WIRED: EVE ONLINE: APOCRYPHA LURES NEW PLAYERS INTO HARSH, CRUEL VIRTUAL UNIVERSE

There’s a new massively multiplayer online RPG on store shelves this week: EVE Online Apocrypha.

Well, it’s not technically new. EVE Online has been running since 2003. But with the expansion pack released Tuesday, the MMORPG will experience an inevitable influx of new players. How will the gamemaker introduce them into a complex world that’s been explored by loyal veterans for nearly six years?

Since its launch, EVE Online has earned a reputation for being dull, with a steep learning curve that has so far scared off all but the most patient gamers — and stubborn griefers. Apocrypha could change all that with its “new player experience,” which is designed to give guidance to fledgling space pilots and empower them with new mechanics designed to take some of the edge off the game’s tantalizingly cruel universe.

“Hopefully it’s a lot easier for [new players] to just get up to speed without feeling like they’re slogging through a mountain of manuals,” says the game’s lead designer Noah Ward. “It’s more of a crash course than a three-hour tour.”

EVE Online is appealing because it is a far cry from the typical MMORPG. In a game like World of Warcraft, a player improves his character by increasing physical attributes like strength or intellect. It doesn’t take many leaps of logic to understand which attribute would be best for a warrior versus a mage. Kill enemies, and you’ll gain experience points and levels, allowing you to improve your base attribute and grind your way toward the game’s tougher content.

But in EVE Online there are no classes, and your character’s abilities are determined by a combination of skills, the spaceship you’re flying, and where your own interests lie. The same battleship might serve with equal effectiveness as a hulking war machine, a support craft for repairing allies or even a humble mining vessel — provided you’ve trained the right skills and packed the right equipment for the given job. Skills are trained in real-time even if you’re not logged in, so players with busy schedules can still make progress.

But if you’d like to fly that shiny new cruiser or upgrade its guns, be prepared to wait. Attributes determine how quickly your character accumulates skill points, and choosing the “wrong” attributes at the start will seriously disadvantage new players.

One of EVE Online’s problems was that neophytes had to choose these important character attributes with no information about why they should pick them.

“They really had no business making those choices,” Ward explains. “Spaceship Command IV? Gunnery IV? Is IV good?”

Players who hadn’t done their homework were likely to create a character whose skill set was at odds with their play style. If, for example, a player was interested in fleet warfare, but happened to create a character that excelled at manufacturing or trading, he would face a long wait before he got to play the game as he intended.

In Apocrypha, a revamped tutorial will familiarize players with basic stellar navigation, mining, trade and the nuances of EVE’s complex combat system. That’s Ward’s “crash course.” The three-hour tour comes later, in the form of an Epic Mission Arc. This new quest for rookies spans the game’s massive universe, introducing them to the various factions that populate EVE while testing the lessons they learned in the tutorial.

A skill queue has been implemented, so players are now able to schedule a limited number of skills to train in succession — no more getting up at four in the morning to start a new skill. And Apocrypha also adds the ability to reassign a character’s attribute points once a year, so players young and old who have rethought their personal goals aren’t completely out of luck.

As a gamers’ stimulus package, new players will train their first million skill points twice as fast as normal players. With faster training times, rookies will be able to access a wider variety of equipment sooner, allowing them to quickly get out and contribute to one of EVE’s player-run corporations — or just shoot at other players a bit more effectively.

In the past, skill points were hand-picked by the game’s designers. Rookies might not have understood what a particular skill did, but it was likely there for a reason. Players now have full reign over their characters, but those who haven’t paid attention to the tutorial are likely to make costly mistakes.

“It gives them more control, but it also gives them the ability to screw up,” says Ward.

Of course, costly mistakes are fundamental to the EVE Online experience. EVE remains an unforgiving place. It is notorious for including nonconsensual player-versus-player combat. Rookie pilots are still likely to be ambushed by unscrupulous veterans.

Speaking of veterans, the Apocrypha expansion also adds loads of new content for older players to come to grips with — from modular, customizable strategic cruisers to wormholes and the intelligent, brutally difficult sleeper drones that now lurk within new, uncharted solar systems.

There are new challenges, and the learning curve remains steep, but the barrier to entry has plummeted. If you’re at all interested in MMOs, and don’t mind putting on your thinking cap from time to time, you’ve officially run out of reasons to avoid trying EVE Online.

