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trading hub	Posted - 2008.06.18 18:37:00 - [1] Im a stil a bit confused, why is it EVE online lagging big time in terms of population behind other MMOs. CCP started eariler than WOW, so they had first mover advantage, why is it CCP could not capitalize on booming internet growth same way WOW did ? Any thought on this ? Disclaimer: All stupid morron trolls, please DO go away: 1) Im not saying that wow is better 2) I really would like to see what is happening with the game and gauge some thoughts in the subject 3) Please DO read comment about trolls. Thank you
Arvald Caldari Provisions	Posted - 2008.06.18 18:39:00 - [2] eve isnt heavily advertised Originally by: Xanos Blackpaw Stealthbomber combat (or as i like to call it: Just because you *are* paranoid don't mean there isnt a invisible demon about to eat your face)
Mangala Solaris Ma'adim Logistics	Posted - 2008.06.18 18:41:00 - [3] The masses of mmo players werent masses back when eve was released, and as Arvald says EVE wasnt (and still isnt) heavily advertised. Even now, when it has more exposure and is considerably easier to get into that it used to be, its still pretty niche. Which is good. -------
trading hub	Posted - 2008.06.18 18:44:00 - [4] Niche can be good But look at it like this - more players, more revenue, (ofc yes that costs increase too) but in absolute terms net incoem is higher for the company -> much more money to introduce new content and make game more fun !
PaddyPaddy Nihildarnik aurorae pacificas	Posted - 2008.06.18 18:49:00 - [5] Edited by: PaddyPaddy Nihildarnik on 18/06/2008 18:50:15 Three reasons imo 1. Blizzard already had a successful template and brand to work from. The WOW brand was already huge before the MMO, so Id imagine that helped enormously. 2. CCP seems to have gone for exotic and niche over masses, which is what makes eve unique and worthwhile to play. Its also alot harsher which im sure puts off alot of players. 3. Complexity. It takes months to understand the basic mechanics of the game, let alone the actual political history of the larger alliances and finer points of pvp. Simply put, its difficult for younger or less intelligent users to roll a char and head off to "quest" a "dungeon" or whatever, again making Eve unique and captivating for those who can bear with the learning curve. I nearly gave eve up when I first started due to the difficulty and (wrong) assumption that I would never catch up to everyone else. Glad I didnt.
Tippia School of Applied Knowledge	Posted - 2008.06.18 18:52:00 - [6] WoW builds on a gaming IP that gained world-wide popularity when it was launched 15 years ago, and which has maintained it ever since. PvP-centric MMOs have always lagged behind PvE ones (cf. Planetside, WW2O and the splintering of UO). The learning curve in ≡v≡ is murderous – WoW's isn't. ≡v≡ offers zero goals and motivations to the player, and has no end-game – players who are unable/unwilling to actively decide and pursue their own end-states will quickly drop out. WoW holds your hand every step of the way. …also, based on nothing but my own observations on RPGs (both computerised and pen-and-paper), I'd say that a lot of people get really confused by not having the classic, clearly defined classes and levels to provide structure to their gaming experience, which means ≡v≡ freaks them right out, while they feel right at home in carbon-copy-of-everything-that's-gone-before-WoW.
Corduroy Rab Digital Fury Corporation Digital Renegades	Posted - 2008.06.18 18:52:00 - [7] I'd venture to say (like the others) that the advertising had something to do with it. I also hear the launch was a bit lackluster. WoW also had the advantage of being an adapatation of an already existant and sucessful product while eve was a original creation. Last, I do not think that the way eve was designed has as wide of an appeal as wow (permentant losses etc...), not that I am saying that is a bad thing.
Patch86 Di-Tron Heavy Industries Atlas Alliance	Posted - 2008.06.18 18:52:00 - [8] Furthermore, due to the non-sharded nature of EVE, it physically couldn't support as many players as WoW right now, with the technology available. If EVE had a million players, it'd be completely unplayable. ------ Originally by: Dark Shikari The problem with killing Jesus is he always just respawns 3 days later anyways.
Roy Batty68 Immortal Dead	Posted - 2008.06.18 18:54:00 - [9] niche game I don't think it's supposed to appeal to the masses. They're trying to broaden their demographic via the ambulation project. However they've never given the impression that they desire to appeal to the greater MMO masses with sugar-coated-grindcraft-like gameplay. Besides, the single shard aspect is what makes it special. They simply aren't capable of hosting that many concurrent logins. No MMO is. Which, in my mind, is a quality over quantity thing. There's a pretty cool thread in C&P where some dudes smack talk basically got him booted from his corp because quite a few people were willing to war dec his corp in response to his racist BS. Name another MMO where that's going to happen. One virtual world. Actions have consequences. It's friggen awsome. That aspect alone makes it worthwhile, even if it does mean a smaller slice of the MMO population pie. Sig removed, inappropriate content. If you would like further details please mail [email protected] ~Saint
Doc Fury	Posted - 2008.06.18 18:56:00 - [10] Originally by: Arvald eve isnt heavily advertised I guess that depends on what you mean by "heavily". IIRC, CCP spent over 7+ Million dollars on advertising last year. That's before EVEtv and all the other fluff. It's so safe to play along, little soldiers in a row Falling in and out of love, with something sweet to throw away. I want something good to DIE for...to make it beautiful to live.
Alenia Swift Caldari Provisions	Posted - 2008.06.18 19:01:00 - [11] Eve is an oddity when it comes to population. Most games start big and fizzle out slowly over time. Eve on the other hand started very small and has had steady growth over a very long period of time. With the exceptions of the very first MMO this is rare. There are many games that have come and gone in the time that Eve has been around. Many had great launches such as Earth and Beyond, Horizons and some I can not even remember. I remember the days when Eve had less than 4000 people online at any one time. WOW can not be counted as typical. Blizzard had a fan base and had an appeal to console players as well. It caused an expansion of online play, with great marketing and a bankroll to boot. Eve had one office in a older building in Iceland, and has grown ever since. They acquired White Wolf and now working on another game through them, and this done primarily by word of mouth and internet advertising. The other side, to look at is EVE is making money (note the acquisition) many MMO never do this even the big ones take years to cover the initial investments. CCP is the little company that could. 5 years and growing how many games can make that claim?
Traidor Disloyal NightCrew	Posted - 2008.06.18 19:12:00 - [12] Originally by: Tippia The learning curve in ≡v≡ is murderous û WoW's isn't. Yes, yes it is: http://bloodeagles.com/images/LearningCurve.jpg --------------------------------------------- Love is having a second account with a cov ops pilot
brinelan Victory Not Vengeance Intrepid Crossing	Posted - 2008.06.18 19:16:00 - [13] 250,000 is about the same or better as all but a very few mmo's in terms of playerbase. What's the problem. WOW's population is a fluke. Most "successful" mmo's are around the 250k population range (except those asian free to play rmt ones). -------------------------- Some days you're the bug, some days you're the windshield
Taedrin Royal Hiigaran Navy	Posted - 2008.06.18 19:16:00 - [14] Originally by: Traidor Disloyal Originally by: Tippia The learning curve in ≡v≡ is murderous û WoW's isn't. Yes, yes it is: http://bloodeagles.com/images/LearningCurve.jpg /thread pure win right there.
Qduhaf	Posted - 2008.06.18 19:25:00 - [15] I haven't played WOW or some other highly succesful MMO's but I would say that they have far more "content", especially for the solo player and players with limited play time (IE defined start/end). EVE isn't a game you just play, its a new life that you get absorbed into. But it has a steep learning curve, both from a game play perspective and actual skill training, so it takes a long time to feel that you are part of that world, losing a lot of players in the path to the 3 month point where you can start to make an impact. Then it probably loses a lot of people after the year point as they realize that playing a game for 8 hours a day isn't what they want to do, because nothing in EVE (like RL) really happens fast. Truy rewarding moments are few and far between, and there aren't really a lot instant rushes. PVP in Eve is harsh, and therfore very exciting. But considering that it often takes 10 hours of play to afford well fitted T2 ship, there are actually very few people that want to make that kind of commitment to really enjoy the finest aspect of EVE. CCP seem to spend a lot of time/effort focusing on the 0.0 alliance end games and catering to the highest SP players. I think this is because those are the players they most see themselves as, dedicated to living in this alternative reality. But made a big mistake on the POS mechanisms and cap ships. Those 2 "features" and continue blob escalation have driven the more casual player to the fringe of 0.0 (either a casual participant in large 0.0 allaince, or into smaler npc station corp, or now into FW). The average person can't make a difference, and gets bored spending hours for a single fight or even worse POS shooting/defending. So many of more dedicated players are getting dissatisfied with product FW seems to be a step in the direction of increasing participation without all the huge time commitments of 0.0 alliances. A single palyer in a T1 ship can get a feeling of team accomplishment without requiring hours everyday of play time. But in a few weeks time FW will start to look more like 0.0 warfare, or it will fizzle out. Its just a natural response to the harsh reality of PVP in EVE, blobs will form for protection. IF CCP wants to increase players they need to focus more on content of the game, and make PVP even more accessible while controlling the blobs. At some level need to introduce artificial mechanisms to reduce the blob mentality. That won't appeal to the EVE purist, but it would to the masses. I don't expect CCP will go that far until its too late though, its a company run by the purists.
Daelin Blackleaf Naqam	Posted - 2008.06.18 19:25:00 - [16] Barriers to entry. In EVE they are part of the games natural complexity. In WoW they are hunted down vigorously. While simplifying entry into EVE could be done, it would be at a cost to the community, that cost being that people too dumb to buy modules, fit ships, and hit things with turrets will be flying round in pre-fitted Kestrels. It remains to be seen whether or not CCP will cave in to the pressure of appealing to a larger market, so far signs hint to the answer being no, and we shouldn't look at the simplification of overcomplicated systems as dumbing down EVE. Sig removed, inappropriate content. If you would like further details please mail [email protected] ~Saint
Tippia School of Applied Knowledge	Posted - 2008.06.18 19:26:00 - [17] Originally by: Traidor Disloyal Originally by: Tippia The learning curve in ≡v≡ is murderous – WoW's isn't. Yes, yes it is: http://bloodeagles.com/images/LearningCurve.jpg I was thinking specifically about that image – this time I'll remember to bookmark it
Jenny Spitfire LoneStar Industries Veritas Immortalis	Posted - 2008.06.18 19:28:00 - [18] My opinon is mabe wow is moar poppular or a super produck. It is not liek peopel want to buy soemthing defektive ... --------- Technica impendi Caldari generis. Pax Caldaria! Go vote! Put voice for silent majority. LOVE PVP, HATE grief
Cors It's A Trap	Posted - 2008.06.18 19:43:00 - [19] Edited by: Cors on 18/06/2008 19:44:27 Originally by: Jenny Spitfire My opinon is mabe wow is moar poppular or a super produck. It is not liek peopel want to buy soemthing defektive ... seeing as you're like the 75th person to "Own" Jenny Spitfire, and you seem to be unable to type, we'll ignore you. EVE is a game that not many will be interested in just because of the content. It's Hard. It has no clearly defined goals. It's complex. It has no "path" to greatness. It takes true real life skills to succeed in pvp. And the Lag.... if we get those new servers online and eliminate lag, you'd see a LOT more people come back. The lure of 2000 vs 2000 battles with next to no lag would ensure it's place in history. Haveing battles that would last hours just because there are SO MANY hostiles on screen, would lure a LOT of old players back.
Jacob Mei	Posted - 2008.06.18 19:51:00 - [20] Being popular is not nessessarly a good thing. History has proven time and again once a company reaches a certain point, the greed factor sets in and they take short cuts, thus making an inferior product. Look at Dell for example, at one point they did make good products, had an award winning tech support division and what not, now look at them. Making crappy computers and you have to set your day aside with the tech support just to get them to admit you have a problem (hell, these days they would perfer to talk you threw the repairs on the phone then send a repairman like they are contractually obligated to do). In any case, CCP in my opinion is doing things right. They were able to land airing an ad each friday when galactica was on, they have been continously releasing new content twice a year, they are working towards several other projects as well. Will they eve beat WoW? I doubt and hope not. I dont think out of the whole video game population that there is a majority that could handle what EvE is like. -------------------------------- To borrow a phrase: Players who post are like stars, there are bright ones and those who are dim.
Tharukan Desm'ar	Posted - 2008.06.18 20:07:00 - [21] From the people I've met in eve. The maturity level of a lot of the friends Ive made has been much higher compared to many other MMO's Ive played. Plus its a very niche game due to its initial complexity getting started. Bigger isn't always better due to how most games player base Ive been in from near launch has suffered in quality as it has grown subscriber-wise. More players = more idiots sometimes.

CCP RyanD C C P	Posted - 2008.06.18 20:09:00 - [22] Originally by: trading hub Im a stil a bit confused, why is it EVE online lagging big time in terms of population behind other MMOs. EVE is now the 3nd largest full-price western MMO behind World of Warcraft and Conan at just over 230K paid subscribers or paid subscriber equivalents. Runescape and Dofus are larger in absolute terms but they have a significant free-play component and a discounted ($5) monthly subscription price for people who choose to pay. EVE is bigger than EverQuest, EverQuest II, Lord of the Rings Online, Dungeons & Dragons Online, etc. In addition, EVE grows every year and has since release. Unlike every other MMO in the market EVE's growth rate is actually increasing not decreasing as time passes. Here's a lot of data for the curious.

Patch86 Di-Tron Heavy Industries Atlas Alliance	Posted - 2008.06.18 20:11:00 - [23] Originally by: CCP RyanD 3nd Thats a little confusing ------ Originally by: Dark Shikari The problem with killing Jesus is he always just respawns 3 days later anyways.
Jinx Barker GFB Scientific	Posted - 2008.06.18 20:14:00 - [24] Originally by: CCP RyanD EVE is now the 3nd largest full-price western MMO behind World of Warcraft and Conan at just over 230K paid subscribers or paid subscriber equivalents. Runescape and Dofus are larger in absolute terms but they have a significant free-play component and a discounted ($5) monthly subscription price for people who choose to pay. EVE is bigger than EverQuest, EverQuest II, Lord of the Rings Online, Dungeons & Dragons Online, etc. In addition, EVE grows every year and has since release. Unlike every other MMO in the market EVE's growth rate is actually increasing not decreasing as time passes. Here's a lot of data for the curious. I love how EVE keeps climbing ever so "slowly" compared to other MMOs - basically shows that whatever the case maybe a certain number of gamers comes in, and out of that number there are always those who stay and keep an going. A steady climb, without much break, vs. zig-zagging of other MMOs that attract people with passing fads and then drop like a rock in "attendance."
