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EVE Evolved: EVE needs real colonisation now
MMOs have absolutely exploded in popularity over the past decade, with online gaming growing from a niche hobby to a global market worth billions of dollars each year. Once dominated by subscription games like EverQuest and World of Warcraft, recent years have seen free-to-play games take centre stage. Global MMO subscriptions have been reportedly shrinking since 2010, and EVE doesn't appear to be immune to this industry-wide trend. Though February 2013's figures showed EVE subscriptions have technically grown year-on-year, those numbers were published just after the Chinese server relaunch, and CCP hasn't released any new figures since. Developers have done a good job of catering to current subscribers and polishing existing gameplay with the past few expansions, but the average daily login numbers are still the same as they were over four years ago. EVE will undoubtedly hook in plenty of new and returning subscribers when its deep space colonisation gameplay with player-built stargates and new hidden solar systems is implemented, but time could be running out on these features. Hefty competition is due in the next few years from upcoming sandbox games such as Star Citizen, EverQuest Next, Camelot Unchained, and Elite: Dangerous, and CCP will have to release something big soon to bring in some fresh blood. In this week's EVE Evolved, I ask whether CCP should focus on new players and suggest plans for two relatively simple colonisation-based expansions that could get EVE a significant part of the way toward its five-year goal in just one year.
EVE Evolved: Bring on the big expansions!
I don't normally jump out of my seat shouting "hell yes!" to an EVE Online dev blog, but this week's announcement on the direction of future expansions has me a little bit excited. In two somewhat dry and lengthy posts, Executive Producer Jon Lander and Senior Producer CCP Seagull detailed the approach they intend to take to ongoing development in 2013. Instead of announcing any big headline features or making vague promises, the developers looked back at the success of 2009's blockbuster Apocrypha expansion. Apocrypha was hands-down the best expansion EVE has ever had, adding 2500 hidden solar systems accessible only through shifting unstable wormholes. We saw a renaissance of exploration, collaborative research, and colonisation efforts that defied EVE's war-like reputation, and moreover, we saw a rebirth of small-scale PvP. The magic sauce that made Apocrypha work was lateral design: Rather than add one massive vertical feature, the expansion offered a little something for everyone. Apocrypha was EVE at its best, and hearing that developers are going back to that style of expansion honestly makes me a little giddy! In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at the future for EVE's expansions, why the Apocrypha model works, and why I'm optimistic for 2013 and beyond.
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.
EVE Evolved: Adapt or die
When EVE Online was first released in 2003, it sold mostly based on its future potential. Everyone I played with in those early years got into EVE in order to be on the ground floor of an awesome space game that was getting more awesome by the month. Features were undergoing continual revision, and new content was released regularly, making EVE a radically different game every six months. Players met this design strategy of continual iteration head on with an "adapt or die" attitude, and it kept the game interesting for years on end. Fast-forward to 2011 and the story looked very different. The Dominion, Tyrannis and Incursion expansions introduced new gameplay but didn't heavily iterate on any other features. By the time Incarna released, most of EVE's gameplay and content had been the same for two years and players had nothing new to adapt to. For the Crucible and Inferno expansions, CCP finally iterated on hundreds of small features and even introduced new modules to reboot EVE's "adapt or die" PvP ship design metagame. With a lot of the small things now covered, I think some of the game's big features are due for iteration. In this week's EVE Evolved opinion piece, I look at how EVE players adapt to new challenges and explore several areas of stale gameplay that are in dire need of iteration.
EVE Evolved: EVE Online's top selling points
At E3 this year, EVE Online developer CCP Games said it wants the game to still be running decades from now, continuing its usual trend of steady growth. EVE has barely grown in subscriptions over the past year, and average concurrent logins have flatlined since 2010, but the Crucible and Inferno expansions helped start turning things around. Developers hope to get growth back on track and attract new people to the world of New Eden, but I have to wonder whether they're selling EVE to new people in the right way. EVE has always spread through word of mouth, with people being brought in by friends or starting fresh after hearing an epic story of in-game events or seeing an awesome video. More recently, existing online communities have been drawn to set up shop in the game and bring hundreds or thousands of members with them. People brought in by friends and people who join organisations in-game are more likely to stay in the game long-term, and it's this angle that I think CCP really needs to push. With its single-shard universe, awesome community, and massive scale PvP, EVE has some pretty huge selling points that no other MMO can match. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at a few of EVE's biggest selling points and how CCP could use them to attract new players.
