empyrean-age posts

EVE Online novel The Burning Life to focus on pirate factions

by James Egan Jul 28th 2009 at 5:00PM

For many players, EVE Online is a game where the developers provide the galactic setting of New Eden but it's them, the playerbase, who makes their own stories. They join together or band against their rivals in alliance warfare, drug cartels, pirate organizations, and industrial powerhouses. The complex interplay of involvements that allow the game's players to establish and destroy invariably triggers cascades of drama. This is the point of the sandbox design of the game, what you do in New Eden affects other players on some level.

For some players, EVE is just about their interactions with one another and the fiction underpinning of the game is of marginal concern. While not all players choose to immerse themselves in the game's backstory, the setting is actually quite rich -- built on roughly six years' worth of lore fleshed out in the Chronicles, short stories that provide snapshots of the various levels of activity in New Eden.

Tags: backstory, ccp-abraxas, dev-blog, dev-blogs, empyrean-age, eve-online, fiction, hjalti-danielsson, lore, new-eden, novelization, novels, pirate-factions, sandbox, sci-fi, setting, storyline, the-burning-life, the-empyrean-age, tony-gonzales

CCP Games reveals next major Apocrypha update for EVE Online

by James Egan Jun 30th 2009 at 6:00PM

Filed under: Sci-fi, EVE Online, Game mechanics, Patches, PvP, News items

EVE Online senior producer CCP t0rfifrans just published a dev blog about the next major update to the game, Apocrypha 1.5. This is not a completely new expansion, just a significant update they will release in August before EVE's (as-yet-unnamed) winter expansion. While CCP hasn't released the complete rundown of Apocrypha 1.5's features and changes, they have announced a few highlights:

Perhaps the biggest changes in 1.5 will be factional warfare improvements. Beyond responding to the lag issues many players have been reporting with factional warfare, CCP is going to introduce Loyalty Points (LP) for kills and captures, and each militia will have its own LP store where militia players can cash in for items unique to that faction.

Several Level 4 epic mission arcs will be introduced, tied to specific races in New Eden. CCP t0rfifrans writes: "These captivating stories deal with moral ambiguity, intrigue, honor, and some people's lack of it. This should come as no surprise to those who know EVE and what we are about. As before with the epic arc that was released with Apocrypha, they provide a deep, interesting story, where your choices influence the outcome."

One of the long awaited buffs for Black Ops battleships will arrive: specialized cargo holds. The first use of this system will be to give Black Ops ships fuel bays, but this feature paves the way for similar additions to other ship classes in the future. For instance, some ships may one day be given ammo bays, freeing up valuable cargo space.

Rigs will be offered in different sizes, with frigate and cruiser sized rigs introduced to the game. These new small and medium rigs will be cheaper to buy or manufacture, and thus provide a lower cost way for players to trick out their ships.

CCP t0rfifrans also dropped a few hints about the forthcoming winter expansion, which will *not* be Walking in Stations. He writes: "All I can say, is that it is focused on sovereignty and you will not be able to walk in it."

We'll keep our eyes open for more about Apocrypha 1.5 as information becomes available.

Tags: apocrypha, apocrypha-1.5, black-ops, breaking, ccp-games, ccp-t0rfifrans, dev-blog, dev-blogs, empyrean-age, epic-mission-arcs, eve, eve-online, factional-warfare, fuel-bay, fuel-bays, game-mechanics, loyalty-points, lp, missions, patches, pvp, rigs, sci-fi, senior-producer, sovereignty, specialized-cargo-holds, torfi-frans-olafsson, walking-in-stations

CCP Games addresses player concerns in EVE Online Q&A

by James Egan Jun 29th 2009 at 11:00AM

Filed under: Sci-fi, EVE Online

The first Q&A between EVE Online developers CCP Games and the Council of Stellar Management (CSM) -- a group of players (elected by fellow EVE gamers) that represents the collective interests of the subscribers -- was released this past week. It addresses a few concerns the players have had, for instance the delays with EVE's 'Quarterly Economic Newsletters', what is intended to be a regularly released overview of the game's ever-shifting economy. (CCP says they're on track to release the QEN's on schedule moving forward.) The Q&A also addresses a major question that has arisen for factional warfare participants, which began with the Empyrean Age expansion and its all-out war between the game's four races. Players fighting for the Caldari race's militia have, essentially, won the war. They've captured all of Gallente space. So where will (Caldari-Gallente) factional warfare go from here?

