What do I think? Where to start. Fold a paper in half, number 1 to 100 down each side and call it list A. Perhaps start with the devs’ “harden the fuck up” attitude (Who’s your daddy now?). Add to that Greed 2 play ($60 dollar monocles), CCP refusing to do anything about suicide ganking (no I haven’t lost a ship to it but it throws a stadium size wet towel on game play). Top it off with a heavy dose of forcing “captain’s quarters” (or should I say walking in a room in a station) on players before it was ready just to get a few extra bucks out of us – and add an apology by your CEO after you have lost 20 percent of the player base that seems less than serious. Want to know more? Go to our website noprisonersnomercy.com or listen to our radio show.

Here it is the end of a month (Let’s see “thirty days has September, April, June and November…yep end of a month) – and the perfect time to give a little used game the old “heave-ho”.    While I did take the time to answer CCP’s “why did you quit” question I doubt anyone there will ever care.  Despite Apologies by CCP Hellmar (which seem less than serious when so much of the player base was lost) I am sure the dev’s at the top are still busy believing the player base should “harden the fuck up”  when the proverbial cameras are turned off. Saddly, it is the front line employees that always pay the price for such attitudes. Will the Crucible patch solve the problems?  I don’t know, but after theyhave had to give so many of their employees the boot it doesn’t really matter. 

As for me, the fact that I thought about this for two months and played the game for six years show either my dedication to the game or my gullibility (I am not sure which).   In the end, all I can say  to CCP is, “baby it’s not me it’s you.”

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather

For those of you who may not be aware of it, CCP, who develop and publish Eve online  has laid off 20 percent of it’s work force.  Sort of ironic that this is the same amount of players they recently lost.   What has me upset about this is more why anyone at CCP had to lose their job.  As I have seen as a project manager with more than 20 years experience it may be the guy (or woman) at the top who makes the colossal mistake but it is the work-a-day front line employees who pay for the mistake. The recent “apology” by Hilmar Veigar Petursson, CEO of CCP leaves us with one basic lesson that screams itself across the rooftops…

In any business, if you are going to have an attitude like you are the 800 pound gorilla on the block you had better damn well BE the 800 pound gorilla on the block.

And even Blizzard has a hard time pulling that off these days.  While the apology seems less than sincere after one’s attitude has lost 20 percent of the player base, it seems even less sincere now – but for many reasons.  First, in business, my thought has always been that anyone who wants to lay off employees should start with their own job.  Another, and much lesser factor, is the way that CCP announced their intent to modify the game mechanic planetary action – it wasn’t discussed it was just simply thrust upon the players.  Here is a telling reaction from the forums:

I dislike ccp saying we thinking of this then after negative comments saying well this is how it is, its already done for deployment. This could have severe impacts on the economy and ccp has not sampled a large enough player base.  – Pat Irvam

Only Mr. Petursson himself will know how sincere the apology was, but I not only agree with Pat Irvam’s take, but it seems that as a corporate entity they should have added two words onto the end of the apology…

NO REALLY.

Obviously no one expects all the developers out there to check with the player base every time they make a change to the game.  But this isn’t just any developer and this isn’t just any mmo.  There are no other MMOs quite like Eve Online and none of them enable the player base to shape the virtual world through emergent gameplay quite like this one. We understand from our recent discussions with Tipa from West Karana, Steve Jobs never used focus groups I will just bet Mr. Jobs had a much better feel for his market than CCP has for theirs.  Basically what it comes down to is this – when you are walking on thin ice already you don’t start stomping around.   Focus and focus groups should have been the words of the day. It’s nice to have a vision but when you market any product you must first make sure that product meets the needs of the consumer, not try and get the consumer to accept your vision of the way things should be done.  And while there are those who will say at this juncture “hind sight is 20-d0″ the fact of the matter is that we have been saying this about CCP for the last three years.

About Planetary Interaction

I will let  you google the planetary interation game mechanic yourselves, but basically it puts all of the control of low security and null security planetary interaction firmly in the  hands of large corporations and veteran players. And in the process kicks the new players to the curb.  Hopefully Dust 514 will change that, and I am sure CCP is hoping it will.  But limiting it to just the PS3 is a decsion they will doubtless come to regret in months to come.

At first I thought I might be alone in my thinking about the new take on planetary interaction – until I went to the forums and saw page after page of  what follows.  Perhaps its just me, but with the player base reacting the way they are, and the financial difficulties the company faces, it seems they can’t afford to tick off any more of their players.