EVE Evolved: Lessons from 38 Studios
This week we heard the news that Kingdoms of Amalur developer 38 Studios shut down and let go all 379 full-time staff. It's always a tragedy when good developers are made jobless, especially if the job losses come out of nowhere and hit people who have only recently been hired. 38 Studios was still hiring people shortly before it collapsed, and some of those recent hires were ex-CCP developers who were part of the 20% of staff fired at the end of last year. The shutdown of 38 Studios is a sobering reminder of the problems in EVE Online's development that led to monoclegate. Both studios were mismanaged, with the jobs of hundreds of developers gambled on the outcome of poorly researched business decisions. EVE Online thankfully survived CCP's failed microtransaction gamble, but 38 Studios' Project Copernicus may never see the light of day. In this week's EVE Evolved opinion piece, I look into the similar circumstances that forced CCP Games and 38 Studios to fire staff, and draw some lessons from them for which I believe the industry should take heed.
EVE Evolved: Expansions, not excuses
Over the last few months, the phrase "Flying in Space" has been increasingly used by both EVE Online's developers and its players to describe features other than those of Incarna. It seems like a redundant phrase as all of EVE's gameplay currently takes place in space, but the distinction has become necessary when discussing the allocation of development resources. Members of EVE's player-elected Council of Stellar Management have recently spearheaded a wave of new complaints about the level of resources dedicated to EVE's in-space features, claiming that developers have been left without the resources necessary to do a good job. In the previous three EVE Evolved columns, I discussed the upcoming nullsec revamp scheduled to begin this winter and the incredible new gameplay players might get as part of it. Members of the CSM know exactly how many people will be working on that revamp, and although those numbers haven't been made public, several delegates have gone public with their disapproval. EVE's subscription fees are currently paying for the development of CCP's upcoming fantasy MMO World of Darkness and its ambitious console MMOFPS DUST 514, leaving few resources for new EVE gameplay and content. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look back at the success of EVE's first blockbuster expansion and ask why development on EVE Online has dramatically decreased over the past two and a half years.
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 planetary interaction improvements deployed
When EVE Online's Tyrannis expansion was first released, developers promised that a team would be assigned to iterate on the core planetary interaction feature. Numerous user interface tweaks have been deployed since then in hotfixes, but the biggest gameplay improvements so far have just arrived with last week's final Incursion expansion deployment. Developers Kristinn Þór Sigurbergsson and Cat Pinson discussed the major updates in a series of video devblogs leading up to the expansion. In a new devblog, CCP Omen has provided a more detailed explanation of the improvements and how you can take advantage of them. A welcome change for players is the ability to upgrade a control center without tearing down the entire industrial chain attached to it. The biggest changes are with the resource extraction process, which has received a complete overhaul. Individual extractors have been replaced with a central Extractor Control Unit, from which movable drill heads can be deployed. Resources also now deplete when they're mined, so you'll need to move your drill heads around periodically to keep the operation running smoothly. Head over to the official devblog for the full details.
Changes on the way for EVE's planetary interaction feature
When EVE Online's Empyrean Age expansion brought us faction warfare, thousands of would-be PvP-addicts rejoiced. When Apocrypha brought us wormholes, I could talk about nothing else for at least six months. With the Tyrannis expansion, however, there was no such giddiness. Tyrannis, with its main planetary interaction feature, was clearly not one of EVE's most popular expansions. Even the developers at CCP said they weren't happy with it, and further work was promised after launch. In a new devblog, CCP Omen has explained some of the changes that are on their way for planetary interaction. Command centres will be upgradeable in-place, eliminating the need to tear down an entire industrial network just to upgrade to the next command centre. The biggest changes are coming to the cumbersome surveying and extracting processes. It will be possible to move extractors around to find new mineral deposits rather than deleting and rebuilding them. The new survey mechanic will also show a graph on which the duration of an extractor cycle can be adjusted. Extractors can now feasibly be left for up to 14 days without needing to be moved or reset, which is good news for pilots risking RSI under the current mechanics. Most of the upcoming changes have been taken from talks with the Council of Stellar Management, which has published a clear list of changes its members would like to see implemented.
