Celebrating the holidays in EVE with snowball fights in space
by James Egan 
Dec 19th 2008 at 3:00PM
Filed under: Sci-fi, EVE Online, Events, in-game, MMO industry, Humor
Space is cold. You wouldn't think 'holiday cheer' and EVE Online would be mentioned in the same context, but CCP Games has gotten in on the holiday action with the other MMO developers this season. Xiphos from the EVE blog "A Misguided Adventurer" had a holiday surprise from CCP when he logged into the game this morning: a snowball launcher and snowball ammo.
Xiphos writes, "Happy Holidays from CCP! Everyone check your hangars and you'll find a nice little gift from CCP. 300 Snowballs and a Snowball Launcher. A High slot fitting, these deadly cold balls of ice do -10 Thermal Damage and are damn fun. Start launching some at your friends and enemies and let's get a massive snowball fight started in Jita, top station!"
Every character in EVE Online automatically received these items today, even your lowly scouts and price-checking alts. Added to the fun is the initial surprise that seems to grip some highsec dwellers as they realize they're being fired upon and CONCORD (EVE's NPC police force) doesn't care. No less than five of them warped off in panic while I tried to get the accompanying image. Try it, you'll see.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
K Whitt said on 10:32PM 12-21-2008
WoW! I'll have to log in tonight and go freak out some people with that!
On the light side, I can see a bit of gang or even fleet 'warfare' with these could be completely awesome. On the evil side, maybe I can con some into actually returning fire with live ammo, and thereby invoking concord wrath and netting me a nice piece of wreckage to loot/scavenge while costing me no security dings.
This also makes me wish I had more alts, so I could gather more snowballs and launchers to mount a bunch of them at once. This also makes me wish they put out some plans for these as well, so we could manufacture them, as I'm sure they would sell (not as well as 'real' gear, but none-the-less for novelty's sake).
Reply
Pacey said on 11:03AM 12-20-2008
Finally had to just shoot a corpmate to get the picture, eh? The snowballs and launchers was an awesome gift the first time around and players have been clamoring for them ever since. Its nice to see them back in game again
Reply
James Egan said on 11:23AM 12-20-2008
Actually I took this with a generic account alt (NPC corp). I tend to use it for screenshots like triggering CONCORD, and things of that nature. Kind of like a stunt double.
So the target here was actually just in the same NPC corp. Total stranger.
It's my first time to see these in-game, I believe they weren't given to us last year. They've been a lot of fun though.
Does anyone remember how long before the snowballs melt?
Pacey said on 11:57AM 12-21-2008
I think its been about 2 years since the last time the snowball launchers appeared. I seem to remember getting them around then. They definitely were not given last year, and the EvE-O forums were very vocal about it.
If the forum post from CCP can be taken literally, I would guess that early January the snowballs will melt. From the post:
"our current estimates is that the effects of said storm will be in effect until downtime January 6, 2009"
Reply