quantum-rise posts

CCP Games points to EVE client as source of performance woes

by James Egan Dec 8th 2008 at 4:30PM

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

The Quantum Rise expansion for EVE Online brought with it numerous server side and database improvements, and brings us a bit closer to the ideal of having smooth fleet battles with thousands of ships. So after the expansion rolled out, with the promise of improving the game experience, why was performance subpar at first? The latest CCP Games dev blog points out the culprit -- it's the client.

CCP Atlas (aka Jon Bjarnason), EVE's Technical Director, has written a dev blog on the performance issue. He states, "In hindsight, we should have caught this, but we didn't. Needless to say the week after Quantum Rise wasn't exactly our proudest moment. Although we had improved server and database performance in Quantum Rise, due to the client issues the perception was that overall performance had degraded. And perception is reality, doubly so in virtual worlds."

Tags: ccp, ccp-atlas, ccp-games, client, dev-blog, eve, eve-online, expansions, game-mechanics, jon-bjarnason, performance, quantum-rise, sci-fi, technical-director

EVE's 'Orca' mining vessel facilitates suicide ganks against miners

by James Egan Dec 2nd 2008 at 6:00PM

Filed under: Sci-fi, EVE Online, Events, in-game, Exploits, Forums, Game mechanics, PvP, News items

Among the changes to EVE Online introduced with the Quantum Rise expansion is a new class of ship, the 'Orca' industrial command ship.The ship is intended to be a major asset to mining operations in New Eden, but it's a flexible ship -- and this writer has been waiting to see what clever uses players will have for it. It looks like that day has come... The Orca's substantial cargo capacity, a ship maintenance bay, and corp hangar have made it an ideal base of operations for criminals operating in highsec, with an aim to suicide gank T2 mining ships. In other words, use fully insurable Tech I ships to gank specialized, expensive, and largely uninsurable Tech II ships.

Suicide ganking is nothing new, but one of the major changes CCP Games put into place to dissuade players from committing highsec suicide ganks was to substantially increase the security status penalties players are hit with when committing aggressive acts in high security (Empire) space. But no matter how low one's security status drops, all players can move about in highsec in their ship's capsule. It's only when a criminal enters a ship in highsec space that CONCORD takes action. That is where the Orca comes in. Criminals can board new ships housed within the Orca at a safespot and then warp in on their victims en masse, in multiple waves of suicide ganks. When their suicide gank ships are blasted apart by CONCORD, they can fly in their pods back to the Orca and gear up for the next wave.

Tags: adapt, ccp, ccp-games, clever, concord, controversy, empire, eve, eve-online, exploits, highsec, orca, quantum-rise, sci-fi

Winterblink on EVE Online's Quantum Rise expansion

by James Egan Nov 25th 2008 at 7:00PM

Filed under: Sci-fi, EVE Online, Expansions, Game mechanics, PvP, Opinion

Longtime players of EVE Online will be very familiar with the name 'Winterblink', or Michael Lastucka. He's the man behind years worth of contributions and commentaries linked to EVE, through the Warp Drive Active comic, the WDA podcast, and now he's a columnist at Massive Gamer Magazine as well.

His latest column, "Quantum of Polish" looks at the recent EVE expansion deployment and how it's changed the game. Lastucka points out some of the user interface changes that he finds beneficial. Visual representation of module cycles provide greater understanding of what's happening and weapon grouping allows players to switch between ammo types, and have a single 'fire' icon as well. But there's clearly more work to be done in terms of weapon/turret effects and some aspects of the UI, in order to reduce lag and improve performance.

Tags: ccp, ccp-games, eve, eve-online, expansions, game-mechanics, massive-gamer, massive-gamer-magazine, michael-lastucka, nano-nerf, opinion, pvp, quantum-rise, sci-fi, speed, speed-nerf, ui, user-interface, warp-drive-active, wda, weapon-grouping, winterblink

The Daily Grind: How much content should an expansion have?

by Samuel Axon Nov 20th 2008 at 8:00AM

Filed under: Expansions, Opinion, The Daily Grind

Everyone's got an expansion out right now -- EverQuest II has The Shadow Odyssey, The Lord of the Rings Online has Mines of Moria, World of Warcraft has Wrath of the Lich King, EVE Online has Quantum Rise -- there's no end to it, but then that's the point, isn't it?