Images courtesy CCP

IGN: A LOOK AT EVE ONLINE’S APOCRYPHA EXPANSION

With nearly 300,000 users and a single game world for the whole base, CCP’s EVE Online stands out in the MMOG space. The game recently reached its highest peak concurrent users ever at 51,675, which represents the number of players simultaneously logged into the game. So how has CCP managed to grow since the game was launched in 2003? Considering all the players log into the same universe and that a majority of the gameplay is player-driven, EVE’s world has a different kind of flavor than many of its competitors that require users interact repeatedly with scripted content. Those who dive into EVE can eventually join up by the game’s sizable, player-run corporations that own vast tracts of space to battle for additional assets, engage in subterfuge within the game and on message boards to nab enemy intelligence and dramatically alter the make-up and organization of the world, and grapple with an ever-changing marketplace.

CCP has regularly released new content geared toward both seasoned players and new ones since launch. The next expansion, Apocrypha, which as of today should be appearing in stores as a new retail box and delivered free to any current subscriber, comes with a number of features. If you’ve never tried out EVE, then the added “new player experience” would probably be of interest to you. Lead designer Noah Ward told us the way new players get into the game has been streamlined in an effort to better ease them in. Now you won’t have to deal with as many character-building decisions up-front, many of which previously required research and understanding of the game, which, if you’re new, you don’t have. With Apocrypha, these kinds of choices are embedded further into the creation process so you’ll have a better base of knowledge.

The character development system is also being given more flexibility, allowing for redistributions of attributes if you want to switch things up. Skill development has been made more convenient, as CCP has added a 24-hour skill queue. Of course if you’re a new player that probably doesn’t mean much of anything to you, so here’s how it works in EVE. To get new skills in the game, you trigger them to start training, which will take a certain amount of time to finish and proceeds in real-time whether you’re online or off. After one skill is finished training, you start up another, and so on. The 24-hour queue allows people to string together multiple skills, meaning if you’re trying to be as efficient as possible with upgrades, you won’t have to log on at odd hours of the day or night to start up the next training process. The reason this queue is limited to 24-hours is because CCP didn’t want to create a queuing system that allowed people to queue up a year’s worth of skill training then walk away from the game until everything was finished. With the setup in Apocrypha, CCP feels it’s just the right amount of time to keep players active while introducing an element of convenience.

After you take your first steps into EVE, you’re bound to be overwhelmed by the size of it all and the apparent lack of structure, so CCP is building in more player-versus-environment quest arcs to offer more structure. While before there were simple missions, Apocrypha’s epic quest arcs can branch and, according to CCP, incorporate more storylines and reward structures. Sometimes these will lead to totally new space, like the unstable wormholes that the expansion is adding to EVE’s already sizable universe of 5,000 solar systems. These wormholes will pop up randomly, and can be detected using a new scanning mechanic. Once accessed, they open up spaces to discover new enemies and technologies. Just as randomly as the wormholes appear, they can also disappear, adding a whole new kind of dynamic element to trade routes and lines of assault within New Eden.

Often while traversing this wormhole space it seems you’ll run into an ancient race known as the Sleepers. By pummeling and snatching components from their vessels, seasoned players will unlock the options to construct Tech 3 strategic cruisers. These highly customizable ships can be fitted in myriad ways, and with different subsystem configurations the overall look of the ship will change, adding more of a sense of variety and individuality to the world.

If any of this sounds interesting to you, then by all means give it a shot. It’s certainly a game that represents a change of pace from the standard fantasy MMOG, with an emphasis on social support and networking, and the sharp visuals are certainly appealing.

BIG DOWNLOAD: FIRST LOOK: EVE ONLINE: APOCRYPHA

CCP’s EVE Online is a spacefaring MMO held in reverence by its players, and a certain amount of respect/fear by those who haven’t played it. One thing that both groups seem to agree on is that EVE isn’t something to be taken lightly. Word of its complexity has spread among those who don’t generally play MMOs, and even the game’s developers sometimes refer to the learning curve as more of a Learning Cliff, which tempts the unwary with promises of gameplay riches, only to dash them to the rocks below.

