BB48 - In The Future, In a Star Cluster Far, Far Away.....

Welcome to the continuing monthly EVE Blog Banters and our 48th edition! For more details about what the blog banters are visit the Blog Banter page.

This month's topic is a request from CCP Sisyphus who wants to know how important is Lore in EVE Online?

"How important is “fluff” in Eve online? Would Eve Online be the same if it were purely numbers and mechanics, or are the fictional elements important to the enjoyment of the game? Would a pure text, no reference to sci-fi or fancy names still be an engaging game? Should CCP put more or less emphasis on immersion?"


For me, MOAR! MUCH MOAR!

I'm a sci-fi fan. I love the setting of Eve, its back-story and its lore. I've always been into this sci fi gaming genre from Warhammer 40k (when you had a rule book so thick you could beat whales to death with it) to the tabletop Star Wars RPG before PC's started to come of age in the mid-90s.

I have read every CCP chronicle, all the scientific articles, all three novels as well as a lot of player created lore. Mark726's lore guide is a great example. I think that the setting and the lore have kept me in this game for so long.

Last week I celebrated my 5th year of Eve Online. No breaks, no gaps, five years straight. No game has ever sucked me in that badly before. I've been a PC gamer since the early 90's. Wolfenstien 3D FTW! I played by first proper MMOG in the very late 90's with Everquest. Then there was Star Wars: Galaxies before WoW (sorry) and then Age of Conan and Warhammer Online. I enjoyed all those games, but not one have gotten close to Eve Online.

A big part of the draw of Eve for me is the lore. I am sure there are large numbers of people out there who play Eve who have zero interest in the lore. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if these people outnumber us lore buffs. But I've said this many times before, Eve Online is not a single game. Therefore it doesn't attract a single type of players. From market traders who never undock, through hi-sec mission runners and miners, down to low-sec pirates and null-sec sov holders, each gets something different out of the game. There will be some that are interested that the Chimera class carrier was originally a water freighter. Some couldn't give a toss!

For me the lore is essential for immersion. I need to know why I'm sat in this spaceship, 20,000 years in the future in a unknown part of the universe. How does warp drive work? How do stargates work? How did Old Man Star get its name? Has Empress Jamyl ever had a drug-fuelled lesbo orgy?*

Knowing this enhances the game for me. People who have seen this blog before will probably already know this. I love the story telling in New Eden as you can see on my own fiction page here. Yes I am a geek, and its worse, I am a sci-fi geek!

So far CCP has done a great job in giving us the backstory and fleshing out life in New Eden. There was a disappointing lull after the summer of rage when I believe the team that did a lot of the lore got hit badly, but it has picked up lately. However, most of the recent lore has been directed at the main storylines. It is picking up but it is still a shadow of the past, back in the good old days, before the summer of rage.

But I am also scared for the future of lore and story telling in New Eden.

At Fanfest CCP Seagull seemed to imply that they want the players to take the lead as the main characters in New Eden and not the fictional characters. Lately we're seeing the groundwork laid out for that, in my opinion anyway. The Heth, Roden, Jamyl et al story-lines appear to be heading in a direction where they can all die quietly. So what will happen then? Are we going to see the tyrant Heth replaced by the Mittani? Will President Roden step down so the Gallente Federation can be run by President Rixx Javix, after all why not replace an ex-pirate president with a current pirate president? Will Empress Jamyl's throne soon be occupied by Empress Sindel Pellion holding court with her legs on display? Will Roc Wieler become the Matari Prime Minister? Will Chribba take 3rd party negotiations to a new level by becoming the head of CONCORD? Will......... erm....... what was I saying? Got thinking about what the Amarr might be like in 2014 if all this came true..... sorry readers I've gone and distracted myself.....

It has potential to work well, but it also has potential for tits to be upwardly inclined. This is going to be much harder than simply writing stories about fictional characters. Letting players run the story? We will see.

I hope CCP will continue naming ships, modules and items giving context in the Lore. I would see planetary information expanded and developed. I want to know more about New Eden and the people there and the technology! I want to see more Eve art like the header pictures we used to get in the chronicles. Yes I am greedy!

For me, if I could guide CCP into just one thing in this area I would push to return to the 2009 hay-day of the Eve Online Chronicles. Back then we would get regular stories about New Eden and not just about the high-level story-lines. They would cover normal people living, working and dying in the brutal cluster of stars that is called New Eden.

Come on CCP, tell us a story!



*The answers to those four questions in tl;dr style are....

1. Warp drive works by creating a 'depleted vacuum' which is a field devoid of all matter and energy that allows for anti-friction and FTL speeds. 
2. Stargates work in pairs by opening and maintaining an artificial wormhole. Just don't ask about binary star systems!
3. A factory ship with the crew in cryogenic stasis was sent to build a stargate in that system and it got hit by an asteroid as it entered the system. Only one man survived and he over the course of a few decades he managed to create an army of drones and build the gate himself to return home.
4. Yes. She was rebelling immediately before her coronation, then Falak Grange 'joined in'' and spiked her "party poppers" with Vitoc, the big spoil-sport, and brought the fun to an end!