Eve Online: Apocrypha

[Stormy]

At last, a release date for the latest EvE online expansion! Really looking forwards to this one. The Tech 3 modular ships are going to be a fantastic new edition (video below), worm holes leading to new areas to explor and epic mission archs. There is going to be so much to keep me going for frigging ages.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=k-DPqnifEIg

EVE Online: Apocrypha Uncovers a New Version of the Universe Itself
Reykjavik, Iceland January 8, 2008- CCP, one of the world?s leading independent game developers, today announced the launch of the tenth free expansion for EVE Online, its popular science-fiction massively multi-player online game (MMOG). EVE Online: Apocrypha is the most ambitious EVE expansion in the game's over five year history and it coincides with the March 10th, 2009 release of EVE Online as a boxed product through a partnership with Atari.

The fabric of space itself will be transformed as vast, unpredictable wormholes open to connect previously unexplored regions of the universe to the stars of New Eden. The seeds of advanced new technology await inside of these cosmic anomalies for those brave enough to explore them. This infusion of technology will enable production of the most dynamic vessels ever ? Tech 3 modular ships with an astounding amount of customizability that can fill any role from skirmish muscle to industrial support.

Furthermore, NPC agents in EVE Online: Apocrypha will be authorized to assign Epic Mission Arcs to the pilots of New Eden. These branching, far-reaching mission strings are full of meaningful stories and more intelligent and deadly adversaries.

http://www.eveonline.com/pressreleases/default.asp?pressReleaseID=52

 

[Gargantou]

Hmm maybe I should pick up EVE again.. Can it be fun even if you don't wanna participate in warfare?

 

[hool10]

I would play this but it's like $20 a month. :x

 

[Eejit]

If you make enough ingame money you can buy account time with that instead.

 

[nurizeko]

Until they release an expansion which makes starting the game a significantly lesser chore, it means nothing to me.

I don't want easy mode but I want a game that invites me to play from the start rather then punishes me until I finally scrape my way up the ladder to the bigger boys level.

But Eve looks like a good game, so this expansion should be nice for the Eve players, top stuff.

 

[Stormy]

It is hard to get into eve thats for sure, especilly when its all time based and you have characters that are 5 years old. You will never be as good as them and you will be a long long way behind.

On the other hand tho even with a few million skill points you can be good. If you have all your skills dedicated to one type of industry or one type of combat you will be good enough to make money and to compeat, its just finding that activity that ticks all the boxes for your personal preference.

For example, I have started a second character 2 months agow and I am around to hit 2 million skill points, I am using him for trade in a very large trading hub and have made over a billion isk with him now. Whre as my 4 year old character has 40million skill points, all in flying ships and guns and makes me very little money and is used for combat.

If you find neash markets and good supplyers easy money can be made and now with the edition of t3, worm holes and these epic mission archs there should be even more money availble.

If you did want to start playing the way to get into it is to work with other people in doing what you want to do, for example join a mining or combat corperation and join in with their weekly ops, it gives you good access to "what the game is really about" but also gives you a ton of people to learn from, and there is a hell of a lot to learn which can be off putting but I think after a good few weeks of play the doors to eve really start to open up.

Also, you can buy time codes with isk, they cost around 320mil which is quite a fair bit.

 

[Lobster]

One of the games of the past that I put alot of time into was Frontier Elite II on my Amiga 500, and EVE to me is like the ultimate MMO version of that game, but I have tried to get into it a few times and ran out of steam, the problem was not really knowing where to go, the games open nature makes it quite overwealming to people new to the idea, If I was to make one change to the experience I had playing it, it would be to have some way of searching for areas populated by similar people, or a list of suggested starter regions for Traders, Fighters, etc. (If such a thing already exists, then my bad)

One other very minor gripe, was when you do a mission to haul an item somwhere, and you make the entire long trip, only to realise you were dumb enough to leave the item in the previous station Hanger. (RAGE QUIT)

 

[Stormy]

^^ ahh the classic leaving the loot behind

I think the "not knowing what to do" thing is pretty common for new starters and its somthing that i suffered from when I started playing back in 04 and didnt play again because of it for over a year.

My advice would be to join a corporation and one that is part of an alliance that is proficient in what intrests you like a combat or industry corp. It means the people you are playing with will have a common goal and you will not run out if things to do.

For example you may have an industry corp within an alliance producing combat ships and moduals for the fighting corps. This corp would get in orders, we need this we need that and it would be your job to find the resorces and meet the supply for as little cost as possible.

