have a tough time beating Burning Crusade-- Blizzard is still pretty far ahead of the game at this point. But it is interesting to note that three of the five nominees are expansions-- Tabula Rasa and LotRO are the two original games on the list.Hopefully this time next year we'll see some more new names in the mix. The AIAS awards winners will be announced on February 7, 2007 in Las Vegas.[Via Curse]
Making light of the bootini incident
Who was it that said "comedy equals tragedy plus time"? Apparently enough time has passed since EVE's "bootini incident" (at least that's what I'd prefer to call it) that people are finally starting to have a sense of humor about the fact that CCP accidentally may have ruined their OS installations. The forums are filling with jokes (I especially like the fake killmail-- "corp: Microsoft; destroyed: boot.ini"), stories, poetry, ("A fast screen of pain is all he sees, / No boot.ini on XP for he"), and even a Goonswarm-photoshopped card for the EVE CCG. Funny stuff.The discussion isn't all good-natured-- some folks are trying to demand "compensation" (some in actual cash, and some in the more likely extra game-time), while many people are saying that to not expect bugs, even this big, on patch day is just wishful thinking.At any rate, the issue has been fixed at this point-- no one who updates after this will have the problem, and the only question that remains is what CCP will do, if anything, for those affected. And Trinity's patching will stand as a warning for other MMOs-- on every big patch day, remember bootini!
EVEMon was down with API update, is now back up and working
The good news on this one is that there is no news: EVEMon, the out-of-game app that is a must-have for EVE players, wasn't working for most people after the Trinity patch this week, but a series of bug reports over on the developer website (EVEMon is open sourced) confirms that the problem was just that CCP had taken down the API for testing. By now, EVEMon should be back up and running, ready to help you plan those skill changes out.And in other EVEMon news, the New Features page over on the developer site is a fun read, too, if you haven't seen it in a while. Very cool to see all the new features planned for the next release: Battleclinic loadouts, a new plan printing feature, and updates to the Ship and Item browser. EVEMon is already a terrific app (definitely the best MMO-related out-of-game app I've ever seen), and it's great to see the devs are hard at work making it better.
EVE Trinity: New graphics engine calls for a video card checkup
Traders, Smugglers, Pirates, Miners, Capusuleers from every walk of life! Today marks a momentous occasion in the EVE Online universe. At approximately 6PM PST the EVE servers will be brought down and fitted for the new EVE: Trinity expansion. The downtime is estimated to last 24 hours, which means this is probably our last heads up beforehand to train a time appropriate skill in advance. The amount of new content is intense as Trinity is EVE's biggest expansion ever: New ships, tweaks, tutorials, new everything, and of course, the grand-daddy of Trinity's enhancements: The long-awaited graphical overhaul featuring EVE's new graphic engine dubbed Trinity 2. Confused yet? All that matters is that every ship, stargate, and station remodeled to sweet perfection. There is a downside, and that is not everyone will be able to enjoy the new radical graphics. Players who do not have a Shader Model 3.0 or DirectX9c compliant video card will be left in the space dust with the classic client. EVE players with DirectX9c and video cards that support Shader Model 3.0 will be able to use the shiny new doodad client. The important thing is everyone can still play EVE Online regardless or not your rig meets the requirements to run the new graphics. What is SM 3.0 and how the hell do you know your video card supports it? To answer that, with the help of the EVE forums, I have compiled the necessary information to help you find out.
EVE Trinity screenshots galore
The Trinity patch notes dropped yesterday, and apparently the new graphics also went live on the test server, so screenshots of all the new ships coming in the EVE Online expansion are flooding the forums.We've seen a lot of these before, both in trailers and official screenshots, but there are so many here that if you want to find your ship-- someone even grabbed some Titans-- it's probably here. Still, my guess is that nothing will compare to what we'll see when we log in on December 5th. Screenshots are nice, but I can't wait to see all these great graphics flowing in motion through the outer reaches of space.
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:
