Fanfest 2013 - some thoughts

I'm sorry to say I wasn't in Iceland last week, but I watched livestreams and replays, read the blogs.. time to write down a few points that stick out for me.

Eve Online + Dust = ...
One of the driving forces behind Walking in Stations, was the vision of New Eden as the complete, immersive scifi simulator. Not just a 'Flying in space' game but much more than that. After this years' fanfest, I'm tempted to say that CCP is still working on that grand vision.. they are just approaching it from another angle. A New Eden that is populated by Dusties, Capsuleers, mobile device users and - who knows, one day - Evr pilots and whatnot. Seen in that light it's no wonder that Dust got the amount of attention it did: it's just another piece of the New Eden puzzle. A very important piece I might add: CCP hinted that in terms of concurrent users, Dust 514 is rapidly growing to around the same size as Eve Online. If this trend continues, pod pilots may soon find themselves a minority in New Eden!

If World of Darkness would have gotten the airtime that was given to Dust, then I would surely have been annoyed. World of Darkness does not add to New Eden, and any energy spent on WoD, does not directly benefit us capsuleers. That said, a company with just one successful product is (almost by definition) a vulnerable company, and as such there is an indirect benefit for Eve Online and Dust players if WoD becomes a profitable game. A more diversified CCP, with income from several sources, is more likely to survive and thrive long term.

And this is also, I think, part of the reasons why CCP is expanding the Eve IP into other territories such as comic books and TV shows. Broadening the audience and potential customer base is a sound strategy, if they do it right.

Immersion
The Oculus3D EVR game was praised for its' immersive qualities and immersion is also a key driver behind CCP Soundwave's 'war on loading bars' and the system scanner revamp. Immersion is very important in a virtual world and I am happy to see very concrete improvements in this area. This, too, fits a 'complete scifi simulator' vision.

Odyssey

Odyssey style jump gate about to fire

The new, immersion improving jump gate effects and system scanner, the hacking minigames, Navy battlecruisers, the restructuring of ice and R64 moons, possibly even new life blood for nullsec industry, and more: I'm looking forward to it. Bring it on!

Politics
The CSM election turned out nicely, most of the people I voted for made it into CSM8. It's certainly not the CSM some of the nullsec blocs wanted to see.. and this too is a good thing. I'm pleasantly surprised by the huge response to Ripard Teg and the fact that a guy like Mike Azariah actually got elected.

CCP
I can't help but admire CCP. They are certainly able to host a significant event and throw a tremendous party, and seeing it from a distance certainly makes me more than a little envious :-) Especially via Twitter you get the feeling that Fanfest pumps a huge shot of energy and sense of togetherness the Eve community. The devs certainly play a positive part in this. Kudos to all involved.
Obviously there is a lot going on in the company, with John Lander moving to a new position and no replacement yet announced. Pressure will remain on CCP to get Dust 514 off the ground, both short and long term, WoD still in slomo development and a mobile strategy that has to be developed as well. Lots to do, but CCP has shown they are able to adjust and overcome, and I expect them to be able to continue doing so well into Eve Online's second decade.
The only thing that worried me, was that - until recently - if you searched for Eve Online on twitch.tv, it would list 'Sony' somewhere on the Eve Online page. It seems to be gone now, and I'm happy about that :-)

And if you want to see it all again, Twitch.tv is the place to go. It has all the broadcasts!

Agile/Scrum
In my RL job, I am a product owner in an agile/scrum team, working on creating and improving virtual channels for a financial services company. We have only begun to use scrum a little while ago, so I'm still learning.
In my role as 'PO' I'm especially focused on the backlog and how to deal with it. I've been taught that a product backlog contains user stories in different stages of development. The user stories scheduled for 'somewhere in the future' tend to be large, not well defined. They are more like general ideas, not yet ready for implementation. In due time (when the user story progresses through the backlog) the idea will be thought through, elaborated on, be specified, quite possibly broken into smaller, more concrete user stories which can, finally, be built during a sprint. So, as their implementation date nears, user stories will progressively grow more concrete and better specified.
Via Twitter I learned that CCP Seagull is product owner for Odyssey, and I just asked her if she is also the owner of the product backlog for the rest of Eve Online - if such a backlog exists, and my guess is it does. If so, it's not surprising that CCP is vague about the long term plans as detailed in the Seagulls' statements in the Eve Online keynote, which were repeated later in the CCP Presents keynote. These future visions are just the vague ideas and big chunks of unspecified work at the end of the backlog :-)

Fanfest 2013 Eve keynote: a short recap

Ok, this is a 'stream of consciousness' writeup of the Eve keynote that just finished on the main stage of the Harpa center. More thoughts later; this is just to recap the main news points.

It kicked off with a look at the history of Eve Online and CCP. Amusing and embarrassing pictures of very young developers, early builds, the first sketches of what were to become familiar ships: nice to see and hilarious to boot. Hilmar recounted how he lost a ship he loaned from someone, and how that moment brought home for him what Eve really was.. he got it, right then and there. A powerful story.