CCP responded: "We plan the NPC timeline for events leading up to expansions, coordinating the release of news and integrating the high level plot with chronicles, video, and everything else we can. This year, our storyline theme was to try and 'cross the streams' more, meaning that we were going to look for ways to weave the exploits of capsuleers into the NPC canon. The Caldari sweep of contestable Federation space gave us the perfect context to do just that."

Tags: caldari, ccp-games, council-of-stellar-management, csm, empyrean-age, eve, eve-online, factional-warfare, gallente, militia, qen, sci-fi

New EVE Online novel "The Burning Life" is on the way

by James Egan Jun 4th 2009 at 4:00PM

Filed under: Sci-fi, EVE Online, Lore, News items

There may be big things on the horizon for the lore of EVE Online with the forthcoming release of a second novel for the game, "The Burning Life". The sci-fi novel is written by Hjalti Daníelsson (aka CCP Abraxas) who has written many of the EVE Chronicles -- short, gritty tales that show readers the various facets of life in New Eden.

The Chronicles have been a way of driving the game's lore forward for years, so we're wondering what to expect from The Burning Life. Could it possibly be tied in with the new directions that CCP Games wants to take with EVE's lore?

At this point we don't know have much information about the novel, or whether it will be tied in with an upcoming expansion as the Empyrean Age novel by Tony Gonzales was in 2008.

There are paperback release dates listed for 2009 in North America (Tor) and 2010 in Europe (Gollancz).

[Via Ga'len]

Tags: backstory, ccp-abraxas, ccp-games, empyrean-age, eve, eve-online, gollancz, hjalti-danielsson, lore, new-eden, novel, novels, storyline, the-burning-life, tony-gonzales, tor, tor-books

Telling more engaging stories in EVE Online

by James Egan Apr 19th 2009 at 10:00AM

Filed under: Sci-fi, EVE Online, Game mechanics, Lore, Quests

One of the greatest strengths of EVE Online is its lore, which chronicles generations of struggle between New Eden's races and their continual political and ideological upheavals. Not everyone will agree with that opinion, of course, just as not all players seek out immersion in New Eden. For those who do, EVE has been building up short stories to flesh out the lore over the past six years -- all nicely collected on their site -- gritty tales of New Eden's technological heights and moral depths. It's already led to a novel titled Empyrean Age authored by Tony Gonzales, which will hopefully lead to a follow-up work.

Given all the attention CCP Games has given to adding these dimensions and layers to the game's backstory, the truth is that EVE is as much a virtual setting as it is a game; as such, there's always a need to expand and refine that setting. A solid backstory is important but it's equally important to EVE's players to be able to interact with it, feel like they're really a part of New Eden in some way. Live events and storyline missions (quests) have been used in the past to this end. However, in the case of missions, a player's role in New Eden's story hasn't quite matched up with what many feel it could be. CCP's efforts to make EVE Online's storylines more engaging is the focus of their latest dev blog, titled "Telling Stories: Evolution of the Atlanta Content Team".

Tags: apocrypha, atlanta, backstory, ccp-technobabble, dev-blog, dev-blogs, empyrean-age, epic-mission-arcs, eve, eve-online, expansions, fiction, game-mechanics, immersion, lore, mission-running, missions, new-eden, quests, sci-fi, tony-gonzales

Massively's EVE Online Apocrypha expansion hands-on

by James Egan Mar 6th 2009 at 5:00PM

Filed under: Sci-fi, EVE Online, Expansions, Game mechanics, Lore, MMO industry, PvP, PvE, Races, Massively Interviews, Massively Hands-on

Massively got word that EVE Online lead game designer Noah Ward, aka CCP Hammerhead, would be in New York City last week. We jumped at the chance to find out more about the Apocrypha expansion, and Ward was kind enough to give us our own hands-on demo while answering our questions about where EVE Online is heading. We were pleasantly surprised to find that EVE's lead writer Tony Gonzales was on hand as well. Fans of the game's backstory will know him for writing The Empyrean Age novel, which chronicled the events leading up to New Eden's factional warfare.

