Fair Warning to Readers: LOTS O PIX ahead... 46 to be exact.
Finally got to watch the EVE Fanfest
2016 Keynote last night… I
really hate to say it but like Neville,
I was not overly impressed. There was a lackluster feel to the presentation.
Like Seagull, Fozzie and the rest would pause for applause… and there was only
a smattering, a half-hearted clapping of hands because it was expected, not a
sudden response to something exciting, something… good.
Started with a SCOPE News
Broadcast on the Final Rounds of the Amarr Succession Trials… While I LOVE the
Lore and I do love that CCP is trying to include us in the NPC Lore story… it
felt… I dunno, kinda thin as a way to kick off the Fanfest Keynote.
CCP Seagull kicked it off… bla
bla bla…
Then CCP Quant and some Graph
Porn!!! Let’s just say THIS was worth watching… but when is graph porn NOT
worth watching? This was as usual a very informative and fun presentation, google
it, well worth the time.
This was fun...
The Battle of Asakao vs The Bloodbath of B-R5B... (each blue square = 1 PLEX) cool.
And this...
Daily Trade Value pre Skill Trading... (each blue square = 100 PLEX, a Titan = 110 PLEX) interesting...
This was fun...
The Battle of Asakao vs The Bloodbath of B-R5B... (each blue square = 1 PLEX) cool.
And this...
Daily Trade Value pre Skill Trading... (each blue square = 100 PLEX, a Titan = 110 PLEX) interesting...
I was pleased and a bit surprised
to find that 67.1 Trillion ISK is tucked away in Anoikis… Please keep in mind
dear reader, there are NO invulnerable stations in Anoikis… ONLY POS’es,
destructible POSes… and of that only 9% is in Thera, the only Wormhole to
actually have (indestructible) NPC Stations.
I went through the whole
presentation and here are the totals…
Anoikis 67.1 T ISK
Lowsec 518.5 T ISK
Nullsec 785.1 T ISK
Hisec 1,699.3 T ISK
Total 3,070 Trillion ISK… Total player holdings in game,
3.07 Quadrillion ISK.
And just for fun, Hisec’s top 5
trade hubs…
Hek 8-12 18 T ISK
Rens 6-8 25 T ISK
Dodixie 9-20 48 T ISK
Amarr 7 104 T ISK… more than ALL of Anoikis.
Jita 4-4 467 T
ISK… almost as much as all of Lowsec.
Total ISK cash in EVE… 978 T ISK…
less than one trillion. And then Quant made a funny… 3,070 / 978 = 3.1415… yes, dear
reader… we have PI. Pie in the Sky...
LOL
Back to CCP Seagull… and CSM11…
My overall take, Yuch. Voter turnout was just barely above 2014 numbers… and
the end result?
If you’re in nullsuc, you might
care… because that’s all we got. I believe Steve Ronuken is the ONLY
non-nullsec player on the council… so the vast majority of the players… all
those in Hisec, Lowsec and Negsec are going to be all but ignored by the
current council. Oh joy. All I can tell you is I voted… and this shit aint what
I voted for.
Next up was A HUGE plus for me
personally… I am a big bookworm. I actually am usually actively reading 2 to 3
books at the same time. IE I have several with bookmarks and can pick up anyone
and fall right back into the story or any one of them anytime. I was one of the
3116 backers of the Andy Groen’s “History of the Great Empires of EVE” and got
my promised paperback version which I avidly read… but I also have bought the
EVE Source and EVE Universe books and just yesterday received my hardbound copy
of the “History of the Great Empires of EVE” for my collection.
CCP TOriFrans came out and
announced a book for summer 2017… and book of ship plans… cutaway views of the
Frigates of EVE. O M G. You see the only thing I ever went to college for was
drafting and mechanical design. One of the reasons I did was my deep love of
the pictorial isometric cut away views of WWII ships, subs, fighters and
bombers I fell in love with as a boy in a large number of books I have
collected down the years.
I myself when I first saw the cut
away view of a Comet in the EVE Universe book…
I was, as so many were, a little
upset that CCP hadn’t spent more time on cut away views and on the ships
themselves. Well… it seems CCP heard us. We are now getting that book. I just
hope CCP realized it cannot end there… you do the frigates, you damn well better
do EVERY CLASS and EVERY HULL CCP!!! YOU
HEAR ME!?!?!
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| Breacher (full view) |
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| Breacher (detail) |
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| Executioner (full view) |
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| Condor (full view) |
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| Condor (thruster detail) |
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| Condor (cockpit detail) |
There will be artwork to go with
the stories of the various hulls design, manufacture, use and support.
