CCP's Whisper has written a developer diary which explains the concept behind Wormholes, and the danger and promise of uncharted space in the upcoming Apocrypha expansion for EVE Online.

"We cannot predict the new forces, powers, and discoveries that will be disclosed to us when we reach the other planets and set up new laboratories in space. They are as much beyond our vision today as fire or electricity would be beyond the imagination of a fish." - Arthur C. Clarke

Hello. My name is Whisper and I am here to talk to you about one part of Apocrypha, the upcoming expansion for EVE Online. I head up Team Bifröst, which includes such luminaries as CCP Casqade from Quality Assurance, CCP Bella Bee from the Software group, CCP Greyscale and CCP Abathur from Game Design and CCP PrismX from...who knows what pit of contrariness he sprung from but he's under my supervision now. So together with the rest of the team we're going to deliver unto you a feature of truly galactic proportions. This being the introduction of a brand new, glittering, shiny travelling mechanic: Wormholes.

First a bit of background musing. One of the criticisms that have been levied against EVE is that space is becoming crowded and that there really is no feeling of exploration. Indeed, from the very first moment you set foot in the universe of EVE, all of you have had a map at your disposal that shows you exactly where every solar system is, how to get there and what you may expect to find. You even have a newly improved autopilot who will selflessly and mindlessly guide you to your destination. And while there are still thrills to be had, there exists at the back of many of our minds the nagging knowledge that we are not the first to venture here. That the maps have been drawn, the anchorages charted, the wild hills surveyed and the paths trodden so often they're now four-lane blacktop highways with shopping malls and 24-hour burger bars along the fringes.

Read more about EVE: Apocrypha and Wormholes.

This Xpac sounds better and better everyday.

Can't wait until March, thanks for the article.

Great article.  Apocrypha should give us pod pilots alot to do while we wait for walking in stations.  The industrial aspect these new wormholes could bring is welcomed news for players like me that don't PVP on a regular basis.  At the same time, I think it's great that going through a wormhole could drop you in the middle of BoB space. 

Another great addition to an already great MMO.  Keep up the good work and fly safe!

in one devblog ccp manage to outstrip every expansion ive seen for mmos before.

we've added some more quests, loot and 10 more levels. oh, and reskinned some rats.

After reading this blog I had to check what date it was. 

And my question is why isn't it march yet :/

Thats exacly why i play eve, even if there is time when i go and play other mmo for a while and dont play eve for a while i still pay sub just becasue this is only mmo following the right way that mmo should be developed.

Other thing i like about Eve is how good communication is from player to dev and the other way around.

Nice reading, really looking forward to this. A awesome add to this game, a space game must have wormholes !

I haven't made comments on Eve issues in a while just because the news coming from CCP hasn't been all good in the last little while. At the least, not everyone agreed it was good. THIS move however has reaffirmed that I made the right decision sticking with the game even when I could barely afford it (emphasis on  barely).

I mostly play as a "safe" carebear like guy but this makes me want to grab a clone, a cruiser and fly off into unknown space with a bunch of friends. As much as nerf sticks and bad press work have occasionally given Eve's reputation a hit, announcements like this bring back praise in far larger quantities.

A few more moves like this and CCP will be Iceland's economic powerhouse. Can't you see it now... and entire economy driven by a videogame (which oddly enough has it's own economy.... coincidence?)

I guess what I mean is, great work CCP. If this turns out how you guys are suggesting it will then my fandom will continue. Great article as well. I'm done now. Off to play Eve.

I also like Eve it is one of the more stable games which is not ork and dwarf orientated for a change, shame some of the other developers don't take a leaf from CCP.

Originally posted by NightBandit

I also like Eve it is one of the more stable games which is not ork and dwarf orientated for a change, shame some of the other developers don't take a leaf from CCP.

Even if I don't play EvE,I always find myself reading the blogs or anything about this game for the last 4 years.And to me it seems that only CCP know how to design a true MMORPG

 While it's nice that it's different, lets not randomly bash entire genres as "inferior" because they're not  unique snowflakes -_-.