Well, you'd think that, anyway. Word on the street is that there are already Death Knights at level 80, and all the raid content in Wrath has been completed. One player reached level 80 in only 27 hours. Over a year of development for one week of content? Are MMO players just too damned hardcore, or did Blizzard aim too low? How much content should you be getting for $30 or $40 and your continued subscription, anyway?

There are some folks out there who (to continue using WoW as an example) are still hacking through The Burning Crusade's content, or even the classic stuff. How do you think a balance can be struck between those folks, and the crews who have already bested all the Wrath content?

Tags: blizzard, ccp, discussion, eq2, eve, eve-online, everquest-2, everquest-ii, expansion, expansions, lord-of-the-rings-online, lotro, mines-of-moria, mom, opinion, quantum-rise, soe, tdg, the-daily-grind, the-shadow-odyssey, turbine, world-of-warcraft, wotlk, wow, wrath, wrath-of-the-lich-king

EVE's call to arms: Thursday fleet battles on test server to help combat lag

by James Egan Nov 19th 2008 at 4:00PM

Filed under: Sci-fi, EVE Online, Bugs, Events, in-game, Expansions, Game mechanics, PvP, News items

EVE Online's latest expansion Quantum Rise brought some new features for the industry crowd, and a few enhancements aimed at PvP pilots as well. But some of the broad changes they've made to the game mechanics have triggered lag, and lots of it, which CCP Games is hoping to combat with the help of the players themselves. CCP Tanis says, "We take this issue very seriously and as a result, our engineering team has been in high-gear working on fixing the problem and we think we are close, but we need your help."

The help CCP Games is looking for requires relatively little from players, aside from logging into the Singularity test server and entering the fray, blasting each other apart in battleships. The Wednesday tests were already underway when we got word of this, but they're looking to get a large group of pilots (200 or more) for the Thursday fleet engagements on Singularity. The test will take place on Thursday at 11:00 GMT, and another is tentatively slated for 15:00, dependent upon what CCP learns from the previous fights. CCP Tanis lays out how players can get involved:

Tags: battleship, breaking, bugs, ccp, ccp-games, ccp-tanis, drones, eve, eve-online, expansions, forums, game-mechanics, lag, patch, patches, pvp, quantum-rise, sci-fi, singularity, test-server, tranquility, weapon-grouping

EVE Mail changes in latest Quantum Rise patch

by James Egan Nov 19th 2008 at 9:00AM

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

The Quantum Rise expansion for EVE Online, while only recently deployed, has drawn a substantial amount of forum rage for sweeping changes to how the game is played, namely for the nerfs of speed and missiles. This follows in the wake of unrest created by the CCP Games decision to phase out ghost training. The latest change, announced Tuesday, targets the in-game email system ("EVE Mail" to be precise).

CCP Wrangler says: "To address performance issues in EVE we are making some changes to the EVE Mail system in Quantum Rise 1.0.1. You will now be able to fetch up to 1000 undeleted EVE Mails, however EVE Mail number 1001 and beyond will not be fetched, whether it has been read or not. To gain access to those EVE Mails, you must delete newer EVE mails. In addition to this all EVE Mails sent by NPCs that are older than 3 months will be deleted."

Tags: ccp, ccp-games, ccp-wrangler, concord, eve, eve-mail, eve-online, forums, mail, patches, pvp, quantum-rise, sci-fi, ui, user-interface

EVE's Quantum Rise on Steam at reduced price, 21-day trial

by James Egan Nov 15th 2008 at 12:00PM

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

EVE Online's latest expansion Quantum Rise is here. We've written a fair amount on this expansion thus far, but it's primarily been a multi-staged release that introduces some new features and enhancements to benefit EVE's industry-focused players. We just noticed EVE Online's Quantum Rise pricing on Steam -- it's $9.99, down from Steam's already reduced $14.99; the initial cost when directly dealing with CCP Games is $19.99.

Steam also offers a 21-day trial which trumps the standard 14-day trial you get from CCP Games. Based on these numbers, Steam certainly looks like a good way to go. However, none of us at Massively have ever gotten our MMOs via Steam to date. We're curious, have any of our readers done so, and were the the lower pricing and other perks worth going through Steam in your opinion?

