blood on the sheets

Last week the EON presses starting rolling – a little later than usual due to Fanfest appearing earlier in the calender. We’d originally planned to have the issue on sale at Fanfest as it seemed that publication dates and the big Iceland meet were meant for each other, but it became abundantly clear a few weeks ago that such a feat wasn’t possible due to CCP devs being busy writing their presentations and myself embroiled in wedding arrangements. In the end it worked out for the best, as it meant the last few days of frantic writing and editing weren’t as fraught as we’d become accustomed to and I could enjoy my honeymoon in relative peace in a very hot country as opposed to a very cold one.

Lot’s of people to thank this issue; CCP Shanghai for creating a blood-soaked cover image that is a little different to those we’ve run in the past, Static Zero for agreeing to snap Fanfest for our Dust feature, LaVista Vista for his insights into EVE’s credit crunch and to the EON Fiction Gang for getting stuck into some new scenarios.

The issue should be up on sale in the EVE Store soon, and I will of course get full details up here over the coming few days.

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…

blatant name-checking

24 hours after returning from Fanfest (the MMM “Pub Team” like to drag things out for a few extra days), I find myself somewhat refreshed and reinvigorated, as I always do after coming back from the annual EVE pilgrimage in Iceland

As ever it was great to meet the real faces behind the pretend names who I’ve come to rely on to help me with the magazine: CrazyKinux has become a close ally and it was great to catch up with the Blog Pack leader as he launched himself from one presentation to the next like some fevered journalist (he was probably the busiest guy in the building). Yoshito Sanders was another EON stalwart it was good to be reacquainted with, who at least seemed more alert than when I last saw him, crashed out on the EON sofas at Fanfest last year. Fellow fictioneer The Cosmopolite offered a hand in friendship, which I was happy to shake, and, In fact, over the course of the three-day EVE extravaganza (of which I lazily attended two) it was a bumper year for name-checking: Alienhand, LaVista Vista, and Reiisha… just a few of the many legends I spoke with.

Sadly not everyone could come to the party, and given the 250,000 players who might have turned up, it’s probably a good thing they didn’t (although I suspect the economy would have embraced such a delegation). Notable absentees include the elusive Winterblink. Likewise Urban Mongral’s non-bounding about looking for his podcasting other-half also made the halls seem a little emptier …although my bar tab was lighter as a consequence. Thankfully there was an off-the-leash Midnighter happy to pick up the slack. An abiding memory of Fanfest V will be a vision of him, drenched in RoXoR love and cheap beer, clutching the neck of a smashed guitar. I trust he managed to get it back through customs.

It wasn’t the most hedonistic Fanfest, nor the busiest – American attendees seemed particularly thin on the ground, but from an EON perspective, it was among the very best. Aside from catching up with contributors, there was some big announcements – all of which are by now well known, but need careful pondering. For the next month, that’s pretty much what I’ll be doing.

tour of duty

As someone who’s been to a number of game development studios across the years (yes, even Blizzard’s), the chance to win a tour of CCP’s recently completed offices (though, sadly, not their old ones) is not a competition I’m all that interested in entering. Don’t let me put you off as it’s all for a good cause, but you have to understand that I’ve been through CCP’s new fish hut enough times already. For instance, I know by heart the warning that’s taped above each lavatory should visitors be tempted to improperly dispose of paper towels.

Hilmar, CCP’s CEO, will be giving the guided tour, which will certainly make the wandering a worthwhile investment should you be as keen an aquarium buff as he is. However, aside from the Fanfest-friendly date and the fact that the winner will enjoy the undivided attention of CCP’s Great Leader (which itself is worth a small fortune), not much is known about what stopovers are planned for the tour. For the asking price, a raid on the EVE Store is a sure thing, but I also hope there are planned pauses at two of CCP’s most popular and worthy destinations; the coffee machine down by where I think the GMs live, and the crow’s nest dining room.

Now I’m not a massive coffee fan, but that machine makes such a good brew I swear it’s sentient (a possibility backed-up by the mechanical marvel being on Facebook). As for the food at CCP, let me just say that it beats the fare offered by any establishment I’ve ever worked at… and I work from home. In a country that can’t seem to make a decent sandwich and where a fresh tomato is rarer than fish legs, it’s quite a feat that so many fresh ingredients can be found in the same room, let alone combined and cooked to such great effect.

My advice to those keen on bidding is to insist you get coffee and dinner. Also, when going through the Art Department, don’t let Hilmar whisk you too quickly past all the desks. You can be sure than if you look carefully enough you’ll see some designs for new ships, or discarded designs for old ones. Elsewhere on your adventure, if you pass a whiteboard be sure to read what’s on it as you’ll probably glean many development secrets. Don’t make it look like you’re reading it too intently though, or you’ll be taken out and shot as a spy. If you survive all that, don’t forget to email me if you find anything interesting. Finally, of course, don’t flush paper towels down the toilet. It’s bad for the hamsters.

young woman star

Clones are not real. Not yet. None of us live forever. We can only hope to continue beyond this life via the memory of others, whose lives, in turn, we have touched in some small way. To that end it shined a bright light into the dark corners of my soul when I read this post on the E-O forums, asking that CCP graciously honour the memory of the recently-departed “Taera”, by creating, in EVE, a monument to her earthly accomplishments.

Laura “Taera” Genender worked at CCP, albeit briefly, yet it was the very beginning of a promising career for a 23-year old who started as a journalist at MMORPG.com and who seemed to make friends wherever she went. Her ambition whilst at MMORPG was to move into games development, and, as someone who has harboured similar ambitions, I can jealously proclaim that it was an incredible accomplishment to have started that career at CCP.

I’m pretty sure I never met her in my travels (I can barely remember the faces of my old mates at PCZone), but reading what others have said, it saddens me that when I get to Fanfest in November, she won’t be there to politely say she loved reading EON.

I do hope that CCP create something inside New Eden as a testament to her memory. I also hope they change their policy and allow monuments to lesser others who are no longer able to fly across New Eden due to extended downtime in the afterlife.

We should remember that EVE is a real universe where real friendships are forged. These are friendships that persist solely in - and because – of EVE, and when players have their clone contract terminated prematurely, the loss is felt across EVE. It is therefore only fitting that players be allowed to honour the memory of departed friends through the medium of the game that brought them together in the first place.

For myself, I’d much rather have my name on a planet in Amarr than a park bench in Woking. Not that I’d care if I’m dead, but maybe …just maybe, others might.

Thanks Taera. Fly safe, wherever you are. Hopefully I’ll see you in EVE one day.

if we don’t fight, they’ll kill us both

Sadly there hasn’t been much news from CCP on when or where the next Alliance Tournament will appear. I’m reminded of asking since it was this time last year that we headed over to Iceland to prepare for and broadcast the fourth of EVE’s inter-Alliance PvP contests (this was back when EVE TV was kicking its hooves in the tiny MMM stable).

Being a rather large and expensive logistical exercise, it’s not one I myself am keen to be involved in again, although I remember it with great fondness… as do the hundreds who took part and the thousands who watched it live. For the sake of that and for continuity though, I’m curious as to whether November’s Super Ultimate Eve Online Mining Tournament of Awesomeness is a welcome re-imagining of the Fanfest PvP Tournament, a financially necessary re-branding of the bi-annual telethon, or a conjugation of both?

Whatever the future of the Alliance Tournament, I do hope it continues in some form. Even if it means getting all the alliance leaders into a bear-pit and arming them with lirpas. (Daa-da dah dah da-dah…)

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.