Today has been a day that will live in stupidity. I’m a fairly positive person about things, as those of you who listen to the podcasts can probably attest to, but even I can’t help but be a bit speechless when seeing the events of the last day unfold. The sheer mind-blowingness of the whole thing is force multiplied by a factor of a million monocoles when one keeps in mind who are the ones responsible for it all. Lets look at what happened.

It started out with this un-stickied thread by CCP Pann, which grew into a threadnought of biblical proportions almost instantaneously:

Hi, everyone

Some of you who have been around for a while may remember me. I was the original community manager for EVE. These days, I oversee the PR and Community teams. While most of what I do happens behind the curtains, I am still aware of what’s going on front and center. I would be lying if I said that what’s happening now didn’t make me sad, but I’m not here to ask for your sympathy. To be perfectly honest, I’m here to buy time while we try to sort things out. No sense in lying about it so I’ll call a spade a spade.

It’s clear that many of you are <understatement alert> angry </alert>. There’s a lot happening, things are changing quickly and we haven’t been as forthcoming as you were used to in the past. I’m willing to step out front and take a lot of heat for that since I was the one who made the decision to hold off on responding for a while to see if things cooled down once the new wore off.

I was wrong to do that and I apologize. We should have said something much sooner. We should have done more to address your concerns and be forthcoming, even if we weren’t going to be able to immediately give you all of the answers you were looking for or the answer your questions in ways that will instantly turn those frowns upside down. To be even more candid, I cannot answer all of your questions, either, but I am working with the people who can to start getting those answers for you. Again, I know we’re doing this past the expiration date of your patience but I hope you’ll bear with me.

I know that, with very few exceptions, most of you don’t know me from Adam. I haven’t earned your trust or respect; therefore I have no right to ask anything of you – but I am going to try, anyway. Can I please count on at least some of you to help bring the pitchforks and torches down a few notches?

Like I said, I won’t be able to answer all of your questions tonight, but I promise we’ll start getting some info out tomorrow. As I see it, the chief complaint is regarding the high cost of goods in the Noble Market. Second, many people are unhappy about the Captain’s Quarters. Third, there are some performance issues with Incarna. I would appreciate it if you would confirm my observations or tell me what I’m missing, but I do ask that you do it in a productive way. I will remove posts without prejudice if they are counterproductive to the conversation I hope to have with you.

If you’ve read this much, thanks for staying with me. If you have something to say, I’d like very much to hear it.

Humbly yours,
~P~

Later that day, probably due to the writeup needing to run through the spanking machine of CCP’s communications and PR departments, we get this bit of damage control. No wait, that’s not it…  it’s just more uncontrolled damage:

Dear concerned citizens of New Eden

This week has seen quite a controversy unfold. In almost the same instant as we deployed Incarna – which by the way is one of our more smooth and successful expansions, not to mention absolutely gorgeous – an internal newsletter with rather controversial topics addressed leaked out. To further compound the confusion there was a clear and rather large gap in virtual goods pricing expectation and reality with a large segment of the community. I‘m going to address both these issues right here.

Fearless

Fearless is one of our company values. It‘s also the name of an internal newsletter that has been designed and developed specifically to catalyze discussions on controversial topics. One of the biggest elephants in the room these days, not just for EVE but for the gaming industry as a whole, is virtual goods sales and microtransactions.

Therefore we dedicated an entire issue to exactly that topic. It‘s worth mentioning that the topic of the issue was “Greed is good?” as a way to ask a question that would then be debated back and forth and often exaggerated purposefully to draw contrasts and make points. The result of that is now widely available on the internet.

The opinions and views expressed in Fearless are just that; opinions and views. They are not CCP policy nor are they a reliable source of CCP views as a company. The employees who submitted articles to that newsletter did exactly what they were asked to do, write about theories and opinions from an exaggerated stand.

While it‘s perfectly fine to disagree and attack CCP over policies or actions we take, we think it‘s not cool how individuals that work here have been called out and dragged through the mud due to something they wrote in the internal company newsletter. Seriously, these people were doing their jobs and do not deserve the hate and shitstorm being pointed at them.