Haywoode Jablome State War Academy	Posted - 2008.06.18 20:14:00 - [25] Originally by: Patch86 Originally by: CCP RyanD 3nd Thats a little confusing It's Wishfull thinking
Mankirks Wife	Posted - 2008.06.18 20:23:00 - [26] Edited by: Mankirks Wife on 18/06/2008 20:27:35 Originally by: CCP RyanD EVE is bigger than EverQuest, EverQuest II, Lord of the Rings Online, Dungeons & Dragons Online, etc. In addition, EVE grows every year and has since release. Unlike every other MMO in the market EVE's growth rate is actually increasing not decreasing as time passes. Here's a lot of data for the curious. LOL. CCP says, "Yeah, we pwned everyone except WoW and the guys who just launched last week a while ago. It was nothing - really." As for the increasing growth rate.. I'll use myself as an example. I played DAOC. I played WoW for a while. Then I got tired of the RPG-On-Rails and Game-With-Training-Wheels mentality of the devs, tried Eve about a year ago (A year in August, actually), and immediately loved it. I have a feeling many others who come to Eve and stay feel the same way. Also the way the game is designed, it can be added to endlessly, without rendering anything that came before obsolete, which is a huge problem in the other MMOs I've played and really made them feel stale after a while when you're running around looking at all the crap nobody does anymore 'cause it's not 'end-game' (whoever came up with that concept for an MMO should be shot in the face, btw), too low-level, has crap rewards, everyone's already done it 10,000 times, etx.
Robert Rosenberg Imperial Academy	Posted - 2008.06.18 20:27:00 - [27] Edited by: Robert Rosenberg on 18/06/2008 20:28:01 Edited by: Robert Rosenberg on 18/06/2008 20:27:42 Just so that everyone knows, the impressive subscription stats on Age of Conan are indicative of an impressive launch BOX sale, not actual subscriptions. In order do use your free 30 days with the Age of Conan box you must start a recurring subscription plan, even if you cancel it within the first 30 days and are never billed. So every single box that they sold counts as a subscriber, whether or not that person ever subscribes. I personally thought that AoC was crap and canceled my sub and sold my account on Craigslist on launch week, and I doubt I am alone in terms of bought-but-never-subscribed. The AoC numbers remind me of a certain quote... "There are lies, damn lies, and statistics". CCP and Blizzard count money in the bank, AoC tries to manipulate the facts so their abysmal game does not appear to be flopping so hard.
Danadur Naval Protection Corp	Posted - 2008.06.18 20:34:00 - [28] 3 letters...P. V. P. When you can't get to the "end game" of a MMO without PvP, a large portion of the MMO player base runs away and hides under their mum's skirts, crying their eyes out. They are skert to play a real MMO! Thus, as other peeps have said, it's a "niche" game. Only the hard core players come and play in this ballfield.
Cassandra Valieries	Posted - 2008.06.18 20:35:00 - [29] Wow is the Macdonalds of MMOs, while EVE is a gourmet restaurant. WoW and it's clones will always have more players than quality games like EVE, and we EVE players will have a lot more quality thant the ******s playing WoW or whatever hyped up game that just launched...
Furious Hawk Farlight Optic Council	Posted - 2008.06.18 20:40:00 - [30] Edited by: Furious Hawk on 18/06/2008 20:41:00 Edited by: Furious Hawk on 18/06/2008 20:40:43 Originally by: PaddyPaddy Nihildarnik Edited by: PaddyPaddy Nihildarnik on 18/06/2008 18:50:15 The WOW brand was already huge before the MMO, so Id imagine that helped enormously. I think you mean the WARCRAFT brand. I didn't spend half my childhood playing "World of Warcraft" on my uncle's Mac. -------------------------------------------------- Everyone is entitled to my opinion.
trading hub	Posted - 2008.06.18 20:55:00 - [31] WARNING BLOCK OF TEXT - TROLLS BEWARE - ONLY SOPHISTICATED READERS Originally by: CCP RyanD EVE is now the 3nd largest full-price western MMO behind World of Warcraft and Conan at just over 230K paid subscribers or paid subscriber equivalents. Runescape and Dofus are larger in absolute terms but they have a significant free-play component and a discounted ($5) monthly subscription price for people who choose to pay. EVE is bigger than EverQuest, EverQuest II, Lord of the Rings Online, Dungeons & Dragons Online, etc. In addition, EVE grows every year and has since release. Unlike every other MMO in the market EVE's growth rate is actually increasing not decreasing as time passes. Here's a lot of data for the curious. This is all very well, let me make a couple of comments (if you allow me ofc): 1) I like the trend in growth of subscriptions - it seems to be very stable. 2) A lot of people commented here on the "niche" feature of EVE. What exactly does that mean ? What is the niche EVE online occupies ? Does it occupies the niche of "...complex, hard to understand, high barriers to entry, steep leraning curve niche..."? If that is so, then it is a bad niche. My understanding is such that (generally speaking) when a company occupies a niche that implies, that there is a unique type of demand on the market, which the company satisfies. That in turn implies high barriers to entry into that particular niche, because only that company is able to satisfy this particular type of demand due to specific expertise (i.e. ferrari). So how does this definition fits into CCP profile ? - Exactly it does not. Well it probably does to a certain extent, because for sure there are people out there who are hungry for space sci-fi adventure, which has very complex game mechanics (including myself), but there are not that many, but it is not exactly a good niche because nor does it offer supperior growth opportunities, neither supperior abnormal returns (like ferrari, low sales volume, but very high margin). Hence in my view, CCP strategists perhaps need to think through something called "investment case" - i.e. what exactly are you guys trying to achieve with your invested capital and how you going to achieve it. Getting back some of the specific point mentioned here - I used to be hardcore WOW player and game mechanics is not that simple as it seems. Come to think about it - there is a certain level of complexity beyond which average MMO guy will not be able to play the game (because he would need to learn calculus to play lol etc), and on the other hand there is lower boundary beyond which game turns into pac-man. I woul say roughly if 10 is upper boundary and 1 is lower boundary, then WOW is approximatelly 7 and EVE 8-9. Looking into charts - market share of 1,5% does not seem to be dominating. I'm not saying that it should be 60+% like WOW, but in my view 1,5% definently seems to be very low. If I was to value CCP as a company I would give a certain discount to the value owing to the fact market share is so low. Of course looking at the breakdown of market shares by genre - link. You will see that even though CCP takes 1,5% of total market, it takes 40% of its own market segment. [3,7% of SCI-FI games out of which 1,5% of total market is eve -> 1,5/3,7 = 40%]. That seems to be not so bad. However as an investor I would still care about absolute number, rather than relative number of subscribers within that particular genre. SO Here is the question for you (no judgment implied, just raising the topic) - do you want to be a group of enthusiasts, who occupy a niche within a niche, or do you want to try to beat Blizzard in their own game and CHOP into WOW profits and market share? Thoughts ?
Anisa Schardl	Posted - 2008.06.18 20:57:00 - [32] I consider WoW to be the filter of the MMO world. It catches all the idiots that are just in it for shiney gear and a system so simple that I could teach a five year old how to play wow in about half an hour. I left WoW for this very reason, and in casting the net around, I came to the conclusion that the majority of other MMO's are suffering from the same thing to a greater or lesser degree. They realized that WoW is so popular because it dumbed itself down far enough to appeal to the average moron, and they're trying to do the same thing. Eve, thankfully, has never tried this, and I hope they never will. Average Joe not-really-gamer will try ever for 20 minutes, be unable to figure out how to equip his first frigate, then quit, possibly leaving a nice whine thread on the forums. Those who are actually looking for an immersive, complex universe where everything is controlled by the player will power through that learning cliff and remain. That's one of the reasons that I love it. Unlike WoW, I can assume that most Eve players I run into have at least moderate intelligence and a drive that is difficult to find in other MMO's. I creates a fantastic game, and I hope they never sacrifice the quality just to suck in more people.
trading hub	Posted - 2008.06.18 21:03:00 - [33] Just to be fair Id like to say that majority of MMO comunity prefer to play fantasy (Warrior, Wizzard) type of games, rather than SCI-FI games. Not sure how to explains that, perhpas owing to D&D paper game or smth. Then there is not much market left as such for EVE to chop into by definition. However I would still argue, that in current state of internet "sophistication" it is very easy to teach players anything, and if your game is genuinly appealing then it will eat into existing market shares of other games.
Anisa Schardl	Posted - 2008.06.18 21:12:00 - [34] And in answer to Trading Hub: The niche Eve occupies is that it's immersive, sandbox, and, above all, economically based. Most MMO's try to base their game on drops from third parties or items rewarded through quests, and money is all but worthless. It pays the one-time fees like mounts, and then is worth basically nothing. In Eve, money is life, the economy behavior is very similar to a real economy, and it offers opportunities that can be had nowhere else. And I disagree with you completely about the complexity of WoW. Even at the absolute end (Sunwell), the calculations for maximal DPS (required on Brutallus), are simple, and can be completed with pen and paper in about fifteen minutes (less for single spell classes like mage or destrolock, a little more for someone like a rogue who has a three or four skill rotation). These calculations are nothing compared to, say, EQ2, which as a result of ability cooldowns forces complex rotations of skills as opposed to spamming one or two for the whole fight. And all of these are dwarfed by the amount of time I've spent in Eve fitting theoretical ships, experimenting with the exact effects of skills to determine which is more efficient to train first, and using market tools to try to find a profitable venture. And this is USING tools like EFT, the turret and missile damage tools in the guide, and EveMon. If I had to grind out the turret tracking calculations myself, it would take me way longer than 15 minutes, and I'd have to pull at least one of the dusty textbooks off my shelf. In order to even attempt to steal more of the market share (which they don't need to do, they have always had positive growth), they would need to radically change the system such that it can be easily understood by a person who only wants to play an hour a day and get free rewards thrown at them. I really hope this never happens, because it would destroy that is appeals to me about eve in the first place, which is it's difficulty.
Artemis Rose Eleckrostatik	Posted - 2008.06.18 21:21:00 - [35] Fantasy MMOs are usually more popular than Sci-Fi ones. PvE MMOs are usually more popular than PvP ones. MMOs with lots of pretty pretty avatar options are usually more popular than ones without. Its just human nature, it whats more consumers will pay their money and spend their time for entertainment. Blizzard, as stated in this thread, has ALOT going for them. I don't think Eve is really "ready" to be a mainstream MMO. I don't mind this. __________________________________________________ Currently Playing: Trolls from Outer Space Current Equipment: VISAcard chain mail, +2 Amulet of Epic Whine. WTB Purple Nerf Bat.
trading hub	Posted - 2008.06.18 21:23:00 - [36] Fair comment, I don't want to argue about levels of complexity because it is very subjective. I would agree that WOW mechnics is probably slightly easier to understand, but to what extent I guess its up to every singly player. For example, I was a warrior tank and at a time (at least it appeared to be so for me), I think it was relativelly difficult to choose gear and optimum combination of skills for maximum aggro generation... but nvm ... Talking about economy. Yes, EVE is very much like real economy with 1 difference - bounties on rats. I would argue that this element is very artificial and much like WOW mechanics. In real economy every economic agent is creating value for the economy by mean of producing something of greater value than the resources out which the final product was produced. With bounties it is not the case. And I would argue that very fat percentage of value generation in EVE is attributable to bounties , that also includes mission rewards. In real life these bounties should've been paid by other economic agents, but not god [CCP] as here. In a sense, its like a plug in the economy, it is very convinient and easy way to regulate eocnomy if necesary. However I would still argue, that in order for you to say that EVE economy is much like real economy then this "bounty" element should somehow be fixed as well. I don't how to fix it, and whether it should be fixed at all or not. I'm just making a comment here.
Doddy Omega Fleet Enterprises Executive Outcomes	Posted - 2008.06.18 21:25:00 - [37] Bit like asking why more people watch eastenders than the sopranos tbh (in the U.K anyway).
trading hub	Posted - 2008.06.18 21:25:00 - [38] Originally by: Artemis Rose I don't think Eve is really "ready" to be a mainstream MMO. I don't mind this. What about CCP themselves, what are your business objectives ? Are you aiming to be elitist comunity of SCI-FI mmo people, or as most reasonable economic agents to try their best to become filthy rich ?
An Anarchyyt Battlestars GoonSwarm	Posted - 2008.06.18 21:29:00 - [39] Originally by: trading hub 2) A lot of people commented here on the "niche" feature of EVE. What exactly does that mean ? What is the niche EVE online occupies ? Does it occupies the niche of "...complex, hard to understand, high barriers to entry, steep leraning curve niche..."? If that is so, then it is a bad niche. In a sesnse, because there are some people who like complexity in games. Like hardcore Sim games, those are like that, but some people like it. But it's niche is that most MMOs do not offer features such as Eve. Non-consensual PvP, actual consequence of action, not just power-leveling, a game that is much more player driven than most other MMOs. The endgame not just being some repetitive raid, but it being what you want it to be. So to sum up, Eve's niche is that it is an MMO sandbox, not like most other MMOs which are pretty much on a rail. Originally by: CCP Wrangler Second, a gentile is a non jewish person
Doddy Omega Fleet Enterprises Executive Outcomes	Posted - 2008.06.18 21:29:00 - [40] Originally by: trading hub Originally by: Artemis Rose I don't think Eve is really "ready" to be a mainstream MMO. I don't mind this. What about CCP themselves, what are your business objectives ? Are you aiming to be elitist comunity of SCI-FI mmo people, or as most reasonable economic agents to try their best to become filthy rich ? I really hope the latter, i have invested way too much time in this game to see it ruined by greed. Ambulation (wtf is the point in it again?) could be the first step in a slippery slope.
Liisa Starlancers	Posted - 2008.06.18 21:38:00 - [41] Originally by: trading hub Originally by: Artemis Rose I don't think Eve is really "ready" to be a mainstream MMO. I don't mind this. What about CCP themselves, what are your business objectives ? Are you aiming to be elitist comunity of SCI-FI mmo people, or as most reasonable economic agents to try their best to become filthy rich ? They might be looking at their hardware now and noticing that it cannot cope with a hoard of new players. If you cannot support a certain population of players, why get them into the game? The last thing CCP wants if for the EVE brand name to be associated with massive, unplayable lag wherever you go. This is not a problem they can fix overnight by throwing money at it. They are throwing money at the needed research to solve this problem, but the solution will not come overnight. Perhaps, when it is solved, they can try harder on getting filthy rich when doing so will not kill the goose that might lay a golden egg.
Azzma TalCorp Enterprises Einherjar Alliance	Posted - 2008.06.18 21:39:00 - [42] I dunno probably the community in WoW is a little better than in EVE because in EVE everyone is all elitist and serious and always correcting spelling and alot of times forget its a game and just have fun and bull**** u know what i mean
trading hub	Posted - 2008.06.18 21:39:00 - [43] I think CCP strategy starts to make a bit more sense to me - it appears that the decision was made to invest heavily into graphic technologies and utilies latest computational advancements to the fullest extent. This will make game more appealing. I think it is a good move by the company and it will definently pay off in the future. Ambulation is also a good move in that sense. However some sort of advancements need to be done in the game as well. Maybe overall universe need to be more coherent with itself sort of to say. From what i can see, EVE appears to be mainly a PVP platform, and not that many players care about RPG aspect of the game (i dont for example) and I would imagine 99% in major pvp alliance dont care either. Maybe CCP needs to think how to make the whole game kinda more consistent...
trading hub	Posted - 2008.06.18 21:40:00 - [44] Originally by: Azzma I dunno probably the community in WoW is a little better than in EVE because in EVE everyone is all elitist and serious and always correcting spelling and alot of times forget its a game and just have fun and bull**** u know what i mean lol good one
Malcanis We are Legend	Posted - 2008.06.18 21:42:00 - [45] Originally by: trading hub Niche can be good But look at it like this - more players, more revenue, (ofc yes that costs increase too) but in absolute terms net incoem is higher for the company -> much more money to introduce new content and make game more fun ! I like EvE all elitist and niche, thanks. CONCORD provide consequences, not safety; only you can do that.