EvE is also partly played through message boards especilly the eve online one found on their website, here you can run industry and hunt out corperations recruting that might take you on. It should be your first port of call.

 

[CombineHunter]

Ive been playing EVE for about a week now just bought myself a destroyer last night i need to know where to make more money though.

 

[hool10]

If you make enough ingame money you can buy account time with that instead.

HOW?!?! I MUST KNOW THIS! That is a great feature and my opinion about the higher ranking people is something I saw in Ogame.org. These huge players would turtle up and this giant alliance would team up or a bigger guy would eat the other guy up. I finally quit with the drama but there was a Nazi force going through the game. Some clan called "RAWK" literally pwned everybody and literally claimed war on the universe. Made many people quit the game after that.

 

[CombineHunter]

If you make enough ingame money you can buy account time with that instead.

Yeah costs over 600 million isk though good luck making that much.

 

[Eejit]

Basically players can buy additional game time from the devs and sell it to others ingame for ingame money or goods. It's like legitimised gold buying for one guy, and playing for free for the other.
Like Stormy said though, it's expensive, several hundred million ISK per time code. Once you're running high-level missions you can probably make that amount of money per month without much sweat if you really want to though.

 

[Stormy]

I dont think they are that much.

They have released a new patch recently where you can by a "pilot licanse" which is bascily a 60 day time code. The patch allows you to put these up on the ingame market and contracts which are used to sell more spesilised items and mods.

 

[hool10]

I read about the pilot license thing. IMO it's amazing with the economic times that people still find the money to pay $15 a month to play a game. Can I receive a pilot license?

 

[CombineHunter]

I dont think they are that much.

They have released a new patch recently where you can by a "pilot licanse" which is bascily a 60 day time code. The patch allows you to put these up on the ingame market and contracts which are used to sell more spesilised items and mods.

Oh they are believe me. Just check the Eve online forums.

 

[hool10]

I just remembered how big this game is. To defer anybody in the game from getting too big, their are greedy people. Some CEO's (lol, they call them that) get killed from their own corporation and like a new dictator takes office. There is often times contracts too. So if your gonna be a Boba Fett, you better watch out for contracts on your frozen corpse. That's pretty cool too cause you can do story missions or you really can be a bounty hunter.

 

[Nitre]

I've been thinking about thinking about starting EvE, but i don't really know enough about it and i've heard stuff from people that makes me see it in a negative light. Spaceships look pretty cool though.

 

[hool10]

I've been thinking about thinking about starting EvE, but i don't really know enough about it and i've heard stuff from people that makes me see it in a negative light. Spaceships look pretty cool though.

Yeah I was on the same boat as you bro. What you really need to do I think is get into a corporation but that often makes you want to pay monthly. Maybe in the future but right now paying $15 monthly is a little crazy.

 

[Stormy]

EvE is brillent, the politics, wars and social interatction is pretty much the same as the real world. You will be friends with a group of people one week then at total war with them the next, you never know what will be coming around the corner.

It's also a very brutal game, you can loose everything you own over night by flying carelessly into a 0.0 system,

http://www.storietime.com/gsy/killboard/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=15592

^^ I lost 400million isk here when some cheeky sods suiside ganked me in empire, damn I was pissed off and didnt play for a few days. Things like this happen a lot in eve and its pretty much garanteed to happen to you at some point but the emotions you get from it dont happen in other games. You will plan your revenge and if you get um you will be so chuffed. I find that this kind of thing produces emotions that you really dont get from other games and it makes it pretty special.

Here be a quick battle report, this is the sort of thing that happens in pvp alliances.

I logged on late and caught the end of a small hac/frig roam in Cloud Ring. Killed a couple then we went back to A-S to organise a bigger gang. I jumped in a guardian so all this is from a logistics pov. As we were forming up in A-S we got reports of a large Scourched Earth + friends gang forming up in 9-4. We managed to get 7 logistics in our fleet plus a lot of BS and support - around 31 (+ the logistics that don't show) in our gang and 36 in hostile gang according to killboard, including a couple of carrier support.

