EVE Online Maintained Uprising Gains In April 2023

Five months after the launch of EVE Online's latest expansion Uprising, the game's activity has managed to retain most of the player interest generated since November.

At the end of April, the average number of user accounts (ACU) logged in at any one time was 19,000. Before the expansion, that figure hovered under 16,000 accounts. With the hype for the next expansion, Viridian, beginning with this week's announcement, the Uprising expansion did the  job of increasing activity, at least on the global Tranquility game shard.

Since the Uprising expansion's main feature involved upgrades to factional warfare, a look at low sec activity is in order.

For the sixth month in a row, the number of player ships destroyed in low security space exceeded 200 thousand. The last time that occurred was in 2018 in the wake of EVE turning to the free-to-play model. In April, the average number of player ships lost each day fell 22.4% from 9155 ships per day in March to 7109 last month. But year-over-year, the number of player ships exploding to the hands of others jumped 31%, from 5396 per day in 2022 to 7109 in 2023.

Since 2019, the only April with more player ship losses in low sec occurred in 2020, but that is attributable to the implementation of the COVID-19 lockdowns initiated at the start of the pandemic.

As we begin looking at Uprising in the rear-view mirror, I would have to declare the expansion a success. We do not have financial information covering the period since November yet, but judging by activity in the expansion's main area of focus, I'd say the expansion began what hopefully is a long recovery of player numbers in New Eden.

Capsuleer Day XX and Announcing EVE: Viridan

This morning I woke up to the launch of the next live event, Capsuleer Day XX. The yearly celebration of EVE Online's launch in 2003 is extended to four weeks to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the game. Not bad for a game that has been dying since July 2003. 

To celebrate, the developers created an event highlighting a conflict between the Guri Malakim, a mashup of the Guristas and Angel Cartel if the NPC ships are any indication, and the Society of Conscious Thought. As is customary at this point, players can choose to aid either the pirates or SoCT and run combat and exploration sites for limited time rewards. As an added bonus, the drop rate for PvP kills will increase from 50% to 75% for the duration of the event.

CCP summarized the available rewards for both playing and just logging into the game during the time period.

Align with the Guri Malakim pirate cooperative, or the SoCT, then take on hacking and combat sites across all security space. The sites can reward you with new boosters, Glamourex boosters, new Capsuleer Day XX SKINs on Guristas, Angel Cartel, and SoCT ships, as well as Genolution implants. In addition, PvP loot drops will increase from 50% to 75% for the duration of the event!

Making Capsuleer Day even more essential are the rewards you get by logging in daily, with Omega pilots able to claim over half a million Skill Points, thousands of EverMarks, and awesome boosters on top of the Alpha rewards, which include a new SoCT ship as well as existing ones, plus more special Capsuleer Day XX SKINs. If you upgrade to Omega after the event has begun, you can retroactively claim the previous Omega rewards.

The log in event has 20 days of rewards available during the 28 days the event runs. Omega players are able to acquire one of each SoCT ship, including the new Metamorphosis-class exploration frigate.

Now, for perhaps an even more exciting event. CCP announced the name of the upcoming expansion, EVE: Viridian. I'm not sure of the significance of naming the expansion after a color except the story arc of the expansion may center around the Galente and Caldari, as mixing the colors of the factions could produce the color viridian. Here is a description of the expansion from CCP's press release.

REYKJAVÍK, Iceland – May 2, 2023 – In honor of its landmark 20th anniversary on Saturday 6 May, CCP Games today revealed EVE Online: Viridian, the next content expansion for spacefaring MMO EVE Online. The first of two major expansions in 2023, Viridian will empower players with n ew tools, personalization options and social-driven content to manifest the glory of their corporation. The expansion launches free for all players in June 2023.

“With Viridian, players will be given more power to shape and color New Eden,” said Bergur Finnbogason, EVE Online's Creative Director. “Viridian builds upon last year’s pivotal Uprising expansion by giving corporation leaders more means and methods to help their group flourish. There is no better time than the present for reconnecting with your corporation members to plan your next venture – you never know what’s on the horizon.”