JamnOne	Posted - 2008.06.18 21:45:00 - [46] 2 simple answers. 1.) It is not heavily advertised here in the States. We walk into a BestBuy, Fry's Electronics, Wal-Mart, or some of the other big box stores and we games like WoW, Ever-Quest, and a few others. I have yet to see Eve-Online. 2.) It is a space based game. A lot of people like swords and magic and whatever else WoW is about (never played) and not many like space based gaming or can't comprehend it. I think when Ambulation is released (hope that is still the name) then you will see the population slowly increase. ________________________ Originally by: CCP Wrangler So, it's all my fault. Originally by: CCP Prism X Hah! Vengeance is sweet!
trading hub	Posted - 2008.06.18 21:47:00 - [47] I would really like for EVE to become bigger, as it will mean more iskies for you guys [CCP] (oop not iskis bucks)... :) and that means you will be hapier, create more ideas, hire more ppl and make EVE environment even cooler ! Maybe you can make this learning curve, not so blasting the begining, but somehow simplify the process, so that more ppl will be induced to stay after they join the game.
Liisa Starlancers	Posted - 2008.06.18 21:49:00 - [48] Originally by: trading hub I would really like for EVE to become bigger, as it will mean more iskies for you guys [CCP] (oop not iskis bucks)... :) Actually, in Iceland they use: Icelandic kr=na (ISK)
Zurrar Epiphyte Mining and Exploration Combined Planetary Union	Posted - 2008.06.18 21:51:00 - [49] eve isnt everybodys bag of chips. it takes the above average gamer to play eve.
Pan Crastus Anti-Metagaming League	Posted - 2008.06.18 21:56:00 - [50] EVE is the only MMO where the average player has something like 2.5 accounts. ;-) How to PVP: 1. buy ISK with GTCs, 2. fit cloak, learn aggro mechanics, 3. buy second account for metagaming
trading hub	Posted - 2008.06.18 22:05:00 - [51] Originally by: Pan Crastus EVE is the only MMO where the average player has something like 2.5 accounts. ;-) I think that is also a good example of faulty mechanics. In a normal game a gamer should be able to play adequatelly with only 1 account, if he cannot fulfil certain roles, then he should (and will find a team) of player with whom he can easily share the profits of the venture. Lets take exploration for example, what stops players from effectivelly cooperating, and flying in pairs eplorer,hacker/ganker for example ? instead ppl prefer to have for instance 1 dedicated pvp trained char and 1 char that is doing everything else. Well thats kinda stupid, no ? Perhpas, FW could one very important step that will induce ppl to participate in teamwork more, and make bonds. I hope FW will be a succes in the long run
Zinras Caldari Provisions	Posted - 2008.06.18 22:10:00 - [52] Edited by: Zinras on 18/06/2008 22:12:35 Edited by: Zinras on 18/06/2008 22:11:12 Originally by: trading hub Stuff that means I have no characters left to post. Good post but I'd say you're doing it wrong as an investor. It's like saying that Armani, D&G and so forth are massive failures because a company aiming for high income people who care a lot about fashion and/or looking good misses out on the 99.9999% of the 6 billion people on Earth who also need socks, T-shirts and whatever and are unable to afford it from them. If CCP is occupying 40% of the market they're aiming for, they're doing a damn good job. Remember that the total market for online gaming is everyone on a PC that has the requirements to run said game on minimum settings and have an internet connection. Currently, 1,407,724,920 people have internet access, according to this site. How many of those do you think have a computer that can run EVE? That's why you divide a market into segments relevant to you and start catering to whatever you choose. Aiming for 1.4 billion people is impossible, so you narrow it down. /fanboy In fact, investing in CCP is probably a good idea at the moment, due to their constant and fairly controlled growth /fanboy EDIT: Grammar fixes Originally by: CCP Greyscale moderated - mother abuse - Mitnal
An Anarchyyt Battlestars GoonSwarm	Posted - 2008.06.18 22:12:00 - [53] I play this game 100% adequatly with only 1 account. And I'm sure I'm not the only one. So point moot. Originally by: CCP Wrangler Second, a gentile is a non jewish person
Pan Crastus Anti-Metagaming League	Posted - 2008.06.18 22:15:00 - [54] Originally by: trading hub Originally by: Pan Crastus EVE is the only MMO where the average player has something like 2.5 accounts. ;-) I think that is also a good example of faulty mechanics. In a normal game a gamer should be able to play adequatelly with only 1 account, if he cannot fulfil certain roles, then he should (and will find a team) of player with whom he can easily share the profits of the venture. In CCP's words, they are "doing something right", as it gives them more subscriptions and thus more money. But in reality it's yet another example of RMT in the game, since people are buying unfair advantages with multiple accounts. How to PVP: 1. buy ISK with GTCs, 2. fit cloak, learn aggro mechanics, 3. buy second account for metagaming
Farrqua Turbo Mining Inc.	Posted - 2008.06.18 22:17:00 - [55] Originally by: Pan Crastus EVE is the only MMO where the average player has something like 2.5 accounts. ;-) So that puts me in the minority apparently. One account. Have no need for more than one. Game plays fine especially if you play with others in the community rather trying to build your own.
Zinras Caldari Provisions	Posted - 2008.06.18 22:23:00 - [56] Edited by: Zinras on 18/06/2008 22:26:13 I also have just one account but besides people also wanting unfair advantages, the extra accounts are likely an expression of people wanting to try other roles as well. Since EVE uses real time to train skills, including when offline, it would take AGES to train a level 5 skill if you also had to log in and train a new skill on a different character on the same account. That way, it could take years before you had a truly competent PVP characer and a great miner/whatever on the side.. It's simply easier to wait it out with your main and then skill up mining later, than starting a charcter on the side on the same account and skill it up alongside the other. Originally by: CCP Greyscale moderated - mother abuse - Mitnal
trading hub	Posted - 2008.06.18 22:24:00 - [57] Originally by: Zinras Edited by: Zinras on 18/06/2008 22:12:35 Edited by: Zinras on 18/06/2008 22:11:12 Originally by: trading hub Stuff that means I have no characters left to post. Good post but I'd say you're doing it wrong as an investor. It's like saying that Armani, D&G and so forth are massive failures because a company aiming for high income people who care a lot about fashion and/or looking good misses out on the 99.9999% of the 6 billion people on Earth who also need socks, T-shirts and whatever and are unable to afford it from them. If CCP is occupying 40% of the market they're aiming for, they're doing a damn good job. Remember that the total market for online gaming is everyone on a PC that has the requirements to run said game on minimum settings and have an internet connection. Currently, 1,407,724,920 people have internet access, according to this site. How many of those do you think have a computer that can run EVE? That's why you divide a market into segments relevant to you and start catering to whatever you choose. Aiming for 1.4 billion people is impossible, so you narrow it down. /fanboy In fact, investing in CCP is probably a good idea at the moment, due to their constant and fairly controlled growth /fanboy EDIT: Grammar fixes Yes but DG etc have high margin, low volume. You have 2 options - high margin low volume or low margin, high volume. If you have high margin, high volume you are damn good superstar, and its not gonna last long, cos its gonna be competed away very quickly. However to me it appears that CCP is low volume, low margin business which is no good. One of the key factors, which keeps CCP going is the nature of SP training, once character created, it is almost impossible to have him unsubscribe, even if original owner will leave the game, he is likely to sell it to someone else who will continue to pay subscription. Hence extremely stable cashflow, which is good, on the other hand stagnant population which is bad...
Sokratesz Rionnag Alba	Posted - 2008.06.18 22:24:00 - [58] Most WoW players can't handle Eve (and i'm being dead serious). I refuse to respect religious beliefs, and i refuse to respect people who hold them.
Robert Rosenberg Imperial Academy	Posted - 2008.06.18 22:25:00 - [59] The "niche" that EVE offers is four fold... Death Penalty PVP Spaceships Sandbox No other game has done all four of these things so the niche is VERY unique (One of a kind), and CCP has a five year head-start in terms of experience and everything else.
trading hub	Posted - 2008.06.18 22:28:00 - [60] This game will be a sweet mumba jumba !!! Just make it grow - just imagine, it grows fast, subscription base never contracts. Flexible funding of accounts, mega cool mechanics, more money for devs to higher more devs and make the game even more fun !!! Everyone is happy...
Captain Falcord The Python Cartel	Posted - 2008.06.18 22:28:00 - [61] Originally by: Traidor Disloyal Originally by: Tippia The learning curve in ≡v≡ is murderous û WoW's isn't. Yes, yes it is: http://bloodeagles.com/images/LearningCurve.jpg If you look at it closely, that graph makes no sense :P. Put that way, it means you gain a LOT of skill in short time. ---<---@
Malcanis We are Legend	Posted - 2008.06.18 22:32:00 - [62] Originally by: Captain Falcord Originally by: Traidor Disloyal Originally by: Tippia The learning curve in ≡v≡ is murderous û WoW's isn't. Yes, yes it is: http://bloodeagles.com/images/LearningCurve.jpg If you look at it closely, that graph makes no sense :P. Put that way, it means you gain a LOT of skill in short time. Look even more closely and you can see the many bloody corpses of those who failed to surmount the curve. CONCORD provide consequences, not safety; only you can do that.
trading hub	Posted - 2008.06.18 22:32:00 - [63] make sense to me ! )
Thorradin State Protectorate	Posted - 2008.06.18 22:35:00 - [64] Originally by: Patch86 Originally by: CCP RyanD 3nd Thats a little confusing Icelangrish?
Thorradin State Protectorate	Posted - 2008.06.18 22:39:00 - [65] Originally by: Robert Rosenberg Edited by: Robert Rosenberg on 18/06/2008 20:28:01 Edited by: Robert Rosenberg on 18/06/2008 20:27:42 Just so that everyone knows, the impressive subscription stats on Age of Conan are indicative of an impressive launch BOX sale, not actual subscriptions. In order do use your free 30 days with the Age of Conan box you must start a recurring subscription plan, even if you cancel it within the first 30 days and are never billed. So every single box that they sold counts as a subscriber, whether or not that person ever subscribes. I personally thought that AoC was crap and canceled my sub and sold my account on Craigslist on launch week, and I doubt I am alone in terms of bought-but-never-subscribed. The AoC numbers remind me of a certain quote... "There are lies, damn lies, and statistics". CCP and Blizzard count money in the bank, AoC tries to manipulate the facts so their abysmal game does not appear to be flopping so hard. I'll admit i'm canceled on AoC but may give them 1 more month. However there's lots of complaining about stuff and it is EPIC to see people complain about unplayable lag in 10v10 fights. The first siege ever happened earlier, and was capped at 96 people and was completely unplayable for both sides. Keep that in mind while slowly slide-show-shooting each other in a 300+ man fight in EVE, or having a half second delay in a 40-50 person fight (like good FW fights).
Thorradin State Protectorate	Posted - 2008.06.18 22:46:00 - [66] Originally by: Azzma I dunno probably the community in WoW is a little better than in EVE because in EVE everyone is all elitist and serious and always correcting spelling and alot of times forget its a game and just have fun and bull**** u know what i mean It's true. WoW's most famous player is Leeroy Jenkins, a court jester who staged something mildy funny. EVE's most famous player is Istvaan, whose group pulled of a hit that was so epic it made headlines, and his group forced unsure players to realize EVE really is a badass sandbox game.
Pan Crastus Anti-Metagaming League	Posted - 2008.06.18 22:48:00 - [67] Originally by: Zinras Edited by: Zinras on 18/06/2008 22:26:13 I also have just one account but besides people also wanting unfair advantages, the extra accounts are likely an expression of people wanting to try other roles as well It's also a consequence of EVE mandating that kind of stuff when you have capital ships ... I don't think it was intended that way, but every capital ship pilot has at least 1 cyno alt. How to PVP: 1. buy ISK with GTCs, 2. fit cloak, learn aggro mechanics, 3. buy second account for metagaming
Pan Crastus Anti-Metagaming League	Posted - 2008.06.18 22:49:00 - [68] Originally by: Sokratesz Most WoW players can't handle Eve (and i'm being dead serious). ******s, based on personal experience (EVE players I know), around 100% of EVE players have played WoW for a while. ;-) How to PVP: 1. buy ISK with GTCs, 2. fit cloak, learn aggro mechanics, 3. buy second account for metagaming*
Thorradin State Protectorate	Posted - 2008.06.18 22:51:00 - [69] Originally by: Pan Crastus EVE is the only MMO where the average player has something like 2.5 accounts. ;-) Perhaps you should go read the account stats posted in one of the CSM (i think) blog.
Robert Rosenberg Imperial Academy	Posted - 2008.06.18 22:52:00 - [70] Originally by: Thorradin Originally by: Robert Rosenberg Edited by: Robert Rosenberg on 18/06/2008 20:28:01 Edited by: Robert Rosenberg on 18/06/2008 20:27:42 Just so that everyone knows, the impressive subscription stats on Age of Conan are indicative of an impressive launch BOX sale, not actual subscriptions. In order do use your free 30 days with the Age of Conan box you must start a recurring subscription plan, even if you cancel it within the first 30 days and are never billed. So every single box that they sold counts as a subscriber, whether or not that person ever subscribes. I personally thought that AoC was crap and canceled my sub and sold my account on Craigslist on launch week, and I doubt I am alone in terms of bought-but-never-subscribed. The AoC numbers remind me of a certain quote... "There are lies, damn lies, and statistics". CCP and Blizzard count money in the bank, AoC tries to manipulate the facts so their abysmal game does not appear to be flopping so hard. I'll admit i'm canceled on AoC but may give them 1 more month. However there's lots of complaining about stuff and it is EPIC to see people complain about unplayable lag in 10v10 fights. The first siege ever happened earlier, and was capped at 96 people and was completely unplayable for both sides. Keep that in mind while slowly slide-show-shooting each other in a 300+ man fight in EVE, or having a half second delay in a 40-50 person fight (like good FW fights). LOL at the 96 man capped siege, yeah I am so glad I sold that game on launch week I doubt I could sell it for even a dollar now.