Pricing structure

People have been shocked by the price range in the NeX store, but you should remember that we are talking about clothes. Look at the clothes you are currently wearing in real life. Do you have any specific brands? Did you choose it because it was better quality than a no-name brand? Assume for a short while that you are wearing a pair of $1,000 jeans from some exclusive Japanese boutique shop. Why would you want to wear a pair of $1,000 jeans when you can get perfectly similar jeans for under $50? What do other people think about you when they see you wearing them? For some you will look like the sad culmination of vainness while others will admire you and think you are the coolest thing since sliced bread. Whichever it is, it is clear that by wearing clothes you are expressing yourself and that the price is one of the many dimensions that clothes possess to do that in addition to style and fit. You don’t need to buy expensive clothes. In fact you don’t need to buy any clothes. Whatever you choose to do reflects what you are and what you want others to think you are.

We will gradually introduce items at other price points, definitely lower and probably higher than what‘s in the store today. We hope you enjoy them and are as passionate about them as you are of the current items that are for sale.

I hope I‘ve addressed your concerns and cleared up a lot of the issues you‘re having. We‘ll continue monitoring the forums and other communications channels and pick up and reply if there are concerns not covered by this blog.

Thanks,

Arnar Hrafn Gylfason

Senior Producer of EVE Online

And now the finale, delivered by none other than Hilmar himself, proving once again that community destroying business development tactics always come in threes:

Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2011 18:16:54 -0400
To: riverini@gmail.com
Subject: ccp ceo global msg sent today
From: evewatch@hush.com
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=.UTF-8.
Message-Id: <20110623221654.CF1E76F438@smtp.hushmail.com>

sent by hilmar to ccp global list-

(strt)

We live in interesting times; in fact CCP is the kind of company that if things get repetitive we instinctively crank it up a notch. That, we certainly have done this week. First of we have Incarna, an amazing technological and artistic achievement. A vision from years ago realized to a point that no one could have imaged but a few months ago. It rolls out without a hitch, is in some cases faster than what we had before, this is the pinnacle of professional achievement. For all the noise in the channel we should all stand proud, years from now this is what people will remember.

But we have done more, not only have we redefined the production quality one can apply to virtual worlds with the beautiful Incarna but we have also defined what it really means to make virtual reality more meaningful than real life when it comes to launching our new virtual goods currency, Aurum.

Naturally, we have caught the attention of the world. Only a few weeks ago we revealed more information about DUST 514 and now we have done it again by committing to our core purpose as a company by redefining assumptions. After 40 hours we have already sold 52 monocles, generating more revenue than any of the other items in the store.

This we have done after months of research by a group of highly competent professionals, soliciting input and perspective from thought leaders and experts in and around our industry. We have communicated our intention here internally in very wide circles through the Virtual Economy Summit presentation at the GSM, our Fearless newsletter, sprint reviews, email lists and multiple other channels. This should not come as a surprise to anyone.

Currently we are seeing _very predictable feedback_ on what we are doing. Having the perspective of having done this for a decade, I can tell you that this is one of the moments where we look at what our players do and less of what they say. Innovation takes time to set in and the predictable reaction is always to resist change.

We went out with a decisive strategy on pricing and we will stay the course and not flip flop around or knee jerk react to the predictable. That is not saying nothing will change, on the contrary, in fact we know that success in this space is through learning and adapting to _what is actually happening_ and new knowledge gained in addition to what we knew before and expected.

All that said, I couldnât be prouder of what we have accomplished as a company, changing the world is hard and we are doing it as so many times before! Stay the course, we have done this many times before.

(end)

I know it’s been said a lot before around the EVE forums, and I’ve echoed the sentiment myself frequently over the past bunch of years: CCP is disconnected from its community. It’s done so in the hopes it can garner more attention from the media and prospective subscribers, to attract more MMO fans over to a wonderful world filled with spaceships, dedicated players, and a fully realized universe driven by the actions of its players.

It looks like the trailers were right after all: the smallest of your actions do resonate and affect thousands of players. Lets see how these ones resonate.

Sources:

• Dev Blog by CCP Zulu: Fearless, Virtual Goods, and Rage
• Forum Post by CCP Pann: An overdue apology and request for parley
• EVENews24: Leaked Hilmar Email

One of the things I hope to do more of around WDA is to comment on a lot of the articles I find on a day to day basis, some of which may sneak under the radar of most. Today’s victim is Ten Ton Hammer’s Space Junkie, who writes a very interesting article about how some coming changes in EVE might affect alliances.