With that in mind, we were hoping that our recent interview with Noah “Hammerhead” Ward, Lead Game Designer for EVE Online, would provide some clarification. Is EVE as hard as everyone says? How can new players manage the overwhelming number of features? What can players look forward to in the upcoming expansion, Apocrypha? What follows is all the information we could extract from Mr. Ward, gotten in much the same way as one might extract ore from an asteroid. See? You’re learning already!

Apocrypha is the name of the newest expansion pack due for release on March 10th, on both CCP’s site and on popular digital download service Steam. And for the first time in a long time, EVE Online will be available as a boxed product, to be found in retail stores, starting in the US on the 10th and everywhere else on March 12th. From the sound of it, CCP has crafted something that will please players who complain that EVE‘s cosmos is, for all of its seeming empty space, nevertheless contained and crowded. The way this will come about is by the introduction of wormholes, portals to new, uncharted territory. Players will have to use their probes to scan areas of space they suspect might contain a wormhole. These wormholes will be somewhat graphics-coded per risk level, so players will know on sight whether or not it’s for them. And interestingly, none of the wormholes will be instances, meaning that it’s possible for other players to enter the same space you occupy, if they’ve scanned and found the same wormhole as you have.

Players will find that Wormhole Space (WS) contains more than just a new area to explore — there’s also a new race to discover. Known as “The Sleepers”, this mysterious race has entered hibernation, and protects itself from meddling with a system of drones of varying abilities. Players will find that these drones are noticeably different in structure than anything they’ve experienced up to this point in EVE Online. For one thing, they have a very sleek, insectoid look to them that makes them seem menacing, even at rest. For another thing, they’re very protective of their resting charges; to the point where they’ll attack anything that comes near. And once they do, players will discover that CCP has outfitted these ships with a new type of AI — one that behaves quite differently than the other NPC ships they’ve encountered in the past.

Sleeper drones are smart enough to recognize which attackers carry the greatest threat, and will switch targets to acommodate. Rather than, say, typical pirate behavior, in which enemies simply orbit a player ship and keep attacking until destroyed, Sleeper ships will actually call for reinforcements and retreat when they have to. They’ll even “heal” each other when needed, making them much more dangerous adversaries for even the staunchest combat-ready veterans. Sleeper ships will also deal different types of damage, requiring that players have a flexible strategy in place that can be updated on the fly (so to speak).

Add to this the WS environment itself, which will affect player ships in different ways, much like — and please forgive the geek-out factor, here — the way that Kirk and Khan’s ships were affected by the nebula in Wrath of Khan. No telling exactly what the effects will be at this point, but be advised: WS ain’t your old backyard.

What’s in it for the player who manages to win through and claim victory over the Sleepers? Tech 3! Longstanding players of EVE Online will rejoice at the addition of the new Tech 3 level of technology, which can only be harvested from Sleeper ships and structures. Of course, it’s not quite as easy as simply picking up components and attaching them to one’s ship. Tech 3 parts must be taken back to a starbase or player outpost, and reverse-engineered to gain their benefits. This is a new skill that must be researched before it can be used. After that, however, players will find that Tech 3 items are modular and offer a variety of uses — which we’ll leave to the players to discover.

There are also new graphical updates in Apocrypha, including a new particle system, shadows cast on ships (which may not sound like a big deal, but really looks great when you see it), and a new ‘warp in’ effect for ships. And they’ve not stopped there: citing CCP’s desire to constantly upgrade the New User Experience, there will be new introductory movies per race, that explain in better detail how each race differs from the next. The ship fitting system will also receive an update, featuring immediate visual feedback on what the ship will look like after changes have been made.

EVE Online will also change the way that players have previously been forced to make certain advanced choices right out of the gate, feeling that this has served only to confuse new players at the outset. Helping in this will be the new skill called “Neural Remapping”, which allows players to queue up a list of skills for their character to learn while not actively playing, limited by a 24-hour window of time. There will also be new Epic Arc missions, which will be less linear and offering more of a branching of possible storyline avenues. Both of these changes should help ease the sometimes rigid-feeling structure of EVE Online, and make the entire experience more user-friendly.