Matthew BloodStar Technologies	Posted - 2008.06.18 22:58:00 - [71] Originally by: trading hub because for sure there are people out there who are hungry for space sci-fi adventure, which has very complex game mechanics (including myself), but there are not that many Define "not that many". In the context of the internet-connected population of the world, 300k is "not that many", yet is more than enough for a viable business. Originally by: trading hub My understanding is such that (generally speaking) when a company occupies a niche that implies, that there is a unique type of demand on the market, which the company satisfies. That in turn implies high barriers to entry into that particular niche, because only that company is able to satisfy this particular type of demand due to specific expertise (i.e. ferrari) Ferrari didn't pop out of the ether a fully-capable sports car manufacturer. And they are not the only company capable of fulfilling the demand. However, because of their experience, prior development etc, they have a significant advantage over any new company trying to enter that market. The same is true of CCP. They are pretty much the only company with years of experience running a game such as Eve. It is important to remember that while Eve and WOW are both MMO's, they are very different games. Sure, they share some similarities. But then so do cars. They all have wheels, an engine etc, but knowing how to make a reliant robin is very different from knowing how to make a ferarri. This experience is particularly valuable, given how far the Eve niche is from the historical experience base of the wider gaming industry. There was a reason the first generation MMOs were pretty much a persistent-world version of the old D&D single-player games, with various amounts of instancing, no-PVP areas etc to hold the essentially single-player or single-party model together in an MMO environment. These origins make sense, as it was a natural extension of existing skillsets within the industry. This evolved into the raid system WOW implemented so successful. Similarly, the WOW battlegrounds could be seen as a derivation of standard first-person shooter game forms, with instancing and lack of significant death penalty shoe-horning it into an MMO environment. Eve took a leap of faith over to the other side of the MMO concept, making a sandbox world from the ground up, rather than trying to tack MMO elements into the old RPG concepts. It's a niche because relatively few players are willing to make that leap. But having made that leap successfully puts CCP in a very strong position within the section of players who are willing to depart from the old formula. Originally by: trading hub SO Here is the question for you (no judgment implied, just raising the topic) - do you want to be a group of enthusiasts, who occupy a niche within a niche, or do you want to try to beat Blizzard in their own game and CHOP into WOW profits and market share? Thoughts ? That really depends on what it would take to chop into WOW's profits and market share. If the eve-style MMO model could be capable of that, then great, lets go for it. But I suspect it is not. If that is the case, then you would have to change the game-style of Eve to be less like Eve, and more like WOW. Aside from my personal feelings that this is a bad idea, because I like Eve how it is, this is also a risky business strategy. You risk alienating your existing playerbase, with no guarantee of securing a new playerbase with your changes (which is likely to be harder anyway if you have a horde of former players filling the internet with how you screwed them over). While it might be a desperation move if the company is in trouble, for a viable and growing company such as CCP, that risk makes very little business sense. The real question is, does Eve need to be as big as WOW to be a successful business? On current evidence, the answer is a resounding no. ------- There is no magic Wand of Fixing, and it is not powered by forum whines.
Zinras Caldari Provisions	Posted - 2008.06.18 23:02:00 - [72] Originally by: trading hub Originally by: Zinras Edited by: Zinras on 18/06/2008 22:12:35 Edited by: Zinras on 18/06/2008 22:11:12 Originally by: trading hub Stuff that means I have no characters left to post. Good post but I'd say you're doing it wrong as an investor. It's like saying that Armani, D&G and so forth are massive failures because a company aiming for high income people who care a lot about fashion and/or looking good misses out on the 99.9999% of the 6 billion people on Earth who also need socks, T-shirts and whatever and are unable to afford it from them. If CCP is occupying 40% of the market they're aiming for, they're doing a damn good job. Remember that the total market for online gaming is everyone on a PC that has the requirements to run said game on minimum settings and have an internet connection. Currently, 1,407,724,920 people have internet access, according to this site. How many of those do you think have a computer that can run EVE? That's why you divide a market into segments relevant to you and start catering to whatever you choose. Aiming for 1.4 billion people is impossible, so you narrow it down. /fanboy In fact, investing in CCP is probably a good idea at the moment, due to their constant and fairly controlled growth /fanboy EDIT: Grammar fixes Yes but DG etc have high margin, low volume. You have 2 options - high margin low volume or low margin, high volume. If you have high margin, high volume you are damn good superstar, and its not gonna last long, cos its gonna be competed away very quickly. However to me it appears that CCP is low volume, low margin business which is no good. One of the key factors, which keeps CCP going is the nature of SP training, once character created, it is almost impossible to have him unsubscribe, even if original owner will leave the game, he is likely to sell it to someone else who will continue to pay subscription. Hence extremely stable cashflow, which is good, on the other hand stagnant population which is bad... But the population isn't stagnant, it's growing. Remember that no matter how many accounts you have, you still have one IP address. So CCP can see how many unique IPs that are registered in their game (and thus if they're rising as well). Also, I'd rather speculate in them having a higher profit margin, considering they release all their expansions for free, something which even WoW makes you pay for (please consider that WoW has 10 million subscribers and the lowest users can pay is $12.99 per month and at most $14.99 -- This puts Blizzard's initial profit before costs at somewhere between 129.900.000 and 149.900.000 dollars per month). Considering they apparently can't afford letting people get their expansions or clients for free, I'd rather say WoW is in trouble if that's the sort of speculation you go by If one could find several annual reports from CCP it would be settled easily. Btw, a stagnant population is in no way bad if you still maintain a proper profit margin. No maker of an MMO will expect numbers to continually rise or even go beyond a certain number of users. So they plan the game with X accounts in mind. It's only when the population declines and if EVE is their only source of income that they'll have to do something about it. Originally by: CCP Greyscale moderated - mother abuse - Mitnal
Pan Crastus Anti-Metagaming League	Posted - 2008.06.18 23:07:00 - [73] Originally by: Thorradin Originally by: Pan Crastus EVE is the only MMO where the average player has something like 2.5 accounts. ;-) Perhaps you should go read the account stats posted in one of the CSM (i think) blog. That's based only on credit cards AFAIK and absolutely untrustworthy. Many alt accounts are paid for with GTCs even if the main account is paid with CC. How to PVP: 1. buy ISK with GTCs, 2. fit cloak, learn aggro mechanics, 3. buy second account for metagaming
Mankirks Wife	Posted - 2008.06.18 23:24:00 - [74] Originally by: Matthew If that is the case, then you would have to change the game-style of Eve to be less like Eve, and more like WOW. Aside from my personal feelings that this is a bad idea, because I like Eve how it is, this is also a risky business strategy. You risk alienating your existing playerbase, with no guarantee of securing a new playerbase with your changes (which is likely to be harder anyway if you have a horde of former players filling the internet with how you screwed them over). See NGE. I think something like 80% of SWG players quit after that patch.
Danton Marcellus Nebula Rasa Holdings	Posted - 2008.06.18 23:30:00 - [75] The docile masses like pastel colors and repetative motions some might refer to as dance. Should/would/could have, HAVE you chav! Also Known As

CCP RyanD C C P	Posted - 2008.06.18 23:35:00 - [76] Originally by: trading hub SO Here is the question for you (no judgment implied, just raising the topic) - do you want to be a group of enthusiasts, who occupy a niche within a niche, or do you want to try to beat Blizzard in their own game and CHOP into WOW profits and market share? We're in a totally different market space than WoW so we don't pay them much attention except to root for them to get bigger and bigger and make more and more people aware of the MMO concept. WoW shards are 3,500 to 5,000 PCU (Peak Concurrent Users) systems. EVE is a 45,000 PCU system. They are in the business of selling a single-player or small-group scripted theme park experience in a simulated world. We're in the business of creating a living virtual world. Our goal with EVE is to continue to grow the player community and the PCU total forever until we hit some hard cap physical limit, or we reach the point where everyone on earth with the necessary equipment, income, and interest in the genre have been reasonably well exposed to EVE and have had a chance to try it for themselves and see if they'd like to join the community. So far the engineers have been able to keep raising the capacity of the cluster as fast as the rate of new users joining the community and we don't see that changing in the near future so I expect that growth will continue as well. As far as investment value, well, lets just say that we're all pretty happy with the growth of the notional value of CCP's equity. :)

Danton Marcellus Nebula Rasa Holdings	Posted - 2008.06.18 23:42:00 - [77] Originally by: CCP RyanD Originally by: trading hub SO Here is the question for you (no judgment implied, just raising the topic) - do you want to be a group of enthusiasts, who occupy a niche within a niche, or do you want to try to beat Blizzard in their own game and CHOP into WOW profits and market share? We're in a totally different market space than WoW so we don't pay them much attention except to root for them to get bigger and bigger and make more and more people aware of the MMO concept. WoW shards are 3,500 to 5,000 PCU (Peak Concurrent Users) systems. EVE is a 45,000 PCU system. They are in the business of selling a single-player or small-group scripted theme park experience in a simulated world. We're in the business of creating a living virtual world. Our goal with EVE is to continue to grow the player community and the PCU total forever until we hit some hard cap physical limit, or we reach the point where everyone on earth with the necessary equipment, income, and interest in the genre have been reasonably well exposed to EVE and have had a chance to try it for themselves and see if they'd like to join the community. So far the engineers have been able to keep raising the capacity of the cluster as fast as the rate of new users joining the community and we don't see that changing in the near future so I expect that growth will continue as well. As far as investment value, well, lets just say that we're all pretty happy with the growth of the notional value of CCP's equity. :) We'll never leave Earth, we'll just get plugged in to support the EVE CPU as batteries to fuel and explore this final frontier. This collective dream will then be broadcast into space where some alien will pick up on it and recreate humanity as his petproject. Should/would/could have, HAVE you chav! Also Known As
Urtok Science and Trade Institute	Posted - 2008.06.18 23:47:00 - [78] I've read the thread, good discussions, but there is one aspect of Eve most people miss. They describe the aspect or it's outcome or mechanic but don't actually say it. Maybe with good reason. I have played many many MMOs starting with UO and even playtested Shadowbane, but stayed away from AoC. Why did I mention these MMOs? Simple, they all tried but failed where Eve succeded. In fact many have tried and failed. Eve is the only MMO I know of that has succeeded in this one niche. Free for all Player v. Player aka FFA PVP. This is a very hardcore niche and turns the average MMO players off. Everybody else who has tried it have failed. They either have very very low subscription rates or forced to transfrom into non FFA PVP to survive. To understand Eve you have to understand this FFA PVP niche. Once you understand it you will realize Eve can not go mainstream and survive. Because the mainstream can not abide FFA PVP. Their experiences in other FFA PVP attempts have taught them very harsh lessions and have come to dispise it. Which is too bad because Eve is a well done MMO and their implimentation of FFA PVP is near perfect and fair to the players. Since Eve is a FFA PVP game, it takes time. Time to drop old prejudice about the niche. Time to learn the game. But, time is not what the masses want to give. So the game grows slowly. But, for those that give the time are rewarded with a very unique game. A game that after five years still surprises. Still excites. And to end this reply....how do I get rid of this bunny?!?!? (how do I change my sig?) (\_/) (O.o) (> <)[]==^= This is Bunny with a machine gun.
Lilan Kahn The Littlest Hobos	Posted - 2008.06.18 23:50:00 - [79] Originally by: CCP RyanD Originally by: trading hub SO Here is the question for you (no judgment implied, just raising the topic) - do you want to be a group of enthusiasts, who occupy a niche within a niche, or do you want to try to beat Blizzard in their own game and CHOP into WOW profits and market share? We're in a totally different market space than WoW so we don't pay them much attention except to root for them to get bigger and bigger and make more and more people aware of the MMO concept. WoW shards are 3,500 to 5,000 PCU (Peak Concurrent Users) systems. EVE is a 45,000 PCU system. They are in the business of selling a single-player or small-group scripted theme park experience in a simulated world. We're in the business of creating a living virtual world. Our goal with EVE is to continue to grow the player community and the PCU total forever until we hit some hard cap physical limit, or we reach the point where everyone on earth with the necessary equipment, income, and interest in the genre have been reasonably well exposed to EVE and have had a chance to try it for themselves and see if they'd like to join the community. So far the engineers have been able to keep raising the capacity of the cluster as fast as the rate of new users joining the community and we don't see that changing in the near future so I expect that growth will continue as well. As far as investment value, well, lets just say that we're all pretty happy with the growth of the notional value of CCP's equity. :) I'm glad CCP's stance on this hasnt changed from when lekajet gave a spech thingie at the it uni in CPH abut the exact same thing. oh and any news abut the world of darkness mmo? pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeease "Bringing Content to you 1 round of ammo at a time"
Zinras Caldari Provisions	Posted - 2008.06.18 23:52:00 - [80] Edited by: Zinras on 18/06/2008 23:53:05 Originally by: Urtok I've read the thread, good discussions, but there is one aspect of Eve most people miss. They describe the aspect or it's outcome or mechanic but don't actually say it. Maybe with good reason. I have played many many MMOs starting with UO and even playtested Shadowbane, but stayed away from AoC. Why did I mention these MMOs? Simple, they all tried but failed where Eve succeded. In fact many have tried and failed. Eve is the only MMO I know of that has succeeded in this one niche. Free for all Player v. Player aka FFA PVP. This is a very hardcore niche and turns the average MMO players off. Everybody else who has tried it have failed. They either have very very low subscription rates or forced to transfrom into non FFA PVP to survive. To understand Eve you have to understand this FFA PVP niche. Once you understand it you will realize Eve can not go mainstream and survive. Because the mainstream can not abide FFA PVP. Their experiences in other FFA PVP attempts have taught them very harsh lessions and have come to dispise it. Which is too bad because Eve is a well done MMO and their implimentation of FFA PVP is near perfect and fair to the players. Since Eve is a FFA PVP game, it takes time. Time to drop old prejudice about the niche. Time to learn the game. But, time is not what the masses want to give. So the game grows slowly. But, for those that give the time are rewarded with a very unique game. A game that after five years still surprises. Still excites. And to end this reply....how do I get rid of this bunny?!?!? (how do I change my sig?) Go to EVE Insider in the left sidebar and click "forums", then "settings".. Then pick your character and edit away! Insert something relevant to the discussion here Originally by: CCP Greyscale moderated - mother abuse - Mitnal
sg3s O.W.N. Corp OWN Alliance	Posted - 2008.06.19 00:06:00 - [81] Remember guys, especially the new ones. CCP, eve, was build up from the grounds with nothing, thats right, nothing... Well some brilliant brains but no funds... ALL the other MMOs are set up and build by already large(r) companies specialised in making tons of cash and investing them in moneymaking games like say wow.
