Tag: Eve Online

Eve Online: Your Stuff's Gone For Good


I lost a valuable Draconic Visage

Silly Eve-izen, that’s not even from the right game. Losing items in a game where you drop everything upon death, is nothing short of not news. Players are killed, hacked, and generally die for one reason or another, on a daily basis and, whether or not we want to accept blame (Lag, account theft, etc), more often than not we are met with a simple “sorry, your stuff’s gone for good,” should we try to retrieve it.

There are three levels of item loss, as I will demonstrate:

  1. If you want to annoy your players, allow them to be killed due to unforeseeable, yet annoying issues. Lag is chief in this category, not to mention players with easy access to exploits in the system, hacks, and other such software.
  2. If you want to piss off your players, kill them via in-game bugs and don’t return their items. In Runescape, it isn’t uncommon for at least one update every four or five months to have some instant-murder effect, or allowing player killing in a spot it shouldn’t be. When Mobilising Armies was released, one player lost an enormous sum of money simply by talking to an NPC, and was not reimbursed despite confirmation by a Jagex employee.
  3. And finally, if you want to get players to quit, take the items right out of their possession, by process of one of your intended features going haywire.

If you were logged into Eve Online today, or even if you weren’t, you may have logged in to find that one or more of your items were missing. Due to an unintended issue, the Eve Online ItemID recycling system ended up deleting a mass amount of items. How many? Up to fourteen thousand, to be exact. But how exactly did this bug happen?

In Eve Online, every item has its own procedurally generated ID (The ID is created when the item is created). In order to prevent items six years from launch being labeled #34054083489534890583890459348, Eve Online recycles ItemID’s back into the pool once the associated item is destroyed, or stacked with another stack of the same item. The retrieval system failed, causing items to not receive an ID when created under various circumstances, and thus disappear.

Although CCP is not returning lost items (they have no way to, the data trail is literally gone), they will be reimbursing players. Players affected are asked to file a petition with the list of items they lost due to the bug. As for how well players will be reimbursed, MMO Fallout will be listening in.

More on [MMO name retrieval failed. Deleting portion.] as it appears.

Blizzard: Put Your Loose Change Away, THIS Is How You Charity…


Welcome to the tip of the mountain.

Make a wish, kids, because Blizzard just donated one million dollars to make your wish come true. Last year, Blizzard ran a two month long charity drive with a simple premise: Purchase a Pandaren Monk pet for $10 USD, and 50% of that purchase will go towards the Make-a-Wish foundation. Despite the usual complaints on the forums, over two hundred thousand of Blizzard’s subscribers pulled their wallets out and made a purchase during that time period.

Although 50% isn’t nearly as much of a percentage as I’d like to see companies (especially Blizzard) give from a non-tangible item that costs barely a couple hours to code into the game, given that the Pandaren wasn’t made for the charity, I think I can give it a pass. The sheer girth of the donation, combined with Blizzard being up front about how much they were donating, makes it an alright move in my books.

Meanwhile the PLEX for Haiti event ended last week on Eve Online, with more than forty thousand dollars being donated. In Eve Online, if players donated PLEX, it was converted directly into cash and sent to charity.

More on Blizzard, CCP, and Charity as it appears.

CCP: No, THIS Is How You Charity


How do you charity without donating money?

Inspiring rivalry between companies is one thing, but if given the opportunity, I would probably spur on a competition of who can think of the best way to get players giving to charity. To say that such a competition exists is probably morally reprehensible, but one can dream, in the form of “This is How You Charity.”

If there is one thing Eve Online is known for, it is the combat of real money trading by the ability to spend ISK on actual game time. A successful player can essentially play the game for free. Back in 2004, CCP held a charity drive where players could donate to the Asian tsunami relief. Now in 2010, they plan on doing the same for the Haiti earthquake relief.

Between January 29th and February 15th, players have the opportunity to donate their PLEX (30-day game cards that can be bought with in-game cash) to the “CCP PLEX for Haiti” character, which will be converted into cash, and 100% of the proceeds will be donated to charity. The Red Cross, specifically.

So get your Eve Online on..line, and get to donating!

King of the MMOFPS Hill: Sony Vs CCP Vs Blizzard Vs Infinity Ward


By this time in, oh I’ll go for a long shot, 2011 we should be seeing the outcome of the battle of the titans: Four major contenders looking to bring their best and brightest to the field and answer one question: Who will dominate the MMOFPS market? Granted, two of the contenders are not actually fully declared.

According to insider reports, Blizzard’s unnamed upcoming MMO will be split into two parts, a social aspect and a first person shooter. Virtually nothing is known about the MMO so far. Likewise, Infinity Ward is rumored to be working on a Call of Duty MMO, with Modern Warfare 3 being moved to another company. Of course, there is Sony Online Entertainment, with the recent announcement of Planetside 2, and the most confirmed of the group: DUST 514.

More after the break…

Continue reading “King of the MMOFPS Hill: Sony Vs CCP Vs Blizzard Vs Infinity Ward”

Direct2Drive and Impulse: Good Stuff Cheaper


And you thought Steam was the only digital download service that had Christmas specials. Once again, these prices are in USD.

Direct 2 Drive

Impulse

Continue reading “Direct2Drive and Impulse: Good Stuff Cheaper”

Blizzard: Don’t Copy Us


Look, it Harry Truman!

Harry Truman once said that, given the choice between a Republican and a Democrat pretending to be a Republican, people will always vote for the real Republican. Saying that, we can translate the phrase to our own MMO world with World of Warcraft, where when given the option of World of Warcraft and WoW clones, the majority will always stick with World of Warcraft.

