sweet sixteen is ready to fly

Thousands of copies of EON #016 are bagged up and ready to be set free into the maelstrom and chaos of the global mailing industry, all of them sure to miraculously end up in the hands of their buyers over the course of the next week or so (depending on where they live, of course). For those who’re currently subscribed to New Eden’s finest inkfest, there will be found a bonus in each envelope in the form of a Caldari Cruiser poster (as below, but rather larger), which basically has all the State hulls ordered so you need never mistake a Rook for a Falcon ever again… or have any excuse to. If you’ve yet to subscribe, it’s not too late to get your hands on a poster. Please let us know what you think of them. If you like the concept, we’ll try to do more for other ships in the future.

Details about what’s in the issue can be found on the Latest Issue page, or you can go straight to the EVE Store to order your copy of the magazine. The Store was recently upgraded, making it considerably easier to purchase EON. In the past the system hasn’t allowed you to use PayPal, or buy other Store items at the same time.

Thanks to everyone who helped out on this issue; CCP of course, FinnAgain from EVE Tribune, James from Massively, Kirith Kodachi for stepping into the Testflight seat at short notice, Karox Lominax for being all-knowing, and a whole host of other players who were kind enough to lend their time and expertise, among them Mynxee, Verone, Hardin and some guy called Winterblink, who seemed happy enough to endure me questioning him on Skype for more than two hours for a Warp Drive Active retrospective.

Before I leave you to your internet wanderings there are a few winners to announce; those who’s in-game images we’ve published from the hundreds sent in last month. All of the following will be receiving 100m ISK from the EON corp account: Odyessus, Tonglil, Seraphina Oriana, Skittifink Dagger, Praerian, Montuss, Kailen Thorn, Niner Skirata, Kai Misu, Felix Hawke and battlebot1077. The winner of the EVE Conquests board game is…. Niner Skirata. Well done to you all, and thanks to the many hundreds of others who entered. We’ll be running the same deal next issue, so ready your favourite screenshots. In the meantime, enjoy the issue!

killboards for carebears

I seem to be on a roll of ideas, maybe this one not as bad as the last: Would there be any benefit by having regular financial accounts generated by the API that focus on certain types of corporations or alliances? I’m not suggesting entire rosters are released, or day-by-day trades, or locations of all resources and assets, just a basic balance sheet and a profit and loss statement.

I ask because I was reading the latest QEN and it was interesting to find out that 88% of wealth was in the hands of 10% of the population. However, beyond discovering that the average account has 500m ISK, we don’t really know where all that wealth is. The QEN hints at personal wealth, but how does personal wealth compare with that of organisations?

If corporate accounts were generated periodically (either for corps over a certain size, or corps within alliances – or just the alliances themselves), and could be publicly scrutinised via the API, might it provide another level of competitiveness, as well as transparency? Or would it take away a much-needed layer of secrecy that organisations need to operated within in order to be competitive?

I know this question has been put forward many times over many years, and even addressed by Dev panels, but given the detailed information increasingly (though all too infrequently) handed out by the QEN, without some specifics it perhaps lacks the context that would make the data more meaningful and useful.

in remembrance

Every issue in EON we have three single-page articles called In Character, that basically profile the famous (and often the completely obscure) residents of New Eden. The articles are always written from a role-play perspective and even those who aren’t role-players are treated as characters rather than gamers (which isn’t always easy when some we’ve profiled are more active on the forums than in game).

I had a thought earlier today about devoting the In Character profiles in a future issue to being more like obituaries. Actually, effectively they would be obituaries. They would focus on player-characters who have actually – to crassly borrow from Monty Python – expired.

I would of course get information from corporation buddies of the deceased rather than hire a medium, and it would remain in character rather than be stuff like “he was so funny on Teamspeak”. But I’m curious if the idea is as tasteless as this proposal is turning out to be, or whether it is a good way to honour EVE’s tragically and permanently fallen? As ever, your thoughts are welcome.

more postcards, for the win (literally)

In the last issue of EON magazine we featured 11 of the best screenshots (from a total of more than 500 that had been sent in) that you guys had taken during Apocrypha’s first weekend. We had dozens of great images of ships exploring the space beyond the wormholes, engaging with Sleeper ships and sometimes not being entirely victorious. Many other players ignored the new features (or seemed to) and just got on with their usual EVE lives. Now it’s time to ask again for your screenshots, only this time we have more than a measly 100m ISK to give away!

As before your pictures can be of ships mining, travelling or fighting. They can be of pilots tending to starbases, searching for wormholes or engaged in epic battles. In fact they can be of anything from inside New Eden, they just have to be good-looking images, as high resolution as your system will allow and with the UI tuned off (CTRL-F9 to toggle). The very best that we receive, or which between them might make for a varied and interesting mix, will be published in the next edition of EON that’s out in July.

