Operation Smile: Clear Skies 3 Trailer

Following Fanfest I sense a lot of angst among the players of Eve Online.  Null sec players are upset about the changes to high end anomolies and the loss of income that entails.  High sec carebears are worried about what the changes to missions agents mean.  Will the changes mean a virtual nerf of level 4 high sec missions driving everyone to low sec?  What about mission hubs?

And me?  I'm just tired.  Getting home from work at 2am and then turning around leaving for work at 7:30am will do that to a guy.  That's barely enough time to write a blog post.

But a solution exists to solve all of these problems.  Minmatar battleships.  Well, Minmatar battleships if they are named Clear Skies.  Yes, just as things are looking down, we get a full length trailer to tide us over until Clear Skies 3 comes out in May.  And the way things are looking, we'll need a dose of Captain John Rourke and the gang.  But this should help get us through the next few weeks.  Enjoy!

Alsbeth Is Coming

One of the problems I have is that with my schedule, I sometimes don't have time to play RIFT.  I'm going to have to take a break from researching blueprints and hauling PI products around to take part RIFT's first world event.  After all, I play on the Alsbeth shard and the shard's namesake is the star.  Here is the press release:

30-Day Update Heralds Massive Invasions, Unique Loot, and New Epic Raid Zone

Trion Worlds today announced the first worldwide, fully dynamic conflict event for the immensely successful MMORPG, RIFT™. The battle for Telara intensifies as world-changing invasions from the Plane of Death engulf the planet, giving Ascended heroes a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be part of a key moment in the game’s history. Beginning March 30th, players will witness the true power of Regulos the Destroyer, and the world of RIFT will never be the same.

This robust update comes less than a month after the game’s March 1st launch, making it one of the most aggressive post-launch content releases ever for a new MMORPG.

Unprecedented Invasions & Exclusive Rewards

Starting next Wednesday, Alsbeth the Discordant will lead massive invasions across every zone in Telara, raising legions of liches, ettins, and gravemakers to battle Ascended. Over the course of about a week, participating players of any level fighting these invaders can earn hundreds of new items including exclusive rewards, such as a Spectral Horse and a transmogrifying disguise that turns Ascended into the rotting undead. But be warned: once the rifts are sealed, these items are gone forever.

Raid Zone: River of Souls

If Ascended are successful in their efforts to drive back the invasions, they can journey to the “River of Souls” 20-man raid zone at the edge of the Plane of Death where Alsbeth the Discordant is reanimating the recently departed and recruiting them into Regulos’ army. Guardian and Defiant heroes will have to wade through these decaying hordes to reach Alsbeth and make her account for her abhorrent crimes.

I also hear that some class balancing (i.e. nerfs) are going to happen too.  I've linked the alpha notes and I'm really waiting to see what happens.  One good thing about not playing a lot is that I really haven't leveled very high (my highest character is level 20) so my game play really shouldn't change much.  But because my crafting isn't that high, I can only make 6 slot bags.  With all the one-time goodies, I need more bag space!

They Told My If I Voted For Mike Azariah for CSM6 That ...

... the null sec alliances would not get their fair share of representation.  And they were right!

Let's just take a quick look at where the delegates who won election to CSM6 come from and the number of systems their alliances hold sov over (as of 28 March):

The Mittani - Goonswarm Federation - 67 systems
Seleene - Cascade Iminent - 12 systems
UAxDEATH - Legion of xXDEATHXx - 125 systems
Trebor Daehdoow - Initiative Mercenaries - 0 systems (held sov until end of February)
Killer2 - Morsus Mihi - 64 systems
White Tree - Test Alliance Please Ignore - 69 systems
Vile Rat - Goonswarm Federation - 67 systems
Meissa Anunthiel - Rooks and Kings (corporation) - 0 systems
Draco Llasa -RAZOR Alliance - 54 systems

So 7 of the 9 delegates are from alliances that hold sov in null sec, with an eighth whose alliance was kicked out of null sec about a month ago.  The last delegate, Meissa Anunthiel, is from the famous wormhole corporation alliance Rooks and Kings.