Nobody wanted to scrape and save ISK, drop a station in null-sec, and then find out that CCP was suddenly making that system worth only a fraction of what it was. Indeed, I think it very likely that players can make better ISK per hour running missions in high-security space than trudging along in a system with wretched security status.

This is a good example of something I have noticed about MMOs: it is a game designer’s job to force players to have fun because, if players are left to their own devices, they will naturally pursue strategies that are effective rather than those that are fun. Someone has probably written the idea more succinctly, but you get the idea.

Actually I think that’s about as succinct as you can get, and it hits the nail squarely on the head. He goes on to discuss another pretty major change to jump bridges…

The next big change is slated for later this month. It will result in a maximum of one jump bridge per system (instead of two), an inability of capital ships with jump drives to use bridges, and a larger fuel hangar for the bridge. The long-term effects of these changes cannot be overstated.

This is awfully profound, and in my opinion a step in the right direction. Sure, it will necessitate a hell of a lot more coordination to keep things up and running in deep space, but — again, just my opinion — this could result in more fights and less running around all evening long without anything to show for it. I say that as a support ship pilot of course, so it’s my preference to see ships and shoot at them rather than watching the names come and go by bridges as fleets long-jump through regions.

Anyway, there’s a lot more in the article, so I encourage folks to give it a read through even if you’re not the type of EVE player to take part in alliance fights.

Sources:

• The Changing Nature Of Alliances In EVE Online

The next EVE Online Fanfest will be held on March 24 through March 26, 2011 at the Laugardalshöll Convention Center in Reykjavik, Iceland.

The change of dates will probably be well-received by most people, especially for those of us in the IT industry who now have an excuse to be out of the country during March Madness.

I guess now that we all have a year to plan our trips there’s no excuse for anyone, right? I’m curious how many folks are going to find a way out of this though. Really, it’s a blast, so I highly recommend people make an effort. You don’t even have to be some ultra-hardcore EVE zealot, Iceland’s a really cool place to visit.

Now even more so, since they’re totally smoking out Europe.

Sources:

• Eve Online Fanfest Announced: Better Time, Better Fanfest

That’s right.  I mean, was there ever any doubt?  I mean lets look at the sad sacks we had as competition for the award this year:

• Aion (you fly around with wings, for crying out loud)
• Lord of the Rings Online (ok I suppose this one’s reasonable)
• World of Warcraft (has anyone even heard of this one?)
• Wizard 101 (couldn’t get the Harry Potter license, eh?)

I jest of course.  There’s some decent competition there, so how the hell did our humble EVE get past the legions of artards still fattening themselves up in Azeroth?  Quoth MMORPG.com’s Jon Wood:

Coming up with a Game of the Year winner this time around was a difficult task. In the end, it came down to factors like: game growth, originality, overall contributions to the industry, fun factor, population and technological advancement and more.

Booyah.  *fistbump*

Sources:

• EVE Online: 2009 Game of the Year

Another dev blog from CCP Abathur, and that can only mean one thing: wide sweeping changes designed to annoy and intimidate the unwashed masses.  Everyone else — you know, the cool kids — will probably think this is totally rad.

First up, Titans are getting a Macross cannon, as you can see in the above picture.  That’s right, no more area-of-effect  tomfoolery, no more hot dropping your titan on a group of unsuspecting frigates, now you have to target a specific ship (ideally a large one) to punch in the face.

Next, moms are no longer moms anymore.

Motherships are being reclassified as Supercarriers. The name of ‘Mothership’ has long caused confusion as to what the intended role of these ships was supposed to be but we are finally putting that to rest.  This refocusing will see these ships go through a few changes.  Gone will be:

• The ability for Supercarriers to fit Triage modules.
• The ability for Supercarriers to fit Clone Vat Bays.
• The ability for Supercarriers to fit one additional Warfare Link per level.

Useless, right?  <lex_luthor>WROOOOOOOOOOOONG!!!</lex_luthor>

They’re getting Fighter Bombers, such as the one shown above, the best looking one of the bunch, the Gallente one.

Fighter Bombers will be unique to the Supercarrier class, launching specialized torpedoes capable of inflicting immense damage against other capital ships.