You’ll be wanting to know what the prize is beyond measly ISK… well we’re going to send out a copy of the recently-released board game EVE: Conquests (linky) to one of the winners. Of course we’ll throw in copies of EON for all the published image-takers… and 100m ISK for each published picture too.

RULES: Send your images to postcards@mmmpublishing.com before downtime on Monday June 1st 2009. Please include your character name (main or alt) in your email. For the image to be accepted we need to know the system the screenshot was taken in and you will need to write a sentence or two about what was happening before, during or after the image was taken. Remember to take hi-res images, with the UI toggled off.

screenshot winners

I would like to thank everyone who entered our screenshot competition from last weekend. We had hundreds of entries which took us more than a day to get through – but let’s not make it sound like it wasn’t a pleasurable day of work: Seeing and reading about the wealth of activities players were getting up to during Apocrypha’s first live weekend offered welcome respite from panic-writing the last few pages of EON.

The winning screenshots were judged not just on the quality and composition of the image, but whether it found the basis of a commentary that told a brief story. Some people included a very interesting piece of text and an image that would have been lessened without it. The winners were also judged by how each image sat on the page next to the others. You see, the idea of “Postcards” is always to offer a wealth of different views, with different stories behind them, so while some images may have looked better through another pair of eyes, I think we chose a very healthy and inspiring mix.

Without further ado, here are the winning names, who will shortly each be receiving 100m ISK and a copy of the magazine just as soon as it is ready: Aeon Spark, Alin Gane, Che Biko, Grey Nord, Irumani, Leeloo Malaquin, Mkah Mvet, Mynxee, Natas Ignis & Pottsey.

I Should add that we will be accepting new screenhots for another competition soon, and that I will this time hope to secure better prizes thanks to Nvidia.

Finally, this image was sent in by Lord Saitan. His graphics card evidently wasn’t up to EVE’s new basic standard. I was torn to include it among the winners, and would have cited failing camera drones as the culprit behind it, but in the end decided against including it. Poor Lord Saitan. Thanks to Apocrypha he lost twice. I hope he doesn’t wardec us.

If the 400+ screenshots we received were any indication of what the general population of EVE was busying itself with, it would seem that about 20% were cooing like babies at the new asteroids, 20% had no idea Apocrypha had been released and were getting on with their usual wars, 10% tackling missions and 50% opening up wormholes (many of which were too intimidating to enter – judging by the comments from the people who peered into them).

apocrypha screenshot competition

Although I’m still waiting for my retail copy of EVE Online to arrive in the mail (it should sit nicely next to my Simon & Schuster first edition), thankfully, unlike in 2003, not having EVE on disc isn’t any kind of handicap. I plan to delve fully into the many features of EVE’s tenth expansion over the weekend and I suspect many thousands of others plan to do the same.

To celebrate this very first weekend of Apocrypha’s existence, we’re running a little competition so we can perhaps glimpse EVE through your eyes. What we’re after are your screenshots. They can be of ships mining, travelling or fighting. They can be of pilots tending to starbases, searching for wormholes or epic battles aganst Sleeper ships. In fact they can be of anything from inside New Eden, they just have to be good-looking images. The very best that we receive will be published in the edition of EON that’s out next month (April 3rd, I think).

Send your images to eon@mmmpublishing.com and include your player name and the system the screenshot was taken in. If you can write a sentence or two about what was happening before, during or after the image was taken, then that will be a bonus to your chances of winning a prize… Yes, we have prizes!

For every image we publish we will hand out 100m ISK. You can enter as many times as you like, and if we get load of great pictures, we may end up publishing ten rather than the usual five. So that’s a potential 1bn ISK prize fund! (Ok, not as much as some of you earn, but it’s the most EON’s ever had in its wallet.) Winners will also receive a copy of the next magazine, and I’m also looking to try and get a graphics card out of NVIDIA, but I may have left things a little too late on that front. I’ll update this if we get lucky.

Rules: Premium client images only please. Turn-off the UI (CTRL-F9 to toggle). Email your imagse to eon@mmmpublishing.com before 6am EVE time on Monday morning – don’t forget your player name (or alt) and the system where the picture was taken. Some commentary will be very helpful too.

Edit: Oopsy. It’s CTRL-F9 to toggle UI, not ALT.

coverage fire

Yesterday was of course a significant day in the history of New Eden, with Band of Brothers being very cleverly – and literally – dismembered by GoonSwarm over the course of just a few short hours. I won’t be adding to the facts, or the conjecture, suffice to say that for what has been a rather anti-climactic end (or rebirth) for EVE’s arguably most successful alliance, is also an event utterly gripping to witness from the sidelines.

The reason for this post is to put a shout out to EVE Radio and their coverage yesterday, which was thoroughly professional in virtually every aspect of its execution. It was wonderful that they managed to scoop comments from The Mittani and Dianabolic, even better that they had the two alliance cheeses sparring live on air a little later on. With correspondents flying into Delve it added immeasurably to the drama, and while it was at times understandably chaotic, veteran DJ FunkyBacon  held it all together wonderfully.

