New EVE Expansion Nears, Possible Mobile Plans

As the EVE Online creators ramp things up for the free Apocrypha expansion due out next week, lead designer Noah Ward sat down with MTV's Multiplayer blog to discuss the future of the game and what characteristics continue to keep players interested. Ward says they've considered branching out to consoles, but ended up deciding that the game doesn't really lend itself to console play. He left the door open to using smartphones for "augmenting" gameplay. Ward also mentioned that upcoming space MMOs Jumpgate: Evolution and Star Trek Online are so different from EVE that they're not really worried about direct competition; EVE thrives in part because of the player-generated drama and scandals, which few games pull off as well. Massively has gathered a variety of details about the Apocrypha expansion, which includes the game's first epic mission arc, and they've also posted some screenshots. CCP Games launched a website for the expansion containing concept art and interviews with some of the developers.

Comments

Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

No native Linux client? No thanks.

I don't care if it runs on wine or not.

Re:Linux

[Rakshasa Taisab]

They already made a native version for linux.

Re:Linux

[binarylarry]

Didn't they just abandon the real linux client?

Re:Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

The client they abandoned was a custom rolled wine based client. Not native.

Re:Linux

[dotancohen]

Yes, they decided that there will be no more Eve Online for Linux and despite that they are expanding their market. I suppose that the the Linux devs are being moved to other platforms. What does that say about Linux marketshare? If we _really_ want to see games on Linux we need to start buying them, not buying the Windows version and running it in Wine (even if it runs better). If we don't encourage the software houses to write the games (encourage==buy) then they won't write them.

Re:Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this available? I'd play using it! Although the new probe system might not be very compatible the rest of EVE lends itself well to a text based interface such as this.

Re:Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

If the wine version runs better than the linux version (which it does in this case...) why would you run an obviously inferior version?

Re:Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't run on Linux?

Quick, someone call the WAAAAAAAMBULANCE!!

Re:Linux

[andersa]

No. It's a humorous fake.

Re:Linux

[andersa]

There never was a real linux client and CCP had no dedicated linux developers as far as I know. It was always the Windows client wrapped in Cedega maintained by TransGaming. I believe most linux users were aware that plain Wine with the regular Windows client performed better in most cases, thus the official linux package was hardly used. Why maintain something that noone uses, right?

They still have a Mac version, but that is also the Windows client, wrapped in Cider.

Re:Linux

[Rattenhirn]

The Eve Online client is free. You have to pay to play, regardless of client used.

Re:Linux

[dotancohen]

I see.

I suggest then, that those who run _any_ application in wine, Eve Online or otherwise, contact the devs and ask for a Linux version. Else, you are just pinning yourself to Wine and the moving target that it is.

Alternatively, use an OS that runs the apps you need. If that is not a solution, then write to the devs!

Re:Linux

[T0wner]

There was no 'linux team', it was outsourced to Transgaming and just branded as official. But the reality was Transgaming did a crap job of it.

When the last expansion was released it introduced a brand new graphics engine. The Transgaming client (Cedega) didn't support it and neither did Wine at first. However within a few weeks Wine got it running whereas Transgaming dragged their heels.

For anyone who hasn't followed the Transgaming story, they forked Wine a long time ago and then went closed source. They developed quite a lot of good directx (shader 1.x/2.x/3.x) code but they have never submitted it back to the Wine project. Wine basically restrict them from using any of their code since Transgaming decided to screw them. The end result is Transgaming's Cedega code base is horrifically out of date in places compared to the Wine code base.

In my opinion they should try and fix those bridges and merge the code. Transgaming still has a decent corporate structure to approach companies like CCP, as well as their successful MacOS range. The Wine developers aren't interested in that, only further improving Wine. Transgaming simply haven't got the balance right.

Re:Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know if this is the right direction to demand software to take, to be custom written for each OS. What if I use BSD, or Plan 9, or Haiku? That's like demanding webpages to be written for the browser you want to use to view them.

Surely we as a larger community could push for APIs/ABIs that make cross-platform game development more of a matter of adhering to openly published standards? And in that vein, why is Wine/PE a particularly bad API/ABI to target? Linux itself is quite a bit of a vague and moving target (what libraries do you depend on? does the user have the 32-bit version of those libraries installed? what if they used a version that was subtly incompatible and you get random segfaults?)