I like the fact that someone from a wormhole corp alliance made it to the CSM, but all the others come to the CSM with the perspective of null sec alliances.  But that's okay because the vast majority of players are in null sec, right?  Not really.  According to the Q3 2010 Quarterly Economic Newsletter (p.13), only 11% of all Eve players live in null sec.  Eleven percent get 78% of the seats?  And that's not including the representative from an alliance that would like to get back into null sec.

I'll let you decide if the null sec alliances are represented fairly or not.  I'm just worried that the total domination of the CSM by the null sec alliances will allow CCP to disregard the CSM as not being adequately representative of the Eve player base.

Watching Fanfest 2011 - Saturday's Coverage

I watched Eve TV's coverage of Fanfest on Saturday.  Quite frankly I was blown away by some of what I saw but I died at the end of the coverage.  Here are some of the highlights that caught my eye.

TQ's New Toys - This was a discussion about the database servers for Tranquility.  A lot of the information was shared in Friday's dev blog but there was some additional information given.  Some of the internal SLAs (service level agreements) were displayed, including less than 2 minutes for failovers.  Also, at least some of DUST 514 is going to run on Tranquility's database servers and that API takes up 10% of database use.  The planned DUST 514 use was compared to market and planetary interaction nodes.

Art - Much of what was shown was seen in the keynote on Friday.  One interesting piece of tech news concerning Captain's Quarters is that with only the one avatar that can be in the first iteration of Captain's Quarters that all the work is done by the client.  On following versions that allow multiple avatars, the servers will need to do a lot of work sending information.  So by rights the initial introduction of avatars in Incarna should not impact server performance.

CCP Presents -  First, I really hope the video of this presentation is posted quickly, because this presentation should be seen by all Eve players.  Here are some highlights.

The results of the CSM election were flashed up a bit faster than I could really read.  Showed results of CSM election.  The Mittani came in first, with Seleene second.

The next thing is that CCP is working with a lot of big names.  On the server side, CCP is working with IBM to increase capacity on Tranquility.  CCP has recently spent on $500,000 on server hardware.

On the client side CCP is working with Nvidia on graphics technology and the Carbon technology.  CCP is also working server side with Nvidia in connection with avatar rendering.  The Nvidia 8 series and above will have the character rendering occur on their video card's GPU, and if technology developement continues at its current pace, video cards will be able to support hundreds of characters using Carbon technology on screen.

CCP is also is working with another leading company, Framestore, in developing the new look to nebulas.  Framestore is a company that was nominated for its work on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1.

CCP also gave players a look at some of the upcoming features in Incarna beyond Captain's Quarters.  These other areas where players can interact are called establishments.  These places will be places that sell mild legal boosters or engage in gambling.  Another idea involves a revamp in the contraband system in which to transfer contraband in high sec will require face-to-face meetings.  The other part of the contraband system will involve players hunting down smugglers instead of CONCORD or faction police.

Finally, the soon to be famous Future Vision trailer was unveiled.  If that is what the Eve universe is going to look like in a few years, well, I don't think any game will match it.  Of course, how long did it take CCP to implement walking in stations, which right now is just walking in a room?  But I so want to believe in the vision.

CCP Panel - After seeing that video, I kind of zoned out on the question and answer session that followed.  I did write down two items that were noteworthy.  The first is that CCP will never sell their Carbon technology.  For them, it is their ace-in-the-hole they believe gives them an edge over all other companies in the industry.  The second is that vanity items will probably come out for sale in June.  There are a lot of details that need to be worked out, but that seems to be the plan.

Incursions and Character Creator - I hope the videos come out soon, because I basically zoned out on these two sessions.  Between the awesomeness of the CCP Presents presentation and having watched about 18 hours of coverage while waking up early both days, I was wiped and just wanted to go to sleep.

