Max Torps's blog
EDIT: Breaking Blog News - CCP StevieSG speaks out!
World Cup be damned. The last two weekends have been the ultimate in geekery for me and it's been bloody marvellous.
I've had TweetDeck on one PC and Gwibber on another chirping away soothingly in the background while watching the Alliance Tournament #8 on my HDTV in the living room. Settled on a luxurious leather upholstered reclining chair with drink of choice in hand. I simply can't imagine a better way to spend a few weekends - aside from inviting some other fellow Eve aficionados to join in too!
As this is the equivalent of our World Cup, it's fantastic to see CCP really getting behind it now. The dark years of no Eve TV seem to be over and the new age of streaming HD feeds and a full blown Eve TV Studio Final is very welcome indeed. Not many games can pull this off with such a sense of community and belonging. Eve is awesome.
I'll leave you with an idea, why not arrange events next year in strategically located pubs/bars with large screen TV and show the final there with a couple of hundred fans in different countries? Anyone interested in this then we may need to join forces! Get in touch.
Welcome to the eighteenth instalment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by none other than CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed to crazykinux@gmail.com. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!
On May 6th 2010, EVE Online celebrated its 7th Anniversary. Quite a milestone in MMO history, especially considering that it is one of the few virtual worlds out there to see its population continually grow year after year. For some of you who've been here since the very beginning, EVE has evolved quite a lot since its creation. With the expansion rolling out roughly twice a year, New Eden gets renewed and improved regularly. But, how about you the player? How has you gaming style evolved through the years or months since you've started playing? Have you always been a care bear, or role player? Have you only focused on PvP or have you given other aspects of the game a chance - say manufacturing. Let's hear your story!
It's a Sordid Love Affair
Career - I Do Not Know What Is About To Hit Me
Eve was launched way, way back in the Earth year of 2003. At the end of 2002 Firefly was dropped by the studios in the US and in 2003 Little Britain first hit the TV screens in the UK. One of the best video cards at the time was the NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4400 128MB, which is a pretty good indicator of the technology available. Since then PC technology has moved on and improved and Eve has improved with it.
Even though I didn't join the scene until 2006 and have no personal experience of the game before then, screenshots, forums posts and comments from friends all serve to give me an idea of what it was like. Ever since then there have been really massive improvements such as the major graphics update of Trinity.
Four years doesn't really seem like a long time but it is the longest I have played with one game and it's almost like a sordid love affair. You know it's wrong but you keep going back for more because you like it.
That fact alone should tell you something about the way this game can hold your interest. Not by just being particularly fascinating in one area (although it can be), but by offering a whole load of options and avenues to explore should you find your attention wavering.
When I first started playing I was thinking I should play this like I used to play David Braben and Ian Bells Elite. Fully aware and bizarrely attracted to the notion that you are your POD character and your reputation sticks like skunk musk, I named my main the Unique Name of Awesomeness I used for three years playing Starfleet Command, I fancied myself as the Han Solo type smuggler/mercenary and thought I could roam around the entire Galaxy in a cool ship trading goods and battling the equivalent of the Thargoids. How wrong I was!
A) I looked nothing like Han Solo
B) My ship looked like some twisted hunk of metal only it's mother could love.
C) No Thargoids of course, don't be silly!
Everything else was there, the locations, the trade goods, the stations, modular upgrades but there was also so much more. The local chatter (with real people!), the agents offering missions and the market! Wow, there were so many distractions! So I spent the first two weeks getting to grips with exactly what was on offer before settling in to any sort of role.
Feeling now a little bit silly about my name choice but too far in to the game to even consider re-rolling I couldn't help but notice one aspect of the game that intrigued me. The Great War which later became more commonly known as the Pendulum War. I spent a little time researching this, i.e. What's this all about then? A few blogs, forum threads and still with no real idea about who was what I decided that I wanted to be a part of this big war, this massive thing that was taking the game by storm, this huge event that had thousands of players screaming at each other on forums and blowing each other up in the face, this mass of exploding ships and arcing lasers. But to do that I had to join a Corporation! read the rest of this post»
Today is the Eve of the launch of the next part of the Tyrannis expansion. Planetary Interaction.
Very soon, CONCORD will allow pilots to reap the rewards of the planets below and start managing resources on a scale never seen before.
When you sit and think about it, this is a major element of the game opening up to all players. Some have likened it to Moon Mining, while the similarities are there, this is available in High Security space too making it much more widely available.
Indeed, this is the stated aim of CCP and the strategically phased launch of this expansion is not due to faults or sloppiness as some have suggested, it is part of a deliberate plan to ensure all pilots have a chance to participate in this expansion on an equal footing.
This is important because some pundits are arguing that the ultimate aim of this is to deregulate the market seeding of some products, such as Nanite Paste. While this is certainly true, some fear that the take up amongst pilots will not be high enough and that the market will fail.
Given the complex nature of the Nanite Paste requirements you could be forgiven for thinking that. However I predict that all will be well and that we will all be very pleasantly surprised by the brand new interactions that PI will bring. read the rest of this post»
Essentially it is aimed at directing CCP to live up to it's own internal promise and corporate aim of "Excellence".
Citing such failures as Faction Warfare, Treaties (where did they go?!) and the launch of Tyrannis as but a few examples, all supporters are calling on CCP just to live up to this aim and not just pay it lip service. read the rest of this post»
After joining (and leaving) various corps sometimes you just need to take a breather and have space to find yourself again, figure out what you want to do in Eve and generally play at your own pace. This is something I'll likely do for another couple of months as my home life is just ridiculously busy at the minute. read the rest of this post»
It is with regret that I am announcing the withdrawal of Eve Instant Messenger.
As a fun project it was great for me to learn from and I had actually created an application that used API authentication, created unique, hidden chat rooms on a Jabber server and performed basic chat and alert functions. All without any server configuration required, making it an out of the box "instant" solution. However it had a flaw that lent itself to abuse. read the rest of this post»
What could CCP Games do to attract and maintain a higher percentage of women to the game. Will Incarna do the trick? Can anything else be done in the mean time? Can we the players do our part to share the game we love with our counterparts, with our sisters or daughters, with the Ladies in our lives? What could be added to the game to make it more attractive to them? Should anything be changed? Is the game at fault, or its player base to blame? read the rest of this post»
I was just reading a blog by Katsumi1980 where he was urging a little restraint in quitting a corp before moving on. I thought about it for a minute and he's quite right to urge that. But what about restraint before actually joining a corp? read the rest of this post»
Hey all
I've finished the Alliance Edition of Eve Instant Messenger.
The major difference being now that when you've entered your LIMITED API details if the character you've chosen belongs to an Alliance, an option to choose Alliance or Corporation chat appears. If you do not belong to an alliance then that option doesn't appear and it defaults to corp chat.
It's now available for download at the usual page:
http://www.starfleetcomms.com/content/eve_instant_messenger_call_arms_0
All relevant docs have been updated - any I've missed I'm sure I'll get a heads up.
Have fun!
The latest issue of EON is out now, number 19 published 2nd April 2010 and what a great issue it is. If you want it, click the big banner at the top of the page to buy!
We have the press release which I will feature below but one article that caught my eye was the Espionage article. Rather than just list the contents, with each issue now I'll take an article from the magazine and blog a little. read the rest of this post»
