I'm going to tell you guys a little story about CCP:
I'm 35 years old now. When I was 25 I was much more into the video game scene than I am now. I used to buy all the magazines and sh!t, to keep up to date with whatever was the "next hot thing", and I've played just about every type of game you could imagine. But it always seemed that no matter what I played there was something missing. I knew what that thing was back in those days, but I didn't actually think that it was possible then, however, in reality, it turned out that I was wrong. In fact, back then, it was happening right under my nose, and even though I had the opportunity to embrace it I ended up discarding it instead.
When I was 24, I remember reading in all the video game magazines about this amazing new game concept called EVE Online. It sounded so amazing. Persistent world, everyone interacting with each other in a single sand box. I was so exited. This was the thing that had been missing! over the course of my many years as a gamer, I had grow so tired of games that had endings and then having to move on to the next big thing. But I wasn't done with that game yet! I wanted a game that would never end. And that was what EVE was supposed to be.
I was 25 when EVE came out, and I was so exited about it. As soon as it hit the shelf, I bought a copy and sped home in my car, eager to upload it and get down to business. When I finally got the game uploaded, and running, and after only 20 minutes of playing it (or at least attempting to) my hart utterly sank into disappointment. The game was terrible! The grafics were complete sh!t. There was no tutorial, and I had absolutely no idea what I was supposed to be doing. The last thing I remember at that time was flying tward some random planet in my ship until I rammed into it, like it was some kind of giant marble, and then nosing around it with my ship like I was some kind of insect and it was a giant light bulb. 20 minutes was all it took and I had had enough. So I shut to game off, deleted it from my system, put it back in the box and stuck it on a shelf, where it sat for years. Eventually, I got back around to addressing what to do with that game, several years later, while doing some spring cleaning one day. I took one look at the box, recalling the memories of my experiences, then proceeded to stuff it in a garbage bag along with the rest of the trash I had collected while cleaning that afternoon.
Several more years went by after that, and one day I was messing around on Myspace when I happened to notice an advertisement for a game called EVE online. Now, so much time had passed since my original romance with this game, that the name EVE Online didn't even ring a bell. But it was a sci-fi game and that kinda sh!t floats my boat, so I followed the advert link and was subsequently taken to the following trailer titled the "the butter fly effect":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oq2oxt7Nrxo&feature=youtube_gdata_playerI was blown away, and all of a sudden the memories started to flood in. I rushed to download this game off the internets (took a grueling six hours). I was so impatient. Had EVE Online become what they had touted it as being those many years ago?
The game finally finished downloading and I finally got logged in, and it was true. The game had become something amazing! Oh how I kicked myself for not giving it a chance those many years ago!
I played EVE online for about three months, and very much enjoyed myself. But, unfortunately, some real life circumstances cropped up and I could no longer play, and by the time I was ready to return to the game, unfortunately, I had lost access to a computer, and was then unable to do so. And, equally unfortunate, I still don't have a computer to this day (I am writing this no my iPhone). But what I do have, and what I have always had, is a gaming console, such as the PS3.
Before I left EVE Online, I had heard rumors that CCP was making another video game that would be connected to EVE Online. Rumor was, that this new game was supposed to be a first person shooter, about land battles on the surfaces of the planets in EVE. Well several more years went by and guess what? Low and behold, one day, in September 2012, I was messing around in playstation network, when I see "EVE online: Dust" attached to an icon and... well, I'll leave the rest up to your imagination.
Anyway, what I am trying to get at here is that, regardless of whatever you're opinion of the state of Dust is right now, I'll be damned if CCP isn't the little engine that could. I wish that I could have stayed around in EVE Online to witness the development of the game. And I still kick my self to this day wondering about how long it took them to get the game from what I played in 2003 to the drastic change of what I played in 2009.
My point is that regardless of what you think the state of this game is now, I am highly confident that CCP will continue to develop this game just as they did with EVE. And this time I do not intend to miss out.