
Multiplayer Game 'Eve Online' Cultivates a Most Devoted Following - creamyhorror
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-04-18/multiplayer-game-eve-online-cultivates-a-most-devoted-following
======
tinfoilman
These are just the latest breed of these types of people for eve.

My eve history is beta, and on and off for years. I have 2 chars, my baby she
was born on release day just shy of 90milion now(yes yes i un-subbed for years
at a time) and a secondary of 40 million who is the transport/mining hauling
alt.

Now I was lucky, like really lucky. I found a group in beta, there was 10 of
us, by release we were 8 but within 6 weeks we had our own BPOs and running a
high sec manufacturing chain. We did alright but it was dull so we moved to
Fountain, and were part of the group that originally found FA. Funny the
original corp ended up being a front for BoB for years ran by the bob
manufacturing team.

Anyway FA at the start, m0o invaded, FA defended as best we could, my corp got
invited to merge with Evol (who never recruited) and so started what I like to
think of as the first step towards bob.

The organizational involved to get BoB up and running and running for 3-4
years was massive. Never under estimate what molly and co were able to pull
off. They were the first big alliance for me personally. Not that i am taking
away from the people in this news bit, but i do think they are just redoing
what we did originally in the day. The difference is they saw how we did it
and done it better, we had to do it from scratch, and by doing so we made some
amazing bonds and were the force for years. Also remember BoB did the BoB BBQ
which is where they would rent a camp site somewhere in EU and everyone from
BoB was invited, really bob was all about building a close team and i was sad
when it got removed from the game like it did but meh a game is a game.

Anyway I is off, Eve is awesome but only play if you have time to play, it
will eat years off you

~~~
ajacksified
ex-TEST director reporting in. It is, indeed, supremely impressive when
looking at the infrastructure required to support an alliance of 5000 people;
in TEST, for example, we have our own software developers and an ops team that
keeps systems like voice chat, forums, wikis, killboards, and more running
24/7.

And then there's the management / organizational side - juggling 20+
corporations, each with their own cultures, leadership, and focuses, and
herding the cats towards battles. (BoB forced members to join battles, TEST
incentivized battles, two methods with the same end goal.) In my tenure as
Director of Training, we set up systems where brand-new characters could get
free ships, equipment, and skill books and a channel for asking questions. It
was nearly a full time job just managing the influx of new players.
Ultimately, it fell to the wayside once I moved across the country, and come
to think of it, I've been paying for a subscription I haven't actually used in
many months...

~~~
alex_c
Heh, I've most likely played with you (Dreddit member since day 1 - for non-
Eve players, TEST was started by Reddit players and is now one of the largest
alliances in the game). I haven't played in almost two years, but watching a
single corp grow from nothing to an entity that changed an entire game
universe has been incredible.

The truly fascinating part was seeing first-hand which forms of organization
and motivation work, and which ones don't. Specifically, how a laissez-faire
organization with relatively few rules in a very hostile game world managed
not only to avoid falling apart, but rise to be a superpower against
established entities with much more defined and rigid structures.

I think TEST's biggest advantages were a shared identity and relatively strong
culture (for better or worse) that emphasizes fun over winning , and
practically non-existant standards for accepting new players combined with
very strong training and bootstrapping (as opposed to more picky corps who
either didn't want to bother with newbies or were afraid of spies). And maybe
a bit of manifest destiny. Throw in support from a very similar but much more
experienced and established ally, a lot of propaganda, and you have something
that's very tough to beat in the long term.

I can ramble forever about it, I really am fascinated by how much complexity
Eve allows. That game has to be a sociologist's or organizational
behaviourist's dream come true.

------
dagurp
> The company employs close to 600 people, or 0.2 percent of Iceland’s
> population. (An equivalent U.S. company would have about 626,000 employees.)

Last time I heard foreigners made up 30-40% of the staff in Iceland.

> Just down the road from the CCP headquarters, the Harpa, a giant glass opera
> house, glows in different colors at night. It symbolized Iceland’s banking
> boom. Now it may have to be torn down, because it’s too expensive for the
> country to maintain.

