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EVE Online Apocrypha Interview
Recently, MMORPG.com Managing Editor Jon Wood sat down with CCP's Petur Oskarsson to talk about EVE Online's most recent expansion, Apocrypha.
Recently, I had the opportunity to sit down with CCP's Petur Oskarsson to talk about the recent launch of EVE Online's most recent, and some would say most sweeping expansion, Apocrypha.
When the team from EVE Online launched their Trinity expansion, there was an issue for a short time that saw people's boot.ini file deleted. While the issue was caught and repaired by the EVE team fairly quickly, it still left a number of players scratching their heads so I asked Petur if there were any similar incidents this time around with the rollout of Apocrypha.
"I'd say that this was by far the best development and deployment of an expansion so far," he answered.
Development-wise, this expansion is certainly the biggest that CCP has released. When it was announced to much fanfare at CCP's annual Fan Fest, many in the audience were surprised by the sheer number of new features that would be implemented in the expansion. The expansion was so huge, for example, that a fair number of the company's total employees were diverted to the project.
So, what did it include, according to Oskarsson?
- Wormholes - 2,000 new, unexplored solar systems
- Tech 3 Production and Tech 3 Ships - Modular design allowing players to mix and match, creating their own ship designs
- New Player Experience - CCP tries to ease players more comfortably off of the game's well known "learning cliff"
- Epic Mission Arcs - Misions that can be strung together and run for 80 or 90 missions in a row
- Enhanced UI
- Skill Learning Queue
Along with all of these new additions, this expansion also re-launched EVE Online's store box sales. The game had previously been download only since it left shelves after CCP reclaimed their game from defunct game publishers Simon and Schuster Interactive way back at the end of 2003 when the Icelandic company decided to move to a digital distribution system.
;)
When a game begins new distribution, there naturally tends to follow an influx of new players who may have seen and picked up the game for the first time. As a result, I asked Petur to go into more detail about the expansion's New Player Experience: "EVE is an open-ended game," he began. "If you choose a profession, you're not tied to it, you can change whenever you want... What new players were facing before this expansion was having to decide beforehand, without actually knowing where to head in EVE. Now, the progress is more non-linear. You decide that it's cool to fly a new ship, you try that... you want to try mining or resource management, you can try that... You slowly build up your character instead of building it first and then using it. So you have more informed decision making than you did before."
Up until the launch of Apocrypha, EVE Online made use of static ships. By this I mean that if you built a ship, that ship looked exactly the same as every other ship of its class. Not that they didn't look great, but they didn't have a whole lot of diversity in them. This is what makes the introduction of Tech 3 ships into the game so important. For the first time, players will be able to choose their own ship designs (from a set of pre-existing modules, of course).
"We haven't had a lot of players playing with them yet," Oskarsson answered, referencing the amount of time it takes in-game to actually build a new ship. "But what we can gather from data and feedback from the test server, players love it. The idea of putting together your own ship [is great]."
Finally, I asked Petur to tell me if there were any issues that had come up that the players had brought to their attention. He told me that with wormholes, players run the risk of having the wormhole close and their ship completely stuck. They've had a few players complain about this and while they knew that it was going to happen, they didn't know that it would happen so often. The thing is, this isn't actually a bug, it's a real risk that players take when they travel to the unexplored areas opened up by wormholes.
If you want to see the interview in its entirety, take a look at the video presentation below, or you can check out our own Andrew Wallace's review of the Apocrypha expansion, here.
| Jon Wood interviews CCP's Petur Oskarsson on Apocrypha, the recently launched expansion for EVE Online.
|
Dear lord, the skill queue ALONE is worth the price of admission. I'm looking forward to start seeing tech 3 items in circulation, as well as the ships. This expo got me playing EVE again after a long time off and Im having a blast.
What I wonder is, with the boxed re-release, as a single server setup.....can things get out of hand technologically? How many players at once is too man y players, after they're last massive hardware overhaul? Just a consideration.
Anyways, Grats CCP, great expo and launch.
Yeah. The skill queue means you have to log in less often to manage your training.... but the game is still hopelessly boring and frustrating for new players. No amount of shiny new graphics or media blitz will will change that. I was hoping the game would be be better than it was when I tried it a couple of years ago, but from the perspective of a new player it's the same or worse.... now you start with less skills, and if anyone says the new tutorial or epic arc are any fun, they are lying to you.
There is a lot of stuff about this game I find appealing, but I just don't have any fun playing it.
Yeah. The skill queue means you have to log in less often to manage your training.... but the game is still hopelessly boring and frustrating for new players. No amount of shiny new graphics or media blitz will will change that. I was hoping the game would be be better than it was when I tried it a couple of years ago, but from the perspective of a new player it's the same or worse.... now you start with less skills, and if anyone says the new tutorial or epic arc are any fun, they are lying to you.
There is a lot of stuff about this game I find appealing, but I just don't have any fun playing it.
