Empyrean Age bringing Factional Warfare to EVE Online
Factional Warfare will soon be upon us. I stopped playing EVE several months ago with the plan to return once Factional Warfare was in (which I figured would be a couple of months since it was suppsed to be part of Revelations. Well the next expansion, Empyrean Age will finally bring it to us. It’s not going to be quite as drastic as my hopes but they were pretty drastic 
Basically you sign up for FW with one of the four factions – that is Caldari, Minmatar, Amarr or Gallente (they’ve said other factions will probably be added later). You then have kill rights on that factions enemies anywhere (0.0, lowsec, highsec – even Jita, which will be even sillier than it has been). The factions enemies will obviously have kill rights on you. At the moment it seems it’s just going to be Caldair vs. Gallente and Amarr vs. Minmatar.
Joining the fight gives you access to special missions that will involve attacking your new enemies. As one faction wins fights in a system it gains “points” there. Enough points and that factions takes the system. It seems that, at least initially, only lowsec systems will be up for grabs in this way.
Finally, to balance out the fact that Caldari have little lowsec, a new region has been added basically in the middle called Black Rise that is mainly Caldari lowsec.
Revelations 1.3 – Castrating Jita
Filed under: Computers, EVE Online, Entertainment, Games, MPOGs, Technology
CCP have announced the patch details for Revelations 1.3. Nothing new as such is being added but it is a a pretty cool update nonetheless. Below are some of the points I feel especially important or cool
Firstly, Jita should be a little less crowded afterwards. It will probably still be a trade hub but it’s asteroid fields are being removed and the school stations are “under new ownership” (and hence no longer selling skills). A bunch of other stations are suffering similar consequences.
Expeditions are more likely to be triggered by exploration sites and Data Interface (used for invention) BPCs and materials will drop more. The new scanners will have their tech II mineral requirements removed also making exploration cheaper.
Best quote from the patch notes:
Moved all of the humans and animals located in the normal ‘commodity’ groups into the ‘livestock’ group, to prevent the poor things from being squeezed into small cargo containers by unscrupulous players.
Revelations (Kali part one) for EVE Online is here
Filed under: Computers, EVE Online, Entertainment, Games, MPOGs, Technology
Well Kali is finally upon us. I haven’t really had chance to play yet. But the first thing I noticed was 29,000+ players online, the most I’ve seen personally (although I was apparently online when they first broke 30,000 – I was stuck in Jita with 700 other players).
They did post a dev blog about yet another cool idea they’ve had for the release beyond Kali – the ability to walk around stations in a nice 3D rendered world. Although they pointed out it will be mainly cosmetic at first. And to be honest isn’t high on my list of wanted features…
Gang warfare in EVE
Filed under: Computers, EVE Online, Entertainment, Games, MPOGs, Technology
There’s a new blog entry about the overhauled gang system in EVE Online. It’s basically gone all hierarchical. You can still create gangs as normal, but they no longer receive gang bonuses. To get the bonus the gang must be upgraded to a fleet. A fleet contains wings, wings contain squadrons and squadrons contain members. And each level has commanders. And all the commanders give gang bonuses (meaning a player can get a bonus from all three of his superiors).
Oh, and the first half of Kali now has a name: Revelations.
Back in EVE Online
Well after taking a little break from EVE Online (damned real life getting in the way again ), I’m back in. And although I haven’t been playing for a couple of weeks, since this is EVE Online I’ve been able to keep my skills ticking over 
Of course when the JETA counter reaches zero (that would be Julia ETA – cute eh?) I’ll have another two week break. But I have a skill that needs 16 days to train so I’m prepared.
Kali Coming Soon
Filed under: Computers, EVE Online, Entertainment, Games, MPOGs, Technology
The current problems with EVE Online mean that Kali, the next big update will probably be delayed at least a month. But some more details have been released in the latest blog, including screenshots of the new seamless zoom feature. The idea is to integrate the map into the main display and simply let you zoom out – from your ship, through to solar system, region and finally all the way to the whole galaxy.
Life is getting better in EVE
Filed under: Computers, Entertainment, Games, MPOGs, Technology
A new post has been made in the EVE Dev blog by a guy called Redundancy about the EVE economy. Lots of interesting thing about GDP and stuff. The most interesting is that GDP per capita is on the increase – that is the average amount of money a player earns is going up. In fact is has double since January.