Malachon Draco
eXceed Inc.
INVICTUS.
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Posted - 2007.04.11 08:36:00 -
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Much of Eve's attraction is its single shard universe.
That being said, there are also some reasons to open up a second shard. One of them is indeed that new players are very much behind in terms of knowledge, ability and skill from older players. And not just in terms of combat (probably least of all in terms of combat).
But with veterans running the major alliances, having the T2 BPOs, being able to afford enough stuff to do invention etc, EVE creates more and more the perception of it being inhospitable to newer players. And that perception alone may very well be all that is needed to kill EVE in the end.
3 years from now, even the people who started today will have 35m SP, those who started back in 2003 will have 100m. Fleetfights will consist of dreads duking it out with MS and Titans, and where does that leave a new player in his rifter, or even in his T1 fitted battleship? He might very well think:"screw you guys, I am gonna find me another game to play." Some people will also have heard about all the scandals, about how a developer was found illegally helping the one of the strongest alliances in the game, and he might think to himself:"I start with a huge disadvantage, the developers are rigging the game in favour of the old guard and it will take me years to even get slightly competitive, maybe I should find a game where the odds are more in my favour".
And currently there is very little competition in Eve's niche of the market. But there are potential competitors on the horizon, not all of them will make it probably, but a good PvP focused game could siphon off a lot of Eve-players, or perhaps more importantly, draw most of the newer players that go to Eve now. Eventually you're gonna end up with a game with little influx of fresh blood, and a slowly declining amount of bitter veterans (look at CAOD forum) fighting it out in dreads and supercapitals in warzones where no new player can do anything noteworthy.
Of course, its hard to say whether a new shard would reduce this problem, it might actually force a crisis right away. Would be interesting though to see how much the world would be changed if a second shard was opened, and who would leave.
If CCP were ever to consider a second server, I would suggest avoiding a carbon copy of Tranquility. They should take the time to change the starmap, with different regions, different systems, different NPC factions (at least in name), just to make it less of a Tranquility clone. That way it would impact the uniqueness of Eve less than an exact clone would.
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