EVE Online: Apocrypha is available tomorrow in two flavors: Premium, and Premium Lite, which will be less graphically intensive for players with lower-level systems. Those of you new to the universe of EVE Online will find a great deal of incredible content to sink your teeth into. Those of you who already play can look forward to yet another amazing update to the game you already know and love in Apocrypha. Go get it now — your ship awaits.

MASSIVELY: EVE ONLINE DEVELOPER NOAH WARD ON PLAYER DRAMA IN THE SANDBOX

There’s been no shortage of player-driven drama in EVE Online over the past few months. The things players can do within the game is a testament to EVE‘s sandbox design, but also to the developers who allow the players accomplish whatever their devious little hearts desire. It’s true that most who play the game don’t embezzle virtual currency from player-run banks, engage in spycraft or turn double agent, much less publicly assassinate another player during a PvP tournament, but all players in the game benefit from the risk these activities inject into the game. It all becomes part of the game’s setting and ultimately makes New Eden a gritter place.

This is a topic of discussion over at MTV Multiplayer this week. EVE Online‘s lead game designer Noah Ward (aka CCP Hammerhead) sat down with MTV Multiplayer’s Tracey John, to discuss some of the potential within the EVE sandbox. The interview focuses on CCP Games‘ hands-off approach to what the players are doing in the game. As long as players aren’t spouting racial epithets or making real-life threats against one another, EVE‘s gamers can basically do whatever they choose on an individual or collective level.

Many people first heard about EVE through some of the infamous things written about the game, most notably The Great Scam (largely fictitious) and Murder Incorporated (quite real), which chronicles the Guiding Hand Social Club‘s in-game assassination of a player, nearly one year in the making. It’s exactly this kind of unpredictability about EVE that’s a large part of the game’s allure, and it even catches the developers by surprise. Ward says, “We could’ve never scripted that; you would never be able to come up with something like that. It’s what the people like, they have this freedom and that’s why this stuff is happening.”

Check out the MTV Multiplayer interview with Noah Ward for a closer look at the game’s player-driven drama and CCP’s perspective on it all.

KOTAKU: EVE ONLINE SCANDALS ARE GOOD FOR BUSINESS

Massively-multiplayer game EVE Online has had its fair share of scandals and controversies. That’s what happens when you let the gamers run themselves. But they’ve hardly been a deterrent to subscriptions.

Speaking with MTV, Noah Ward, from developers CCP, reveals that after the latest user-induced meltdown to hit the game – in the form of the disbandment of the largest player alliance via treachery - people didn’t really seem to mind. Prepared for a backlash of users leaving the game in their droves, Ward & CCP actually found that:

The largest alliance in the game was broken up by a trader on the inside and when this happened we were really worried at first because we were like, “Oh no! Everyone’s going to quit!” And it was really horrible for us.

That was in the morning, but a couple hours later the buzz on the forums was crazy, subscriber numbers were growing, and everybody was really excited. Because everyone was becoming complacent and bored with being the biggest alliance, and then all of a sudden now there’s war and turmoil. People who used to be in the alliance were re-subscribing and everyone was really excited about it so it’s not necessarily always a bad thing when this sort of stuff happens.

Gotta say, despite MMOs as a whole never really grabbing my attention, it’s this kind of thing that has me leaning towards giving EVE a good, hard look. You just don’t find that kind of real-world intrigue in other games.

‘EVE Online’ Designer: Players Actually Like In-Game Scandals, Corruption [MTV]

THE ESCAPIST: EVE PLAYERS LIKE SCANDALS AND CORRUPTION

With scandals and cut-throat treachery the rule rather than the exception, the dog-eat-dog world of EVE Online isn’t quite for the faint of heart. But according to Noah Ward, one of the game’s developers, that’s exactly what the game’s players love about it.

The futuristic world of EVE Online is not a friendly place. Why, just last month, one of the top executives of the biggest in-game alliance went turncoat, defecting to the enemy and dissolving the alliance for good. Before that, it was a cabal of approximately 70 players exploiting a bug to harvest entirely more raw materials than they were supposed to, affecting the in-game economy of more than two hundred thousand people.

