• {FPSN}Sir_Helcon
  
• {FPSN}lordsearider
  
• {FPSN}AdmiralBull
  
• {FPSN}Teufelhund
  
• {FPSN}samfisher
  
• {FPSN}BC

• PaulStorm (e-Sports and League Play Community)
  
• Lunch Meat (Armed Forces and Military Service Community)
  
• RogueDoc (Armed Forces and Military Service Community)

Thank you for your understanding.

Apart from the obvious fact that the Impairor, the Velator, the Ibis and the Reaper hold great importance being the first ships any new pilot is granted upon being born into the EVE Universe, they hold a special place in all our hearts.

The rookie ships are being re-designed and given a long overdue makeover. This is part of our ongoing effort to continously update the art assets in EVE Online and making sure it remains the most beautiful MMO out there.

We wanted to show you the new rookie ships, and use the opportunity to give you a little insight into the process behind adding new assets to the game. Enjoy!

Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

New to EVE? Start your 14-day free trial today. Returning pilot? Visit Account Management for the latest offers and promotions.

Please report any issues with Crucible 1.2.1 here; a thread for general feedback is available here.

It is currently at 15 seconds but will be set to 10 seconds tomorrow.

EVE is a very unique game and it enables players to have a lot of fun even if they have never touched some game mechanics. We want to give new players the best possible experience from the very beginning and lay the groundwork for an enjoyable time in New Eden.  As you can see in the below scientific graph, EVE rewards those who accumulate “EVE knowledge” in a way other games do not.

This Player Experience team will focus on making EVE more accessible to players without dumbing down the game. So the main area for us is naturally the tutorial and everything around it, but we will also be focusing on what happens before a player logs in and after the player completes the tutorials and wishes to explore the universe during their first few months in New Eden.

We want to give the new players a smooth and consistent online gaming experience, where they are comfortable with the game mechanics and know what they wish to be in New Eden. We aim to teach new players how to play EVE in a way which is gripping, exciting, clear and most importantly FUN. We want players to have increased social interaction with the community and corporations in the beginning. We wish to give new players more direction and the understanding of what they can become, and guide them towards that goal. We want to give the players a chance to experience the coolness of EVE even in the beginning and make them understand all the potential within the game. In short, we want to make the first days, weeks and months in EVE enjoyable and not just something ‘you have to plough through in order to get to the good stuff’.  Having said that, we have no intention to make the game easier in any way, we are not looking into simplifying EVE Online, nor do we want to tell the players exactly what they should do or give them a step by step guide for wormhole mining for example. Rather, the approach we are taking is to make it easier for new players to learn and understand the different mechanics and features of EVE.

To begin with the Player Experience team will do research to identify where and why people lose interest in EVE. We will look at a wide range of statistics, player and trial surveys, conduct focus group tests and we would also really like to hear ideas from within the EVE community as well. Some problems are very obvious whilst other factors are more subtle. In the short term we might be able to do small changes to the current new player experience, but long term we are aiming to overhaul and redesign the whole experience.  

We invite you to pour your heart (or guts) out and tell us what you think is good or bad with the current new player experience and what you think could be done about the problems. Both small and big ideas are welcome, especially if you have your first weeks freshly in mind. What small things do you think could be done to the current tutorial or do you think it should be binned and a new one built from the ground up? What would your ideal EVE tutorial look like? Let us know what you think.

Once we have a solid plan together we will be sharing them with you for more feedback. Till then, fly safe and go easy on the new guys.

CCP Legion, Team PE.

New to EVE? Start your 14-day free trial today. Returning pilot? Visit Account Management for the latest offers and promotions.

There have been a few rumblings out there in the social ether, with concerned minds suggesting that all was not well inside Outpost EON. It's true that we've been rather slow in getting the new (26th) issue sent out, but that's not because production is about to cease on the longest-running internet spaceship magazine. Far from it. The truth is that there have been some quite significant changes going on, about which we've had to remain quiet... until now.

Let me take you back to Thanksgiving 2011 and the announcement of an EVE Store sale offering 50%-off all EON stuff. It was a sale that was uncommonly generous, but it was also one that for various reasons did not go quite as intended. The layers of code that have been the foundations of the EVE Store have served it well over many years, but things like flash sales and bulk codes have never worked out faultlessly even at the best of times. Given all that had been going on in the weeks and months previous to the onset of winter, Thanksgiving 2011 was anything but the best of times, as CCP, undergoing extensive reorganization, wasn’t able to react to technical issues as quickly as before.

It was suggested then that perhaps the best way to manage stock and create sales within the new CCP reorg paradigm was to create our own retail outlet, one that could be built purely around EON and our particular requirements. So that's what we went and did.

Though it looks different, the just-opened store offers exactly the same EON items as were available in the EVE Store. The big difference is that because we can't transfer accounts over to the new system, buyers and new subscribers will have to register their details at the new site. This is because, quite rightly, the terms and conditions you agreed to as an EVE Store customer preclude the wholesale transfer of your customer information, and since the new EON Store is owned and maintained by us at MMM Publishing rather than CCP Games, obviously we all have to abide by the rules. Rest assured however that if you have a current active subscription it will be honoured. When it comes to re-subscribing, however, you will have to register at the EON Store.

The good news is that with the EON Store up and running we will be able to offer more deals and special offers at short notice (you might want to join our Facebook page or follow our Twitter feed @EonMagazine in case a 50%-off deal kicks off. All the usual credit cards and PayPal are accepted through our trusted payment gateway (WorldPay) and you can select between US bucks, UK quids or EU 'roes. Oh, and we have re-evaluated postal costs to be a little fairer to those ordering from the economic black hole that is the UK and Europe, which is where Outpost Eon is located.

Another significant development with regard to EON is that we have - at long, long last - gone ahead with digital editions of the magazine. I blogged and commented a couple of times last year about our frustrations in trying to force integration of digital magazine sales within the EVE Store, but as spring became summer and Incursion became Incarna, it became increasingly obvious that CCP had more important things to worry about. To be fair to CCP, the issues were more complex than I realized at the time and went far beyond the technical—so our independence from the EVE Store actually has turned out to be a good thing, especially with how fluid things are with regard to digital reading trends.

Right now we only have the current issue available in digital form, but the rest of the magazines will follow over the coming weeks and months. Sadly we're not quite in the position to offer digital editions for direct sale via the EON Store, but if you have an account with Zinio.com, who will be distributing digital editions, you won't need to worry about that anyway.

We actually put a lot of time into researching the best platform and we liked Zinio by far the best. The service works across a greater range of devices (PC, Mac, Android, iOS) and you can download the mags as many times as you like to however many devices you own. No doubt there are some of you asking why we don't just sell pdfs from the EON Store, which is a fair question, but we almost see Zinio as the Steam of the magazine world. It has ubiquity, ease of use, a nice switch between portrait and landscape modes (and a text-only mode that we'll be eventually supporting), relatively small file sizes for each magazine compared to hi-res pdf files, and the aforementioned support over a range of devices - which, we're informed, will soon include Kindle Fire. Oh, and there's a nice preview feature too.

So, to recap, EON has vacated the EVE Store and set up shop anew, while the process of going digital is well underway. In celebration we're offering 50%-off everything in the EON Store until midnight on Sunday 26th February.

Rest assured that just because sales and administration has moved to an out-of-town purpose-built facility, EON remains an official EVE product, with all the benefits that entail. EON has and always will remain fully-embedded within the CCP collective consciousness. Thank you for reading. If you have any questions or concerns, please either comment here, via Facebook or send an email to eon@mmmpublishing.com. We'll do our best to respond.

Please report any issues with Crucible 1.2 here; a thread for general feedback is available here.

Thank you for your understanding.

A variety of client performance improvements will be introduced with Crucible 1.2. More information about client performance improvements is available in this devblog.

CCP Veritas here from the BRAND NEW Team Gridlock.  I know, I know, it was just a couple days ago when I was here blogging about Time Dilation which is a thing that the old Team Gridlock did, but there was a period where there wasn’t one but now there is again and let me tell ya we’ve been busy, folks.  We’ve got a couple new faces – CCP Snorlax and CCP Colgate, both experienced veterans when it comes to all things client. The servers are doing much better these days, so the performance target has moved over to that little piece of tech you all use to fly spaceships around with, making them excellent additions to the crew.

CCP Masheen posted up a blog asking for ideas on how we can make the client better, which has given us some fantastic targets to go after.  But while that was going on, we were already busy hacking at some overgrown forests in the UI and the results are coming out in Crucible 1.2.  Highlights include:

MORE CONSISTENT UI PERFORMANCE!

If you’re a fan of having a helluva lot of windows open, man is this patch going to own for you.  Using something akin to magic, we’ve made it so setups like this have about the same load as only having a couple windows open:

BETTER FONT PROCESSING AND RENDERING!

So yeah, there’s a lot of text in a lot of places.  It’ll process and render faster now, which is like a fine glazing of winsauce over everything.

MORE RESPONSIVE OVERVIEW!

This beasty had a big target painted on its back and we’re not very sporting so we kicked this thing around a lot.  The overview is now much less of a performance hog, so folks doing large fights and such should see a respectable boost to their FPS.  And in case you’re feeling left out ‘cause you’re not into blobs and stuff, we upped the overview’s target refresh rate from .4hz to 1hz - that’s from once every 2.5 seconds to once per second for you non-hertz-aware types.  It’s a hell of a lot less spiky too, which makes being around lots of things a lot less like being punched in the face repeatedly.  It feels pretty good bro, you’ll see.

Allow me to use the communication form of my people: the graph.  This here is a raw frame-time clock in millisecondsbefore and after our improvements– lower meaning faster:

These charts come from a laboratory-style setup where there's just a few hundred random ships sitting about with no special overview settings at all. The improvements are even more noticeable when the ships around you have pilots in them with relationships to you causing various colors to be splatted all over your screen like a Pollock painting.

With the increased update rate, we made one super tiny functional change which you’ll probably notice and hopefully like – the sorting of the overview will lock when you hover over it.  Previously it would freeze if you held your lock button, but with things moving around quicker it felt better to lock sooner than that. 

BONUS GOODNESS:

Since the overview and brackets share a lot of code, we made them a bit faster by accident.  I hope you don’t mind.

All this is headed your way very soon. Like, really soon. Okay fine it's Thursday the 16th of February, 2012. Stay tuned for more coming from us as we march our way towards a smoother more gooder client that shows you information faster.

Fly Fast,

~CCP Veritas

New to EVE? Start your 14-day free trial today. Returning pilot? Visit Account Management for the latest offers and promotions.

CCP Veritas here from the BRAND NEW Team Gridlock.  I know, I know, it was just a couple days ago when I was here blogging about Time Dilation which is a thing that the old Team Gridlock did, but there was a period where there wasn’t one but now there is again and let me tell ya we’ve been busy, folks.  We’ve got a couple new faces – CCP Snorlax and CCP Colgate, both experienced veterans when it comes to all things client. The servers are doing much better these days, so the performance target has moved over to that little piece of tech you all use to fly spaceships around with, making them excellent additions to the crew.

CCP Masheen posted up a blog asking for ideas on how we can make the client better, which has given us some fantastic targets to go after.  But while that was going on, we were already busy hacking at some overgrown forests in the UI and the results are coming out in Crucible 1.2.  Highlights include:

MORE CONSISTENT UI PERFORMANCE!

If you’re a fan of having a helluva lot of windows open, man is this patch going to own for you.  Using something akin to magic, we’ve made it so setups like this have about the same load as only having a couple windows open:

BETTER FONT PROCESSING AND RENDERING!

So yeah, there’s a lot of text in a lot of places.  It’ll process and render faster now, which is like a fine glazing of winsauce over everything.

MORE RESPONSIVE OVERVIEW!

This beasty had a big target painted on its back and we’re not very sporting so we kicked this thing around a lot.  The overview is now much less of a performance hog, so folks doing large fights and such should see a respectable boost to their FPS.  And in case you’re feeling left out ‘cause you’re not into blobs and stuff, we upped the overview’s target refresh rate from .4hz to 1hz - that’s from once every 2.5 seconds to once per second for you non-hertz-aware types.  It’s a hell of a lot less spiky too, which makes being around lots of things a lot less like being punched in the face repeatedly.  It feels pretty good bro, you’ll see.

Allow me to use the communication form of my people: the graph.  This here is a raw frame-time clock in millisecondsbefore and after our improvements– lower meaning faster:

These charts come from a laboratory-style setup where there's just a few hundred random ships sitting about with no special overview settings at all. The improvements are even more noticeable when the ships around you have pilots in them with relationships to you causing various colors to be splatted all over your screen like a Pollock painting.

With the increased update rate, we made one super tiny functional change which you’ll probably notice and hopefully like – the sorting of the overview will lock when you hover over it.  Previously it would freeze if you held your lock button, but with things moving around quicker it felt better to lock sooner than that. 

BONUS GOODNESS:

Since the overview and brackets share a lot of code, we made them a bit faster by accident.  I hope you don’t mind.

All this is headed your way very soon. Like, really soon. Okay fine it's Thursday the 16th of February, 2012. Stay tuned for more coming from us as we march our way towards a smoother more gooder client that shows you information faster.

Fly Fast,

~CCP Veritas

New to EVE? Start your 14-day free trial today. Returning pilot? Visit Account Management for the latest offers and promotions.

CCP Veritas here from the BRAND NEW Team Gridlock.  I know, I know, it was just a couple days ago when I was here blogging about Time Dilation which is a thing that the old Team Gridlock did, but there was a period where there wasn’t one but now there is again and let me tell ya we’ve been busy, folks.  We’ve got a couple new faces – CCP Snorlax and CCP Colgate, both experienced veterans when it comes to all things client. The servers are doing much better these days, so the performance target has moved over to that little piece of tech you all use to fly spaceships around with, making them excellent additions to the crew.

CCP Masheen posted up a blog asking for ideas on how we can make the client better, which has given us some fantastic targets to go after.  But while that was going on, we were already busy hacking at some overgrown forests in the UI and the results are coming out in Crucible 1.2.  Highlights include:

MORE CONSISTENT UI PERFORMANCE!

