Now that Rhea is upon us, I thought I would write a quick assessment of how each of the major blocs reacted to Phoebe, and to the major changes it implied as to how and where alliances hold space.

Hero Coalition – 7/10 – A perfectly respectable passing grade which improved due to resilience and the willingness to follow through on their decisions.  Part of Hero’s to Phoebe response was born of sheer inertia: BNI had a few options available (some of them radical, some less so) offered to them by N3/NCDot, the CFC and others. Brutally frankly, they didn’t remain where they are because they thought it was the best option – although that might turn out to be true in the long run – but because they, and specifically BNI – don’t have the structures in place to make radical decisions.  Their ultimate response was that nobody felt able to make the call on their options.

Still, having decided to stay put, they were clever enough to neutralise the Providence front with diplomacy, and they’ve been lucky that the various Russians who might have been a threat have been ineffectual or distracted by other targets. The tinfoil hattery over PL’s motivations was a bit daft but killing two of PL’s titans has given BNI in particular a swagger that they’ve not had before.  I remember the effect of Goonswarm killing Shrike’s titan in 2007 and the last couple of weeks could be similarly exploited by BNI to create a different view of themselves than was the case in the past. Closer relations with BL are a strategic ace in the hole but they do need to watch out for the traditional skimming-off of their best members as a result. Continue reading Alliance Phoebe Scorecards →

This isn’t the controversial article I mentioned in my last post: just a quick aside.

One of the fun aspects of Eve Online’s Phoebe release has been the increased importance and prominence of wormholes for fast travel: while traditional modes of fast travel like jump bridges (whether from infrastructure or titans), capital jumping and death cloning are all far less effective for moving long distances, wormholes can let you cross Eve in minutes. All you need are some dedicated probers and a bit of good luck.

Of course, there are risks associated with this. When CFC FC Kcolor found, last night, that Black Legion had used a wormhole to take a fight in Catch, he got one of his colleagues, Tarrante, to run down to Pure Blind in his carrier and collapse the hole behind the BL fleet. Then when the fleet went back into the hole in Catch, near BR-5, Tarrante and Kcolor critted that entrance, too, trapping a chunk of the BL fleet and meaning that everyone’s ships had to be transported home from Domain.

I imagine that it’ll not be long before the same is done to us, and that these sort of W-Space high jinks will be increasingly common as the weeks go by, but it’s a beautiful example of emergent gameplay and I imagine that CCP will be delighted to see it happen.

The job of Nullsec sovereignty powers is to be the easily-found game content for each other and, even more often, for NPC dwellers. CCP risks making that job so unprofitable that the supply of content dries up.

Eve PvE gameplay is notoriously horrible. This is not a unique problem: MMO PvE in general barely rose above the level of “kill ten rats” for many years. But, lead by World of Warcraft, the genre has gradually dragged itself up to a level where entertaining and varied scripted content is available, whether for solo or group play.

Eve, as a sandbox, does not even try to hold the attention of players with purely PvE content. Continue reading We are the Content →