EVE Online In The News - 1 November 2018

I decided to start playing around with Google Alerts in order to come up with ideas about what to write about. While I didn't find any new ideas, I did get a chuckle out of what I read. I probably need to start collecting quotes, because I read some good ones. Here are the articles I received mention of over the last few days of October.

The first is an article by James McMahon that appeared last Friday on PCGamesN, titled "Eve Online is like a 'violent Facebook,' and it's changing the world." The article is one of the last covering EVE Vegas and at least EVE players don't come across totally as blood thirsty psychopaths. And CCP Guard came up with a great quote.

"Yet, because of how Eve’s community interacts and plots, the data CCP has collected is of massive value to academics who want to understand more about how people organise themselves politically. It’s also of interest to economists who want to do the same with financial systems. 'It’s basically violent Facebook,' Sveinn Jóhannesson Kjarval says, the game’s senior community development lead, as he chuckles. He makes a good point. But, unlike Mark Zuckerberg’s digital-Filofax-for-sale, you can argue that Eve is actually making the world a better place."

On Tuesday, Kotaku published a piece by Lee Yancy on the upcoming changes to the war declaration system. The title, "EVE Online's Constant Wars Are Driving Away New Players", isn't exactly the most inviting, but did mentioned CCP's solution as well as spelling out the problem.

"CCP, to its credit, is finally fixing the issue. Last weekend, at the annual EVE Online convention in Las Vegas, CCP shared some of the data surrounding war declarations with the hundreds of players in attendance. It turns out the vast majority of the game’s wars are declared by just five player corporations, seemingly looking to farm easy kills.

"CCP has now stated that in EVE’s winter release, corporations that have not built a structure in space will no longer be a valid target for war declarations. This means that players who have formed social groups and have no interest in war nor capability to defend themselves will have a way to opt out of being targeted and hunted into extinction."

Halloween saw a pair of articles mention EVE Online. The first, by J. D. Biersdorfer, appeared in the technology section of the New York Times. Tucked away in an article named, "How to Find the Video Games of Your Youth", was this little gem.

"Steam has a larger library (and, for $20, access to the Atari Vault of 100 golden-age classics). But both platforms offer games that can be played on Windows and Mac computers. Not all games work on every desktop system and prices vary, but you can find 1990s favorites like Baldur’s Gate for $20, Star Wars: X-Wing for $10 or 2003’s EVE Online for free."

Don't let the title of the article fool you, though. CCP is not running a legacy version of EVE and the nano nerf is still in effect.

Finally, what would Halloween be without articles about scary video games. PC Gamer had a slightly twisted take, coming up with a list of 10 non-horror games that are scary anyway. Andy Kelly nominated EVE, explaining why with this tale.

"I rarely venture into those systems in EVE Online where other players can attack you without immediate repercussions from the space cops, but the first time I did it was utterly terrifying. A friend and I went to a lowsec asteroid belt to mine some ore, aware that these are often the hunting grounds of players looking for clueless people to rob. And, of course, after about ten minutes of mining someone in a much bigger ship warped in and started shooting at us. The ensuing panicky flight back to a safer system had my heart racing more than any horror game. I haven’t returned to lowsec since, and I never will."

I was pleasantly surprised by the results and plan to keep up with my reading. My only question is whether, without the presence of a major event like EVE Vegas, can EVE stay in the minds of the press?