EVE Online: Viridian will empower player-run corporations in more ways than ever before. From strengthening and growing their numbers to new personalisation options and an expanded toolset, corporation leaders will be able to create meaningful content, manage and efficiently train new recruits, and lead their corporation to collective glory.

Currently we have no word on whether the Guri Malakim is a new pirate faction that will provide players with Caldari-Minmatar ships in Viridan. As the press release indicated, the announcement is just a tease and CCP will provide more details as the event draws closer.

I believe we have now entered the hype cycle for the next EVE Online expansion. But we do have an official Twitch stream running on Saturday from 1700-1900 UTC to celebrate the occasion of the game surviving 20 years of operation. Most games don't last 20 years in order to celebrate such an event. I'll definitely log in to help celebrate. I might even go to Jita.

Cloud Imperium Games Earns $6.9 Million In April 2023

In April, Cloud Imperium Games recorded $6.9 million in sales of Star Citizen and Squadron 42 related merchandise as recorded on the funding page. The total represented a year-over-year decrease of 10.3%, down from $7.7 million in April 2022. Looking at the first quarter as a whole, CIG sold $27.8 million, a 0.3% increase over the $27.7 million sold in the first four months of 2022. Overall, CIG ended the month having sold $567.7 million in goods since the company incorporated in April 2012.

The funding page on 1 May 2023

April featured the release of two patches, Alpha 3.18.1 on 12 April and Alpha 3.18.2 on 21 April. Alpha 3.18.1 witnessed a full server wipe, while the full server wipe expected for Alpha 3.18.2 failed to materialize. Instead, only items purchased in-game with aUTC were removed from player accounts. Ship sales and the free-fly event that ran during most of Alpha 3.18.1 helped make up for a lot of lost sales but was unable to fully make up for the difficulties players had trying to play on the Persistent Universe.

Overall, CIG has raised $649.7 million from confirmed sources (the funding page & the 2021 financial report). The income breaks down as follows:

• Sales/Pledges: $567.7 million (through 30 April 2023)
• Subscriptions: $27.8 million (through 31 December 2021)
• All other sources: $54.2 million (through 31 December 2021)

In addition, CIG received $63.25 million in investor funding in 2018 and 2019, bringing the total funding of the project up to $712.9 million.

Microsoft's Acquisition Of Activision-Blizzard-King Rejected By The UK

Reuters is reporting that the United Kingdom will block the sale of Activision-Blizzard-King to Microsoft for $69 billion due to "concerns it would hinder competition in cloud gaming." Apparently, Microsoft's Game Pass didn't impress the regulators in the UK enough.

I decided to go visit UK government websites to get the reasoning. According to a press release from the Competition and Markets Authority, the main concern was the development of cloud gaming. 

The UK cloud gaming market is growing fast. Monthly active users in the UK more than tripled from the start of 2021 to the end of 2022. It is forecast to be worth up to £11 billion globally and £1 billion in the UK by 2026. By way of comparison, sales of recorded music in the UK in 2021 amounted to £1.1billion.

Microsoft has a strong position in cloud gaming services and the evidence available to the CMA showed that Microsoft would find it commercially beneficial to make Activision’s games exclusive to its own cloud gaming service.

Microsoft already accounts for an estimated 60-70% of global cloud gaming services and has other important strengths in cloud gaming from owning Xbox, the leading PC operating system (Windows) and a global cloud computing infrastructure (Azure and Xbox Cloud Gaming).

The deal would reinforce Microsoft’s advantage in the market by giving it control over important gaming content such as Call of Duty, Overwatch, and World of Warcraft. The evidence available to the CMA indicates that, absent the merger, Activision would start providing games via cloud platforms in the foreseeable future.

The cloud allows UK gamers to avoid buying expensive gaming consoles and PCs and gives them much more flexibility and choice as to how they play. Allowing Microsoft to take such a strong position in the cloud gaming market just as it begins to grow rapidly would risk undermining the innovation that is crucial to the development of these opportunities.

