Is Eve Dying?

My thoughts and opinions here are a fair reflection of those posted over on Ecliptic Rift, which as always, is worth a read.

Like you, I’m just upset rather than angry. I’ve been here since the beginning, and through all the troubles the game and CCP itself has gone through I’ve got by alright; even ye olde t20 incident saw me casually waiting for some sort of explanation of what exactly happened. This though; confirmed on various levels by various individuals is really quite painful. I honestly cannot imagine the sheer pressure those CSM members must have been feeling after seeing this document, knowing all-too-well that they could say nothing about it to the community they represent because of NDAs.

It was just a week ago that I was talking with a friend that I was visiting – also an Eve player – about my thoughts regarding CCP. I have for a while now held the belief that all the rampant fanboyism and all the threadnaughts were in some kind of cosmic (pardon the pun) balancing act as a result of the company growing. That CCP was sitting on the fence with growing pains as it slowly contemplated which side of the fence it would eventually sit on: Small, friendly company? Or a large entity obsessed with corporate greed? This I think has convinced me of the latter, and its and incredibly sad realisation.

Corporate greed

A Distinct Lack of Arsed

Some who know me fairly well were probably aware that I had hit a bit of a lull in playing recently; that, or they’re stalkers. I log in mostly for skill changes and building stuff – something I feel is more of a responsibility than something I necessarily want to do (though I admit that when I’m doing it, it is enjoyable).

I have been thinking about moving Eilean over to another account and letting it lapse, half-heartedly of course, since its paid for with ISK that I don’t even notice the lack of when it goes to PLEX. Around the time I made my last Industry Character post I realised I was hitting another “wall of Can’t Be Arsed”, and was banking on my trip to Iceland for FanFest to reinvigorate my interest and get me playing again. It worked to a degree. I logged a massive amount of hours after that, mostly just chatting with people; I was still fairly excited about the future. But it didn’t last more than a few weeks. Then I lapsed into being almost a non-entity to all but a few close friends.

Now I’m thinking of taking it further. To what extent, I’m not as-yet sure. But I suspect like anything truly interesting I’ve done in the past, you’ll only likely hear about it if you ply me with alcohol and genuine interest. And since the former is decidedly lacking in interwebs-land, I guess its not going to happen anytime soon.

Walking in Stations

Or more accurately, walking in one room of a station. The same room. In all stations.

I defended CCP a lot when people would criticize them about taking a billion years to produce Incarna only to have some Captain’s Quarters done by the time it launched. I was there in presentations about the whole thing when they explained that the whole concept had been developed then scrapped several times over before settling on a solution that was easily expandable post-launch.

This aside, it was a bit saddening that the best look we got of these CQs in Iceland was a video showing a partially textured room and gangway, when 2.5 years previously, people had been demoing walking about in quarters, a station environment and a bar. But never mind!

For me, the main problem came in with the introduction of just one room for the expansion. I’m not knocking the time and effort that surely went into creating the Minmatar CQ, but new turrets and a dirty room to saunter around do not make for particularly inspiring main features of an expansion. Sure, its free, and I can’t complain about that, but the fact remains; it is distinctly underwhelming.

Add to this the fact that my PSU and GPU run incredibly hot with station environments rendered now – even on the lowest settings – I find myself in two minds about whether to enjoy the shiny view, or not die from the heat the PC case kicks out in protest of the visuals it has to render. Since I sometimes need to run 3 clients at once – admittedly 90% of that time is spent outside of a station – the initial loading those clients up may cause some kind of mini-nuclear meltdown inside my computer.

There’s a lot of people that have turned it off already. I suspect this to be the usual vocal minority forum-goers, but I’m leaning in that direction too. At least til winter when the extra heat will be welcome. If I’m still around then…

Those Are Some Fancy New Boots

I feel that a lot of people (myself included) felt a bit angry about the cost of cosmetic items following the release of Incarna. I really wanted to sidestep this entirely, but:

Micropayment: Transaction in small amounts, costing a few cents to usually less than five dollars, typically involving sale of information on internet. (http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/micropayment.html)

While I would be happy to pay a couple of £ for some really nice items (thus putting the ‘micro’ in ‘micropayment’), dishing out the equivalent cost of a month’s subscription (15 euro (we get billed in euros in the UK for some reason)) for a pair of shoes which you can’t even preview on your own sodding character just isn’t going to happen for me, and I have loads of ISK.

Of course, the counter to this is that they did state fairly frequently their intention to keep a very close eye on the PLEX market following the release of the Noble Exchange. I imagine this includes fluctuation of the prices based on supply/demand. At least I hope so, otherwise I feel really sorry for the artists that worked on the clothing items, because no bugger is going to wear them. That said, I don’t really like the selection we can buy at the moment anyway. Or at least, I don’t think they would suit my characters; I’m not paying that much just to see if they do.

So What’s Going On?

From my perspective, I’m not sure yet. I do plan to do something as a reaction to this, but at the same time, I want to hear some kind of official response before I properly throw my rattle out of the pram. We’ll have to wait and see I guess.

The lack of voice – of any kind – from CCP does have echoes of the t20 fiasco, but at least this time we have reasonable community representatives rather than a corporate-drone-like Keiron that we had back then, who’s responses were so vague and written in legalese that all it did was make the community incredibly angry.

But to answer the original question posed by this entry: Is Eve dying? No. Its already dead. And I fear I’ve been deceived into thinking otherwise for a long time.

Comments for this Post

0 thoughts on “Is Eve Dying?”

  1. Joccaquinn
    23rd Jun '11 at 8:00 pm

    I could laugh at Incarna turning out as one room as really I was never in favour of it. I could laugh at the Noble Exchange prices as I never had any intention of spending anything in there (I already pay a subscription, I’m not paying twice for anything). But the leaked newsletter really felt like a punch in the stomach. Have the volcano’s put some funny gasses in the air over there? are they all permanently high? I am probably one of the biggest Eve fanboys (not CCP fanboy) and I have never taken a break in 8 years but if that newsletter becomes reality it will probably be the end of me.

    • 23rd Jun '11 at 11:11 pm

      I’m hearing similar things from various corners of the community. Not the usual suspects or the typical crybaby responses, but people that have stuck with the game through thick and thin.

  2. Within
    25th Jun '11 at 7:29 am

    CCP CEO Hilmar thinks the player response is “_very predictable feedback_”. So CCP purposely put themselves in this situation. That sounds like a company that has decided it doesn’t need all of its current customers.

    The memo says the company is not interested in what the customers say or think, only actions matter. What I hear is a company CEO saying STFU or leave.
    Do I really need a company, who created a game I like to play, to love or even respect me? Off hand I can’t think of another parallel where it matters. So maybe it is me, it is just time to move on.

    Only I don’t seem to be alone.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *