Campaign Medals

One of the many interesting features of corporations in EVE Online… and probably not well known to people outside of the game… is the ability to create, design, and award medals to member of the corp.

I have long harangued our CEO, El Supremo, to implement some sort of honors systems for the corp.  There are all sorts of ways that you could go with this, but my focus has been on campaigns.  Ideally, anybody who actively participates in a campaign ought to get a medal for their profile.  My campaign list would look something like this:

• Branch and Tenal Campaign 2011-12
• Homeland Defense 2012
• Tribute and Vale Campaign 2012
• OTEC Operations Award 2012
• Delve Campaign 2012
• Homeland Defense 2013
• Liberation of Fountain 2013
• Delve Campaign 2013
• Curse Deployment 2013
• Halloween War 2013-14

In addition, in my vision of how things ought to be, there would also be awards for significant battles, such as:

• Missiles Free – Battle for EWN-2U, February 8, 2012
• In the Conga Line – The Siege of 319-3D, July 8-9, 2013
• Node? What Node? – Battle for Z9PP-H, July 4, 2013
• Remember the Lazamo – Battle for 3WE-KY, July 6, 2013 (With “Batshit Insane” device for those in Laz’s fleet)
• Let us Fofofofo in Fountain – Battle for G95F-H, July 20, 2013
• Victory in Fountain – Battle for 6VDT-H, July 29, 2013
• The Node is Primary – Battle for E-YJ8G, November 23, 2013
• Malthus was Right – Battle for HED-GP, January 18, 2014
• Slayer of Giants – Battle for B-R5RB, January 28, 2014

Maybe not all of those would deserve an award.  You might, as an example, just make a blanket award for having been in a battle that crashed a node.

These would be something like achievements, though being given out by fellow players and only available to members of your own corporation makes them more special.  At least if nobody is abusing the system.

Medals do not get used all that often in EVE Online however.  It can be time consuming to create them, they cost a small chunk of ISK for each one awarded, and the method for tracking and awarding them is buried in the usual atrocious CCP user interface.  Seriously, you think the UI is bad, and then you try to do corporation level functions and suddenly managing your overview seems pretty logical.

So, my hope is that, at some future date, CCP will cast its collective eyes on the medals system and turn it into something a bit more usable.

In the mean time my nagging had some impact.  I did get El Supremo to create medals for participation in the battle at B-R5RB and for being on a titan kill mail.

Order of Friendship

Hero of Socialist Labor

So you can see those on my in-game profile now.

The EVE Online Monument – They’ve Seen Some of Those Names, Right?

The big… well, sort of big… okay, barely noticed by those outside of the game… count down on the EVE Online web site has finished, and the big reveal has been… um… revealed!

CCP is building another monument.  This time it is going to be in the real world rather than the virtual.  A quote from the web page devoted to the monument,

We would like to, as best as we can, reflect the same beauty that you have shown us. To make you into art. To honor you in the real world as much as you have earned in the virtual. To immortalize the already immortal pilots of EVE.

To that end we are creating a monument to all EVE players whether they are currently flying or who have long docked their ships. A monument to players who are living and with us or who have sadly passed on.

CCP will immortalize players by engraving the names of the primary character on each account on the monument.

The Planned Monument

The criteria for name inclusion is described as:

The monument will stand atop a half meter tall metal-plated concrete platform that will have the names of all the “main characters” of all active EVE Online players etched upon it. This list of active, paying players will be captured on March 1st, 2014—no exceptions. In addition, CCP will be honoring EVE Online players who have passed away by adding their names to the monument, as described in the following section.

I wonder if this will create a subscriber spike as past players consider activating their accounts to be included on the monument?

The monument itself will be placed in a public space at Reykjavik harbor, not far from the CCP offices.  There will be an online web app to allow people to examine the monument and find names.  The monument is expected to be in place by April 30, 2014, followed by at least three update patches.

As linked above, more information about this can be found at the EVE Monument site.