Rock, Paper, Shotgun

I just wanted to remind fence-sitters and ditherers that RPS reader “Dave” is running an Eve Online corporation for us, and you can find out more about it over on the forum thread. The in-game chat channel is “RPS Community”. It’s welcoming players new and old, and is now up to almost a hundred members. In fact, MMO guilds and clans from any game should feel free to post in that subforum if you’re friendly to RPS newbies. Come on folks, help your fellow gamers find a home in the games they want to play.

I’ve also used this article as an excuse to post a trailer for Eve that was released this summer (below). It only took them six years, but CCP have finally created a trailer that captures some of the reason why Eve is an interesting game to play.
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Permaband. Do you see? A clever joke there. Eve Online operators CCP seem to have no fear of getting up on stage to strut their stuff, and they seem to have taken that habit to its logical extreme in this video, a rap about running an MMO and having studios on three continents.
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I just wanted to flag up the new RPS Eve community, details for which can be found on the forum here. If you’ve never been able to brave the dark waters of Eve Online, but still find yourself interested, then this might be a good place to start. (Along with the free trial.) I’m taking a break from Eve at the moment, so it’s good to see RPS community members pitching in to help beginners on their way. I’ll certainly be checking in with this lot when I do log back on.

Did you know there’s an Eve star system called RPS-0K?

In this, the final part of my look back on five years of the Eve Online corporation, Statecorp, we see our plucky heroes wander Eve, struggle for survival, and ultimately burn out in the long search for a home. Previously: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.
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In this, the third part of my retrospective on five years of an Eve Online corporation, I discuss our guerrilla war, a heroic evacuation mission, and the few weeks of play that will, I fear, diminish all game experiences to follow. For the story so far: Part 1, Part 2.
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In this, the second part of my series looking back on five years of Eve Online, I tell the tale of two lost Empires, and the solo-corporation that emerged far stronger from their ashes. Part one is here.
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This summer has seen the end of the lengthiest and most fulfilling gaming experience of my life: five years helping to run the Eve Online corporation, StateCorp. A five year plan? More like five years with no plan, but with endless drama. The corporation is currently in the process of moth-balling and disbanding, and so we took the opportunity to look back at what made those sixty months of Eve so fascinating, why we became so involved, and why it had to come to end. This retrospective comes to your courtesy of everyone who has been a member of StateCorp over the years.
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EDIT: No platforms are confirmed for this other than “console”, we’ll get more info as soon as possible.

So CCP have revealed just what the mysterious Dust 514 actually is: a console action MMO featuring “first-person shooter and RTS-style gameplay”, set in the Eve Online universe. Disappointing, eh? But there’s an intriguing twist: PC and console games will be able to interact, and the faction warfare map that gets decided in space on the PC, will also decide the map in the console game. There’s more, as Gamasutra reports:

Players in the PC MMO can “fund mercenaries and give them goals” in the console title. CCP’s Petursson hope that “these communities will meld over time”, expecting specific Dust 514 corporations to start with, but eventually social structures that bridge across the two. He quipped of the new game and the relationship between the two titles: “While the fleet does the flying, the infantry does the dying.”

So PC gamers get to be the space-bound commanders of the console foot-soldiers… That isn’t going to help our elitism complex, is it?

And I cannot imagine the sum of the hours I have poured into that game. Nor do I imagine that I’ll ever play anything else on a regular basis for that length of time. Still, it inspired me to write the final chapter of a pretty good book. CCP say:

“In the past couple days we surpassed the impressive milestone of 300,000 active subscribers. That doesn’t include trial accounts. We’ve broken our peak concurrent user record 3 times this year alone, standing now at an impressive 53,850 in the same universe. That is exponential growth. We couldn’t think of a better birthday present than having more people playing EVE Online than ever before.”

Happy Birthday, you great big virtual galaxy. Here’s to a few more.

The recent Eve Online competition was our most popular event ever, with hundreds of entries from all across the globe. Thanks to everyone who contributed. The competition is now closed, and the winners are detailed below.
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