A look to the past, with Planetside, so now a look to the future, with EVE Online. I'd be hard pressed to put an exact date for my eventual return to the game - I have a lot of games I'm quite enjoying already at the moment, but the 2007 Plan is indeed, another go at CCP’s quirky niche space-based quietly-solid success story.


Part of EVE's unique appeal, is the sheer level of impact the players have on their game world, and indeed, game. Many of the elements of gameplay that exist in today's EVE Online are things that had been largely implemented by players, as workarounds and kludges, and then later added as fully supported game features by CCP after they'd seen what the players were doing with their universe - things like the recent Contracts system, a game-supported Alliance framework, territorial claims using deployable Towers, the Escrow System, all ideas that sprung as much from the players, as the devs.

Similarly, CCP seem to be the very antithesis of 'The Vision(tm)', a particular example being the abandonment of the originally planned 'fifth race', the Jovians, after years of gameplay (both in EVE and observations of other games) gradually suggested that they weren't really needed anyway. Whether these enigmatic super-humans will return in some guise in the future remains to be seen, but CCP certainly don't seem to see a need to fix things that aren't really broken.

This 'shaping of their own destinies' by the player-base extends far into the contextual game-world itself too, with empires rising and falling, markets ebbing and flowing, and the actions of the various player corporations impacting significantly on the universe around them, and the others people in it. The practical upshot of it all is that if you want to get involved in EVE, (As I hope some day to do again) you need to know, not only what does what, but who is doing who, and the maps and politics become quite important, on a daily basis, if you ever hope to survive for long outside of the core Empire 'safe' systems. Politics matter!

With that in mind, I came across this gem of a site:

EVE Tribune

I'll add it to the sidebar too, as it seems a useful resource. The format is a good one, clean, simple, and to the point, and is presented as a sort of weekly EVE broadsheet newspaper - mostly in-character - containing news, politics, editorials, the occasional guide or tutorial type of piece, and even a bit of fan-fiction. The standard of writing, produced by a small group of regular and highly literate correspondents, is very good, and I'm finding the 'war reporting' news pieces very helpful and informative, as I begin the slow task of familiarising myself with who is currently who. Last time I was there, most of the names I'm seeing in their news today, didn't exist, showing what a turbulent place EVE can be.

One piece in particular caught my eye:

EVE Tribune: Pendulum War - The Final Analysis

Which is a lengthy and keen post-mortem of the underlying war behind my casually interested headline piece about the Titan being blown up, some weeks back; the ASCN vs BoB war, now widely regarded as conclusively won by BoB.

Fisher conducts an incisive analysis and covers a number of points which all seem to make sense, as far as my very limited understanding of EVE wars, and psychology in general, goes, although I couldn't honestly say how knowledgeable it all seems to someone who was actually playing, and was involved in the events described. I'm also taking the whole site at face value, for want of any understanding to the contrary - the quality of the articles suggests a fair degree of integrity and impartiality, but as I've mentioned before, wars in EVE take place in real 'hearts and minds' as much as virtual star systems, so it pays to be a little wary of any source of EVE news...heh...even me.

They also have a link to the widely accepted 'Current State of Play', Joshua Foiritain's long running 'EVE Alliances Map' (top right), which, as well as being an attractive piece of poster art in it's own right, is generally viewed as perhaps the least contentious look at who has conquered what, and is updated fairly frequently.

All useful intelligence for the potential returning EVE pilot, and even an interesting read now and then for folks who are nothing to do with it at all...