wizards and warriors

No-one knows how long an MMO will last and even as new generations of them appear in their shiny new suits of armour, the old games still manage to survive. It’s easy to see why when you see just how much content is swilling around inside the likes of Ultima Online, EverQuest and, yes, EVE. (Hard to believe it’s almost five years old.)

The elders among the MMO fraternity are like the wise old wizards, with the newcomers the brave knights on their fresh steeds, keen to find favour in the imaginations of the great unwashed. Some will fall early in the battle, others will ascend to command vast armies, and yet, the old ones hidden amongst towers of books seem not to care. With so many games surviving to a ripe old age and new ones arriving almost every month, we have to wonder where all the players are coming from… EA-Land, perhaps?

It’s hard to imagine EVE Online ever disappearing. It’s five year mission thus far has been singularly unique and having enjoyed sustained growth throughout that time, and with such impressive investment in the game’s infrastructure (Christ, I sound like an accountant), the next five years promise to continue along the same trajectory. I do wonder where it will end though. In an interview that completely missed my eye, CCP’s co-founder Reynir Hardarson said “MMOs do not have to age. The nature of a game like EVE is that there is no need for sequels – why shouldn’t it run for fifty years?”

Indeed, why shouldn’t it? Whether there’ll be anyone left alive in 50 years is neither here nor there, but if we humans do happen to survive the great surge of methane that’s apparently simmering under the polar ice caps, EVE is probably the best-placed MMO to ride out the wave of obsolescence that will surely engulf Ultima Online and EverQuest and certain other old wizards. EVE may be nearing its fifth birthday, but Trinity gave it a new suit of armour, one that though perhaps not needed, will stand it in good stead for a good while. Wizards in shiny plate may not be standard issue in MMO Land, but when was EVE ever a standard game?

award winners announced (again)

Since most people have now received their copies of EON#011 I will just list the winners of the recent EON Awards, as voted for by the EVE community back in February. These were of course the second annual awards, and, as with last year, the Goons have collectively won the lion’s share. Some have complained that they have done so due to sheer weight of numbers rather than out of merit, which is certainly half true - logically so, given these are decided by a public vote and GoonSwarm are the largest player-entity in the game. That said, the number of total votes cast was significantly lower than the GoonSwarm membership, so it wouldn’t have taken much effort at all to have rolled them over. Congratulations to the Goons I say for mobilizing their drones. And congratulations too for their achievements during 2007. The bees done good. Also a few hearty slaps on the back at last for Verone, who wins his first award after having so many nominations across both years, and to Chribba, who is EVE’s pin-up boy for the second year in a row.

• Forum Warrior: HIPPOKING
• Corp / Alliance site: WWW.GOONFLEET.COM
• Filmmaker of the Year: STAHLREGEN
• Fiction Writer of the Year: VERONE
• Guide Writer of the Year: AGONY UNLEASHED
• Community Service Award: EVEMON
• Fansite: WWW.EVE-FILES.COM
• Leader / CEO of the Year: SESFAN QU’LAH
• Most Promising Newcomer: PANDEMIC LEGION
• Alliance of the Year: GOONSWARM
• Corporation of the Year: GOONFLEET
• Player of the Year: KIATOLON
• EVE Idol: CHRIBBA

Congratulations and thanks again to all the winners for making EVE just about the most interesting and engrossing alternate reality in existence, as well to all the nominees, plus all those who voted online, offered nominations in Iceland and attended the Award meets in Philadelphia and London (what an international bunch we all are).

As for the laser-etched trophies, they are currently being made up and as soon as they arrive in the office, I will be contacting the winners in-game to get their details so we can mail the things out. They are impressive things to behold (and damn heavy too). Before next year we need to think up a name for them. Given that they have a little EVE guy sitting in a pre-Trinity pod, maybe we should call them the Adams? EVE… Adam… geddit? Ok, bad idea.

Final note: The awards procedure will change a bit more drastically for the third awards, but I’ll reveal that another time. For now, let’s allow the winners bask in their well-deserved glory!

cover stories

Hopefully most who have received the latest issue will be enjoying it. It was quite a tough one on account of the cover feature being an absolute bitch to illustrate, consternation over which managed to cause a few tensions within the EON ranks. Originally I had asked Svenstaro, famous for his 3D EVE ship wallpapers, to put an image together for the cover, but as the text came in it from Nate it seemed that what I wanted was either going to be impossible to do in the dwindling time we had available before deadline, or it just wasn’t going to fit with the theme of the cover feature itself.

After flip-flopping and prevaricating about the place (as only I know how) the calvary appeared on the hill in the form of an image CCP had created as a extra for the Testflight article - which ended up working far better than I hoped, thanks to the work of EON’s Art Editor “Wee” Jamie who toyed about with the in-game map elements. As ever, it all worked out well in the end, but i do feel a little bad for Svenstaro having had done all the work I had asked of him with nothing coming of it… If he ever makes it to Fanfest, I will have to buy him a beer.

let the muck-raking begin!

