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Seleene's blog here: http://seleenes-sandbox.blogspot.com/2011/09/lack-of-communication.html

has an update this. The CSM had a conference call with CCP yesterday and in the comments Seleene indicates that CCP should have a new, more concrete devblog by the weekend.

Well - who expected that CCP actually did change anything? Sure, we all hoped, but to annonunce stuff, call the player-base "rabble" and then keep silent for 8 days? 24 hours was too long, 192 hours is way-way too long...

CCP; Winter is comming... What's it gonna' be? You gonna' stick to it and pull through, or just throw down? Let me know what to expect from you please; failed attempts to hype, followed by contempt and silence does NOT win the hearts of your player-base, and I would really like to know if I should start to look around for a new hobby...

CCP; Winter is comming...

Who's still watching?

Hmm. I assumed that meant "Bits and pieces throughout the following weeks" and not "Bits and pieces in a few weeks"
But maybe I misunderstood. Or maybe this thing is so big that things are still happening too fast for anything concrete to be devblogged about.

If that's the case, I'd understand why you would be hesitant to post another "Hold on, we're working on it but can't give any details yet." after the fallout this devblog has received.
We want you to succeed, CCP. We really do. I know it seems like we bash you a lot, but thats because we care about this game a lot and hate it when you frack things up.

As for this-

Not going reiterate what others have said about the 'rabble' business, but...
Does this mean new space ships, or fixing existing ones?
Because, if it wasn't fairly obvious, we're not looking for new. Nothing's wrong with new.... except when it takes priority over.. well... everything else in the game to the point of the core game ending up where it is now. I rather thought that the idea of new content in a winter expansion, and improving existing content in the summer, was a great idea.

CCP sort of screwed themselves from the start when they began to promise two free expansions a year. It's awesome that they tried, but I believe that's part of the reason EVE is in the state it is now. So, CCP, we applaud your efforts, however, you've overreached your resources.

One expansions a year is fine, really! Just as long as it's actually finished. You guys have all these great ideas, and then screw them up by releasing them in an unfinished state, and worse, abandoning them for some other new project just to do the same thing.

Finished, quality content, delivered as promised. Quality over quantity. Quit promising us hot fudge sundae's and then only giving a scoop of vanilla ice cream. We want the toppings; hot fudge, peanuts, and whipped cream with a cherry on top. Even if that means it takes longer to make ;)

Anyway... CCP, this is your one chance to really show us players you guys are competent after all. You've set yourselves up in an all or nothing situation here; deliver and redeem your company in the eyes of your customers, or fail and prove once and for all that you're beyond salvation.
Personally... when that winter expansion comes out, I would love to be able to smile smugly and say "CCP delivers."
Just don't an hero on us.

10 days. Seems increasingly more likely that Zulu was trolling. Quite a good one too, wasting ten days and counting.

This dev blog is making me want to cancel my last account.

Which moment would that be?

It's been 2 weeks, CCP Zulu.

If we have to "watch this space" much longer, there'll be nothing to watch but space.


It might be that you don't have as much time as you think you have; just to hammer the point home: the unsub rate is non-linear. The players are the major source of game content. Every person that unsubs (or just stops logging in) makes it x% more likely that all his n subbed friends will do the same, and y% more likely that his m unsubbed friends won't come back.

For someone like a :foreveralone: empire missionrunner, that xn.ym value is pretty tiny. For someone like the main FC of a large alliance, or Chribba, or Estel Arador, that xn.ym value will be hundreds or even thousands of times higher. In a situation like that you don't have to be a mathematical genius to realise that this means there's an unstable, unpredictable tipping point after which EVE will failcascade no matter what CCP do.

I don't pretend to know where the tipping point is exactly, but given that so many of the most visible players in EVE, the content creators, the motivators, the ones who have the largest values of xn.ym are either unsubbed, in skill maintenance mode, so just spinning their wheels in game... yeah.

Deliver. Quickly.

This is what we want to see. Now if you follow through all will be well.

The biggest issue with EVE today is it's lost the one thing that truly separates it from other MMOs; a compelling player-driven story. EVE is more than a game; it's an interactive space opera. A few years ago the game was full of epic-scale conflicts, fraught with stories about espionage, betrayal, massive wars, alliances crumbling, constant power-shifts. No other game offers this experience; EVE is so grand in scope on the social level that's it's actually breathtaking. No other game has such high-level player interaction. No other game can generate such a huge amount of player-driven news, tales of bravery, intuition, foolishness and luck.

And then suddenly, it all stopped. The ridiculous imbalance of super capitals turned nullsec into a cold war, and made an alliance's power based on who had more, rather than who could come up with sound strategies, well FC'd fleets. The most notable example of this is the DRF moving into the north. They're famed for their incompetence in subcap fleets, but the DRF had more supers and the NC was powerless to resist them. Losing a fight because you were out-manoeuvred, out-played or out-strategized is fun. Losing a fight because of a broken game mechanic or imbalance is not.

The same is echoed everywhere else. PvP is becoming stagnant in lowsec because there's just no-one around. FW used to be fun but there's less and less active pilots everyday. FiS has had so little love recently that it's become stagnant and even PvP has lost its touch. Fighting always used to get my heart racing; that edge-of-the-seat feeling when you know you could easily die but you still had a chance of winning - going into a fight completely unsure of the outcome used to be such a rush. But now I'm becoming desensitized to it and it just doesn't produce the same feelings.

EVE is the only game that's ever had the ability to bring me to the extremes of emotions - the joy of first entering nullsec, getting my first Raven, my first PvP fleet back in the glory days of IAC, my first solokill in lowsec. The frustration of losing my first battleship, losing my first pirate implant close, every time I lose a fight that I was so close to winning... no other game can create such compelling experiences. But lately EVE has just stopped being as fun as it used to be. These experiences are few and far between, and it's slowly making me want to stop playing. I don't log in nearly as much as I used to because the tedium is completely unbearable.

EVE is a game that has always had unrealised potential, but it only really set in with Incarna. The expansion offered nothing in terms of gameplay, and it doesn't add nearly enough value to the game for the resources that have gone into it. If that time had been spent on spaceships then the game could be so much more and it's frustrating to think about.

Basically CCP, this is a sincere request from a long-term fan for you to not **** this up. For lack of a better word I love this explosion simulator/spreadsheet/epic space opera and I want to play it. I want the old tales that players would spend hours telling. I want to be enthralled, frustrated, angered, excited, scared, all the emotions EVE used to be able to produce, because the apathy that's replaced it just isn't fun.

- KFenn

P.S. Sorry for wall of text, kinda got a little caught up.