Tags: ccp, ccp-games, digital-distribution, distribution, eve, eve-online, expansions, quantum-rise, sci-fi, steam, steam-powered, steampowered, trial, trials, valve

Behind-the-scenes video of EVE Online expansion Quantum Rise

by James Egan Nov 11th 2008 at 6:00PM

Filed under: Sci-fi, Trailers, Video, EVE Online, Expansions, MMO industry, Server downtime

The EVE Online game servers and forums are presently down in an extended downtime, during which time the Quantum Rise expansion is being rolled out. While EVE players cope with the withdrawal shakes, CCP Games has released a behind-the-scenes video to check out, in addition to the Quantum Rise trailer.

EVE Online: Behind the Scenes is in some ways an introduction for new players to the setting of New Eden and the company that creates EVE. For gamers who are already EVE players, the video is a look inside the CCP Games office in Reykjavik, and features interviews with several developers in addition to some nice visuals of the new sub-capital industrial ship arriving with this expansion, the Orca. This video should really be seen in high resolution to appreciate the details, and can be downloaded from the temporary 'downtime news' EVE site which is up during the expansion deployment. In terms of when Quantum Rise is expected to be ready and the servers open up for players, the latest update from CCP is that they're currently on schedule, with the servers to open on November 12th at 02:00 GMT. In the meantime, we've got the 'EVE Online: Behind the Scenes' video embedded for you below the cut.

Tags: ccp, ccp-games, downtime, eve, eve-online, expansions, iceland, orca, quantum-rise, reykjavik, server-downtime, trailer, video

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

EVE's Quantum Rise expansion patch notes rival Tolstoy

by James Egan Nov 8th 2008 at 3:00PM

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

EVE Online's newest expansion, Quantum Rise, has almost arrived. EVE dev CCP Navigator writes: "The EVE Online: Quantum Rise patch will be deployed this Tuesday, 11th November. Tranquility will be down from 02:00 to 20:00 GMT. The downtime will affect the forums which will be unavailable for part of the time." The patch notes are up and are definitely worth taking a look at, as they do spell out some major changes for EVE Online.

The breadth of the changes are, quite frankly, beyond the scope of any post we could make at Massively, and we suggest you head straight to the source. As the post title implies, the Quantum Rise patch notes should have publishing rights associated with them, perhaps released as a trilogy. Sequels to the patch notes will be shown on the Quantum Rise patch notes page in green text, as CCP Games updates or revises what's currently posted. If you're one of EVE's industrialists who are looking forward to this expansion with some degree of fervor, you'll want to settle in with some hot chocolate and your copy of the Quantum Rise patch notes, and perhaps discuss the changes on the related forum thread.

Tags: ccp, ccp-games, ccp-navigator, downtime, eve, eve-online, expansions, industrialists, industry, patch-notes, patches, quantum-rise, server-downtime

CCP Games and Atari partner on EVE retail box sales

by James Egan Nov 8th 2008 at 12:30PM

Filed under: Sci-fi, EVE Online, Business models, Events, real-world, Expansions, MMO industry

When EVE Online launched in 2003, it came in a box through the game's publisher, Simon and Schuster Interactive. But for much of EVE's lifespan, it's been a digital product. Nothing to buy at a store, no physical media to save. It seems CCP Games has gone retro, from what was announced by CCP's CEO Hilmar Pétursson today, live from EVE Fanfest 2008 in Reykjavik. He announced that CCP Games will be partnering with Atari to establish a retail presence once again... which is fitting really, as Atari will also be publishing Ghostbusters. Hilmar introduced a short presentation by David Gardner, Atari's CEO, who discussed the partnership with CCP Games.

EVE typically has a winter expansion and a summer expansion. The winter expansion, Quantum Rise, is just days away. The summer expansion is expected (but not confirmed) to include Walking in Stations, only there's a little twist with the timing... They're not waiting for summer. It's coming in March. In a box. In your local game store. That's the information we have at this time, but we'll keep you informed as more details surface.

Update: Note that we haven't locked down a release date with Walking in Stations yet. Massively will report on Walking in Station's official release date once that's available -- at this time we only know it's tentatively slated for 2009.

Tags: ambulation, atari, box-sales, breaking, ccp, ccp-games, ccp-hellmar, david-gardner, digital, eve, eve-fanfest, eve-fanfest-2008, eve-online, expansions, hilmar-petursson, quantum-rise, walking-in-stations

Voting for EVE's second Council of Stellar Management begins

by James Egan Nov 7th 2008 at 8:30PM

Filed under: Sci-fi, EVE Online, Culture, Events, in-game, Game mechanics, MMO industry, Politics

This has been an important week for our American readers in terms of elections, but now that the minor distraction of real-world governance has been dealt with, it's time to focus on governance in the MMO space. You've got to keep those priorities straight, after all.