Basicaly you have just anexed my sorce of income and given the keys to the biggest Alliance around……thanks for f**k all! – Scarlett Ninja

Well just the other day I was clicking clicking clicking while setting up new planets and wondering what was wrong with me. I kept thinking that any of my real life friends would think I was crazy to spend so much time doing something that wasn’t fun in any way shape or form. And now I find that there will be absolutely no profit in any of that work and I will lose my low sec planets as well.

Thanks for giving me some good motivation for canceling my three accounts CCP!  – Dalloway Jones
 
I’m sorry, while this sounds like an interesting ideal, I don’t think CCP has the ability to roll this out and not completely f’up the entire PI base. Look at the initial PI introduction and the problems and bugs that came with it. Do you really think they have the skill and patience to actually properly test this on SiSi like none of their other expansions-with-bugs.

CCP’s history of rife with introduction and disinterest of new features. They like to start something but become bored with details and move to the next shiny new thing. The tax situation and roles are complicated and will need constant tweaking. I’m afraid this will be another faction war roll out. They will put it in there with all sorts of grand promises of doing something to tweak and fix but it will never occur. How many years has it been since anything was done to FW and now it is a place to get LP.

I especially find humorous the ideal that defense will be “new corporations coming together”. They blatantly admit that there is no way to defend or prevent massive griefing and they “hope” the solution is people play well together. They don’t see the irony in the current super-cap cluster blobs that roam around without any counter. I guess PL sitting in low sec with all their supers will play nice with the local corps wanting to do PI…maybe those small corps can come together and try to convince 1 super cap pilot to go agaubst the PL fleet in defense

This seems targeted at the oldest and largest alliances, this is a huge buff for them and a shot in the nuts for everyone else. I like how this is admitted with the statement “the small guy should use CONCORD owned custom offices.” CCP knows these small guys will leave low sec now and fill the population of empire dwellers, leaving null and low even less populated.
 
- Buruk Utaa
 
 Great, so now someone who runs PI in a quiet low sec system on a small scale basis is screwed.
Now they have to put up PI structures within said quiet low sec system, with a “blow me up” sign on them.

Small scale low end PI in low sec is now dead for small corps.
Once again, CCP has developed something for the huge alliances, and screwed the little guy.

It is one thing to dodge the gankers in low sec to do PI, it quite another to fight alliances.

All hail the megacorps and mega alliances.
 
- Dinsdale Pirannha
 
Some final words: this NOT a good change, but I’m very glad that you have posted a public discussion about it way before the deployment. If you want more inter-player interaction to expand the sandbox and give players the possibility to prosper even if they are not members of large alliances, you’ll have to find a way to give freedom to the players and limit corporate monopoly over every single industrial activity in the game. (like mentioned, inter-command center transfers between players and ways to collaborate on the planet on player-to-player level).

Btw. do you think that Gallente ice prices are scary just because of a couple of days of suicide gankings? Deploy this change to PI as a permanent feature and see what happens to the economy.

Definitely not supported.
 
- The Offerer
 
Basicaly you have just anexed my sorce of income and given the keys to the biggest Alliance around……thanks for f**k all!
- Scarlett Ninja
 
I dislike ccp saying we thinking of this then after negative comments saying well this is how it is, its already done for deployment. This could have severe impacts on the economy and ccp has not sampled a large enough player base.  – Pat Irvam

CCP has also added the old hangar interface functionality back into the EVE client, and users with sub-optimal Incarna computer specs (or those who simply hate walking in stations) can opt to turn off the game’s captain’s quarters and party like it’s 2010. – Massively

I was originally excited to be walking in stations.  Even walking in a room in a station was cool at first – for about 30 seconds.  Then it turned into walking in a room in a station with a stick up my ass.  The room in a station had no functionality beyond simply being there. Nothing.  If you bought something special to wear for that “night on the town” or that special date…

Let’s just say that date had better go no further than the front door.   Much like I found with Everquest II, even if you have the biggest house on the best block with the best decorations what do you do? Invite friends over? That only lasts so long.  Ramble around in the big empty house?  Sometimes material possessions are just as meaningless even when they are virtual.

Sort of like real life.

