When Test Worlds Collide

CCP Falcon put out a little article today that had some big news. The first little bomb EVE's community manager dropped is that CCP will run the Serenity server. I thought NetEase would have to either host the Chinese cluster themselves or find a third party company to provide the service. Apparently not.

Another change that will impact players more directly is that the Singularity test cluster will host both changes for the Serenity cluster as well as the Tranquility cluster on which the rest of the world plays. CCP Falcon explained the details of the move.

"One of the key aims of our partnership with NetEase is to ensure that Tranquility and Serenity stay as close to parity as possible in terms of content, and we aim to be in a position where Serenity is either running the same release as Tranquility or is one release behind.

"This means that as of today, with preparations for the re-launch of EVE China, Singularity will begin to host content destined for either, or both servers.

"This will include SKINs, localization and monetization features that are destined only for Serenity, along with changes to the client that are required to comply with Chinese law. Changes to the launcher and client that need to be made because of Chinese law will however only be active in the Serenity packaged version of EVE."

I'm not sure, but I think the Chinese government has to approve any software upgrades in video games to make sure they conform to approved standards. One standout example was the delay of the release of Wrath of the Lich King to the Chinese servers until Blizzard could remove all traces of skeletons. But maybe CCP has some connections.

I'm looking forward to my next trip to Singularity, if only to see some of the SKINs TianCity sold in lieu of implementing Alpha clones. The only thing I'm not looking forward to is the whining coming from r/eve. I think CCP Falcon ended his news article with a huge dose of sarcasm.

"As always, the EVE community is renowned for its level headedness when changes are ported to Singularity for testing, and we expect that our pilots will understand that Singularity is a test environment, and that not everything that is tested there makes it to our live game environment!"