Dev Diaries

Tomorrow marks a huge milestone in MMO history as sci-fi sandbox EVE Online officially turns ten years old. Released by a tiny icelandic development studio whose only previous release was a board game featuring Reykjavik's favourite cross-dressing mayor, EVE has slowly grown over the past decade to become one of the industry's biggest and most stable subscription titles. Following 2011's monoclegate scandal that led to around 8% of players quitting and CCP Games shedding 20% of its employees, this year saw EVE Online climb to new heights as it regained the playerbase's confidence and smashed the 500,000 subscriber barrier. As a special side-note, the EVE Evolved column also turned five years old last week; it has now officially been running for over half of EVE's lifetime.

The past year has been remarkably successful for CCP, with both of the year's EVE expansions being extremely well received and console MMOFPS DUST 514 finally starting to take shape. The Inferno and Retribution expansions fixed a staggering number of small issues that were broken in the game while also making big changes to bounty-hunting, piracy, and PvP across the board. We also saw huge emergent events like the Battle of Asakai, a $6,000 ship kill, and the five trillion ISK faction warfare exploit this year. With DUST 514 officially launching in just over a week on May 14th and players fired up about the upcoming Odyssey expansion, the future's looking bright for EVE Online as it heads into its second decade.

In this week's EVE Evolved, I look back at some of year's top EVE stories, stories that touched real life, and what the future holds for EVE's second decade.

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Details of this year's $1,600,000 US Dota 2 world championship have been released ahead of next month's qualifiers for the remaining three competitor spots. Heroes of Newerth began gearing up for its own tournament at DreamHack Summer 2013 with details of a qualifier tournament to determine which teams will face off at the event. Team Stay Green may be in with a chance if it enters, as the group just took home $32,000 US following a decisive win in the HoNTour grand finals.

A new Diablo III exploit that allowed Witch Doctors to farm XP by repeatedly killing their pets was discovered this week and promptly hotfixed. Riot Games released spotlight videos for newly revamped League of Legends champions Trundle and Sejuani, and CLG pro gamer Peter "Doublelift" Peng discussed his challenging road to success and heartbreaking family issues in a fantastic short documentary for Machinima.

Turbine released details of two new Infinite Crisis champions this week with video spotlights on hulking brute Doomsday and the gadget-wielding Gaslight Batman. Russian success Prime World let press into the English language beta for a first look at its castle-building and MOBA style gameplay. Rise of Immortals geared up for the official launch of its Battle For Graxia game overhaul with the addition of a new reputation system. And Star Citizen developer Chris Roberts revealed that he's been holding off on accepting investor deals because of the success of the game's crowdfunding campaigns.

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With the new Legacy of Romulus expansion due to go live on May 21st, players might be wondering what goodies are in store once it arrives in their sector. In a new dev blog -- number 11 -- Senior Producer Steve "Salamilnferno"Ricossa, Jr. shows off a fat list of goodies that covers new and free players and all the way to those grand life-timers. Every player gains access to that sweet (and maybe sickly looking) Alien-Gen Hybrid Romulan Species, but the list goes on to show just how smart it might have been to subscribe to the game for life.

How about a free Exclusive Romulan Veteran Starship for those 1,000-day veterans? It's on there. The list gives out shinies to almost everybody, so be sure to go look and see what's in store for yourself. Be sure to keep an eye on more detailed coverage of the upcoming expansion and everything else Star Trek Online by reading the Captain's Log!

We usually don't expect to see much from the final day of the EVE Fanfest, but for this year's tenth anniversary celebration, CCP isn't doing anything by half measures. The first two days of the event had a strong focus on DUST 514 and EVE Online, delving into the specific details of DUST's upcoming Uprising update and EVE's Odyssey expansion. I went into the convention centre today expecting a nice slow wind down with the usual CCP Presents keynote looking at the state of the company, but I left with several huge reveals that seemed to come out of nowhere.

Not only did we find out that EVE Online is finally getting a collector's edition box full of goodies, but CCP revealed that a new EVE comic book and lore compendium are both on the way. As if that weren't enough, there's also an EVE TV series in the works based on player-submitted stories of true events inside the EVE universe. I couldn't help escaping the feeling, though, that this year's CCP Presents talk was more than a little marketing-oriented. As one of the press put it to me after the talk, it felt at times like watching an infomercial. On the plus side, we did get to see more of CCP's future vision for the EVE universe and an amazing new trailer showing the game's core storyline.

Read on to check out the incredible EVE Universe Origins trailer and my summary of the final day of Fanfest 2013.

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If you find yourself asking, "Hmm, when will I see more customization options for my character, new vehicles, and possibly a convenient one-stop-shop to adjust my character's look?" while playing Star Wars: The Old Republic, then your answer lies in the latest Insider video. In it, BioWare producer Cory Butler details some of the new features inbound for the space MMORPG.

What does the Cartel Market have on offer this month? There's a new Eradicator's Warsuit, a killer-looking outfit that was inspired by the original Deceived trailer. The trooper's armor set will be introduced later in the month, and then look out for the Vice Commandant's Contraband pack, which includes all new pets, vehicles, and gear. After April, the game will introduce the appearance designer kiosk, an all-in-one barber shop that allows players to change their appearance and even race! And oh yeah, players can also re-color armor sets. It's time for a new summer look, Jedi! (The Sith can't stand the sun.)