Apocrypha will be the most significant expansion in EVE's history to date, introducing new -- and some controversial -- features while revamping existing aspects of the game. Ultimately the aim of CCP Games with Apocrypha is to make EVE accessible to more gamers while adding depth for the existing playerbase. The Apocrypha expansion launch will coincide with EVE Online's retail release on March 10th. Leading up to that date, a number of the CCP developers have dropped info about what's on the way through dev blogs and the occasional interview, but the expansion seen as a whole is mind-blowing. What we have for you here is the most complete look at the Apocrypha expansion offered to date, in one place, and much of it from the developers themselves. We've tackled Apocrypha in four parts: the New Player Experience, Epic Mission Arcs & Tech III, True Exploration, and the Sleepers.

Strap yourself in and get ready for Massively's exclusive hands-on with the Apocrypha expansion for EVE Online.

Gallery: EVE Online Apocrypha expansion

Tags: apocrypha, attributes, ccp-games, ccp-hammerhead, ccp-tonyg, empyrean-age, eve, eve-online, expansions, featured, game-mechanics, joystiqfeatures, lore, massively-hands-on, massively-interviews, mmo-industry, neural-remapping, new-eden, new-player-experience, noah-ward, races, skill-injection, skill-queue, skills, tony-gonzales

EVE Evolved: The top ten EVE videos of all time

by Brendan Drain Feb 2nd 2009 at 5:30PM

Filed under: At a glance, Sci-fi, Trailers, Video, EVE Online, Culture, Forums, MMO industry, PvP, Opinion, Machinima, Roleplaying, Virtual worlds, EVE Evolved

Whether you like EVE Online or hate it, I think everyone can agree that it's a visually stunning game. Combined with the enthralling PvP experiences to be had in the game, it's not surprising that the game lends itself well to making some excellent videos. Films of EVE gameplay have been around since EVE began and large fleets now routinely bring a camera specialist pilot in a cloaked covert ops frigate to film their action. With the release of the premium client and the proliferation of good video editing software, the quality of EVE videos has improved significantly over the past few years.

In this article, I run down my list of the top ten EVE videos of all time.

Tags: angel cartel, AngelCartel, carrier, ccp, ccp-games, clear skies, ClearSkies, darwins contraption, DarwinsContraption, empyrean age, empyrean-age, EmpyreanAge, eve, eve-evolved, eve-online, evolution, featured, joystiqfeatures, Lacrimosa, movie, piracy, pirate, pvp, quantum rise, QuantumRise, Tortuga, trailer, triage, veto, video

Slave emancipation a major change in EVE Online's lore

by James Egan Dec 28th 2008 at 10:00AM

Filed under: Sci-fi, EVE Online, Lore, Roleplaying

A significant twist in EVE Online's lore was announced on Christmas day: emancipation for much of the subjugated Minmatar race. EVE's far-future galactic setting of New Eden is characterized by struggles between the four (playable) races. Of those races, the dynamic between the theocratic but cruel Amarr and the tribal Minmatar is often one of master and servant. The Amarr enslaved the Minmatar race centuries ago; this is a prevalent aspect of the backstory (lore), the game's missions (quests) and factional warfare, as well as a focal point of the roleplaying that some players opt to engage in. Even some player alliances have taken a stance for or against slavery in the game. (Those who don't play EVE might be surprised to learn that slaves can be bought and sold on the open market as a low-cost commodity. Note, however, that the players themselves cannot be forced into slavery. It's just an aspect of the setting... one which is intended to evoke response from the players.)

CCP Games has decided this change in the Amarr-Minmatar dynamic was warranted in terms of New Eden's backstory, with the freed slaves numbering in the hundreds of millions, although the existence of slavery in EVE is still far from being abolished.

Tags: amarr, backstory, birth-of-new-eden, breaking, ccp, ccp-games, emancipation, empress, empyrean-age, eve, eve-online, factional-warfare, jamyl-sarum, lore, minmatar, new-eden, quests, roleplay, roleplaying, sci-fi, slave, slavery

EVE's Quantum Rise trailer depicts escalating conflict

by James Egan Nov 9th 2008 at 4:00PM

Filed under: Sci-fi, Video, EVE Online, Events, in-game, Expansions, Races, Roleplaying

With all of the announcements and events that have taken place this week at EVE Fanfest 2008, it's a safe bet that the forthcoming video footage related to the title should be interesting. CCP Games is kicking off the November 11th release of the Quantum Rise expansion with a video, depicting how the game's storyline is moving forward. As they did previously with the Empyrean Age release, rather than simply making a video that shows off a new game mechanic or ship, CCP's Quantum Rise trailer is presented as 'in-world' breaking news footage from "The Scope" -- New Eden's galactic news network.