Basically, Microsoft's GamePass service was not deemed a sufficient solution to the issue for three reasons:

• It did not sufficiently cover different cloud gaming service business models, including multigame subscription services.
• It was not sufficiently open to providers who might wish to offer versions of games on PC operating systems other than Windows.
• It would standardise the terms and conditions on which games are available, as opposed to them being determined by the dynamism and creativity of competition in the market, as would be expected in the absence of the merger.

The conclusion the investigation came up with was to disallow the sale. The press release gave a rather lengthier explanation.

The CMA carefully considered whether the benefit of having Activision’s content available on Game Pass outweighed the harm that the merger would cause to competition in cloud gaming in the UK. The CMA found that this new payment option, while beneficial to some customers, would not outweigh the overall harm to competition (and, ultimately, UK gamers) arising from this merger, particularly given the incentive for Microsoft to increase the cost of a Game Pass subscription post-merger to reflect the addition of Activision’s valuable games.

Martin Coleman, chair of the independent panel of experts conducting this investigation, said:

"Gaming is the UK’s largest entertainment sector. Cloud gaming is growing fast with the potential to change gaming by altering the way games are played, freeing people from the need to rely on expensive consoles and gaming PCs and giving them more choice over how and where they play games. This means that it is vital that we protect competition in this emerging and exciting market."

"Microsoft already enjoys a powerful position and head start over other competitors in cloud gaming and this deal would strengthen that advantage giving it the ability to undermine new and innovative competitors."

"Microsoft engaged constructively with us to try to address these issues and we are grateful for that, but their proposals were not effective to remedy our concerns and would have replaced competition with ineffective regulation in a new and dynamic market."

"Cloud gaming needs a free, competitive market to drive innovation and choice. That is best achieved by allowing the current competitive dynamics in cloud gaming to continue to do their job."

The UK was not the final approval needed. The European Commission is set to rule on the sale on 22 May while the Federal Trade Commission in the United States has scheduled an administrative hearing on the case in August.

More Shadows For The Shadow War

Tuesday is patch day for EVE Online, which usually is accomplished in 5-10 minutes. Yesterday's patch notes included some news about improved graphics.

• Anti-aliasing has been upgraded. You will see smoother edges and the elimination of specular aliasing, which eliminates the 'shiny' effect that occurs in some situations.
• The shadow system has been entirely overhauled. Previously, there was a limit of 16 shadows in a scene, for casting and receiving. Shadows also look much sharper, and there is now no limit!
• The film grain effect has been refactored, reducing the 'grid' pattern that would sometimes be visible.

In addition, station hangars will no longer turn green when a specific advertisement runs on the large display. But that was just a bug. The other bits of news are enhancements.

An article went on to describe the exact graphical improvements down to the settings level.

How the client implements the graphical settings for shadows has also been reworked. Shadows will now always be rendered at all settings other than ‘disabled’, with the filtering of shadows being adjusted to allow a balance between quality and performance. Your entire visual experience will now also be much smoother thanks to new anti-aliasing techniques that smooth edges and improve textures for ships, stations and the landscape across New Eden. It also puts an end to "specular aliasing" which manifests itself as shimmering pixels, so you’ll now be able to appreciate the contours and textures of your spectacular ship in all its glory when flying around in space. The new anti-aliasing implementation moves us away from an older method which included MSAA (Multisample Anti-Aliasing) to a pure TAA (Temporal Super Sampling Anti-Aliasing) approach.

Due to an entire rewrite of how anti-aliasing is calculated and with several optimizations, performance is around the same as before, even with this better image quality. However, due to the change in how anti-aliasing is generated, it does come with a small caveat: low / medium AA is no longer available when using low / medium shader settings. This is currently a technical limitation due to how the game is rendered at the moment but will be revisited at a later date.