Re:Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why the linux version was made in the first place.. but it was just a cedega wrapper and everyone continued to use wine. Eventually CCP dropped the "official linux client" since wine was better anyways.

Re:Linux

[dotancohen]

Web browsers are _supposed_ to support HTML, which is not platform or software dependent.

Linux is POSIX-compliant, which does not cover the type of usage that a game would need. The best that you could hope for is to standardize win32, and help Wine develop an implementation of win32 on Linux.

Re:Linux

[PrescriptionWarning]

They didn't even bother to try to make the linux client as fast or faster than the Wine implementation, not to mention they only release the Low-Res textures version as the only option for native linux, which definitely pales to their upgraded textures version. I think they only shot themselves in the foot by not taking the linux client seriously.

However, perhaps if they will start fully supporting the Wine implementation as much as possible, perhaps there's still hope for them and other apps to improve theirs also.

Re:Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

that's ok. we don't want you linux losers playing our game anyway.
 
attention wine runners: please leave the game to real windows users. you linux people have no place in eve.

Re:Linux

[xianthax]

i don't think it says anything about market share, the vast majority of eve linux players have played in wine for years, which they don't track, CCP's numbers only indicated the number of people using the offical client, which i would venture to say is a very small % of the total number of linux users running eve. if you had ever used the official linux client from CCP you'd know that its a bug ridden POS that only ran in classic graphics mode when it worked. also remember that its not a native client, its the windows client in a cedega wrapper. eve has worked well/perfectly under wine for years now including full premium graphics. From CCP's perspective, why spend money to provide something the community has already provided for itself, that is the linux way after all right? a community that provides for itself? as someone who gives CCP $ each month i'm glad they dropped the client, they should be spending $ on more useful things than repeating work that has already been completed at a higher level of quality.

Re:Linux

[prisoner-of-enigma]

Alternatively, use an OS that runs the apps you need. If that is not a solution, then write to the devs!

Writing devs doesn't do a darned bit of good. You need to demonstrate that there are enough paying customers on a given platform to defray the costs of developing for and supporting that platform. They tried Linux, and they couldn't make money doing it. The WINE solution is perfectly usable and was superior to the Linux client in performance anyway.

Folks need to understand that supporting a platform is a decision based on economics, not religion, geek street cred, or write-in campaigns. Put your dollars (or euros, or whatever) on the line and you'll get the support you want. If not, don't blame the devs.

Re:Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize win32 is HUGE... You would get a better bang for the buck just doing directx. If you do win32 you MIGHT as well just use wine. Even directx is huge and has a crazy set of archena standards...

Re:Linux

[dotancohen]

If you do win32 you MIGHT as well just use wine.

That was exactly my point! Asking for a 'standard' is akin to asking for devs to code to MS 'standards' and then have Linux devs reverse engineer them.

Re:Linux

[dotancohen]

I've got the money sitting there that I want to give to Solidworks, the minute that there is a Linux version available. I'll buy Photoshop, too, just to help support them even though I've become comfortable with Gimp. I've written to both companies to let them know that.

Re:Linux

[Quarters]

So I should spend my money on an inferior product even though I know of a product that performs better and gives me the same entertainment? No, just no. That's now how it works. If the people who create Linux want Linux to be more widely adopted they should determine why a product or class of products runs poorly on their code and work to fix those inadequacies. I shouldn't be expected to pay to suffer.

Re:Another news about ..

[binarylarry]

How exactly is this a troll? If anything, it should be modded insightful.

EVE Mobile?

[tnok85]

A mobile version?

EVE Online from my Blackberry at work?

I'll be in heaven, and I won't get much work done.

Re:EVE Mobile?

[drsquare]

Ward says they've considered branching out to consoles, but ended up deciding that the game doesn't really lend itself to console play.

Yeah console gamers generally like to play games more involved than watching your spaceship mine an asteroid for six hours.

The advantage of EVE Online is that it doesn't really have any graphics so you could play it on anything, even a normal phone. Just select your spaceship to mine an asteroid or travel across the galaxy, put the phone back in your pocket and come back the next day.

