Vertisce Soritenshi wrote:I would say I know about 10 or so individuals that are currently interested in DUST that have never or simply don't play EVE. Out of those 10 or so only 2 of them have no interest in EVE at all. The others either are interested and have no time for EVE or intend to give EVE a try when they start playing DUST. I am certain that my small sample of friends means jack squat but I seriously doubt that DUST will have no beneficial impact on EVE's population. The more diversity EVE has, the better chance it has of growing in popularity.
See, out of all those people, what stopped 8 of them from playing EVE before? Those who had no time for EVE, likely still won't have time after Dust. And those intending to give EVE a try after they start playing Dust? Why wait? Dust is months and months away yet, EVE has been out for well over 9 years.
The way I see it, people who were interested in EVE, already tried it and either are still around or quit. And Dust won't bring them suddenly back, if they wrote off EVE already. And the gamers today had 9 years of EVE to do it in. Dust isn't going to suddenly make someone who had zero interest in EVE or spaceships jump out and yell "Man, I gotta get me some of that!" Just like playing Battlefield 3 doesn't make most people suddenly drop everything and go play a nice game of chess.
Despite what CCP says, they haven't really explained how the games would be linked at all. How will I, as EVE player, interact with a Dust bunny? Via chat window? That's not particularly fun. Have you ever chatter with someone online while you're playing one game and your friend is playing something entirely different? It's not as awesome as it sounds. You tell him "OMG, I just killed a Drake!" and he'll go "There's dragons in EVE?!" See what I mean?
But maybe it's just me. On one hand I'm happy they're diversifying and all that. But doing on PS3? When PS4 will be coming out in 2013-2014 at the latest? Huge mistake. Not to mention PS3 has been an absolute nightmare in recent years, I know hardcore PS3 fans that sold their consoles and are not going back. The whole security breach thing a few years back? The new EULA that basically says "no matter what we do to you, you can't sue us in class action". And even now, all other platforms have Skyrim DLC available...except PS3...which still has none. And that's just a few examples. And this is the basket CCP is putting its Dust egg into? Classy.
And WOD? I'm sorry, but how long since it was announced? And have we seen any gameplay footage, at all? Nope. Unless you count camera flying around an empty map without any NPCs or, god forbid, actual players? And the map is about 10% size of an average FPS game map. Woo, totally worth it? Now, compare that to Star Citizen that was announced a few months ago, and we've already seen pre-alpha footage of dogfighting, cockpit view, avatar movement, etc., etc. Though, fingers crossed, we might see something WOD-related at FanFest...5 months from now!
Maybe I'm beginning to suffer from a bitter vet syndrome, but I really think WiS was EVE's best hope to remain viable. Rebalancing old spaceships and changing how flagging works, while very much needed, isn't going to bring old players back, or new players in.