Sorry if this sounds crawly, but I was genuinely glued to my speakers throughout the evening, mostly because of events, but also because of the quality of the coverage. Great stuff. I shall be tuning into the Baconator more often from now on, you can be sure of that.

The download of the show in question can be found here.

i wanna be a spaceship manager

So I was thinking today about a game I’ve been playing recently called Football Manager Live. It’s an MMOG where virtual managers buy a team of footballers, coach them and then stick them in a formation that suits their abilities before pitting them against other teams, either in friendly matches or player-created leagues. Generally the higher you finish in a league, the more funds you get to buy better players.

Initially I was quite excited by FML. It has a skill-training system fully-based on EVE’s (lots of offline training), you can run the client in the background all day without having to pay too much attention to what’s going on in the gameworld (usually just transfer mails and chat rooms), and if you need a break from work, you can quickly and easily find another manager to PvP against in a friendly soccer match, or a scheduled league game.

It’s not a very visual game. All the players in your team are represented by stats, with each of their physical and mental attributes, as well their footballing skills, rated between one and twenty.

The reason I mention the game here is because it suddenly struck me today that there is an equivalent to FML in the EVE universe. Well, not really, but almost… Imagine if the great EVEmon was given a chatroom and a text-based battle system where you could field a fleet of your fitted ships and manage them in some kind of Alliance Tournament. You could create leagues, offer prize money, then when it got to the battle, you could order ships to attack, defend, orbit, etc, all in a real-time overhead view where you’re dragging lines across the battlefield like some frenzied general with a chalkboard.

The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of there being a Spaceship Manager Live game, and the more feasible it seems. I’m not sure the EVEmon guys would agree with me though.

so many goblins, so little time

A couple of months ago I was asked by a  friend of a friend if I would like to edit a magazine. Without thinking too much about what I was letting myself in for, I said yes. The magazine is called MMOZine and from that you can probably get a good idea about what it concerns itself with. It’s not quite a magazine in the same sense that EON is, since it’s only available online and can be downloaded for free (yes, for free), but it’s a magazine in that it is planned, written and produced to the traditional conventions of a magazine. In other words it’s a pain in the ass to put together when compared to websites (in my experience at least): You have to gather everything by a deadline rather than publishing as-and-when, by which time you must also make sure you have all the page elements ready for proofing and design (body text, panels, captions, straps etc), rather than just running it through some content management template.

None of these issues are that big a deal since I’ve been doing this magazine shenanigans for a number of years, but what was a considerable shock to the system was just how time consuming persistent world games are to visit, even for a short while. Keeping up with EVE was difficult enough when it was mildly complicated by occasional forays into LOTRO, but when you suddenly find yourself having to re-acquaint yourself with World of Warcraft and Warhammer and get to grips with “lesser” games such as Runes of Magic at the same time, the spare time just vanishes in puff of subscription fees. I’ve seen more goblins and their derivatives in the past two months than I ever thought possible.

A large part of my reasoning for helping out with MMOZine was to get myself out among the general populace again and get some perspective on EVE and it’s place in the greater MMOG universe. That one aspect alone has been worth the journey: It’s quite an eye-opener to go back into New Eden when you’ve been on a whirlwind tour of every persistent world out there, seeing how they all handle character creation, how progression is managed and so on. Communication is something that in EVE really stands out after you’ve had to work though other worlds and their endless spam messages. Actually on that point I liked the way in FM Live that if you spam the mailing system you not only get a warning from the moderators – a public one, you lose in-game currency. Something the EVE mods should consider, perhaps?

With another EON deadline looming large on the horizon I’ve made my way back to the loving arms of EVE after finishing my first MMOZine as editor. It struck me though how almost impenetrable and confusing the official EVE site is. Seriously, if it wasn’t for the fact that location of certain areas have been branded into my subconscious mind over the course of many years, I would have been utterly lost. I do hope CCP are working on a thorough redesign because it must surely put a lot of newcomers off.

The ninth issue of MMOZine (my first as editor – feedback welcome) is out today. I should warn you that there is almost nothing about EVE it in, partly because I found other games were more worthy of the coverage. That may sound like a heretical thing to admit but MMOZine aims to offers a concentrated dose of general persistent world news and views, aimed very much at the rank-and-file of the online gaming fraternity. It would be a massive abuse to ram MMOZine full of EVE material just becuase it may be easy to come by. There are many more games than EVE in the online world (few better it must be said) and some are of far greater interest to some gamers than EVE will ever be. Maybe it has something to do with all those goblins. Be assured that I intend to discover why in the fullness of time.

back to the edge

After returning from picturing Fanfest V in the latest EON, Postcards from the Edge is calling out again for in-game images to adorn its pages.

Reading over my previous call for images I’m reminded that I never made good on my offer to send magazines out to those who had their’s published. As I admitted in my previous post I suck at credits, more than I realised. Time to make amends…