Despite all of the uncertainty, lead designer Noah Ward told MTV Multiplayer, gamers weren’t being turned away from the turbulent universe of EVE, as the developers at CCP had feared. In fact, they saw quite the opposite:

That was in the morning, but a couple hours later the buzz on the forums was crazy, subscriber numbers were growing, and everybody was really excited. Because everyone was becoming complacent and bored with being the biggest alliance, and then all of a sudden now there’s war and turmoil. People who used to be in the alliance were re-subscribing and everyone was really excited about it so it’s not necessarily always a bad thing when this sort of stuff happens. Somebody on the other side was interviewed, and he was saying “When you beat the biggest raid in WoW you don’t get an interview in The New York Times but when this sort of thing happens it makes real-world news.

Nor does the dev team intend to step in and put a stop to it – after all, the extent to which EVE is player-run is in fact one of the game’s main draws: “We let them do their own thing. We will step in if there are racial slurs going on or any real-world threats, but if it’s all within the role-play and within the game, we don’t change anything.”

MTV Multiplayer’s Tracey John goes on to ask Ward whether or not he thinks that other MMOs should follow suit and try to be like EVE. Me, I’m torn. On the one hand, the stuff that goes down in EVE is completely awesome, but it only really works because it’s the game that it is – the only other way another MMO could have the same kind of interactions is … well, if it was EVE. Sometimes you’re in the mood for an EVE, sometimes you’re in the mood for a WoW, or a LotRO, or a WAR. Let EVE stay the unique gem that it is.

MASSIVELY: EVE EVOLVED: APOCRYPHA EXPANSION PREVIEW

As March 10th draws ever closer, EVE Online‘s Apocrypha expansion is coming more and more into focus. Information on the new game mechanics and content is being released in the form of developer blogs and the official expansion page complete with screenshots and artwork is already up. Most importantly, a test version of the expansion is live on Singularity, EVE‘s main test server. Like any good journalist, I took my camera crew onto the test server to get some pictures of Apocrypha in action. What I found blew me away, literally.

In this gallery article, I take a visual sneak peak at parts of the impressive new Apocrypha expansion with a whopping 37 screenshots. In each screenshot, I talk about all of the new additions to the game.

MASSIVELY: NEW EVE ONLINE CHARACTERS WILL INITIALLY TRAIN SKILLS TWICE AS FAST IN APOCRYPHA

Massively recently mentioned a few of the changes coming to EVE Online through the New Player Experience, part of the Apocrypha expansion which rolls out next month. Of particular interest, or concern, to some EVE players is CCP’s decision to reduce a starting character’s skillpoints to 50k from the current 800k many existing characters began with. CCP Games apparently hopes to clarify this decision, and thus stave off any torches and pitchforks, with today’s dev blog. EVE developer CCP Flatboy writes,“In Apocrypha, new characters train at double speed until they reach 1.6 Million SkillPoints. That is all.”The reason that new characters will get this boosted skill training rate is to compensate for the fact that, for simplicity’s sake, new characters will begin with less skills. The New Player Experience is all about reducing the complexity that someone just starting out can find themself mired in, and having more control over how the character develops.

CCP Flatboy estimates that an Apocrypha character would catch up with one made with the current system in about six weeks, and this is without learning skills or implants to accelerate that window. He writes, “The main point here is that this will increase a new player’s understanding of his skills. Today it’s near impossible to remember all these skills one starts with and how they work. But if you start with less and get most of the skills while experimenting to find your own path, learning about your skills becomes much more enjoyable and you become efficient and useful sooner than otherwise possible.” The players are weighing the pros and cons of this system in a forum thread connected with CCP Flatboy’s dev blog “A Virgin Mind“.

MTV MULTIPLAYER: MMO DEVELOPERS SHARE THEIR NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS

We asked several MMO makers — Funcom, Mythic, Turbine and more — about what they’re planning to do to keep their virtual worlds up and running for players in 2009.

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Sure, we journalists and gamers have made resolutions for what we’d like to see the gaming industry accomplish in 2009. But what do the developers have to say for themselves? Read on for the goals of those working on “Age of Conan,” “City of Heroes,” “EVE Online,” “Lord of the Rings Online” and “Warhammer Online,” and see how they’re aiming to keep us entertained this year.

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AGE OF CONAN (Funcom)

Craig Morrison, game director:

- A true Hyborian warrior doesn’t make resolutions, resolutions are for the weak, a Hyborian’s goals are always met! Or they will die trying!