Where the Empyrean Age trailer showed viewers a suicide attack on a peace summit that triggered war between the Caldari and Gallente races, the newest Quantum Rise video depicts an escalation of hostilities in New Eden. The Gallente Federation now finds itself mired in a two-front war, fending off the nationalistic Caldari while having to face the golden Amarr fleets as well, as seen in the footage. The Quantum Rise trailer is just the newest one shown on the CCP Games YouTube page. For those looking for higher res downloads, the Quantum Rise trailer should be up on the official site's video section soon. But for now, you can see video footage from 'The Scope' as the conflict unfolds below the cut.

Tags: amarr, caldari, ccp, ccp-games, empyrean-age, eve, eve-online, expansions, gallente, new-eden, quantum-rise, the-scope, trailer, trailers, video, videos, youtube

Mac and Linux client improvements roll out today in EVE Online

by James Egan Oct 8th 2008 at 7:00AM

Filed under: Sci-fi, Galleries, EVE Online, Bugs, Patches, News items

EVE Online has a much smaller playerbase than some of the other top-tier MMOs on the market. Despite this fact, CCP Games was willing to provide an even smaller subset of players -- Linux and Mac users -- with an EVE client, via Transgaming's Cedega (Linux) and Cider (Mac). While the 'premium' Trinity graphics are only supported on the Windows client, this writer can attest that the Mac client has improved a great deal since its release.

That said, there have certainly been some issues with providing a stable client for multiple operating systems. The Empyrean Age 1.1.2 patch for Mac and Linux, which was scheduled to deploy during downtime today, should bring with it numerous small fixes to these clients. On the Mac side, Empyrean Age 1.1.2 changes how autopatching works, improves issues with international keyboard layouts, and especially resolves the issue with how station interiors display. If the changes go through smoothly, this funky anomaly will be no more. This gallery may be a last look at the black, translucent interiors of stations that some Mac users have been reporting:

Gallery: Mac client station anomalies

Tags: autopatcher, autopatching, bugs, ccp, ccp-fallout, ccp-games, cedega, cider, client, empyrean-age, eve, eve-online, galleries, linux, mac, patch, patch-notes, patches, sci-fi, transgaming, trinity

EVE Evolved: The making of EVE Online

by Brendan Drain Oct 5th 2008 at 3:00PM

Filed under: Sci-fi, EVE Online, Expansions, Game mechanics, Launches, MMO industry, EVE Evolved

EVE Online's development path from concept to release has followed a very different path to the MMO norm. Starting from its humble beginnings as one man's dream to build an online space game, EVE has developed into the massively popular game it is today. Rather than designing and developing the game all in one go, the CCP crew opted for a staged delivery approach. The game was re-made 11 times, each stage being progressively closer to the final goal. By launch, EVE had been through 5 total recodes where almost the entire game was scrapped and rebuilt from scratch and at least 6 partial recodes.

Join me as I take a look at the course EVE's development has taken from concept all the way to the current Empyrean Age expansion.

Tags: castor, ccp, cold war, ColdWar, empyrean-age, eve, eve-online, exodus, expansion, factional-warfare, featured, hilmar, joystiqfeatures, launch, patch, red moon rising, RedMoonRising, revelations, rmr, second genesis, SecondGenesis, server, trinity

EVE Evolved: The making of EVE Online, part 2

by Brendan Drain Oct 5th 2008 at 3:00PM

Filed under: Sci-fi, EVE Online, Expansions, Game mechanics, MMO industry, EVE Evolved

Tags: castor, ccp, cold war, ColdWar, concord, empyrean-age, eve, eve-online, exodus, expansion, factional-warfare, gank, hilmar, joystiqfeatures, launch, patch, red moon rising, RedMoonRising, revelations, rmr, second genesis, SecondGenesis, server, suicide, trinity

EVE dev blog charts much improved customer support experiences

by James Egan Oct 1st 2008 at 3:00PM

Filed under: Sci-fi, EVE Online, Patches, News items

Long petition queues, particularly related to expansions, has long been a problem in EVE Online. These long waits may very well be a thing of the past, according to GM Nova, Senior Game Master for EVE Online. GM Nova's latest dev blog, "Such stuff as dreams are made on," deals with the deployment of the Empyrean Age 1.1 patch in early September, as seen from a Customer Support perspective. "We at Customer Support, being at the front lines so to speak, are in a unique position to judge or evaluate whether a patch was successfully deployed and if ther is any fallout or unexpected problems involved, as the potential torrent of problems are directed at us to pass on," he said.

