Spaceholder

I really haven’t kept up much on the whole CCP Arrum NeX store, but apparently it’s exploded in the last 24 hours.  EveNews24 broke the news with a “leaked” internal newsletter from CCP titled “Greed is Good” where they discuss views on their NeX store (where you buy items for your character with real life money).  The Eve Forums have been threadnaughted with angry Eve players.  The main concerns aren’t just the fact that a stupid monocle costs $60, but that CCP may begin introducing items that affect the game itself.  Similar to “Gold Ammo” in World of Tanks (WoT is an awesome, free, microtransaction supported game that you should all go play right now).

Today another “leak” came from CCP, claiming to be an e-mail from CCP CEO Hilmar Pétursson.

Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2011 18:16:54 -0400
To: riverini@gmail.com
Subject: ccp ceo global msg sent today
From: evewatch@hush.com
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=.UTF-8.
Message-Id: <20110623221654.CF1E76F438@smtp.hushmail.com>

sent by hilmar to ccp global list-

(strt)

We live in interesting times; in fact CCP is the kind of company that if things get repetitive we instinctively crank it up a notch. That, we certainly have done this week. First of we have Incarna, an amazing technological and artistic achievement. A vision from years ago realized to a point that no one could have imaged but a few months ago. It rolls out without a hitch, is in some cases faster than what we had before, this is the pinnacle of professional achievement. For all the noise in the channel we should all stand proud, years from now this is what people will remember.

But we have done more, not only have we redefined the production quality one can apply to virtual worlds with the beautiful Incarna but we have also defined what it really means to make virtual reality more meaningful than real life when it comes to launching our new virtual goods currency, Aurum.

Naturally, we have caught the attention of the world. Only a few weeks ago we revealed more information about DUST 514 and now we have done it again by committing to our core purpose as a company by redefining assumptions. After 40 hours we have already sold 52 monocles, generating more revenue than any of the other items in the store.

This we have done after months of research by a group of highly competent professionals, soliciting input and perspective from thought leaders and experts in and around our industry. We have communicated our intention here internally in very wide circles through the Virtual Economy Summit presentation at the GSM, our Fearless newsletter, sprint reviews, email lists and multiple other channels. This should not come as a surprise to anyone.

Currently we are seeing _very predictable feedback_ on what we are doing. Having the perspective of having done this for a decade, I can tell you that this is one of the moments where we look at what our players do and less of what they say. Innovation takes time to set in and the predictable reaction is always to resist change.

We went out with a decisive strategy on pricing and we will stay the course and not flip flop around or knee jerk react to the predictable. That is not saying nothing will change, on the contrary, in fact we know that success in this space is through learning and adapting to _what is actually happening_ and new knowledge gained in addition to what we knew before and expected.

All that said, I couldn’t be prouder of what we have accomplished as a company, changing the world is hard and we are doing it as so many times before! Stay the course, we have done this many times before.

I really don’t know what to think right now.  I know #tweetfleet is exploding with people cancelling their accounts.  I really think this could be CCP’s “NGE” moment, and I’m not sure if CCP is taking this seriously enough.

I guess I can just lean back and watch the fireworks. I’m not planning on cancelling my accounts at this point, but if CCP introduces things that allow people to get an edge up if they pay real money to do so, I may just conveniently ”forget” to renew.

Edit: My buddy @winterblink posted a great summary of the eve-o drama over at his Warp Drive Active blog.

do you wanna date my avatar?

Today, for the first time in eve, I’ve done something I’ve been promised I would be able to do since 2008.  I walked in a station.

That’s right, I just spent some time playing around with Captain’s Quarters in Eve.  While it’s still very much alpha-test quality, I can sort of see where CCP is going with it.

You start off in a room standing on a raised platform with three large screens on a wall in front of you. the middle screen shows data about the system & station you’re in, as well as incursion information.  I’ll assume it’ll eventually show more things such as market data.  The screen on the left basically opens your corporation menu, and the screen on the right opens your planetary interaction menu.  I’ll also go ahead and assume they will show more pertinent information at a later date as well.

You can walk around the area a bit, and even sit down on a “sofa” (which looks more like a bench on some form of public transportation).  Walking is currently horribly un-intuitive and you get stuck on just about everything that comes within two meters of you, but hey, that’s not too bad for an 8 year old video game where you’ve been nothing but a ship.   There’s a hall behind you that leads to a balcony where you can overlook your ship.  I wandered out to look at MY ZEALOT in all it’s majesty.  Basically it’s just a different version of the current station view.

I’m optimistically pessimistic about this.  I’m very confident that CCP will find a way to fuck it up somehow.   It’s nowhere near ready for a release.  You can’t walk and chew gum at the same time.  For example, ou can only push one button at a time while walking. You push “W” to move forward, then you have to let go of “W” in order to push “A” to turn left.  If you try and push “A” while pushing “W”, nothing happens.  Even mouse controls are wonky, and require you to stop walking in order to turn.

Edit: Apparently this is only true if you’re holding down a mouse button like a retard.  I tend to hold down my right mouse button when walking around to adjust the camera. However, let’s not get into camera controls, and just leave it at “they’re really bad”. When you’re not holding down your mouse button, you can turn about 45 degrees while walking.

As I mentioned, this is an alpha-test version.  It does worry me that CCP was confident that they were going to have this pushed out to Singularity before Fanfest last month, as I think there’s quite a bit of work to do before it’s ready to go be moved there.

I do wonder if this is how far CCP is along with properties like Dust and World of Darkness.  I mean, if this is the state World of Darkness is in, I fear that game will take another 5 years to come out.  But, I shall post some other time about my love of the original WoD.