If you’re a fan of having a helluva lot of windows open, man is this patch going to own for you.  Using something akin to magic, we’ve made it so setups like this have about the same load as only having a couple windows open:

BETTER FONT PROCESSING AND RENDERING!

So yeah, there’s a lot of text in a lot of places.  It’ll process and render faster now, which is like a fine glazing of winsauce over everything.

MORE RESPONSIVE OVERVIEW!

This beasty had a big target painted on its back and we’re not very sporting so we kicked this thing around a lot.  The overview is now much less of a performance hog, so folks doing large fights and such should see a respectable boost to their FPS.  And in case you’re feeling left out ‘cause you’re not into blobs and stuff, we upped the overview’s target refresh rate from .4hz to 1hz - that’s from once every 2.5 seconds to once per second for you non-hertz-aware types.  It’s a hell of a lot less spiky too, which makes being around lots of things a lot less like being punched in the face repeatedly.  It feels pretty good bro, you’ll see.

Allow me to use the communication form of my people: the graph.  This here is a raw frame-time clock in millisecondsbefore and after our improvements– lower meaning faster:

These charts come from a laboratory-style setup where there's just a few hundred random ships sitting about with no special overview settings at all. The improvements are even more noticeable when the ships around you have pilots in them with relationships to you causing various colors to be splatted all over your screen like a Pollock painting.

With the increased update rate, we made one super tiny functional change which you’ll probably notice and hopefully like – the sorting of the overview will lock when you hover over it.  Previously it would freeze if you held your lock button, but with things moving around quicker it felt better to lock sooner than that. 

BONUS GOODNESS:

Since the overview and brackets share a lot of code, we made them a bit faster by accident.  I hope you don’t mind.

All this is headed your way very soon. Like, really soon. Okay fine it's Thursday the 16th of February, 2012. Stay tuned for more coming from us as we march our way towards a smoother more gooder client that shows you information faster.

Fly Fast,

~CCP Veritas

New to EVE? Start your 14-day free trial today. Returning pilot? Visit Account Management for the latest offers and promotions.

Many AAA-game developers I have met seem to think so. While games like Modern Warfare and Battlefield owe their success to the fact that their games play out like movie-fare, sometimes…gameplay suffers as a result.

Recently, at least one influential developer has spoken out against this trend. We discuss this topic and wonder aloud whether developers should put the “game” back in gaming, or whether they should continue to evolve the digital arts until it overtakes movie-going audiences in both numbers and in terms of artistic merit.

To discuss this and many other topics, we have brought on a new roundtable member, he’s a former producer for KAOS Studio’s Homefront, Edmar M. — the last person I interviewed on BASH, is making his first FBS appearance. As usual, we also have our good friend from fpsadmin.com, Jim (aka Rudedog).

Stories ruin gaming?

I have to be honest, I’ve always thought that the game should come first and the story second in any video game…but I have always felt that I was in the minority. Many of you, will only buy a game for its story, just look at the heavily scripted Call of Duty as an example of how popular the “story as-a-game” can be. So, I know that I’m swimming uphill on this one.

It is no surprise then, that I was elated to hear that God of War creator David Jaffe recently lectured his colleagues on the appropriate use of narrative in video games during D.I.C.E. 2012 in Las Vegas. As I am nowhere near as eloquent as Jaffe in expressing my wish that developers should prioritize gameplay, I’ll be quiet and let Jaffe express his arguments here:

Note that Jaffe isn’t saying that we shouldn’t ever have storylines, he just cautions against turning a videogame into an ebook.

Ravaged

In addition to giving us insight into the world of game development, Edmar also alerts us to a really interesting indie vehicular-shooter that is currently being worked on. The name of this new game is called Ravaged and it is being designed by 2Dawn Games.

Ravaged takes place on a post-apocalyptic Earth that has been devastated by natural disasters caused by solar flares from the sun.� The main conflict in the game sees the so-called “Resistance” fighting the “Scavengers” for territory and resources. A “Mad-Max” style art design is employed and you get a really good feel for the game when you take a look at some of the gyrocopter action in this new pre-alpha teaser:

Here’s a Trike Vehicle vid that came out in a 2Dawn developer diary a few months ago:

Testing should last around 60 minutes. All participants will receive two million skillpoints on Singularity.

Please refer to this thread for more information about how you participate in the test, and this EVElopedia article for more information on mass testing.

• Live each day with courage
  
• Take pride in your work
  
• Always finish what you start
  
• Do what has to be done
  
• Be tough, but fair
  
• When you make a promise, keep it
  
• Ride for the brand
  
• Talk less and say more
  
• Remember that some things aren't for sale
  
• Know where to draw the line

I want to share my favorite two graphs of the past few weeks with you folks.  They display the amount of time dilation in red against the right axis with how delayed module processing is in blue along the left axis, in seconds. 

F-9F6Q on 20Jan:  >1,300 pilots on a reinforced node (4 solar systems, supernode hardware)

92D-OI on 21Jan:  >1,350 pilots on a normal node (83 solar systems)

The thing to notice here in both cases is that modules were not allowed to lag very much.  When the delay spikes up, TiDi kicks in, then the delay goes away.  Happy news for anyone interested in making lazors go pewpewpew or reppers go, well, whatever they go.  In both huge fights here, the module response time was kept under one second for the vast majority of the action, which is a tremendously large improvement over the 20, 40, 600 seconds we’d sometimes see in fights of this scale.

Another thing the attentive amongst you will notice is the large pile of load at the end of both fights, corresponding to large jumps out of the system.  Jumping being expensive is one of the first things we identified back when Team Gridlock was formed, so we’re very familiar with that problem and why it exists, but it’s not easily dealt with.  This load has always been there, it’s just now very explicit and visible to you folks where before you’d just notice it by sometimes being black screened or at e-warp distance from gate or other such tomfoolery.  In any case, the work to be done to remedy this has been identified and is awaiting being the worst problem we have so we can tackle it.

While I’m here, I want to address another common criticism of TiDi – that it’s a node-level thing, which causes solar systems potentially far away from the fight to be effected.  Ideally, we could have a clock per solar system and just slow down the biggies and that’d be just swell.  Unfortunately we’re very far from there just based on how our software is set up, there would have to be some pretty fundamental changes in order to keep track of all that.  Given the choice between not doing TiDi and doing it on a per-node basis though, I believe I made the right call.

But enough about all this negative stuff.  TiDi is going quite well and big fights have been quite enjoyable as late.  Or so I hear.  I actually haven’t been in any personally, I just watch.  Let me defer to Lovelocke's exhilarating battle report from EVE Swarm about the battle of 92d:

"As an estimate I believe we had around 650 – 700 people, not including capital ships. Understand that this is an approximate figure – it was far too difficult to pinpoint an exact amount due to a mixing of friendlies and hostiles in local. I have to be honest and say I expected to be ‘blue balled’ as such an amassing of sub capital ships would surely put most people off.

I was wrong, very very wrong. A cyno went up in system and local began to spike. “Spike” doesn’t sufficiently explain by how much local went up in so much as local actually more than doubled! Levelling off at around 1350 – 1400 the TiDi indicator quickly turned red..."

...

"...The scene was magnificent; to the left were well over 30 Raiden titans and many more super carriers that were saving their Tech moon tower, up above were Goon Titans doomsdaying the lone trapped Erebus that had been surrounded with bubbles and all around were hundreds of Maelstroms fighting a fierce battle against the Drake horde. As the Dreadnoughts were sieging Raiden Titans began doomsdaying them in a horrifying yet beautiful lightshow of brilliant greens and vibrant yellows, followed by massive explosions. A calculated sacrifice.

This, my fellow readers, was the opening minutes of a battle that would rage for approximately three hours..."

...

"...We carried on fighting, many of us died and we killed many. But do you know what was most remarkable about this fight? The lag was barely noticeable. 1400+ in local, super capitals with fighter bombers swarming, doomsdays, Drake missiles, etc, yet with TiDi in full force there were no crashes, no unresponsive modules, no MWD’s that wouldn’t turn off. Astonishing. I still don’t fully understand what TiDi is, its explanation far too technical for my fragile little mind, but whatever it is CCP have certainly struck gold. This was by far a huge improvement over even smaller battles I’ve encountered in the past."

---

Right then.  Going to chalk this up firmly in the “win” column.  Next up – we’re hitting the client!  Expect some pretty bigtime improvements there in the coming months.  You can check out the first round of them *right now* over on Sisi! There's also some information on the Crucible feature page.

BONUS GRAPH!

This shows the cluster-wide average amount of time dilation for the given time on the clock for the period mentioned.  Unsurprisingly, most of the usage sits in the EU & US primetimes.  The spike down at the end there is our new TiDi-enabled shutdown routine, which pauses the universe while shutting down.  It’s kinda neat like that.

BONUS STATISTIC!

In that same period of time, 12.87 hours of simulation time in total have been dilated out of existence – 45 minutes per day on average across the entire universe.

New to EVE? Start your 14-day free trial today. Returning pilot? Visit Account Management for the latest offers and promotions.

Blacklight: Retribution

Blacklight: Retribution is a F2P FPS developed by Zombie Studios. It’s yet another in a myriad of sci-fi F2P shooters and has elements of Brink, CoD and just about all other run’n'gun games out there.

Blacklight: Retribution’s core gameplay are nearly identical to Zombie’s Tango Down, their previous game. Tango, which came out on multiple platforms, was well-received and provides a good base on which to build on.

Just about all the questions you could think of about the game are answered here.

It’s currently in Closed Beta and was to be released sometime in 2012.

Comments:

• Comes with PunkBuster anti-cheat.
• Unreal 3 Engine and has DirectX 11 compatibility.
• Somewhat gimmicky, the game evokes Splash Damage’s Brink…and that ain’t a good thing.� Lots of talk about “customization”…that’s a huge red-flag for me.
• I was really looking forward to this game as the graphics are quite nice for a F2P; however, the gameplay is not as dynamic as I expected and it frankly feels like I’ve done all this before. For that reason my enthusiasm has been dampened somewhat.

My interest level:� ••••• / 10

Hedone

This is a sci-fi F2P online multiplayer first person shooter (FPS) from Acony Games. Acony says the game is AAA quality. I’ve already talked about this game at length, you can read the details here. The game was supposed to have a late 2011 release; however, it’s still in Beta.

Official Website

Comments:

I don’t see much here that will capture my interest. Graphics appear far from AAA-quality and the whole future-gladiatorial high-concept idea strikes me as being too high-concept and its execution somewhat half-hearted.

Having said that, for those that have tried A.V.A., you might want to try Hedone, as it promises to be similar in quality and in gameplay (that is, pure run’n'gun).

Release date: Sometime in 2012?

My interest level:� ••• / 10

PlanetSide 2

Another F2P sci-fi MMO shooter, Sony Online Entertainment’s� PlanetSide 2 will apparently allow battles between “thousands (of troops); with air and ground vehicles slugging it out alongside.” The original PlanetSide came out in 2003 and was also created by Sony Online Entertainment.

Planetside 2′s game engine will be the new Forge Light, which will feature a new PhysX API that will provide the capability of complex movements and even character face expressions.

Official Website

Comments:

• The shear scale of what is promised in this game has me interested.
• To get the numbers of players into the “thousands”, I’m assuming the graphics will be dumbed down to seriously brain-dead levels. But again, that’s OK by me, as long as the gameplay is worth it.
• Another plus is that Sony has stated that any real money transactions will simply buy you customization, not wins.

Release date: Sometime in 2012.

My interest level:� ••••••• / 10

Hawken

Potentially, one of the prettiest looking F2P releases, Hawken fits the category of “mech”-shooter. It’s being worked on by Adhesive Games, an indie studio led by Khang Le who is Adhesive’s CEO and the game’s Art Director. The games’ artistic direction is certainly a consequence of Khang’s wonderful work.

• Impressive graphic quality and design.
• The mech-battle concept is new to me, but to anyone who has ever played MechWarrior, it will all seem very familiar.
• The lack of one-hit kills in the game should make for epic, pounding battles.

New to EVE? Start your 14-day free trial today. Returning pilot? Visit Account Management for the latest offers and promotions.

It went something like this:

BM verabschiedet sich ? zumindest vorerst! BM says “Goodbye”!

I quickly clicked over to the BlackMonkeys.de site and looked for the inevitable end-times post. The impenetrable German prose tripped me up. I’d forgotten…I don’t speak German, so I Skyped Xiao and asked him if it were true. Was he, the main ringleader behind the band of German modders, mappers and FPS enthusiasts, calling it quits? Was the headquarters of the ex-CoD group who brought us community handiwork like the Apesgorod map and one of the greatest CoD mods of all time, Galactic Warfare shutting down?

Another ex-CoDder

Xiao’s FPS roots began in Call of Duty and his first taste of community came from playing and interacting with clanmates. As his circle of friends grew, he began to communicate with others in ever increasingly larger circles of FPS clans in Germany. Sharing ideas, information and community, that’s how the idea for Blackmonkeys (BM) was born. Since 2006, the BlackMonkeys offered admins, gamers, modders and mappers a virtual club that allowed everyone to pool knowledge and share some fun.

Xiao and the BlackMonkeys organized events like “Friday Fight Fever” and the tournament “Monkey Mania”.� These tourneys and events were the basis of friendships with many members of the CoD modding community.

Galactic Warfare

After a while, the relationships forged between modders, mappers and hardcore gamers in servers playing each other soon translated into a joint mod project. The group united to their favorite game, CoD4: MW with their favorite movie, Star Wars. A total conversion mod was born. The BlackMonkeys team combined a lot of the known battlegrounds, characters and weapons of Star Wars with the fantastic gameplay of the COD4-Multiplayer. You could realize your childhood fantasy of fighting as either an Imperial Trooper or as a Hans Solo-wanabee Alliance Rebel. The Galactic Warfare mod took years to make but when it was released, the CoD community reacted with near unanimous slack-jawed awe. The mod was downloaded two-hundred thousand times and its official YouTube page accumulated over a million and a half hits.

While the BM were known as modders, BlackMonkeys.de, their home, was also a very well known German FPS community news site. Since the disappointment of Modern Warfare 2, the BM site moved out of the CoD orbit and began to sample franchises like Battlefield and Homefront.

