As much as I love EVE and its community's dedication, I have to say that I think the scrapping of World of Darkness was partially their fault. Incarna (walking in stations) would have allowed for a live testing ground for CCP's new tech. That beautiful character creator we got? Wouldn't have happened without their investment in World of Darkness, and that was but a fraction of what their tech was capable of.
EVE was to be a testing ground for new tech, in a medium that largely wouldn't have affected the meta game much, if at all. Walking in stations would have been a harmless place to test this tech in a live setting. A place to test it without worrying that bugs would destroy EVE's core experience because it simply wasn't affecting EVE's core experience but merely adding to the total package.
The EVE community's rebellion was partially CCP's fault for that whole 'greed is good' newsletter which was never meant to see the light of day, but the EVE community is equally responsible for the scrapping of WoD. I fear that their rebellion forced CCP to reallocate resources when they scrapped Walking in Stations, and likely ruined their entire 5 year development plan for World of Darkness/EVE.
EVE players basically got butthurt about something that wouldn't have affected the core game at all, due to speculation about it turning into a cash-shp fashion show instead of being about spaceships. In reality, it would have rounded the entire experience out and made it a much more complete game, and the resources being utilized in Walking in Stations would have benefited their development of World of Darkness directly.
It was a phenomenal amount of foresight into the development process, ruined by a blunder where-in "Greed is good" was taken out of context and caused their core source of income to flounder.
A lot of what you said is true. The community did over react but it was a symptom of a wider problem with EVE and the way it iterated its content. Expansions were released and never fully finished, bugs were never getting fixed ships weren't being balanced properly POS were a nightmare to run. the UI was just horrible and so on and so forth. The game at the time needed fixing more than it needed new features and the captains quarters were and still is a joke. It serves absolutely no purpose whatsoever. CCP needed to refocus on the core game and to their credit they released some good patches that improved the quality of life, everything from basic bug fixes to UI improvements made the game much better.
Although I no longer play, I can say that EVE was a better game when I left it than when I first started playing at around 2007 and that's the only time I have ever said that about an MMO.
A lot of what you said is true. The community did over react but it was a symptom of a wider problem with EVE and the way it iterated its content. Expansions were released and never fully finished, bugs were never getting fixed ships weren't being balanced properly POS were a nightmare to run. the UI was just horrible and so on and so forth. The game at the time needed fixing more than it needed new features and the captains quarters were and still is a joke. It serves absolutely no purpose whatsoever. CCP needed to refocus on the core game and to their credit they released some good patches that improved the quality of life, everything from basic bug fixes to UI improvements made the game much better.
Although I no longer play, I can say that EVE was a better game when I left it than when I first started playing at around 2007 and that's the only time I have ever said that about an MMO.
I guess to each their own.
I haven't really played EVE all that much since about 2009. The game was at its best in 2007, right around when they released the Tier 3 Battlecruisers. Ever since then it's become a hot drop capital shipfest that totally and completely bores me.
They've whittled away at the ability of small gangs to have fun year after year. The dampener nerf, then the speed nerf, then they gave empires the ability to bypass travel with jump bridges, then the falcon nerf, then titan bridging. If you aren't a gadzillionaire with a hangar full of Motherships and Titans, then forget null sec PVP cause as soon as you think you've got a fair fight, it's really just bait with a cyno generator.
It's as if all CCP wants are 1000 vs 1000 capital ship battles and nothing else matters.
I love the idea of EVE, but I despise the current meta and rarely log in to do anything but change skills, build a few ships and sell the ones that I'm done building.
CCP also really shot themselves in the foot with their side projects so far. With DUST they killed the game deader than shit by limiting it to the PS3. I won't touch a console shooter, and none of my IRL buddies will either. Not only that, but it's a really below average FPS. It's plagued with bugs, one of them being a hit detection bug that took MONTHS to work out. I mean ffs, the one thing that has to be 100% working in an FPS is hit detection.
Before DUST they started developing WoD, but after seeing some of the Alpha rendering one of my first thoughts was "That looks awesome, but who owns a computer that can render those graphics? Maybe in ten years". Essentially, they bit off way more than they could chew with WoD by trying to make it ultra realistic. They dumped so much money in developing the game engine, that five years later they still didn't have a game.
WiS was the biggest waste of EVE money I've ever seen. We now all have characters that look super realistic... and are only ever seen in thumbnail portraits. Way to spend that cash CCP.