Who appointed you the spokesperson of the new players? Personal opinion is just that: personal. I have had an on off relationship trying to get into this game till the new expansion. Not only am I a subscriber now but have a friend who's playing now too and enjoying it. The idea isn't to be blown away and enjoy countless pve activities but just use them as a guide and the game is quite a bit clearer this go around than it used to be.
As for starting off with less skills, players now advance at 2x the speed while they actually make informed decisions about their players instead of things being assigned to them when they had no clue of their impact on the game like it used to be. All around this seems like a win in many ways for the new player. There is a video out there called the CCP challenge which demonstrates players who started new accounts and after only 2 days of training were raising hell against even established players.
I wish you luck in playing/finding a game you enjoy but don't go nominating yourself as any kind of spokesperson for others.
I am curious, and i do not mean this in a bad way at all, but is your play style geared towards soloing? EVEn is very confusing, even for someone like me whose toon started in 2004. But once I found fun people to play the game with, i started learning a lot from them and the game became more fun.
Before that, i played solo a lot and it was my favorite boring game. EVE is basically like a fantasy game with group-only play. You can solo, but god it sucks. jmho
Who appointed you the spokesperson of the new players? Personal opinion is just that: personal. I have had an on off relationship trying to get into this game till the new expansion. Not only am I a subscriber now but have a friend who's playing now too and enjoying it. The idea isn't to be blown away and enjoy countless pve activities but just use them as a guide and the game is quite a bit clearer this go around than it used to be.
As for starting off with less skills, players now advance at 2x the speed while they actually make informed decisions about their players instead of things being assigned to them when they had no clue of their impact on the game like it used to be. All around this seems like a win in many ways for the new player. There is a video out there called the CCP challenge which demonstrates players who started new accounts and after only 2 days of training were raising hell against even established players.
I wish you luck in playing/finding a game you enjoy but don't go nominating yourself as any kind of spokesperson for others.
I really don't see where I presented my opinion as anything other than that. I wanted to be clear that I was a new player, but I certainly didn't claim to be representative of the group. :/
Who appointed you the spokesperson of the new players? Personal opinion is just that: personal. I have had an on off relationship trying to get into this game till the new expansion. Not only am I a subscriber now but have a friend who's playing now too and enjoying it. The idea isn't to be blown away and enjoy countless pve activities but just use them as a guide and the game is quite a bit clearer this go around than it used to be.
As for starting off with less skills, players now advance at 2x the speed while they actually make informed decisions about their players instead of things being assigned to them when they had no clue of their impact on the game like it used to be. All around this seems like a win in many ways for the new player. There is a video out there called the CCP challenge which demonstrates players who started new accounts and after only 2 days of training were raising hell against even established players.
I wish you luck in playing/finding a game you enjoy but don't go nominating yourself as any kind of spokesperson for others.
I really don't see where I presented my opinion as anything other than that. I wanted to be clear that I was a new player, but I certainly didn't claim to be representative of the group. :/
and yet my corp continues to gain new players weekly from mmorpg.com...even those who are past thier trial period.
and the winner is...... Eve, by a landslide! ;)
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/232293
and yet even after it being the most "boring" game.....it gains thousands of players monthly, continues to grow, is in the top 10 rated mmorpgs consistently, gives free HUGE expansions every year, and keeps breaking its own records for most concurrent users, and shows up in mainstream news like the New York Times when major alliances do something in game. How many games can you say that about almost 5 years after launch?
yeah the game sucks /snickers
I saw a review linked in that thread that sums this game up perfectly in four words. :)
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/208-Eve-Online
ahh yes.....cause we all know zero is a true critic and not an entertainer..should i pull up the countless of gaming forums which rate eve at 90% or better?
ahh yes.....cause we all know zero is a true critic and not an entertainer..should i pull up the countless of gaming forums which rate eve at 90% or better?
hahahahaha you know, i like EVE. regardless, this video bout made me shit my pants, because its really qft, just because i like it doesn't mean i can't admit it lol.
ahh yes.....cause we all know zero is a true critic and not an entertainer..should i pull up the countless of gaming forums which rate eve at 90% or better?
Actually that review is pretty much spot on for the single palyer side of it. What i noticed is that he didnt join a corperation and we all know how boring EvE can be when playing solo and mission runnning all the time
Actually that review is pretty much spot on for the single palyer side of it. What i noticed is that he didnt join a corperation and we all know how boring EvE can be when playing solo and mission runnning all the time
possibly but i been in a great corp (now a good alliance) since day 1.....so i never experienced the solo side of it
its all about finding fun people to play the game with.
I don't know after all the developer misconduct, shady deals and consistent ongoing rumors of in game tampering and cheating from the Devs I just can't play this game anymore. I just don't trust CCP. Sell the game so blizzard :) Then maybe we can get a game with a good UI, and able to look at other things than outside of ships and boring planets all the time.