- Our resolution this year is to ensure that we are responsible for even more decapitations (preferably stylish ones achieved at the end of glorious and bloody battles with our foes) than ever before!

- Our resolution is to entice even more brave souls to the brutal and thrilling world of King Conan. We can’t vouch for your safety, decapitations are a fact of life in Hyboria (the best you can hope is that it’s your foes head and not yours that flies) but rewards torn from the bodies of decapitated foes are always much more rewarding.

On a more serious note…

- In the year ahead we aim to continue to focus on the areas of the game that we feel will bring the Hyborian experience to eaven greater life. There are really two main areas that we will be concentrating on for 2009. Firstly, we will of course continue to add great new areas, dungeons, content and quests for players to enjoy, in particular focusing on the higher level areas.

- Secondly we are working a lot on developing the character and community elements of the game, this means you will see a new focus on character progression through better use of character statistics and items in the game and then later in the year a lot more focus on guild functionality and options for guild development.

- In addition we are already underway on the first expansion to “Age of Conan” and there will be more details on that throughout the course of 2009!

- Most of all we are looking forwards to providing as much fun and enjoyment as we can for the brave souls who dare to explore the brutal and deadly world of Hyboria in 2009.

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CITY OF HEROES (NCsoft)

Matt Miller, senior lead designer:

- To prove to the MMO world that we are the #1 superhero MMO, not because we are the ONLY one, but because we are the BEST one.

- To allow our players to customize their character in ways that have not been possible before.

- To allow our players to make their own missions and story arcs, and have the world play and rate them (Mission Architect).

- To continue upon the improvements we’ve made to the game as a whole in 2008, adding more cool stuff for our players to do.

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LORD OF THE RINGS ONLINE (Turbine)

Jeffrey Steefel, executive producer:

- Do everything we can to broaden the reach of “LOTRO” and introduce even more people to this wonderful game.

- Provide much tighter integration between the game and the web to add visibility and reward to players’ activities.

- Continue to lead the industry in game quality and innovation with places like Moria and features like Legendary Items.

Michael Jablonn, lead producer:

2008 was a crazy yet amazing and fulfilling year for both “LOTRO” and our development team. With that in mind my resolutions for the game, the team and myself are:

- Continue to put out high quality product frequently and efficiently.

- Continue to build and foster the amazing team we have.

- Stop and smell the roses a bit more often!

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WARHAMMER ONLINE (EA Mythic)

Josh Drescher, associate producer:

- To visit all of the places where “WAR” is being played that I DIDN’T visit last year. I’m looking at YOU, Italy and Spain.

Paul Barnett, creative director:

- To make good on our promises — by which we mean that we’re going to bring more “WAR” to more people more often, all over the world.

Jeff Hickman, senior producer:

- To get a track from my band — The Hamtouchers — onto “Rock Band 2.” [Note: The Hamtouchers are an in-house Mythic band who perform "WAR"-related songs.]

Mark Jacobs, lead designer:

- Now that winter break is done, to get the sand out of my boots, wait for the sunburn to heal and help set the stage for the next great “WAR” event.

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EVE ONLINE (CCP)

Noah “Hammerhead” Ward, lead designer:

The entirety of CCP is laser-focused on “EVE Online.” After the massive improvements in our hardware and software infrastructure made in our free November expansion, “EVE Online: Quantum Rise,” we’ve really set the stage for some killer changes that take full advantage of our systems. Now we’re pushing into a new year with a production schedule that goes to eleven. That means that we’ll come out with our next major expansion earlier than tradition dictates, by about three months. “EVE Online: Apocrypha” will be one of the biggest free expansions to date (we’ve had nine previous), and it brings a whole host of new features that include wormholes that lead to mysterious new space, epic mission arcs from NPC agents, profitable ancient technology to integrate into ship design and a refocus on the New Player Experience. That final bit will be crucial when we appear in stores around the world as a boxed copy through distribution via Atari.

In addition to box retail, we’ll be entirely revamping the New Player Experience to help ease players into New Eden. We’ve added the collaborative knowledge-base that is EVElopedia, our wiki and historical archive. In “Quantum Rise” we added the certificate system, which is a great tool for players to use to determine what skills and paths they should focus on to reach their goals. We’re also upgrading from Classic to Premium Graphics for Mac, so Mac users can enjoy the cinematic beauty of our visuals the way they were envisioned.