Re:EVE Mobile?

[BRSloth]

IF you decide to mine. I'm doing the missions this time (second character) and it's far away from boring (weeee! Firing three ships at the same time!)

Re:EVE Mobile?

[Carfiend]

I suspect it would be something like outofeve where you can view your orders, research jobs, build jobs, pos status and assets from a phone and maybe allow you to adjust orders and what not rather than a full blown client.

Re:EVE Mobile?

[Anonymous Coward]

You've obviously never played more than an hours worth of eve. Shame on you.

Re:EVE Mobile?

[Anonymous Coward]

advantage of EVE Online is that it doesn't really have any graphics so you could play it on anything, even a normal phone. Just select your spaceship to mine an asteroid or travel across the galaxy, put the phone back in your pocket and come back the next day.

I know you are trying to be sarcastic. It's true that mining in secure systems is just about as exciting as watching paint dry, but these days it's a very minor part of EVE.

And as for the graphics of EVE - you are wrong. EVE has upgraded the graphics engine about an year ago and with Apocrypha they are phasing out the old "classic" client and adding new models and effects to all the bits that weren't upgraded last time (weapon effects, asteroids, some mission-related models). The minimum for playing EVE after next week is Shader Model 2.0 capable video card. No cell phone does that.

Personally I expect the mobile device "augmentation" be a way to use a (smart)phone to track your character training progress, assets and perhaps play the "market PvP" part of EVE, adjusting your sell and buy orders - that bit is effectively just numbers and spreadsheets.

But no way you are going to be able to actually play the whole game on anything else than a PC. Even older low end notebooks are getting hosed a bit with the expansion (well, any 4-5 year old notebook with "Intel Extreme Graphics" is at least out of the question)

Re:EVE Mobile?

[Shinobi]

Actually, while testing the Apocrypha client on SISI, my GMA950 equipped laptop is actually getting more FPS in space using Premium Lite than it ever got with the classic client.

Re:EVE Mobile?

[TheThiefMaster]

I'll have to try my eeepc with that, it got 15 fps at the highest when I tried the classic client on it.
It has a GMA 945 IIRC.

Re:EVE Mobile?

[MBGMorden]

Still a nice feature though. I really wish WoW would implement something like this. Give me access to my in-game mail, guild chat, and (assuming I logged out in a major city), the auction house, and I might actually have a reason to finally get a smartphone + data plan :).

Re:EVE Mobile?

[krenshala]

I think I get 20 fps with my Mini 9 wigh GMA 945 and 1GB of mem. Of course, I had to reduce

New Space MMOs out soon!

[gravos]

âoeJumpgate Evolutionâ and âoeStar Trek Online" should be out pretty soon... are people really still playing EVE?

Re:New Space MMOs out soon!

[Shinobi]

Because EVE is far more tactical, and offers strategic play too.

And don't bring up the nonsense about how "Jumpgate requires SKILLBASED piloting", it's just bullshit. It requires twitch-based reflexes and some skills pertaining to that, while EVE requires a more tactical skillset, that is, analysing your position, strengths and weaknesses of your group/ship, of the ships of your enemies etc.

Re:New Space MMOs out soon!

[Anonymous Coward]

jep, it is an awesome tactical game.
- No object collision on attacks. So it is impossible to use the back of a huge asteroid or station as cover.
- Missiles have no splash damage, take the big Mofo missile and only damage one target. No drones no other ships nothing.

Re:New Space MMOs out soon!

[Anonymous Coward]

Missiles and torpedoes used to deliver splash damage, but they got rid of it due to the fact it was too easy to get owned by Concord in empire space. If you were doing a mission in a missile boat and someone outside your corp decided to sit next to one of your targets you were pretty much stuffed.

Re:New Space MMOs out soon!

[castironpigeon]

Somehow these new space MMOs never materialize...

Re:New Space MMOs out soon!

[Anonymous Coward]

you can definitely use stations and astroids to your advantage.. drive your enemies into them so they get stuck or bounce and you can tackle them easily. Or you can hide behind them and prevent fast tacklers from MWDing straight at you. Also, almost every ship in the game has drones.

