~or “Is EVE Dying, or is it Just Me?”
Its summer and EVE is Dead. The usual summer blues or “Damn There’s Really A World Outside??” has hit and I, like so many, are not loggin in nearly as much due to conflicts with things like boating, cookouts, sittin round the firepit of an evening, swimming, wimmen in bikinis!!!, more swimming (due to wimmen in bikinis!!!), BBQs, travelin to visit fambly, mass consumption of alcoholic beverages (outside for a change), fambly travelin to visit us, more mass consumption… you know… :summertime: and this is all normal this time of year… even basically all of CCP goes on vaca for most of the summer it often seems. Things just slow down when it gets hot.
For my part, as re EVE, I have been keeping PI running, a good semi-passive ISK faucet and an easy 30 mins to hour of playtime. I rarely see anyone else on either, Lethal is on occasionally, but usually he says he’s just doing PI also. I would like to do some ratting in lowsec, the Clone tags and Mordu BPCs make it very worthwhile, but I am loath do go solo, much prefer when a few of us are on and I can call for, or get called in as, backup if PvP occurs.
But, all in all, things have as usual gotten quiet and a bit laid back as the days grew longer and hotter… I’m still here, still skim the blogs each day… though I will admit with less enthusiasm than I used to, I really do miss Jester’s posts… I basically turn to Sugar Kyle for my daily fix now but I find there is a lot less cross talk and cross posting now that the Roboblogger has gone dark… real shame there IMHO.
I can’t speak for Ripard, only for myself but the EVE blogshere has become a lot less interesting over all, I wonder if he truly realized what an effect he actually had on us all.
Fly Wreckless and see you in the Sky =/|)=
Yes, the Ripard is mssed. There can be no one person to replace him - it would take several folks if fact. I've not widened my EvE blog rota, the dozen or so sites are as many as I can visit. Without Jester's Trek, however, I feel that I've become one step separated from what's going on.
ReplyDeleteThe summer doldrums predated by the loss of Jester's Trek has me at an EvE low.
Yea... 'damn 'is eyes' as the prates say. And nope, no one else in the EVE blogshere comes close to the convergence of actual detailed knowledge about the game and it's mechanics (often not always but often, truly untainted by any real agenda or rhetoric) mixed with someone who really knows how to 'write' and REALLY communicate thereby.
DeleteI feel the loss of his insight and take on EVE deeply... Sugar Kyle is fantastic, she's no Ripard Teg but then again she is not trying to be and she is damn good just as herself. Her take on the game is not as in depth mechanically but I do believe she is possibly a little bit better at the reaching and connecting with the 'everyplayer' in EVE. Still...
We really have lost something very special with Jester having come to the end of his Trek. I feel like blogging the way he did about EVE and his CSM run were just checkboxes on his EVE Bucket List... gods I hope not.
Thank you for remembering I'm not Ripard, Tur. I appreciate it. :)
DeleteI really hope you didn't take that wrong... what I meant was your blogging style, 'all players & all playstyles' and your gameplay as a lowsec pirate are distinctly different from Ripard's as a meta-critic and NPC nullseccer. I hope you realize that for me at least, but I don't think I am alone here, yours is now my 'go to' EVE blog (and before Ripard closed shop, yours was my #2 right after JT).
DeleteSugar please know I have nothing but the deepest respect and admiration for you.
The good news is that when lots of people go on vacation, or go off to do whatever in the nice weather, they often forget to fuel their towers. Lots of vulnerable silos, hangars, and maintenance arrays out there for the taking.
ReplyDeleteOh so true. http://kb.ofsolitude.net/index.php/kill_related/8395/
DeleteWouldn't mind hearing the story behind that...
DeleteI wish I had been there. Trust me. Basically, yes, a dead tower. Full of stuffz. Really, full of Stuffz. Our team got their first, used their Moros to pop the others. No way to export, it was a C2....
DeleteBlogosphere is VERY quiet. I would be curious if there are as many serious bloggers about Eve as there were 2 or 3 years ago. I doubt there is any way to quantify it.
