I was discussing this with a corpmate of mine yesterday, and I came across a thought. They could use the 'ambulation' engine and content later on to actually add something to the game compared to the 'walk around the station' ability it's going to be at release. (What that is, I've not a clue... maybe we could land on moons or planets and run around, or tour a titan?)

I didn't say much about the other content mainly because nearly everyone that has anything to do with science and industry in EVE is going "It's about time!" Now if there was only some way to automate mining that DOESN'T violate the EULA/TOS.... (Sure would be nice to drop a 'mining array' in a belt and come back a few hours later to collect the goods... In low/null sec only, of course! Sovereignty possibly required.)

WoW converts, eh?

I have been playing EVE since its late beta stages, unable to tolerate any other MMO for more than a few weeks of hour-a-day play, on average. And since release, indeed since beta -- since first being enthralled by the character and culture exuded by its robust avatar creation process -- I have longed for nothing more than I have longed for what Ambulation is bringing.

Obviously its absence thus far has not been game-breaking for me, but its arrival will be game-expanding, and it will undoubtedly garner more interest and greater immersion from me.

Originally posted by girlgeek

Originally posted by jinxit

I think ambulation will be stealth patch, on Christmas day this year as a thankyou to it's devoted players.

 

Ohhhhh....IhopeIhopeIhopeIhopeIhope!

(Translation:  Oh, I hope, I hope, I hope...muttered from a very excited gamer that has been anxiously awaiting ambulation since the first mention of it.)

Whats the big deal about ambulation? Is it really going to add any more fun? If we can walk in stations, maybe someday we can walk in starships and on planets, but again, whats the big deal? Would there be that many people that would do it? Are there that many people that want it?

EVE is a totally PvP oriented game. My two friends and I joined about a month ago. The extremely steep learning curve, along with little ability to decide what to do next made it difficult for us to enjoy our first times in. We tried to get info from the chat lines but most often we got arrogant insults about 'newbies' or mindless offensive chatter. Buried somewhere in this were a few helpful suggestions but finally we got tired of this. We probably would have dropped the game by that time (the learning curve is steep and slow!!!) but we are all in phoning distance of each other and when we play we can chat on the phone. The chat box is minimized.

On the positive side I have found the graphics for the game are outstanding. The UI for ship control is fairly easy and intuitive and congratulations to the programmers who designed it. The ships are unusual to say the least. While I would have liked to see more customization of the basic design (not the modules but the combinations of the various slot types), the present system is ok. While customization is allowed with modules those you may use are limited in both number and most importantly, slot type. The character avatars are generally useless and most everybody looks alike, even tho most don't bother with the single in game pictures. Your pic is small and shows little of any detail you selected when you created the character.

Ships are the stars of the game of course. But guys! Most of them look like somebody stuck a bunch of items togetner and then hit it with a hammer! Hadly able to tell front from rear unless the rockets are blasting. A few come thru ok, like the Galletean Caracal cruiser which resembles a Klingon bird-of-prey and is downright cool. But why did they leave out virtually all the more conventional design types? Yes, I am aware that spaceships have no need for streamlining or even aesthetics, but I have news for you. People (not all but MOST) who play like the cool ship designs and want to buy them. Think I am wrong? Are u a hard corps EVE player who doesn't want to see any criticism?

CCP is a company and needs to make a profit. People like myself, a former game designer for TSR, now retired, have all sorts of ideas for content and improving game play. First decide if you want to keep the more casual player who simply wants a few hours of escapism, not endless frustration of high level players gloating over their ability to destroy most new players at will. If new  to the game, then I recommend u stay out of and low security space. Your only real option is joining some Corporation (ie guild) already containing powerful players). Loe security space) is full of high level characters with no real control, certainly not courtesy or things like that, over gleeful destruction of your ship and all the hours of play and game monies spent to obtain it. I fear that the majority of high level hard corps EVE fans do not want any change that might intefere with their power and pleasure. Few have any interest in gaining new paying players to support the game. This is, of course, only my opinion.

