At least according to CCP’s head of studio :).
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/eve-online-will-never-die-says-head-of-studio-after-18-years-1
Eve’s birthday triggered a few more articles around the web, here are a few links :
https://www.eveonline.com/news/view/eve-turns-18-happy-capsuleer-day
https://thenerdstash.com/eve-online-celebrates-18th-anniversary-with-foundation-event/
I posted an overview of my gaming activities in 2019 over at my greendale blog:
By now most people that follow Eve and/or MMOs have probably heard that, for a sum of 425 million dollars Black Desert Online Studio Pearl Abyss has bought CCP. So Pearl has said that CCP will remain an independant studio. It usually starts out that way though. Whether it will stay that way remains to be seen. Hard to imagine taking over a company and not ‘mess’ with it. Checking around forums and reddit, I mainly see cynical jokes like $4,99 to activate your guns. Don’t think any player can see this as very positive, because of the reputation of Pearl Abyss to monetize their games, but only time will tell what will happen.
Links:
Ah remember this one ? Already 7 years ago, this controversy almost ended Eve Online. And might have hurt it’s reputation to this day. Ars technica posted a link to this old article yesterday. It’s fun read, along with the almost 200 comments below ;).
On my other blog, I posted a series of 2017 Gaming in [insert platform here]. Thought it would be nice to link that from here, since there isn’t much new content here.
VR hasn’t become the success CCP was hoping for apparently and it’s closing down 2 studios related to VR development. The timing is a little odd, in september there was still a presentation for Valkyrie at Eve Vegas.
The press statement also stated that ‘Eve development won’t be affected by this lay off’. But strangely enough even CCP_Logibro, a name even I recognize is laid off as well. He might be a community manager, who probably isn’t typing C++ every day, but to say Eve is not effected when 100 of your 350 employees are fired is a little odd.
Does VR still have a future ? The uptake is very low if we have to believe the Steam hardware survey (0,12 % with the oculus rift being the most popular). The price and the need to have a good video card doesn’t exactly help. Furthermore I believe that most people don’t really want to be lost in a game, completely shut off from your environment. Also the heavy device on your head doesn’t look very comfortable to me. Anyway, we’ll see what the future brings, don’t think VR is my cup of tea, but maybe I am just getting old ;).
Links :
Welcome to the continuing monthly EVE Blog Banters and our 80th edition! For more details about what the blog banters are please visit the Blog Banterpage.Blog Banter 80 – A Voice for All Players?CCP Seagull ecourages you to get involved in CSM12 and put your name forward to be a Space-Politician. On his blog Neville Smit noted that CSM11 had done a good job with minimum of drama. However he said he’d not be covering CSM12 like he has in previous years as he sees no point. The power-blocs will vote on who they want and unless Steve Ronuken manages to get on CSM12 it is almost certainly going to have every seat taken by the big null-sec blocs.
Is Neville right? Is the CSM moving more and more into just a voice for 0.0? Is this a bad thing? Are the hi-sec, low-sec and WH players going to lose out badly or is it really not an issue as its the same game? Could a totally null-sec dominated CSM 12 give a balanced voice for everyone?
Ever since the CSM was introduced, I always thought it was not much more than a marketing ploy. ‘Oh look in our game the players have their own council etc.’. And in the course of time (11 installments later), not much has changed my mind on this.
One could argue that this backfired with various scandals, although Eve being what it is, this was hardly surprising, and might have attracted more publicity. And there is no such thing as bad publicity ;).
As stated above, at the moment only power blocks from 0.0 seem to get a seat in the CSM. Is this a bad thing ? I would say yes. A lot of players don’t play in 0.0 or in one of the big alliances. But hardly anyone cares for the CSM any more. And if only 0.0 blocks get voted in, than it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy as people don’t see the point of voting any more, since their vote doesn’t matter anyway. All in all a sad state of affairs.
Welcome to the continuing monthly EVE Blog Banters and our 78th edition! For more details about what the blog banters are please visit the Blog Banter page. This months topic comes from Talvorian Dex.
Blog Banter 78 – The Big Reset
Just for a moment engage your “willing suspension of disbelief”. Imagine that CCP, at downtime today, reset everything in Eve Online. Everything! When you logged in you were in a starter system with your character… but now with less than a million skill points, a mere 5,000 ISK and a noob ship (now with civilian afterburner!). Markets are pretty empty other than a few seeded items. All Sov is gone. All player structures are gone. All PI infrastructure is gone. No corps or alliances exist. Nothing remains. New Eden is suddenly a completely level playing field and the next great goldrush is on? Or is it? What happens now?
Banter on…..
