I ended up with a Friday bullet points post that was all about EVE Online. A few things have come up that I wanted to note, but about which I couldn’t quite muster a full blog post.
Just a nice picture of a Caracal in Fountain Space
Tech III New Eden Cluster
We got news earlier this week via a video blog from CCP Seagull that EVE Online had been moved to an upgraded server cluster in a new location. This accounted for some of the extra downtime we saw around last weekend. But hopefully the new hardware means good things for the future… like less TiDi.
Downtime and the 200,000 Skill Point Gift
As an incentive for those who were subscribed during the rocky patch during the server move, CCP is giving every character that had an active skill queue between February 24 and March 1 200,000 skill points. That doesn’t seem like much in the age of skill injectors, but it is still about four days training… and it seems pretty good for somebody who can only get 150,000 skill points out of an injector.
Skill Injectors are Made out of People!
The Skill Injector mania appears to be carrying on. A few weeks of the things have yet to sate appetites in New Eden. My favorite tale of the past week was from Gevlon, who has been making ISK by harvesting the character bazaar, buying up characters that were undervalued in relation to their total skill points, stripping them, and selling the resulting skill injectors. The main problem seemed to be the active yet mind numbingly boring way each character has to get processed.
Still, the whole thing makes me wonder if there is any future for the character bazaar, the existence of which was used to help justify the introduction of skill injectors. Why would you buy a strange character with which you held no affinity when you can simply boost up the skills on a character you made yourself?
February Economic Update
CCP Quant has some graph porn in the form of an economic update from New Eden. The raw data that makes up the graphs appears to be available for download. Add those charts in with the skill injector charts we got last week.
Kickstarter Op Success
I got my hardbound copy of Andrew Groen’s Empires of EVE Book this week. I haven’t had a chance to really sit down with it yet, but I can already tell there is a problem with… it isn’t enough. It will need a sequel or something, because the story carries on from what was covered. I want more already.
Also, I think that screen shot on page 145 is a Hurricane fleet and not a Machariel fleet. Actually, I am pretty sure it is this picture. (Yay, a screen shot I took is in the book!)
Asher Speaks about the Casino War
Finally, over on the Asher Hour podcast, the leader of the Reavers and the 23rd best FC in the Imperium had Imperium Skymarshall Kcolor and fellow Reaver Azure and Argent (just one person despite that name) on the show to talk about the war in and around Fade and some of the mechanics behind what is going on. A decent discussion without too much Imperium cheer leading. Your mileage may vary.
https://soundcloud.com/eve-asher/the-asher-hour-week-16-with-guest-kcolor-azure-and-argent
The Ancient Gaming Noob 