The BASHandSlash connection

A few years ago, Xiao made his first major mistake and teamed up with us here at BASHandSlash.com. What came out of that collaboration was surprisingly fruitful: numerous BASH episodes, a VO appearance in Galactic-Warfare by me, the German-language podcast MonkeyBiz and finally FBS.

All good things

But everything comes to an end and inevitably, another ex-CoD site, the BlackMonkeys is closing its doors — at least for a little while.

Hopefully Xiao will take this break from FPS and recharge. He will continue to appear on FBS and he has assured me, that he will continue expand his PC-gaming horizons.

In fact, as I am writing this, Xiao is dodging flaming balls of fire in Skyrim. He’s currently hunting dragons and hangin’ with his Werewolf crew. Eschewing his fave BF3 gun, the M416 for a longbow, Xiao was a CoD Modder like you, then he took an arrow to the knee.

On behalf of the ex-CoD community and the current FPS one, thanks Xiao…to you and all those who graced BlackMonkeys with their presence.

See ya buddy!

If you had previously been playing the Beta, but did not log in since Thursday, you will find that you will now start with the basic loadout in the game and you will only have the Soldier, Pathfinder and Juggernaut classes unlocked. Any Gold you may have bought or spent will be refunded and any XP or Tokens you may have earned will be returned as well. Post patch, HiRez will be combining Tokens and XP into a single currency (two were confusing tbh) using the exchange rate of 1 Token being equal to 8 XP.

Major Changes

• There is a new UI for all the front-end menus. Many aspects of the new UI are still a work in progress, so please forgive any issues or quirkiness.
• The class and purchase systems have undergone a major overhaul. The new system allows greater customization within a given class. Among the highlights:
• There are now 9 classes instead of 12 (Pathfinder, Sentinel, Infiltrator, Soldier, Technician, Raider,� Juggernaut, Doombringer, Brute).
• New players receive the Pathfinder, Soldier and Juggernaut classes for free.
• �Each class has a default loadout associated with it that includes your Armor (Light/Medium/Heavy), a Primary Weapon, a Secondary Weapon, Belt item, a Pack, and two Perk Slots.� You may unlock alternate weapons for each slot, using XP or Gold.
• The class specific skill trees have been removed and replaced by a weapon-centric and armor-centric upgrade system. Upgrades are still unlocked using XP.
• Perks have been overhauled. With this patch, there are 18 perks in the game — nine assigned to Perk Slot 1 and nine assigned to Perk Slot 2. You now unlock Perks using XP or Gold. Once a perk is unlocked, it can be used on all classes.
• Perks now have upgrades that can be purchased with XP, and contain additional functionality. (Example: The Pilot Perk gives +10% vehicle health, and has upgrades that provide +10% more health, with a final upgrade giving Ejection Seat).
• 16 new weapons have been added to the game.
• A new Crossfire Team Deathmatch map has been added. This map is an early iteration and is not in its final intended artistic or design state.
• Several new Rabbit maps have been added (using previously released Team Deathmatch maps as their base).
• Tokens have been removed from the game, and all purchases previously made through Tokens can now be made through XP (see CONVERSION NOTE).

A full list of changes in the upcoming patch can be found here.

Planetary Interaction

There was an average of 64,840 planetary export transactions per day, or 2,701 per hour. Of that, 26,693 were in high sec, 6,936 in low sec, 15,844 in null sec and 15,366 in wormhole space. An average of 64,627 characters exported goods from a planet each month, with the annual total being 195,449 different characters.

The top five systems in empire space for planetary interaction and the average number of export transactions per day were:

Barren class planets were unsurprisingly the most utilised. Average number of export transactions per day per planet type:

Production

A lot was built! Just under 62 billion missiles. That’s an average of 7.08 million an hour. I’m pretty certain that’s more missiles than the Persians had arrows. 13.2 million ships, too - an hourly average of 1,506.

Average production per hour by hull size and tech level:

Average production per hour by hull size and race. This excludes any ships not belonging to the four main races, hence the lower totals:

Production of ships per hour by sec group:

The top 15 ships built in 2011 and their total, excluding shuttles and frigates:

Also, our congratulations to the mighty Dreddit corporation for producing more Rifters than anyone else in 2011! 7,829 of them to be precise.

People blowing each other up

In 2011, 5,381,636 kill reports were generated; that’s an average of 14,744 per day or one every 5.86 seconds. 65% of these kill reports were caused by damage inflicted by a player, whilst non-player controlled entities (from Serpentis to CONCORD) were responsible for the remaining 35%.

Average destruction rate in PVP of the various hull sizes:

By tech level:

By race, excluding rookie ships and capsules:

Overall, 576,860 different characters lost ships to non-players in 2011, and 422,801 lost ships in PVP scenarios. 155,087 characters scored at least one final blow, too!
 

The Market

To finish this blog off - If there’s one big thing in EVE, it would have to be the market. In total in 2011, 348,483,735 market transactions were performed with a total combined trade value of 2,692,367,631,609,430 ISK. That’s a lot. To break that down, 2011 on average:

Here's hoping for an even more productive and explosive 2012! If stats like these interest you, don’t forget to follow my twitter account and the comments thread of this blog. I’ll try to answer as many of the questions that come up as I can.

 -  CCP Diagoras

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Planetary Interaction

There was an average of 64,840 planetary export transactions per day, or 2,701 per hour. Of that, 26,693 were in high sec, 6,936 in low sec, 15,844 in null sec and 15,366 in wormhole space. An average of 64,627 characters exported goods from a planet each month, with the annual total being 195,449 different characters. The top five systems in empire space for planetary interaction and the average number of export transactions per day were:

Barren class planets were unsurprisingly the most utilised. Average number of export transactions per day per planet type:

Production

A lot was built! Just under 62 billion missiles. That’s an average of 7.08 million an hour. I’m pretty certain that’s more missiles than the Persians had arrows. 13.2 million ships, too - an hourly average of 1,506.

Average production per hour by hull size and tech level:

Average production per hour by hull size and race. This excludes any ships not belonging to the four main races, hence the lower totals:

Production of ships per hour by sec group:

The top 15 ships built in 2011 and their total, excluding shuttles and frigates:

Also, our congratulations to the mighty Dreddit corporation for producing more Rifters than anyone else in 2011! 7,829 of them to be precise.

People blowing each other up

In 2011, 5,381,636 kill reports were generated; that’s an average of 14,744 per day or one every 5.86 seconds. 65% of these kill reports were caused by damage inflicted by a player, whilst non-player controlled entities (from Serpentis to CONCORD) were responsible for the remaining 35%. Average destruction rate in PVP of the various hull sizes:

By tech level:

By race, excluding rookie ships and capsules:

Overall, 576,860 different characters lost ships to non-players in 2011, and 422,801 lost ships in PVP scenarios. 155,087 characters scored at least one final blow, too!  

The Market

To finish this blog off - If there’s one big thing in EVE, it would have to be the market. In total in 2011, 348,483,735 market transactions were performed with a total combined trade value of 2,692,367,631,609,430 ISK. That’s a lot. To break that down, 2011 on average:

Here's hoping for an even more productive and explosive 2012! If stats like these interest you, don’t forget to follow my twitter account and the comments thread of this blog. I’ll try to answer as many of the questions that come up as I can.  -  CCP Diagoras

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Last year we began a strategic journey of improving our web presence by launching a brand new Account Management website and new Forums. I’m here with the first dev blog in a series to come throughout 2012 that will detail important changes and updates to our websites over the course of this year.

Currently, the EVE website is a mixed bag. It's split between trying to offer an explanation of the game without really doing so, and trying to cater for our community's needs. Further, important information is distributed across many other websites, from EVE Gate to EVElopedia. We can do better.

Changes on large scale require a large amount of in-depth planning and development effort, so rather than taking on the whole web at once, we are going to do this in stages. 

Stage 1 - EVEOnline.com

The first part of these changes is taking the aspects of the current website that explain what the game is and creating a better front facing website for EVE Online. This means we will have a website that has information about the various elements of the universe, the rich gameplay, visuals and how passionate our players are. A website we will be proud to share with our friends, fellow gamers and potential customers.

The details

Some of the cool features that will be on the site include:

• Interactive star map with different view states where you learn about features of the universe
• Interactive 3D spaceship gallery showing a selection of spaceships ranging from capsule to titan 
• Popular gameplay styles like Pirate, Explorer, Fleet Commander, etc. represented as career paths 
• A short Personality Analysis quiz to help you determine what career paths may suit you
• Screenshots showcasing all aspects of in-game visuals
• Revised versions of popular EVE Chronicles downloadable in eBook format
• Community spotlights highlighting the passion and commitment of EVE players
• A Getting Started page where you can sign-up for a trial account and download the game without leaving the site

Here are sneak peeks of a screenshots page, starmap showing ship kills, an Absolution and the pirate gameplay style below:

This is ready and should go live next week. 

Stage 2 - Building for the future

Having moved the information valuable for potential customers and for all of us to show off the game to its own home, we can now focus on information needed by our current players and how we can improve your experience on our websites. We will be making changes that will bring together all the community related pages and functionality on the other sites under the umbrella of one EVE Community website. The long term goal here is for you as a current player to be able to go to the community website and from there access all the content, information and functionality relevant and useful to you.

The details

We are going to make changes to the now obsolete eveonline.com to re-brand it as the EVE Community website, allowing us to have a foundation to build on. This coincides with the launch of the new eveonline.com discussed above. It will live at community.eveonline.com, with the following tweaks:

• Replacing the header area with a Community branded logo and menu
• Adding the Login widget currently on Account Management to the top right of the site as a central place to login, go between eve websites and change language where applicable
• Re-organizing and simplifying the menu into a more logical structure where it's easier to find content without expanding and collapsing for an eternity
• Placing pages we don’t necessarily wish to remove yet from the old site into an archive section to be dealt with later

The site will be structured around these categories to start with:

Still tweaking these, so what you see above is subject to change before release.

We are finishing up these tweaks to be ready for next week as well.

What comes next for EVE Community

• Upgrade the hamster wheels behind the scenes (classic asp is not cool any more according to our hamsters) 
• Where it makes sense, we will merge content from other websites like Support, EVElopedia, EVE Gate, etc. into EVE Community in various phases
• Make site-wide UI and presentation changes so it looks and behaves like a modern, well designed website
• Add new content and features

More will be revealed in further dev blogs as we are working on the next stages.

We are really excited about these updates and looking forward to getting them live, teams Bitmap, Charlie Sheen and GForce have done a fantastic job over the past months (go team!). We will keep you posted with exact release dates and where you can give feedback as soon as we can.

Fly safe!

CCP Alice / Anne Walsh Web Architect

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I'd promised that I would keep you abreast on future developments of our lore, and now that I've got a better handle on how it all went and where our priorities lie - including new parts that I hadn't announced in the last dev blog - I wanted to drop you a quick note to tell you where we're headed.

As a side note: While admittedly I am, like all fiction writers, basically a professional liar, I assure you that I will tell you the truth. Not those other guys, they can go to hell - but you and me, we've got a connection. We've seen things.

The Fiction Portal

I'm actually amazed at how well the Fiction Portal launch went. Most people seem really happy with it, which is a good thing to hear after you've devoted a year of your professional life to that very aim. The most important part of the launch, to me and Mercury and everyone else involved, was that nothing would break badly enough to put a major damper on your ability to access and enjoy our content.  So far, so good.

In the weeks since launch, we've done a ton of minor edits to various pages. This includes not only aesthetic ones (including spellchecks, style checks, and unifying the '(tag)' suffixes we used to differentiate our lore from similar pages), but also reviewing several dozen page comments on lore consistency and improvement suggestions. This is something we'll be doing constantly from now on. If you ever feel that a Fiction Portal page is in error, use its Discussion tab to let us know. If you have more general comments about the Portal, post on the Fiction forum section. I review all threads that have anything to do with the EVElopedia, and note down anything we can use to improve it.

What we haven't done is add a ton new content. We want to do so in strategic fashion, so that you won't always have to trawl through the extant thousand pages of lore just to see if anything new got added. For the most part we'll be adding articles alongside patches and expansions; there was a small bunch coming out with the January release, for example. In terms of future expansions, CCP recently nailed down what we'll be working on and releasing up to and including this summer, so Mercury and I are hard at work right now figuring out what new lore we want to write up for you guys to tie in with those features. If you ever want to see what's new, just head on over to the Updates and Credits page.

Aside from articles tying into expansion features, there is a lot of published content we haven't yet gotten around to writing up in wiki form. We have almost the entire news archive to go, plus the three EVE novels, various bits and pieces of other published work, and, of course, our in-game PvE content. Major aspects of our canon, including the factions and notable persons, also need a going-over soon. Moreover, we want to rewrite the entire chronology section so that it'll be event-focused rather than purely date-focused. And somewhere, over the horizon, there is the fabled in-game connection, which I'll be quietly working on in between other content projects.

(A side note on in-game content and live events: The Arek'Jaalan project is a special case, and CCP Dropbear and I plan to figure out a workable way to transition A'J info into official canon.  It'll happen, but it's probably going to take a while.)

There really are three major points I'd like all of you to take away from reading this part of the blog: Firstly, we plan to do a lot more for this project. Anything new will get announced on the Updates page.

Second, it's all going to get done, albeit at a slow but steady pace. It's a great deal of work, and most of us at CCP have a lot on our plates these days, but I have a pretty good track record when it comes to delivering what I promised (such as the Fiction Portal itself).

Third, and very importantly: All of this is only possible thanks to the amazing efforts of our Mercury volunteer team. If you want to help contribute to our fiction, you should defintely consider joining them.

The Chronicle Portal

So what's new? Well, here's a thing.

The EVE Chronicles are, for the most part, a collection of over two hundred short stories set in the world of EVE. I wrote about a hundred of those, over a period of four years - it was basically the biggest part of my day job at CCP before I switched over to doing the Fiction Portal and various other things - so I've been heavily involved with them for quite a while, and I want to make sure they're treated right.