Click onward to check out the video for yourself.

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The CCP Presents Keynote at the annual EVE Online Fanfest is usually a fairly tame retrospective on how CCP has a company has done the past year and where it's going in the future, but for EVE's tenth anniversary, CCP broke out the big guns. In addition to announcing a massive new collector's edition, the studio has also revealed plans to turn real stories of events inside the sandbox into professional comic books and even a TV series.

Industry giant Dark Horse Comics, the company responsible for comics like Hellboy and Sin City, will be publishing the 54-page graphic novel this winter in both a paid-for print form and a free digital download. For the lore buffs among us, Dark Horse will also be producing a colossal 184-page glossy colour hardback book covering all of the NPC backstory and lore behind EVE Online and DUST 514. Titled EVE Source, the book will be an in-character almanac of everything in the EVE setting that isn't player-created and will even include previously unreleased concept art.

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Moments ago at EVE Online's tenth anniversary Fanfest, CCP revealed plans for its Second Decade Collector's Edition box. EVE never really had a proper collector's edition, and the tenth anniversary of the game is the perfect opportunity to release one. The box will come with an awesome physical Rifter model that doubles as a USB hub, a CD of the tenth anniversary EVE symphony from this year's Fanfest, and a series of codes to redeem to cosmetic items in EVE Online and DUST 514. The box is due for release in October 2013 and on the EVE store and Amazon and can be pre-purhased right now for $149.99 (€149.99 for those in Europe).

Cosmetic upgrades for EVE include a new golden pod skin that applies permanently to one character, some new bloodline-based in-game clothing, and several collector's edition ships. Players will get a five-run blueprint copy of the tenth anniversary Gnosis battlecruiser and a re-skinned red Tash-Murkon Magnate, and pre-purchasers will get a bonus Nefnatar Thrasher. DUST 514 items include a set of permanant Amarr templar drop suits and weapons with the same stats as normal items but lower skill requirements.

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EVE Online's tenth anniversary Fanfest promised to be its biggest yet, with over 1,400 players packed into Iceland's Harpa convention centre to find out the latest on EVE Online, DUST 514, and World of Darkness. The first day focused mainly on DUST and its link with the EVE universe, but today the focus largely switched back to internet spaceships. There were plenty of roundtable discussions, and the CSM and Alliance panels were as awesome as ever, but it was the EVE Keynote that really blew the crowd away.

The day got off to a good start with the highly anticipated World of Darkness talk. Most fans were probably expecting to see more airy game design ideas and another shiny trailer, but this year CCP just came out and put all its cards on the table. We saw that the game is still firmly in pre-production, with much of the previous work going into developing the engine and cool content creation tools and shaders. While I was initially disappointed at the lack of gameplay progress or shiny cinematics, I found this approach of being open and direct with fans very refreshing. As I told WoD art director Thomas Holt, honest beats shiny every time.

Read on for a full run-down of the EVE reveals from the second day of EVE's tenth anniversary Fanfest, including in-depth details of the Odyssey expansion's features.

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When the World of Darkness MMO was first announced in November 2006, it was just an idea and we knew that it wouldn't be released any time soon. The chance to play a sandbox game set in the Vampire: The Masquerade universe nevertheless made fans of the series go nuts, but now over six years later we haven't seen much progress on the game. At EVE Fanfest 2013 today, CCP laid the current state of development bare for all to see and showed some plans for the coming year. There are now 70 people on the WoD team, and they've spent the past week working on everything from art tools and server infrastructure to vampire powers and social options.

"You're a powerful, immortal lord of the night. You don't want to stitch a shirt."

Development plans for 2013 include working on out-of-game web-based social tools, clothing systems, and PvE game environments. There are also plans to work on item creation, but direct crafting is probably not on the cards. As the presenter put it, "You're a powerful, immortal lord of the night. You don't want to stitch a shirt." Though the game is still in the pre-production stage, CCP was keen to show off the tools it's made to speed up the development process. "Some of these videos are a bit dry and technical," joked the presenter, but it came across as more real and honest than another trailer or musings on theoretical gameplay.

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The second day of EVE Fanfest 2013 is now underway, and the schedule is packed! Today kicks off with a highly anticipated talk on World of Darkness at 7:00 a.m. EDT, and continues with the CSM Panel at 8:00 a.m. EDT, Alliance Panel at 9:00 a.m. EDT and Art Panel at 10:00 a.m. EDT. The CSM and Alliance panels are usually filled with hilarious banter, but this year the CSM Panel happens at the same time as the Faction Warfare roundtable and a talk on DUST 514 planet conquering in lowsec. The big event today is of course the EVE Online Keynote at 1:00 p.m. EDT, where we'll find out details of the upcoming Odyssey expansion.

World of Darkness is still pretty early in development, so the presentation will be talking mostly about the tools being used to build it. We're unlikely to get a release schedule or any solid gameplay demos, but with developers raving about their internal play-tests I expect to see some serious progress compared to last year. Since the CSM panel is likely being streamed, I'll try to hit up the Faction Warfare roundtable and see what CCP's current thoughts are on how to improve this aging game system.

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