I say they devote the expansion to ships and space then start a Kickstarter...

...to raise more money for ships and space.

Your idea is new and original. And also in the wrong place.

I don't care, F&I is the graveyard of all good ideas, mine deserves to stay here.

Let the players who want WiS to be finished (myself included) raise money via Kickstarter so that CCP can hire external developers to finish off WiS. This way the entire playerbase can get the best of both worlds, inhouse dev's working on FiS, external dev's working on WiS.

CCP, may avoid taking this route because they think it might harm their reputation as a company but everyone knows CCP are pretty radical and innovative. Why not let us (who want WiS) help you expand on EVE by letting you hire more dev's especially for WiS.

Your idea deserves to be buried under concrete.

Ok time to break out some maths.

500K sub base. Assuming average alt count is 4 equals 125K actual players. Assuming 3% of the playerbase cares about WiS enough to donate equals 3750 players. Assuming 0.1% of those are capable and willing to donate meaningful amounts equals about 4 people. Lets see, you'll need a dev team of about 5 people minimum if you want this in the next decade and assuming $62,000 USD per dev for their salary plus inter-corp support costs & entrepreneurial costs means it would cost about $620,000 per year to fund meaning you, as an individual, would have to donate $155,000 per year for WiS to work.

And then there's the whole topic of whether or not WiS could actually work beyond one avatar and a closet. Going by the beta test CCP forced upon it's playerbase I doubt most of them would be willing or able to purchase their own supercomputer to render hundreds of avatars in expansive environments.

Ok time to break out some maths.

500K sub base. Assuming average alt count is 4 equals 125K actual players. Assuming 3% of the playerbase cares about WiS enough to donate equals 3750 players. Assuming 0.1% of those are capable and willing to donate meaningful amounts equals about 4 people. Lets see, you'll need a dev team of about 5 people minimum if you want this in the next decade and assuming $62,000 USD per dev for their salary plus inter-corp support costs & entrepreneurial costs means it would cost about $620,000 per year to fund meaning you, as an individual, would have to donate $155,000 per year for WiS to work.

And then there's the whole topic of whether or not WiS could actually work beyond one avatar and a closet. Going by the beta test CCP forced upon it's playerbase I doubt most of them would be willing or able to purchase their own supercomputer to render hundreds of avatars in expansive environments.

[quote=Mr Kidd]
Hence. Ditch WoD, put that team on EVE Avatar and let them create a modular game capable of running from within EVE Online. They can work out how their funding streams will work and whatever is useful after EVE Online gets to be used for WoD.

WoD has been in development for years, and has been in the works ever since the White Wolf merger. It's not going to be scrapped.

As for Incarna, a corp meeting room and a bar with a poker table is all I really want to see. Past basic socialization and corp meetings, new Incarna features probably hurt more than they add to the game. It seems like development is already most of the way towards this goal, considering the CARBON framework obviously has multi-player support that hasn't been implemented in Eve's Incarna.

You all realize that WIS is already out.. DUST??

Houm. To keep it simple, let's consider 400.000 subs x 15 usd/sub/month =72 million USD/year (factors subs worth less than 15 usd, PLEX trade and the chinese and japanese subscribers)

Cloud Imperium Games is developing Star Citizen, whose funds are a bit short of 8.4 million USD, and that's going to be spent developing an AAA game in 2 years.

Of course, CIG is not running the most powerful server in industry and so and so. CCP's operational expenses are obviously higher than a game in development. Also, there is some "production magic", aka using an off the shelve engine and hiring a 3rd party with ample expertise to do the hard work (no need to reinvent the wheel), so CIG can stay small and yet afford the manpower needed for an AAA title. Having in charge guy like Chris Roberts doesn't hurt, neither.

But the point is that a whole AAA game costs less than two months of CCP's income.

If CCP can't undertake that kind of effort, well, sure they have their reasons. All in all they're developing three games on a single income source. Obviously I feel they're cheating us by developing WoD in a way that can't be used in EVE, which means that EVE is not planned to get any avatar content in any scheduled time, but for some reason CCP hasn't said that.

Avatars are the mother of all half-assed features abandoned for years to come until further iteration -and they've established a record for being the first featureless feature ever implemented in EVE.

It's a pity and a shame, but it's the way it is.

Ain't gonna happen.

CCP got "into bed" with SONY for DUST... so guess where most (almost all ?) the dev "resources" are going ?

You only have to look as far the "fantasy" MMO that has pretty much gotten ignored like a fugly prom date... so I wouldn't expect CCP to have the surplus resources for character avatars and station environments in WIS, either.

EVE is real -- and so are the resource limitations at CCP.