John Lander got to tell the story of Eve 2012-2013, the Retribution expansion, Dust beta etcetera. He also got to say goodbye, resigning from his current position, to chief of CCP's mobile division. He got a well deserved round of applause and seemed to be tearing up a bit, even.

On to Oddyssey, presented by Soundwave and Seagull. The latter explains how the theme for Retribution was taken from the very first Eve Online website. So what will be in Odyssey? Lots of improvements to exploration and scanning: the system scanner now scans space around you, you see it sweep across the screen and the results are visible directly in space. Immersive and looking good to boot. When Soundwave sent his ship through a stargate, the room erupted with applause: the new jump animation is simply gorgeous. It looks a bit like you warp through a planet: it's dark, but you're obviously moving and you really end in space on the other side! Immersive and looking good..? Definitely!
Soundwave then scanned down an exploration site (which will, by the way, no longer feature npc rats) where he had to hack his way into a wreck. Upon breaking into the computer he had to hack, it spawned several containers which drifted away in space. The message: do this together, you won't be able to recoup those containers all by yourself.
Other Odyssey points: CCP will 'look into R64 moons and T2 production bottlenecks'.. meaning the OTEC is about to be dissolved shortly after Odyssey is released.
Ice belts will be moved into new types of anomalies, which will only spawn in the systems that currently already have ice belts.

Then Seagull, who was tense, at times gasping for air, detailed some principles for future Eve expansions. They will be theme based, with stuff in them for several player groups: solo players, group players, instigators and enablers.
And then she asked the room to 'dream with me..' about new empires to build, space to explore.. and finally she said 'Now imagine you could build the right kind of stargate..' She was obviously hinting about acquiring access to new space! She also said something about '2014'. Those expansions might be interesting, too :)

By this time the room (and the commenters on twitch.tv) were quite thrilled already, but they were about to be completely blown away: Hilmar demo'd a short clip of an Eve Online client for the Oculus Rift: 'EVR' built on Unity3D. Think of it as a first person dogfighting experience in Eve! You see yourself being launched into space (again, no black screen, a real exit from station a supercarrier), you look through your window, there's a fight.. you join it! Very, very exiting stuff. The demo was barely done when Themittani already had an article up. Go give it a read! Guys in Iceland get to try the Oculus demo tomorrow morning. My envy knows no bounds.. UPDATE: this too is a good writeup of the EVR demo: Eve becomes virtual with Oculus Rift.

Viewer numbers on the twitch.tv stream topped a little over 13.000, which is very impressive too.

All in all.. I'm very impressed and thrilled. Reading the comments on the twitch stream and on twitter, I can tell I'm definitely not alone. The next ten years should be good ;-)

Update: the first relevant devblogs are already published: check them out!

(edited 23.20 CEST for clarity and spelling)

The official "This is not my month" month

Eight losses this month, and April isn’t even over yet. I’m just hesitant to undock at this point!

So how did I lose eight ships?

Less harmful damage

The first loss is from a corp death roam in the MTO2-2 area. We were bringing in a new corp member, which was a funny story in itself. We were moving from MTO in his direction, and he’s supposedly moving towards us. At some point we notice he’s not getting any closer, as a matter of fact he’s burning away! Turns out he was on his way to our PVE system in the southeast, not our PVP deployment area in the northeast. Oops. Twenty minutes and lots of jumps through deserted nullsec later we join up and move back in the direction of MTO. Via intel channels we hear of a hostile RAZOR fleet near MTO along our way, and we try to catch up with our guys chasing said fleet. That doesn’t work - we never find them - but we manage to get stuck in a bubble at a gate, together with the escaping hostile fleet. Most of our ships explode, including my Talwar; I get podded, too. Deathroam mission: goal accomplished.

About a week later, I’m in station in MTO2-2, bored and waiting for action. A hostile fleet is bouncing around the area, and a fleet is formed to do something about it. We undock and there’s some brawling at gates and such. We lose some, we kill some; I manage to survive but fail to score any kills (although I suspect some kills weren’t posted..)  after which our still sizeable fleet follows the FC deeper into Venal, in hot pursuit of the hostiles. Finally, at a gate we catch them, and the fight is on. I deploy drones and assign them to the FC, but pretty soon (well, immediately really) after that, the entire hostile fleet yellowboxes and subsequently redboxes me. Boom goes my Prophecy, and I’m podded as well.
The fight is, however, escalating: the enemy brings carriers on the field, and of course I want to get on those juicy capital killmails. I quickly reship to a Caracal, determined to lob missiles at said carriers from a bit of a distance, i.e. not within 5000 meters of our FC. As soon as I land.. here we go again: yellowboxed, redboxed, boom. I don’t think I successfully fired one missile! Ffs! As I float around the battlefield in my pod, cursing the hostile FC who apparently has it in for me,  I realise I forgot to upgrade my clone after the first podding. Crap. I am now suddenly trembling behind the PC.. please don’t pod me please don’t pod me please.. With a sigh of relief I make it out alive and return to MTO2-2 to upgrade the clone. Phew, lucky escape there.