Ideas! Encountering meteors and comets and rogue asteroids during travels. Increasing the occurance of special finds. yes treasure, like in WOW, who have 10-15 million paying accounts. Can you imagine the outstanding content upgrades if CCP had even a fraction of those accounts? I have already bragged on the graphics, so what about seeing 'glimmers', 'gleamings', 'glistenings', 'glowers' etc...? None of which are detectible with equipment but might be seen if you manually fly your ships around asteroids. Comets you can reach that have unknown effects, mabey on your character or ship. Wrecked and abandoned ships adrift that can be explored, if not by avatars then mechanical remote drones. For goodness sake the list of ideas and possibilities is practically endless, and all with range of the present programming.

I have just read that the company is doing away with ghost training. All I can say is that this is a bad idea. I feel that there is more to this decision than meets the eye. If an account in terminated then simply terminate the training. On and off, like an electronic switch (computers are good at this). My friends and I are 50/50 at best on staying with the game. We decided to stay for a little longer to see what was upcoming but this was some more unhappy news. Skill based training systems can be as grinding as any fantasy leveler when there are hundreds of skills, and numerous skills needed to emplace and use a single type of module. Opinions vary on this but the removal of the ghost training (training a skill continues while player is offline) "seems' to be a somewhat desperate move to keep players in the game longer.

Don't think for a minute I object to a company trying to maintain and grow their client lists. They have to in order to survive. It is called good business. But I don't think a backward step (nerf in the gametalk) will help much. It will lengthen the new players 'grinding' along with the steep learning curve. The 'old heads' won't be bothered too much I guess, they already have theirs. By the way 'steep learning curve' simply means there is a lot, a really really whole lot, of information needed to play EVE.  I am thankful for the 'tips' we get on check in. The 'tutorial' seems fragmented and if you make a mistake (as all of us did) it gets you screwed up even further. Also the game seems to have either glitches or unknown rules that can effect your play. Such as a cruiser on a mission that suddenly cannot attack any of the swarm of enemies attacking your friends in the group. Leave and come back, if anyone is still alive in your group, and suddenly you can shoot your missiles or guns. Is it some sort of rule about the type of ship allowed on each individual mission? Is it simply that we do or don't do something that causes the problem.

I hope I don't cause a lot of flaming because I criticised this game. I simply wanted to point out some stuff, both good and bad, like a regular reviewer. If I was somewhat harsh of the hard corps it was because when my friends and I finally took our hard earned new cruisers and ventured into low sec space (.4),  our three Type 1 cruisers were ambushed immediately by four assault ships of some type a from Mining Corp for cripes sake!  Taught us a lesson? Sure it did! Fun? No!  Frustrating?  Yes!  Annoying? Very!  We are newbies (less than two months). Read this paragraph and decide if you want others to feel the same way about a your game, and we have to pay for it. Should we bother to stay? Doubtful but will stick a little longer and see what happens. Do you really care? "GRIN", seriously doubt it.

Thanks for listening,                            Garry Spiegle

Originally posted by garry

EVE is a totally PvP oriented game. My two friends and I joined about a month ago. The extremely steep learning curve, along with little ability to decide what to do next made it difficult for us to enjoy our first times in. We tried to get info from the chat lines but most often we got arrogant insults about 'newbies' or mindless offensive chatter. Buried somewhere in this were a few helpful suggestions but finally we got tired of this.[...]

Ships are the stars of the game of course. But guys! Most of them look like somebody stuck a bunch of items togetner and then hit it with a hammer! Hadly able to tell front from rear unless the rockets are blasting. A few come thru ok, like the Galletean Caracal cruiser which resembles a Klingon bird-of-prey and is downright cool. But why did they leave out virtually all the more conventional design types? Yes, I am aware that spaceships have no need for streamlining or even aesthetics, but I have news for you.[...]

CCP is a company and needs to make a profit. People like myself, a former game designer for TSR, now retired, have all sorts of ideas for content and improving game play. First decide if you want to keep the more casual player who simply wants a few hours of escapism, not endless frustration of high level players gloating over their ability to destroy most new players at will.[...] I fear that the majority of high level hard corps EVE fans do not want any change that might intefere with their power and pleasure. Few have any interest in gaining new paying players to support the game. This is, of course, only my opinion.

