EVE Fiction

Not sure if the topic is descriptive enough, but here goes - I've been wondering what is CCP's / storyteams overall stance on players doing things such as inventing languages, words or background fluff for things that don't have much of it?

Like, for example, my corporation is going to research New Eden's history. I'd like to start with archaeological excavations on Pator III for there is the little lore nugget that it used to be inhabited by unknown settlers that had vanished by the time Minmatar colonized it. So how would I go about it, as to not **** off the guys who write the lore? Not to reveal everything I have in mind, suffice to say, there would be a rather drastic revelation at the end of this endeavour - but it would potentially step on pretty big toes, while I personally do see some pretty big hints on the established lore on about what I'm thinking. Sorry for being so vague, but all might(?) be revealed in due time.

Of course I could leave these findings purely at the theoretical level, just to play safe, instead of involving actual science to it like carbon dating and other such methods , but of course this seems a little half-assed way of doing things if you go through the trouble and cost of buying equipment, manpower, permissions for the use of land etc.

Ah, last but not least, would I really need to ask permission from an actor or something for an excavation license? Or can I just go and outright say that the Republic gave my corporation a permission to dig around right next to the Minmatar home planet? I understand Pator III is at the time being, very sparsely populated, so it probably isn't as huge a deal to claim than to say that you got a permission to rummage through holy sites unimpeded.


Sorry if these sounda bit silly things to ask about, but I'd rather do things right and know where I'm overstepping my bounds. I do understand that I can't go claiming my ideas as absolute truth, but I wonder where to draw the line.

Languages.... I suppose someone from so far away from Earth would evolve new languages, or modify old ones. Especially since all contact with Earth has not just been lost, but forgotten in time. Gallentians, for example, always seem french to me. Their system names and such certainly seem to fit the bill. I can imagine a modified French would be spoken in their culture.

Or maybe scientifically, English has grown to be the universal language out of necessity, much like standard measurements (in the math and science world the Metric system is used, and thus universal). Maybe each race with it's own culture has a modified English they speak. Or.... Maybe they all sound like Chewbacca!

Player created lore.... I can see in small ways these things being created. For example the war between GOON and BOB SHOULD be in Eve Lore as it's a major, MAJOR influence on many things today, player wise. Or the most recent, $300,000 fight that was so massive I saw it on the news a little while back. That should be in Eve Lore. An event of that size happening today would be apocalyptic, would the survivors not have that to speak of in their history? These things are seriously historical events that belong in Eve lore. Those sorts of things would be legend for millenia to come. Scale and scope not just RL Monetary value, which wouldn't be in the lore itself but something on the scale in the eve universe would suffice. Not just the monetary value of the fight, but the scale of human loss (in terms of ships crews) is staggering. Not having these events placed officially into Eve Lore is like erasing from history the 2004 Tsunami. It'd just not happen, that was too large for people not to talk about, especially those that lived it.

I think player driven events, especially IMPORTANT events, deserve their place in Official Eve Lore.

There are two factors you need to consider here: Where am I writing about?, and What is the scale?

In general, it's safest to keep any particularly major "developments" away from particularly lore-important systems, such as bloodline home-systems or others that commonly show up in past prime fiction arcs. Smaller developments - for instance, simply announcing that you intend to finance an archaeological expedition to Pator III - are rather safer, as are small developments such as finding the buried remnant of a pre-industrial settlement that doesn't really reveal anything massive.

The thing is, you're talking about "drastic revelations" and "potentially stepping on pretty big toes" - planning these sorts of things from the beginning sets off alarm bells in my head, unless you are able to be in constant contact with a dev actor at all times. Unfortunately, actor responses are extremely rare these days (when you get them at all - some people have been waiting for months). The last time we had anything remotely resembling what you are talking about now was during the heyday of the Arek'jaalan Project, when CCP Dropbear (as Hillen Tukoss) communicated with players several times a week and reviewed their scientific proposals, sometimes nixing them when they didn't fit with the lore.

Without that level of interactivity, something on the scale of plot development that you are talking about is probably going to run into the disbelief wall. You are still welcome to run archaeological expeditions, with potentially far smaller results ("We found some random shards of pottery, yay!") which may still garner some interest.