Blizzard has caught in on this, with producer Shane Dabiri saying;

“I know that World of Warcraft is very successful, and so people think if they were to make another game just like it they could somehow capture that audience. However, I don’t think that’s what players are looking for.

“Players that have invested time in WOW don’t just want to do the same thing in other game – they want to try something completely new and different,”

Absolutely true. Let’s look at World of Warcraft’s biggest competition, shall we?

  1. Eve Online reports over three hundred thousand subscribers, a number that continues to rise. What differentiates Eve is that you’re not at a disadvantage because someone else has been playing longer than yourself. All ships have their weak spots, and knowing those weak points can help you turn a fight to your advantage. The free expansions are a nice addition.
  2. Lord of the Rings Online may be low on player vs player, but the game’s long arching storyline and plentiful free updates is where the draw comes in.
  3. Runescape, with over a million paying subscribers, thrives on the stat system, and weekly updates. Unlike many other MMOs, quests move above the boundary of kill, fetch, and kill/fetch, to create a world with a rich history.

Blizzard: Don't Copy Us


Look, it Harry Truman!

Harry Truman once said that, given the choice between a Republican and a Democrat pretending to be a Republican, people will always vote for the real Republican. Saying that, we can translate the phrase to our own MMO world with World of Warcraft, where when given the option of World of Warcraft and WoW clones, the majority will always stick with World of Warcraft.

Blizzard has caught in on this, with producer Shane Dabiri saying;

“I know that World of Warcraft is very successful, and so people think if they were to make another game just like it they could somehow capture that audience. However, I don’t think that’s what players are looking for.

“Players that have invested time in WOW don’t just want to do the same thing in other game – they want to try something completely new and different,”

Absolutely true. Let’s look at World of Warcraft’s biggest competition, shall we?

  1. Eve Online reports over three hundred thousand subscribers, a number that continues to rise. What differentiates Eve is that you’re not at a disadvantage because someone else has been playing longer than yourself. All ships have their weak spots, and knowing those weak points can help you turn a fight to your advantage. The free expansions are a nice addition.
  2. Lord of the Rings Online may be low on player vs player, but the game’s long arching storyline and plentiful free updates is where the draw comes in.
  3. Runescape, with over a million paying subscribers, thrives on the stat system, and weekly updates. Unlike many other MMOs, quests move above the boundary of kill, fetch, and kill/fetch, to create a world with a rich history.

Direct 2 Drive: Good Stuff Cheap


d2drive

Been thinking about picking up that MMO title, but don’t want to run the risk that your initial investment will be a dud? Direct 2 Drive has the answer for you. As part of their 5th year anniversary, you can pick up a few select MMO titles for just $5 USD. This week (Running from the 20th to the 26th), the following titles are only $5 (USD)

For those of you not looking to pick up any new MMO titles, there is a plethora of old and new titles on sale for five dollars, with a new range of titles every week. If you’ve been holding off buying Eve, Age of Conan, or Planetside, you have until this Saturday ends to snatch up a copy and get your free month.

If you have five dollars handy, you can choose between one of these titles and a foot long Subway sandwich. In my discredited opinion, the MMO might last longer.

Eve Online: The Exception To The Rule


02n

Some time ago I wrote an article discussing how games that have full, unrestricted PvP are doomed to fail. The games create a griefer’s paradise, where Player Vs Player combat is no longer about finding the most powerful person to take down, but rather how many people you can gank out of their starting area before you are removed for a few hours. Developers create the games with the knowledge that the title will be niche, but fail to realize just how many players will not make it past their first free month of gameplay.

Continue reading “Eve Online: The Exception To The Rule”

Operation Unholy Rage a Success


CCP’s contempt for Real Money Traders may seem slightly overblown in this title, but in his latest dev blog, GM Grimmi wants us completely sure that the Eve Online developer feels exactly that sentiment when the subject comes to RMT and players who buy and sell illegal isk (ingame currency). Eve Online has taken a two tier strategy to fighting Real Money Traders in the past, one of those being the ability to sell membership for isk, and the other being the support staff that are on hand to remove farmers as they pop up.

Eve Online has been trying to find the perfect formula for fighting gold farmers for years, and we’ve seen many mass bans on their part. Operation Unholy Rage, which went live on June 22nd, resulted in the banning of over six thousand paying accounts. Gm Grimmi is nice enough to provide us with a few charts, one of which I’ll refer to here.

Makes you wonder what the ratio of players to bots is.
Makes you wonder what the ratio of players to bots is.

Thanks to Operation Unholy Rage, the servers are back to their spacious…space, and resources are no longer being tied by up botters and macros. GM Grimmi also noted the instant impact on items, namely memory augmentation implants, noting that the immediate effect was a sharp increase in price and a pitfall in quantity supplied.

With all of these changes, however, the market has reportedly been overall unaffected by the string of mass bans. Players of games such as Runescape are well in tune with the effect massive amounts of real world trading and botting once had on the economy, and it’s fresh to see that the macroing didn’t manage to break the kneecaps of the economy on its way out.

If you’re an Eve Online player; Keep fighting the good fight. A large market of real world trading is conducted through hacked accounts, so keeping your password secure and difficult to guess is an absolute must. I normally don’t do your regular MMO news, but issues such as Real World Trading have a big effect on a game’s population. People who see the developers as not stopping real world trading will leave an MMO in droves. What CCP has shown for over four years straight is their dedication to keeping their game clean and enjoyable without hurting the legit players, and that is something to be truly commended.