The thing is, when you see what other developers have done with their game engines, and as example I  point to Turbine, there is little reason for the frame rate to drop so drastically “in station” beyond poor game design.  This was especially frustrating when the rest of the game ran so well.

So I never thought I would say it, but I am happy that soon I will no longer have to ever “walk in a room in a station.”   Hopefully the devs at CCP will wait until walking in stations actually is walking in stations and is ready to release before it comes back to haunt us again.

As for the ship spinning?  I could care less.

See  you online,

Julie Whitefeather

CCP is so very sorry for not listening you...you should have rioted sooner.

It might not be easy for some people to say they are sorry – but when it is said after you have lost 20 percent (Via Tobold’s blog) an apology seems less than sincere. For those not already in the know, the CEO of CCP apologized for all of the recent decisions that the company has made.

He apologize for trying to cram a meaningless Captain’s quarters down everyone’s throat and attempting to make us like it.  Grand father would have told them this requires the mastery of being able to “tell people to go to hell and make them like it”…and trust me, CCP is a far cry from being able to do this.  Their apology for an “underwhelming virtual goods rollout” sounded a bit more like “we’re sorry you didn’t understand us than anything else.

Their CEO tells us all in his letter “Good things are coming. They always do when you learn from your mistakes.”  It’s difficult to believe that any company can be so out of touch with their community that they either can’t, or won’t  admit it until the ship starts to take on water and the game starts hemoraging players.  Are CCP truly “sorry” have they seen the light?  Only those who trod the hollowed halls of the Icelandic company know for sure.

But one thing we DO know for sure…

As often as we have said here at No Prisoners, No Mercy, and as often developers and publishers alike have run askance of it, one would think the lesson would have been learned by now.  You may have a “vision” for your game but you can’t shove that vision down the players throats.  You can’t tell them what they should have – once your product hits the shelves what matters is what THEY want not YOU.  My marketing instructor back in grad school would just say “marketing is making your product meet the needs of the consumer.”

As for us, we just call it common sense.

See you online,

The No Prisoners, No Mercy Team.

Recently John Smedley pronounced the subscription model dead on arrival. While he was busy pounding nails in its coffin, however, EA is betting a mountain of money  on it not being over.  Free 2 play may be the business model of the day with a developer and publisher (and now even investors) run to jump on the Turbine bandwagon.  Still, it is the many odd iterations of free 2 play that not only get my goat, but tie it to a bumper and drag it around the block.

Oh at first it took the form of a few innocent starry ponies, and pets a plenty in Blizzard online virtual pet shops.  Before long the trend picked up speed and we ended up with $60.00 virtual monocles as CCP (developers and publishers of Eve Online) tried to have their cake, my cake, and your cake and eat all of it too.

Still stranger is that what all this turns on is the long promised “walking in stations” – or as I have come to think of it in its most recent incarnation “walking in a room in a station.”  Of late CCP has been devoting much of its resources to bring us all new rooms to walk in where no one will ever see us.  Recently they announced they will be redecorating those rooms where no one will ever see us, based on the virtual culture of each pilot.

It all sounds exciting and like a kid with a new toy it is…for about five minutes.  Anyone who has ever set foot in a virtual room in Eve Online will see that it isn’t just “walking in a room in a station” it is “walking in a room in a station like you have a 2 by 4 shoved up your posterior.  While some people have pointed out that CCP is using a different game engine than companies like Bethesda and Turbine, that is the point – there is no reason for the frame rate to drop through the floor.  Even at that, Incarna lends nothing to the game.  As George Carlin once put it, all the virtual room in a station is, is a place to put your crap while CCP tries to think of more crap to sell you to put in the room you didn’t need in the first place.

It would be different if this really was free 2 play.

It would be different if the room in a station that Incarna gave us actually accomplished something. If it served ANY purpose what so ever.

But it doesn’t.

It’s a trend, like the local paper where I live called the Herald.  Recently they announced they were going to be charging for online access.  I haven’t got problem with that.  What I do have a problem with, is a publisher who takes so much printed news out of the paper that it becomes the daily pamphlet…and THEN tells us if we want the rest of what they were selling us (already priced higher than the major Chicago newspapers) we will have to pay even more for it.

What it’s all about is a new business model that doesn’t seem limited to the game development industry.  It has nothing whatsoever to do with “free 2 play.” It’s a little something I call…

GREED 2 PLAY.