trading hub	Posted - 2008.06.19 00:07:00 - [82] Originally by: CCP RyanD Originally by: trading hub SO Here is the question for you (no judgment implied, just raising the topic) - do you want to be a group of enthusiasts, who occupy a niche within a niche, or do you want to try to beat Blizzard in their own game and CHOP into WOW profits and market share? We're in a totally different market space than WoW so we don't pay them much attention except to root for them to get bigger and bigger and make more and more people aware of the MMO concept. WoW shards are 3,500 to 5,000 PCU (Peak Concurrent Users) systems. EVE is a 45,000 PCU system. They are in the business of selling a single-player or small-group scripted theme park experience in a simulated world. We're in the business of creating a living virtual world. Our goal with EVE is to continue to grow the player community and the PCU total forever until we hit some hard cap physical limit, or we reach the point where everyone on earth with the necessary equipment, income, and interest in the genre have been reasonably well exposed to EVE and have had a chance to try it for themselves and see if they'd like to join the community. So far the engineers have been able to keep raising the capacity of the cluster as fast as the rate of new users joining the community and we don't see that changing in the near future so I expect that growth will continue as well. As far as investment value, well, lets just say that we're all pretty happy with the growth of the notional value of CCP's equity. :) Sounds fun ! Essentially all I want to know is that you ppl out there are hungry for more and want to grow. This will make me happy ! If these kind of discussions, can potentially help you guys to improve the game - great. BTW that post clarifies quite nicely how is WOW and EVE market segments are different, it was not that obvious to me before
Pan Crastus Anti-Metagaming League	Posted - 2008.06.19 00:10:00 - [83] Originally by: CCP RyanD WoW shards are 3,500 to 5,000 PCU (Peak Concurrent Users) systems. EVE is a 45,000 PCU system. They are in the business of selling a single-player or small-group scripted theme park experience in a simulated world. We're in the business of creating a living virtual world. So you are saying that you are competing with Second Life, which is a 60.000 PCU system. Quote: So far the engineers have been able to keep raising the capacity of the cluster as fast as the rate of new users joining the community and we don't see that changing in the near future so I expect that growth will continue as well. As a long-time player I find this debatable. I think the only reason why people are still finding the capacity of the cluster barely acceptable is because they adapt or leave. Many would love to have playable 500v500 fleet fights (or even 200v200) nowdays and know that it's not possible (with little or no lag). It doesn't mean that the cluster is delivering the performance it should. How to PVP: 1. buy ISK with GTCs, 2. fit cloak, learn aggro mechanics, 3. buy second account for metagaming
Pan Crastus Anti-Metagaming League	Posted - 2008.06.19 00:18:00 - [84] Originally by: Urtok This is a very hardcore niche and turns the average MMO players off. Everybody else who has tried it have failed. They either have very very low subscription rates or forced to transfrom into non FFA PVP to survive. The majority of EVE's players isn't interested in FFA PVP, so your conclusions are wrong. The niche you are talking about is much smaller than EVE's target audience. Many players seem to play EVE simply because they want a sci-fi MMO with long-term appeal (due to the market and the persistant world) and there's very little available in that niche. Personally, I'm sure that EVE could have many more users if there weren't so many completely unnecessary stumbling blocks for new and old players: lag, obscure/bad UI (esp. regarding the "twitch" actions in combat), lacking documentation (esp. the website). A polished UI and website would make a real difference to the new player and the long-term appeal seems to be there anyway. How to PVP: 1. buy ISK with GTCs, 2. fit cloak, learn aggro mechanics, 3. buy second account for metagaming
Lilan Kahn The Littlest Hobos	Posted - 2008.06.19 00:24:00 - [85] Quote: As a long-time player I find this debatable. I think the only reason why people are still finding the capacity of the cluster barely acceptable is because they adapt or leave. Many would love to have playable 500v500 fleet fights (or even 200v200) nowdays and know that it's not possible (with little or no lag). It doesn't mean that the cluster is delivering the performance it should. every time ccp "fixs" the server to handel the load peopel wil bring more "Bringing Content to you 1 round of ammo at a time"
Urtok Science and Trade Institute	Posted - 2008.06.19 00:29:00 - [86] Originally by: Pan Crastus The majority of EVE's players isn't interested in FFA PVP, ... Does not matter if they are not interested in FFA PvP they still play a game with that as its heart. Which if you think about it is quite amazing and a great accomplishment. Maybe limiting it to that particular niche was not accurate. As the discussion have shown, Eve is hard to define. Perhapes it's because Eve is so unique. WoW killer. No, not a joke...really...why won't you belive me!!!!
Mankirks Wife	Posted - 2008.06.19 00:46:00 - [87] Also, Eve is truly unique in the realm of gaming in this one simple fact... It has no crates. None at all. Not even any barrels. Such a feat of innovation is nigh-unheard of in this day and age.
Squasar State Protectorate	Posted - 2008.06.19 00:49:00 - [88] Originally by: Urtok Originally by: Pan Crastus The majority of EVE's players isn't interested in FFA PVP, ... Does not matter if they are not interested in FFA PvP they still play a game with that as its heart. Which if you think about it is quite amazing and a great accomplishment. Maybe limiting it to that particular niche was not accurate. As the discussion have shown, Eve is hard to define. Perhapes it's because Eve is so unique. Exactly. I'm more interested in the market, which in the end is passive PvP because you're always against SOMEONE posting market orders or who is going to mine out a belt before or after you. Yes, I produce my own ships (T1 frigs) by the dozen, so PvP doesn't hurt my bank much, but the market itself is its own PvP system.
Squasar State Protectorate	Posted - 2008.06.19 00:50:00 - [89] Originally by: Mankirks Wife Also, Eve is truly unique in the realm of gaming in this one simple fact... It has no crates. None at all. Not even any barrels. Such a feat of innovation is nigh-unheard of in this day and age. Yes, but we have cans. Basically LARGE barrels, lol
Danton Marcellus Nebula Rasa Holdings	Posted - 2008.06.19 01:25:00 - [90] Originally by: Pan Crastus ...So you are saying that you are competing with Second Life, which is a 60.000 PCU system... Is that something like World of World of Warcraft? Should/would/could have, HAVE you chav! Also Known As
RigelKentaurus Flying Tartiflette Caldari Deep Space Industral	Posted - 2008.06.19 01:36:00 - [91] Originally by: Pan Crastus Many players seem to play EVE simply because they want a sci-fi MMO with long-term appeal (due to the market and the persistant world) and there's very little available in that niche. Indeed, CCP has almost a monopoly over space MMOs. Personnally, I'm only here because there are spaceships. While I don't dislike the "harsh death penalty" idea, I really hate the way it's been implemented (blobs exist because of that). What would be interesting to know is what would the current EVE population look like if E&B were still around. _________ Someday, EVE may look like this.
MotherMoon Huang Yinglong	Posted - 2008.06.19 03:59:00 - [92] ummm the 4th more popular mmorpg is final fantasy 11... which has 500,000 members. which is a lie but we'll pretend that's not the case :P making eve the 5th most popular mmorpg. 5th place is great.
MotherMoon Huang Yinglong	Posted - 2008.06.19 04:02:00 - [93] Originally by: CCP RyanD Originally by: trading hub Im a stil a bit confused, why is it EVE online lagging big time in terms of population behind other MMOs. EVE is now the 3nd largest full-price western MMO behind World of Warcraft and Conan at just over 230K paid subscribers or paid subscriber equivalents. Runescape and Dofus are larger in absolute terms but they have a significant free-play component and a discounted ($5) monthly subscription price for people who choose to pay. EVE is bigger than EverQuest, EverQuest II, Lord of the Rings Online, Dungeons & Dragons Online, etc. In addition, EVE grows every year and has since release. Unlike every other MMO in the market EVE's growth rate is actually increasing not decreasing as time passes. Here's a lot of data for the curious. I stand corrected :P I guess final fantasy 11 was lying! yarr!
MotherMoon Huang Yinglong	Posted - 2008.06.19 04:06:00 - [94] Originally by: trading hub Just to be fair Id like to say that majority of MMO comunity prefer to play fantasy (Warrior, Wizzard) type of games, rather than SCI-FI games. Not sure how to explains that, perhpas owing to D&D paper game or smth. Then there is not much market left as such for EVE to chop into by definition. However I would still argue, that in current state of internet "sophistication" it is very easy to teach players anything, and if your game is genuinly appealing then it will eat into existing market shares of other games. but MORE people play eve that 98% of fantasy mmorpgs. they are all below eve other than two.
MotherMoon Huang Yinglong	Posted - 2008.06.19 04:06:00 - [95] Originally by: Pan Crastus EVE is the only MMO where the average player has something like 2.5 accounts. ;-) [/quote sorry but CCP did a study on this in the co report only 20% of the eve community has more than one account.
MotherMoon Huang Yinglong	Posted - 2008.06.19 04:08:00 - [96] Edited by: MotherMoon on 19/06/2008 04:10:10 Originally by: Captain Falcord Originally by: Traidor Disloyal Originally by: Tippia The learning curve in ≡v≡ is murderous û WoW's isn't. Yes, yes it is: http://bloodeagles.com/images/LearningCurve.jpg If you look at it closely, that graph makes no sense :P. Put that way, it means you gain a LOT of skill in short time. actully it goes back in time when you get pod killed and forget to get a new clone! EDIT: sorry about all my posts :P I had too many people to reply too while I was reading :P Right so someone said something about competed with second life. Guess what if eve dumbed down to second life standard it could support over 400,000 people easy. but there is a problem... eve has game mechcanics :)
Elessina Antares Fleet Yards SMASH Alliance	Posted - 2008.06.19 05:00:00 - [97] Edited by: Elessina on 19/06/2008 05:00:54 Of all the MMOs currently in publication, I'd be willing to bet on only WoW and EVE (or their corresponding successor/sequel) insofar as long term future and success. The way I see it, WoW will continue to attract mostly the younger generation of gamer looking for fun and easy gameplay, and the "I am a god" type experience. (WoW at the moment also attracts people of the older generation who are only just getting into games - but they can be ignored as they are a dying demographic). However, as these WoW gamers grow up, go to uni/trade school, learn various skills (accouting, economics, engineering, maths, science, etc.), enter the work force, and generally become more mature, a complicated, "sand box" game like EVE will begin to appear more appealing than WoW. IMO, the relevance of real world knowledge and skills in a game, and the ability to apply such knowledge/skills in the game makes the game especially appealing/enjoyable to persons with such RL knkowledge/skills. For example, if one had a look at the Market Discussion sub-forum, some of the discussions there are so academically challenging that you literally need a degree in commerce/econ/accounting/finance to begin to make heads or tails out of it. And I am sure these people take great pleasure out of being able to apply their RL knowledge to EVE. Similarly, those EVE subscribers who have had military or para-military experience in RL would be attracted to the PvP aspects of EVE such as leading fleets and alliances, managing logistics/supply lines, defending territory, and military tactics in general. As the population of most 1st world countries is generally aging, and as the education of children/teen agers/adults is become more and more accelerated, I reckon EVE is well placed to be a market leader in the coming years. The fact that EVE's subscription is lower than some of the other MMO's currently in publication, together with the fact that EVE is showing positive growth, means only that EVE has not yet peaked. Using the "buy low sell her" rule, EVE has basically identified an undervalued stock, invested heavily in it, and is now riding the upward trend. My 2c. --Ele edit: typos + grammatical
Mara Rinn	Posted - 2008.06.19 05:37:00 - [98] Originally by: Captain Falcord If you look at it closely, that graph makes no sense :P. Put that way, it means you gain a LOT of skill in short time. Alternately, view the line as "the level of skill you must have in order for continued play to be meaningful," rather than "the level of skill you get spoonfed while playing the game." :) So with EVE you can get in your ship, run the tutorial missions, then go start a career mining veldspar in the starter system in a frigate! Woot! Day one of EVE is so easy, you even have the game telling you how to play! Then you get to day 2. You've finished the tutorials, and mining veldspar in your Ibis is getting kinda old. Now what? There's no NPC standing around with a big exclamation mark above its head to tell you what to do next! OH NOES! Welcome to the extremely steep learning curve of EVE :)
Pan Crastus Anti-Metagaming League	Posted - 2008.06.19 06:15:00 - [99] Originally by: Danton Marcellus Originally by: Pan Crastus ...So you are saying that you are competing with Second Life, which is a 60.000 PCU system... Is that something like World of World of Warcraft? No, it's something like Ambulation. How to PVP: 1. buy ISK with GTCs, 2. fit cloak, learn aggro mechanics, 3. buy second account for metagaming
MotherMoon Huang Yinglong	Posted - 2008.06.19 06:22:00 - [100] Edited by: MotherMoon on 19/06/2008 06:22:03 Originally by: Pan Crastus Originally by: Danton Marcellus Originally by: Pan Crastus ...So you are saying that you are competing with Second Life, which is a 60.000 PCU system... Is that something like World of World of Warcraft? No, it's something like Ambulation. yeah but at least ambulation won't have player modeled assets... shutters... SL is a **** store by the way, honest.
Olli Hokkanen Full Life Alternative	Posted - 2008.06.19 07:17:00 - [101] eves largest problems are: warp drive active.. zzz warping.. zzz its just too damn boring, even 0.0 alliances arent much fun since mostly you wait at the station for orders/rat in belts while waiting
trading hub	Posted - 2008.06.19 08:51:00 - [102] It was very interesting to have at numbers at this website MMORPG charts. IÆve done some number crunching to understand how EVE is position on competitive landscape and thatÆs what IÆve found out. 1.60% of games exhibited negative average annual growth of subscribers (consequently 40% exhibited positive growth, that includes EVE) 2.Top performer was not ! WOW but relatively young game called DOFUS. However in my view it can be attributed to the fact, that the game is young, and it may as well decline in the future, as we have seen with many other games. In the light of that uncontested leader is WOW with average annual growth of 151% 3.Average annual growth across all games including those with negative growth was 23%, excluding those with negative growth 77% 4.Worst performer was Vanguard: Saga of Heroes with negative annual growth of 56% EVE average annual growth was 74% - what can we learn from this ? û EVE is very stable good average market participant. It falls into 40% of positive performers, it also perform somewhat in line with the rest of the market, i.e. in line with 77% average growth across the board. Hence I would say that all in all EVE business model is a success, however if I was a shareholder of CCP , then I would definitely say that it is not good enough and that the game should perform better than the market. EVE definitely has some unique game mechanics, and it appears that CCP is relatively flexible in terms of implementing additional content. IÆm not saying that EVE should mimic WOW, however as they say in US û ôYou can be excused for not inventing a good idea, but there is no excuse for not stealing a good ideaö. I suppose you could definently learn from best market players out there. To me it appears the game designers are already learning. FW adds much more player interaction to the game, which I think is a distinctive feature of WOW. And obviously as devs comment themselves that they are looking to induce more interaction between EVE rpg content universe and players community. Which is a good thing.
Sidney Greenstreet	Posted - 2008.07.22 00:12:00 - [103] Here is the #1 problem with EVE, nobody knows what it is... They have no idea how vast it is, how detailed it is, how broad the options are for player participation, and that the end game can continue for years... I have played EQ, DAOC, Shadowbane, WOW, AOC, and now EVE (for a week). I had no idea what EVE was until a guy playing AOC heard me talk about Shadowbane and how it had the best conceptual design due to the fact that players actually control the politics and join likeminded "guilds" and form realms. He was adamant that EVE was like that, so I decided to look it up, and here I am... As far as the idea stealing, it's EVE that the other MMO's need to mimic, as no other game has this level of player implemented politics, mixed with a PVP system that works and actually has an end game. Content is great for the future, but accurately communicating to the gaming world what EVE actually is and represents is by far the main need that needs to be addressed... People just don't get it...
Cat Gilligan Caldari Blair Corporation	Posted - 2008.07.22 01:14:00 - [104] Edited by: Cat Gilligan on 22/07/2008 01:14:32 I don't WANT CCP to go after WOW, or their players. I'm happy with EVE as a relative niche game, but it's a HIGHLY successful niche... Star Wars Galaxies used to also be pretty complex and hardcore, and stood out as a successor to UO instead of EQ (WoW is in the EQ mold, and SWG's original Devs were mostly UO Devs) and management decided (foolishly) to chase the WoW audience because 250K subs weren't "enough". Today they have far less than 50K and the WORST reputation in the industry, to the point that to even MENTION the "NGE" (the biggest "fail" in the history of MMO's) anywhere generates "SOE sucks" hatred. I don't want to ever see ANY hint of WoWishness in EVE or CCP. EVE has grown to where it is because of the game that it is. To try to be anything else would be to "failcascade" like SWG did. And I think our Devs are smart enough to know it.