I really do need to upgrade from the computers I purchased in 2016 to run the Oculus Rift when EVE: Valkyrie came out. My best computer right now is the laptop I purchased after I had to move into a hotel when my condo flooded. I didn't log into EVE last night to check out the new graphics because I was installing GEForce Experience because I finally got tired looking at the washed out graphics in Final Fantasy XIV. With Freestyle freshly installed, I should log into EVE and update my settings so I am not using the same ones for both games.

NetEase Is Not Suing Blizzard After All

I'm almost afraid tomorrow I will have to clarify today's post. Yesterday's post concerned NetEase's lawsuit against Blizzard Entertainment. Today I have to write about how NetEase isn't suing Blizzard after all.

Blizzard replied to inquiries from Jiemian News about the lawsuit with the following statement.

“Blizzard has not received relevant complaints, but we believe that we have not violated any licensing agreement. NetEase’s suspected dissatisfied contract terms involve standard industry practices, and in the past few years It is mutually beneficial for both parties. Although these persistent behaviors make us feel disappointed and confused, It should be pointed out that the nearly 20 years of operation in China has been very positive and pleasant, and we will continue to be committed to serving local players and protecting their rights and interests.“

But then Wowhead did some research and questioned the entire idea NetEase sued Blizzard. The site specializing in World of Warcraft found that the docket had changed and NetEase was no longer listed as a party to the suit.

Like I mentioned at the beginning of the post, I'm almost afraid I'll need to post a third article explaining the whole chain of reporting events. But for now, Blizzard is being sued in China. Just not by NetEase.

NetEase Is Suing Blizzard Entertainment for CN¥300 Million

A really quick note about an ongoing situation that escalated to the Chinese legal system. NetEase is suing Blizzard Entertainment for a reported CN¥300 million, or USD$43 million. The original news site, Sina Finance, reported that NetEase paid refunds to 1.12 million players due to Blizzard pulling the games from NetEase's control in the People's Republic.

The lawsuit is seeking redress of additional damages, such as refunds for deposits the game company made to secure the rights to several games the American game studio never released and compensation for unsold merchandise. 

At this time, I'm interested in the effect the lawsuit will have on the upcoming sale of Activision-Blizzard-King to Microsoft. I'm pretty sure that with the billions Microsoft is willing to pay for ABK, and additional $43 million settlement is money the American tech giant can find somewhere in the couch pillows.

A Shadow War Event Update After 5 Weeks

A little over a week after the launch of EVE Online's Shadow War event, I gave an update on how each faction was progressing with their turn-ins. After 9 days, the Amarr, Caldari, and Minmatar were 4-5% of the way towards completing either Transport Relay Development (Amarr and Minmatar) or Stellar Transmuter Development (Caldari). The Gallente, starting from behind, only had progressed 5.8% through Stellar Transmuter Development and 1.9% through Transport Relay Development.

Factional Warfare Status: 21 April 2023 @ 1330 UTC

The Amarr are making the slowest progress with Transport Relay Development only 26.5% completed. Fortunately for them, their bitter enemies the Minmatar are not doing much better development at 31.8% completed.

The other pair of empires are making much more progress. The Gallente are still far behind, but have progressed Stellar Transmuter Development to 52.8% complete while almost catching up to the Amarr and Minmatar in Transport Relay Development with 22.4% complete. The Caldari are in the clear lead with Stellar Transmuter Development at 79.9%.

At the rate the Caldari are progressing, the faction will unlock Interstellar Shipcaster Construction during the week of 30 April to 6 May. That Saturday is the 20th anniversary of the launch of EVE Online.

I don't know how others feel, but I really hope that the slow progress players are making in the event will not delay the launch of the next expansion. I suspect shipcasting technology will play a major role in the upcoming, as yet unnamed expansion for EVE. The question now is, will the developers step in to make the process go faster, or let events take their natural course?

Is The Final Fantasy XIV Club Scene Moving To Kick.com?

