During his time at PAX Prime, Director of Content Cody Bye got the chance to sit down with EVE Online Lead Designer Kristoffer Touborg (aka CCP Soundwave) talk talk about a variety of topics, such as the null-sec revamp and the community's current reaction to Incarna and the Captain's Quarters. He even touches on the future of EVE, including the addition of player-run Establishments and alcohol. Lots of alcohol.
Keep reading after the jump for the full interview!
CCP held a special Council of Management summit in Iceland from June 30 to July 1 to discuss a variety of controversial issues that had emerged in the EVE Online community, including the high prices in the Noble Exchange store and the company's future plans for the sale of virtual goods. After more than two months, both the CCP and the CSM have approved the release of the meeting's minutes. If you'd like to get the full story, check out the 8-page document.
For more details on the controversy, be sure to read the written statements provided by the CCP and CSM immediately following the special summit. You should also take a look at the press conference we attended after the summit.
The new EVE Online forums are live once again and include a variety of new features, including a compact view, a character dropdown list, the hide posts option, RSS Feeds, new search functions, the new notifications function and a selection of customizable backgrounds.
The old forums will stay active until Friday, September 9 so players can complete any final discussions. Once they shut down, the old forums will remain fully viewable, but in a read-only mode. Threads and posts from the old forums will not be included in the new forums.
Back in April, CCP launched the new EVE Online forums and then quickly took them down due to security issues. They became available again for testing in June before officially launching today.
Through September 16, EVE Online players can take advantage of a first time ever discount on bulk orders of PLEX by picking up a pack of 13 for $199.99. Not sure what PLEX is? Here's CCP's description:
"PLEX is short for 30 Day Concord Pilot License Extension. It's an in-game item that can be used to pay for your subscription without using more traditional payment methods.
By using PLEX, you can pay for your game time simply by playing the game. You can buy PLEX through our Account Management site or you can buy PLEX with in-game ISK.
Because PLEX is an in-game item you can also make in-game profit for yourself by buying and selling it on the market."
According to CCP's latest dev blog entry, the EVElopedia wiki on the game's official site will soon be getting a facelift. As you can see in the above image, the team has "fixed ugly into new sexy." They're also removing the moderation queue, fixing their backend, implementing a content portal system, and adding more content from the EVE University and EVE History wikis.
As for as the not so distant future is concerned for EVElopedia, CCP wants to improve the wiki editor to make it easier to use, localize it in more languages and make it so the help button takes you to an appropriate wiki article. They're also working on the first part of the Immersion Project, which is a "central storehouse" of all the game's lore.
CCP wants to give EVE Online players access to market data on a consistent basis, and they've released a batch of it in a trial run to get feedback from the community. This initial one-time datadump contains market data from 2010 through May 2011 for more than 6,000 items, including their average prices.
During this trial run, you can download the data in two formats: CSV and SQL. CCP wants to know which format you prefer and how often you'd like to receive new data. Once a month? Every couple weeks? Every few days? They also want to know how you plan to use the data.
So what's the purpose of this entire project? "If this turns out to be popular, it is my opinion that the more we can directly give to you, the better," CCP Dr.EyjoG said. "More data, more knowledge, more power to the pod pilots of New Eden."
The deployment of EVE Online: Incarna 1.1 has been delayed until September 1. While you wait for the launch day to arrive, you can browse through the newly released patch notes.
Incarna 1.1 will reintroduce the new official forums (which where quickly taken down in April due to security issues), upgrades to EVE Gate, improvements and fixes for the Captain's Quarters feature, customizable API keys and more.
CCP has added new clothing and footwear to EVE Online's Noble Exchange store. Here are the details from the announcement:
"Sennda of Emrayur have several gorgeous items in the Noble Exchange: black men's 'Trench' boots; heeled grey 'Mystrioso' boots; and the 'Sterling' line of dress shirts and blouses now come in navy (for men), and olive or black (for women). Not to be forgotten, House of Ranai has released a gorgeously slim black wax 'Impress' skirt, and Vallou has it's latest in camo high fashion with it's 'Impress' skirt."
The NeX Store launched back in June with the release of Incarna. Following some controversy over the price tags (including almost $70 for a monocle), CCP told us during a recent press conference and in a follow-up blog entry that they plan to focus on three pricing tiers in the store, ranging from affordable to deluxe.
UPDATE, 9/1: We've already given out a bunch of swag, but we still have more! We'll be giving out more prizes next week after Labor Day Weekend. Be sure to check your Twitter messages! While we have only a limited amount of physical things we can ship, we have tons of codes to give away, so keep your eyes peeled.
Gamescom may have come to an end, but the summer convention season isn't over just yet! PAX Prime will be held in downtown Seattle from August 26-28 and we'll have members of the ZAM team on the floor, including Director of Content Cody "Micajah" Bye. He'd love to give out PAX swag to some lucky readers, and all he wants in return is more followers on Twitter!
We'll be giving away PAX gear to people who follow @ZAMOfficial and @CodyBye on Twitter. The more followers the pages get before PAX, the more chances you'll have to win prizes. Check out the constantly updated prize list after the jump to see what you could get simply by clicking the "follow" button!
Voting for the image and video contests is now open on CCP's EVE Is Real site. There are over 4,000 images and videos to choose from, and you can vote for your favorite ones once per day through September 1. Prizes include 20 GeForce GTX 460 SE video graphics cards for image winners and an Alienware Area-51 gaming computer for the video winner.
While you're at it, be sure to share your favorite images and videos using the site's sharing feature. The more you share, the more Aurum the EVE Online community will win!