I was angry that I didn’t score any kills, but suddenly two Megathron kills appear on our killboard, with my name on them. I can’t remember them at all. Of course these are from my sentry drones, they were assigned to the FC who shot at stuff while I was being exploded, so that’s what netted me two kills. I don’t feel good about it, at all. I didn’t see them or target them, I didn’t have the pleasure of seeing the damage overpower the ships’ reps until it exploded. It leaves me with a sour taste in my mouth. But at least my kb efficiency is saved.. for what it’s worth.

Again a few days later, and the R3 hellcamp is in full swing. There’s talk of pvp and I want some real kills after those Megathron 'semi kills', so I hop into the coalition approved Prophecy, and make it to the Titan just in time to make the jump from MTO to R3.. but that’s not where I land. I didn’t know it was two Titan jumps, but here I am, 19 jumps out of R3, burning towards the second Titan whose bridge will bring me to R3 proper! It’s just that I really, really need a bio break now! So I warp to a celestial and go afk. When I come back a minute later (yes, I am that fast and that close to the sanitary stuff here) the second Titan pilot says ‘afk, back in 2 hours’ and is gone. Crap. Alone and 19 jumps out of where the action is I decide to go by myself; I am positively not going to hang around here for two hours. So I carefully make my way to R3, until - three jumps out of my destination - I land in a gate camp. Boom. At least I am able to get my pod out!
But you know what's really stupid? While I land in the gate camp, I notice something in the local channel: the lone blue in local said "watch out, gate camp at the out gate". Either I missed it, or I could have used the heads up a wee bit earlier :-)

Anyway, a few days later I log my main back on and make for R3. The final jumps are uneventful. In R3 however, I notice I can't get into the POS, and I can't dock I the heavily bubbled station either. So what to do? I warp from celestial to celestial, making bookmarks along the way. Warping between those bookmarks, I create a couple of safespots; when I'm done, I warp to one of them. Not contended with being in a safespot, I align to one of the other bookmarks I created and, with the pod moving, I begin reading mail and chatting with corp mates. Until all over sudden a Manticore appears on screen! Did he warp in? I have no directional scanners and can't detect probes, but who'd make the effort to scan down a pod? To be honest, I believe I accidentally uncloaked him in his own safe spot.. what are the odds of that! Anyway, he points me and begins shooting at me, but his torpedos aren't really suitable for hitting a pod at 3000 meters. I barely get any damage, but am afraid to call in help; it might be a trap, who knows. So after an unusually long period of being shot at with Scourge Rage torpedos, my pod dies and my R3 adventure is over.

Sick and tired of all the coalition deployment losses, I decide to jc back to our PVE area for some peaceful anomming. Barely halfway into my first Angel Hub, I notice intel reports of a neutral Arazu coming in, and a small fleet is arranged to try and kill him. We are aware that he might be a hotdropper; what Arazu would venture out so far into hostile territory, all by himself? I bring a Drake I happen to have there and set out for the Arazu, after being warned to remain outside of 30 km which, I am told, is probably his point range. That information proved to be incorrect. I am pointed well out of 30 km, and pretty soon I'm webbed too, and pretty soon after that, there's a dozen or so hotdroppers on my Drake. Kaboom. Drake dead due to misinformation and (perhaps) carelessness on my part. The guys who told me '30 km' feel bad about their wrong intel, and I receive generous gifts, enough ISK to buy two fitted Drakes back. Thanks guys.

And here I am, month not over yet.. I wonder if I'll make it to May without further losses!

Drums in the deep

Perhaps you know that scene from the first Lord of the Rings movie, the Fellowship of the Ring. While travelling through the mines of Moria, one of the Hobbits (that 'fool of a Took!') accidentally drops a bucket in a deep, dry well. It rattles down, chains and all, lots of noise ensues.. and then it gets silent. Nothing happens.. But just as the travellers are about to breathe a sigh in relief, a single low drum beat vibrates through the dark mines. And another one answers, and another.. Drums in the deep. The Orcs are coming! Battle is here!

Something like this happens in nullsec life too, every now and then. Rumors of a war begin to spread, tell tale signs of impending battle appear. And then, sometimes, for a while it just gets silent. Nothing happens. But just when you are about to breathe a sigh in relief (or boredom), hostile fleets are unleashed at your space, stations are reinforced, systems SBU'd. Hostiles are coming, battle is here!

What follows can be epic, just like the fight in the movie 'the Fellowship of the Rings' was. Unexpected victories or losses, strange turns of fortune, exciting events: it is all possible, and you can be there to watch it. Better yet, you can participate.. or even cause it to happen. It's your choice!