Operation Smile: EVE: A Future Vision

CCP just relessed a new trailer during the CCP Presents presentation at Fanfest called EVE: A Future Vision.  This is a vision of the merger of Eve Online and the hopefully soon to be launched DUST 514.  This is the type of vision I have for a science-fiction game.  Simply awesome.

The Mittani Wins Chairmanship of CSM 6

CCP just released the results of the CSM elections.  I couldn't get a list of all the winners, but The Mittani received the most votes and will be the chairman.

UPDATE:  The results have been posted on the forums.  The winners (with vote totals) are:

The Mittani - 5,365
Seleene - 3,813
UAxDEATH - 3,320
Trebor Daehdoow - 3,306
Killer2 - 2,925
White Tree - 2,539
Vile Rat - 2,240
Meissa Anunthiel - 2,086
Draco Llasa - 1,986

The alternates are:

Elise Randolph
Prometheus Exenthal
Krutoj
Two Step
Darius III

Watching Fanfest 2011 - Friday's Coverage

Watching EVE TV's coverage today was pretty interesting.  I didn't try to live blog because I just wanted to sit back and enjoy the day off.  But I just couldn't resist taking some notes.

General - They like drinking and porn.  Tech porn, graph porn, etc.  Also, strong language is used, just in case you want to view some of the videos later.

Design Democracy - The artist didn't want to draw Gallente ships.  That was an interesting dynamic that ran throughout the panel.  Just watching the interaction between the host, the artist, and the audience was good.  And the ship wound up looking pretty cool.  There was some epic fail involved when the CCP folks didn't know what a "top thingy bit" was.

API - Just a few minutes about the API team, but Wollari got some well deserved face time to discuss Dotlan's Eve Maps.

Content - CCP is interesting in that they acknowledge that the game can be made better.  Or perhaps more accurately that mistakes were made.  Most of the content team was on stage answering questions.  One admission is that the story articles that have been written over the last few years just haven't been integrated into the game and that is what the Immersion Project is about.  Other news is that another live event is planned for this year, but is delayed because the two devs who ran the Sansha live events are tasked out for Incarna-related tasks.  And the Sleepers?  Expect more story near the end of the year.

QA - Eve Online does have a reputation of being a bit geeky.  You know that CCP knows that about its player base when the QA staff not only gets their own panels, but when one of the panel is televised as well.  But given some of the problems in the game, players not only want to know what CCP is doing to fix and prevent problems, but CCP wants to tell the player base how they can help.  And a quote just struck me: "Errors are tasty."

And if you see a frigate that looks like a cockroach, its not a bug.  It's just QA doing some work.

Keynote - I'll be interested to hear players' reaction to claim that servers are doing better with lag than ever before but still are trying to make the cluster better.  The introduction of the forum whine index is something I hope to see as a regular feature.  Also, the devs acknowledged they will never catch up as more players will pile on as capacity increases.  But think they can raise the capacity level of Jita to 2,500 and might be able to get lag-free fights up to 1,200.  Announced that they just spent $50,000 on a server and will be the first company to use a new undisclosed processor from Intel and a never before used server from IBM.  In the technology field CCP is leading all companies, not just the gaming industry.

On the UI improvement front, a new fonts for the UI being used and will appear on Singularity soon.

CCP Soundwave gave a talk on Incursions and his team's efforts to reduce some of the annoying little quality of life issues in the game.  He first talked about the reasons for expansions like Incursions.  Not only does CCP feel the need to improve and expand the Eve universe, but also to expand the game experience and increase the number of activities to stay ahead of the competition.  CCP Soundwave threw out Star Trek Online as an example of the competition and how that gave already has avatars.

Some of the small issues that Team BFF is going to roll out in the near future (hopefully) are changing the mission agents to only giving out one type of mission (kill, courier, mining, etc.) and only have 1 agent in a station that can give out all four levels of missions where appropriate.  Other nice quality of life issues are a scanning revamp, the ability to visually tell BPOs and BPCs apart and not having to stop your skills queue in order to insert an implant into a clone.  And did I mention adding some additional default settings to the overview?  As CCP Soundwave said, the current overview system basically says to new players, "Welcome to Eve Online.  Here's a Rubik's Cube.  Go fuck yourself." 