Re:New Space MMOs out soon!

[bigstrat2003]

Until JGE comes out, it's hardly fair to say that it won't have that tactical element.

Re:New Space MMOs out soon!

[Shinobi]

It's been available for beta testing for a while now ;)

Re:New Space MMOs out soon!

[bigstrat2003]

O.o

Since when? I track the site religiously, and haven't heard a peep about beta. Either they're playing it very close to the vest, or I'm a bad reader.

Re:New Space MMOs out soon!

[Shinobi]

Signups have been open since summer last year, and I got my beta account in december

Re:New Space MMOs out soon!

[bigstrat2003]

Damn liars, always saying beta hasn't started on their forums!

...please tell me it doesn't suck. I'm counting on this game to give me my space combat sim fix!

Re:New Space MMOs out soon!

[Shinobi]

*Shrugs* Don't really know. I know I'm not alone there either. But I also betatested the original Jumpgate so that could be the reason.

As to the game. It's... nice, though I still prefer the more tactical and strategic elements of EVE.

Re:New Space MMOs out soon!

[Smoke2Joints]

look, i used to play eve, so im no hater.. but ive always felt icky about using an oddity of the game mechanics (that you bounce off things rather than crashing) as a legitimate space combat tactic. eve players regularly run into another players ship just to bounce them away from safety, such as a stations dock or a jump gate, as if ship webbers and warp disruptors were not enough. heaven forbid you might have to chase your target!

Re:New Space MMOs out soon!

[Kharny]

My biggest beef with eve-online is the huge "empty" spaces in time at start.

After the tutorial, you basically can't do much more than mine and train skills for several weeks before you can even think of starting to do more interesting stuff. There really should be a better, longer tutorial style introduction, also, the agent system is terrible. After my second tutorial agent, i was basically completely unsure where to go for "my level" of missions, trying in the next 1.0 space system got me blown up in the first mission i took from a level 1 agent.

Re:New Space MMOs out soon!

[Shinobi]

And there we get to both the massive multiplayer part, namely, ASK, and the curiosity part, namely start looking around.

One of the big drawbacks with the game having grown, and it having been made easier and more "accessible" over the years, is that rookies actually have it harder now. Sure, it's easier to get into ships, it's easier to be a tackler in PvP etc. But you can't really luck out in your exploration. For that, you need to train lots of skills. I remember back in late 2004/early 2005, a friend of mine was a rookie, 3 months in-game. While others, far more rich people were still afraid of low-sec etc, and were fairly poor due to just doing lvl 3's(And lvl 4's were not fully mapped out yet), this guy was already cruising low-sec, ratting in 0.0 and farming complexes, making several hundreds of millions of ISK in a good week. At the time, that was a HUGE amount of ISK. The thing is, no probing was needed to find complexes, which meant rookies could luck out in their exploration. Instead, caving in to pressure, the game has been wowified, i.e made more "accessible", but also more linear, which is kinda sad.

Re:New Space MMOs out soon!

[phlegmboy]

So I guess you didn't bother asking for help in the appropirately named "Help" channel or in the corp chat channels. Eve Online players will help each other when they first start out. Also there are lots of websites, most of which are accessible through the Eve Online forums, which, incidentally, also contain lots of help if you look.

Re:Another news about ..

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed.

What's it with /. and Eve anyway? There are more Eve-related "news" here than on the rest of the net combined :D

Re:In-game footage

[Daengbo]

That was impressive! I've never seen or heard so much gay porn in my life, and the dancing windows were so much fun to watch. Do you have any more of this kind of material? I'd like to subscribe to your newsletter, too.

Re: official linux package

[Lonewolf666]

I've tried the official Linux package and it did not work that well. So I'm not surprised in the least that it got little use. If plain Wine (which I didn't try) worked better, I'm even less surprised.

Re: Transgaming

[Lonewolf666]

From the Wine homepage (http://www.winehq.org/history):

In March of 2002 a poll was conducted among both the free and commercial developers of Wine to see if there was interest in moving to a different license. Most developers did not want their code to be appropriated by a commercial entity and there were concerns that might happen. After much debate they chose the Lesser General Public License and on March 9th, 2002 the Wine source code became bound to those terms.