The first time sov warfare happened to me, our corporation No Fixed Abode (NOFAD) was in Querious, in an alliance that rented some very nice space from IT Alliance. I've told that story before and won't go into the details again, but I remember strongly how lonely it got in our space, as soon as we heard the 'drums in the deep'. The guys running Sanctums in carriers all day long - gone. Our prolific belt ratters - gone. Our miners in the hidden belts - gone. Familiar voices vanished from TeamSpeak, and in some corporations, membership numbers started to fall pretty drastically. As it turns out, many alliance members were there for the ISK, grazing, earning fortunes in our perfect dead end ratting system; but they didn't care for the alliance itself. They never even undocked one single PVP ship when the alliance needed them badly. What a disappointment! How utterly cynical those guys were! And what cowards, too.

The second time sov warfare happened to me, NOFAD was part of LEGIO ASTARTES ARCANUM, living in Catch. The Drone Russian Forces wanted to get rid of -A- once and for all, and LEGIO was obviously also in the DRF's way. We fought, we lost our space, we retreated to LGK-VP with -A-. And we kept fighting! Guerilla style ambushes, reinforcing stuff left and right, deploying SBU after SBU.. and slowly but surely we won everything back we once had, and then some. This time around, most pilots hung in there, and those who did still pride themselves in what they accomplished. And rightly so! It was a struggle to remember and a memory to cherish. Not to mention it was a whole lot of fun, too..

Next time when you hear the 'drums in the deep', make sure to prepare for war. Don't bug out and leave, silently. Allow yourself the chance to be part of something potentially epic, something you'll remember for a long time, whether you win or lose. It's definitely worth it, and you'll be a better Eve pilot afterwards.

Blog Banter 46: Eve's many choices

Blog Banter 46: the main event

"EVE Online is a unique piece of science fiction that is ‘participatory’." - CCP Seagull, December 2012

EVE Online is heading into its Second Decade with renewed vigour and a new development strategy. At the CSM Summit in December, Executive Producer CCP Unifex and Development Director CCP Seagull explained how future development and expansions will be broader in scope than recent "collections of features" stating that CCP "want to create something more inspirational, that players aspire to play."

With the return of Live Events such as the Battle for Caldari Prime, clearly the prime fiction of EVE
is back in favor as part of this new thematic approach to expansions. However, EVE's story is very much a tale of two play styles, with an entirely player-driven narrative unfolding daily in parallel to the reinvigorated backstory. Often, they do not mix well. How can these two disparate elements be united or at least comfortably co-exist in a single sandbox universe?"

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One of the main draws of Eve Online - at least in my experience - is that it is not ‘just’ a game, but a persistent virtual world. Its’ inhabitants may have begun their careers with a carefully planned development path in mind or they may have meandered through Eve, tasting a bit of this, doing a bit of that, sampling what’s on offer: the variations are legio.
Intertwined with all these career related developments, are a multitude of player interactions. These happen in countless corporation and alliance channels, open channels, TeamSpeak conversations but also out there in space, where player made choices pit pilot against pilot in pvp or in a struggle for resources (..ok, I mean guys mining together).

The combination of so many variables means that there are no identical Eve players. There is not really such a thing as a ‘level 45 paladin’ or ‘level 25 wizard’ in Eve; every pilot is unique, and so is his or her story.

Eve lore has always been part of these unique and different stories. Wormholes came, and some players adapted, ignoring them as much as they could, continuing with their own path through Eve. Others, however, profited from these new found sources of fun and profit. Factional warfare came, and the general population adapted while others jumped in, joining an FW corp. Incursions came, and the same happens: some pilots ignore them as much as possible, adapting to their occurrence every now and then; but others jumped on the Incursion running bandwagon (and made obscene amounts of ISK in the process).

These are clear examples of lore driven additions to game play have been beneficial for Eve Online, expanding the options and opportunities available; but some players dive right in while others don't.

And that's perfectly fine in a virtual world, a scifi simulator such as Eve Online. In a sandbox, you should be free to pursue your own path. Forcing lore based events on unwilling pilots runs contrary to that, and might be bad for business. And so far I think CCP has done a good job in this area.

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Other entries here: http://freebooted.blogspot.nl/2013/04/blog-banter-46-main-event.html

Odyssey, designed for emergent game play?

For a while now, we are seeing a passionate debate on the future direction of Eve Online. Everyone seems to be convinced something has to change: a rebalancing seems to be in order for several areas of Eve Online.
Yet, your perspective on what should change and how it should be changed, probably depends on your main source of income or your preferred play style. For instance, some nullsec dwellers say highsec is too safe and profitable, and should be nerfed. But other (overly paranoid) highsec pilots claim CCP is in a secret cabal with nullsec overlords and that this will prevent an 'obviously much needed' buff to security in highsec.
Some say industry belongs in nullsec, but what sensible megacorp would put its' production facilities in lawless outer regions? That would be akin to Volkswagen moving it's main factories to, say, Gilgit-Baltistan.. highly unlikely.  There's a lot of this armchair game design stuff going on: this should be adjusted and that should be moved, and Concord shouldn't do this or that anymore, and ganking should be encouraged or abolished, and..

