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thumbs up ^^

If infact some of these things do come to pass. I will come back to EVE. I will keep a close eye on the forums in the months to come. He did say new ships right?

Thank you, interesting letter.

It was a cascade of mistakes after mistakes that brought down EVE to level it is now. For long time regular players (that includes myself), it wasn't hard to see the entire EVE environment trending down from its heydays. You can use numbers and stats to confirm the trend, but always, the early warning signs can be picked up from the amount of anti-CCP noise in the forums .... instead of game mechanic/gameplay noises which used to litter the forums. The frequency of chatter in the NPC corp channels and Newbie forum section is another indirect indicator. Your community managers play an important role into bringing these indirect signs to your attention - which is your first line of defence. So, if that was ignored, it was at your peril.

Let me point you to this article to get my point accross - http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/04/swinefluchatter/

Now from a personal viewpoint, the current CCP image (as a company) portrays incompetence and mismanagement - with very strong tendencies to repeat its mistakes. This was different from let's say circa 2007, where the general perception was positive. Granted I was new to EVE back then. The gradual erosion in trust, once destroyed, will take 10x as long to rebuild ... if ever. Word of mouth matters. Negative publicty through internet chatter matters very much. My question : Why o why in god's name did you let the slide continue? Are ye blind?

To end, as they say, successful businesses are built from several bankruptcies. It takes a strong person to learn from their mistakes to re-build into something successful. I'd personally prefer someone who has made mistakes, but also demonstrated they have learned from them - over anyone who hasn't made a mistake. Only time will tell. The community will observing these so called changes.

in my experience its very rare for someone in leadership to look inside themselves like this and admit they made mistakes.

o7 respect for this blog.


I find it interesting, and a bit sad, that it where strong and positive emotions and spirit that brought these problems with them.

I've seen this kind of thing before: personally and on a bigger scale. Strong emotions, both positive and negative, can have dire consequences when not tempered by wisdom. I find it annoying how easily my emotions can drag me down a certain path, and no matter how much I try to guard against this, it seems to be a strong part of human nature.

One can see why the Jove tried to control their emotions through genetics....



eh, sorry for these silly philosophical waxings, but a great blog.

Lets see what the future holds.

On one hand, "Wow, they will do what some players have been asking for years"

On the other hand, they will not do anything for me, not even cut down those bloody ludicrous NEx prices. No new Solo PvE content. No Solo/Casual endgame content. Nothing. Do the same that was doable 3 years ago (well, minus Lvl5, plus the five epic arcs).

I guess that here I am in the wrong side of "you can't please everybody", but nonetheless it's my 340 euros a year, some 800 € since i began playing EVE, and fixing the troubles of nullsec bitchers it's not worth that kind of money.

Was assuming we'd never see this. Glad to be wrong. Takes a big man with a heavy heart to admit such things. Welcome back to the game. Now let's get cracking on those improvements.

Onward and upward from here, until the stars grow cold.

And oh look, my subscription runs out tomorrow.

And SUDDENLY... 3 months added.

Very straight and to the point. Sounded very sincere too. Having read this instead of looking at a face and listening to a voice, this is about as good an apology as any I've ever read.

As I've told my children many times, saying sorry only actually means anything if you are truly sorry the error occurred and will do your best to never repeat it. Being good for a little while then going back to the way you were before is just a sneaky bit of lying.

Everyone makes mistakes in their life, whether it is personal or professional. How we make up for our mistakes, how we try to make things better, shows our character better than anything. I think you realize that you will be under a microscope for quite some time.

With luck, you will make the effort needed to not only enact changes that have positive results for the majority of the Eve community, but also to continue with the communication on where you are hoping to go and why. As long as you keep an open mind to other possibilities than your originally planned course, you should be just fine.

Eve is a sandbox. To some extent, your developing, planning and improving Eve should also have a sandbox format. Be ready to change your plans based on what users would like and things will go well.

Good luck. I too will be watching and hoping.

i haven't got through the entire thing yet but i have to give Hellmar props for admitting he was wrong - that is a hard thin to do so publicly and clearly. especially after such a bitter fight broke out between CCP and the fans.

All companies fail every now and then on service and strategy, the way how one goes about resolving it is how people will ultimately trust or crucify you.

Great first steps - onwards and upwards!

Yes, necessary words and a decent step in the right direction.

That post recognizes, IMO, that something even more important than game mechanics got broken this Summer.

Trust was broken.

That will probably be harder to fix than 1000 bugs.