Gaming for Love: Finding Love in MMOs

NY Times Covers EVE Online Summit, Runs it in "Television" Section

OK, many video games are indeed played on a TV, but correct me if I'm wrong, EVE is a PC game, so it's most likely played on a monitor, right?

Thus ends my attempts to Bazooka Joe every post I do today.

Ahem, anyway. We told you about the Council of Stellar Management a couple weeks back. They just had their big congressional session up in Iceland, home of CCP, the developer of EVE Online. A New York Times reporter went up to report on the proceedings and, surprise surprise. People are more civil in person than they are online!

Yet in person — around the conference table, in the CCP cafeteria, over cocktails amid the infamous Reykjavik nightlife — the vitriol and bickering that had often characterized their in-game interaction largely fell away, replaced by mostly cordial cooperation. Late at night, in the back room of a bar, you could even witness high-level political negotiations among the players.

Granted, it would take a deep and firsthand knowledge of EVE Online to report on any developments out of the Council of Stellar Management (I can't help but imagine Bill Lumbergh after typing those words). And the NYT reporter admits a general cluelessness — then again, aren't most of us. So, not sure what the confab accomplished other than taking the EVE players to a site where Icelandic tribes once met to resolve differences. And of course, since this was a summer conclave of EVE's student body government, you know that means at least one wholly unexpected hookup in a hot tub somewhere. But that wasn't reported.

A Council of Eve Online Gamers [The New York Times]

Interview: 'This Gaming Life' Travels Online Game Culture, Attitudes

Veteran UK game journalist Jim Rossignol, currently one of the Big Four at the Rock Paper Shotgun blog, has just published a book called 'This Gaming Life,' documenting his experiences in three different cities pursuing and documenting the culture of online games.

He covers the widespread competitive game scene in Korea, looks into Quake's evolving role in the London game scene, and visits Iceland to see the birthplace of EVE Online, to develop what he says is a story of "how games change the lives of gamers."

I thought the idea of a "travelogue" of game culture was interesting, so I asked Jim a few questions about the book, and his experiences.

The latest expansion to CCP Games' deep space MMO EVE Online has just gone live, bringing space-miners, space-moguls, and space-fighters alike into the Empyrean Age. The expansion focuses on two of the most important aspects of any MMO, storyline and PVP, introducing factional warfare, a system of militia ranks, system occupancy, combat zones, and factional warfare bases for players to capture and control. Each of the factions now has a corporation open to all pilots to help coordinate war efforts.

Along with all of the healthy player killing comes an entirely new region called Black Rise, which contains 49 new star systems and 40 new stations, many of which are already sworn to a specific faction.

It sounds to me like folks hungry for some ship-on-ship PVP might want to sign up for their umpteenth free trial of EVE Online.

Empyrean Age Features Page [EVE Online]

Iceland. It's where all the cool kids go to have a summit. Reagan and Gorbachev rapped about nukes there in 1985; 20 years later, the Supreme Metal Council condemned the overuse of the devil horns hand-signal. And now something billing itself as EVE Online's democratically elected government will meet there, probably because it's too far for Something Awful to show up and grief the shit out of it.

CCP's EVE Online fans have a "surprise gift" in store for current subscribers who log in after May 6th, to celebrate the game's five-year anniversary. Ooh, what is it?

The MMO biz is a capricious one, and most online games tend toward a naturally short lifecycle. Five years is a big deal for EVE, which distinguishes itself through both its aim to develop a realistic player "society" and its sophisticated in-game economy - they were the first MMO I'm aware of to hire a real-world professional economist in Dr. Eyjo Guðmundsson to manage it, and since then other virtual worlds and online games, such as Gaia Online, have followed suit. Many critics, like the PC gaming mavens of Rock Paper Shotgun, believe the industry can learn a lot from EVE.

Full release follows the jump, in which CCP has delineated what it considers EVE's "milestones" over its five-year run.

EVE Online Source Code Leaked, No Worries

The source code for CCP's EVE Online has been popping up on torrent trackers all over the place this week, leading to players worrying about the security of their accounts, as well as having the peace, sleep-inducing serenity of their mining efforts disturbed. CCP assures everyone that the leak will have no adverse effects on the EVE community.

"The server-side interface used by the client is carefully protected to ensure that no abusive or unwanted information is transmitted to, or from the internal EVE server systems. Nothing the EVE client can do can affect the game state, no advantage can be gained by manipulating the EVE client, no advantageous or disadvantageous information can be transmitted to other EVE users by altering the EVE client."