Wrayeth Inexorable Retribution	Posted - 2008.07.22 01:37:00 - [105] Edited by: Wrayeth on 22/07/2008 01:37:51 Originally by: Pan Crastus So you are saying that you are competing with Second Life, which is a 60.000 PCU system. Second life doesn't allow you to pew-pew other players right in the face. It's also a different genre as far as sci-fi/fantasy/modern life/historical fiction/etc. goes. Quote: As a long-time player I find this debatable. I think the only reason why people are still finding the capacity of the cluster barely acceptable is because they adapt or leave. Many would love to have playable 500v500 fleet fights (or even 200v200) nowdays and know that it's not possible (with little or no lag). It doesn't mean that the cluster is delivering the performance it should. As another individual has said, every time CCP improves the servers the players just bring a larger blob. A 100-v-100 fleet fight was considered massive at one point, FFS. Originally by: Cat Gilligan Edited by: Cat Gilligan on 22/07/2008 01:14:32 I don't WANT CCP to go after WOW, or their players. I'm happy with EVE as a relative niche game, but it's a HIGHLY successful niche... Star Wars Galaxies used to also be pretty complex and hardcore, and stood out as a successor to UO instead of EQ (WoW is in the EQ mold, and SWG's original Devs were mostly UO Devs) and management decided (foolishly) to chase the WoW audience because 250K subs weren't "enough". Today they have far less than 50K and the WORST reputation in the industry, to the point that to even MENTION the "NGE" (the biggest "fail" in the history of MMO's) anywhere generates "SOE sucks" hatred. I don't want to ever see ANY hint of WoWishness in EVE or CCP. EVE has grown to where it is because of the game that it is. To try to be anything else would be to "failcascade" like SWG did. And I think our Devs are smart enough to know it. This. -Wrayeth n00b Extraordinaire "Look, pa! I just contributed absolutely nothing to this thread!"
Schani Kratnorr x13	Posted - 2008.07.22 02:59:00 - [106] EVEs Sci-fi setting and un-sharded game world makes it a more interesting game to play. I have been playing EVE since it came out, and have been around for the growing pains. THE best thing to happen for EVE was when CCP aquired the distribution rights from Simon & Shuster, who quite frankly did a half-assed job at promoting the game. Another milestone was when CCP gave two months free to all the refugees from Earth & Beyond - a nice gesture that earned them many points with the Sci-Fi crowd. These events may lie years in the past, but they occured at a time when EVE could easily have gone down the toilet instead of where it is now. As for WoW - well it had and has its fanbase. it has magic swords, orcs and potions. It is an avatar-based game that is supreemely done - but seen from the outside, it does not appear to expand much on the basic design of this type of game. EVE is the only game where you can fly a huge spaceship. Play the user-driven market. Be s smuggler, hero, villain, pirate, tycoon, politician, diplomat, recruiter, leader, spy, and much more... ¦ It will take a well executed, expansive and franchise-driven competitor to make a dent. Star Trek/Wars might have what it takes, but their respective owners are content with non-visionary developers churning out useless crap (with a few exeptions). EVE Online is always at a crossroads. On one hand the game has technical issues that need adressing, and some argue the finer points of PvP are lost in the blob. On the other hand, it does deliver a unique experience - and that is what keeps people coming back for more.
Sidney Greenstreet	Posted - 2008.07.22 03:20:00 - [107] Originally by: Cat Gilligan Edited by: Cat Gilligan on 22/07/2008 01:14:32 I don't WANT CCP to go after WOW, or their players. I'm happy with EVE as a relative niche game, but it's a HIGHLY successful niche... Star Wars Galaxies used to also be pretty complex and hardcore, and stood out as a successor to UO instead of EQ (WoW is in the EQ mold, and SWG's original Devs were mostly UO Devs) and management decided (foolishly) to chase the WoW audience because 250K subs weren't "enough". Today they have far less than 50K and the WORST reputation in the industry, to the point that to even MENTION the "NGE" (the biggest "fail" in the history of MMO's) anywhere generates "SOE sucks" hatred. I don't want to ever see ANY hint of WoWishness in EVE or CCP. EVE has grown to where it is because of the game that it is. To try to be anything else would be to "failcascade" like SWG did. And I think our Devs are smart enough to know it. Wowishness? You do not want WOW players? The beauty of this game is that most of the folks that stayed in WOW for a long period of time, cannot handle this level of complexity. I say bring on the fodder, let the Company make the money, improve game capacity, and let's see where it goes, strap it on... PS: Don't be the bunny!
Muddy Miner	Posted - 2008.07.22 03:39:00 - [108] I'm not sure what this learning curve is you all speak of. I have only been playing a month or so and I've got the basics down. Then again I'm not a snot nosed brat either.
teh punisher Suddenly Ninjas	Posted - 2008.07.22 03:40:00 - [109] this is a silly question. it's like asking why car and bicycle manufacturers make different gross incomes. though they both produce a means for transportation, they satisfy fundamentally different marketplaces. quite simply, there are many more people in the world who want to shoot fireballs from their hands than shoot lasers from a spaceship.
Kyra Felann Gallente Noctis Fleet Technologies	Posted - 2008.07.22 04:13:00 - [110] Originally by: An Anarchyyt I play this game 100% adequatly with only 1 account. And I'm sure I'm not the only one. Same here. One account, one character on that account. I've been playing around 9-10 months.
Kyra Felann Gallente Noctis Fleet Technologies	Posted - 2008.07.22 04:19:00 - [111] Originally by: MotherMoon SL is a **** store by the way, honest. SL is a really cool concept. I like the fact that the whole world is player-created and that it's a sandbox, even more so than Eve. What I got tired of was the furries, the cybersex, the casinos, the spam for casinos and cyber-prostitutes and all that. I joined to build things, script things, maybe even make some money, not to dress up like a rabbit and have cybersex with someone dressed like a fox. Eve has a lot of similarities with SL, actually. But it has an actual cohesive setting, though, and no furries.
MotherMoon Huang Yinglong	Posted - 2008.07.22 04:23:00 - [112] Originally by: Pan Crastus Originally by: Thorradin Originally by: Pan Crastus EVE is the only MMO where the average player has something like 2.5 accounts. ;-) Perhaps you should go read the account stats posted in one of the CSM (i think) blog. That's based only on credit cards AFAIK and absolutely untrustworthy. Many alt accounts are paid for with GTCs even if the main account is paid with CC. it's 5% of players fool. even based on card whqat does everyone have 3 cards?
Draygo Korvan Merch Industrial GoonSwarm	Posted - 2008.07.22 05:03:00 - [113] Wow is starting to show signs that it might start losing subscription numbers. The reason is not suprising, it follows almost exactly the same model put forth by everquest. --
Mr M	Posted - 2008.07.22 05:37:00 - [114] Some people crave magical shoulder pads, some don't. EVE Tribune \| EVEgeek
Belmarduk Amarr de Prieure Four Elements	Posted - 2008.07.22 05:45:00 - [115] Originally by: CCP RyanD In addition, EVE grows every year and has since release. Unlike every other MMO in the market EVE's growth rate is actually increasing not decreasing as time passes. Here's a lot of data for the curious. Keep it up like you are, CCP and it will continue to grow. The death of an mmo is: Letting scripting (MacroMiners....) go rampant. Not keeping to your line and making too drastic bad changes - Sofar CCP has kept to its line. The gtc-price change was borderline - not a good idea from marketing - Too many changes like that can cause considerable damage to the game.. On the whole Eve is running very fine - just do something against the MacroMiners !!! Greetings Belmarduk CCP Please give us casual players a Skill-Queue !
Kuolematon Space Perverts and Forum Warriors United	Posted - 2008.07.22 05:56:00 - [116] Originally by: Anisa Schardl .. Unlike WoW, I can assume that most Eve players I run into have at least moderate intelligence and a drive that is difficult to find in other MMO's .. Ha-Ha! Not so fast there. I can say that there is ALOT of idiots in EVE. And I know what I'm talking about. "The Amarr are the tanking and ganking floating rods of ~~gold~~crap"
wah bok Caldari Copperhead Arsenal	Posted - 2008.07.22 12:06:00 - [117] Originally by: Matthew If that is the case, then you would have to change the game-style of Eve to be less like Eve, and more like WOW. Aside from my personal feelings that this is a bad idea, because I like Eve how it is, this is also a risky business strategy. You risk alienating your existing playerbase, with no guarantee of securing a new playerbase with your changes (which is likely to be harder anyway if you have a horde of former players filling the internet with how you screwed them over). While it might be a desperation move if the company is in trouble, for a viable and growing company such as CCP, that risk makes very little business sense. The real question is, does Eve need to be as big as WOW to be a successful business? On current evidence, the answer is a resounding no.[/quote SWG anyone
rValdez5987 Amarr Series of Tubes	Posted - 2008.07.22 12:16:00 - [118] Originally by: CCP RyanD Originally by: trading hub SO Here is the question for you (no judgment implied, just raising the topic) - do you want to be a group of enthusiasts, who occupy a niche within a niche, or do you want to try to beat Blizzard in their own game and CHOP into WOW profits and market share? We're in a totally different market space than WoW so we don't pay them much attention except to root for them to get bigger and bigger and make more and more people aware of the MMO concept. WoW shards are 3,500 to 5,000 PCU (Peak Concurrent Users) systems. EVE is a 45,000 PCU system. They are in the business of selling a single-player or small-group scripted theme park experience in a simulated world. We're in the business of creating a living virtual world. Our goal with EVE is to continue to grow the player community and the PCU total forever until we hit some hard cap physical limit, or we reach the point where everyone on earth with the necessary equipment, income, and interest in the genre have been reasonably well exposed to EVE and have had a chance to try it for themselves and see if they'd like to join the community. So far the engineers have been able to keep raising the capacity of the cluster as fast as the rate of new users joining the community and we don't see that changing in the near future so I expect that growth will continue as well. As far as investment value, well, lets just say that we're all pretty happy with the growth of the notional value of CCP's equity. :) If you have stock or some way of actually putting money into your company, I am in fact interested. I really see EVE as being the MMO to be a part of, and I truly feel that we are here before the real bang goes off.
Val Vympel Caldari 24th Imperial Crusade	Posted - 2008.07.22 12:31:00 - [119] Originally by: trading hub Im a stil a bit confused, why is it EVE online lagging big time in terms of population behind other MMOs. Resisting the urge to answer this in long form,here is my opinion in short... Eve is a game created by adults,for play by adults. (Something like that..reading the forums too much may render my opinion void however. My 2 ISK
Slanty McGarglefist	Posted - 2008.07.22 12:40:00 - [120] Is CCP a publicly traded company? I demand stock options! __________________________________________________ Originally by: CCP Wrangler No Doh!
Carnun Blodeuwedd	Posted - 2008.07.22 12:50:00 - [121] Well forgive my bluntness but as I see it EVE loses a lot of potential customers because the new player experience: a) sucks b) is hard and takes a long time to get into c) requires a completely difference attitude to most MMOs and because the actual verbs that you do can be fairly boring.
Gnulpie Minmatar Miner Tech	Posted - 2008.07.22 12:53:00 - [122] Why is it that Eve doesn't have more players? A quite high entry barrier. You just cannot get your account and start doing stuff. There is the character creation which can easily take 1+ hour. And then? You usually cannot just start doing things, too difficult. Difficult times as noob. With so many veterans around, no one can do any pvp with unnamed t1 and no skills. So that leaves pve, but there is not enough pve for small chars around! Not enough relaxing stuff, eyecandy. Some people just want to fly around and enjoy the beautiful imagination Eve can give. But after a while everything looks the same and is repeated. Hopefully the next expansion will introduce more different things! The griefer, the scammer and all the ugly. Eve is a harsh world. Many people just want to relax and have a carefree time online. For those people Eve is not the right game. (which is good I might add ) Old players getting bored with pve stuff or upset with pvp/0.0 things - though I think they are almost always comming back. I think that are the main reasons why Eve has not more players.
Plumpy McPudding	Posted - 2008.07.22 12:57:00 - [123] Originally by: Carnun Blodeuwedd Well forgive my bluntness but as I see it EVE loses a lot of potential customers because the new player experience: a) sucks b) is hard and takes a long time to get into c) requires a completely difference attitude to most MMOs and because the actual verbs that you do can be fairly boring. Because EVE fills a niche market and does not cater to the mass market audience giving it one of its greatest strengths, but also its greatest weakness. __________________________ Fear me for I have an insatiable appetite! Proprietor and inventor of Chocolate Chip Chocolate Donut flavored Ice Cream.
CommmanderInChief	Posted - 2008.07.22 13:05:00 - [124] the learning curve and the loss vs reward basically puts people off...simple..eves numbers hasnt raised for some time, the trinity patch initally got it up to 40000+ peak time thats now dropped back to around 34000 which was around the same before trinity - so what does that tell you and they did advertise this version
Tarminic 24th Imperial Crusade	Posted - 2008.07.22 13:05:00 - [125] Originally by: Carnun Blodeuwedd Well forgive my bluntness but as I see it EVE loses a lot of potential customers because the new player experience: a) sucks b) is hard and takes a long time to get into c) requires a completely difference attitude to most MMOs and because the actual verbs that you do can be fairly boring. How recently have you tried it? I made a new character for kicks a month ago and I was really amazed at how in-depth the tutorials and everything are now. They even have a mission that acts as a tutorial for invention. ---------------- Play EVE: Downtime Madness v0.83 (Updated 7/3)
Slanty McGarglefist	Posted - 2008.07.22 13:06:00 - [126] Originally by: CommmanderInChief the learning curve and the loss vs reward basically puts people off...simple..eves numbers hasnt raised for some time, the trinity patch initally got it up to 40000+ peak time thats now dropped back to around 34000 which was around the same before trinity - so what does that tell you and they did advertise this version What are you talking about? __________________________________________________ Originally by: CCP Wrangler No Doh!
Miyamoto Uroki Caldari State Protectorate	Posted - 2008.07.22 13:08:00 - [127] The entry barrier for Eve is considerably lower that it was when I started in 2003. A lot lower, infact. Nowadays you have guidance in the process of character creation, aswell as quite detailed ingame tutorials from AURA. And also you actually get useful things and quite good reward for your tutorial missions. The early days were trial and error at best. And it's a myth that you cannot do pvp in your noob time. Train some basic skills for mwd and tackle gear and there you go. Especially with todays possibility to start with Gunnery V (and therefor small tech2 turrets within a week or so) or high frigate lvl. After a week in the game one can become a quite good tackler already. The eyecandy stuff is sadly true. It keeps you occupied for lets say 2 months, but you quickly realize that every star system is the same really. I am hoping for more space backgrounds, some nice stuff like system wide astro fields and basically Cosmos 2.0 Old players eventually burn out a bit, true. Most come back later though. Originally by: Puupuu dude... your face
Karii Ildarian Caldari Eve University Ivy League	Posted - 2008.07.22 13:08:00 - [128] Done correctly, I think that Ambulation could easly double the player base.