It's definitely bleeding money but nobody is talking about tearing it down.

~~~
lazyjones
The article contains many such mistakes, for example there are not 500.000
players, that's the number of accounts. CCP never discloses the number of
actual players and the game practically mandates the use of several accounts
for more advanced gameplay.

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coley
I really enjoy EVE's sandbox. It's a great game to lose yourself in. The
developers release expansions regularly and really listen to their player's
feedback.

One thing I find interesting is that most dedicated EVE players pay for two
subscriptions. This allows you to have two characters that are both active and
training skills.

A popular setup is to have a subscription for a law-abiding citizen that can
pass through all Solar Systems and make a lot of in-game currency through
mining, mission running, transportation of goods, or any other means. The
second subscription would most likely be used to engage other players, whether
their victims are up for the challenge or not. If an EVE player is engaged
illegally, the attacker becomes red-flagged, and if they keep it up,
eventually won't be able to traverse high security solar systems without being
pursued by a Faction Navy or CONCORD(EVE in-game police). Running from CONCORD
is a bannable offense - as in, banned from the game.

EVE is a wonderful world of capitalism, piracy, industry, and exploration, but
I do wish CCP had a way of counting the number of players instead of
subscriptions.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
So you get banned if you engage in too much pvp? I thought this game was all
about pvp.

~~~
LordMoriarty
From what I understand, it's if you do too much pvp on players who don't want
to pvp. I guess there's some sort of flag to turn on if you want to pvp, a
little like World of Warcraft.

~~~
Tuna-Fish
No. The most important principle of EVE is that someone can _always_ kill you.
Only having consensual PVP makes games boring, as it removes risk.

In some areas of space, killing people has consequences, specifically, losing
your ship. Which just means that you should fit it for firepower/cost when you
go shooting random people in highsec. Various parties have honed this to an
art, for example: _miniluv_ (Goonswarm Ministry of Love).

Their handiwork: <http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/28640>

Choice quote: "There’s just something special about building 15,000 spaceships
and loading their guns with 1 round of ammo to shoot. And doing it right in
front of the police."

~~~
LordMoriarty
Well, that's what I understand from the post I replied. Thanks for correcting
me though.

------
gtaylor
The timing for this post is hilarious. They just massively pissed off a large
chunk of their third party developers, and an even larger chunk of the players
that depend on third party apps:
[https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=2266...](https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=226648&p=14)

------
9999
I feel the same way about Eve that I feel about Dwarf Fortress. I love reading
about it and find the surrounding community fascinating, but I just don't have
the time to devote to properly playing it.

~~~
fatbat
I feel the exact same way. I especially enjoyed reading one article a few
years back about a real-world Eve scam. Not sure how to find it anymore but it
was very well written as are a lot of Eve stories.

I did not know CCP bought White Wolf Studios and will be looking forward to
what they do with those creative brands. Will they dominate the sci-fi and
horror genre?

~~~
didgeoridoo
Do you mean this story?
[http://www.computerandvideogames.com/180867/features/murder-...](http://www.computerandvideogames.com/180867/features/murder-
incorporated/)

------
intended
EVE has done one truly innovative trick, which I suspect is going to be
template for many mass unit virtual battles in future - time dilation.

Not everyone can just throw hard ware at a problem, Time dilation is one of
the coolest things that have happened to make the Massively part MMO feel
massive.

~~~
danneu
I was curious so I googled it.

<http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Time_Dilation>

Basically, EVE Online's universe spans a bunch of server nodes. When a node is
under a lot of stress (large battles, high volume), the node's game speed
slows down so that it can handle the load of player actions.

~~~
1123581321
I'm not an Eve player. Is snaring opponents in a dilated node in order to get
ahead of them time-wise a used strategy?

~~~
saraid216
I suspect it's very difficult to actually pull it off, but I wouldn't be
surprised if it has happened once or twice.

My impression is that chasing people across several different systems is a
relatively rare practice, since you're basically blind to what might be
waiting for you when you jump after. Worse, you'd have to be giving the other
player an impression that you're going to a specific destination and they'd
have to notice that there's a faster route to begin with.

Plus, if someone jumps into a dilated node, they've managed to put themselves
inside the crossfire of at least two very large fleets anyways.

Basically, the level of mind game necessary to even open the possibility of
doing this makes it impractical at best.

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Scramblejams
Single page link:
[http://www.businessweek.com/printer/articles/110598-multipla...](http://www.businessweek.com/printer/articles/110598-multiplayer-
game-eve-online-cultivates-a-most-devoted-following)

