pos posts

Player housing is one of those features we love to see in an MMO but every game that has it seems to implement it differently. Sometimes it's limited to instanced rooms the player can decorate and sometimes it's a little more functional like shared guild halls. In EVE Online, the closest thing to widely-available player housing would be anchorable starbases, which can be configured to serve a variety of functional roles. Originally, their primary purpose was to mine moon minerals and react them to produce advanced materials for Tech 2 production.

Starbases can be very useful as tactical staging points for PvP operations. With the right modules anchored around them, they can also be configured for use in other industries, from mining and manufacturing to research and deep space exploration. Until recently, they also played a critical role in EVE's alliance sovereignty warfare as the alliance with the most starbases in a system gained control of it. With that role now fulfilled by Outposts, Infrastructure Hubs and Territorial Claim Units, starbases have mostly returned to their former industrial and tactical uses.

In this article, I look at five different starbase configurations that can be very useful to organised corporations.

While it's most often lauded for its PvP, not everything in EVE Online is about shooting people. Research and manufacturing are two of EVE's most popular PvE professions because of the small time commitments they require. A lot of things in EVE are built from blueprints and through research, you can be one of the people supplying those blueprints. Whether you want to improve your own blueprints to increase manufacturing profit margins or make blueprint copies for sale, it's worth looking into doing your own research. Jobs can be set up to run for days on end, taking you as little as a few minutes per week to manage. This can augment your income from active sources like mining, trading or mission-running.

In this article, I look at the basics of tech 1 blueprint research, the skills required to make the most of your time and how you could run your own research labs in the relative safety of high security space.

The Dominion expansion for EVE Online will bring some major changes to capital ships and sovereignty when it goes live on December 1st. As that release date approaches, the developers at CCP Games are seeking feedback from the EVE playerbase on some of the changes being made to the game. They aim to do this through large scale fleet battles on the Singularity test server with a minimum of 100 pilots, although hundreds more would be preferable. The tests will first focus on open combat between large fleets and later switch focus to player-owned starbase (POS) sieges. There are three play tests (tentatively) scheduled, with more to be announced:

• Thursday, October 15, @ 17:00 GMT

• Friday, October 16, @ 18:00 GMT (this is specifically a Sovereignty test)

• Thursday, October 29, @ 17:00 GMT

Read the full post from EVE Quality Assurance dev CCP Tanis for more info on the tests and how players can connect to the Singularity test server. Players are encouraged to bring out their capital ships and unleash plenty of drones during these mass-tests of Dominion.

A few weeks ago, we here at Massively were speculating on what the big announcement CCP Games were planning was. After they filed a trademark on a logo for something called "DUST 514", we could only guess that it was the promised EVE Online themed first person shooter. In an email with one of my regular column readers before the announcement, I suggested off-hand that it would be awesome if it were a new EVE FPS that linked in with 0.0 sovereignty. I didn't seriously think that's what they had planned. In fact, I only suggested it as a sort of idealised wish -- a hint at what heights I thought EVE could reach a decade from now.

When the announcement finally went out and I was right, my jaw hit the floor. Reception of the news has virtually polarised the EVE community, with only a small few viewing the idea with a calm, cautious optimism. Most seem either in firm support of the idea or dead set against it, with many arguments erupting around the claim that Dust will let console gamers decide the fate of EVE alliances. And yet despite all the talk of DUST 514 since the announcement, few people have speculated on what the game-play might actually be like and how it might integrate with EVE Online.

In this wish-filled article, I lay out the facts we know so far about DUST 514 and then go on to speculate on what the game-play might be like.

If it seems like I've gone wormhole crazy lately, that's because I have. The wormholes that arrived with the Apocrypha expansion have infiltrated and enriched many different aspects of EVE Online, from exploration and corporate goals to small gang PvP and piracy. In previous articles, I looked at preparing for an expedition, untangled the mystery of the Sleepers and told the story of a tense week for Total Comfort alliance in the Sleeper's den. After a week spent hunting wormhole-dwellers for fun and profit, this week's EVE Evolved is dedicated to the fine art of being an interstellar cut-throat as I delve into the world of wormhole piracy.