The MMM team (at least, those with passports and without criminal record) went out to Iceland last week for discussions with CCP about various things that are actually rather mundane and not very exciting (making EON better, making the EVE Store friendlier for those that have to endure its bizarre ways in order to buy the mag, etc etc), but of course being at CCP means you bump into a few old faces, some of whom remembered your’s truly from previous visits, and with whom I managed to exchange a few pleasant words before collapsing in a heap due to exhaustion, illness and excessive beer ingestion the previous night (a bothersome threesome of afflictions it must be admitted).

One of the people I exchanged words with was GM Xhagen, who of course is co-responsible for the redevelopment of the new Council of Stellar Management, and who was on the day of our encounter going through all the applicants to make sure they weren’t evil-doers - lapsed or otherwise - or lacking in the necessary documentation to make the trip to Iceland in June (should they be voted in). I should add that I received no insight about this process, nor did I offer much of my own beyond my slow transition from skeptic hopeful to hopeful skeptic. What we did briefly chat about was whether it would be a fun idea to put the weight of EON behind any of the hopeful candidates: It’s fairly obvious that many print journals have political affiliations, so why not EON? Of course it was quickly agreed that to openly back any of the candidates would be a bad idea, not just because EON is kind-of an “official” EVE publication, but because not many people would care anyway… since the next edition of the magazine comes out after the candidates will have already been sworn in. It was a mindless suggestion in any case.

Since our return from northern lands, the full list of candidates has been revealed and I’m very happy to see all the names on the list, some of whom I know little about, some of whom I’ve stood toe-to-toe with over a beer or two. Most revealing of all is that the usual fears and preconceptions are already being manifested and dirt has already begun circulating. As a political entity, the CSM may end up as toothless as some detractors have already argued, but for entertainment value the political process in EVE is already proving to be very diverting. For most of us in the Western world, politics is entertainment, of course, but the good news is that this particular pretense at democracy will have at least been decided upon fairly soon… which will coincide with my next visit to Iceland to cover the first CSM meeting, and so enjoy more chats with new and old faces alike.

eve. face. mag. book.

Since ‘Pages’ were added to Facebook there have been charges that the social networking phenomenon (69 million users and growing) is about to turn into pedo/emo magnet MySpace, which is possibly true given that these unsubscribable Facebook Pages are viewable to the public, unlike the profile pages themselves. However, now that they’re in place and there’s no much we can do about it (since it was put there specifically to allow nefarious corporations to pummel potential consumers into blind obedience), I’ve decided that EON deserves a Page of its own. So, if you’re a Facebook user (and if not, why not?), and you wish to pledge yourself to EVE’s one and only magazine, then just clicky here. And, no, I don’t want to be a vampire, thank you very much!

lost in translation

It’s not often on the EVE forums that you find a thread that is both entertaining and informative, but the person behind EVE character jna has provided one, purely, he protests, out of an act of scholarly “nerd rage”.

Being someone who clearly managed to stay awake during his latin classes, and someone who has enjoyed delving headlong into the language upon which the Western world was built, jna was mildly irked enough by EVE corp and alliances who had adopted cool-sounding latin names (because lingua latina is very cool in EVE, of course) that he’s been compelled to disassemble them, showing them up to be the poor auto-online translations that most of them are. Of Morsus Mihi, a distinguished and revered EVE alliance, he argues that instead of meaning ‘Bite Me’; “sort-of means “A Bite. To Me.”“

Of course it’s no massive blow to collective alliance ego that Atrum Tempestas Foedus should actually be Foedus Atrum Tempestatis, and thankfully no-one has taken jna’s pedantry as any kind of slur, but a few have reverted to defendus modus role-playus (I hope I got that right) to excuse their lack of scholarly latin insight with the ‘fact’ that New Eden is many light years distant from the present and that precise latin usage has changed somewhat in the years since humanity’s final migration to the stars. Good recovery, say I.

Anyway, it’s a great read, one that will help you to feel slightly smug about yourself for having chosen a name in English (or Klingon, etc) that was guided helpfully by one of those spell-checker things… or that you’re not a member of the alliance now called ‘Little Mist’. Now, if you’ll excuse me I have to play Europa Universalis Rome… which in actual fact I do, although I can’t help wondering if the name is spot on, given that it’s just series of geographic locations. jna…? You there?

baby i’m a star

After my supporting role as “Bob” on the WDA podcast last week, I seem to be getting all the big roles. Out now is the latest Witty Ranter podcast, where I was kindly asked to join a panel of professionals to chat about forums and other interactions between MMO developers and their respective communities. Alongside me were the great and the good from the likes of NetDevil (Jumpage Evolution, LEGO Universe),  SOE (EQ, PlanetSide, SWG) and Massively, with me as the unofficial EVE representative. Sadly my connection during the discussion wasn’t the best, which meant that whenever I said anything, Skype freaked out and I ended up having  no idea how the others responded to my inane comments. Still, it’s a step closer to immotaility. (For the record, mine was the only English accent.)

so, what do you think?