On the graphics front, the lead art developer mentioned that CCP is working on allowing players to have custom paint jobs and corporation logos on our ships.  He also showed some work on Captain's Quarters, which led into a general discussion of the upcoming feature in Incarna.

CCP has posted dev blogs about Captain's Quarters, but the lastest pictures and even the short film clip blew me away.  I'm still not sure about being forced to use the 3D interface instead of the 2D ship UI, but I know that if I wasn't in a hurry I would definitely want to lounge around in the new housing.  I really want to see things like market tickers and news feeds of events in low and null sec. 

War on Lag - I was called by work during this event so I didn't get to catch everything.  But I did hear that CCP was concentrating on server lag and won't really look at the client lag until the server-side issues are under control.  I write "really", because although the client isn't the focus of attention, brackets are getting looked at now.

Apparently at another session, an IBM rep said that lag is not caused by the server hardware, but by the software, and the CCP dev had to agree, which is why a team is going through and optimizing the code.  Even though Python does not multi-thread, the CCP devs are getting such improvements in optimizing the code that they are not going to port the code into another language like C.

Security - I'm not sure the CCP name of the lead presenter for the security discussion because I took one look and yelled, "OMG, that's Darius JOHNSON!"  That's right, the former head Goon is now leading the efforts on security.  Some of his presentation covering phishing was already presented as a dev blog, but the CCP security task force also covers botting and hacking.  The current system to petition botters is inadequate so a new system inspired by ReportBots.com that involves just clicking on a menu option to submit a bot report.  CCP is also going to introduce authenticators to aid in account security and passed out the first of them to the attendees of Fanfest.  The authenticators will not be mandatory and I think I heard those choosing not to use authenticators will have another method of authentication.

In addition, the authentication servers will capture the IP addresses for each login session and save them for 30 days.  So if players ever wonders about their account activity, they can go back and see if an unauthorized machine accessed their accouts.

Other security measures are shrouded in secrecy to not tip off the botters and hackers.  One thing Darius did say was that there would be no massive repeat of Unholy Rage.  Instead, CCP would continually ban players found violating the EULA every day.  He called it conducting a "slow burn."  I thought of it as conducting a war of attrition instead of a "shock and awe" campaign.  The only "shock and awe" he plans on conducting might be targeting all the types of bots sold by a particular website so that the bot seller's user forums light up and catch on fire.

I think the one message CCP wants players to take away was stated on one of the slides:

"If you are botting, it is the perfect time to stop." 

Economy - A lot of the content of CCP Dr.EyjoG's lecture will show up in the next quarterly economic newsletter so I won't go over everything, but he did give out some interesting information about the future.

First, the money supply in the game is growing faster than he'd like.  Currently the money supply is growing 2-3% per month and he would like to see that cut back to 1-2%.  That means we should expect to see new money sinks entering the game.

The second remarkable item is that market activity is an indication of unhappiness in the player base.  During the unhappiness last summer the market cooled down while the forums lit on fire.  Apparently there are other economic ways of showing displeasure with matters than just canceling accounts.  Or were lots of accounts being canceled during this time?  Hmmm.

The third is that for the first time, Dr.EyjoG may be ready to intervene directly in the economy for the first time due to the major role PLEX currently plays in the market.  According to a slide,

"EVE Central Bank may, or may not, take actions to intervene with the PLEX market if its stability is severely threatened.  Important to note that it does not mean that there is a specific target for PLEX prixes or money supply in the future."

And finally, Dr.EyjoG would like to see more economic data provided to players so we could see more player economic analysis.

Pain vs Brain - What a spectacle!  And believe it or not, I was on the seat of my couch watching the end.  The commentary was basically from boxers but the match was won on the chess board.  I really hope the entire event makes it to YouTube! because people started jumping on the live stream and I missed some of the introductions.