At first we thought the hostile gang was coming to us in A-S so we setup camp on the 1-3 gate, but after a while it became evident we would have to take the fight to them. The logistics group organised their cap transfers and created a seperate chat channel to keep on top of things. As we prepared to jump into 9-4 everyone had their orders - support was to run down the enemy EW and other support, BS focusing on the primaries, logistics keeping everyone alive. We jumped in holding cloak for a few seconds to get a picture of the fleet before us, there was also a large bubble up. Logistics held cloak for a couple of extra seconds to avoid the insta pops. Primaries were called, support went on the rampage to kill hostile EW while BS focused on the hostile BS, logistics did all they could to keep everyone alive, but it was hard with the amount of jamming the enemy fleet had. Most of the logistics had to jump out and in again at some point. Saying that, the support did an awesome job of harrasing the enemy EW and it could have been a lot worse without them. Unfortuantely, Sashenka (Guardian) popped before he could jump, despite spamming the jump button before he hit structure. Can't really say much for the ships we killed as i was concentrating on the repping, but other than the guardian, we only lost a couple of frig sized ships and killed 14 odd BS + support.

Also have a try reading this its about an epic scam somsone did

http://www.wirm.net/nightfreeze/

What I find with eve is you end up with so many storys to tell people, about some awsome scam, some amazing new money making sceam, some new ship setup or some great kill you got or how you managed to escape some gang of 50 people. Its this kind of thing that keeps me going with this game.

 

[Stormy]

My sexy new ship... hummmm

And ill be getting a new one of these soon

 

[Computer5k]

Oh they are believe me. Just check the Eve online forums.

Not really. Looks like 350m for 30 days from the region I'm in right now. Not the forge so I can't be sure that's entirely accurate but it sounds about right.

 

[Stormy]

The 30day plex is 354mil in Jita with buy orders at around 340mil. I guess if you want to go down that rout it would be worth trying to get them cheaper through buy orders.

Oh, me and some alliance friends managed to kill an AFK onyx and the silly bugger had an armor hardner in the cargo worth around 450mil! What a fool!

What do you do with your self computer5k in eve's?

 

[Gargantou]

Things like this happen a lot in eve and its pretty much garanteed to happen to you at some point but the emotions you get from it dont happen in other games.

Not true, I've had such emotions happen in other games, only online games with permanent stuff but still other games.

Mainly Neveron(A strategic browser-based MMO based off the BattleTech universe), it has no resets etc and the game/round has been going for over 4 years now, I don't think you can truly understand the anger when you've built up a huge empire over the timespan of 3 years, and then because of an alliance breaking down, you get royally sodomized and your empire crumbles to pieces over the few days and you can do nothing more than watch as your servants bravely but uselessly struggle against the invaders.

 

[Ravioli]

Im going to try out that new offer they have, 5 days free to reactivate an old account,then 10$ off when you buy more time. Il do it at the end of the week. Oh and if you are running windows 7 and have problems, try removing these from the bin folder

RedistD3DXOnly.exe
NetClient.dll
NetUtil

 

[Some_God]

I got bored of EvE after 1 month.

 

[Stormy]

^^ You must be doing it wrong

Ravioli, what do you get upto ingame? Would you be intrested in getting together and doing some PVP?

I have a could of friends who may come and we could make a trip of it going up to fountin to splam some ratters.

 

[Ravioli]

Im afraid i cant. The last time i was ingame my ship blew up and i just quit 10 seconds after, once i come back im going to reorganize everything and pick up where i left off slow, without wasting money. Sometime in the future (if i dont quit again) we can do it.

 

[Eejit]

Just activated my 5 days 'try it out again' thingy.

Remembering the good and the bad.
31 jumps from Solitude back to Empire with all my belongings and ships avoiding 0.0 being part of the bad

 

[Acepilotf14]

Just reinstalled it, damn my account is still active.

 

[Stormy]

They never seem to remove accounts. I didn't play mine for a year after I signed up because I didn't like it found it all a little boring but then I started playing again by the recommendation of a friend. Now I'm just got learning amarr and am about to hit 40mil sp on my main character and have a trading character + just learning a freighter alt on my second account.

Like I say, if you really want to get a feel for the game you need to join a corporation and if you can a 0.0 active one because this is where the game really hits off. Have a post on the forum saying what you are looking for and hope for the best. Goonfleet would be pretty good because they take on anyone I think.

http://wiki.goonfleet.com/index.php?title=About_EVE - could be a good read and give some ideas of what to do with your self.

http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp - linky to the eve online forums, there should be some kind of corporation section which you can either look through or port asking to join up. Tell them what you want to do in the game, what aspects your interested in and i'm sure someone will reply. Being in a corp will teach you a ton about the game but also give you a greater goal and ultimately be more fun

 

[Stormy]

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=lKviRpvGXBs

awsome cakes

 

[Nabobalis]

Just go into the game and well all I plan on doing in the mean time is missions, not sure how to go about looking for a corporation to join really.

