If someone who plays MMOs asks me what caused all of the fighting we are witnessing in EVE, I would say that CCP added two new crafting materials and changed the material requirements on a whole bunch of crafting recipes. That's right. The trillions of ISK lost (which someone will convert to real world currency), the tens of thousands of man-hours worth of work destroyed, all the propaganda videos created and bad posting on forums, were caused by changes to the crafting system.
At the beginning of the conflict, The Mittani stated that the invasion of Fountain was about the moons and wealth:
"Tonight we are invading Fountain. But we are not going to bother with stating a grievance or demonizing the defender - We are doing it because we need the region and its moons for our people and our friends."I wonder how many MMORPG game developers look at EVE with jealously in their hearts. Most of those developers are looking at ways to create content fast enough to satisfy their players. ArenaNet has even gone to an insanely fast two-week deployment cycle for adding content to Guild Wars 2. But "all" CCP had to do was devote a small team of developers, probably supported by the economics team, and jiggle some numbers around. Hard, difficult work to do properly? Yes. But compared to what other studios are doing, pretty cost-effective.
Of course, CCP can do this because of all the work done over the previous 10 years building a player-run economy. Some game developers look at a game's economy and its crafting system as an afterthought. In EVE Online, crafting is serious business and CCP is reaping the rewards.