The School of Hard Knocks

My industrial pilot Wandering Rose has somehow managed to get a combat role when I run missions.  Originally she just flew alongside Rosewalker salvaging while he ran through missions.  Salvaging while missioning has a tendency of discouraging ninja salvagers.  And because she had good defense and fitting skills because I wanted her to fly transport ships well, she could tank a surprising amount of incoming fire. 

By the time I started running level 4 missions, Wandering Rose was flying a salvage-fitted Hurricane.  While I was learning how to run the missions, I wound up fitting a couple of 650mm artillery pieces in place of a salvager and a tractor beam to help out against the smaller ships harassing Rosewalker's Maelstrom.  Eventually I decided to let Wandering Rose fly a fully combat-fit ship with 6 450mm autocannons and 2 assault missile launchers.  That worked really well.  So well I decided to have her train up to use tech 2 guns.  The only problem is that with her spotty education she had problems learning the advanced autocannon skills necessary to really dish out some pain.  So she has to go back to smaller ships in order to learn the basics required to use the larger weapons installed on battlecruisers.

Or, in other words, I screwed up her skills queue and I can't fit tech 2 guns this weekend.  Instead Wandering Rose will finish up Small Projectile Turret V and then learn Small Autocannon Specialization up to IV.  Next weekend will be fun.

Watching Fanfest After All

I'm taking Friday off to watch Fanfest.  And why not?  I haven't taken a day off all year, not even for the great snowstorm of 2011.  I'm not sure if I want to get the HD feed or not.  I'm still torn between just laying on the couch to watch or running a mining op and watching on the laptop.

So what finally made me decide to take the day off?  The Pain vs Brain chessboxing match.  The pre-match video is pretty good and I've got to see how it turns out.  Besides, only EVE TV would show a chessboxing match immediately following a one hour economics lecture.  And I really want to see that one too.  With so much goodness on Friday, I just couldn't resist.

Hammer And Anvil

I don't spend all of my time in Eve Online figuring out ways to build tech 2 ships.  Sometimes I run level 4 missions.  I especially like the rogue drone missions because they give out so many minerals I need to make tech 2 ships.

When I search the Internet looking for fits for my Maelstrom, auto-cannon fits without propulsion mods seem really popular.  But since I always dual-box PvE situations in Eve, I'm developing another tactical doctrine for running level 4 missions.  The concept involves fitting out a battleship (currently a Maelstrom) with artillery because I like to reach out to 90 klicks and hit other ships.  Of course, artillery fit battleships are vulnerable to fast ships like frigates and destroyers.  That's where my second ship, and auto-cannon fit Hurricane comes in.  If a small ship like a frigate or cruiser is able to survive traversing the Maelstrom's kill zone, the Hurricane is usually able to take out the pesky ships rather rapidly.

This tactic works really well on missions when the ships land right next to frigates fit with webbers and scrams.  The Maelstrom enters the deadspace area, draws all the aggro, and then the Hurricane, combined with the gang's ten drones, makes short work of the offending rats.  This tactic also frees up the Maelstrom's guns to take out more distant targets (like stasis towers) that pose a longer term threat to the successful completion of the mission.

I've been working on the tactic because this weekend Wandering Rose, my industrial pilot who also pilots my battlecruisers, will finish up learning Medium Autocannon Specialization to 3 and I'll be able to outfit the Hurricane with tech 2 guns.  At the same time, I need to finally decide which tech 2 guns to buy for my Maelstrom since Rosewalker can now use large tech 2 autocannons and artillery.  With the success of these tactics I'm leaning toward fitting artillery and then purchasing autocannons later on to experiment with.

I know that most people find missions boring.  But between spending a lot of time involved in industrial activities and playing RIFT, I'm not burned out doing them and actually look forward to doing missions like The Blockade and can't wait to finally get to do a level 4 version of Worlds Collide.  Besides that, I get to play around with gang compositions trying to figure out how ships fit together best.  Figuring stuff out is always fun.