 

[Gargantou]

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=lKviRpvGXBs

awsome cakes

Yeah already saw the HD version of that like a week ago, still awesome though.

 

[Stormy]

When you first start the game you will be in a noob corp already, you should have a corp chat window on the go. Have a chat with people in there, ask questions and find out as much info as you can. Ask people about corps and how best to get into them.

Also head over to the eve online website, and post some messages in the forum saying who you are and what you want from a corp. People might not want you in if your only on a trial account tho thats the only problem so it may be best to get involved with some people in the noob corp. Maybe ask if people can help you through your missions or if you can help them with there's etc. That should be a good start on meeting some people that you may later corp up with.

http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp

If you want you can give me a shout in game "Maktor" is my character name and I can try and help you out a bit.

Also,

The 6th alliance tornament has just started and so far its been pretty sweet, 64 different alliances to start with and it will wittle down to 1 with a prize of 60 time cards with about 18billion isk.

here are some youtube links if anyone is intrested to the first round.

Here is my alliance totaly pwning some guys in our first round matchup !

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=rPutcadfH9s

Here are all the matches from the first 2 days of the comp. Some really good ones there.

http://uk.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=E3253708589CBE0A
http://uk.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=0051F4B27C1BE3A7

I really enjoyed this match with the 3 navy mega setup with blasters, it was total rapeage

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=x4H0EFtY7XU

 

[Gargantou]

Goddamned stop making me want to re-open my EVE account, don't have the time!

 

[Stormy]

I never get why people around here are never that intrested. It's a game aimed at a mature audiance I would guess 18+ was in their design document and it seems a good lot of the people on the forums are at least 18 so I dont know what the big put off is.

Its nice playing a game where people are generaly pretty decent to each other rather then screaming noob and hacker like you get in CS and WoW etc. Don't get me wrong i love cs to bits but its nice to play somthing where you use your brain and talk to people that have some brains.

There is plenty to get involved in, plenty to shoot, plenty to kill, plenty of people to rip off and screw over, money to be made etc etc...........

 

[Eejit]

The put-off for me is mainly that 'levelling' is dependant entirely on time subscribed rather than time played.

Ok, almost entirely, imba implants would help a little but you know what I mean.

 

[Gargantou]

The put-off for me is mainly that 'levelling' is dependant entirely on time subscribed rather than time played.

Ok, almost entirely, imba implants would help a little but you know what I mean.

That's exactly the appeal for me, whilst it can be unfriendly to 'newbies', it also means that it doesn't matter if you can only boot up and properly play the game once or twice a week.

 

[Stormy]

some news on the new add-on coming soon, sounds sweet

"We cannot predict the new forces, powers, and discoveries that will be disclosed to us when we reach the other planets and set up new laboratories in space. They are as much beyond our vision today as fire or electricity would be beyond the imagination of a fish." - Arthur C. Clarke


Hello. My name is Whisper and I am here to talk to you about one part of Apocrypha, the upcoming expansion for EVE Online. I head up Team Bifr?st, which includes such luminaries as CCP Casqade from Quality Assurance, CCP Bella Bee from the Software group, CCP Greyscale and CCP Abathur from Game Design and CCP PrismX from...who knows what pit of contrariness he sprung from but he's under my supervision now. So together with the rest of the team we're going to deliver unto you a feature of truly galactic proportions. This being the introduction of a brand new, glittering, shiny travelling mechanic: Wormholes.


First a bit of background musing. One of the criticisms that have been levied against EVE is that space is becoming crowded and that there really is no feeling of exploration. Indeed, from the very first moment you set foot in the universe of EVE, all of you have had a map at your disposal that shows you exactly where every solar system is, how to get there and what you may expect to find. You even have a newly improved autopilot who will selflessly and mindlessly guide you to your destination. And while there are still thrills to be had, there exists at the back of many of our minds the nagging knowledge that we are not the first to venture here. That the maps have been drawn, the anchorages charted, the wild hills surveyed and the paths trodden so often they're now four-lane blacktop highways with shopping malls and 24-hour burger bars along the fringes.


Well we are going to change that. We are going to give you uncharted, unknown places to visit via paths that shift and slide through the fabric of space. We are going to give you thousands of new solar systems which will contain new NPC's, new exploration content and new pockets of resources to exploit. You will have the chance to venture into places that promise great rewards but also bring with them great risks. We are going to establish the untamed frontier that lurks at the fringes of known space and into which brave souls bent on conquest and riches will venture with high hopes. Some will return as heroes, some will return as fresh clones spewing from the medical vats. Some may never return at all.