Ideas![...] yes treasure, like in WOW, who have 10-15 million paying accounts. Can you imagine the outstanding content upgrades if CCP had even a fraction of those accounts?  I have already bragged on the graphics, so what about seeing 'glimmers', 'gleamings', 'glistenings', 'glowers' etc...? None of which are detectible with equipment but might be seen if you manually fly your ships around asteroids. Comets you can reach that have unknown effects, mabey on your character or ship. Wrecked and abandoned ships adrift that can be explored, if not by avatars then mechanical remote drones. For goodness sake the list of ideas and possibilities is practically endless, and all with range of the present programming. [ed note: see last paragraph in reply]

I have just read that the company is doing away with ghost training.[...]

I hope I don't cause a lot of flaming because I criticised this game. I simply wanted to point out some stuff, both good and bad, like a regular reviewer. If I was somewhat harsh of the hard corps it was because when my friends and I finally took our hard earned new cruisers and ventured into low sec space (.4),  our three Type 1 cruisers were ambushed immediately by four assault ships of some type a from Mining Corp for cripes sake!  Taught us a lesson? Sure it did! Fun? No!  Frustrating?  Yes!  Annoying? Very!  We are newbies (less than two months). Read this paragraph and decide if you want others to feel the same way about a your game, and we have to pay for it. Should we bother to stay? Doubtful but will stick a little longer and see what happens. Do you really care? "GRIN", seriously doubt it.

Thanks for listening,                            Garry Spiegle

Man, do I hear a lot of 'cry, cry, cry' in this post, or what? Did you not bother to read any of the new player guides out there? There are dozens of them on every single website that deals with EVE Online. They all say the same things: Don't fly what you can't afford to lose; Stay away from low/null-sec unless you are ready for a pvp fight; Learn how to use the tools given you to find/avoid fights... I could go on here, but why repeat everybody else? (And does your design experience on AD&D modules really apply to overall game balancing? Assuming you're who you say you are, of course.... A baseball player can bat and field, but it doesn't make him a good coach. Just asking!)

The next thing I would like to 'criticize' is the complete lack of any attention to detail from your post. Accurate information decreases the likelihood of getting flamed and makes you look more intelligent. You get ships wrong, you get details wrong, you get patch information wrong. (That would be a Caldari Caracal, not Gallente.) EVE Online is a very unforgiving game and very detailed oriented. Failure to pay attention to those details gets your ship 'sploded every time.

Last, we don't mention that 'Idiots Guide to MMORPGs' that is WoW. It has little to do with EVE other than it is also an MMORPG. Also, check your demographics for WoW. You'll find that they might have 10+ million subscribers, but a good 2/3rds of those are Chinese accounts, where many games aren't even played because of Chinese law restricting Internet access. They also have that many subs because the game is idioticly simplistic. Also, since I have played WoW, I don't know anything in that game that 'glimmers' or 'gleams,' though EQ2 has little collectibles that can be picked up like that. It's fun in EQ2 because you have to run all over a zone to harvest, anyway. (Besides, do you truly understand the scale of distances in stellar space? Anything more than 125-150 km is warp distance. Planetary distances are measured in AU: 1 AU = 150M km) Ok, I'm done flaming now. (I had to get that out of my system.) I do have a few useful comments to make.

I've spent most of my pod career in the newbie corps and chat helping out players that needed it, but have certainly lambasted noobs. It usually came from 1) a player not paying attention to the tutorials, 2) not even doing the tutorials, or 3) still not paying attention to what more experienced players were telling them. I've recently moved on from the newb corps only because there are things I wanted to do and couldn't accomplish there. I do still make myself available through the ever present 'Help' channel and local. Yes, the learning curve is more of a cliff. Yes, CCP could do more to improve the new player experience. I've only been playing a year and a half myself, but in that time, CCP has done much to improve tutorials. There used to not even be tutorials for that matter.  They're doing even more to make the game new player friendly, but it does take time, and they have to satisfy their dedicated player base, too, by fixing bugs and improving and adding to end-game content.