..It’s one of those questions that are often asked without ever fearing the worst: We ask it when we’ve proudly put some shelves up, only for a friend or partner to point out that a door won’t open. It’s also a question we sometimes don’t ask in case we hear something along the lines of, “Yes, actually, your curvaceous behind does look rather big in that dress.” …Not that I wear dresses, you understand. Not in public anyway. Not yet.

So it’s with an excited sense of dread that I ask a slightly more fleshed-out version of the above question. I, and my colleagues at EON Towers, would simply like to know what you think of the magazine we’ve been making for… cripes… nearly three years! We’d like to know what you think of it, even if you don’t think much of it at all - that’s the dreaded part, because sometimes honesty and frankness is often the best policy. (You heartless swine, you!)

You see, those of us who put the magazine together think it’s rather good and we’re all very proud of it. Lots of you who read it seem to enjoy it too, but to be honest we don’t hear much beyond “it’s great”, or “I don’t buy it.” We’d really like to know what parts you do or don’t like. Is it too infrequent, too expensive, too light on info… too papery? I mean, there are things that can be improved and will be improved, but we maybe don’t see the same opportunities for change that you might. Our EVE experiences are all different and we try to reflect that in EON. Of course you can’t please everyone all of the time, but it is worth trying, at least. Or is it?

So anyway, we’ve put together a little survey that should only take a couple of minutes to complete. It’s perhaps not as scientific as surveys should be (we’re not marketing people), but we hope it covers most things about EON and how the mag might relate to you. I did answer a survey years ago about something, so inspiration for some of the questions might have come from that.

EON SURVEY

Of course you don’t have to answer all the questions and you don’t have to leave an email address, but those who do will be entered into a monthly draw to win extra playtime for EVE. If you’d like to be more wordy in your feedback, you may of course email us directly, although all that will win you is our eternal gratitude - which is arguably more worthy, who knows.

Now, to get this freakin’ door open…

turn left at jita

For a while now CCP have been engaged in “other projects” that we at EON towers have been refused permission to even talk about. To a certain extent such blanket refusal to even allow us to put the words ‘darkness’, ‘world’ and ‘of’ in any way that might suggest CCP don’t have their eye fully on the here and now of New Eden is fair enough. EON is an EVE magazine after all. However we can’t help but assume a position of smug superiority in proclaiming we’ve been involved in a few “other projects” of our own, ones that extend beyond the temporary stewardship of EVE TV Weekly.

Actually the first of these projects came about through EVE TV, when Serenity Steele popped over to London be a guest on the weekly show, bringing a prototype copy of his EVE Strategic Maps book with him. So impressed were we that we would have published it right there and then had we the resources to devote to it. Fast forward a few months and those resources have become available and after more than two years in development, the book is now on sale.

Of course I am rather biased so I won’t tell you how great I think EVE Strategic Maps is, but I would like to praise SS for his patience and determination at seeing the project through. A lot of effort has gone into the design of the book in trying to reinterpret EVE’s in-game 3D mesh for the printed page. When you think about the number of systems, all the links between them, plus stations, complexes, ice fields and rocks, it really is a triumph of style and function that the book is so easy to decipher. In fact I’d rate it up there with the London Underground map, but hey, I am biased.

after the meet

After a suitably greasy lunch and a strong cup of tea I can now claim to feeling at least part human after the EVE player meet in Philadelphia yesterday.

I would hazard a guess that there were 50 people who came along, some sticking around only until I bumbled my way through reading aloud the EON Award winners, others only appearing afterwards. Not as impressive a turnout as the London meet perhaps, which had well over 100 attendees, but a great crowd nonetheless.

I have to give out massive thanks to Nicoli Voldkif who dutifully drove me all the way to and from Harrisburg (I have no memory of the return journey, though I gather I was fully asleep for most of it), also to Xeserox from Eden Underground Radio who traipsed from New Jersey and left only with a drunken interview of me swearing loudly and talking only small ammounts of sense. I’d also like to mention Manasi, who squeezed every bit of life out of his notebook to get EVE running at 7fps and thus managed to have a mining op going during the meet, making him the only player to leave the pub with more money than he went in with.

Congratulations, of course, to the winners, whom I will be contacting in-game soon so we can get the awards mailed out - a process that may take a month or two, since we’re still waiting for the trophies to be made up. I shall of course be thinking ahead to the nominations for the 2009 awards, which may be decided by a secret council (of trusted EON contributors) which will hopefully convene around Fanfest time… giving me plenty of time to defeat this hangover.