Ever since beta times, they've been hosted several layers deep on the eveonline.com site. They have long since outgrown their place there, and now that eveonline.com is going to be given a total, streamlined redesign, we figured it was high time we moved them to somewhere that was a bit more amenable to EVE fiction. The natural decision was to create a separate portal for them on the EVElopedia.

Here's what this means for the chronicles from now on (not 'going forward', because I don't even know what that phrase means.) We'll need help from you, so look to the end part for that.

• Official CCP fiction (novels aside) will now be published and stored on the EVElopedia Chronicle Portal. Any publicity efforts will point you to that portal, not to eveonline.com

• There will not be any more chronicle artwork. I'm sad to see it go, but we have good reason to drop it. Art creation has always been a major bottleneck in chronicle production and a notable draw on the Art Department's resources. Moreover, art and thumbnails are not amenable to the kind of categorization we have in mind for the chronicles. It's easy to plonk down a thumbnail when all you've got is a 200-strong list of alike pieces; it gets progressively harder when you want to start reordering them in all sorts of ways.

• Also, you see how one of those Chronicle Portal categories is 'Flashfic'? Flashfic means really short fiction, and that means that if I have an idea for a Chronicle but I don't have the time to turn it into a full-fledged story, I can ninja it into that category without forcing myself into some hapless artist's schedule and waiting for him to produce a picture. To rephrase this bit in more high-level terms: While we plan to release short stories only around expansions and such, the Chronicle Portal's organization gives us far more leeway in adding fresh fiction without having to tie it in with a release schedule.

• (You're all subscribed to our twitter feeds, right? The official one is @ EveOnline, Dropbear is at @ccp_dropbear, and I'm @cloisterphobe. If we do something cool, we'll undoubtedly mention it there.)

• From now on, 'Chronicle' refers to any published story by us, of any length, and the terms "EVE Chronicles" and "Chronicle Portal " refer to the entire bulk of our online fiction. Also, the long stories (like Ruthless and Saccade) will now be called Novellas, while the short stories will simply be called 'short stories', not 'chronicles' - because employing the same term both for a particular type of story and for the entire bulk of all types of stories is a silly thing to do and leads to misunderstandings.
   
•  The categories will overlap. One chronicle can belong to many categories. If a story involves both the Caldari State and the Guristas, it'll show up both in the Empire and the Pirates category.
   
• The categories will be manually updated. The wiki tag system is too unwieldy in design and insecure in appilcation for us to employ at present.
   
• The categories aren't fixed. This is where you come in. Do you have ideas for new or different categories? For subcategories? (For instance, Empires is  going to split the stories up along the four-empire axis.)Tell us. Comment on the forum thread for this dev blog, or start a new thread on the Fiction forum.

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We are adding the option for every corporation in EVE to have it‘s own Corporation Forum, on the EVE Online forum.

Why are we doing this?

There are two reasons basically. We are very interested in providing corporations, particularly new and smaller corporations, with a community enhancing tool which boosts communication and corp cohesion without all the hassle of starting their own external forum. We also have DUST approaching and this will provide corporations with a cross-game platform where both their EVE members and their DUST members can talk and discuss whose planet to curbstomp next.

How will corp forums 1.0 work?

Once we launch this feature in the coming days, every CEO who goes to the forums will have the option to activate a Corp Forum. We know that not every corporation is interested in, or needs, a private forum on the EVE forums, so your CEO will have the option not to activate them and you will never even notice their existence in the code base. If, however, your CEO curiously chooses to activate them because he likes pretty buttons, they are there to stay and will become visible at the top of the category list for every corp member with your corporation logo next to the title. They will be collapsable much like every forum category so even if your CEO is a button-happy-son-of-a-gun and you have no interest in corp forums, they shouldn‘t get in your way too much.

Acme "Awsome" Corp has been extra "awsome" after getting its own forum

Tell me more about how these forums work, Guard? Tell me more!

All right, since you ask so nicely.

There will be three channels in your Corp Forum.

• Corporation Announcements will be the place for corp directors or your CEO to post announcements about upcoming ops, wars, or just whatever the heck they please! Nobody tells them what to do after all. Regular members will have read-only access to this section of the corp forum.
• General discussion will be the public area where every member of the corporation will be able to start threads and post replies.
• The Board Room will be the private area for the directors and the CEO to discuss business amongst themselves, far from the prying eyes of their minions.

Access will be determined by in-game roles.

Click to enlarge (but don't click the green cross unless you´re ready for corp forums)

CEOs have to have the ability to make informed decisions on serious matters

But who‘s going to moderate when someone posts ASCII penises and stuff?

Not us! Neither CCP Staff nor the Volunteer Forum Moderators will monitor your Corp Forums. As the proprietors of the database, CCP staff will have emergency access in case something terrible happens that we need to verify, but Volunteer Moderators will under no circumstances be able to gain access.

Your corporation should have all the tools necessary to maintain order and to discipline rowdy members who just can‘t stop posting ASCII penises for some reason. But additionally to the ability to simply kick people from your corp, we decided to add limited moderation roles for directors. They will be able to lock topics, move them between channels, delete all your badposts and the like. These are somewhat similar tools to the ones our Volunteer Moderators have, apart from the fact that they will only work in your own corp forum (sorry).

While I‘m slow-clapping, is there anything else I should know?

Only that this is the first version of Corp Forums and that both the Community Team and the Web Team will be listening to your feedback very carefully. We decided to launch a rather streamlined version to begin with, while including a few options that give you the control you need to enjoy your new corp forums. If there‘s anything else you really need or if you notice something that we may have missed, let us know.

The current expected launch date is February 8th, which constitutes as "soon" in every sense of the word I believe.

All the best,
CCP Guard

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The aim of community events at Fanfest is to provide players with non-EVE activities that they can participate in outside of the normal roundtables, presentations and panels. This also ties in to our drive to enable players to raise funds for our charity of choice, Get Well Gamers.

Get Well Gamers President, Ryan Sharpe, will be attending Fanfest this year and will be making a sizeable donation of toys to the hospital in Reykjavik on behalf of EVE Online players.

Office Tour

Every year we offer Fanfest attendees the opportunity to win a VIP tour of the CCP offices and a lunch with the Developers. Historically this event worked by inviting players to submit a minimum bid of $1000 and the highest bid would win the tour. A $1000 bid or more in this economic climate is a huge request of any one player so we are going to change how you, a Fanfest attendee, can win the office tour.

This year we will hold a draw and allow every attendee, plus a friend, the opportunity of winning for as little as one PLEX. We have set up the character ‘CCP Office Tour’ and in order to be in with a chance of winning, simply contract a PLEX to this character. The cutoff date for all contracts to this character will be Thursday, March 16 at 17:00 UTC and the winner will be announced in a CCP video on our You Tube channel on Friday, March 17. The winner will then be invited to attend the Office Tour starting at 11:00 UTC on Wednesday, March 21. Naturally, we will contact the winner by mail and arrange to get them to the office.

Ok, ok that’s all well and good but why do I want to spend part of a day in an office? Offices are boring! In many ways, that is true but these are the offices of CCP and you will be one of the few players who will ever get to take part in such an event. If that is not enough, let’s sweeten the deal a little more. CCP Soundwave, the Lead Game Designer for EVE Online, will allow the winner to pitch a game design idea of their choice in a 20-30 minute private meeting. This design idea can touch on any aspect of EVE Online. We cannot guarantee that the idea proposed will make it into the game. For example, if you propose that every Gurista Despoiler has a bounty of 20 Billion ISK or that Titans can go to High Sec space, chances are Soundwave will nod and smile while thinking about dangerous animals. Should your idea be well presented and thought out, who knows!?

No Limit Poker Tournament

The poker tournament at Fanfest has grown over the past few years and it is one of the events that players love to participate in. Each year we have been making the prizes bigger and better and this year, we will push it through the stratosphere. The tournament will take place on Thursday evening in a special area in the Harpa center and will be limited to the first 80 players who purchase tickets and tickets are available at the Fanfest 2012 site.

The format for the poker this year will be a knockout tournament and each player will have their initial buy-in of 5,000 chips for 5000 Icelandic Krona. An additional buy-in is available for all players of 5000 chips for 5000 Icelandic Krona before the end of the first break. A full rule set will be available at the venue.

So enough about the buy-ins and format how about you tell us about the amazing prizes on offer for the winners?

Ok so prizes will be awarded to the final three players placed in the tournament and we are giving away 60 PLEX, the first Ishukone Scorpion skin in-game and the winner will have their name on the show info window of this ship for eternity, T-shirts and other goodies.

P-P-P-POKERFACE-P-P-POKERFACE!

Wait a second; I think I should explain a little more. The 60 PLEX will be broken down as 30 for the winner, 20 for the runner up and 10 for third place.

Unique T-Shirts will be issued for the winner, runner up and third place

The first in-game Ishukone Scorpion skin will be awarded to the overall winner as well as having their name added to the in-game description of this ship. We need to stress at this point that the winning name is subject to approval and we may ask that you create an alt or use an alt name if we find your name unsuitable to be added to the permanent lore of EVE Online. For example I opened a thread today and names like Chribba, Kronossan, Ion Rubix and Zagam would be completely acceptable. Other names like 243636 or lol buttes would not be considered acceptable. The final decision on naming will be decided upon by the Lead Game Designer, CCP Soundwave. Should you have the name of a dangerous animal in your player character, you are pretty much fine.

Click to enlarge

This leads on to another question, does this mean we will be seeing ship skins for sale in the NeX store or by some other method? That is currently not the plan and is not in development so the short answer is no. The Ishukone Scorpion was already created as the first prototype and Game Design plan to release it to everyone at some stage. The winner of this event will just be granted the first one, before anyone else has ever owned it, along with the bragging rights of having their name in the lore.
 

Silent Auction

Every year we hold a silent auction which allows players to bid for extremely rare or unique items. In previous years we have auctioned off the famous Banhammer, hand painted ship models and EVE/Dust art. This year will be no exception and we are hearing rumors around the office of some very, very cool stuff if we can arrange to get it on time. I will not go in to any more details but you are all invited to drop by the Community area at Harpa and check out everything on offer.

Battle of the Bands

We initially started this project using Rock Band for players to compete against each other and it has turned into quite a big draw for many, simply for the many lulz it provides. Goonswarm have been dominating this event in recent years and remain undefeated so the gauntlet is thrown down. We have witnessed vocal powerhouses like Zastrow destroying all comers while Michael Bolton III has treated us to a partial striptease. Who knows what this event will bring this year but everyone is invited to take part. If you wish to sign up, drop by the Community area and we will be happy to have you listed.

 VIP area at the ‘Party at the top of the world’

The final part of the community events will be inviting the top three placed players in the poker tournament, the winner of the Battle of the Bands and Office Tour along with the player who buys the most expensive item at the silent auction to a VIP area at the main Fanfest party. This area will include table service all night, your own private seating area and security guard. Nothing quite says, ‘I won’ as much as lording it over everyone else like the rich pimp you are.

So that’s all from the Community team. If you have been debating whether to come to Fanfest then this is the ideal time to visit the Fanfest 2012 site and check out the early bird specials which are on sale. If you have already signed up to attend Fanfest, sign up for our poker event here and be quick as tickets really are selling out fast.

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CCP Ginger.

Last year we began a strategic journey of improving our web presence by launching a brand new Account Management website and new Forums. I’m here with the first dev blog in a series to come throughout 2012 that will detail important changes and updates to our websites over the course of this year.

Currently, the EVE website is a mixed bag. It's split between trying to offer an explanation of the game without really doing so, and trying to cater for our community's needs. Further, important information is distributed across many other websites, from EVE Gate to EVElopedia. We can do better.

Changes on large scale require a large amount of in-depth planning and development effort, so rather than taking on the whole web at once, we are going to do this in stages. 

Stage 1 - EVEOnline.com

The first part of these changes is taking the aspects of the current website that explain what the game is and creating a better front facing website for EVE Online. This means we will have a website that has information about the various elements of the universe, the rich gameplay, visuals and how passionate our players are. A website we will be proud to share with our friends, fellow gamers and potential customers.

The details

Some of the cool features that will be on the site include:

• Interactive star map with different view states where you learn about features of the universe
• Interactive 3D spaceship gallery showing a selection of spaceships ranging from capsule to titan 
• Popular gameplay styles like Pirate, Explorer, Fleet Commander, etc. represented as career paths 
• A short Personality Analysis quiz to help you determine what career paths may suit you
• Screenshots showcasing all aspects of in-game visuals
• Revised versions of popular EVE Chronicles downloadable in eBook format
• Community spotlights highlighting the passion and commitment of EVE players
• A Getting Started page where you can sign-up for a trial account and download the game without leaving the site

Here are sneak peeks of a screenshots page, starmap showing ship kills, an Absolution and the pirate gameplay style below:

This is ready and should go live next week. 

Stage 2 - Building for the future

Having moved the information valuable for potential customers and for all of us to show off the game to its own home, we can now focus on information needed by our current players and how we can improve your experience on our websites. We will be making changes that will bring together all the community related pages and functionality on the other sites under the umbrella of one EVE Community website. The long term goal here is for you as a current player to be able to go to the community website and from there access all the content, information and functionality relevant and useful to you.

The details

We are going to make changes to the now obsolete eveonline.com to re-brand it as the EVE Community website, allowing us to have a foundation to build on. This coincides with the launch of the new eveonline.com discussed above. It will live at community.eveonline.com, with the following tweaks:

• Replacing the header area with a Community branded logo and menu
• Adding the Login widget currently on Account Management to the top right of the site as a central place to login, go between eve websites and change language where applicable
• Re-organizing and simplifying the menu into a more logical structure where it's easier to find content without expanding and collapsing for an eternity
• Placing pages we don’t necessarily wish to remove yet from the old site into an archive section to be dealt with later

The site will be structured around these categories to start with:

Still tweaking these, so what you see above is subject to change before release.

We are finishing up these tweaks to be ready for next week as well.

What comes next for EVE Community

• Upgrade the hamster wheels behind the scenes (classic asp is not cool any more according to our hamsters) 
• Where it makes sense, we will merge content from other websites like Support, EVElopedia, EVE Gate, etc. into EVE Community in various phases
• Make site-wide UI and presentation changes so it looks and behaves like a modern, well designed website
• Add new content and features

More will be revealed in further dev blogs as we are working on the next stages.