As far as the ships go... sounds like you're playing Minmatar characters. Those aren't anything more than a flying junkyard with warp drives and thrusters strapped to them. In my opinion, you should be able to salvage a Minmatar ship from a Raven, but who am I to design? As far as the other races' ships go, yes there is some reason for streamlined design stemming from mechanical engineering, but it has nothing with designing 'internetz spaceships'. I say go with wild and wierd! The game would be interesting no matter what the ships looked like. Remember, there is no 'traditional' ship design for ships that spend their entire life outside of an atmosphere, only several dozen artistic influences, all of which can show great diversity. Compare a Borg 'Cube' to a TIE Fighter to the lunar lander (which really did look like a bunch of spare parts bolted together).

As a final note for you, garry, the post about 'ghost training' is about players that let accounts lapse, not logging out of the game for the day. Yes, it is upsetting a LOT of players. A lot of players manage multiple accounts because we could juggle training in this way. Unfortunately, I can't afford to keep a second account open all the time, so that's just one fewer accounts for CCP to ever have to worry about again. Is there a reason for CCP changing this? I'm sure their is, but as per the history of CCP, they aren't telling or even hinting as to what it is. (I'm sure if there is anything going to be added because of this, it will come with or before the next expansion in December.) And yes, there are more treasures out there. You have to find them, though. They aren't just floating around the systems where anyone can pick them up.  (Maybe you should open that newbie corp or help chat back up again and just read.)

Whew!  magicmanICT, wait a mo while I put out the flames. Quite ba 'buuurnnn' u gave me there. Normlly don't get into mutual acrimony but , truthfully, that was quite a shot. I believe u questioned my honesy, integrity, intelligence and professionalism in a few paragraphs. I freely admit to deserving a burn for my typing and spelling tho. I think u forgot those.

As to who I actually am, my name is Garry F. Spiegle. I live in Birmingham, Al and my name and address is in the book. I am retired. Former Electronic Tech, U.S.Navy. Served as game designer for TSR (by the way I didn't work on AD&D, I co-designed Companion D&D, served on Dragonlance team and had several modules for various products). Also served as designer for Pacesetter games (Chill, Time Master and Star Ace plus modules). So ,magic, I won't say I was a 'coach' but I am truthfully a game designer. Player and DM for RPG games since 1976 and my first on-line game was EQ.

Now for the business of "WOW". I presently play WOW nd thoroughly enjoy It. You mentioned an 'Idiot Guide to WOW', well I'm guilty. Did I hear you say you also played it? Guess you didn't stay an Idiot tho. I only mentioned WOW to indicate what that type of revenue could do for EVE and CCP. The two games are apples and oranges and I happen to like both. I played EVE a number of years ago when it first came out. Joined a Corp to help me learn the game but found it more difficult and somewhat frustrating than fun so I moved on. Eve had it attraction's however, and that is why I rejoined, and asked my friends to join as well. CCP is taking our money without complaint. I can state for sure that the membership for EVE is very flat , most likely declining. Some of the reasons are in the posts here, including yours, about learning 'cliffs', and detail oriented etc..

The purpose of my post was a simple overview of the game as it stands now from the point of view of a couple of new players. I had hoped not to offend the old heads cause they are one of the mainstays of this game. The average population I have found to be between 20,000 and 35,000. I am retired so I have played on the game at many different hours of the day and night. I do not ever remember being named a 'cryer', so I was a little surprised at the accusation.

The suggestions about 'glimmers. glows etc.' was not from WOW but what designers call creative content. Giving players reasons to use the manual controls of their ships to hunt among the very remarkable graphics in the deadspaces used for the missions. The possibilities for these constructs seems downright wonderful and I'm afraid any designer wants to jump in and add stuff. There was no critisizm, merely enthusiasm.