I have to admit, I've been guilty of this myself: I too have written long blog posts proposing specific  changes to Eve. Yet I am feeling increasingly uneasy about some of that stuff I wrote myself and about suggestions I read from other players. But I couldn't really put my finger on why I felt like that, until I read this quote by Dee Hock:

Simple, clear purpose and principles give rise to complex, intelligent behavior. Complex rules and regulations give rise to simple and stupid behavior.

 And that's it! Players often come up with tremendously complicated solutions to gameplay issues, usually designed to protect their own interests. But as the complexity of gameplay rules and regulations rises, people are more and more forced into following those rules and regulations like sheep. This, it seems to me, is definitely not what we want for New Eden. If you want emergent gameplay in the proverbial sandbox, overly complex rules and regulations should be avoided as much as possible. I think this Dee Hock quote, probably intended to describe business processes, perfectly  applies to game design intended to foster emergent gameplay.

CCP has announced Odyssey, the next expansion for the summer of 2013. It promises, amongst other things, "a rebalance of major areas of space from highsec to nullsec including changes in exploration sites, industrial resources, some types of NPC loot and more…" I'm eager to see whether those changes will be 'simple and clear in purpose and principle' or not.

AmarrCam: live stream test

Since watching some of Mad Ani's streams, I've been thinking about doing my own livestream. So last week I signed up with own3d.tv.. don't laugh at me, I couldn't know they would be bankrupt the next week!

So I switched to twitch.tv, redid al the setup and such, and started testing with the stream last night. I intend to stream the small gang warfare we do every now and then and I am enrolling a toon in factional warfare to stream orbital bombardments, if I get the chance to do them of course!

Here's the AmarrCam I've had up and running all afternoon:

Watch live video from seredwoollahra on nl.twitch.tv
 This station isn't really very useful for live streaming the undock, due to the way it is built. The ships pop out of the station like it's giving birth to them; for some reason I find it hard to get the angle right, in this situation. A complicating factor is that there's a gas cloud surrounding the station, which makes the image look whitish, washed out. Perhaps I should try to do this at a busy gate, or some other place.

Any hints/tips: welcome!

Small gang warfare report: last second save and kill

Yesterday our FC organized a corp roam, and they were about to leave our home system just as I logged on. They could use some extra dps, so I grabbed my Harbinger and undocked. Leaving E-YJ8G we cautiously made our way in the direction of Providence, our two forward scouts trying to find something to shoot at. We could have done without the caution though, as there was nothing to shoot! A ratting Gila vanished from dscan right after our forward scout noticed him; a ratting Navy Issue Raven disappeared as well. Some neutral or hostile frigates moved in the area but nothing we could sink our teeth in. Near YWS0-Z things changed rapidly though. One of our forward scouts ran into a gatecamp, and given the size of the hostile fleet there and the eagerness with which they pursued us, there we had little choice but to turn and get out as fast as possible! One of our forward scouts didn't make it unfortunately; he got killed and podded. He dryly reported 'I'm back in Essence guys, I'm out for the night'.

I have fond memories of YWS0-Z, by the way. It was our first place of residence in nullsec, after The Star Fraction  turned it into a Freeport in the middle of 2010. We were real nullsec n00bs back then.. we learned through some painful losses :-)

While en route home (and apparently no longer chased) we found a small bubble, left behind by some friendlies and we decided to camp it for a bit. We play hide and seek with a neutral Stabber who avoids the bubble but keeps popping up hundred or two hundred kilometer away. We burn to him, he warps out, he warps back in, we burn to him et cetera. A neutral Enyo is doing the same, warping from safe spots to tacs off the gate, landing in different places each time.

We ignore the Enyo and focus on the Stabber when (newly bought toon) Simon Jenkins, who's flying a Stabber Fleet issue himself, reports he's close enough to engage him. The Stabber pilot, apparently confident he can take out the Stabber Fleet issue before we arrive, returns the favor and the fight is on. Simon, sure of our support, engages and points the hostile, but we're not even aligned yet and he's losing shields rapidly. And armor. And structure.. he's yelling on TeamSpeak, KIILL HIM! KILL HIM! I'M IN STRUCTURE!. My calm reply that I have the hostile pointed didn't help much, it just results in more yelling and verbal abuse :-) Finally, with the help of my lasers and drones, the neutral Stabber exploded, leaving Simon intact with perhaps 30% structure left. We exchanged 'gf' in local, commented on each others fittings. Phew, that was close. And then..

