Sorry

dev blog

Tone and Demeanor

By:
@winterblink

June 27, 2011

The newest Dev Blog from CCP Zulu has some things to say about the recent events in EVE Online…

The tone and demeanor of my blog on Friday did not correctly portray my emotions towards the community and player base at large. I love and respect EVE and its community on a level that’s hard to really do justice in words. However I let my frustration take charge of me, fueled by emotions that had built up due to a breach of trust we at CCP have been experiencing over the past few days. I know that sounds ironic considering those are the exact same feelings you have been having towards CCP.

For that I am sorry.

Having cooled off a bit and taken a solemn look at the situation, I see it’s clear we need to strengthen the deep mutual trust and respect that’s been so unique and descriptive of our relationship. There are certain questions you want answered and there isn’t room for more error in our communication on those topics or our perception of the root causes.

Therefore we have asked the CSM to join us in Iceland for an extraordinary meeting June 30th and July 1st to discuss the events of past week, to help us define and address the real underlying concerns, and to assist us in defining and iterating on our virtual goods strategy.

The result of this meeting should be mutual agreement of how virtual goods and services will evolve in EVE. Other issues may be brought up and we urge you to contact the CSM with your comments and concerns so that they may be addressed at this session.

However, just to prove the point of the Fearless newsletter and give you a further understanding of what it is then there are no and never have been plans to sell “gold ammo” for Aurum. In Fearless people are arguing a point, which doesn’t even have to be their view, they are debating an issue. This is another example of how information out of context is no information at all.

Due to the volatility of the topic we want to refrain from any further comments on this matter until after meeting with the CSM.

Thank you for your patience,

Arnar Hrafn Gylfason

Senior Producer of EVE Online

You know what, lets try something different… lets word cloud this thing and see what we get.

Yep, that’s what I thought… words.  To be honest I don’t know if this says much other than there being a distinct focus on the future. If one were so inclined, one could whittle the whole blog down to “lets just forget about that stuff and move forward”. Honestly that might not be such a bad idea… if EVE Online was similar to World of Warcraft in its complexities.

But it’s not.

I have to tip the hat to Zulu for apologizing, and chasing after getting a CSM meeting going on such short notice. Based on comments I’ve seen around the interwebz, I think the CSM have the greater community’s needs in mind and can represent them effectively.

I am concerned about the openness of the meeting, and others have indicated this in forum posts about this. Non-disclosure agreements are frequently employed in situations where exposing strategic business directions could compromise that business. Sorry to say it folks, but this is obviously going to be one of those cases, so don’t expect a live webcast of the meetings to occur. I imagine we’ll get a somewhat informative statement from CCP about it, and some incredibly informative stuff from CSM.

We know there were no plans to do microtransactions in EVE before. That didn’t mean there wouldn’t be in the future, so the same applies to the “gold ammo” concept. The fact that the idea is prevalent enough in CCP to be discussed and not whacked with a mallet like a mole from upper management strikes me that we’re one or two design team reshufflings away from seeing gold ammo in EVE.

Four things are true:

  • CCP is a business
  • Microtransactions = $$$
  • Businesses <3 $$$
  • Players of other games have shown it’s a model that works well for companies that employ the concept.

I don’t expect the concept to go away anytime soon, but I would expect is for CCP to come back down to planet Earth for a few minutes and be made to understand that just because a shirt costs $20 in real life does not mean we should have to pay that for an e-shirt.

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  • Adam

    I couldn’t agree more. They really need to look at their prices if they want to apply a MT store to a subscription game on top. The word Micro should be just that. Prestigious items that cost a leg and arm should have come much later on in the expansion. Certainly not buying a e-shirt for the same I would a real one.

  • Belloche

    You got most of it right right except that EVE is currently a SUBSCRIPTION service model. It is not a free to play model where gold ammo is sold. If EVE were a free to play model then the argument would be moot because then that is acceptable. Gold ammo would destroy the game so the players demand to know that it is forever off the table. Vanity items, meh, gold ammo, no. The way CCP has handled the past days it SEEMS that gold ammo is coming. Why else would it take them SO long to say “No, its not coming” If they has said that, there would be no problem now. But they haven’t said that and they seem to be stalling which does not portend good omens.

  • Kwambus

    Nice post Winter, I re-subbed only a couple of months ago and as you know I have been coming and going since 2004. I was looking forward to seeing what WiS was all about. To be honest it was a complete mess.

    1. There is no point to it at the moment – What is the point honestly? The interface is the same but takes you longer to get to anything. Oh wait there is a mirror! and in that mirror you can buy things… CCP put the cart *before* the horse here and Eve players are pretty smart people generally. Not the type to be suckered; this was ultimately an insult to the player base at large.

    2. Don’t know where to start here, how long has WiS been in production? 4 or 5 years? and we get a room with a badly animated character using a control scheme from the 8 bit era walking at a speed where you really can’t be arsed moving around for more than a few minutes. It gets old fast.

    Overall I think it was badly implemented, badly thought out and badly presented. What fears me most is nobody in CCP had the balls to say ‘this is crap’, or if they did they got ignored (possibly even worse).

    I cancelled my sub again… shame really there is a lot to like about Eve but there is also a lot to be concerned about regarding direction of production.

    Hope your well mate.

  • Chromatix

    Let me make another analogy.

    In OO scale, a locomotive with digital control and sound costs about £250. Carriages cost £20-40 each, and similarly for wagons. Track costs about £25 for two straight pieces, two curved pieces, and two sets of points totalling about a metre in length – building a complete tabletop layout will cost hundreds. The cheapest controller – without which the train will not move – is £100.

    Yet mosey over to Steam and you can buy and download a simulator for £30 which includes multiple locomotives, a reasonable range of carriages and wagons, several routes of about 80 miles each, and you can drive them all around. For £20 or less apiece you can buy more locomotives, wagons and routes as DLC – and you get to use them as many times as you want, so for that £20 you can have several long trains of wagons all trundling about. Usually they even come as sets for that price.

    Even so, both of these business models seem to still be doing perfectly well for themselves – which suggests that OO-scale modellers value the idea of having a tangible railway in their loft enough to pay those much higher prices.

  • SHADOWVOX

    Good point well made Blinky. If you ever run for CSM… you would have my vote sir.