Wormhole piracy is one of the few professions where small gang warfare is most prevalent. While many pirates have already begun including wormhole systems in their roaming gangs, our corporation (and I'm sure others) have come across a much more effective method. By setting up your own pirate staging base inside a wormhole system, your corp can use its regular outgoing wormholes to wreak havoc in systems all across EVE. Using this method, it's possible to spring attacks on people without anyone even seeing you coming. Whether you're planning surprise attacks on 0.0 systems or hunting in the 2500 new unknown sleeper systems, wouldn't you like to run your own pirate way-station?

Read on for an informative guide on using wormholes to wreak havoc around EVE and make a profit in the process.

Back in 2004, a friend introduced me to a relatively new space MMO called EVE Online, where the markets were run by the players and there were undiscovered frontiers to chart. A short time after, I became obsessed with pre-calculating everything in the game. I thought that if the game server can calculate everything we do, I must be able to replicate the process and come up with some interesting results. I wasn't alone, many other pilots had previously created simple spreadsheets and web-databases of EVE's items. Rather than the game's developers hoarding the information required for such an undertaking, they took an unusual stance and released large portions of their main database for player-study. Websites began popping up listing information from the data dumps and it wasn't long before the first pioneering apps came about in the form of handy spreadsheets and interactive web-pages, my own fairly popular tanking spreadsheet among them.

In this article, I look at how player-developed apps came about in EVE and give details on my top five EVE apps. Once you've tried these programs, you won't know how you lived without them.

What follows is a storytold account of Total Comfort alliance's deadly week in the Sleeper's den.

A few weeks ago, we at Massively started the weekly "Redefining MMOs" series, a collection of articles examining how the MMO genre has been redefined during the current generation of games and where it's headed in the next. So far, we've looked at the terminology we use to refer to MMOs, how the art of storytelling has changed over the years, and the rise of the "massively singleplayer" online game. In this week's article, I examine what happens when players are given the reigns of an MMO or have a hand in part of its development. If you have something important to say on the topic, feel free to post a comment on page 3 or even write your own "Redefining MMOs" blog post and leave a comment with the URL.

Traditionally, all content for an MMO is designed by the game's development studio and players have no direct influence on its creation. The idea of handing the reigns of an MMO to its players is considered heresy and we shudder to think of what horrible quests and areas players would construct if given a chance. But is our aversion justified or is it something developers should strive to overcome? Certainly Second Life has successfully capitalised on letting players develop almost every aspect of its virtual world but could successful mainstream MMOs make use of it too? City of Heroes, EVE Online and even World of Warcraft are prime examples which suggest they can. All three of these games have handed at least some part of the game's development over to players, with incredibly promising results.

In this article, I look at these three successful examples of players being allowed to develop aspects of an MMO. I then go on to explain why this works and how the next generation of MMOs could learn from these pioneering feats.

When EVE Online's Apocrypha expansion was released, details on how wormholes and the 2500 new systems that came with them worked were sketchy. The advanced Sleeper AI found protecting these systems were a force to be feared, unknown and mysterious. There were no guides, no stories of encounters on the forums and anyone that had mounted a successful expedition was keeping their closely guarded secrets to themselves and raking in the ISK.

My corporation (Pillowsoft) were among the first to launch their expedition, having previously prepared an Orca with a medium POS, fuel, equipment and everything else we thought we'd need. We set up in an unknown system and explored this new frontier with a cautious optimism. Over the months that followed, we learned a great deal about EVE's new wormhole systems and the Sleepers that lived in them. After striking gold many times and making each of our expedition members over a billion ISK richer, we began telling our story and giving up those secrets we had been so careful to protect. Today, a great deal is now known about the "unknown" wormhole systems and with ever more corporations launching their own expeditions, it's now more important than ever to research the Sleeper menace before venturing into the abyss.

Join me for this extensive three-page article where I dole out the fruits of my research on wormholes and begin to untangle the mystery of the Sleepers.

EVE Online patch Apocrypha 1.3 is slated for a Monday June 29 deployment. CCP Games is pushing ahead with their Need for Speed initiative, which aims to streamline the game's performance and provide a better play experience. They're making some database changes with the next Apocrypha patch that should improve what you experience in your game client with inventory management, but beyond addressing "The Jita Problem" there will be a fair number of changes in the next patch.