One of our other pilots noticed how the Enyo (yes, he was still darting about) was in the exact same spot he had been in a while ago; a spot our pilot had bookmarked earlier. We had a warp in! I barely had time to loot the Stabber wreck before Alexander called us to warp to him: in his Rapier, he had a good chance at pointing and webbing the Enyo before he could warp out again. And it works! Alexander and Magister Wu land on top of the Enyo, and Magister Wu points him before he can move.. But just when most of us land on the Enyo, about ten hostiles jump through the nearby gate and make their way to their beleaguered friend. It's a trap! 'Such a shame', I think, 'the Enyo is already through most of his shields'. Right at this moment I land on top of the Enyo, virtually at the same moment as his first friends, and think: 'I might as well fire my lasers at him while I align and warp out. If I get pointed I may even take out the Enyo before dying.'
By this time most of our guys were away and safe, it's just Patris Angelus in his Stabber Fleet issue, me in my Harbinger and the hostiles. Patris is pointed and shooting the Enyo; strangely enough no one is pointing me, so I am free to warp. And just when I do, I see the Enyo explode in a glorious ball of fire! Patris got out too as well: as it turns out, it was only the Enyo who was pointing him and when the Enyo exploded he got out immediately.
 It was a trap, and we fell for it - but it backfired badly at those who set the trap. Next time, bring more points guys.. Lots of hilarity on our TeamSpeak, lots of virtual pats on backs. 

We saved Simon's Stabber Fleet Issue at the last moment, we killed the Enyo in the last second. Of course these aren't monumental battles but it sure was fun!

Some images of the new Gnosis

With a few minutes spare time left, I decided to log on to Singularity and check out some of the new stuff currently available there: the new infopanels, the Jove battlecruiser Gnosis and the ability to show your actual route in space.

I didn't bother to test fittings on the Gnosis. Kirith has a nice writeup if that's your thing; I am not really an EFT warrior. I was primarily interested in the ship's looks. Let's look at a few screenshots!

Gnosis silhouetted against an ice planet

Ok, question. If you've never seen or flown this ship before, would you know which part is front or back? Is it dragging a heavy load, or rather pushing it through space?

Front end

Turns out the big baggy part is actually the front end; the circle and spokes part is the backside. Based on the looks of the Jove Apotheosis shuttle I would have thought the spikes and spokes would have been placed at the front side, but obviously CCP has the artistic freedom to make another choice.

Had the spike and spokes part been the bow of the ship, it really would have had a spider and web feel to it, with it's combination of organic lines and straight spikes. Plus, spiders too carry the bulk of their mass behind them.

As it is now, the bulk of the ship is at the the bow, being pushed through space. It looks a bit like a pipe, or those large wooden horns used in the Swiss mountains for instance. Or a shovel. I'm not used to it yet and am definitely not sure whether I will, really. My son said it like this: 'that is one ugly ship!'

the Jove smoke a pipe

The golden color of the ship strongly reminds me of Amarr ships. In New Eden's lore, the Amarr suffer their first big defeat at the hands of the ancient and superior Jove, shortly after the dark ages ended and the Amarr began to build their interstellar empire. Did the Amarr copy the Jove's ship color?

Apparently there's no consistent color palette for Jove; several other examples of Jovian ships have a rather greenish look, for instance this Eidolon. The Enigma frigate is often shown red, while the Apotheosis does indeed resemble the Gnosis in terms of color.

Gnosis near a star

Showing your route through space, from star to star, is indeed an amusing new feature. The color lines are rather faint and could be a bit more prominent, if the intended goal is to enhance immersion.

spot the waypoint stars

Last year CCP tilted or turned all stargates, so that they would actually point in the direction of the destination star systems. With this feature enabled, you can even see the next star system, and the next, and the next.. To me this has one unintended side effect: New Eden feels smaller if you can see five or six jumps ahead!

Two hundred boots on the ground in Halle

While gathering some stuff in highsec with one of my alts, I jumped into Halle. And was greeted by this:

 

Nice, a hundred foot soldiers in Halle; it grew to over a hundred a bit later. Somewhere a nice fight is brewing! But apparently it hasn't started yet: they are currently all docked! I didn't know that they could :-)

 I didn't expect these guys up here just yet. Now if only that damn door would open..

The virtual world grows

As Jester tends to say, 'just a quicky'.

Today CCP announced that on January 10, they will connect their new FPS game Dust 514 to the existing Eve Online server cluster, Tranquility. A unique event!

Recently, CCP has repeatedly billed Eve Online as a virtual world, rather than 'just' a game. It's a sentiment I recognize: when I grew tired of other virtual worlds back in May 2008, I specifically went looking for a space based virtual world - and I ended up in Eve Online.

On January 10 2013, that virtual world is set to grow in unique and very interesting ways. From a technological point of view, the mixing of PC based and PS3 based environments on one massive server cluster such as Tranquility is certainly innovative. And from a gameplay perspective, the same is pretty much true, for the same reasons. The coming months will be very interesting, to say the least.

One thing I noticed in the devblog linked above, is that CCP advises Eve Online pilots to use Destroyers for the to be released variants of orbital strikes or bombardments, and you'll need small turrets to fire the 'S' labeled ammo. That certainly lowers the entry barrier for Eve pilots to participate in Dust gameplay! in earlier trailers, we'd see expensive Dreadnaughts delivering the pain from above. Destroyers, by contrast, are very easy to train for and cheap to buy. It wouldn't surprise me at all to see Dust mercenaries create Eve Online pilot accounts just to be able to do the orbital bombardment stuff themselves.