Kash Ka Amarr Point of No Return Vanguard.	Posted - 2008.07.22 13:20:00 - [129] I started playing eve a bit over a year ago. Back then i would see tops 20,000 people on. Now i often see 30,000 - 40,000. Eve has doubled in activity in the last year. Which is something special considering its over 5 years old now. Something no other mmo, as i can recall, has achieved. --------------==============================-------------- Forgiveness is between you and god, im just here to arrange the meeting.
Letouk Mernel	Posted - 2008.07.22 13:27:00 - [130] It's pretty much all been said, but I wanted to add my two cents in: The "niche" part affects the playerbase numbers heavily. Specifically: - PVP. Historically, PVP MMO's have had lower population numbers than PVE MMO's. PVP servers are usually less populated than PVE servers. PVP areas are less populated than PVE areas (70% of EVE stays in high-sec Empire). - sci-fi/spaceships. The single-player combat sim genre died 10 years ago; Freespace 2, IWAR2 were pretty much the last games in the genre. Freelancer was an attempt, not sure how successful, to resurrect it. I love spaceships and flight sims, and I guess many people do, but not enough to make it profitable, I guess. Not as profitable as elves in skimpy outfits. As far as going after the WoW market, I think CCP are doing that, just not with EVE. EVE will stay the way it is and continue to develop in the direction it's going. CCP are coding that Vampire MMO, which has first person avatars walking around and fighting and interacting, and I'm guessing that that's more similar to WoW's environment, so that'll be how CCP goes after the WoW market. Incidentally, Blizzard probably has a Starcraft MMO in the works somewhere... sci-fi even if there's no ship combat, and then there's the Stargate MMO and a possible Star Wars MMO (yes, another one) to compete with that, and that new Jumpgate MMO to compete with the spaceship pewpew that EVE is. Not saying that any are any good, but CCP and everyone else are competing on many fronts.
Zaerlorth Maelkor The Maverick Navy Interstellar Alcohol Conglomerate	Posted - 2008.07.22 13:31:00 - [131] Originally by: Captain Falcord Originally by: Traidor Disloyal Originally by: Tippia The learning curve in ≡v≡ is murderous û WoW's isn't. Yes, yes it is: http://bloodeagles.com/images/LearningCurve.jpg If you look at it closely, that graph makes no sense :P. Put that way, it means you gain a LOT of skill in short time. Look at it this way: The skill graph is the amount of skill needed to have fun. Not the amount of skill you aquire from playing. ================================================== I should really get a sig.
Malcanis We are Legend	Posted - 2008.07.22 13:40:00 - [132] Originally by: Letouk Mernel It's pretty much all been said, but I wanted to add my two cents in: The "niche" part affects the playerbase numbers heavily. Specifically: - PVP. Historically, PVP MMO's have had lower population numbers than PVE MMO's. PVP servers are usually less populated than PVE servers. PVP areas are less populated than PVE areas (70% of EVE stays in high-sec Empire). - sci-fi/spaceships. The single-player combat sim genre died 10 years ago; Freespace 2, IWAR2 were pretty much the last games in the genre. Freelancer was an attempt, not sure how successful, to resurrect it. I love spaceships and flight sims, and I guess many people do, but not enough to make it profitable, I guess. Not as profitable as elves in skimpy outfits. As far as going after the WoW market, I think CCP are doing that, just not with EVE. EVE will stay the way it is and continue to develop in the direction it's going. CCP are coding that Vampire MMO, which has first person avatars walking around and fighting and interacting, and I'm guessing that that's more similar to WoW's environment, so that'll be how CCP goes after the WoW market. Incidentally, Blizzard probably has a Starcraft MMO in the works somewhere... sci-fi even if there's no ship combat, and then there's the Stargate MMO and a possible Star Wars MMO (yes, another one) to compete with that, and that new Jumpgate MMO to compete with the spaceship pewpew that EVE is. Not saying that any are any good, but CCP and everyone else are competing on many fronts. Well they're not competing until those games are actually launched. And by then they'll have a 6-year headstart in terms of installed playerbase, balancing and general experience. I'm not ruling out the possibility, but Jumpgate would have to be pretty damb awesome to entice me away from nearly 2 years investment in EvE, with all the skills, assets, friends, experience and contacts I've accumulated. There's also no way I'm paying subs to two MMOs. Realistically, even if Jumpgate or whatever is great it'll still be buggy and thinly populated to begin with. Say it's 6 months before they iron out the teething problems - another 6 months of investment in EvE.... I suspect that CCP will then raise their game with something like atmospheric flight (for the joystick jockeys) and/or planetary exploration (for the counterstrikers). Atmospheric flight would probably be the easiest to bolt on. All they have to do is add an off-the-shelf flight sim engine, tweak it, make up racial air fighters as a deployable module which you can fit in cargo (100m^3 or so) and you're off. It would be on separate servers - heck it should be available during downtime. CONCORD provide consequences, not safety; only you can do that.
djenghis jan Amarr 24th Imperial Crusade	Posted - 2008.07.22 14:02:00 - [133] Check out this podcast :van hemlock it has some rather interesting info on the matter...
Bfoster Minmatar Rising Federation	Posted - 2008.07.22 14:43:00 - [134] From a noob's prospective... Eve is not as big as WoW... Because.. 1.) The are not 50 copys at every Best Buy, like WoW.. 2.) Like said above, AoC and WoW, you can join a PVE server, fight monkeys with a glowing sword, and think your cool.. Its not hard, you will go from LVL 1 to LVL 20 in a few days, so kids think they are getting somewhere.. Real easy.. EVE, is a different story, jump the wrong gate, and ur ass is grass. Its one server, which is the way it should be, if you wanna PVP with your friends, you dont have to find which server they are on, just make a little journey through space. 3.) The gameplay is much more in depth, I wouldnt stay its hard for a noob, stay in high sec, learn some skills, make some money, meet some friends.. Same thing with any other MMO.. The game is best played with good people at your side no matter where you are! U gonna take your lvl 2 char and whoop a lvl 40 char on WoW or AoC? On day 2? Nope.. 4.)Blizzard is a name, they've got alot of loyal supporters, and for good reason. FUNCOM, well AoC is buggy to say the least, their last MMO was a flop because of thier customer support and game support(AO), this one will fall to.. I know too many canceling already..
MotherMoon Huang Yinglong	Posted - 2008.07.22 14:46:00 - [135] Originally by: Slanty McGarglefist Is CCP a publicly traded company? I demand stock options! this actually, where I can stick 1000$ in CCP stock?
RaTTuS BIG Libertas Fidelitas	Posted - 2008.07.22 14:48:00 - [136] CCp are private -- BIG Lottery, BIG Deal, InEve, USERPROFILE
Bfoster Minmatar Rising Federation	Posted - 2008.07.22 14:52:00 - [137] I just wanted to add again how great it is for EVE to be on ONE server.. If ur on the PVE server in AoC and caveman A walks by and I just feel like cutting him open, I cant, PVE server... But, on EVE... Even in high sec, I could shoot whomever I please.. I would pay for it, but im not being controlled or limited by the server I logged.. EVE Freedom ...
Crae Matreki Sten Industries	Posted - 2008.07.22 16:03:00 - [138] Originally by: CCP RyanD EVE is now the 3nd largest full-price western MMO behind World of Warcraft and Conan at just over 230K paid subscribers or paid subscriber equivalents. AoC is that popular? That's criminal - it's awful!!
Malcanis We are Legend	Posted - 2008.07.22 16:19:00 - [139] Originally by: Crae Matreki Originally by: CCP RyanD EVE is now the 3nd largest full-price western MMO behind World of Warcraft and Conan at just over 230K paid subscribers or paid subscriber equivalents. AoC is that popular? That's criminal - it's awful!! Everyone who bought the box set counts as a subscriber... till the end of the month. CONCORD provide consequences, not safety; only you can do that.
J Kunjeh Gallente	Posted - 2008.07.22 17:36:00 - [140] Originally by: Malcanis I like EvE all elitist and niche, thanks. +10 I think Eve is for a certain type of gamer, one that likes their games complicated and with complex real-world like mechanics (i.e. the Eve market). It's also for SciFi nerds, which doesn't have mass appeal. I like it this way. Slow, small and steady growth is a blessing for Eve and all of the players who love it.
Carnun Blodeuwedd	Posted - 2008.07.22 21:56:00 - [141] Edited by: Carnun Blodeuwedd on 22/07/2008 21:57:14 Most new players I believe will have a large lack of direction or lack the abilities to follow the path they want to be on when they start. Faction warfare certainly helped but I believe there's still a lot CCP can do. Part of the problem I think is that missions (at least level 1s, 2s and 3s) are very solo oriented when EVE is a very social/party/corp oriented game. Not to mention unbelievably mundane if you play alone. This is completely counter-productive, in my opinion they need to up the difficulty of at least everything after level 1s significantly, up the rewards and put the onus on the starting corps to form groups to do them. Also, (and its almost certainly been mentioned before but)wtf is the point in learning skills? This is a big time sink for new players where they could be training skills to go have fun. Abolish them (at least the basic ones) and find a way of reinbursing everyone who has trained them... so basically everyone. Originally by: Tarminic Originally by: Carnun Blodeuwedd Well forgive my bluntness but as I see it EVE loses a lot of potential customers because the new player experience: a) sucks b) is hard and takes a long time to get into c) requires a completely difference attitude to most MMOs and because the actual verbs that you do can be fairly boring. How recently have you tried it? I made a new character for kicks a month ago and I was really amazed at how in-depth the tutorials and everything are now. They even have a mission that acts as a tutorial for invention. Well almost a year ago now but yeh it has improved but given the obvious complexity and steep learning/progression curve of EVE, the new player experience may be as long as x months (depends on the player really), Gnulpie describes this quite well.
Bfoster Minmatar Rising Federation	Posted - 2008.07.22 22:16:00 - [142] Originally by: Crae Matreki Originally by: CCP RyanD EVE is now the 3nd largest full-price western MMO behind World of Warcraft and Conan at just over 230K paid subscribers or paid subscriber equivalents. AoC is that popular? That's criminal - it's awful!! Whats real funny is how they "duped" all there fans into joining fileplanet to get early access for like a week or 2. I can't believe people actually went for that... Lame... Huge money scam between FUNCOM and Fileplanet.
Skipdog	Posted - 2008.07.22 22:31:00 - [143] Originally by: Karii Ildarian Done correctly, I think that Ambulation could easly double the player base. whoaaaa, i about fell out of my chair laughing!!! how is "walking around and not being able to do anything useful" going to attract players? lolol seriously, "walking around as your character" is not going to bring NEW players into the game. it will only please those who have never played a real mmo(and think it will be SO MUCH FUN to be able to WALK AROUND OMG!!!) and just **** off pilots who realize how pointless the entire concept is.
Johnny English Caldari Dark Entropy G00DFELLAS	Posted - 2008.07.22 22:56:00 - [144] 1. Eve is one server , therefore can take on aset amount of players. WoW has like 20 servers taking on much more players. for one server competing against games with multiple servers, its quite impressive 2. EvE was sold in a box in game in 2003, i have 2 copies with the orginal case, cd and tutorial book, teaches you how to mine and create a character and gives you a timeline of eve for the win :D 3. CCP has grown you know it owns this white wolf company and will most prob start development of the card games white wolf have made, eve has room for improvement they'll leave some art designers, coders, programmers and what not for it, but ccp has bigger plans o/
MotherMoon Huang Yinglong	Posted - 2008.07.22 23:07:00 - [145] Originally by: Johnny English 1. Eve is one server , therefore can take on aset amount of players. WoW has like 20 servers taking on much more players. for one server competing against games with multiple servers, its quite impressive 2. EvE was sold in a box in game in 2003, i have 2 copies with the orginal case, cd and tutorial book, teaches you how to mine and create a character and gives you a timeline of eve for the win :D 3. CCP has grown you know it owns this white wolf company and will most prob start development of the card games white wolf have made, eve has room for improvement they'll leave some art designers, coders, programmers and what not for it, but ccp has bigger plans o/ actually wow has over 400 servers lol. which is madness.
Soporo Caldari	Posted - 2008.07.22 23:16:00 - [146] Quote: Done correctly, I think that Ambulation could easly double the player base. This is what scares me. Sooner or later those people will actually undock and do stuff.
Angela Toren Amarr Toren Shipyards	Posted - 2008.07.22 23:31:00 - [147] Edited by: Angela Toren on 22/07/2008 23:32:44 Originally by: trading hub Im a stil a bit confused, why is it EVE online lagging big time in terms of population behind other MMOs. CCP started eariler than WOW, so they had first mover advantage, why is it CCP could not capitalize on booming internet growth same way WOW did ? Any thought on this ? Disclaimer: All stupid morron trolls, please DO go away: 1) Im not saying that wow is better 2) I really would like to see what is happening with the game and gauge some thoughts in the subject 3) Please DO read comment about trolls. Thank you EVE is internet spaceships, WOW is not. Internet spaceships has a very select following, usually those who like sci fi whilst fantasy mmo's have always appealed to the larger more general audience. This fact will always show when viewing subscriber numbers based on the genre. CCP is hoping to blur the lines somewhat with the ambulation project so those that love full body avatar games but are not too keen on spaceships might give Eve a try rather than ignoring it altogether. _______ Oh Mindy...
Yelan Zhou Amarr Hedion University	Posted - 2008.07.22 23:32:00 - [148] Originally by: Cat Gilligan Edited by: Cat Gilligan on 22/07/2008 01:14:32 I don't WANT CCP to go after WOW, or their players. I'm happy with EVE as a relative niche game, but it's a HIGHLY successful niche... Star Wars Galaxies used to also be pretty complex and hardcore, and stood out as a successor to UO instead of EQ (WoW is in the EQ mold, and SWG's original Devs were mostly UO Devs) and management decided (foolishly) to chase the WoW audience because 250K subs weren't "enough". Today they have far less than 50K and the WORST reputation in the industry, to the point that to even MENTION the "NGE" (the biggest "fail" in the history of MMO's) anywhere generates "SOE sucks" hatred. I don't want to ever see ANY hint of WoWishness in EVE or CCP. EVE has grown to where it is because of the game that it is. To try to be anything else would be to "failcascade" like SWG did. And I think our Devs are smart enough to know it. Iam a SWG (pre NGE) Vet. and you are dam right.I will never ever buy another Sony product again. War, War never changes.
