Christmas Prezzies from CCP!

In case you missed it, CCP are giving daily presents for all! Similar to other games that do this, you need to log on each day to claim your gift for that day otherwise you lose out. Each day being UTC hours not the usual DT to DT you might expect in Eve.

"Each gift will be present for 24 hours, until 23:59:59 UTC, when it will be replaced by the next gift. Be sure to log in and claim your gifts from your redeeming system to avoid missing out!"

Anyway, grabbed my first one today... wow... I have a lot of crap in my redeeming queue!

You get a crate in your inventory and unlocking it runs through a little unlocking thingy like a hack. I got....

Four SKINs of ships I do use. Nice! Wonder what tomorrow will bring?

The Risk of Early Adoption

So what does this mean and why is it causing so much salt?

Well, in a word Rorquals! CCP Fozzie announced that the Excavator Mining Drone is going to be rebalanced. Basically you can see this in two ways depending if you are a Rorqual null sec miner or not.

This is a problem with early adopting new tech in Eve Online. I've not done the numbers myself but I have heard that with the Excavator Drones a proper fit Rorqual did the same yield as 8 well fit Hulks. Post December update it'll be 5 and a bit hulks. CCP have been watching  the effect these drones have been having has and decided they don't like it. Apparently they were raking in 350m an hour. A billion ISK in three hours?

Surely if they are making so much money it would be obvious that they'd be nerfed? People on the forums are screaming that they have bought skill injectors to get into Rorqual mining? Why did they do that? Obviously because they saw it made an absolute bucket-load of cash.

Whenever something new is released, or completely revamped there tends to be two things happen:-

1. Prices start off really high or increase in value suddenly
2. Things tend to get nerfed fairly quickly

If you jump in early you are likely to pay way over the odds and have limited time before the nerfbat lands. The only difference between this and say, when T3 Destroyers were nerfed, is the speed the nerf has come in at. I guess that means CCP have picked up a major problem early!

Blog Banter 78 - Worse than Brexit!

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 completley level playing field and the next great goldrush is on? Or is it? What happens now?

Banter on.....
Problem is it is difficult to willingly suspend belief here as it wouldn't happen. It would be worse than Trump or Brexit. A massively self-destructive act that would lead to the end of Eve. Then again India did try to beat both Trump and Brexit by making 85% of their cash illegal with about 3 hours notice in a society that is almost totally reliant on hard-cash. May be CCP could try and top this in the quest for 2016's Most Self-Destructive Act?

Anyway I think if CCP did do the big reset, Eve would die. Obviously this is after being "dying" since 2004. CCP would never do this. You cannot wipe out all that progression and not have a massive number of rage quiting. So many vets quiting would probably be too much. However that would be a short answer to the blog banter question. Eve is Dead!

Would I quit? Probably not. I'd be mad at over 8 years of progression lost just like that. Plus there is all the money I've poured into the game especially in PLEX sales. However I would continue and to be honest, as a fan of frigate and destroyer fights, I'd probably enjoy the brave new world.

However, lets think about what would happen.

First of all the corporations and alliances would reform almost instantly and start heading over to their previous areas more than likely. They would be a lot smaller due to the various rage quits and "well I was thinking about stopping playing so this seems like a good time to do it" loses.It would be fairly funny to see T1 frigate and destroyer blobs charging into null. Probably some of the larger entities would fight over the better space.

Hi-sec mining would go nuts! Veldspar and Tritanium would be highly valuable. This is not 2003. High-sec is much more highly populated than 13 years ago. The belts would probably get chewed through a lot faster.

PLEX prices would plummet. Nobody has cash so nobody is willing to pay anywhere near a billion for a PLEX. This would adversely affect those that PLEX their account obviously as they wouldn't be able to afford to the ISK people wanted to sell something worth $15. It might eventually restart at around 300m ISK mark or so.

Other than that, those who stayed would probably find the game would be still what it is now if just very quiet... a grand space opera populated by the very best and the very worst online gaming has to offer!