EVE Online: Fanfest: Revelations I & White Wolf

The salvage skill is applied to the wreckage and as the name implies: lets you find loot. On top of all the regular loot that has always been there, players also find components to make rigs, another new addition to the game.

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Invent Damint, Invent!
They're also opening up Tech 2, which is an improved level of craftable items that had previously been accessible only to those twenty inventors who had secured the finite blueprints to specific items. This is done through invention.

Invention allows players to take a Tech 1 blueprint, data-cores and other optional components to make limited use blueprints for Tech 2 versions of those items. Data-cores are only on the market through research agents and purchased not with ISK, but with the points they had earned in that field. Those points previously had no use save to enter them in the Tech 2 blueprint lottery. Ward called them losing lottery tickets.

Players take those data cores, blueprints and decryptors (which are looted) to invent the Tech 2 blueprints. The decryptors are a group of items that alter the value or roll of the process. For example, one may increase the number of rolls a player gets to invent a useable blueprint, while another may give less rolls, but increase the probability of making something useful. While the blueprints vary in quality and invented ones require far more raw materials to create Tech 2 objects, the actual objects themselves are equal to those created by the original inventors. The intent is to bring prices down without completely undermining the market. Their solution gives the original blueprint holders a distinct advantage, but removes their monopoly.

It's not that complicated... really!
The expansion also promises significant changes and simplifications to character creation that should enable new players to get into the game more easily. CCP knows that they've built a complicated beast and really does want to open it up without dumbing it down. One method of attack has been to up the usefulness of new characters by quite simply making them stronger. Some veterans are rumbling, but they wanted to make sure even new players were useful when they first entered the world. They also made it less likely for players to make useless characters by explaining in more detail what the different skills do.

Vivox: I hear you!
Finally, Revelations I adds support for Vivox voice to the game. This is a built in VOIP solution that runs off a separate server and is unlimitedly available to EVE subscribers for $10.00 per year. For multiple-account subscribers, rest assured it can be tied to the master account and filter down to all the others. Vivox rep and fellow Canadian (sorta) Monty Sharma promises unparalleled clarity and ease of use (as a result of its full integration into the client). For an essentially nominal fee - which covers bandwidth and acts as a good excuse for those who do not want voice in the game - players should be able to more easily coordinate their adventures. Vivox in EVE supports over 200 people in a channel and does all the voice mixing on the server (which is entirely separate from the EVE servers) so that people hear no clipping when more than one person tries to speak at the same time.

More to come...
My word limit has been abused, so for today, I leave you. Check back in the coming days for information on the Fanfest itself, Revelations II and III and some clues on where EVE is going in the coming years (procedurally animated 3D avatars walking on stations strike your fancy?).