Our good friend R.W. Harper has been kind enough to allow me the privilege of publishing my Eve Online fiction on his Lorewriter.com site.  Not only that, I am in good company as Rod himself and his cousin, Dedra Stevenson (both published authors) also write for the web site.  The latest part to the story, Splintered Reality – part 11 – over the hill can be read here.

Tajqa “Taj’”:

A former pod pilot, Tajqa once stretched her senses out across the stars, plying the spaceways as a pod pilot in ships that cost more than the gross national product of many nations. She was like a living computer, the ships sensors plugged into her mind, and her pod plugged into the interceptor. As an interceptor pilot her nerves were stretched so tight they would play high g – She was like a living computer, the ships sensors plugged into her mind, and her pod plugged into the interceptor. Then the day came that her pod malfunctioned (or so she was told) and she remembered dying. To be sure, she still works for the Kaalakota corporation. Now, however, instead of screaming through space in her Stiletto class interceptor she wakes up screaming each night in the Charon freighter where she now works and calls home.

Brighde Blackwolf:

Brighde met Tajqa by simple reason of the fact that she snored like a backhoe and was the only person who would bunk with Taj on the Charon freighter on which they both worked. Not that Taj’ was universally dislike (she was) but simply by virtue (if it can be called such) of what Brighde has come to know as “the 2:00” scream which was so regular those unfortunate to hear it could set their watch by it. Brighde is a woman of the world (actually many worlds) – including the planet in the Bania system upon which she and Tajqa have just crash landed.

Brighde is half Minmatar on her mother’s side.

Charlie:

Charlie is a veteran Blood Raider pirate upon whom has fallen the unfortunate weeding out of a class of “wannabe” recruits by way of a raid on a Charon freighter. It is the same freighter, as fate would have it, upon which Brighde and Tajqa make their living.

Rip “Ripper” Montenago.

Rip is Charlie’s neophyte co-pilot. He is also a former member of the Amarr branch of Concord, the multi-national/muli-world police force that keeps the “secure” in high security space. Rip left the police force of his own accord (or so he maintains). People outside the concord thought Rip was a bit of a wack job and were sure he wasn’t the sort of man you would want on the front lines with you. People inside Concord knew better. Oh there was no doubt about the fact that Rip really was a wack job. And he certainly wasn’t the sort of person you wanted in the front lines with you. But in any given situation when a real shooting war started, Rip was precisely the sort of person that you wanted out in front of you. Rip eventually left Concord in search for even bigger guns than could be carried over a shoulder or dropped from an aircraft – and he found them.   

“It is CCP‘s plan that the Noble Exchange (NeX store) will be used for the sale of vanity items only. There are no plans, and have been no plans, as per previous communication and CSM meetings, to introduce the sale of game breaking items or enhancements in the NeX store.

The investment of money in EVE should not give you an unfair advantage over the investment of time. The CSM, under NDA, has been presented with CCP‘s plans for continued evolution of the business model and agrees that nothing they saw breaks this principle. CCP has committed to sharing their plans with the CSM on this front on an ongoing basis.” – CCP Zulu aka Arnar Hrafn Gylfason, Senior Producer, Eve Onine.

Peak Performance…

What we say and what we do…

Back on the block…

It’s a classic…

Eve Online, finally has the ability to get out of your ship!

I’ve got legs….

That was my first comment upon opening Eve Online with the first stage of Incarna active.  Having spent  years “being the spaceship”  I got so tired of it I could just puke on my shoes.  And now I have legs. What is more I had a sofa I could sit on and watch the news from Concord.   For those who aren’t in the know, for the first time the first step has been taken toward the long awaited “walking in stations”.  For the first time players have actual avatars and not just portraits.

It didn’t matter that my main pilot walked around like she had a 2×4 shoved up her bum, for the first time she was out of the space ship.   I understand that things take a bit of time to code properly, especially when you are trying to create a virtual universe that spans the medium of pc games to console games – hardly an easy task and certainly ground breaking.

And what has this and every other addition to Eve Online cost players?

Nothing.

That’s right. It was free.  In a world where publishers charge for additional downloadable content  as a regular basis, CCP gave out their hard work for the taking.  It appears that contrary to what grandmother used to say, occasionally there is at least a complimentary dessert, even if the entire meal isn’t free.

Much ado about monocle.