At this point, obviously Transgaming was no longer allowed to use new versions of Wine in a closed source product. But there is not necessarily personal hostility between the developers. I guess if Transgaming reconsider and make their product Open Source (preferably LGPL) too, Wine and Gedega could be merged again.

I wish I got it.

[Anonymous Coward]

I really wish I could understand this game. It seems really great and there are always new expansions and stuff.

Whenever I play the game, though, I find myself bored immediately. I've even asked friends of mine who enjoy it to explain it to me but I can never get in to it. Oh well.

Re:I wish I got it.

[gothzilla]

Eve is a sandbox. When you go play in a sand box you're the one that has to make it fun by using your imagination and finding something that you consider fun. You can do an almost limitless number of things in the game and there are very few rules. I usually recommend that new people join one of the training corps that exist, Eve University being one of the larger ones. That's the fastest way to get a handle on the game and find the things that are fun for you. People who do this are usually highly regarded and from there it's easy to be recruited into any of a number of large alliances.

Re:I wish I got it.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a lie though. I wanted to mine. I mined. So far so good. Then some jerk comes by and steals all of the ore I mined. I try stealing it back, but that just earns a free trip to the cloning bay. Ok, game isn't fun anymore. Eve isn't a sandbox. I even joined a corp, did some player missions... you wouldn't believe how repetitive those get. Ok, finally PvP, lets try that. You know what I found out? PvP is a *lot* of wasted time waiting around to get the advantage over the other guys who are waiting around doing the same thing to you. So, now I'm back to first person shooters... where I don't have to wait 3+ hours to get some action and if someone destroys my dispenser I have a fair chance of killing them with my shotgun.

Re:I wish I got it.

[Duffy13]

So are you often disappointed when you bite into an apple and it doesn't taste like steak?

Re:I wish I got it.

[Anonymous Coward]

The guy said it was a sandbox. It's not actually a sandbox, it's a gank fest. If he said it was a gank fest, I wouldn't have disagreed.

Re:I wish I got it.

[zzottt]

I only got ganked when I didnt know what I was doing. The game is like the old west. Dont go into the wrong town and expect to find friends if the people who live there just want to kill visitors

Re:I wish I got it.

[Duffy13]

Explain what part of Sandbox indicates to you complete and utter safety from "gankers"? There are areas of relative safety, of course you still have to know the rules of those places. If you want an honest descriptor, EVE is more of a social-economic simulation then an MMORPG. The power comes not from being able to gank someone, but from the massive amount of power that can be wielded through the market, industrial production, politics, and the ensuing wars these factors cause. Hell, it's technically possible for EVE to be one of the most peaceful games in existence, but the players don't choose to make it so.

Re:I wish I got it.

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

> You know what I found out? PvP is a *lot* of wasted time waiting around to get the
> advantage over the other guys who are waiting around doing the same thing to you.

Yes, but when you do, it's a beautiful thing. Unlike your FPS kill which 99% of the time is not. And I love FPS games, was in a very good Quake clan way back before most of you were even born.

On the flip side, when you're "popped" trying to scurry through 0.0 (no guards whatsover space) because you warped to a gate crowded with punks, and warp quickly through to get away, and the other side is camped, too, you're furious. You may even ragequit for 24 hours or more.

But you'll be back. Eve people know what I'm talking about. Longer-term plans to build up fleets, and hog out a hole of control in 0.0 space with your alliance (a guild of guilds, so to speak, or corporation of corporations, in Eve-lingo.) Shit, alliance-chat, someone says one of our stations is under attack with at least 6 capital ships, 2 carriers, 12 battleships, and a bunch of support ships. We've gotta tell the roaming fleet (the alliance-internal "pick up group" of people who wanna be a quick-react force) to get serious. Send out the link, everybody fleet up!

Unless you wanna lose 20 billion or more worth of hardware.

On the other hand, if donkey guild to build in a no man's land too close to a gate to your controlled space, sometimes you've just gotta teach those bastards a lesson.

Re:I wish I got it.