On that topic of speed, players should notice a huge change with starbase deployment (or hasty tear downs): players will be able to anchor, online, or unanchor offensive and defensive starbase structures in half the time it took previously. (Ninja POS deployment?) Perhaps more significant to some players than others, station reprocessing will be much faster -- apparently refining stacks of items will be up to 25 times faster than before. Also, some of those changes to Tech III production we've mentioned before are going into effect on Monday, and should ultimately be a boost for Tech III. Apocrypha 1.3's changes extend far beyond what is mentioned here; players heavily invested in wormhole exploration and the production it fuels should look closely at the patch notes to see how CCP's changes to the game might affect them.

It's been a while since I've done a full-blown opinion piece but this week I figured it would make a nice change from yet more coverage of the recent Apocrypha expansion. No matter where you go in-game, everyone has their own opinion on what features EVE Online needs. For some people, being able to put mining rigs on planets would sound interesting. Others might prefer a new exploration-specialist science vessel or a module that gives resistance to energy neutralisers. There are a lot of ideas out there and some of us spend long nights chatting to friends in-game about the ones they'd like to see implemented. A few pilots have gone as far as to write up full scale proposals to present to CCP on the forum and some of those have even been implemented. This got me thinking – what features would I most like to see implemented in EVE?

In this concise opinion piece, I take a look at the top four features I'd like to see make it into EVE Online. What's your top four?

Massively has been watching the issue of a significant starbase exploit in EVE Online, through which some players reaped vast financial rewards, as it went from rumor to confirmation from the developers themselves. Unlike your average run-of-the-mill exploit in most massively multiplayer online games, the exploit in question has had a significant impact on EVE's virtual economy -- the backbone of the game itself. All players in EVE interact in one vast galaxy, and their actions in the sandbox can create ripples felt by their fellow players, which has certainly been the case in this past week.

EVE Online's developer CCP Games has opted to hold off on responding to most press inquiries for comment on the issue, having issued a statement on the matter and then focusing on the investigation and a weekend meeting with EVE's player-elected community representatives, the Council of Stellar Management (CSM). The minutes from that meeting are now available, and several of EVE's developers took part in the discussion: namely CCP's Lead Economist Dr. EyjoG (Dr. Eyjólfur Guðmundsson) and CCP Arkanon -- who heads up the company's Internal Affairs division, which investigates the CCP Games staff themselves, hopefully ensuring that no CCP employee can abuse their influence over the game.

Read on for Massively's highlights of the state of affairs in EVE Online, in the wake of the starbase exploit.

In the wake of last week's revelation of a market disrupting exploit in EVE Online, a growing number of players have been calling for increased transparency on the situation. EVE's developer CCP Games has stated they've discovered seven player-run corporations taking advantage of the player owned station (POS) exploit, which yielded a vast amount of materials used in the EVE Online's manufacturing (crafting) system. Three of those corporations were in two alliances, and over 70 accounts have been banned thus far in connection with the exploit. The starbases used in the exploit have been destroyed by CCP, and they've stated that the corporations in question are now effectively inactive following the bans.

CCP Games has not released the names of characters, corporations, or alliances linked to the exploit, but a player named "moppinator" of the AMT. corporation (part of Ev0ke alliance) stepped forward and issued the following statement on the extent of his alliance's involvement:

An exploit in EVE Online has come to light that may have some major repercussions for the game. Massively does not have solid confirmation on the details (and allegations as the case may be), as this has just come to light. The exploit was publicized on a third party EVE forum called Scrapheap Challenge, on Wednesday, December 10th. If this isn't a hoax or an exaggerated account of events, how serious an exploit might this be? Very serious, if the details listed prove to be accurate... The exploit was really a bug related to a network of player owned stations (POS) paired with a moon mining operation, which yielded far too much valuable material far too quickly. Four years and an estimated 2.5 to 3 trillion ISK later, the exploit was found and patched, and the offender(s) banned. Given the claimed amount of ISK involved, it's serious enough to potentially have an impact on the game's economy.

The individual who posted the details of this exploit remains anonymous, and has only identified him or herself as "anotherone", but tells a story of how the exploit came to be: "I would like to tell you a short EVE story. Today all of my EVE Online accounts were banned. I was sure this day would come. What surprises me is that it took CCP this long to catch up with me. Even though they knew about it." It's that last sentence that is sparking so much response from the playerbase -- anotherone asserts that this issue was actually petitioned to CCP Games back in 2004, and subsequently ignored.

Read on for more details on this economic drama.