All Hands On Deck

I originally intended to publish a bittervet tinged post today, but something amazing emerged from EVE Down Under Friday.  CCP's latest video, "This Is EVE", debuted in Sydney and already has over 1.2 million views in less than 72 hours.



Not only did the video spread quickly onto gaming sites like Massively and PC Gamer, but new players started to flood into New Eden, curious about the game.

The Spike In New Characters Created

Once people started noticing, everyone, CCP and players alike, leapt into action.  CCP held another series of new player training sessions on Saturday from 1600-2100 EVE time covering "Orientation and the UI", "Skills", and "Ships and Fittings".  EVE University, in an event publicized on the EVE launcher, followed up with a super lecture session running from 2100 EVE to 0745 EVE time on the 24th featuring a roam FC'd by Pandemic Legion's Apothne.  Having Apothne, a commentator for Alliance Tournament XII, FC a fleet was a good move as it showed that a new player can get into a fleet like those shown in the trailer.

Another hopeful sign were the reports of Brave Newbies visiting the new player systems looking for recruits.  Since Brave Newbies was mentioned in the trailer, the new players enticed into EVE were probably excited that they would get a chance to experience what they saw in the trailer right away.

I also heard reports of veteran players starting up alt accounts to join the Rookie Chat Channel to answer questions.  On the CSM front, I know that CCP Manifest performed some dev magic to allow Sugar Kyle into the rookie chat channel on her main on Saturday and that Steve Ronuken and I believe Mike Azariah spent considerable time helping new players over the weekend  (I'm sure I'll hear if I left anyone out).  By Sunday, I heard that new players were sometimes getting answers from four players when they asked questions.

People were popping up all over the place offering advice.  CCP Manifest streamed a play through of the new player experience Saturday night/Sunday morning and such luminaries as video maker JonnyPew (Sir Livingston in the trailer), Ashterothi of the Hydrostatic Podcast, and Crossing Zebra's and EVE101.com's Hendrick Tallardar showed up to offer help.

The EVE community has a reputation as a group that will scam and kill new players without a second thought.  But EVE is a game that in many ways is owned by the players and the community wants to see the game grow and thrive.  When an event occurs that brings a flood of new players into the game, whether it's a large battle like B-R5RB or a trailer like "This Is EVE", a large segment of the player base turns out to welcome the new players and try to help them overcome the game's steep learning curve.  I've never really seen that in other games and is one of the things I think makes EVE Online a special game.

Additional content:

I've seen a couple of things posted on Twitter that fit in with this post.  First, Blackhuey created a Google document titled "Newbies Are Awesome 101 or: why people who say that newbies can't compete with vets in Eve Online are pants-on-head retarded."  Well-known pirate, artist, and EVE blogger Rixx Javix tweeted the following video on what it is like to be an EVE player.