EVE Evolved: The EVE Online that could be
Each of us has a different idea of the perfect game, whether it's an existing game with a few tweaks or something completely new. Game designers work tirelessly to make their own vision of the perfect game a reality, but there's no telling what players will think of a feature until it's finished. In the process of transforming a feature from a gleam in the game designer's eye to a finished product, something is unfortunately often lost in translation. Limitations in the technology being used or the manpower available can render the ideal implementation infeasible. As players, we don't really see that full development process. That doesn't stop us from painting our perfect vision of an upcoming or potential feature and how awesome it could be. In the coming years, the EVE Online developers will be going through the process of making some of their most incredible visions a reality. Ideas like walking in stations and integrating the upcoming MMOFPS Dust 514 with EVE's planetary interaction feature will be put through a potentially brutal development process. We can only hope that as little as possible of those visions we've heard from EVE's developers gets lost in translation. In this speculative opinion piece, I look at a few areas in which EVE is sure to be expanded in the coming years and discuss what I'd consider to be the ideal way they could be implemented or handled.
PAX 2010: CCP unveils EVE Online's latest expansion
Tweet var digg_url = 'http://digg.com/story/r/pax_2010_ccp_unveils_eve_online_s_latest_expansion_massively'; At PAX Prime, we caught up with CCP's lead game designer Noah Ward, who paused helpfully between the roaring crowds on all sides of the booth to fill us in on the "secret sauce" to EVE Online's continued growth and success. Ward said it was simple: CCP's steadfast commitment to the game for the long haul. The dev team strongly believes in the growth of EVE and works hard to expand it both inward and upward. Part of that growth includes continued expansions to the title, and Ward was excited to reveal the next one on deck. While it doesn't yet have a name -- at least, nothing CCP could put in print -- the team is hyped up about its latest expansion to the EVE Online franchise. Set to debut later this winter, the expansion looks to build on many of the key foundations that Tyrannis began. Hit the jump to hear about the four new features that EVE fans will find themselves crowing about by the time Santa comes a-callin'!
E-ON Magazine issue 20 hits the shelves
The magazine industry is a behemoth, catering to practically every hobby there is. No matter how obscure the hobby, you're sure to find a magazine on the shelf all about it. While there are plenty of magazines dedicated to gaming, only a few MMOs have their own dedicated magazines. Despite the rise in popularity of web-based publications, there's something special about having a physical magazine you can flip through. Since I am a massive nerdy fan of EVE Online, each issue of the quarterly E-ON magazine feels like a proper treat. The production values are very high, and it's pure EVE from cover to cover. The publishers even go so far as to include advertisements for EVE corporations and services rather than paid ads for other games or gaming services. Issue 20 of the magazine was released last month, but the postal fairy decided I had been naughty and didn't deliver it until this week. I've spent the majority of today reading this magazine all about internet spaceships, and I've loved every nerdy moment of it. This quarter's issue has a strong focus on the impact of EVE's recent Tyrannis expansion and its planetary interaction feature. In addition to a guide on setting up planetary harvesting infrastructure, the magazine's editors ask whether Tyrannis was everything we hoped or a missed opportunity to breathe new life into the planets of New Eden. Other topics discussed in this issue include EVE's controversial Council of Stellar Management, the history of the alliance tournament, and a look at the new rebalanced supercarriers. Skip past the cut for a breakdown of what you can expect in E-ON issue 20 and my impressions from reading it.
Latest EVE Quarterly Economic Newsletter highlights Tyrannis insurance changes
EVE Online is a game with complex economic activity that often mirrors real-world economic systems. The similarity is so pronounced that CCP even hired its own Lead Economist, Dr. Eyjólfur Guðmundsson, to examine the in-game markets in detail. Each quarter, the economist and his team of researchers publish the EVE Quarterly Economic Newsletter (QEN). The report provides a timeline of market indices and major economic changes over the past several months. This quarter's report focuses on the effect of the insurance changes that came with the Tyrannis expansion. It also has a special segment on ISK sinks and faucets, and their changes following the release of planetary interaction.