ReplyDeleteWhat can be quantified is the PCU. At least to a certain degree. I would be very happy happy to crunch the numbers for the average PCU for June 2012, 2013, 2014, July 2012, 2013, 2014, etc to see what the trends are. Chribba's graphs great at Eve-Offlin, but I don't think that kind of granularity can be extracted from that site.
My views on what is happening with the subscription base are widely known. I strongly doubt the breadth of the sub base has grown at all in the past years, and any sub growth is based on more alts / player, and the sub base dropped this year regardless of that.
Dinsey, I gotta hand it to you... a clear, cogent and rational comment and while I disagree with you heartily, I have no problem with that. A pleasure to hit post for once on something you wrote.
DeleteAs for the blogsphere quietus and lower PCU... it's SUMMER man, EVE always slows down over the summer... cripes everyone knows that.
As for whether o not the sub base has grown recently or is in decline... or holding at some approximate ;'x' level... only CCP knows for sure and they are not talking about it. And yes, everyone knows your view on the health of EVE and the gods know I'd love to be able to rub your face in hard numbers that prove you wrong but... if the sub base were doing well or growing CCP would be talking about it, and they're not and that little fact is my only real point of worry... but it is a shame to say it is a valid one I think.
But hell man... CCP is doing something NO ONE else ever has... created and run a single shard shared virtuality for ELEVEN YEARS... and as much as I love EVE, and as much as I want to play EVE until I am really old (not just damn old like I am now... =\ ) the simple truth is that nothing lasts forever...
But, even if subs are actually falling EVE is no where near going dark and CCP is definitely not anywhere near ready to throw in the towel... so I will keep the faith, and keep flying and posting an fighting for those things I feel will HELP us to grow this amazing game... instead of doomcrying and naysaying and in general being a part of the problem.
And now that you have finally decided to stop childishly ranting about conspiracy theories wrapped in Nullsec tinfoil, you might wanna consider how you have been and are applying your passion and energy... for the game, or against it.
Do you want to see EVE die? If not then how about trying to be a part of the solution instead of just sitting on the side lines and pointing fingers?
@TurAmarth:
ReplyDeleteSorry, but the tin foil and null sec conspiracies as you call them are still front and centre with me. I have said it elsewhere, and will say it again.
CCP has 2 BIG problems driving their subscription issues. IN no particular order
1. The blue blanket of null has created a horribly stagnant situation where the vast majority of the residents are obscenely rich, and much worse, very very bored. There is no point for them to log on other than to grief high sec players, because large scale campaigns are a thing of the past. So if they don't gank, how much ISK is enough before they simply say "screw it, I don't feel like logging on, or keep plexing my supercap account, or my cyno account, or for that matter, the bulk of my accounts". I think a bunch of them are dropping accounts.
2. The moronic campaign to wreck high sec income generation, with the latest attack on casual industrialists. Is the GUI better? Maybe. But now it illustrates how little profit will be made for a whole lot more risk in high sec industry, plus a whole lot more clicks (50 plus POS modules anchored, constantly offlining and onlining 11 to minimize production costs, really????), plus a whole lot more time hauling product and moving operations. Clearly CCP drank the kool-aid when they bought into the fantasy that there would be a net gain of subs with more null sec industrial accounts created compared to the high sec ones that will be ended.
Regarding the 1st issue, if you look at seagull's flow charts, any meaningful changes to null sec sov are at best, mid to late 2015. At least another year of the status quo...a huge failure by CCP management. Regarding the 2nd issue, the CSM will continue to attack high sec. Can't wait to see what happens to T2 invention in high sec with the autumn changes.
And as for me, pointing fingers is pretty much all I can do. CCP and the cartels are on a path they will not deviate from, that being the Jesus feature of allowing the powerful to build stargates to new territory that the owners control total access to. Building a whole new area of space that is only accessible to those in the the cartels or that pay the cartels for that privilege, basically 20-30% of your player base, is madness.
Oh well... at least you are trying to be clearer and more cogent instead of so ranty... but whatev...
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