There’s more details on all of this of course, but you’ll have to click through to the Dev Blog to read about all of that.  Suffice to say, these are substantial changes to the way capitals will operate when Dominion hits.  For the better?  Worse?  Best way to find out is to wait for them to hit the test server and try them out yourself.  In the meantime, the debate rages on the EVE forums.

Source: Dev Blog

Oh wait, there’s a news article.

Ten free expansions down. Now an eleventh.  Set for Winter 2009, EVE Online: Dominion will focus on what is often cited as EVE’s “end game” – alliance warfare. It offers a complete overhaul of the current sovereignty mechanics in favor of a system that’s a brilliant mix of our game design vision and the input we’ve received from fans on forums, at conventions (FANFEST!) and via the CSM. Savvy alliances will benefit greatly from following and understanding these changes, which will receive extensive testing.

Ok, I’m intrigued.  For anyone who’s had anything to do with this “end game” they speak of, you’ll know full well that the current sov mechanics are pure joy in game form.  I’ve no idea why they want to change anything.

No idea at all.

*snort*

Source: http://www.eveonline.com/dominion/

It is with deep regret that we inform you of our decision to suspend certain banking activities with immediate effect. As of now both withdrawals and interest are frozen until further notice. This decision has not come lightly, we have critically analysed all aspects of the business and decided it is in the best interest of our customers and the long-term sustainability of the bank that these actions be taken.

Yes, lets analyze the issue of losses here, from the thread:

Losses

Losses to date have occurred as follows:
1. ~250b – Ricdic Theft.
2. ~380b – Loan Defaults
3. >48b – Share Losses
4. ~466b – Interest Paid
5. ~75b – Salaries

75 billion lost due to SALARIES?  Really?  To be clear, at least according to this post, they paid themselves more than their estimated losses due to Share Losses.

Ok, who wants to start the discussion about trust in EVE?

Source: EVE Thread

• ‘DUST 514′ is the name – looks very Halo. great feeling of warzone
• Been in development for three years at CCP’s Shanghai studio
• EVE players fight in space… Dust 514 players fight on the ground… both feed together to dictate control of systems in EVE universe.
• it’s a massively multiplayer game that ‘connects’ to the EVE universe. Dust will become an ‘input’ into who controls planets in EVE
• backstory to the ‘cloned’ soldiers coming in an upcoming EVE book
• takes place on the planets of EVE Online
• …it’s a hybrid FPS and RTS set within the EVE universe, for consoles. It’s CCP’s MMO for consoles!

Interesting!  I had a sneaking suspicion that if CCP did anything console-related that it would tie in to EVE data in some way.  It’s cool to know that if you decide to step away from EVE for a time to chill out on your console you can … well, still play EVE.

Source: http://twitter.com/developonline

UPDATE 1: Video of the game from the presentation is available here.  Ummm.. WOW???

UPDATE 2: Gamasutra’s got some excellent coverage happening on DUST as well.

The team-based game has the player “fighting in a massive war” on existing planets in the EVE Online universe, and is a standalone MMO title, “but is also connected to EVE“, according to the CCP boss.

In fact, when Dust 514 launches, the map of EVE, currently divined only by player structures owned in the PC game, will also take into account infantry successes and failures within the console game. Players in the PC MMO can “fund mercenaries and give them goals” in the console title.

Oh this is getting better and better. :)

Source: http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=24886

In the weeks and months building up to June 22nd we monitored and analyzed activity of ISK sellers, and in particular, their supporting groups of macro-miners, ratters, mission farmers and other RMT related units. The information obtained by this research was then used to identify further RMT type accounts and to prepare lists to process in the action.  The preparations also included identifying various items of interest that we wanted to monitor and measure, such as market activity, server performance, petition trends and so on, as our intent was to examine the effects of the action in a scientific way and in as much detail as possible.  Finally, a lot of work was put into gathering information on and collecting lists of RMT type accounts to be targeted in the operation.

That operation involved the mass banning of the aforementioned nitwits from EVE.  Go now, smiling, to the dev blog that contains all kinds of happy charts.

Source: Dev Blog

I mean it has its own blog, right?  Gotta be something cool… lets see what it’s about:

By adding an “apply to join” button to the info window for a player corporation, it allows players to apply to a corporation without having to visit their corp office in specific stations. It’s like one-stop shopping: you browse for a player corporation, look over their information, and the button to apply is already right there!

….  wait, that’s it?  Seriously?

Seriously.

Source: Dev Blog