We are really excited about these updates and looking forward to getting them live, teams Bitmap, Charlie Sheen and GForce have done a fantastic job over the past months (go team!). We will keep you posted with exact release dates and where you can give feedback as soon as we can.

Fly safe!

CCP Alice / Anne Walsh
Web Architect

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Several small fixes to the Neocom were released together with corrections to localization and various texts throughout the game. The patch notes are available here.

Testing should last 60 minutes. All participants will receive two million skillpoints on Singularity.

Please refer to this thread for more information about how you participate in the test, and this EVElopedia article for more information on mass testing.

CSM election results announced at Fanfest 2011

This CSM term will see a change to the election process where upon being approved by CCP, the candidates must prove a certain level of support in order to be included in the final candidate list. This initial nomination stage will be assessed based on the number of “likes” given to the initial post for that candidate’s forum thread; if the number exceeds 100 then they will be included in the final list.

The schedule for the elections is as follows:

February 8^th to 22^nd – Candidacy application period opens
February 22^nd – Publication of the list of approved candidates; nomination stage begins
February 29^th – List of candidates who passed nomination stage published
March 7^th – Voting opens
March 21^st – Voting closes
March 24^th  – Results announced during Fanfest keynote.
April 4^th – CSM 7 take office
April 3^rd, 2013 – CSM 8 take office

The requirements to be able to run as a candidate in the CSM7 elections are as follows:

• You must have an active EVE Online account that is older than 30 days.
• You must be aged 21 years or older as of April 4th, 2012.
• You must provide your address and an e-mail address where you can be reached, which will not be made public.
• You must provide a scan or reasonable quality photograph of a valid passport to verify your identity and that you can travel internationally to the CCP HQ in Reykjavik, Iceland.
• You must be willing and able to sign a non-disclosure agreement with CCP as the CSM are regularly provided with information that is not for public release.
• You must be willing for your real name and country of residence to be made public alongside your character name on the EVE Online website. No other personal details required for candidacy will be made public.
• You must provide a reasonable campaign message stating your reasons for running, in no more than 200 words.
• You must have up to date and accurate account ownership information on all of your EVE Online accounts.
• You should be willing to actively engage in forum and chat room style discussions with CCP and the other members of the CSM.

In addition to the above in accordance with the CSM white paper, any serious violations of the EVE Online EULA may void your eligibility to run. All applications will result in an audit of the accounts belonging to the applicant. In cases where EULA violations have occurred, the application will be assessed on the basis of the severity of the violation and the length of time since the violation occurred. More information on candidate eligibility can be found in the CSM white paper.

Should you have any queries regarding the CSM election process, please head over to the comments thread or if you would like more private issues addressed, you can contact us via e-mail at csm-contact@ccpgames.com.

 - CCP Diagoras

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CSM election results announced at Fanfest 2010

This CSM term will see a change to the election process where upon being approved by CCP, the candidates must prove a certain level of support in order to be included in the final candidate list. This initial nomination stage will be assessed based on the number of “likes” given to the initial post for that candidate’s forum thread; if the number exceeds 100 then they will be included in the final list.

The schedule for the elections is as follows:

February 8^th to 22^nd – Candidacy application period opens
February 22^nd – Publication of the list of approved candidates; nomination stage begins
February 29^th – List of candidates who passed nomination stage published
March 7^th – Voting opens
March 21^st – Voting closes
March 24^th  – Results announced during Fanfest keynote.
April 4^th – CSM 7 take office
April 3^rd, 2013 – CSM 8 take office

The requirements to be able to run as a candidate in the CSM7 elections are as follows:

• You must have an active EVE Online account that is older than 30 days.
• You must be aged 21 years or older as of April 4th, 2012.
• You must provide your address and an e-mail address where you can be reached, which will not be made public.
• You must provide a scan or reasonable quality photograph of a valid passport to verify your identity and that you can travel internationally to the CCP HQ in Reykjavik, Iceland.
• You must be willing and able to sign a non-disclosure agreement with CCP as the CSM are regularly provided with information that is not for public release.
• You must be willing for your real name and country of residence to be made public alongside your character name on the EVE Online website. No other personal details required for candidacy will be made public.
• You must provide a reasonable campaign message stating your reasons for running, in no more than 200 words.
• You must have up to date and accurate account ownership information on all of your EVE Online accounts.
• You should be willing to actively engage in forum and chat room style discussions with CCP and the other members of the CSM.

In addition to the above in accordance with the CSM white paper, any serious violations of the EVE Online EULA may void your eligibility to run. All applications will result in an audit of the accounts belonging to the applicant. In cases where EULA violations have occurred, the application will be assessed on the basis of the severity of the violation and the length of time since the violation occurred. More information on candidate eligibility can be found in the CSM white paper.

Should you have any queries regarding the CSM election process, please head over to the comments thread or if you would like more private issues addressed, you can contact us via e-mail at csm-contact@ccpgames.com.

 - CCP Diagoras

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Returning pilot? Visit Account Management for the latest offers and promotions.

In addition there will be a 30 minute outage of the EVE Gate forums and EVE API to facilitate migration of web databases. In an effort to keep API downtime to a minimum, we will be truncating the player access logs which keep the last seven days history of locations and IP's.  

Please report any issues with Crucible 1.1 in this thread and a thread for general feedback is available here.

Players, who from now on, select PayPal as a payment option for their buddy account will have to contact customer support as the reward will not be given out.

Crucible 1.1 brings a number of improvements into EVE Online, including the new Neocom panel, rebalanced assault ships, ability for alliances to join Factional Warfare and numerous UI enhancements. For more information on these changes, please refer to CCP Soundwave's recent dev blog or visit the Crucible feature page. Patch notes are available in English, German and Russian.

Please note that in December we have temporarily doubled the size of POS fuel bays to reduce the impact of the delay to fuel block switch-over. In Crucible 1.1, these changes will be reverted and the fuel block consumption enabled. Towers left with their fuel bays in an "overloaded" state as a result of this change should continue to function as normal.

A discussion thread is available here.

The trailer includes the FW-56 Goshawk trainer, the famous BF-109G Messerschmidt fighter, the FW-57 fighter-bomber and the never-built butterfly-tail ME262 HG III jet fighter.

Note the mix of prop and jet aircraft.

The American plane trailer came out a bit earlier:

Known knowns

There’s a considerable amount of info on this game already in the public domain. Here is a brief summary:

Accounts

• WoT and WoWp accounts are to be unified.� XP and gold can be transferred between your Wargaming accounts.

Gameplay

• Each round will start with players spawned in the air.� At the end of the round, if you are still alive, you can try landing your bird for additional XP.
• You will be able to use both a Mouse and a Joystick to control your aircraft.
• Rounds will consist of 15 v 15 player battles.
• WoWP will have more gameplay modes than WoT. There will be a TDM of course and Escort missions (probably with� non-player controlled bombers) which devs have already hinted at.
• Maps will be approximately 15 km x 15 km in size. Note that WoT maps are approximately 1 km x 1 km. The new maps will actually contain bits of the old WoT maps within them. Devs have already stated that, for example, the WoW El Hallouf will contain parts of WoT El Hallouf and Sand river.
• Flight sims can’t really make use of text chat in dogfights. Wargaming will implement voice chat for wingmen.
• As mentioned, there will be non-player controlled vehicles in the air with you. Most notably, the devs have announced that heavy bomber formations will consist of these NPC’s.

Damage models

• Your pilot cannot be killed, however he can be injured and piloting will be difficult and view range will be reduced. Injured NPC gunners in your aircraft will not shoot.

• Developers have stated that mid-air collisions will be implemented. A mid-air will reduce your health (HP). The amount of reduction will depend on a number of damage parameters (aircraft speed, weight, damaged equipment). You will be able to try and deliberately ram the enemy and chop off their tail with your prop…not unlike documented instances during WWII when pilots ran out of ammo.
• If fuel tanks are shot up, you will need to land, else you will run out of fuel, crash and then face a big repair bill.

Flight Models

• Aircraft will consist of models flown between 1929-1950s. That means that the top tiers in the game will probably feature the F86 Sabre and the notorious Mig 15.
• There will be 10 Tiers.
• German (Luftwaffe), U.S.A. and Soviet (VVS RKA) planes will be first out, followed by British, Japanese and probably Italian models.
• The flight model is being developed based on a realistic physics; however, there are slight arcade overtones: you can’t spin the plane for instance. You will be able to stall the plane. In fact, you will be able to conduct most popular combat maneuvers: barrel rolls, low-yo-yos, etc.

System Requirements

• Multi-core support has been confirmed.
• Devs indicate that if you can run WoT, you’ll run WoWP.

Check out what the devs have to say about the game on the official forums here.

Current Status

WoWP will be coming out of� closed Alpha testing very shortly and enter into Closed Beta Testing within a month or so. Given its mix of arcade-like action and physics-based graphical realism, I think it will be a smash hit.

A challenger on the Horizon

The only thing that might come up and challenge WoWP’s aerial supremacy is yet another F2P air-to-air MMO shooter, also made by a Russian developer (Gaijin Entertainment), called World of Planes. Talk about confusing. Both games are Russian. Both are called “World of …..” and both feature WWII aircraft. Here’s Gaijin’s entry, for comparison:

I’m going to be in the Beta for both games, so stayed tuned, I hope to review them in the future!

Here is SeanPwnery’s take on the French Tech Tree:

The French Tech Tree

What to consider before taking the plunge – by SeanPwnery

With the release of World of Tanks 7.1, WoT players have been given a taste of French haute-cuisine, armored-warfare-style. The French tech tree release was only a few weeks ago and is currently incomplete. Therefore, if you do decide to dive into French tanks, be aware that it will eventually lead you into a limited� ?end game? because, as it stands, the road stops at only two tanks:� the Tier IX Bat Chatillon 25t and the Tier X AMX 50B Heavy.

Currently, the 7.1 release features a tech tree with only two branches:

• Light/Medium
• Medium/Heavy

You can see this branch in this figure:� WoT Preliminary French Tech Tree

Note that the full Tech Tree should actually look something like this: WoT French Tech Tree (full)

While the tree has not been fully fleshed out, there are a lot of interesting tanks to choose from. French equipment looks, feels and fights differently from the other three main WoT national armored vehicles. Here?s what you should know and consider before starting to grind French equipment, especially if you?re already well-established in one of the other three trees:

Autoloader Technology

Before the onset of WWII, the French were one of the most technologically advanced creators of Armored Fighting Vehicles (AFV?s). Their innovation is clearly shown with the advent of the ?revolver autoloader system?, which is featured in most of the post-war AMX-series of tanks (beyond Tier V). The autoloader is one of the most dramatic technological innovations brought about through the introduction of the French Tech Tree.

While the autoloader sounds like a world-beating feature, it actually is a double-edged sword (epee?). It only works well if you?re the type of player who loves using hit-and-run tactics. In a nutshell, you can lay waste to an enemy tank with the autoloader’s incredible rate of fire. Imagine firing four or six shot volleys with only 2.5-3 seconds ticking off between each round.�� Once you?ve depleted the revolver, you will need to reload. Most of the Lights and Mediums get 6-shot autoloaders, heavies get 6 in lower calibers and 4 in the higher ones.

Tip: You do not need to completely empty the revolver to reload it, just press the ?C? keybind and the revolver will empty and begin the reloading process. Like CoD-like titles, you do not lose the unused ammunition in the revolver but you now have an ?uneven? amount of rounds left in total (your last reload could only be 2 or 3 shots since that?s all you had left, for instance).

Another Tip: Be sure to invest in a Gun-Laying Drive to speed up aim-time ten percent.

French tanks have no designated loader: there’s no room for one to sit in the diminutive turret (smaller turret-harder to hit and knock out the main gun). For this reason, the reload times for the revolver are PAINFULLY slow, so plan accordingly. When fighting, be sure to always give yourself at least one exit route, preferably two, just in case your primary needs to be abandoned due to heavy flanking. Load times vary between 35-50 seconds as far as I can tell. During this time, you?re basically a vulnerable and defenseless target. Use the buddy system and try to work with either another French tank to stagger shots to take up the slack during your reload. Even better, tag along with a Tank Destroyer (TD) to drive the final nail in the target?s coffin.

Lower Tiers

The French tanks in the upper tiers rely on their speed and maneuverability to achieve combat success. This is NOT the case in the first four tiers. You have to remember that most tanks in the lower tiers are also some of the oldest models (pre-war or early WWII variations). Most of the tanks of this period were considered ?Infantry support tanks,? which as the war waged on, proved to be an obsolete role for the tank, especially when facing the advent of machines like the Wehrmacht’s Henschel Tiger (Tiger I in the German Heavy Tree) and its superior firepower and armor.

The lower-tiered medium and heavies are well-armored against like-tiered tanks. Their smooth contours (as found in the AMX40) or the angled armor (as seen in the AMX38) give them an incredible defensive advantage against other tanks in the same tier. Trying to kill an AMX40 with another AMX40 is a lot like the unstoppable force versus the immovable object. It can be done, but it?s really not economically viable, considering how you?ll have to unload most of your ammo just to kill one tank. Generally, I leave these low-tiered French tanks to the lower tiered TD?s to make short work of them or let the artillery have a field day with them.

Tip: Help out your arty by “tracking” the French tanks (aim for their tracks) and leaving them vulnerable sitting ducks for the SPGs.

These tanks are also very slow. You should really plan ahead on where you want to position yourself and calculate where you want to be at what time.� The word “rush” did not appear in the French tank-designer’s vocabulary. Patience will be your watchword as these lower-tiered tanks will get there eventually.

Heavies

Contrary to what anyone tells you, the French Heavies are not brawlers.

Let’s look at an example. While it may not be good in a toe-to-toe fight, the French Heavy AMX 50-120, is fast. The ’50 is the Stiletto knife of tanks. It?ll get in there quickly, cut the enemy to shreds and then disappear in a flash. Up against a Tier X Maus,� the French tank will fire off its load before the German can even begin turning its turret to engage.