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| Condor under construction |
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| Tormentor (full view with pull out) |
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| Tormentor (cockpit detail) |
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| Tormentor (approximate page) |
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| Enyo (full view) |
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| Enyo (reactor detail) |
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| Amarr Priest Engineers and Overseers directing repairs. |
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| Kestrel (full view) |
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| Kestrel (cargo bay detail) |
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| Frigates of EVE Online... coming Summer 2017 |
Charles White is a Knowledge
Management professional with NASA’s JPL in Pasadena. Charles, also known as Max
Singularity the 6th, First of His Name, is also going to be a guest
writer for this book on the subject of propulsion.
CCP Seagull presented a CCP
created Cell App for iOS and Android. It looks cool, I have used a few over
time… but I’m not a big “phone” guy… not one of those who spends every waking
moment staring in some form of tech rapture into a 2x4 in. or even a 4x8 in.
screen when I’m not doing something more important… or like so many who stare
into the damn thing even when it puts my life, and others, at risk.
Biggest thing I liked about it
was EVE Mail finally outside of the client, and POS notifications… other than
that, meh.
So on to the Roadmap. We’ve all
seen it, CCP Seagull’s Roadmap for EVE Online. She rolls it out and says, “With
the Citadel expansion, I would place us about here on the big picture
Roadmap." This does kinda jibe with my feeling of how CCP has been doing.
Then came CCP Fozzie and CCP
Larrikin who presented us with a series of Upwell Consortium Commercials. I
liked em… A nice lore’ish feel with real ‘verse impact. First up, the Citadels…
nice visuals showing off features and gameplay.
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| Astrahaus (medium) |
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| Fortizar (large) |
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| Keepstar (xlarge) |
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| Docking |
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| Citadel Doomsday AOE Weapon |
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| Fighter Squadrons |
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| Palantine Keepstar... There can be only One! |
Then another Upwell Commercial,
this one for the industrialists…
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| Venture Command Deck (as I have always seen it in my mind...) |
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| A Bright Future for us All |
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| Medium Industrial Array Design |
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| Med Industrial Array concept |
The first BPO/Cs for the New
Industrial Arrays will be available this fall. The next will be Drilling
Platforms (to be available this winter).
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| Drilling Platform concept |
The plan seems to be to offer
these replacements for POS uses until they reach parity with POSes, then POSes
will be going away. By Fanfest YC119 CCP will have begun the POS buy-back
program.
Next up, The Rorqual is getting
the love… Free upgrades from ORE, powerful medium range Mining Foreman bonuses,
and a weapon… a Defensive Super Weapon that will make you and your mining fleet
invulnerable… for short periods of time.
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| Rorqual |
Plus a new mining drone… an
Excavator Class Mining Super Drone… created from Rouge Drone tech… what could
possibly go wrong? These require rouge drone salvage… from the outer regions…
from nullsuc.
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| Excavator Class Mining Drone (careful with these...) |
There are planned Upgrades and
improvements for all the mining barges.
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| Upgraded Covetor |
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| Upgraded Procuror and Skif |
After the stream cleared up, CCP
Larrikin announced that the pirate factions were so scared by the battle of B-R
and have, as a result, decided to get into the capitol business themselves.
Check out the stats!!! OMGLOL!
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| The Vanqusher Pirate Faction Titan |
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| The Vehement Pirate Faction Dreadnought |
Warefare Links are getting iterated…
plus the usual ongoing iterations, changes and additions.
Back to CCP Seagull… some talk on
NPE and bringing new players into the game. More control over the risks of
bringing in new players to a corp (IE less effective corp thefting/spying in
the future). She introduced CCP Ghost, a new producer who will be solely focused
on NPE.
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| CCP Ghost |
Very weird talk at first… he kinda
rambled around (a lot) about him and his brain to get around to how he met
Hilmar. He quit his job at the Iceland Prosecutors office to work on why we
have only approx. 300k active accounts when last year alone 1.5mil trialed it…
half of them, approx. 750k players dropped out within a few hours of trying
EVE.
Imagine if we hooked only half of
those… every year. Just imagine.
So we have approx. 2 hours to
‘hook’ a new player… if they don’t get it by then, they just move on. I liked
his answer to how we might do this… “Immersive
experiences that provide meaningful gameplay plateau.” IE We need to get
new players emotionally involved in the game quickly… very quickly, in less
than 2 hours quickly. He then asked for our help. I liked him.
Back to Seagull… More stuff like
Operation Frostline, Bloody Omar, and other Events and story arcs will be
coming along these lines.
Then… the Upwell
Citadel Commercial… pretty
sweet actually.
