It was an ugly Summer for CCP after the Incarna expansion for EVE Online went live. There was a lot of anger, conspiracy theories, inaccurate shorthand phrases, “leaked” “secrets,” oblivious corporate responses, and just damned lies about sentry drones. I will certainly have fodder for my “one year ago” summaries next year!
The whole Incarna debacle is kind of summed up for me in this picture.
The Immobile Hanger Door
That is the hanger door view that you got when you turned off the useless, resource hogging captain’s quarters that was the crown jewel of Incarna.
Gone was the view of my currently equipped ship, a helpful visual indicator when you have more than a dozen different vessels that you use for various tasks regularly, along with all the functionality that went with it… like being able to right click and open the cargo or drone bays. Ship spinning, one of the shorthand phrases that people grabbed on to, never had anything to do with it. It was the loss of functionality that had been there for years that was the pisser.
Anyway, that hanger door never had a chance to hit me on the ass I was out of the game so fast.
And I was far from alone.
But months have now gone by. The tumult at CCP has subsided. They have paid a price in people and projects and have promised to get back to the core elements of the game that people have been paying to play for the last 8+ years; flying in space, fighting in space. That is what people DO in EVE Online, right Hilmar?
And the first big milestone is today’s expansion, the 15th formal expansion for EVE Online, Crucible.
Crucible
It is intended to be EVE Reforged.
The patch notes for Crucible are long and filled to the brim with very tangible changes and updates to the core game. There seems to be something in there for just about everybody, from null sec warriors to empire care bears to those of us who just think space is pretty. Even trails are making a comeback along with a graphic update for my old warhorse, the Caldari Raven.
Crucible Raven – Pre-Release, with trails
CCP seems to be focused again on what matters to the players.
But will all of that remove the stink of Incarna. Players have long memories and there were a lot of bitter words spoken.
What do you think?
[Poll mysteriously disappeared… no idea why]
And will CCP still be around next year even if they are back on track?
The Ancient Gaming Noob 
I think that hangar door was the last straw for a lot of people. It might as well have had “F you, loyal customers!” printed across it, because there was absolutely no need to make that the only alternative to the pointless waste of time that was Captain’s Quarters.
Despite that, it sounds to me like they’ve learned something. Time will tell.
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I was one of the ones who un-subbed my alt accounts over the summer. Although a step in the right direction we’ll have to see if they can hold the course over the next patch or two. EVE always was and to an extent probably always will be about the future potential of the game rather than the game itself. Well that and the single server architecture and the in-game economy and what not.
They still pander too much to the Greifer mentality to ever become popular, but there’s still no competition out there for EVE. Zip, Zero, Nada. But that just means they’ll always be vulnerable to competition one day should it arrive. They just had a good lesson on how “on edge” they keep their player base. They’re just lucky they don’t currently have any competition. If they had this summer’s consequences would have been MUCH more severe.
Na, they’ll still be around. It was never about EVE not being profitable, it was about chewing off more than they should have development project wise. A look at the company finances revealed that. They seem to have gotten their shit under control (back-shelffing WoD and concentrating on EVE and getting DUST out the door and laying off 120-ish people) and back within the means the revenue stream of EVE can support. So don’t look for them to go under.
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I read through the expansion release notes–garde sentry drones were missing their firing animations (before today)–fixed.
Should be an interesting week. With all the changes, CCPs ability to launch the expansion smoothly will be tested.
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@Gaff – What, again? Damn, the web site is down at the moment so I cannot check. I should have copied it into a text file.
@Letrange – You had a good comment, but you commented on the poll rather than the post. I moved that over to your comment here. I hope you do not mind. And I should remember to disallow poll comments. I always forget to do that.
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@Letrange–I unsubbed all my accounts this summer too. However, the $5 dollar resub special (pointed out to me by Wilhelm) was enough of an incentive to come back.
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I used the $20/2 month deal to resub as well, but the game just did not keep me interested enough to continue paying even with Crucible coming out. Everything takes too long and PVE is still boring beyond belief.
Eve is not a casual game, and not having too much time hurts the experience.
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The way I view it, if Incarna and the aftermath showed that EVE fans will vote-with-cash when things are bad, will they vote-with-cash when they get a bittervet-fueled expansion?
For the sake of the genre as a whole, I hope so.
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I never unsubbed, i kept my accounts running and training skills, but can almost count on one hand the nr of times i have been logged in since around maj-jun.
I had already started to grow tired of CCP’s stunts during the 18 month perion of no EVE development previous to incarna.
The 10+ hours of ontime logged some day’s might had also have something to do with my little temporary EVE burnout :-)
Glad to see it’s pulling back on acourse it never should have strayed from in the first place.
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I unsubbed after my game time and a couple refer a friend free 30 days ran out (amusingly two people I’d referred paid for their accounts after I gave up Eve in disgust after Incarna), training all the time, but barely playing at all, other than to refresh skills and a few market orders (though by the end I was letting all those slide as well).
It’s nice that CCP are listening to players again, but with EQ1’s TLP servers taking up my MMO time I just don’t care enough to return to Eve’s brutal gankfest of a world. Especially as the system requirements now leave my four year old computer in the dust, and to get decent performance even at new ‘low quality’ graphics settings I need to spend a couple grand.
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