Astronomical scales! Well. when I was working in Huntsville, Al at the NASA Manned Space Flight center as a contractor for service and repair of their Electro-mechanical calculators (yes-those were pre-PC days) I also took a few courses at the Univ of Ala-Huntsville on Astronomy. Voluntarily. Had to complete problems such as calculating the mass of Jupiter using spectral analysis formulae. Rough! You may have a point in burning me on Intelligence! I paseed, but Whew! Seriously I know about space and realistic spatial relationships but as an avid gamer I also know about gaming spatial relationships, and their relationship to fun, and the business of fun as well. Bottom line, make a profit, even from us idiots, or the game is over. Magic, I want EVE to succeed and grow!

I am glad you help people in game. You may be one of those who helped me and my friends but we had to be quick to catch it from a 'lot' of chaff.I play a Gallente char and a Caldari char at the suggestion of the player guides. So do my friends. Being in phone distance we chat  and help each other out with tips etc..

As to ghost training, I certainly hope you are correct about it applying only to lapsed accounts. I honestly may have mis-understood the article here in MMORPG.com when it seemed the CCP speaker was indicating that lapsed accounts using ghost training was a primary reason it was being removed. I did feel that it was to make players train only in the game, thus increasing the pressure to keep players and their accounts longer. Hope you are right on that one.

Enough from me 'magic'. I hope you don't feel that this is some sort of return 'burn attack".  I just thought I would give some impressions and ideas about new players in Eve. As to where it is going, well, I don't know. The idea of actually using my avatar to interact with others is a good one and we have decided to stay in through at least december. May be we will see you in-game sometime and you can say hi (tho please, not with a cruise missile!).

By the way, as a sop to my bruised and burned ego I got a piece of mail thru here in MMORPG from someone operating a game (Starealm or something like that-just glanced quickly at it) who saw my post and wanted me to check out their game and send them a review. of course, being a retired designer I can't wait to jump right in. It's called Ego and I am certainly guilty. Thanks for reading and best to a fellow pod pilot!      Garry Spiegle

Originally posted by garry

Whew!  magicmanICT, wait a mo while I put out the flames. Quite ba 'buuurnnn' u gave me there. Normlly don't get into mutual acrimony but , truthfully, that was quite a shot. I believe u questioned my honesy, integrity, intelligence and professionalism in a few paragraphs. I freely admit to deserving a burn for my typing and spelling tho. I think u forgot those.

As to who I actually am, my name is Garry F. Spiegle. I live in Birmingham, Al and my name and address is in the book. I am retired. Former Electronic Tech, U.S.Navy. Served as game designer for TSR (by the way I didn't work on AD&D, I co-designed Companion D&D, served on Dragonlance team and had several modules for various products). Also served as designer for Pacesetter games (Chill, Time Master and Star Ace plus modules). So ,magic, I won't say I was a 'coach' but I am truthfully a game designer. Player and DM for RPG games since 1976 and my first on-line game was EQ.

To be perfectly honest you're experience designing pen and paper RPG's gives you very little if any insight on designing a computer game, especially an MMORPG. There are countless different requirements that must be considered compared to writing modules or rule-systems for a P&P RPG system. Also EVE doesn't follow the standard RPG tenets either as it is less of a theme park and more of a sandbox. Not to take away from your abilities as a PNP designer though.

Now for the business of "WOW". I presently play WOW nd thoroughly enjoy It. You mentioned an 'Idiot Guide to WOW', well I'm guilty. Did I hear you say you also played it? Guess you didn't stay an Idiot tho. I only mentioned WOW to indicate what that type of revenue could do for EVE and CCP. The two games are apples and oranges and I happen to like both. I played EVE a number of years ago when it first came out. Joined a Corp to help me learn the game but found it more difficult and somewhat frustrating than fun so I moved on. Eve had it attraction's however, and that is why I rejoined, and asked my friends to join as well. CCP is taking our money without complaint. I can state for sure that the membership for EVE is very flat , most likely declining. Some of the reasons are in the posts here, including yours, about learning 'cliffs', and detail oriented etc..