You thought the Blizzard $25 dollar pony was expensive? How about the CCP $61.00 monocle?  Much ado is often made about “subscription plus” business plans in the world of game development.  Every time a subscription based game opens a cash shop a hue and cry arises that would shake the mountains to their very roots.  Still, the main difference between cash shops such as offered by Blizzard (home of the famous $25.00 starry pony) and that on offer by CCP is what lays at it’s heart – real money trading (RMT).  RMT in World of Warcraft is a quick trip to a permanent ban. While CCP would have us believe the same thing that’s not exactly what they mean.  Trading in real money for virtual currency (Isk in this case) is acceptable as long as CCP is your pimp…er….I mean they are the ones getting cash.

As Eve Online players know, but seem to forget at convenient times,  all you have to do is buy a “plex” (also called a “thirty day pilot license) from CCP (sold in lots of two) and sell them in game to get somewhere between 310 and 350 million isk per.  What does this mean? It means that while players are griping about a “leaked” (and we wonder if it was leaked or fabricated) internal memo reporting that “Not all virtual purchases will focus on customization” (source:  Evenew24 http://www.evenews24.com/2011/06/22/greed-is-good-purportedly-leaked-internal-bulletin-shows-ccps-refreshing-new-direction/ ) this is nothing new.   The truth of the matter is that with the exception of things like system sovereignty, just about everything in Eve Online can be had for a price…so long as you are willing to shell out enough cash to CCP.   It has been this way for some time now.  The only difference is that when you say “cash shop” gamers seem to have an autonomous response that screams “I TOLD YOU THE SUN WOULD FINALLY EXPLODE”.

That, of course, is what the proverbial excrement finally hit the fan and CCP reacted to the outrage by players in a blog entitled “Fearless Virtual Goods and Rage” (Source: http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=932).   Still, two days ago in a blog entitled “The Realities of Eve (http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=934) found Arnar Hrafn Gylfason a/k/a CCP Zulu, Senior Producer for Eve Online apologizing.

The tone and demeanor of my blog on Friday did not correctly portray my emotions towards the community and player base at large. I love and respect EVE and its community on a level that’s hard to really do justice in words. However I let my frustration take charge of me, fueled by emotions that had built up due to a breach of trust we at CCP have been experiencing over the past few days. I know that sounds ironic considering those are the exact same feelings you have been having towards CCP.

For that I am sorry.

Oddly enough, if you read CCP Zulu’s blog from last Friday, there wasn’t all that much to apologize for except high prices.  The fact that he apologized at all is surprising when the usual reaction from industry counterparts in other successful  development companies would have been something along the lines of “don’t let the door hit you on  the ass on the way out.”  In the end the answer to whatever objections any player may have to what they consider objectionable policies is simple…now that you have legs for walking they can walk out the door.  Eve isn’t the only game on the block anymore.

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather

When the late great comedian Richard Pryor appeared on stage after completing drug rehab he spoke of how things had changed for him.  He told the audience when he was on drugs he would go into the men’s room, step up to the urinal and then say “look out boys I going to shake it to the left”.  When he came off drugs he said he would look down at himself he would say “who put that baby pee-pee down there?”

Long before David Mamet ever thought to use “Bambi vs. Godzilla”  an animator named Marv Neman produced a short feature (see below) named Bambi Meets Godzilla”.

They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue.  That‘s the  Chicago way!” – Sean Connery as Jim Malone, The Untouchables (1987)

In the quote above Sean Connery could as well have said “That’s the New Eden way!”.  Always remember, as you fly the unfriendly skies of Eve, if you live the Jim Malone’s philosophy of life, so too does the next guy.

If he brings a battleship you bring a Titan. If he turns your ship into salvage, you send him to the cloning vats. That’s the New Eden way!

In Eve Online nothing is what it seems. In fact, it is probably the only mmo on the market where players swindling other players is actually a feature.  Read the fine print – that contract labeled “Caldari Navy Raven” for 650,000 isk is actually a run of the mill, right off the factory floor Raven worth 87,000 isk.  That player  in local chat who claims to be quitting Eve Online and selling all their ore for the “low, low price of…” is actually selling the ore for a ONE THOUSAND percent markeup.  When you buy or sell ANYTHING make sure you count the number of zeros in  the buy order you are filling – there is a reason that the system warns you that you are buying something for THREE HUNDRED PERCENT above market. 

Remember the advice from when you used to play poker back in the day…

Trust you mother, but cut the cards.