The biggest prong in our multi-pronged approach in 2009 will definitely be the ability for players to walk around inside of space stations. We’ve had countless people interested in playing “EVE” try it only to leave after they found out they didn’t have a full body avatar. We’re really excited to walk around in stations and there are a lot of people out there who share that excitement. That’s not to say with the move to walking in stations we’re going to lose focus on important things like blowing up space ships. Quite the contrary. The core of the “EVE” [intellectual property] will always be about creating the deepest sci-fi simulation we can and big explosions are the cornerstone of that experience.

The primary thing we’re looking to change in 2009 is in the mechanics of the high end gameplay. This was a heated topic at Fan Fest (our annual player gathering) and was also brought up by the CSM (our democratically elected council of players). Everyone agrees that the current system is limited and should be much more layered and dynamic. In a nutshell, the current system has player alliances setting up control towers at moons to claim sovereignty over a solar system. Opposing alliances try to destroy those towers. Our plans aren’t quite finalized yet, but the new system should offer diverse ways for players to influence the sovereignty of a system and claim territory. In turn the system would give everyone more options to cause their enemies pain. I’m really looking forward to these changes because they are going to vastly improve the end game and they are long overdue.

Throughout the year we’ll be continuing our server and hardware upgrades in a never-ending mission to increase performance. Graphic upgrades are also on the horizon as we finish making a gorgeous game into something that will drop your jaw to the floor.

After March, we’ve got designs we hinted at during this year’s Fanfest, which will not fail to disappoint. It might be time to finally leave the comfort of your pod and stretch your legs a bit.

So far we’ve made our fair share of game design decisions (and subsequent programming ones) that have set us apart from the rest of the MMO landscape. From the single shard world to the sci-fi setting and from the death penalty to the skill training system, we’ve always done things a bit differently and it has served us well. We hope that the MMO landscape grows as a video game genre and even as its own form of entertainment. MMOs are such a tremendous value for money that can also bring truly meaningful accomplishments and relationships to their players. Sure, it’s quite a task to create an MMO and help it through its “infancy,” but the rewards are so great that we can’t imagine competition won’t continue to arise. We’ve weathered the storm of shiny new MMOs being launched before, and I expect the relaunch of “EVE” in the retail space to really help us thrive in 2009.

I predict that in 2009 we will finally see the day where there are more “EVE” subscribers than Icelandic citizens. There will be more “pew pew” than ever before.

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MMO players, what do you think of the developers’ resolutions? And what hopes do you have for these games?

PC WORLD: EVE ONLINE, THE WORLD’S FIRST VIRTUAL DEMOCRACY?

I’m overdue for a second visit to CCP’s EVE Online, a massively multiplayer space simulation that’s undergone epic changes since its troubled inception back in 2003. What started as a riff on David Braben’s sandbox space-trading game Elite has morphed into a universe of grandly clashing fleets and postmortem piracy, of elliptical economics and fascinatingly factionalized corporations. Agents hawk missions and proffer manufacturing or research services for a price, while players scan security indices before leaping into lawless space where freedom is fluid and region-specific rules are enforced by player-run alliances.

And occasionally — twice, so far — players actually gather to cast votes to elect nine representatives to the game’s Council of Stellar Management.

Of the latter, the BBC writes

Iceland is one of the world’s original democracies – its parliament, the Althing, is the oldest one still in use. So it is perhaps no surprise that the game world of EVE Online, developed in Iceland, has become the world’s first virtual democracy.

The Council’s no gimmick. CCP literally brings the council members to Iceland, its home base and development stable, for two weeks, to meet and debate. The result of those debates? Alterations to the game’s mechanics, derived from their input.

How cool is that?

EVE Online’s fledgling “democracy” emerged from a scandal last year involving one of the game’s developers, who used his status to inappropriately aid some of his in-game pals. Players understandably revolted. How to know other scandals weren’t looming? Or that something like it wouldn’t happen again?

Easy: Lock down the system, then make the players themselves (or representatives for the player base) responsible for analyzing and vetting the game’s rules.

Too bad there’s no way to export EVE Online’s results to that other persistent-universe game everyone’s talking about. You know, the one called “Wall Street.”