Actually EVE is one of the only MMO's on the market that has a steadily increasing population and has since shortly after it's release. Please if you're going to speculate on this type of stuff do at least some basic research beforehand the info is very easy to find. Also the amount of revenue that CCP brings in on EVE is more than adequate for them to be able to afford all the upgrades of both hardware and software that they want. The hurdles they have to overcome are the difficulty of developing these things as they are a market leader in the areas of single-server concurrency and complexity when it comes to online games.

The purpose of my post was a simple overview of the game as it stands now from the point of view of a couple of new players. I had hoped not to offend the old heads cause they are one of the mainstays of this game. The average population I have found to be between 20,000 and 35,000. I am retired so I have played on the game at many different hours of the day and night. I do not ever remember being named a 'cryer', so I was a little surprised at the accusation.

The suggestions about 'glimmers. glows etc.' was not from WOW but what designers call creative content. Giving players reasons to use the manual controls of their ships to hunt among the very remarkable graphics in the deadspaces used for the missions. The possibilities for these constructs seems downright wonderful and I'm afraid any designer wants to jump in and add stuff. There was no critisizm, merely enthusiasm.

Again, while it would be easy to add that into a PnP scenario EVERYTHING in a computer game requires art assets or code or both. That tiny little sparkly bit of interesting stuff requires someone to code every item and event that is attached to it. Granted I think even CCP acknowledges that their mission content is lacking compared to other games, and I definitely hope that they can redesign it later on to make things like that easier for thier mission designers to do (and hopefully to even integrate ambulation where possible), but it is certainly not an easy task to just put that kind of stuff into every mission easily. Hell if you look at quests in WoW or most other MMO's they are able to fit into 1 of 2 categories: FedEx quests, or kill collection quests. They simply change the item your delivering/collecting and the mobs you have to face.

Astronomical scales! Well. when I was working in Huntsville, Al at the NASA Manned Space Flight center as a contractor for service and repair of their Electro-mechanical calculators (yes-those were pre-PC days) I also took a few courses at the Univ of Ala-Huntsville on Astronomy. Voluntarily. Had to complete problems such as calculating the mass of Jupiter using spectral analysis formulae. Rough! You may have a point in burning me on Intelligence! I paseed, but Whew! Seriously I know about space and realistic spatial relationships but as an avid gamer I also know about gaming spatial relationships, and their relationship to fun, and the business of fun as well. Bottom line, make a profit, even from us idiots, or the game is over. Magic, I want EVE to succeed and grow!

I am glad you help people in game. You may be one of those who helped me and my friends but we had to be quick to catch it from a 'lot' of chaff.I play a Gallente char and a Caldari char at the suggestion of the player guides. So do my friends. Being in phone distance we chat  and help each other out with tips etc..

As to ghost training, I certainly hope you are correct about it applying only to lapsed accounts. I honestly may have mis-understood the article here in MMORPG.com when it seemed the CCP speaker was indicating that lapsed accounts using ghost training was a primary reason it was being removed. I did feel that it was to make players train only in the game, thus increasing the pressure to keep players and their accounts longer. Hope you are right on that one.

He is correct in that it only applies to lapsed accounts. As long as your account is paid you will continue to train offline or online without interruption (unless you forget to start a new skill of course).

Enough from me 'magic'. I hope you don't feel that this is some sort of return 'burn attack".  I just thought I would give some impressions and ideas about new players in Eve. As to where it is going, well, I don't know. The idea of actually using my avatar to interact with others is a good one and we have decided to stay in through at least december. May be we will see you in-game sometime and you can say hi (tho please, not with a cruise missile!).

By the way, as a sop to my bruised and burned ego I got a piece of mail thru here in MMORPG from someone operating a game (Starealm or something like that-just glanced quickly at it) who saw my post and wanted me to check out their game and send them a review. of course, being a retired designer I can't wait to jump right in. It's called Ego and I am certainly guilty. Thanks for reading and best to a fellow pod pilot!      Garry Spiegle

OK! Here we go again. Hello Miscn. Thought I might answer the points made about my post (in bright blood red letters no less).