That being said, assuming it's not just kind of tacked on and doesn't require a quarter year of peperation and economic grinding to actually take part in it, the exploration system could very well get me to sub again as this is exactly what I wish the game had. I would very much like to run an exploration vessel decked out in probes and sensors looking for parts unknown. I am however going to play it cautious and wait to see how it pans out, because I thought the faction war was going to be everything I hoped for as well, and spent the next two months bored out of my mind grinding isk without so much as getting popped myself let alone getting the oportunity to engage another ship. Hell, almost half a year total in this game and despite owning several tacklers and a battecruiser, I've yet to be able to use any of it and my entire combat "experience " consists of getting one shotted while jumping around during grinding sessions to support any possible combat...

edit: scratch resubbing. took about all of 10minutes listening to the Eve community to put things in perspective again...

I have to say, despite their attempts to stress how this will be relevent to 0.0 warfare, I don't see it. That entire dev blog reads to me like this entire expansion is designed specifically to create a "frontier" which will be artificially kept clear of Sov issues and domination by big guilds so that the masses of empire hugger mission runners have an exploration system to play with - which will be primarily a PvE environment.

Sadly well I have zero faith in CCP to deliver PvE content that actually interests me. Their track record is pretty dismal. (Mission revamp, lvl 5 missions, COSMOS, exploration, FW etc)  Not that it won't work, but it will be the same endless hours of probe dropping that exploration is, same 5 npcs over and over and over that pirates all are (okay so 5 new universal badguys - yawn), same endless damsel rescuing or trinket collection like cosmos...open 500 more boxes of popcorn to find the prize!

Any possible PvP opportunities from this will really depend on things they aren't saying...

Likely WH locations, frequency, duration, detection difficulty, size limits etc.
If they are as short lived and hard to find as exploration sites are now then there will be very very little PvP generated by them - if they last for a week+ or a month or something then I can see people having time to find and fight over them but if they have the same sort of 3-5 day lifespan and are a pain to find it'll hardly ever be fought over.

As for any kind of strategic deep raiding or whatever....same deal, no fleet of throwaway ships and expendable jump clones with no supply line is going to do any real damage no matter where it gets access to and virtually no one is going to hurl a capital fleet and grade A clones down some rabbit hole without knowing they can get it back/get out.

Biggest thing I see this resulting in is a whole lot of throwaway jump clones in replacable ratting ships effectively getting to "ninja rat" without most of the risks normally associated with it....which will equal even more ISK flowing into empire based PvE'rs. Of course that will equal more happy subs and a better bottom line for CCP...but I can't help but view it as another nail in the coffin of meaningful PvP.

I'd have much rather seen an expansion focused on revamping the mechanics of Player owned Structures, Stations, Sovereignty and the massive issues with Super caps/capital blobs..but I'm not suprised CCP is leaning more towards the 75%+ of their base who don't go into and don't care about Nullsec.

Your points are valid but for a pirate this is another opportunity to capitalise on the industrialists and the unprepared PvPers/missioners who decide to venture into the solar sytem they control. Simply put; a corp can control the ins and out of a system no need for sovereignty, just loads of probes and eyes everywhere. If you want to get out of a system have a jump clone(will those even work? not sure yet) .

 Really I'm not sure what you were expecting from this> free pvp all round? everyone gathering in one place to blow each other up? There's always the alliance tournament (which is crazy fun!). You should also remember that pvp comes in many forms in eve and its either a war dec or a control struggle  (that doesn't need to be a sovereignty war, my corp's alliance is currently controlling one 0.4 system and 0.3 system space right now) or a mindless pirate capitalising on the weak industrialist/missioner. You just have to pick the right corp and the right people at the right time.

Originally posted by Ngeldu5t

Originally posted by NightBandit

I also like Eve it is one of the more stable games which is not ork and dwarf orientated for a change, shame some of the other developers don't take a leaf from CCP.