Tip: As I said, these tanks do not take punishment well. Don’t try trading shots.

Armor – or lack thereof

In the post-war years, the French became enamored by Soviet tank design doctrine which favored slippery and speedy designs. You can see this manifested in the French trend toward powerful engines, angled or curved armor and resulting high rates of speed. Like the Soviets, the speed and maneuverability came at the cost of armor. For the French designs, this downside was even more obvious.

Higher-tiered tankers in the French tree are constantly teased about having armor made out of ?hopes and dreams? (the AMX M4 1945, for instance).

Tip: Get in, wreak your havoc, and get out. French heavies make decent ?snipers? at long range, and their speed also makes them very effective flankers. Jagdtigers can wreak havoc on French heavies, but then again, you can do equal damage to them with a well-executed flanking maneuver.

Gun Elevation/Depression

Gun Elevation and Depression is supposed to be the French Tree’s secret weapon. Many heavy AMX tanks have a hinged “casemate” design for elevation and depression, sounds good but it is frankly terrible. Most of the lower tier tanks do not have this so when you finally get into, say an AMX 12t for the first time, you may be in for a bit of shock. These ?hinged? tanks will require you to really make use of the terrain to dial in your shots. Maps like El Halluf, with the huge downhill center valley, will drive you nuts. Try to keep this in mind and keep the enemy tank in as flat of an orientation to your tank as possible.

Tip: Try to avoid areas of the map with lots of elevation changes.

Where are the TD’s?

As there are no French Tank Destroyers or Artillery pieces yet in place, I can?t really comment on them. All I can say is, they?re coming. But, even as a SuperTester for Wargaming myself, I can?t tell you when.

Redefining Strategy

French tanks definitely do bring a completely new dynamic to what was considered the ?norm? play style of the current map rotation. Having a Tier VII French light tank with the revolver and large caliber gun puts other Tier-V lights like the VK2801, Chaffee and the T-50-2 to shame. The French tanks’ speed and high rate of powerful fire have redefined how a map should be played. For example, the fast and hard hitting AMX 50 heavy tank will definitely make a presence on the Clan Wars conquest map, being such an effective flanking tank.

The upper-tier lights are like the current lights but on steroids. The ARL-44 feels like a proper mid-tier heavy tank, like you?d play in the German or US trees. The AMX 50-100, AMX 50-120 and AMX 50B give you the intoxicating speed and the firepower you wish you had in your King Tiger or T-29, but at the expense of ultimate armored security.

Either way, if you?re considering whether or not to take the plunge, chances are, there?s a tank somewhere in the current tree setup that will work for you.

From the beginning of 2008 until the end of 2011, excluding rookie ships and shuttles, sentry guns and CONCORD were responsible for destroying 567,304 ships. That’s 11,818 a month, or 388 per day. 16.2 ships an hour, or one ship being removed from service every 3.7 minutes. New Eden is evidently a high-crime neighbourhood.



Month by month you can see spikes from events such as hulkageddon and the recent “Gallente Ice Interdiction” campaign by the Goonswarm Federation alliance. The green line only shows Hulks, but is still a good indicator of what all the people who were getting blown up by CONCORD were doing.

Where are these all taking place? Well, aside from a few sentry gun kills in NPC null security space, it’s of course all in empire space.


The map above shows a bubble chart for the empire regions, with the size of the bubble being relative to the number of losses to CONCORD. Whilst it does look cool, it probably isn’t quite so clear, so here are the top 10 regions for 2008-2011.

What does this mean? From what I can tell, Caldari space must be full of criminals. It could also be due to the vastly higher population, but I think I’ll go with the criminal thing.

Looking into what ships people are using to break the law, the results weren’t exactly shocking:

The alliances who have lost the most ships to CONCORD/sentries and the number of unique ship losers (different members of that alliance who lost ships) are as follows:

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the people of Goonswarm have managed to top both categories. To wind this blog down, I thought I’d take a look at the rate of these losses since the launch of Crucible. I was somewhat expecting a decline due to the change to insurance payouts, though apparently the number of people carrying around high-value goods has been tempting enough to actually cause a slight increase:



Lastly, the number of tier 3 battlecruisers lost to the police during 2011:

It will certainly be interesting to see the long term trends in overall losses from the removal of insurance payouts from CONCORD related deaths, as this has a significant impact on the cost of “suicide ganking”. As usual, I’ll watch the comments thread and answer questions that I can.

- CCP Diagoras [Twitter]

No Hulks were harmed in the making of this dev blog.
 

If you still haven't made your travel arrangements, you can book your flight and hotel room in one go with the package deal provided by Icelandair, or use the offer provided by our hotel partner, Center Hotels.

See you at Fanfest 2012!

Let’s go with the bad news:

Team Best Friends Forever and Pink Zombie Kittens have been disbanded. In memory of their service to the internet, a small statue was erected in Reykjavik today, following a lengthy parade which also had cake. It’s been a fun ride and we hope you all enjoy the features the teams got to make.

Now it's time for the good news:

The teams were disbanded because the influx of developers making spaceships was too great, so we had to be split them into three teams (or as I call them, friendship-bands). Please welcome Team Super Friends, Team Game of Drones and Team Five 0. All three teams are full of good looking men and women, with some familiar faces and some new ones.  Hopefully we can introduce you to some of the people on the teams at a later point, but right now, let’s focus on spaceships (and safety).

To celebrate this transition, Team Best Friends Forever and Pink Zombie Kittens decided to do one last push to get features out and we’re happy to give you this list of items on January 24^th:

• We’ve rebalanced small, medium and large Null ammo. I came back from vacation and Tallest had done this. He’s a pretty cool dude.
   
• We’ve changed the CPU on cap shield transfers. Much needed, high five.
   
• Assault ships have been rebalanced. We’ve wanted to do this since forever and were originally planning to do it for Crucible. It fell out due to time constraints, but has been completed for the coming release.
   
• We’ve buffed some of the modules launched in Crucible. You can now whine about how overpowered they are.
   
• When one of your friends logs on and get an annoying pop-up with his picture, you can now click the picture and start a conversation, telling him how annoying the pop-up is.
   
• The skills list now has a filter box so you can track down your individual skills. This is pretty great if you have a lot of them.
   
• Starbase fuel notifications are now shown in your calendar. You know why? Because it makes goddamn sense, that’s why.
   
• Overheating can be done by shift-clicking a module. This is a viable alternative to clicking the worlds smallest button.
   
• The agent list inside a station will now display your current status with an agent (mission offered, accepted etc). Hopefully less people will be cursing after undocking without pressing “accept” on a mission.

Before we go on, here is a brief intermission for some animal safety advice:  If you’re having issues with mosquitos and other bugs, rubbing garlic all over yourself is a natural repellant. If you are lost in the wilderness, this has the added effect that you can call for help once you locate an Italian restaurant to get garlic.

• The chat member list can now be condensed and have been given some more intuitive icons. This should be more in line with the actual chat, which you can already condense.
   
• Shield bonuses are now applied like armor bonuses. Remember when you got a shield bonus and LOST shield? Yeah that, we fixed it.
   
• The session change has been lowered from 20 seconds to 15 and hopefully we can adjust it even further in the future. Death to session changes.
   
• The watchlist now holds 15 people and you can drag and drop to re-arrange them. If you don’t have any friends, this isn’t relevant to you.
   
• We’ve started re-naming modules (missiles and ABs/MWDs) in a schema that tells the user what they do, while still maintaining a lot of the sci-fi feel. The aim is to make everything make sense, instead of today where everything is as confusing as possible.
   
• Meta 11, 12 and 13 Invulnerability Fields have been added to the game. We stumbled on them in the basement of CCP one day. Someone must have left them there.
   
• We’ve iterated on locations. You can now choose if it’s a personal or corp location when you create them. This means less dragging and clicking.
   
• Alliances can now join faction warfare. This is the first of a series of Factional Warfare iterations CCP Ytterbium is working on. We’ll tell you more as we get closer to fanfest, but we’re working on Factional Warfare. In other news, a flying pig just passed my window.
   
• The old Neocom has been replaced by a younger, prettier model. It’s customizable and has a ton of cool features you can play around with.
   
• We’ve added autocomplete and search hints to the asset search function from Crucible. SEARCHING HAS SUDDENLY BECOME REALLY EXCITING. Or not, but you know what I mean.

Anyway, that’s what we have for you here. Thanks from Team Best Friends Forever and Team Pink Zombie Kittens.
 

Toodles,

Soundwave

New to EVE? Start your 14-day free trial today.
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In the meantime, should a PLEX not redeem correctly for you, please see this article on reverse redeeming a PLEX. Should that option not work, please submit a petition under ‘Billing and Account' and a GM will handle the issue for you.

EVE Service Quality includes Customer Support, Community Relations, Virtual World Operations and now a dedicated group of EVE ‘Live’ developers. Some of these developers will be familiar to you as parts of the old Engineering teams Gridlock, Sleeper Cell, Pi and Riding Mower. The EVE Live team is led by CCP Zulu and has the specific mandate to work on raising the quality of your experience playing EVE.

I am CCP Masheen, I have worked on teams BFF and Pi since 2010. Together, myself, CCP TomB and CCP Highlander will be identifying, researching, testing and prioritizing those issues which adversely affect your EVE experience so that EVE Live developers can work on improving them.

We are kicking the year off with a focus on Client Performance, how the client behaves and areas where we could show it some love. Over the past year Team Gridlock and EVE Operations have refined and overhauled both the server software and hardware to reap huge performance gains. This year, in the name of making your EVE experience even better, a series of client optimizations are on the way.

We are looking for the type of issue that might not normally be reported. For example:

This happens because it takes a few seconds to summon all the ships and display them on your EVE client. However, the initial appearance that the hangar is empty can be a little scary if you’re not expecting it. So, perhaps what we could do is add some way of letting you know that the list of ships is being fetched so that you don’t panic momentarily and since it may have been a while since one of our clever people took a look at the hangar code, we can check to see if there is any way to speed up the process.

If you would like to promote something which you believe is worthy of a performance tune-up please tell us in the comments what things about the client you would like to work just that bit better, but... for-the-love-of-CONCORD…be specific!

Including a summary of your PC’s vital statistics is extra helpful and clicking ‘Like’ on the posts of other players whose suggestions you support will help us to determine how popular improving something would be.

Developers in the EVE Service Quality group are already working on client optimizations to the Overview (yes indeed), more about that exciting development in an upcoming Dev blog. 

New to EVE? Start your 14-day free trial today.
Returning pilot? Visit Account Management for the latest offers and promotions.

Personally, WoT appeals to my love of military history and technology. Regardless whether you love the tank-genre, you just have to admire the accurate, richly detailed combat armor models in this game. That detail of course doesn’t just stop at skin level — it extends right into the interior of each tank itself. After the latest patch, Wargaming reworked its damage-model to account for the vulnerability of numerous critical components inside the tank to penetrating shells. Incoming rounds can now take out individual sub-systems, cripple engine components and even worse, kill or wound the tank operators.

All of this dev-love gives the 18 million+ registered WoT tankers like me a very realistic and challenging gaming experience. Recently, I took a valuable time-out from grinding my next medium tank on the new French Tech Tree, to reach out and talk to the developers who have provided us gamers with that experience. In this case, it wasn’t just any developer, I got a chance to speak exclusively to Sergey Burkatovskiy, Wargaming.net’s Lead Game Designer.

BS: Sergey, can you tell me a little about Wargaming.net?

Sergey: Wargaming.net is an award-winning online game developer and publisher mostly famous for the armored action MMO World of Tanks.� Since 1998, we?ve shipped 13 titles, including the Massive Assault series, Order of War published by Square Enix and three add-ons for Blitzkrieg II.� With the development center in Minsk, we have offices in America, France, and Germany, and are looking forward to establishing a Korean presence. Our team has recently grown to 700 people who are hard at work on the aforementioned World of Tanks and the new upcoming titles: World of Warplanes and World of Battleships.

BS: When did you join Wargaming and what is your role there?

Sergey: I was among World of Tanks’ pioneers and joined the team in an early stage of development. They needed a man with deep knowledge and true passion for tanks, and that?s where my experience turned very helpful for the project. We?ve done ? and keep doing ? great work on World of Tanks game design, from fight balance and up to the core game mechanics.

BS: World of Tanks is an impressive experience. I think you started developing it in 2008, but can you tell me how it started? Who had the idea for the game? What was the inspiration?

Sergey: The idea, indeed, appeared in 2008, but we started working on the concept as early as 2004. We just realized we had been moving in a slightly wrong direction. The idea of making tanks the central point simply dawned on us one day: why rack our brains when we can develop a game dedicated to what most of us enjoy. Here, in Wargaming.net we really have an affection for military warfare, the history of WWI and WWII. We are a bit addicted to all war things, I would say. So we decided to focus on tank-on-tank combat and a multiple genre game. We wanted to work out a unique blend of action, strategy, RPG and simulators and garnish it with high-quality graphics and audiovisual effects.

BS: What advantages are in the Free-to-Play/Freemium model versus the standard pay model. Why did WoT go in the F2P direction?

Sergey: Wargaming.net had shipped a dozen “box” games that received high praise from players and critics, before we switched to the MMO genre, which was an entirely new experience for us. Normally, you put a box on the shelf, release an add-on or two ? and that?s it, that?s what the player gets for quite a big sum of money as the life cycle of the game comes to the end.

With free-to-play, there?s, first of all, no $50 or $60 payment wall that prevents millions of players from even trying out your game, secondly, in order to draw new users and keep the old ones playing, developers are always eager to add new free content that extends a game?s life cycle to years making players? experience more enjoyable.

Unlike many MMORPGs that require playing hours upon hours daily just to keep up, a free-to-play game is more flexible and convenient for casual gamers to play without worrying of being left behind. Besides, the free-to-play model makes it possible to try the game first and then decide whether to join it or not.

Another advantage is a flexible budget: players don?t have to pay any�money to�get into it but their progress will be slightly slower. To avoid this issue, we?ve managed to tune up the gameplay, so that low-level tanks are as fun to play as top-level ones.