As far as I know, the Big Reset has been at least once in an MMO and that was the infamous NGE update in Star Wars Galaxies. It’s still referenced to, for example I found this on an elder scrolls online forum. In case you want to know more here’s a nice write up, albeit a little long.
What it came down to, the game changed so much, due to a new combat system that a lot of gear and skills were worthless over night. What made people really angry though, was that the whole thing was extremely buggy. Mobs would move at twice the speed, you couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn with your guns etc etc.
Besides the bugs, a reset is the last available ultimate tool an MMO developer has to try one last time to revitalize interest in their game. It comes with a lot of press attention, and probably a lot of new players who want to see what the hype is about, and who want to seek out new opportunities. In eve’s case, maybe that piece of 0.0 space you always craved for. On the downside, most of your old veteran players will leave. And they wont leave silently, they’ll make a fuz. They’ll camp Jita and suicide gank etc etc. You get the picture 
. It would be interesting though, everybody mining for trit in a simple cruiser or frig, running level 2 missions for a few isk. Though it would be a bit much for people who have already gone through the whole thing.
So the reset would only happen if CCP would be extremely desperate and they’re about to go under. I assume we’re not at that point just yet .
Contributors:-
Eve Hermit – BB78 – THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, THE MORE THEY STAY THE SAME
Jack Jomar – BB78 – The Great Reset
Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah – Blog Banter 78 – The Big Reset
The Ancient Gaming Noob – BB78 – Can The Slate Ever Be Made Clean Again?
Ghost of Eve – BB78 – The Big Reset
Space Cadet Online – BB78 – What if EVE was Reset?
SCASS – BB78 – Worse than Brexit
Announced in a devblog on august 31st, Eve will get a free 2 play component. The regular subscription accounts will stay though, the free 2 play accounts will have limited access to the game.
The Alpha Clone State is the new base state for all clones and it will be available to any character in New Eden at any time. Clones in the Alpha state will be able to train and use a specific set of skills including tech one Frigates, Destroyers and Cruisers for your faction along with essential weapons and modules. Alphas will also train skills at a reduced rate compared to Omegas.
That is pretty much stuff you do in the first few months of the game. Doing missions and mining in a frig or cruiser. From what I read above any specialised ships are out, so if you want a real mining vessel or go out exploring in a Buzzard, you’re out of luck. But I am sure it’ll bring in some new players who can play longer now without having to spend money on a subscription, but how long they’ll stay I don’t know.
This seems very similar to what other MMOs do, for example you can play World of Warcraft all you want for free, up to level 20. There are restriction just like the ‘Alpha Clones’. You can only earn 10 gold and talk in /say or wisper your friends. This is of course to limit abuse for gold farming / selling etc. Since Eve is a very different game focused on PVP there are of course dangers in free throwaway accounts. The ancient gaming noob is going deeper into that. Since Eve players are very creative, I am sure they’ll come up with more loop holes CCP will have to fix ;).
There’s also a big thread on this on reddit, you can find it here.
[stextbox id=”black” caption=”Blog Banter 77″]Is there a malaise affecting Eve currently? Blogs and podcasts are going dark and space just feels that little bit emptier. One suggestion is that there may be a general problem with the vets, especially those pre-Incarna and older, leaving and being replaced by newer players who are not as invested in the game. The colonists versus immigrants? Is this a problem? Are there others? Or is everything just fine and it’s just another bout of summer “ZOMG EVE IZ DYING!”[/stextbox]
This topic had to be addressed at some point in a blog banter I assume, but the topic is as old as Eve itself ;). But there might be some truth to it at this point in time. Let’s face it, Eve isn’t getting any younger. And without any major expansions, as of the last few years, it’s not attracting a lot of new players. The gaming landscape has changed a lot, as have the players themselves since Eve started. It would only be natural to slowly fade away.
Now let’s look at some numbers, you can check eve-offline yourself, also the other participants of this Blog Banter have probably linked the pics by now. You can see a decline (including the usual summer slum) for the past few years.
Google trends is interesting. It shows a peak at 2010 or so and a little decline from ten on wards. Sadly from 2015 or so the trend is at an all time low.
I know not a lot of people play Eve through Steam, but we’re looking for trends here, not actual numbers.
You can easily see the decline from about mid 2015 and onwards, with a very interesting peak in May 2016, because of the big war going on. So apparently interest is there, (unless these were all alt accounts, I assume though people playing through steam play usually one account), but people don’t know what to do (any more ?).
So to answer the original question, yes there is a decline, and it’s been faily obvious. To get out of it you’d need a big expansion of some sort to catch media attention and some hype around the game again IMHO, otherwise it’ll just slowly fade away.
You can find the other participants at the Blog Banter 77 main post.