Even if I don't play EvE,I always find myself reading the blogs or anything about this game for the last 4 years.And to me it seems that only CCP know how to design a true MMORPG

I completely agree. CCP sticks true to their subscription based models and keep pushing out large free content updates, instead of horrible Turd companies like SOE who keep screwing you from behind by either completely changing the game into an unrecognisable state or changing the whole bussiness model around and turn your P2P game into RMT one with the subscription fee on top! 

So CCP indeed deserves all the credit they can get. Sertainly one of the better companies out there at the moment. Next to Turbine that is.

Cheers

this is enough to bring me back....maybe.  I do have some unanswered questions which I hope get answered.....I like 00 mining, I do NOt like big alliance politics.....so the part where tehy talked about asteroid rich areas is cool, the part that confuses me is how do you handle it if there's no stations....if they say orca then im not so impressed anymore.

Some of us like playing the little fish in the big pond, leaning more towards solo play in a big universe.....hopefully this new mechanic allows us to stretch out.

I daresay this is partly due to the understanding and acceptance that there are a LOT of players in empire and npc corps who just wanna fly around for a couple hours.

Originally posted by Rekindle

this is enough to bring me back....maybe.  I do have some unanswered questions which I hope get answered.....I like 00 mining, I do NOt like big alliance politics.....so the part where tehy talked about asteroid rich areas is cool, the part that confuses me is how do you handle it if there's no stations....if they say orca then im not so impressed anymore.

Some of us like playing the little fish in the big pond, leaning more towards solo play in a big universe.....hopefully this new mechanic allows us to stretch out.

I daresay this is partly due to the understanding and acceptance that there are a LOT of players in empire and npc corps who just wanna fly around for a couple hours.

Well it all depends where these wormholes get implemented.

Is it everywhere... from 0.0 to low sec to high sec to even 1.0 ? 

Or are they only going to pop up in low sec and 0.0... or even in 0.0 alone.

If the latter is the case... well than it will answer your question real quick I guess.

they're everywhere. if there are no stations and you want to mine, then jetcan mine and jump a hauler in to pick up your ore. keep an eye on the wormhole stability however.

My only worry is with semi-stable economic system currently, throwing so much randomness into the market may negatively affect it.

It seems like the only cost to worm holes is time. The won't be guarded by corps,and will have a much smaller chance of having pirates in them, so probably won't "worm-camped". With out any of those perceived risks, ISK will only equal time spent searching for holes then mining the ore inside before anyone notices.

And if ISK = time, how will that be any different then any other mmo?

CCP is treading a very thin line.

my only complaint is:  no news recently about world of darkness!

I love eve, I love world of darkness, I want to see the game FFS :D

I have a few comments:

- You can only jump clone while docked. I doubt wormholes will have stations, so that's not an out. But I'm betting that CCP won't make wormholes harder to escape than they are to find. If it was that hard, people wouldn't do it.

- PVP vs PVE. Of course CCP is going to cater this upgrade to PVE players; they do make up most of the game. I agree with the previous poster that sov mechanics need reworking though. I spend 80% of my time in 0.0 and blob warfare gets old fast.

- Mining in Wormholes. I'd be shocked if there are stations in unexplored space. To me that means you'd better have a Rorqual or an Orca. Bummer, but neither ship is out of reach for a serious industrial corp.

- Every time CCP introduces a major new technology, there is a massive amount of isk for early adopters. This was true with Jump Freighters, T2 battleships, the Orca... and it'll be true with the T3 ships. If you're first to find the wormholes and move fast, you will reap the profits. That said, I'm going to do my best to be the first one in!

- Perhaps most importantly, Eve is the only MMO that has consistently grown for the last 4 years. When I started, it was rare to see more than 20,000 people online... ever. Now, it's rarely under 40,000 during peak times. IMHO, the game has only gotten better in the last couple years.