Players might also choose to pay ‘micropayments’ which allow access to additional armour protection, better ammunition, etc.�Hardcore gamers might spend ?gold? to get prestige tanks or special gear for your tank that gives you small boosts. Gold can also convert earned experience on a tank into ?free experience? that can be spent on any tank even allowing you to explore the tech tree without buying each one along the way.

BS: The detail in the game is incredible as it is historically accurate. Who is responsible for doing all the research for the game? They should be congratulated.

Sergey: Thank you! We?re grateful to our team of historical consultants who made all the research for World of Tanks. Here I should mention that our historical consultants aren?t some ordinary paper-pushers. For instance, the leading historical consultant, Yury Pashalok previously worked at the�National Museum of the History of the Great Patriotic War . Also, he is the one who repaired the�Panther (PzKpfw V) for the�Kubinka Tank Museum and transported damaged Japanese tanks from the�Kuril Islands. In other words, our colleagues do know something about tanks.

BS: Your community is one of the best mannered groups I’ve ever seen online. They are also incredibly knowledgeable about the subject of tanks. Does it put a lot of pressure on the developers of the game, knowing that any mistake in depicting these historic tanks will be immediately caught by the community?

Sergey: We?re glad to have such a close-knit and educated community. For sure, their opinion means much to us and we are always grateful for their feedback, as it gives us aspiration to implement changes and correct mistakes. We are not the best tank specialists in the world. When millions investigate on the same subject they?re likely to find some slips unnoticed by the developers. We?ve never claimed we are perfect and prone to making mistakes.

BS: BTW, is it possible for you to create a “dead-chat” switch, like most other MP games? That is, when/if you are dead, you cannot chat to other players. This would allow those in the game to talk to each other and communicate and not have to deal with the (few) trolls that are dead in game.

Sergey: We?ve been thinking about that option, and World of Tanks might indeed get a ?dead-chat? switch. However, comparing it with other important features we still need to implement, we have to postpone it, unfortunately. �In other words, it?s not among our top priorities right now. Besides, living trolls are sometimes even harsher than the dead ones!

BS: French tanks have been introduced into World of Tanks at version 7.1. Why didn?t these tanks come out at version 7.0?

Sergey: Initially, we were planning to introduce the French (tree) as a part of what could have become the huge update 7.0. It would include the camos, the new maps, horns, and, among all these things, the new tank line. However, the most crucial innovation we were working on was the multicluster system that allowed us to vastly increase our overall server capacity. By November 2011, our Russian cluster would carry more than 250,000 concurrent users, which is what our network technologies were capable of. We had to put a strict limit for 250,000 PCCU, so that our servers wouldn?t crush.

And this is what took us most of our time ? to prepare and launch the proper multicluster system. If we did it earlier, the 7.0 would have seen the French. But it wouldn?t have seen new maps and camos, had we stumbled on finishing the multiclusters.

BS: In your opinion, what do you think the most interesting/exciting change is in version 7.1?

Sergey: It?s the French, definitely. We?ve been waiting for so long to balance them up and insert into the existing gameplay as smoothly as possible, and now that we feel that they are ready to go, it?s time to finally introduce them to our tankmen. They will be hard to tame but very exciting to drive, so I reckon players will spend some good time playing them.

As for the previous update, I?m excited about camouflage, as we have had enough of monotonous similarly coloured tanks. Although, the camo is true to the era ? no pink bunnies or rainbows.

BS: What if any, premium French tanks are coming out? Which would you recommend I look into if I want a medium tank, that?s quick and fun to drive and has some power?

Sergey: So far, we?ve introduced only the first part of the French vehicles, which doesn?t include the premium stuff. With the second part including tank destroyers and SPGs, we?ll add several premium machines. As for you preferences, I would say the Lorraine 40t will be the best solution. It?s very fast, it has tons of agility, and the semi-automatic gun will make your enemy think twice before going for a head-to-head duel. You should bear in mind though that it has no armor at all comparing to its direct counterparts, like the T-44 or the Pershing. So you?ll need to adjust your style to its very unusual behavior.

BS:� I?ve been hearing a lot about the French Tier X AMX-50B. Apparently, it packs a huge punch?specifically, it comes with an auto-reloader that load multiple rounds. Can you talk about that feature?

Sergey: This is a truly unique top heavy. Imagine a 60-ton beast with a top speed and agility of the T-50-2, its gun with penetration and damage numbers of the Maus, which can deliver several shells in a row within a couple of seconds. As an attacking machine, the AMX is indispensible. But, again, its armor can?t be compared with other tier X tanks, so you?d better be careful with your bravado.

BS: I?ve been hearing that the French tanks will have high accuracy?on par with German tanks, can you comment? What are there any general characteristics of French tanks relative to German, Russian, British tanks. For example, the French tanks seem to be poorly armored, but have quick firing and deadly cannons. Is this an accurate characterization?

Sergey: I would say, it?s half accurate. You see, looking back at the history of WWII, we can see that all the stuff the French designed can be divided into two periods. During the pre-war period, they came up with strong-armored, slow-paced machines that had rather mediocre guns. There were many innovations in their tanks though ? you can still find people arguing about whether the sloped armor of the T-34 was purely Soviet design or the engineers borrowed the idea from the early French designs.
Then there?s the post-war period, which had an absolutely opposite approach. Just as you?ve said, these tanks have thin armor, powerful guns, and huge speed which makes their gameplay highly unusual, as opposed to more classic Germans and Russians. Americans are somewhere near, but even they will seem too conservative against the French.

BS: I think you are using the BigWorld game engine? Has it been modified for use with WoT?� I have to admit, I would love to see more destruction in the game (I would love to see you guys get the Frostbite� engine from DICE)…are you limiting the destruction in the game due to gameplay reasons, or is it a technical issue?

Sergey: Indeed, we?re using the BigWorld game engine which features a great online capacity. Certainly, our developers team had to remake it for the World of Tanks needs, as initially the engine had been framed for orks and elves.

Unfortunately, it?s impossible to add more destruction to the game as servers? power is quite limited. Consequently, complete destruction will reduce online capacity by 10 times and cause technical problems. Moreover, indestructible elements are widely used in gameplay.

BS: What is your favorite tank tech tree in WoT? What do you normally use in-game? What tank do you like best? What tank is the scariest to face in-game?

Sergey: It depends, I would say. As far as I?m pretty much keen on fast raids to the enemy base, my in-game research started with USSR medium tanks. Now I?ve switched to German heavy tanks and the Tiger is my favorite one. It?s a strikingly powerful vehicle and I respect its abilities. I also have a couple of ?all-time favorites? ? I play them from time to time and never ever get bored. Those are the Soviet T-44 and the American Sherman. It?s not easy to pick the scariest machine as well. A skilled tanker knows that, for example, arty must beware both light and medium tanks. If I choose a heavy tank I will definitely watch out for tank destroyers and, also, I always try to keep off the American Heavy T-30 with its superdamage.

BS: I cannot wait for World of Warplanes and World of Battleships, both are genres that I would love to play in an MMO environment. Is there any word on a North American release for World of Warplanes?

Sergey: For the time being, we can?t announce the date of the World of Warplanes release. All I can say is that we are the closing stages of the closed alpha, with the closed beta to begin this winter.
BS: Do you ever see yourselves making a first-person-shooter (infantry) game? Or a Sniper game?

Sergey: In the near future, Wargaming.net doesn?t plan any sniper projects, but thank you for giving us food for thought. Maybe, we?ll bring it to life some day!

I’d like to thank Sergey for this interview and his energy and infectious enthusiasm for his work. World of Tanks is a result of his passion (and that of the Wargaming.net’s entire dev team)�for tanks and for gaming.

Here’s an audio interview with Sergey, understandable if you can speak Russian…you can spot him at 1:04.

A cute (unofficial) vid showing the staff of Wargaming.net and some of the team is shown below:

• Meeting with the Senior Producer of EVE Online             
• The CSM
• EVE veterans/loyalty program
• The economy
• The PLEX
• Security
• Crucible wrapup
• Incursions
• Null sec –stations, sov, resources
• Little things –Factional Warfare, Wormholes
• Game balance
• Future highlevel discussions –War
• Future highlevel discussions –Fixing broken systems
• Web cell
• Microtransaction Microsummit
• New Player Experience
• A meeting with the Art department
• UI discussions
• The CSM and Hilmar CEO

This is quite the wall of text to read through, and there are bound to be many comments from players regarding many of the issues. Please feel free to place your comments in the related thread, it will be monitored both by CCP and the CSM.

Source

@Ckrawl Not a huge Halo fan and Ascend looks too much like it. I’ll give it another look see tho. Thanks. Do you intend to play it?

Recently though, I saw some of my online buddies playing the game, so I thought, why not…let’s give it a try. What follows are my experiences and what I learned about the game.

Powered by UE3

In my original Tweet, I compared Ascend to Halo. That’s not quite right…let’s say that if Halo, Quake Live and Global Agenda had a three-way, the ensuing baby would look like Tribes: Ascend.� Given that none of the former games managed to keep my attention for very long, I didn’t expect to be interested in an amalgam either. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean to suggest that Ascend is a knock-off of any one of those games. In fact, the Tribes franchise was a unique IP that has had long and successful history that actually predates many of the games I mentioned. In fact, Tribes traces its roots back to November of 1988 when the original developer Dynamix released Starsiege: Tribes.

The Tribes franchise produced two important releases, the original Tribes and Tribes2. And like most franchises, the third in the series proved to be its undoing.�Tribes: Vengeance, as the third PC-based installment was called,� struck a discordant note with many of the game’s players and the series hit the rocks. In 2010, Hi-Rez Studios in Atlanta, the same studio that gave us the F2P Global Agenda,� came to the franchise’s rescue and bought the rights to the game. Hi-Rez then immediately stated it would create an MMO called Tribes Universe; however, it soon changed its mind and it decided to put the MMO on hold and instead developed a F2P variant based on the Unreal Engine 3. That variant was called Tribes: Ascend.

Speed is life

Set in the far future, Tribes: Ascend is a fast paced combat shooter game that uses a variety of sci-fi weaponry and vehicles. The maps are huge and feature hilly, but nearly-tree-less, uncluttered landscapes. Normally, the lack of cover in an FPS game would be rather worrisome. After all, how will you stay alive?

Well, the answer to that question becomes obvious once you begin playing and the answer is speed.� The game is played on the ground and in the air. To� stay alive you will need to learn to motor in all three directions: left, right, front, back, up and down. As well, in comparison to traditional shooters, Ascend is a very, very fast game. Possibly not as quick as the original, it nevertheless is faster than most current shooter games. While at one time, speed games like Tribes and Quake were the norm in the shooter-world, photo-realistic FPS’s like MoH, CoD and BF changed tastes and relegated the ultra-twitch-shooters into a small niche. Many of today’s young gamers will be taken aback by just how quick you have to think, aim and shoot in this game.

Skill is rewarded

True to its Tribe roots, Ascend’s gameplay rewards those that are skillful. The skillset you will need to be successful similar to but different than those you would need for “slow” shooters.

• Aim.
  Today’s FPS’s really only require you to be able to aim in one dimension: left, right. Possibly one reason for this trend is that game companies want to simplify aiming for all those console-gamers out there using their clumsy controllers.� Contrast the rather boring aim mechanic which evolved in CoD (CoD:UO’s aim requirements were much more difficult than, say CoD:WW’s or Black Ops) with that of Tribes’ where the enemy can be anywhere in space. This translates into having to develop really good aim in two-dimensions. Speaking of CoD, I can’t think of any shooter franchise that has helped dumb down the importance of aim. In CoD, you put your crosshair on the target and kapow…you hit it. That is not true in Tribes. Projectiles have arc and targets are moving up/down and left/right on your screen and are exceedingly difficult to track.
• Movement
  Tribes is all about energy management. In this respect, it is more like a Combat Flight Simulator than it is an FPS. While some games give you some taste of energy management, CoD for example gives you a limited sprint capability, Tribes takes it to another level.� In this game you are constantly trying to maximize your forward momentum. Gravity will increase that momentum and rob it from you if you have to climb. A jet-pack strapped to your back will help you climb and a frictionless “ski” mode will aid you on the way down. If you run out of energy you will be pounced upon like a wounded gazelle in the Serengeti. There are two ways to keep your energy (and hence speed) up in the game:
• Jet packs. Strapped to your back, they propel you forward and upward. Your jet pack charge lasts only a few seconds, after which it needs to replenish itself using internal stores of fuel. Once those are gone, you need to replenish your supply. Jet packs allow you to gain potential energy and are typically used to quickly scale hills. The interface in Ascend has not evolved much beyond the original. Jet packs can’t be will boost you in the direction you are running. Alas, it would have been quite interesting if there was a way to use vectored-thrust.
• Skiing – frictionless, gravity-assisted sliding, skiing will let you attain breath-taking velocities.

I would have thought that disc-jumping (aka Rocket-jumping) would have also been a significant movement technique in this game, but disc-jumps do not seem to benefit much (then again, I may not be doing it right). Hi-rez has stated that they will be improving this capability.

While jet packs and skiing are used as individual modes of transport, the game also employs vehicles. The three I have seen in game are:

• The Beowulf can have a two person crew. It has a machine gun on top of the turret as well as a slot for a driver.
• The Grav Cycle also can have two riders. It’s very fast and is useful for catching flag runners.
• The Shrike has a high-damage primary cannon and it benefits from a limited-use afterburner.

• Timing
  Timing your motion is important in any shooter. If you play too linearly, your enemy will be able to predict your movements and he will lead you and you will get fragged. Frankly, doing anything in a predictable way in FPS games will get you fragged. This is no different in Tribes, but the game has its own rhythm and you really have to practice to get good at being able to manage your own momentum and be able to predict the enemy’s motion. One of the goals in any one-versus-one combat is to deplete your enemy of energy, get him down on the ground where he becomes slow and you can finish him off.

Beta

Currently,�Tribes: Ascend is in Beta. The basic game appears quite stable and lots of fun.