1) The assumption that this was CCP writing off capitalized R&D costs from WoD, is unsupported by the financial statement. If they had in fact killed the project by December 31st, 2013 this would need to be disclosed within the statements for investors and financial institutions who have given them loans. Omitting disclosure of the write off of a large investment project, would create the potential for criminal penalties not only for CCP, but also for the audit firm that signed off on the statements.
2) So the assumption is that project was written off last year, but they continued to pay 50+ employees (and related office/realty/administrative costs) for 4 months?
Ifrs does allow for the expense of development costs as they occur, vs the GAAP standard of capitalizing expenses.
CCP needs to make Eve Online PvP fun to play for a majority of the people - not just a niche market. This is the only way for them to become a highly profitable company, instead of staying as a niche market MMO.
Staying niche market is what has made them the SECOND MOST SUCCESSFUL MMO ON THE MARKET. I think they're doing just fine.
What information are you basing that on out of curiosity?
The fact that Eve has grown in subs every single year its been out, and about a year ago it was sitting at 550k subscribers, which, according to all the MMOs we have actual data for, puts it behind WoW and no one else.
The majority of MMOs on the market no longer rely on just subscriptions to make money. Most are now f2p with subscription option with except for maybe now ESO (however long that lasts) and of course WoW.
That's because they weren't good enough for anyone to want to keep paying for them.
Maybe or maybe not, but that is both opinion and another topic completely.
If a game is great, people will pay for it, even subscribe for it.
Comments
A lot of what you said is true. The community did over react but it was a symptom of a wider problem with EVE and the way it iterated its content. Expansions were released and never fully finished, bugs were never getting fixed ships weren't being balanced properly POS were a nightmare to run. the UI was just horrible and so on and so forth. The game at the time needed fixing more than it needed new features and the captains quarters were and still is a joke. It serves absolutely no purpose whatsoever. CCP needed to refocus on the core game and to their credit they released some good patches that improved the quality of life, everything from basic bug fixes to UI improvements made the game much better.
Although I no longer play, I can say that EVE was a better game when I left it than when I first started playing at around 2007 and that's the only time I have ever said that about an MMO.
I guess to each their own.
I haven't really played EVE all that much since about 2009. The game was at its best in 2007, right around when they released the Tier 3 Battlecruisers. Ever since then it's become a hot drop capital shipfest that totally and completely bores me.
They've whittled away at the ability of small gangs to have fun year after year. The dampener nerf, then the speed nerf, then they gave empires the ability to bypass travel with jump bridges, then the falcon nerf, then titan bridging. If you aren't a gadzillionaire with a hangar full of Motherships and Titans, then forget null sec PVP cause as soon as you think you've got a fair fight, it's really just bait with a cyno generator.
It's as if all CCP wants are 1000 vs 1000 capital ship battles and nothing else matters.
I love the idea of EVE, but I despise the current meta and rarely log in to do anything but change skills, build a few ships and sell the ones that I'm done building.
CCP also really shot themselves in the foot with their side projects so far. With DUST they killed the game deader than shit by limiting it to the PS3. I won't touch a console shooter, and none of my IRL buddies will either. Not only that, but it's a really below average FPS. It's plagued with bugs, one of them being a hit detection bug that took MONTHS to work out. I mean ffs, the one thing that has to be 100% working in an FPS is hit detection.
Before DUST they started developing WoD, but after seeing some of the Alpha rendering one of my first thoughts was "That looks awesome, but who owns a computer that can render those graphics? Maybe in ten years". Essentially, they bit off way more than they could chew with WoD by trying to make it ultra realistic. They dumped so much money in developing the game engine, that five years later they still didn't have a game.
WiS was the biggest waste of EVE money I've ever seen. We now all have characters that look super realistic... and are only ever seen in thumbnail portraits. Way to spend that cash CCP.
The article is a bit misleading.
1) The assumption that this was CCP writing off capitalized R&D costs from WoD, is unsupported by the financial statement. If they had in fact killed the project by December 31st, 2013 this would need to be disclosed within the statements for investors and financial institutions who have given them loans. Omitting disclosure of the write off of a large investment project, would create the potential for criminal penalties not only for CCP, but also for the audit firm that signed off on the statements.
2) So the assumption is that project was written off last year, but they continued to pay 50+ employees (and related office/realty/administrative costs) for 4 months?
Ifrs does allow for the expense of development costs as they occur, vs the GAAP standard of capitalizing expenses.
seriously these are already old news, that's why a lot of people were waiting to hear the "death" of World of Darkness development ...
in my country we call such news as "after jesus death prophets ..."
If a game is great, people will pay for it, even subscribe for it.