Maken Tosch
DUST University
Ivy League
4755
   |
Posted - 2013.10.27 21:20:00 -
[1] - Quote
Arkena Wyrnspire wrote:Everyone thought the game was going to die.
When it was released, there was barely any content - No missions, barely any ships, interesting mechanics like wormholes were years and years away.
Look at it now.
To further emphasis this point...
Just before initial release back in 2003, CCP went to EA Games (yes, that's right. Electronic Assholes) and showed them a concept in which there is a harsh universe where player, not the developers, create the content and establish their own rules and shape the sandbox to their own liking. This was the Eve they envisioned and hoped EA would help publish it.
EA laughed at them.
EA told them that it will never work. In fact, when Eve Online first launched, it was at a time when Earth & Beyond was published by EA. Just like how you see today the various Planetside 2 fanboys all saying that Dust will fail and burn to the ground, many players in the Earth & Beyond community laughed at Eve Online saying the same thing.
A few years later....
EA announces that Earth & Beyond and its servers are shutting down. An influx of disgruntled and alienated players from the E&B community immigrate into Eve Online which then boosted its subscription considerably. EA never forgave CCP for that.
Even then, Eve Online was still weak in comparison to another MMO out there. World of Warcraft. With its millions of subscribers compared to Eve's mere one hundred thousand, many felt that Eve will crumble under the success of WoW. Many players in the MMO industry at the time didn't like the concept of a space MMO that is as harsh as Eve. Most of such players wanted a theme park MMO rather than a sandbox MMO. That and many people were still smitten by the age of orcs, goblins, and dwarfs. As a result, only a small niche group of players remained in Eve Online while everyone else went to games like World of Warcraft and Guild Wars.
But something incredible happened. The few players that stayed in Eve Online forged a universe with stories, shenanigans and adventures that made many players outside of Eve very curious. Suddenly stories emerged of corporate megalomaniacs having an economic stranglehold on the New Eden market but only to see their own kingdom come crashing down around them as a disgruntled director disbands the alliance and steals everything that wasn't bolted down in the hangars while an opposing alliance named Goonswarm came in with swift vengeance and strong resolve.
But it didn't end there. More stories emerged of major events like Hulkageddon hosted, epic battles in low-sec space involving nearly a thousand players, and more. Then came the stories of political intrigue and diplomatic cases when news came of players being able to elect their own representatives to work directly CCP on their behalf. The Council of Stellar Management (CSM) was born and later over the years grew to become the framework for the Dust 514 community's Council of Planetary Management (CPM).
Fast-forward to today....
We suddenly hear news that a ship with an ISK-to-USD conversion value of over $9,000 was lost in a major battle. The best part about this incident was that it wasn't planned at all. It was by a complete fluke of nature that an Eve player decided to warp in a very expensive ship into a trap he didn't see coming in the waiting hands of a bunch of hungry players who didn't expect to see such a ship on the field. The name of the ship was the Revenant which is a super-rare Sansha's Nation ship in which only 3 such ships were produced by the players in the entire market. Now there are only two in the market.
But such an incident pale in comparison to the Battle of Asakai in which a Titan accidentally jumped itself into the middle of enemy territory and suddenly every alliance and their grandma got in on the action causing a massive time dilation trigger in the system so that the server can catch up and process all of the near-3,000 players in the local system. Assets with a total ISK-to-USD conversion value of $15,000 were lost in this one battle that lasted only a few hours.
Stories like these are what caught everyone's attention. But still, that wasn't all.
www.Forbes.com as of December of 2012 reported that Eve Online is the only subscription-based MMO out there that maintained a consistent growth of players across ten years. Even World of Warcraft couldn't top that due to its nature of bleeding so many subscribers at once at any given time. WoW sometimes loses players by the millions compared to Eve.
Then came the news that Eve Online is considered to have the strongest and most vibrant economic model in the entire MMO industry. WoW can't even compete with that model. It was so successful that Guild Wars 2 tried to adopt that same model into their system. Their developers even admitted that they like Eve's model.
Of course, all this still doesn't bring enough subscribers to Eve because... well... Eve is the harshest MMO in the industry. You can scam, gank, rob, ransom, and even buy/sell slaves/hookers with in-game currency while having virtual sex chat with an Eve prostitute and still get away with it because technically you didn't break any rules. Even players who participated in the grand event of 2012 when Jita system was burning by their hands still got away with it because CCP said it was "******* brilliant". It's a little hard to go into a Cantina if everyone there is a potential crook with a death sentence in 12 systems. But that's actually good because then that means only the intelligent players stick around.
Welcome to New Eden. |
Maken Tosch
DUST University
Ivy League
4759
|
Posted - 2013.10.27 22:19:00 -
[2] - Quote
Lance 2ballzStrong wrote:castba wrote:Lance 2ballzStrong wrote:Comparing a PC MMO, niche game, to a console 16v16, sub par lobby shooter. Best comparison ever  The comparison was not so much the type of game, but the way in which CCP develop the games and the community's response. Comparison seems quite valid. The community's response? lol Brings me BACK to my point. PC crowd is not a console crowd. Can never, NEVER compare a PC point and click MMO crowd to a FPS console crowd. Night and day.
You know this really makes me wonder if PC players and console players are really two different people. I'm a dedicated console guy but I also dedicate myself to PC gaming equally. Where does that put me? |
Maken Tosch
DUST University
Ivy League
4765
|
Posted - 2013.10.28 02:35:00 -
[4] - Quote
BARDAS wrote:
EVE on the other hand does not currently have much competition. It certainly had no competition when it was released cause EA pulled the plug on its only direct competitor(Earth & Beyond). SWG also shed almost its entire playerbase at around that same time when the NGE bomb dropped. However, I do think Eve will be hurt significantly once Star Citizen is released when many of their casual players(anyone probably not locked heavily into nullsec activities) will likely abandon ship. SC has good promise, but we shall see I guess.
The assumption that Eve has no competition is an illusion. WoW is a very powerful and direct competitor. Not in science fiction but in the mmo industry in general. This is despite the fact that wow is sometimes losing subscribers by the boat loads. This is because wow is a very easy to use game catering to a very broad audience. It's so easy that even an elementary kid can learn it quickly on their own. Eve on the other hand is a very involved experience involving the understanding of mathematics, economics, and politics. There is a reason why Eve is often called a spreadsheet game. This means that Eve caters only to a very niche group of players.
On the one hand you could make Eve easier to attract more players, but on the other hand you don't want to dumb it down and potentially lose the veterans who helped establish the universe in the first place. |