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

As someone who's sick of crap like walking into the famed cantina in Mos Eisley and hearing the music and seeing the patrons drinking, only to realize there isn't one damned real human there, I love the PvP.

It's not like PvP in other games, which is mostly 1 person getting ganked by a couple of roaming punks with way too much time on their hands.

No, this is essentially Realm vs. Realm PvP, where the realms self-assemble and carve out their own "realms".

By the way, this expansion pack introduces several thousand new star systems to be explored and conquered, if your alliance has the lobes for it.

Apparently there will be temporary wormholes ala Star Trek: Next Generation, complete with them disappearing, leaving you hours and fifty jumps away from where you were if you aren't careful. Seems like it'll be tied to some kind of max number of ships/tonnage going through before it closes. Gonna send a self-sufficient fleet through "just in case"?

Sweet!

Re:I wish I got it.

[darkwing_bmf]

Explain what part of Sandbox indicates to you complete and utter safety from "gankers"?

As a kid, I had a real sandbox. Actually it was just a large pile of sand. But I could make whatever I wanted without someone else coming along and destroying it. You obviously had a horrid childhood if you think sandbox equals gankerland.

Re:I wish I got it.

[Duffy13]

Never said it was the land of gankers. Just that anyone could come buy and kick it, nothing artificially prevents it. It comes down to civil behavior, which in turn brings about my previous point.

The new release is looking good for a lot of us

[Absimiliard]

And for some of us who are diving into wormholes with a passion it's absolutely outstanding. I know I'm currently building up a small alliance or corporations to go in and build a colony.

It's re-invigorated my game to be sure.

Re:The new release is looking good for a lot of us

[infinitevalence]

Aye, as a long time eve player I am very excited to see this expansion hit. We got some really interesting sneak peaks while at Fanfest. Wormholes will open up all sorts of new industry, exploration, piracy, and small gang combat. IMO CCP has show its genius once again by creating an interesting game mechanic that actually encourages small gangs and smaller scale combat. All while leaving plenty of space for large territorial alliances to fight each other in perpetuity.

Re:Another news about ..

[infinitevalence]

because unlike the rest of the masses most EVE players can read :) In all seriousness those of us who play love this game, we devourer every post, every news item, and every little bit of drama relating to eve we can find. Its honestly hard to explain unless your part of it, this game (lol yeah i know its a game) becomes part of your life. I have now visited about 15 of my corpmates around the world just so we could hang out and have a beer. Im not sure your going to find that kind of interpersonal relationship in any other game. Real life always comes first in out little group, but when its game time we take things seriously. Strangely enough that is how we get our lolz and fun. So yeah thats about it, awesome game, awesome people, literacy and being scifi geeks and all.

Hello out there.

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess I'm the only person on earth who used the official linux client (yes i know its cedega). It worked fine enough for me. It works in wine, but dog slow and unplayable. Whatever transgaming is doing, they sure got it right on my box (Fedora 9). I'm no bozo either. Same thing in the crossover games which I own. Slow slow slow and unplayable. i for one wish they would not discontinue the linux client.

Re: Transgaming

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI that's not what the LGPL means, that's what the GPL means, and only insofar as you distribute the code to other people, whether for profit or no. So given that cedega certainly could (and I believe in some parts does) use lgpled code for some of the libraries. However what it DOES NOT allow is statically linking said code into your code with no way for the end user to relink it (This is also the difference between the GPL with the Clause 3(?) alteration versus the LGPL itself, the former allows static linking for an executable as long as the library code itself was not modified whereas the latter would require object code in a format suitable to relink with alternate/modified copies of the library).

Re:Another news about ..

[phlegmboy]

Let me guess. You play "World" of "Warcraft". Of course the word "World" bit is more of a suburb, given that you have to screw around changing servers. The Warcraft bit is even funnier, given that player versus environment is not warfare, and indeed barely rates as a skirmish. Warfare involves stratergies that last days, and even weeks or months. It involves logistics and support, intelligence gathering, fleet movements, controlling your own territory making and keeping allies. Eved Online involves in vesting in your character over a period of months or years. WoW is just about spotty gits running about killing orcs and goblins