GM Nova points out how that 'torrent of problems' has slowed down to a trickle, using graph data of the Trinity expansion deployment (predictably an insane amount of petitions), the subsequent Empyrean Age 1.0 patch (so smooth they thought their petition system had crashed), and finally Empyrean Age 1.1. The trend evidenced by the graphs is that their patch deployments are becoming less fraught with complications, meaning happier players in the long run. GM Nova goes on to discuss some of the structural changes made to CCP's Customer Support department that improve petition response time, saying,"We are happy to announce that our average petition age is currently two days with most normal requests handled in hours. We hope our efforts shine through in the level of support we are able to offer." Would you agree with GM Nova's assessment, and have your own petitions of late in EVE Online been resolved in a reasonable amount of time?

Tags: ccp, ccp-games, customer-support, deployment, dev, dev-blog, empyrean-age, eve, eve-online, expansion, expansions, game-master, gm, gm-nova, patch, patches, petition, petitions, qa, quality-assurance, sci-fi, trinity

Changes and new features in EVE's latest Empyrean Age patch

by James Egan Sep 29th 2008 at 3:30PM

Filed under: Sci-fi, EVE Online, Game mechanics, Patches, News items

The next EVE Online update is the Empyrean Age 1.1.1 patch, which deploys on September 30th. It brings with it a number of fixes and a few new features as well. These features are centered around the Jita problems, with three new jumps being added to help players avoid the laggy system: Muvolailen-Maurasi, Maurasi-Perimeter, and Veisto-Sarekuwa. An 'avoid system' option has been added to the autopilot, with a default setting to avoid Jita. Taking the population cap issue a step further, CCP Games is also rolling out an Auto-Move feature to the login process. In the event a player attempts to log in to a system which has already hit its population cap, the player will have the option of moving themself to a neighboring system.

The rest of Empyrean Age 1.1.1 is comprised of smaller fixes and improvements, namely to the user interface and EVE's communication channels -- Voice, Mail, and Chat. In addition, they've fixed a problem where Stabber Fleet Issue ships wouldn't display (or cloak) properly due to an issue with the ship's model in the Trinity graphics engine. These are the changes announced at this time, but see the full patch notes for additional revisions made by CCP as the deployment approaches. Until then, the devs are discussing the changes -- both announced and unannounced -- with players on the official forums.

Tags: ccp, ccp-games, empyrean-age, eve, eve-online, forums, patch, patch-notes, population-cap, population-limits, trinity

EVE Online interview discusses players determining storyline

by James Egan Aug 31st 2008 at 8:00PM

Filed under: Sci-fi, EVE Online, Events, in-game, Guilds, Interviews, Lore, Patches, News items, PvE, Politics, Races, Roleplaying

Split Infinity Radio, a gamer-run internet radio station (with a noticeable sci-fi MMO bent) recently interviewed Scott Holden, Lead Content Creator of EVE Online at Gen Con 2008. Holden has been integral in building up all the mission content that's about to drop in the upcoming Empyrean Age expansions over the next few months. Split Infinity asks Holden a question that's been on the minds of a number of EVE players: Can player actions really influence the storyline?

Holden's answer is 'yes'... to a point. He discusses the initiative at CCP to create a system where events are announced in contested parts of space, prompting players to get involved. Their actions would be reported on through the in-game news, and in this way affects (or creates aspects of) the storyline. Participants in factional warfare, or anyone who reads the Interstellar Correspondents news pieces, know that this already exists to some extent in EVE, but Holden states that CCP would like to take the idea further as time goes on.

Tags: ambulation, backstory, ccp, ccp-games, embedded-reporter, embedded-reporting, empyrean-age, eve, eve-online, faction, factional-warfare, factions, fiction, guilds, immersion, interstellar-correspondents, interviews, isd, lead-content-creator, lore, militia, militia-missions, mission, missions, pve, races, roleplaying, sci-fi, scott-holden, split-infinity, split-infinity-radio, storyline, volunteer, walking-in-stations