First - Why do you assume my Game Design experience in PNP (pen and paper) does not apply to the design of computer games such as MMORPG? I am very well aware of the items, time, and costs, of Art, Computer Coding, Computer Engine Architecture and other technical requirements for use in a computer game. Never stated that I was any sort of expert in application of 'stuff'' in a game but I am well aware of the difficulties and complexities involved. Where my experience and background apply is in creative content, design and storyline, which is basic to both PNP and Computer Games. The applicability of this type of experience is reasonably apparent for both game types.

Coding and inserting 'items' into the architecture of an existing game engine, along with art and animations is the same in 'type' as inserting material for a book or module within the framework of the requirements of space layout and most important, interaction with an existing product. PNP game designers work with editors, layout designs, formats, artists and production managers. All of a designers work must fit within the parameters of production and distribution, marketing (a nightmare for most game companies) and most of all, sales. Accuracy in fitting the game mathematics and avoiding rules conflicts, playabitlty and time constraints for players, all must enter into the process. IT IS THE SAME DAMN THING FOR COMPUTER GAMES! Computer games must deal with the added complexity of programming as well, which is why they hire programmers to do this and the game designer, like myself, must work within those programming requirements and restrictions. Costs, both financial and in game playing time can kill the best ideas. As a game designer I have been exposed to and experienced most of this.

Game designers are part of a group, and frankly, not the most important part, if you want to market your game and stay in business. So please don't imply that I do not understand the underlying complexities of computer gaming. If I knew even more I could go to work for a company of either type if they wanted someone with my background (please no-I retired and I like it)

Next- As far as not having done basic research on the numbers of players (accounts) I freely admit I did not contact CCP and ask about their account records, financial health etc...sincerely doubt I would have recieved an answer and rightfully so. None of my business. However, I joined and played for several months, years ago. The company posted shout outs on numbers of players when they reached what were then records. From my memory of actually playing the game I believe about 40-45000 players on average was the level when I left. Could be wrong, I am old. The Log-in window of EVE shows the number of players in game when you check in now. The lowest I have seen was about 21000 and the most I have seen was around 36000. I only pay attention to this because the more people on-line the better chance of lag, slight freeze-ups and 'glitches' that can occur. None of these have presented much of a distraction and I relegate them to minor annoyance.

I am glad you said EVE revenue is most adequate. I want EVE to succeed and get even better. However from comments by players on forums there have been steady complaints about lack of content, learning curve like a steep cliff (see MagicmanITC above), lengthy implementation of fixes or bug repair etc..I simply wanted to add my own feelings on this sort of thing without the flames that are too common. On the face of it, without internal knowledge about CCP data, it seems there is a division between resources and production. I claim nothing more than this is a personal observation, and yes, I know I could be wrong.

Thanks for the heads up about the ghost training. We simply mis-understood the company rep who was interviewed here in MMORPG.com. We are very glad you corrected this. Honestly.

I am sorry you took strong exception to some of my statements. My comments about 'glimmers' and 'glows' was simply linguistic symbology for creative content in existing areas of the game to increase player interaction. I applaud the designers and especially programmers who created what I have always felt was the finest space computer architecture I have seen in any game so far. I guess I am just greedy in wanting more interaction in these superb constructions. As for the starships, I have already said I understand that ships need no streamlining or symmetry in space. It is just that I started seeing spaceships in the fifties (I said I was old) with 'Flash Gordon', have a certificate as a flight deck officer on the starship USS ENTERPRISE NCC 1701 signed by James T. Kirk and Gene Roddenbury (Trekkie) and the use of streamlining and aesthetics is my norm. Please believe I do not object to the bold and imaginative Icelandic ship designs, it's just my nostalgia popping up.

If any of this has been helpful then I am happy. Sorry if I hit a nerve. You seem a devoted and supportive fan of EVE. I hope that my friends and I become the same. We contribute our time and money and if things continue well, then we will continue playing. Thanks for listening...Best to you and EVE

                                                        G. Spiegle