Tag Archives: eve online

EVE Fanfest 2014 will be the only thing I watch for a few days.

EVE Fanfest is an annual conference surrounding EVE Online and the other games related to the New Eden universe. It’s become a huge celebration of CCP Games and a chance for players to get together and meet in a real space, but the real value of Fanfest comes from the presentations that take place. Most of the presentations are entertaining and informative about how the company approaches its sandbox.

I’m definitely going to be watching the stream as much as I can. Getting hyped for the upcoming summer expansion. I also have a few drafts for ideas I’m kicking around including posts about my thoughts on Dark Souls 2 (I’ve finally made it to NG+!) and on my first impressions of my Nintendo 2DS purchase now that I’ve had a couple of weeks with it.

As far as must-watch events on the stream, here’s a few I’d suggest anyone to try to make time to watch: 1

  • 1600 UTC today: CSM Panel
    The CSM is a panel made up of players who directly advise CCP Games on the development of new features and updates to EVE Online. With the CSM8 term coming to a close, I imagine there’ll be plenty of reflective-esque comments to be gleamed.
  • 1700 UTC today: EVE Fanfest Welcome & EVE Valkyrie Keynote
    Looking for details to come out about an estimated release date and system plan for Valkyrie, the upcoming space-dogfighting Oculus VR game.
  • 1700 UTC tomorrow: EVE Online Keynote
    This is typically the time when we get the summer expansion revealed to us, complete with a demo of all of the new things being added. With such a huge focus on Industry modernization evidenced by dev blogs, this could be the time for CCP to surprise its players with drastic capital ship rebalancing.
  • 1900 UTC tomorrow: Alliance Panel
    Historically entertaining presentations given about certain player-run organizations in the game. Last year’s highlights (for me) was a tie between TDSIN’s second year presentation which was more of a hilarious update and DBRB’s GSF presentation in his admiral’s outfit… I wonder who will be the winner this year!
  • 1700 UTC Saturday: CCP Presents
    CCP’s future plans have frequently been divulged in this particular block of time. A strong showing here will leave players hyped up for years to come. With the big 10-year-old bash last year that celebrated the upcoming second decade of EVE Online, this presentation is probably going to touch on the status of so many of the ideas they shared about how New Eden will expand in size in the future.
  1. EVE Fanfest 2014 is streamed over CCP’s Twitch.tv channel ↩

Here’s what I learned from CheckPoint S3E21.

  • Wasn’t Titanfall supposed to not see a PS4 release by design? Oh well. Graham will surely give us a reason to fear that it never will soon enough.
  • Whoa, Kathleen is particularly hyper this episode.
  • Jonathan Ross being hired by MSFT’s UK division as some sort of executive producer sure sounds like a good deal for the Brits and other Euro-folks, but I share Graham’s pessimism of the hiring. I know he’s a funny guy, but that doesn’t really translate into being a great inspiration for anything, much less video games.
  • The Command & Conquer cancellation. The end of a great IP.
  • Angry Birds: Star Wars on the PS4 or Xbox One for 40 USD? A new low.
  • Runescape developers JAGEX copies and implements a core aspect of EVE Online and finds rampant success in decimating the pirate gold community. Excellent.
  • EA promised that Titanfall would be MSFT-console exclusive thanks to publishing rights or something dumb where money was exchanged in order to reach an agreement screwing prospective PlayStation 4 owners.
  • Fill in that scene, Graham.
  • Sony playing it smart in some alternate business universe making some of their next generation games and accessories available before the actual console is officially launched. Anything new, here? NOPE.

“You play EVE Online?”

Here’s a typical conversation regarding my playing of EVE Online with another gamer. She’s a pretty cool person that I follow on Twitter from back when Pownce was a thing. Random conversation picked up from resisting the call of the recently released Grand Theft Auto V into a mention of the iOS 7 beta breaking a lot of games. The conversation continues:

Now, I know that I’m not the best person that could possibly describe EVE Online to a non-player because I am pretty low on the ladder of respect in the community of the game as a whole partially because of what I’ve chosen to do with my time in the game. However, I think I hit the nail on the head in two major ways.

First, the actions that are sanctioned in a game like EVE Online could be considered to be a breach of other games’ terms of service, including owning multiple accounts and scamming. Owning multiple accounts is typically an indication that you wish to cheat the system of other MMO titles to benefit one particular character. For instance, doing multiple daily quests in WoW while sending all of the rewards for these quests to a main character. In EVE, this strength in numbers is an important part of being able to operate in the game world and trust is a pricey commodity. So the solution is simple: own multiple accounts so that you can run multiple instances of the game to have more efficient and/or more secure operations. Scamming is a huge part of what makes the upper end of the EVE universe move. Where particular high-level hulls cost on the order of billions of ISK to manufacture and tens of billions of ISK to purchase outright, one would assume the most precautions are taken in these deals. However, the game’s interface combined with a few tricks could make understanding these deals difficult, if not impossible, therefore rigging the game in favor of the scammer. If things go the right way, it becomes the most profitable activity in the game.

Second, that in the case of EVE Online, time and experience are two different things where they are the same thing in other games. Unlike WoW, where leveling up requires a player to constantly adapt to stronger enemies thanks to the difficulty curve known as the grind, EVE Online’s “leveling system” requires a certain amount of time to pass before a player is certified for a new class of ship or new variant of weapon. It forces the player to do something in the meanwhile—it forces a player to experience what the game has to offer as an open world. This is more important for players who are new to the game and have not traveled outside the relative order that is empire space.

Like I said, I’m sure that’s not really the best way to look at the game when trying to tell someone who doesn’t play about it, but it’s the truth. It’s not a game for everyone, in the same way that not everyone like comedy films compared to a live performance: one is formulaic in an attempt to be funny to everyone while the other can change from day to day and is generally never the same show twice. While some of the jokes might not change, it’s always a new experience.

That and comedy films are the absolutely worst form of entertainment that I can think of.