Billy Sastard Amarr Life. Universe. Everything.	Posted - 2008.07.22 23:43:00 - [149] There are a lot of good points in this thread that help to answer the OP's question, however I feel it all boils down to one thing... *EVE is just too freakin awesome for the masses.* They just cant take it. -=^=-
Buyerr	Posted - 2008.07.23 01:10:00 - [150] Originally by: Arvald eve isnt heavily advertised ehh main reason is that ccp don't give a shit what people want, ccp give people what ccp want themselve, which is a hardcore non caring game with a pve as bad as the old amiga games etc etc. the reason it is not popular is that they don't listend or they just don't care to bring people what they want, realise most mmo'ers are pve'ers with a joy for pvp. real pvp type players play cs, instant fair action. meaning, having shitty pve in a game that is not instant fair action will result in a very low playerbase, even worse most of all players have atleast two accounts (some of them have up to 8 :/) which means that the actual playerbase is properly not nearly half of the assigned accounts. I declare war on stupidity
Zinras Caldari Order of draugr	Posted - 2008.07.23 02:30:00 - [151] Originally by: Buyerr Originally by: Arvald eve isnt heavily advertised ehh main reason is that ccp don't give a shit what people want, ccp give people what ccp want themselve, which is a hardcore non caring game with a pve as bad as the old amiga games etc etc. the reason it is not popular is that they don't listend or they just don't care to bring people what they want, realise most mmo'ers are pve'ers with a joy for pvp. real pvp type players play cs, instant fair action. meaning, having shitty pve in a game that is not instant fair action will result in a very low playerbase, even worse most of all players have atleast two accounts (some of them have up to 8 :/) which means that the actual playerbase is properly not nearly half of the assigned accounts. Can I have your stuff? Originally by: CCP Greyscale moderated - mother abuse - Mitnal Originally by: Jenny Spitfire That si a fact comming out from my bran.
Atsuko Yamamoto Caldari The Nietzian Way Hydra Alliance	Posted - 2008.07.23 04:05:00 - [152] Originally by: Sokratesz Most WoW players can't handle Eve (and i'm being dead serious). QFT. If you go into any server on WoW and start discussing EVE, the failures come out of the woodwork to flame you. It's friggin hilarious ____________________________________ "MONKEY!!"-Gir
White Ronin Gallente Screenout	Posted - 2008.07.23 04:44:00 - [153] Um, cause Mr T's level whatever Mohawk would get prison **d and his *** sold for Amarr slaver chow if he tried to come here. Just saying. --------------------------------------------- "There have always been ghosts in the machine . . . random segments of code that have grouped together to form unexpected protocols. "
Jinx Barker GFB Scientific	Posted - 2008.07.23 05:03:00 - [154] Originally by: Buyerr ehh main reason is that ccp don't give a shit what people want, ccp give people what ccp want themselve, which is a hardcore non caring game with a pve as bad as the old amiga games etc etc. the reason it is not popular is that they don't listend or they just don't care to bring people what they want, realise most mmo'ers are pve'ers with a joy for pvp. real pvp type players play cs, instant fair action. meaning, having shitty pve in a game that is not instant fair action will result in a very low playerbase, even worse most of all players have atleast two accounts (some of them have up to 8 :/) which means that the actual playerbase is properly not nearly half of the assigned accounts. Why are you still playing then? If EVE is bad, and devs do nothing for the population, go someplace else, eh? I am a fan of EVE, but at the same time, should something better come along I would go in a heartbeat, hence Developers know that, and are trying pretty damn hard to accommodate. They give us the best communication an MMO ever had! I mean how proactive the dev team is? More than you could say for EVERYONE ELSE out there. Yea EVE has issues, has issues which were not resolved in the last 3 years, but it is still the damned best MMORPG out there. Hell, it is the ONLY SciFi MMORPG out there. As far as dual boxing, well I am sure that even if HALF of EVE has dual accounts, this still leaves 115,000 People who are playing the game, on the SAME server, in the SAME environment. Anyway, EVE has problems - but I doubt very much the quality of Developers approach to the game and community any better anywhere else. 10 More years to EVE, if not more, I say.
Bfoster Minmatar Rising Federation	Posted - 2008.07.23 14:31:00 - [155] Originally by: Zinras Originally by: Buyerr Originally by: Arvald eve isnt heavily advertised ehh main reason is that ccp don't give a shit what people want, ccp give people what ccp want themselve, which is a hardcore non caring game with a pve as bad as the old amiga games etc etc. the reason it is not popular is that they don't listend or they just don't care to bring people what they want, realise most mmo'ers are pve'ers with a joy for pvp. real pvp type players play cs, instant fair action. meaning, having shitty pve in a game that is not instant fair action will result in a very low playerbase, even worse most of all players have atleast two accounts (some of them have up to 8 :/) which means that the actual playerbase is properly not nearly half of the assigned accounts. Can I have your stuff? Yea really... By simply mentioning Counter Strike, you just put yourself into the 12y/o kid crowd who plays WoW or AoC.... Go log onto a AoC PVE server and beat up a monkey, so u will think your even cooler... I would love to see the age demographic's between WoW and EVE...
Letouk Mernel	Posted - 2008.07.23 14:56:00 - [156] Any spaceship pewpew game might actually take a large chunk out of EVE's playerbase. Reasons: - EVE is brilliant and established, but let's face it, there ARE problems and bugs, and so the fact that the new MMO will also have problems and bugs doesn't really count as an argument. - you're all imagining that everyone in EVE plays the game for the same reasons that you do. That everyone likes the PVP, the complexity, the politics, etc. But look at high-sec Empire, and at the fact that 70% of the playerbase is there playing PVE, and think about what would happen to that 70% if another game comes out that provides spaceship PVE that's as accessible, developed, and easy as WoW's raid dungeons. Especially if it has good AI and tactics for the NPC's, and the ability to actually see ships and fly close to their hulls, a la Freespace, instead of colored brackets and an Overview list. - you can put your character on the "train a long skill" plan and cancel your subscription to go check out other games, easily enough. Anyway, I think there's a definite possibility that another spaceship game can take a bite out of EVE. I know I would at least check it out, and joystick-based flight in small ships against huge NPC motherships a la Freespace is teh win for me. Even if it doesn't look exactly the same as that old game, as long as they capture the feel of it, I'm there.
NeoTheo Dark Materials	Posted - 2008.07.23 15:22:00 - [157] i look to jumpgate with interest, however i beta'd and played the first jumpgate and frankly it was poor at best. i am hoping jumpgate evolution sux less ;) but nothing will stop me playing eve, there is something very unique about new eden, the only thing that will stop me playing is if they start to sterilise the universe, unfortunatly hammer keeps talking about making wardecs more fluffy and other such stuff so that might happen. /neo Neotheo Dark Materials Linkage
Rakshasa Taisab Caldari Sane Industries Inc. Ursa Stellar Initiative	Posted - 2008.07.23 15:24:00 - [158] Originally by: Skipdog whoaaaa, i about fell out of my chair laughing!!! how is "walking around and not being able to do anything useful" going to attract players? lolol seriously, "walking around as your character" is not going to bring NEW players into the game. it will only please those who have never played a real mmo(and think it will be SO MUCH FUN to be able to WALK AROUND OMG!!!) and just **** off pilots who realize how pointless the entire concept is. And this is why one shouldn't let morons do product development. ^_^
Esmenet Gallente	Posted - 2008.07.23 15:36:00 - [159] Originally by: Bfoster I would love to see the age demographic's between WoW and EVE... Wow might actually win if you consider all those that have to use their fathers credit card to pay.
Tsiros Minmatar	Posted - 2008.07.23 15:45:00 - [160] log in---> <--- /del it is that simple. anything else is just post count
Malcanis We are Legend	Posted - 2008.07.23 16:26:00 - [161] Originally by: Buyerr Originally by: Arvald eve isnt heavily advertised ehh main reason is that ccp don't give a shit what people want, ccp give people what ccp want themselve, which is a hardcore non caring game with a pve as bad as the old amiga games etc etc. the reason it is not popular is that they don't listend or they just don't care to bring people what they want, realise most mmo'ers are pve'ers with a joy for pvp. real pvp type players play cs, instant fair action. meaning, having shitty pve in a game that is not instant fair action will result in a very low playerbase, even worse most of all players have atleast two accounts (some of them have up to 8 :/) which means that the actual playerbase is properly not nearly half of the assigned accounts. yes, CCP have got it just right IMO. Great isn't it! CONCORD provide consequences, not safety; only you can do that.
Layla McScout	Posted - 2008.07.23 17:08:00 - [162] Edited by: Layla McScout on 23/07/2008 17:15:18 - Crappy launch - The game was designed by by some of the most notorious griefers from UO. Pvp where you can lose everything only attracts a slim minority of the MMOG playerbase. - Old bugs, lag and a very outdated UI. - Lack of goals to achieve unless you set them yourself. People nowadays want to log on for an hour or two and see their char progress in one way or another. This isn't the case with Eve, despite the training over time feature. - Casual gaming offers very limited activities in highsec only. If you want to see the full game you have to invest a lot of time, which is not an option for many players. - Various bad press, i.e. the T20 incident, RMT farming by lowsec alliances and other goodies are not really helpful in attracting new players. And no, I don't buy the "steep learning curve" argument. Most of this is caused by the crappy documentation CCP delivered. And the help channels don't really remedy the matter much.
Traidor Disloyal NightCrew	Posted - 2008.07.23 17:29:00 - [163] It doesn't seem to be doing that bad. It all depends on what the goals of the company are and if the amount of profit the company makes will satisfy those goals. The population seems to be increasing over the years. When I first started playing back in 2003 it was like party time when they hit 5000 (or was it 3000, I forget). I stopped playing in late 2003 and came back in August 2006 when population was around 20000 or so on a weekend. Now it's around 34000 or so accounts logged in on a weekend (and god forbid you go into Jita). You also need to remember this is all on one server which is very different to WoW, AoC, EQ2, and others. This is a nice selling point for a lot of people. You can not transfer if you get a bad rep in this game. Your rep stays with you, good or bad (bad is more fun in my book). In the end the population seems to be growing, not getting smaller. It seems to be growing at a nice pace. For the type of play style I favor it's not to bad. --------------------------------------------- Love is having a second account with a cov ops pilot
deza11	Posted - 2008.07.23 18:05:00 - [164] Edited by: deza11 on 23/07/2008 18:05:27 I would like to see more people in the game. Doesn't need millions of players, but it would be nice to see more real players in my overview, rather than just me, and concord npc's However it wouldn't surprise me at all if tonnes of people actually try the trial, only to log off within the hour and never come back. Reasons being: 1) No ship control. Seriously, that put me off big time when I realised it's not like X3 with no ****pit etc. Obviously now, I understand why. 2)Those that do persevere often struggle locating simple things, like agents. Not to mention running agent missions for the first time, get to your destination and realise your cargo is still at the station you left from. Warp all the way back, and then back again? I think not. You need patience, and lots of it. 3) Restrictive. I continue to see sarcastic comments every time I log on. "How do I trade on the market? Or do I need to learn a skill for that too?" 4) Sheer head-crushing depth and complexity (main reason I kept playing), which puts people off. It's just 'too much'. 5) Missions are boring. Especially the lower level ones, or when they're simply no challenge. Sorry, but they are. They are - BORING! Yes I know this is a PvP game, but that doesn't mean PvE should be neglected and left to nothing more than a simple point and click fest. There's nothing wrong with any of the above(except for No.5 :P), but it it's a very difficult game to get into.
Malcanis We are Legend	Posted - 2008.07.23 18:13:00 - [165] Originally by: deza11 Edited by: deza11 on 23/07/2008 18:05:27 I would like to see more people in the game. Doesn't need millions of players, but it would be nice to see more real players in my overview, rather than just me, and concord npc's However it wouldn't surprise me at all if tonnes of people actually try the trial, only to log off within the hour and never come back. Reasons being: 1) No ship control. Seriously, that put me off big time when I realised it's not like X3 with no ****pit etc. Obviously now, I understand why. 2)Those that do persevere often struggle locating simple things, like agents. Not to mention running agent missions for the first time, get to your destination and realise your cargo is still at the station you left from. Warp all the way back, and then back again? I think not. You need patience, and lots of it. 3) Restrictive. I continue to see sarcastic comments every time I log on. "How do I trade on the market? Or do I need to learn a skill for that too?" 4) Sheer head-crushing depth and complexity (main reason I kept playing), which puts people off. It's just 'too much'. 5) Missions are boring. Especially the lower level ones, or when they're simply no challenge. Sorry, but they are. They are - BORING! Yes I know this is a PvP game, but that doesn't mean PvE should be neglected and left to nothing more than a simple point and click fest. There's nothing wrong with any of the above(except for No.5 :P), but it it's a very difficult game to get into. Many of the things that make it difficult to get into are the things that make it appealing in the longer term. If I was going to use a word to describe EvE, it wouldn't be "fun" in the sense that computer games usually are, it would be "fascinating". Fun wears off pretty quick. Fascination keeps people subscribing. If CCP were to announce that the next patch was not going to introduce a single new ship, module or skill, but was only going to debug/update the UI, industry, corp management, map and deal with a few of the more pressing remaining balance issues, I'd be delighted. CONCORD provide consequences, not safety; only you can do that.
Haakelen Gallente Genesis Rising	Posted - 2008.07.23 18:15:00 - [166] Originally by: Malcanis If CCP were to announce that the next patch was not going to introduce a single new ship, module or skill, but was only going to debug/update the UI, industry, corp management, map and deal with a few of the more pressing remaining balance issues, I'd be delighted. Hard to market though.
Malcanis We are Legend	Posted - 2008.07.23 18:19:00 - [167] Originally by: Haakelen Originally by: Malcanis If CCP were to announce that the next patch was not going to introduce a single new ship, module or skill, but was only going to debug/update the UI, industry, corp management, map and deal with a few of the more pressing remaining balance issues, I'd be delighted. Hard to market though. yeah I know... but I reckon it would be worth it. CONCORD provide consequences, not safety; only you can do that.
Qduhaf	Posted - 2008.07.23 19:28:00 - [168] Originally by: Letouk Mernel Any spaceship pewpew game might actually take a large chunk out of EVE's playerbase. Reasons: - EVE is brilliant and established, but let's face it, there ARE problems and bugs, and so the fact that the new MMO will also have problems and bugs doesn't really count as an argument. - you're all imagining that everyone in EVE plays the game for the same reasons that you do. That everyone likes the PVP, the complexity, the politics, etc. But look at high-sec Empire, and at the fact that 70% of the playerbase is there playing PVE, and think about what would happen to that 70% if another game comes out that provides spaceship PVE that's as accessible, developed, and easy as WoW's raid dungeons. Especially if it has good AI and tactics for the NPC's, and the ability to actually see ships and fly close to their hulls, a la Freespace, instead of colored brackets and an Overview list. - you can put your character on the "train a long skill" plan and cancel your subscription to go check out other games, easily enough. Anyway, I think there's a definite possibility that another spaceship game can take a bite out of EVE. I know I would at least check it out, and joystick-based flight in small ships against huge NPC motherships a la Freespace is teh win for me. Even if it doesn't look exactly the same as that old game, as long as they capture the feel of it, I'm there. The second a decent game comes out with better PVE and accessible PVP comes along then people will leave. Until then EVE seems to offer the best immersion game out there, too bad it takes forever to find a fight
Mankirks Wife	Posted - 2008.07.23 19:42:00 - [169] I don't really understand all the Ambulation hate - sure it's a little pointless now, but it could easily be the base of entirely new aspects of Eve, which could be more accessible to new players since it's all new. Personally I think CCP is doing right (mostly). Games that try to copy the super-casual-friendly WoW approach have all fallen flat on their faces. Eve is a game for people who want depth, immersion, high difficulty, whatever you want to call it. Will it ever be #1? No, but there will always be a niche for it.
SiJira	Posted - 2008.08.17 14:47:00 - [170] because if it had 10 million active accounts right now it wouldnt be any different than wow Trashed sig, Shark was here

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