EVE Online's deep safe spot nerf to be deployed on Tuesday
Safe spots are an integral part of EVE Online's tactical warfare, making it harder for other players to locate and consequently destroy your ship. They're created by making a bookmark while in warp, which causes the bookmark to lead to the middle of nowhere. When you're on the run from bad guys, you can often slip away by warping between several safe spots while they try desperately to scan you down. Deep safe spots are illegal bookmarks created far outside the bounds of a solar system. Pilots hiding here needn't bother warping around to evade pursuers, as they'll be quite literally off the grid and virtually impossible to locate. Deep safe spots several hundred AU from the nearest celestial object have also been used in the past to jump huge capital fleets into a hostile system without fear of being attacked.
CCP details Tyrannis performance tweaks
CCP Blaze has posted a dev blog on the official EVE Online website detailing the various fixes and performance improvements made to the game client since the Tyrannis expansion. The piece goes into a fair amount of technical detail about everything from the game's physics, to Overview changes, to resource loading and memory issues. "It turned out that there was an issue with the way the resource manager assigned a size to textures that had not been fully loaded. This caused the resource manager to hold on to too much memory; this was fixed shortly after it was discovered. We also found and fixed a memory leak in the module responsible for reading resources. At that time, during internal testing, we started noticing that some objects from our physics simulation weren't being cleaned up as well as they should have been. We fixed that as well," Blaze states. Read all about it on the EVE Insider dev blog.
Steam continues MMO sale pricing with $2.00 EVE Online
Friday's news of the Perils of Summer sale had some great deals, but it looks like Steam isn't done with MMO sales quite yet. The powers-that-be at Steam surprised players today with news of a sale on EVE Online. Not just any sale, however; EVE Online: Tyrannis is priced at 90% off. Customers taking advantage of the sale will pay $1.99 for the full game and 30 days of free gameplay. If you want in on this, you'll need to hurry, because this is one of Steam's "today only" sales, and you've got less than 24 hours to take advantage. Check out the sale page for EVE Online to purchase, and if you're not an MMO-only gamer, you may want to take a peek at all of their today-only sales.
EVE Evolved: First impressions of planet industry
As I sat down to write a guide to planetary interaction in EVE Online, I realised that I hadn't explored the system fully enough to come up with any definitively good deployment strategies. A few great guides to planet industry have been circulating since the expansion came out, but it will be some time before people really start to figure out the best ways to use EVE's newest feature. It's a complicated business and since a lot of the products made on planets are still currently available to buy from NPCs, the market potential hasn't yet been fully realised. In this short opinion piece, I give my first impressions of planetary interaction and the Tyrannis expansion.
EVE Online's planets are open for business
When EVE Online's Tyrannis expansion went live last month, its main planetary interaction feature was initially disabled. The command centre structures required for planetary interaction weren't released as more time was needed for testing. This had the unfortunate side-effect of causing havoc with the starbase market. Until now, players were only able to scan planets for resources and train the required skills in preparation for the inevitable planetary gold rush. Today the markets in EVE were seeded with command centres, opening the flood gates on planetary exploitation. To help you get to grips with planetary interaction, several helpful guides and instructional videos have already been made. EVE University have produced an impressive and thorough guide, along with a handy chart of what you can produce with each of the planet materials. Similarly, EVE player Korai Iarok has taken the initiative and produced a great flow-chart style PDF showing the manufacturing processes for each item. With these helpful guides and CCP's own video tutorial, even new players should have very little problem setting up their own planet-based industrial networks. Skip past the cut to watch CCP's official planetary interaction video tutorial.
EVE pushes over the 60,000 peak concurrent user mark
With its single-server structure, EVE Online is home to over 330,000 pilots, all playing in the same instance of the game universe. As subscriber numbers rise, EVE continues to set new records for the number of players simultaneously online in a single 3D game world. Records tend to be broken in the days leading up to or following a big expansion, usually during EVE's peak activity on Sunday evenings. The previous record of 56,021 set following the Dominion expansion was beaten yesterday with a peak concurrent user total of 60,453. The high active subscriber levels we're currently seeing can be attributed to both the buzz caused by EVE's eighth alliance tournament and the newly released Tyrannis expansion. The main feature of Tyrannis goes live tomorrow, when the command centres required for planetary interaction will be seeded on the market. With two more weekends of the alliance tournament to go and the imminent Tyrannis land grab, we're sure to see this new record pushed even further in the weeks to come.