Watching the news, one might get the impression the chat application Discord is only for leaking classified documents. Not so. Discord is a free-to-use app which keeps gaming communities together. I received a notification from one of those communities this morning, the Sugar Rush DJ Team.

Final Fantasy XIV has a robust club scene fueled by the game's housing and glamour systems as well as large selection of dance emotes. Dancing in a video game? That's right. In addition to two NPC run locations that qualify as clubs, players create their own, including hiring bartenders, waitresses, bouncers, and DJs. Up until now, the DJs operate on Twitch, playing music that club goers can dance to. Or at least, run their dance emotes while cooking dinner.

This morning, DJ Dollipop, the founder of the Sugar Rush DJ Team Discord server, sent out a server-wide ping with news about Kick.com, a new competitor to the Amazon-owned Twitch.com.

With Kick.com up and coming, we decided to start reserving our names and planning a “kick off” event to give it a try. 

Why do you ask? Well Twitch takes 50% of yalls hard earned money with every sub you drop on anyone. Meaning your $100 worth of subs , you pay $50 to Twitch. 

Kick on the other hand pays the streamers 90%, so your $100 you just dropped goes a long ways, almost double. A lot of the streamers in our community do this for a living. So even if you decide to not support kick, think of hitting that donate button or using bits instead. This is not me saying everyone will be moving over to Kick. This is us preparing for the “just in case”. Y’all know me, plan for the worse hope for the best and get ducks in a row. So! 

Head over to kick, make ya selfs a account and drop ya link in here for everyone to cross follow and help each other out!

While FFXIV DJs don't have the viewership of say, mind1 during EVE Online's World War Bee 2/Beeitnam War, FFXIV DJs are certainly more plentiful. As of this morning, 47 DJs have a channel on the server for club owners to book performances. And in the new kick-handles channel, 17 DJs have posted their new Kick.com accounts.

I'm not sure if Kick.com will succeed where so many Twitch competitors have failed in the past. But club goers who want to listen to a DJ may see new URLs pop up.

The Moogle Treasure Trove Event For Spring 2023

Finally some news that doesn't lead to thoughts of Web3 games and cryptobros even if the news originates with Square Enix. Starting next Tuesday Final Fantasy XIV will host a Moogle Treasure Trove event until the launch of patch 6.4. The event should run roughly four weeks, but Yoshi-P usually leaves the date open until he announces the launch date on a live producer's letter.

One of the more interesting features are the dungeons and raids awarding the most rewards. As usual, The Praetorium will award 7 tomestones. But the other raid awarding 7 tomestones is The Tower at Paradigm's Breach, the final stage of the YoRHa: Dark Apocalypse raid series. The first two stages, The Copied Factory (5 tomestones) and The Puppet's Bunker (6 tomestones) and the next two highest reward instances players can run.

I am sure that min-maxers will argue that other dungeons produce more tomestones per hour. But with the rewards for running the YoRHa: Dark Apocalypse high, I imagine the developers are trying to help newer players get the 2B gear set, which is in demand for glamour purposes. While the basic 2B set is the most popular, other role specific gear is also popular.

The list of rewards for tomestones is highlighted by the new Porxie earrings for 100 tomestones. The top mounts available for 50 tomestones are the Magitek Predator, Ixion Clarion, and Megalotragus mounts. The list also includes outdoor furnishings like the Red Brick Kitchen, Nomad Tent, and Oriental Wood Deck usable when Island Sanctuaries will allow the placement of up to 90 outdoor furnishing items. Personally, at the lower end of the reward list, the extremely cute Black Hayate, usually available from Shadowbringers' first MSQ dungeon, is a bargain for only 7 tomestones.

I don't have a problem trying to figure out what to do for the last month of patch 6.3, but I am a rather casual player. Still, I never did finish the YoRHa: Dark Apocalypse raid series and some of the rewards, like the Magitek Predator and Ixion Clarion mounts are very tempting. I probably will dive into the Moogle Treasure Trove event for a few weeks until I meet some goals I didn't really know I wanted to fulfill.