You will need to get yourself a Beta key to play. These are actually found rather easily around the net.� You can try getting a key from the game’s homepage:

Tribes Ascend

Once on the homepage, you can download the game and sign up for a beta key. Rather than wait for a key, you can get one immediately over at Alienware Arena. There are hundreds available. Link

Primer

I first have to say that this game is a throwback to the old days of PC FPS gaming. Back then, you were either a noob and you sucked, or you were good. This game tends towards those days. In this game, you don’t get stroked for being able to color within the lines like you do in other FPS’s. For that reason, you need to have patience and a bit of a thick skin — noobies will get owned. There are quite a few really good Tribes players in the Beta servers and the pros are obvious.

You start off as a Ranger class or a Soldier playing under either the Blood Eagle or Diamond Sword flag. As a Ranger, you will get Medium Armor, an Assault Rifle (it has a fast rate of fire and is effective at close range), the Thumper DX (similar to a grenade launcher) an Energy Pack and an Anti-personnel Grenade.� Soldiers get Medium Armor, the Spinfusor, the Eagle Pistol and an Energy Pack.

I would start with the Soldier class and the Spinfusor as it is the most common weapon in the game. The Spinfusor launches explosive disc-projectiles. Given how difficult it is to target anyone in the air, it is not uncommon to see Spinfusors being used against targets near the ground. You aim near the enemy as he descends and the splash damage as the disc hits the turf is typically enough to do significant damage. Aside from the basic Spinfusor, there are Light and Heavy variants.� I did say “splash damage”, but there is nothing spammy about this weapon. It is quite hard to hit someone with it.

Classes: There are three classes (light/med/heavy) and twelve individual types (more classes will come in the future). This vid shows each class:

Gameplay: This little vid is an excellent primer on gameplay.

Gametypes: Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag and Rabbit Chase modes. Deathmatch is obvious, as is Capture the flag. Rabbit Chase mode simply requires you to capture the flag and keep it as long as you can. As with CTF, the flag runner does not regenerate health.

F2P?

Real money does have its rewards, but it can’t make you better. We are told that Gold will only short-circuit the grinding process, it won’t create a pay-to-win experience. Spending that money on in-game gold will allow you to unlock classes, skills and perks at a faster rate (currently,�US$49.99 will get you 5500 in Tribes Gold). You can also get a VIP account. VIP Status increases XP by 50%, gives you more tokens after each game and access to VIP only servers. You can get VIP for $7.95 for 10 days or pay $14.95 for 39 days. And yes, that seems staggeringly high.

For example, if you were not keen on grinding the Juggernaut class (Heavy Armor, Fusion Mortar/Spinfusor MKD/Regen Pack and Super AP Grenade), you could simply pay money to unlock it for 260 Gold or 900 tokens.

During the open Beta, you can purchase the Tribes: Ascend VIP Starter package, which is a bit more of a deal:

The Tribes: Ascend VIP Starter Pack (29.99 USD, 24.99 EUR, 19.99 GBP) includes:

• 3,000 Tribes Gold (Value: $30 USD)
• 30-Day Booster (Value: $15 USD)
• Lifetime VIP Status
• Admission to Beta

Should I play?

This game will definitely challenge FPS gamers who have come on to the scene recently and have not been exposed to fast-action shooters. This game is definitely a throwback to old-school PC gaming. While it is not as hardcore as some old Tribes-franchise players would like, I think it is a valuable game and one that could begin to start pulling our community back to its roots.

I have been in the Open Beta for a few weeks and never played the original franchise. I initially did not like the rather sparse graphics and minimalistic scenery, but I have learned to appreciate why the game cannot have dense landscapes. The pace of the game is so high that you simply would end up having laggy play as low-end machines could not keep up with the rendering. As I learned to play the game, I realized that all my focus was on the gameplay and not the surroundings. Shazbot! That’s what I have been begging for forever and here’s a game that met my requirements.

While I could pick up any CoD and play it well within minutes, I have not acquired a competent level of skill in this game even after a week of play. That to me is the sign of a great game. It keeps bringing you back because you want to get better. What was the last game you played that made you think that?

Should you play?

If you are more of a slow-paced gamer that likes tactical realism, you might answer with a resounding no. On the other hand, if you want to play something that is lightning quick, requires considerable hand-eye coordination, accentuates team play, heightens the importance of skill and is a throw-back to the glory days of PC competitive gaming…then yes!

While the game will definitely appeal to the younger guys out there (and the young of heart), I have been so far amazed at how nice everyone in the Tribes’ servers have been. For example, you don’t often see server trolls spamming “you suck” in the chat window –something you see regularly in CoD and in many F2P games. Whether that is a function of the speed of the game (you just don’t have time to type) or whether the community is much more polite will be something to watch, especially as the game gets more popular and attracts ruder non-ex-Tribes newbies.

The only things I do see getting spammed are “Shazbot!” (type VGS in chat) andWoohoo! (VGW).� For me, the game has been a learning experience and fun. I have not came anywhere near learning its nuances and that’s the basis of a great PC shooter.

Tribes Ascend is definitely Woohoo!

VGCG

Competitive Gamers

Tribes is a perfect fit for competitive gamers. Hi-Rez has already reached out and snagged a tournament organization to feature the game. NASL has stated they will be playing Ascend in their Season 2 Finals of the North American Star League (NASL).� Here is more information: Source.

Links

Official site

VGS: Tribes’ in-game comms tool

Excellent Tribes beginners guide

Hardcore Tribes gamer gives his opinion of Ascend

Here‘s a few more little things from Team BFF to make your life easier. We didn‘t have much time for doing this so we mostly just harvested good ideas from the forums and prioritized by how much work it would be to implement them (and things that I personally find annoying when playing EVE - heh).

Filtering skills

This was asked for a lot in the comments thread for my last devblog, filtering of skills! We added a filter box above your skill list in the character sheet and in the skill queue so you can now easily and quickly find that skill you are looking for, even if you only remember part of the name, and even if you‘re an average bittervet with 150 million skill points.

Click to enlarge

Watch list improvements

Would you like to be able to keep the more important members in your fleet always at the top of the watch list? Or put people you don't like at the bottom of the watch list (if you‘re a logistics pilot)?  You can now move people around in your watch list by dragging and dropping them. That way it‘s easier to keep track of the people that you want to be watching.

CCP Masterplan also made it so we can now have 15 people in our watch list instead of 10. Yay!

Online notification improvements

There was a thread on the forums where people were saying they always wanted to be able to interact with the online/offline notification when it pops up. We agree, and decided to use ideas mentioned by players (for example here) and added the standings icon, a right click menu and an ability to drag that notification to chat to create an info link leading to the pilot in question. Probably handy if you‘re stalking some bad guy and want to tell your friends about him logging in all of a sudden!

Overload modules improvements

We know the tiny overload button isn‘t the best to click when you‘re panicking. We didn‘t want to make the click area much bigger because you don‘t want to be clicking that overloading when you just wanted to deactivate your module. So what we came up with is that you can now shift-click a module to overload it – so it works just like if you‘re using the keyboard shortcuts.

We also made the overload button blink from the time you actually activate it, until it gets activated so at least you know what‘s happening. Up until now you would activate it and you didn‘t really know whether it was working until the time it turned bright green. We also changed the hint text for it to be more descriptive of the state. (This works in the same for deactivating overload).

New agent entries

We made the agents list a bit more useful. In station it will now tell you if you have been offered a mission from an agent or if you have accepted one. You‘ll also notice that it has a new sleeker look.

Click to enlarge

Compact member list in chat

When you‘re out and about shooting other pilots in the face, the most important part of information in local (other than the smack talk) is the standings icon. So we added an option to see a compact member list.  In the compact list, there‘s no portrait but instead the standings icon is at the beginning and it‘s about one third of the height of the detailed list, so you can see way more pilots in the list. Since we‘re sure you still want to look at the nice portraits of your friends in some of the chat channels, the setting is per channel. You can access it via right clicking on the tab.

Click to enlarge

To be able to fit all the information in the compact list, we created new icons for the online/offline status, blocked status and the voice chat status. You will obviously never see the offline icon in chat but you will see it in your contacts list. Here‘s a graphicexplaination of what the icons are like now.

Click to enlarge

All these little things are available on Singularity for you to play around with and are scheduled to be released on TQ later in January.

That‘s all for now. Until next time, fly safe!

New to EVE? Start your 14-day free trial today.
Returning pilot? Visit Account Management for the latest offers and promotions.

Here‘s a few more little things from Team BFF to make your life easier. We didn‘t have much time for doing this so we mostly just harvested good ideas from the forums and prioritized by how much work it would be to implement them (and things that I personally find annoying when playing EVE - heh).

Filtering skills

This was asked for a lot in the comments thread for my last devblog, filtering of skills! We added a filter box above your skill list in the character sheet and in the skill queue so you can now easily and quickly find that skill you are looking for, even if you only remember part of the name, and even if you‘re an average bittervet with 150 million skill points.

Click to enlarge

Watch list improvements

Would you like to be able to keep the more important members in your fleet always at the top of the watch list? Or put people you don't like at the bottom of the watch list (if you‘re a logistics pilot)?  You can now move people around in your watch list by dragging and dropping them. That way it‘s easier to keep track of the people that you want to be watching.

CCP Masterplan also made it so we can now have 15 people in our watch list instead of 10. Yay!

Online notification improvements

There was a thread on the forums where people were saying they always wanted to be able to interact with the online/offline notification when it pops up. We agree, and decided to use ideas mentioned by players (for example here) and added the standings icon, a right click menu and an ability to drag that notification to chat to create an info link leading to the pilot in question. Probably handy if you‘re stalking some bad guy and want to tell your friends about him logging in all of a sudden!

Overload modules improvements

We know the tiny overload button isn‘t the best to click when you‘re panicking. We didn‘t want to make the click area much bigger because you don‘t want to be clicking that overloading when you just wanted to deactivate your module. So what we came up with is that you can now shift-click a module to overload it – so it works just like if you‘re using the keyboard shortcuts.

We also made the overload button blink from the time you actually activate it, until it gets activated so at least you know what‘s happening. Up until now you would activate it and you didn‘t really know whether it was working until the time it turned bright green. We also changed the hint text for it to be more descriptive of the state. (This works in the same for deactivating overload).

New agent entries

We made the agents list a bit more useful. In station it will now tell you if you have been offered a mission from an agent or if you have accepted one. You‘ll also notice that it has a new sleeker look.

Click to enlarge

Compact member list in chat

When you‘re out and about shooting other pilots in the face, the most important part of information in local (other than the smack talk) is the standings icon. So we added an option to see a compact member list.  In the compact list, there‘s no portrait but instead the standings icon is at the beginning and it‘s about one third of the height of the detailed list, so you can see way more pilots in the list. Since we‘re sure you still want to look at the nice portraits of your friends in some of the chat channels, the setting is per channel. You can access it via right clicking on the tab.

Click to enlarge

To be able to fit all the information in the compact list, we created new icons for the online/offline status, blocked status and the voice chat status. You will obviously never see the offline icon in chat but you will see it in your contacts list. Here‘s a graphicexplaination of what the icons are like now.

Click to enlarge

All these little things are available on Singularity for you to play around with and are scheduled to be released on TQ later in January.

That‘s all for now. Until next time, fly safe!

New to EVE? Start your 14-day free trial today.
Returning pilot? Visit Account Management for the latest offers and promotions.

Here‘s a few more little things from Team BFF to make your life easier. We didn‘t have much time for doing this so we mostly just harvested good ideas from the forums and prioritized by how much work it would be to implement them (and things that I personally find annoying when playing EVE - heh).

Filtering skills

This was asked for a lot in the comments thread for my last devblog, filtering of skills! We added a filter box above your skill list in the character sheet and in the skill queue so you can now easily and quickly find that skill you are looking for, even if you only remember part of the name, and even if you‘re an average bittervet with 150 million skill points.

Click to enlarge

Watch list improvements

Would you like to be able to keep the more important members in your fleet always at the top of the watch list? Or put people you don't like at the bottom of the watch list (if you‘re a logistics pilot)?  You can now move people around in your watch list by dragging and dropping them. That way it‘s easier to keep track of the people that you want to be watching.

CCP Masterplan also made it so we can now have 15 people in our watch list instead of 10. Yay!

Online notification improvements

There was a thread on the forums where people were saying they always wanted to be able to interact with the online/offline notification when it pops up. We agree, and decided to use ideas mentioned by players (for example here) and added the standings icon, a right click menu and an ability to drag that notification to chat to create an info link leading to the pilot in question. Probably handy if you‘re stalking some bad guy and want to tell your friends about him logging in all of a sudden!

Overload modules improvements

We know the tiny overload button isn‘t the best to click when you‘re panicking. We didn‘t want to make the click area much bigger because you don‘t want to be clicking that overloading when you just wanted to deactivate your module. So what we came up with is that you can now shift-click a module to overload it – so it works just like if you‘re using the keyboard shortcuts.

We also made the overload button blink from the time you actually activate it, until it gets activated so at least you know what‘s happening. Up until now you would activate it and you didn‘t really know whether it was working until the time it turned bright green. We also changed the hint text for it to be more descriptive of the state. (This works in the same for deactivating overload).

New agent entries

We made the agents list a bit more useful. In station it will now tell you if you have been offered a mission from an agent or if you have accepted one. You‘ll also notice that it has a new sleeker look.

Click to enlarge

Compact member list in chat

When you‘re out and about shooting other pilots in the face, the most important part of information in local (other than the smack talk) is the standings icon. So we added an option to see a compact member list.  In the compact list, there‘s no portrait but instead the standings icon is at the beginning and it‘s about one third of the height of the detailed list, so you can see way more pilots in the list. Since we‘re sure you still want to look at the nice portraits of your friends in some of the chat channels, the setting is per channel. You can access it via right clicking on the tab.

Click to enlarge

To be able to fit all the information in the compact list, we created new icons for the online/offline status, blocked status and the voice chat status. You will obviously never see the offline icon in chat but you will see it in your contacts list. Here‘s a graphicexplaination of what the icons are like now.

Click to enlarge

All these little things are available on Singularity for you to play around with and are scheduled to be released on TQ later in January.

That‘s all for now. Until next time, fly safe!

New to EVE? Start your 14-day free trial today.
Returning pilot? Visit Account Management for the latest offers and promotions.