I know that there are Eve pilots who really dislike the fact that CCP puts development effort in something - anything - that can't undock from a space station. Personally, I applaud CCP for pursuing such an innovative strategy. As with any CCP initiative that aims to grow and sustain my favorite virtual world, I hope it will succeed!

Blog Banter 43: talking back to Makalu

At the turn of the year in meatspace, award season starts to spin up. Across the general media, folk are encouraged to look to their peers and recognise excellence and inspiration from the previous year.

For the past two years I have attempted to do the same for EVE by distributing imaginary Free Boot Awards to an eclectic assortment of community luminaries. This year I thought it might be nice to expand the concept.

For Blog Banter 43 I would like to invite every participant to nominate their peers for whatever awards you think they deserve. Let's start the year with some EVE-flavoured altruism and celebrate the best and the worst of us, the funniest or the most bizarre, the most heroic of the most tragic of the past year. They could be corpmates, adversaries, bloggers, podcasters, developers, journalists or inanimate objects. Go nuts.

There's only one rule: no narcissism allowed (so step away from that mirror and resist the urge to nominate yourself).

Other than that, if it's great, let's celebrate.

Banter On.

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Here's my nominations for 2012!

Each nation needs a Jester!
What’s a court without a jester? As an irregular blogger myself, I can’t help but admire the output created by Ripard Teg, in terms of both quantity and quality. I can’t always establish whether he’s right or wrong on certain issues, but his writing is clear, easily readable, always entertaining and often thought provoking. His guides and fits are helpful to many a pilot. He is a very visible part of the Eve community and capable of influencing the public opinion in important ways. As such, he wholly deserves a nomination.

My corp mates
This may sound very cheesy, but from my perspective my corp mates deserve a mention: they have shaped my Eve year 2012, perhaps more than they realize. Most of us have flown together for years now. They have been loyal friends, supportive and (mostly ;-) )fun to be around. They have also been effective and efficient: we regularly dominated our alliances' killboard, even though we were one of the smaller corps. Frankly, without these guys I might have unsubbed ages ago. Eve Online is a game, it's a sandbox, it's a virtual world - but above all it's a place where I meet my friends. And then we undock to kill stuff :-)

Talking back to Makalu
We currently witness the fall of Against All Authorities, or at least a severe diminishing of their numbers and operational capabilities in the short term. This will probably go down in the annals of Eve history as an important moment, when one of the last independent nullsec alliances' might was broken.

With our previous alliance we were firmly in the -A- camp. Back in 2011 this was a good thing; after the DRF invasion of Catch, late in 2011, we took part in the -A- guerrilla war to reconquer Catch. We had a great time and it remains one of my most cherished Eve memories. In the second half of 2012 however the honeymoon was definitely over. More and more of my corporation and alliance mates didn't want to fly in -A- fleets anymore, often because of the oafish behaviour of Makalu Zarya. A prime example is his infamous 'You don't talk back to triple A' rant, available on Soundcloud (the juicy part starts at 1.45 minutes).

A lot of the animosity regarding-A- was caused by this kind of behaviour towards those who should nominally be your friends and allies. Against All Authorities could have been the admired underdog of Eve, the brave lone alliance fighting the CFC and HBC, but instead they grew to be loathed even by large parts of their own coalition. To me Makalu Zarya, though obviously not singlehandedly responsible, personifies all that was wrong with Against All Authorities in 2012; all that helped a once great alliance to it's demise. I am nominating him for a place in the Eve Online 2012 history books.

Alliance move completed; recruitment commences

After spending a month in the alliance Mildly Sober, No Fixed Abode made the step to the main alliance Mildly Intoxicated earlier this week. Mildly Intoxicated is smaller than our previous alliances, but this is mainly due to the fact that the industrial wing of 'Mildly' is concentrated in Mildly Sober. Combat pilots live in Mildly Intoxicated; those who are primarily non combatants remain in Mildly Sober. Taken together, Mildly Sober and Mildly Intoxicated are about the same size as LEGIO or SaS had when we joined them.

Mildly Intoxicated gained name recognition with the last Alliance Tournament, where they performed well, and they even got to shoot at CCP devs on SiSi in preparation of this tournament, too! Finally their name popped up again when news came out of the new Nulli Secunda led bloc in the south, of which Mildly Intoxicated is a part. We already knew them by the way, because one of our previous members ended up there and they used to be blue to us in Catch, until earlier this year.

Our move to Mildly Intoxicated marks an important moment in No Fixed Abode's history. I used to say: "we shoot rats, reds and 'roids". This is still true, but the main focus of our activities is now clearly the 'shoot reds' part. We still have industry, but it is no longer a core activity of our corporation; combat is. The funny thing is that this makes me CEO of a pvp corporation. Me, the non confrontational diplomat! This is clearly something I never expected, earlier in my eve career..

