Stupid short term money grab, "getting players to resub for their name on it."



Useless idea.

My favorite part is the crappy article by Ripard justifying it, headlined with "We're All Building This Together" - along with a random picture of our useless CSM's.

You've never heard of management engaging in vanity projects?

Are you joking?

It's not "for the customers."

It's for themselves.

If it was for the customers, I would expect the money and effort to be going into the game itself, because as a customer, that's what I'm actually paying for.

Richard Garriot took my name to space. Beat that.

I am so completely and utterly underwhelmed, CCP. Yeah, I guess a monument is cool, but here I was thinking the timer would be counting down to some important change to EVE Online, rather than an announcement about a planned monument.

How does this thing even represent EVE? There's no imagery in the design that resembles anything in EVE, just a blank obelisk flanked by a face-like object. The only thing telling us that this monument represents EVE is that sculptor saying it does. It could just as well represent the struggle of the common man to understand the mindless rapacity of the business world, or something else appropriately art-wonky.

I'm disappointed, CCP, because you made such a big deal over this and it's something that doesn't actually affect a lot of us.

There is an obvious disconnect between CCP and the players here. And whoever forced this project is living in a bubble far away from normal people.

that one posts to sound edgy and cynical

Yes, some of us are going to chuckle that CCP is undertaking a vanity project as a sad publicity stunt.

It reminds me of trying to cure the economy through advertising that the economy is good - and then justifying it by talking about all those jobs you created by making the advertisement in the first place.

Another one for the opt-out feature! Maybe CCP will listen.

The timer ruined it. .

A single dev blog announcement would have made significantly more sense, instead of getting people's hopes up.

Never mind, you can console yourself with the knowledge that you are too cool and cynical to enjoy something like this. I hope you will spare a little mote of pity for poor fools like me who know no better than to be really happy.

One of the chief criticisms in years past was about ccp not being focused on the game. Losing focus, doing lots of other things and side projects that the subscribers were not interested in.

"This list of active, paying players will be captured on March 1st, 2014GÇöno exceptions."

Does active, paying players, mean active players who sub with PLEXes won't be included?

Eh, not really cause the sentence before that says:

"The monument will stand atop a half meter tall metal-plated concrete platform that will have the names of all the GÇ£main charactersGÇ¥ of all active EVE Online players etched upon it. "

So please clarify this for us, CCP.

Again, this is a computer game! Comparing a monument to a recreational pastime in any way, shape, or form to a monument honoring soldiers who gave their lives defending the freedoms of others is absolutely disgusting. You should be ashamed of yourself.

A RL monument feels a bit misplaced for an online game, beside the waste of $.
It sounds like a marketing stunt or an ego boost for the people who already think that Eve is real but hey they will have their fantasy login name on a rock.

Next time develop a big thing for all the players; like dynamic places to explore, dynamic missions, PVE-PVP dynamic events like Sabriz suggested, less TiDi, and so on. The Todolist is already full.

some kids will have spray painted their tags on it by the end of the first week

I've seen a lot of people in this thread complain about the cost of this monument. Some even estimate it to be in the millions of dollars.....
So, because I am a curious man, I looked up the cost of the building materials. I took some rough measures and approximations. Costs are including tax and front door delivery for me as a private person in west Europe mainland.

• Massive granite block, Black, 100 x 100 x 500 cm = Gé¼ 12.000,-
• Stainless steel rectangular tube, welded shut on both ends, 500 x 100 x 20 cm (5mm thick plate) Gé¼ 1100,-
• Polishing of steel tube Gé¼ 650,-
• Aluminium tube 100 x 100 x 500 cm (2mm thick plate) = Gé¼ 2000,-
• Black matting of aluminium tube = Gé¼ 1200,-
• Concrete 10m3 including steel reinforcement and pouring (0.5 metres underground as foundation included)= Gé¼ 2100,-
• Steel plate around concrete base 7m2 = Gé¼ 350,-
• Polishing of steel plate = Gé¼ 200,-

Total = Gé¼ 19.600,- in building materials. Again, this is an approximate figure

Of course this is also without the cost of making an actual statue out of it and without the inscribing of our character names.

Now please stop complaining that it is too expensive and that for the same amount of money problem X or Y in EvE could have been solved. In light of the figures above, it is a bit silly.....


In my personal opinion it is a beautiful statue and a grand gesture by CCP, regardless of cost. And I thank them for that!

Playing a video game, even one as engrossing as EVE, is hardly some sort of lifetime achievement or anything. My concern is that by celebrating it in a manner normally reserved for the big events of history we are sending the wrong message, both to the players and the outside world.

Some of the younger and/or more impressionable players may take this as some sort of signal that they have somehow done something worthwhile with their lives. A monument usually commemorates something significant or important in local, national, or world events; and a monument to gaming would indicate to some that video games are on a similar level of importance, and something to be proud of rather than just a way to fill one's free time. The people who buy into this may be few, but it can still be damaging.

The outside world will probably get the impression that we all have just such an opinion of ourselves. The message will be that EVE players are a bunch of self important geeks who have gotten so lost in their little virtual world that they have completely lost their grip on reality. How many new players do you think are going to want to jump into a game full of delusional egotists?

I've already shown the announcements about this monument to a few friends and coworkers. Their collective reaction can be summed up by the words of one of them: "That's dumb!" They were all confused, at first thinking that it must be some sort of in-game thing. When I explained that it was to be a real monument in Iceland, they were shocked at the stupidity of it, especially after I told them how the company had been laying people off just a few months ago. They think that CCP has lost its sense of priority to say the least. There was concern that a game company would neglect the health of the game itself and instead choose to invest in sucha pointless display. One of them commented, "I keep wanting to try EVE, but then something like this happens." It was also observed that CCP "must be rather full of themselves." These are people who were excited to read about the Battle of B-R5RB, but now their opinion of the company behind the game has done a 180.

So there is my anecdotal evidence, but it may be a warning sign that this monument may not generate the sort of publicity that is good for EVE.

Anticlimatic.

For a gaming development company, this is just a waste of money.

Let the Arts be funded by other organisations, and you CCP should focus on doing your job.

Edit.

CCP, this piece of Art should not be called or described as a monument.

Monuments are only for real life heros and for "The Fallen".

land costs money... so unless they were given the land or building it at there headquarters.... They would have to buy it.... That isn't cheep..

also do u even know how much that stuff costs in large volumes + cost of building..

The monument itself looks a little plain to me, but art is always one of those "eye of the beholder" kinds of things.

When it's one of the few places to go to honor your lost loved one there's not much of a choice but to show up there. 50K+ dead makes for a lot of traveling relatives.