Wormholes will bring us to this new frontier, appearing all over New Eden as a result of a cataclysmic event, the nature of which we'll reveal in the coming months. These wormholes are unstable and will spawn and vanish randomly throughout the known universe. A pilot who stumbles across one of these stellar phenomena can fly through it and travel to unknown space, where there are no stargates or stations, just the unexplored void of a new solar system. And when I say "new solar system" that is exactly what I mean. It will not be moving you to instanced space but rather to one of the thousands of new solar systems we will be adding to the EVE universe.


The wormholes themselves will be open only for a randomly determined amount of time and can only let through a certain amount of mass before they collapse. Pilots should carefully consider the information their ship's computer gives them about a wormhole before committing to travel through it. Although there will always be a way back to known space from wormhole space, you may have to search long and hard to locate it. And in that process, you may find wormholes that lead you to even more unexplored wormhole systems, launching you on a voyage of exploration the likes of which EVE has never seen before.


Which begs the question of how you will find the wormholes. Well, we are in the process of revamping the entire scanner mechanic, making it faster and easier to use. A shortlist of the new scanner features is:
* You will be able to drop more than one probe in a grid
* Probe scan ranges can be adjusted via a drag and drop interface in the 3D map, removing the need for multiple probe types
* Probes can be repositioned in the solar system map using a drag and drop interface and will warp to their specified positions
* Scanning will now use triangulation to refine and improve accuracy of scan results
* You can recall probes for re-use at a later point and time
* The transition from ship view to 3D Solar System view to Universe Map view has been made near instant, allowing for quick switching between them

There will be two new probe types, exploration and combat. Exploration probes will not be able to locate ships and drones but will have extremely low fitting requirements, making them ideal for people who wish to hunt down wormholes and other celestial anomalies. The combat probe launcher is able to detect ships and drones but has a higher fitting requirement, making this the tool of choice for those wishing to hunt down other pilots. We are still in the process of balancing these probes and launchers and yes, we are looking into the options of how to deal with the existing probes, probe blueprints and launchers.


Why should you fly through these wormholes then? Well in the solar systems on the other side of the wormholes you will find new exploration sites patrolled by a brand new type of NPC. The salvage and loot drops from these NPC's and the exploration site rewards will provide you with the raw materials you will need to reverse engineer the technology that makes construction of the new Tech 3 ship modules possible. There will also be exploration sites with ore-rich asteroid belts just waiting to be found by an adventurous industry corp.


There is also the chance that you could stumble across a route through wormhole space that links two widely separated areas of known space and gives you a lucrative, fast trade route for as long as the wormholes stay open. Or perhaps the route leads into the backyard of your sworn enemy...at which point you may be faced with the question of what ships to send through to maximise the potential of the mass allowance the wormholes possess.


Wormholes will shift all the time. They will open and close and reopen at random locations throughout New Eden and thus present you with an ever-changing area of space that no-one can control all the choke-points to. While it is theoretically possible to move a control tower into wormhole space, set it up and maintain it, the logistical challenge and risks of fueling and defending a tower in a system with no permanent links to known space would be considerable. But then again the potential rewards are equally great.

One important point needs to be made: Wormhole space will not be able to be claimed as sovereign space. This is partly due to current implementation restrictions regarding how we added 46% more solar systems to EVE but mainly because we wanted to design an area of space which, while risky to travel through, is open to all players all the time. We have not forgotten about the desirability of space for colonisation, and will be looking at ways to implement that gameplay feature in the future. In fact one of my biggest challenges will be stopping PrismX from adding ten thousand systems now that he's gotten a taste of being a deity in creative mood.


Greyscale will be publishing a dev blog of his own where he will go into more detail about the game mechanics surrounding wormholes. I'm sure PrismX will be going wild in the comments thread about the work he's done to introduce more solar systems into EVE. I'll also be encouraging other team members to post in the comments and perhaps write dev blogs of their own about what they're working on with regards to this universe-expanding feature. And of course the other teams will be writing about their work in the very near future, so keep your eyes on the news column.

 

[Gargantou]

So, pondering opening up my old account again, would you say that one can have fun in EVE EVEn(I couldn't resist) if one only finds the time to play it maybe 3-4 hours a week actively?

I'm most concerned about being kicked out of corps etc because of lack of activity.