The polls are now open in EVE Online's second Council of Stellar Management (CSM) election, where players can vote for candidates to represent their interests before CCP Games... and potentially impact how the game evolves. We can already sense the impulse someone, or several someones, out there has to comment below: "But why should I bother voting? What do they even do?" And to be fair, it's not been very transparent what the CSM has been up to (aside from the meeting minutes), but more so what effect they've had on EVE and its development pipeline.

Tags: breaking, candidate, candidates, ccp, ccp-games, ccp-xhagen, community, community-relations, council-of-stellar-management, csm, culture, election, elections, eve, eve-online, governance, mmo-industry, new-eden, new-features, orca, politics, quantum-rise, sci-fi

EVE's Quantum Rise expansion features page is live

by James Egan Nov 4th 2008 at 3:00PM

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

The feature page for the forthcoming EVE Online expansion, Quantum Rise, is now live. The ninth free expansion for EVE will officially launch on November 11th, and brings with it some new features we've been reporting on in recent weeks, such as the long-awaited Orca and industrial ship changes, not to mention the guaranteed-to-spark-forum-rage speed rebalancing, and alchemy -- which is invention applied to minerals used in Tech II manufacturing.

According to the Quantum Rise expansion's feature page, there are also some previously unmentioned features like new additions to the RealX in-game soundtrack, new stargates, a host of improvements for industry players like assembly array upgrades, ammunition cost changes (namely for bombs), and a more flexible user interface. See the new Quantum Rise features page for more on what's in store for EVE Online players in the expansion geared towards the game's industrialists.

[Via Winterblink]

Tags: alchemy, ccp, ccp-games, eve, eve-online, expansion, forums, industrialist, industry, invention, manufacturing, minerals, nano-nerf, orca, quantum-rise, speed-nerf, t2, tech-2, tech-ii, ui, user-interface

CCP Games dev Oveur on how EVE is going to change

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

Filed under: Sci-fi, EVE Online, Business models, Expansions, Game mechanics, MMO industry, News items

Longtime players of EVE Online have often commented on the disappearance of one of CCP Games' most-liked devs, Executive Producer Nathan "Oveur" Richardsson. He's been noticeably absent from developer-player interaction for a while, which he addressed in his latest dev blog: "Unfortunately for you, the rumors of my death have been highly exaggerated. I've seen the occasional post inquiring about my demise. While flattering, I think most people have forgotten all about the old nerfs and more vividly remember some random jokes while I was flaming some poor soul on the forums."

Despite his light-hearted way of breaking the silence, his dev blog "I can resist anything but temptation" is packed with info about the future of EVE Online, which he kicks off by invoking Wilde. Read on to learn about some of the substantial changes coming to EVE.

Tags: api, business-models, ccp, ccp-games, concord, etc, eve, eve-api, eve-online, eve-time-code, eve-time-codes, evelopedia, expansions, game-mechanics, iphone, mmo-industry, nathan-richardsson, oveur, quantum-rise, rmt, sci-fi, social-networking

Substantial changes to industrial ships in EVE's Quantum Rise

by James Egan Oct 29th 2008 at 3:00PM

Filed under: Sci-fi, EVE Online, Expansions, Forums, Game mechanics, Crafting, News items, PvE

New additions to EVE Online through the Quantum Rise expansion are on the way, some of which are already on the Singularity test server. CCP Chronotis followed up his announcement of the Orca by outlining some big changes to ships that are some of the mainstays of industry in EVE. "Much has changed in EVE since many of the hauler of mining class ships were introduced. With Quantum Rise we felt the time was right to review these ships and make changes where necessary to refocus their roles and ensure they can still perform in the age of New Eden's Great War," he said.

The changes outlined aren't finalized, and will go through testing on Singularity before any of this goes live. Chronotis addressed how CCP Games would like to change three categories of ships: blockade runners, deep space transports, and mining vessels.

Tags: black-ops, blockade-runners, ccp, ccp-chronotis, ccp-games, crafting, deep-space-transports, eve, eve-online, expansions, forums, game-mechanics, industrial-ships, industry, mining, mining-ships, mining-vessels, orca, pve, quantum-rise, rorqual, sci-fi, singularity, test-server