Yet, I think it's good to clearly define ourselves as a pvp corporation. It focuses our efforts and that should help with recruitment. We have a great team, we've become friends, but we could use a few decent guys! Having the numbers to run our own operations is a goal of ours, and I hope that having a clear focus on combat will help with recruiting those pilots. Focus, dedication and good killboard stats should help bring in the desired reinforcements :) If you think you would like to fly with us, eve mail me or join our public channel No Fixed Channel for a chat.

If you could own one Eve Online spaceship in real life..

..which one would it be?

It's something I think about every now and then, usually when I'm bored commuting from/to work. "Oh man", I'm thinking, "I'd rather be in a spaceship than on this train. But which one would I choose, if I could?"

Now that mankind may be a theoretical step closer to an actual warp drive, the question on how a warp capable space ship might look and work is more interesting than ever. And Eve Online's extensive range of vessels is an inspiring source of ideas in this regard! Apparently I'm not the only one who thinks along those lines:

TianCity is responsible for all marketing activities in China [...] They have done some really innovative things to make EVE more visible in China, including [...] having EVE featured in a CCTV (Chinese national television) program about militaries of the future, which included some high-ranking Chinese military officers talking about EVE spaceships.

..although, to be honest, I have no idea what these officers actually said about Eve's space ships!

Back the the question at hand: what Eve Online spaceship would you choose? The first warp driven space ships mankind builds (..if we ever succeed, of course) would probably be little more than an Eve Online shuttle: very limited in size and scope. But let's dream bolder dreams and look a bit further in the future..

It might be tempting to take some military vessel such as a Battleship or Battlecruiser, but I think I'd go with a cloaky Helios. Traditionally, our existing space vessels so far have primarily (but not exclusively) served peaceful purposes. The Voyagers, Mariners and Pioneers carried cameras, not guns, and neither did the Space Shuttle or the MIR space station for example. Thinking along those lines, it makes sense to look for an exploratory vessel first. And given that we have no idea what we might encounter once we drop out of warp, it would also make sense to make it a cloaky, stealthy ship. The scan capabilities of the Helios would help us do our research, while a single mining drone might help us acquire precious samples of asteroids. So, there's my daydream.. explore the wonders of the universe in a Helios.

What's your ship of choice?

I felt like Moses

No Fixed Abode joined LEGIO ASTARTES ARCANUM in April 2011, after we’d been in nullsec for about six months. Early 2011, we got kicked out of Querious with the rest of the ‘coalition’ that centered around IT Alliance, and we were very happy to have found another home in LEGIO. A few months later, the DRF wave crashed over Catch, and for a moment we had the idea we were going to see the very same thing happening again: a failcascase of an entire coalition. But pretty soon it became clear that Against All Authorities was no IT alliance, and LEGIO wasn’t going down either. We lost some corps, for sure, but it was certainly no failcascade. We did the ‘retreat back to LGK-VP with -A_’ thing, and after a while reconquered Catch. Victory! And -A- remembered LEGIO stood with them when many left: we were given an extra system in Catch as a token of appreciation.

Loss of sov

On October 31 this year, one year and ten days after we reconquered our main staging system HY-RWO, we lost it again. This time to the HBC alliance The Initiative, who have some historical claims to Catch themselves. Given the number of pilots the HBC can summon for any fight, the loss didn’t come unexpectedly. Already we had been given the order to retreat to LGK once again, and all our assets had been evacuated before we lost access.

Loss of trust

But we lost something else. Over the months leading up to the loss of our sov, we also lost our trust in -A-, as well as our willingness to fly alongside them. It wasn’t one big thing, really, but a gradual loss of fun and sense of affiliation. Pilots would complain about the way they were treated by -A- FC’s, -A- pilots behaving like arrogant dicks in the area where we lived, lack of fleets to join in EU TZ, lack of mutual respect.. every few days something else would happen, causing someone to say ‘you know, screw -A-, I’m not doing this anymore’.

At the same time it became clear that LEGIO too wasn’t the alliance it was a year ago. It’s very hard to pinpoint, but somewhere in 2012 we lost something. Perhaps the sad fact that the human behind Commander Donta succumbed to cancer in the summer of 2012..?  Some leadership being less active than before..? There may have been other factors too, but whatever the cause: LEGIO wasn’t able to fight like it was in 2011. Several corps, disillusioned or unable to follow LEGIO leadership’s course anymore, began to drop out.

Moses

So NOFAD pilots too began to talk about leaving, greener pastures here or there, following this guy or that corp to a new place. After a period of growing unease, we finally decided to leave LEGIO ASTARTES ARCANUM, even before we had an idea on where we’d end up. We left LEGIO some time ago, and for a while I felt like Moses leading his people into the wilderness!

We’ve left some good friends and capable pilots behind, in an alliance that has a rich history, but is currently straining under the pressure of current events. We thank them and wish them well and we sure would like to fly alongside our friends once again in the future. But, I am afraid that for this to become true, -A- has to chance their tune, or fall. I don’t see -A- changing anytime soon, but a -A- failure might actually occur. Winter is coming..