EVE Online and World of Darkness: Reynir Harðarson on MMOs

Rock, Paper, Shotgun has a great (as always) interview up with Reynir Harðarson, one of the minds behind EVE Online, on EVE, new MMO-in-production World Of Darkness, MMOs in general, and why MMOs should be more like ... Facebook?

They are more like Facebook, or should be. They share the same technology, and they have to be considered as a social technology if the genuinely massively multiplayer gameplay is going to emerge. People interacting is all that matters here. We are going to stick to this vision with our games. It was what we believe in some form back in 1997 when we formed the company, and I think we demonstrated it with Eve. It really works. People like Eve and play it. They kept playing it. Twenty five percent of people who bought the game on day one are still playing it now and I think that is because of how the game is structured.

Great interview touching on a number of interesting points.

Eve Online Creator Reynir Harðarson [Rock, Paper, Shotgun]

Sorry if this one is a little late to the party. But it's the weekend, time for some longer think pieces. And besides, finding posts for Kotaku on the weekend is a bit like drafting a fantasy team. (Alright, World of Warcraft violence study, I'm going with you if ... DAMMIT. McWhertor took it ...)

Here's an article out of Wired I spotted shortly after coming aboard. It's a great look at Second Life and EVE Online griefers, whose behavior is truly sociopathic — in those communities. In the real world, they're average ordinary /b/tards and SA Goons — OK so they're probably sociopaths in the real world, too.

EVE Online Gets New Faces, Places

What Are Your Gaming Resolutions For 2008?

Some of the Kotaku staff, those who live in the future, have already rung in 2008. But many of us in the tower are anxiously awaiting a thrilling night in of TV watching, complete with copious amounts of sparkling, non-alcoholic cider enjoyed in our footie pajamas. Fifteen minutes of partying, then we head off to bed around 12:01 AM and wait for the sun to rise to get started on our chores. While we wait for New Year's Eve festivities, resolutions are being made—get that third nipple removed, finally cancel our subscription to Grit magazine, and spend more time gaming!

Personally, I'm going to make the effort to play more with my friends, wherever they may be. A multi-hour session of Team Fortress 2 that's due to happen as you read this with two of my best friends will make sticking to that one a bit easier. I'm also planning on spending less, buying only exactly what I plan to play and leaving nothing in the shrinkwrap. There will be more downloadable gaming in my future, more online gaming and more attention paid to indie and homebrew wares.

Let us know what you've got planned for a self-improved 2008, whether it's less fanboyism, more time with your SNES or even the shedding of that unsightly 80 pounds gained at college.

The EVE Online BOOT.INI Problem Explained

Back on the sixth, popular space MMO EVE Online released their Trinity update, which added an all-new (and quite dazzling) graphics engine, with the unfortunate side-effect of deleting some XP users' BOOT.INI file, effectively stopping their PC from booting. While a "We're so sorry" and a fix would have sufficed, the director of the EVE Online software group Dr. Erlendur S. Thorsteinsson has posted a dev blog explaining the bug in great detail, from origin to fix to helping customers get their PCs up and running again by calling in external tech support like the Geek Squad. While the explanation basically amounts to irresponsibility on the team's part and lack of diverse hardware - which is really inexcusable - CCP showed some real class in fixing the issue, which could explain why they have a fan base so loyal they actually fly to Reykjavík, Iceland to hang out with them.

About the boot.ini issue [EVE Insider Dev Blog - Thanks Tyson]

The EVE Online Trinity update is live, bringing with it an all-new graphics engine, new features, and the death of your Windows XP boot.ini file. It's okay! The file is only necessary if you want your computer to start. Apparently a faulty version of the updater slipped out that worked great across the board, with the exception of Windows XP - one of the most widely used PC operating systems in the world. You know you've got trouble when you have to issue an alert that starts like this:

Check the root directory of your hard drive and see if you have a boot.ini file.

EVE Online went down for nearly nine hours last Friday due to a security breach. Here's more from their official statement:

...we discovered an anomaly in the EVE Online Database indicating a potential exploit. Our policy in such cases is to mobilize a taskforce of internal and external experts to evaluate the situation...that group concluded that our best course of action was to go completely dark while an exhaustive scan of our entire infrastructure was executed.

EVE Online service restored after unexpected downtime [eveonline]

World of Evecraft?

What About the Losers? Virtual Worlds and Player Loss

"We're pleased to extend our relationship with TransGaming, as the company's expertise allows us to deliver the most innovative MMOG to more platforms," said Halldor Fannar, CTO of CCP Games. "By integrating TransGaming's excellent technology, we are able to keep our laser-focus on evolving EVE Online, while simultaneously expanding the EVE universe to even more players."

Bungie Day Starts Tomorrow, Free Goodies Promised