I wondered how was EVE preparing to face the might of David Braben's latest work on the
Elite series. But then I looked at EVE's latest patch pictures and I saw what they did there!
These new mobile structures, the
Mobile Depot and the
Mobile Siphon Unit... where have I seen this kind of design? Maybe in some of Elite: Dangerous ships like the
Sidewinder, the
Viper or even the
Cobra???
What about the new
ISIS guide? Wait a minute... I think I've seen something from Elite: Dangerous like that aswell... was it the
starmap? Yes, I remember it now!
Omg, even
EVE's website front page now has a yellow button like the
Elite: Dangerous' site and it's new
store! ED webmasters even had to change their button's color to orange to stay original!
This attempt to clone Elite:Dangerous assets comes as another sign of serious confidence loss within CCP's direction, despite claims made by its CEO in
this interview, where he states that "It's easy to go and look at all the new shiny things that are coming but we don't want to be doing that. We want to stick to our guns".
It's somewhat understandable that CCP's stakeholders might be afraid to lose costumers to a game like Elite, the godfather of space trading and combat simulators and a pioneer in 3d computer graphics and procedural generation, that served as role model for EVE Online itself aswell as other games like Wing Commander and Freelancer.
ED's early backer rewards program has recently closed with over 40.000 backers donating over -ú2 million pounds of crowdfunding swag. The alpha build is now live. (If you aren't lucky enough to be one of the backers with Alpha build access, you can check
this twitch feed for streamers.) Open world sandbox and space simulation fans are highly optimistic about the game and anxious to get their hands on the final release.
And it's not for less. The game is looking gorgeous and will give players the freedom to roam/resource gather/trade/pirate/fight in more than 100 billion procedurally generated star systems (including our own) with moving celestials, real 1:1 scale and physics. Oculus Rift support is currently working on the alpha build, future expansions confirmed by Braben include avatar gameplay, atmospheric entry and planet landing/exploration. The game will have no monthly fees but they do plan on charging for these expansions. Early backers who funded -ú80 or more will have free access to all of them, besides the satisfaction of knowing they helped once more to
kick big publishers in the nuts with another epic crowdfunded project
Will this game kill EVE? Will we abandon New Eden forever? Of course not, but it will surely hurt CCP's finances, not only by attracting a lot of its current playerbase but also by offering a fresh and high quality game to the space sandbox MMO genre newcomers.
EVE could be top dog in the industry by offering a top quality product to the players, but CCP decided to pursue other ventures and is now playing catch-up with its new competition.
Care to share your thoughts?