Burning Eden, part Quattro

When I started my "Burning Eden" series of posts during my summer break I never thought I would have to add to it a few months down the road. But here we are four months after the infamous Jita Riots, and despite some efforts to reconnect with the community after letting it down in a big way with the Incarna/NEX/Greed debacle, CCP once again managed to hit a massive foul ball. 24 hours after bringing back a feature of EVE Online which had been basically a trademark of the game, and getting showered with shouts of relief, CCP announced that basically in order to survive as a company, it had to lay off 114 people. Most of these were working on World of Darkness, but the part that I'm still trying to understand is how they layed off the community team. After folding themselves in 4 saying "Incarna sucked, we're sorry, we'll listen to you a bit more now". If you fire a community team, one that did everything it possibly could to shovel water out of a clearly sinking boat earlier this summer, just how the hell do you think the community will react?

I understand the business part of having to lay off people. It is now clear that the wave of mass unsubs coupled with the way CCP had become over-stretched trying to juggle 4 monsters at once (EVE, Incarna, Dust, WoD) had the effect of the company suddenly not having enough income to keep everybody working. But further alienating the community, this I don't get, and I don't think I'll ever get it.

So, am I unsubbing come the 17th of December? So far, I don't think so. I like EVE enough to believe that CCP will not let crash into the ground if they remember the reason they created this awesome game. I asked myself all the "unsub" questions during my summer break and guess what, I even resubbed in advance of when I thought I would! But after the dust has cleared (no pun intended) I will be anxious to see how CCP directs its energies to make what is already a good game better. If EVE goes back to being the main focus as opposed to a test bed for other games then they might yet have redemption. But after so many foul balls I'm very afraid for the future; one missed swing and it's a strike out. In the meantime the winter expansion is coming soon... let's see what throw the pitcher serves...

o7

PS: Head on over to Rixx Javix's EVEOGANDA and listen to RockCalledSteve aka Moose's one-off podcast. It's worth a listen.

WHAT THE BASTARD SHIT ?!?!

CCP lays off crap-tons of employees, namely the community team.

My title says it all. I'll write a real post about this tomorrow after I've mulled it over.

Fuck.

>:(

The 2011 EVE-O Forums Debacle

Wow.

This is the first word that comes to mind when thinking about last weekend's melodrama around the failed New Forums. To me it started when some well-known forum denizens who I believe play the forums more than the actual game (I call Akita T to the defendant's box) posted an ungodly amount of "Waaaaa the new forums suck!" whine threads. At first I thought the issue would slowly blow over because this was only the reaction of people getting thrown out of their comfort zone. For the record I'll say that I actually liked the look of the new forums; the EVE client has already damaged my eyes enough with it's microscopic font, it was nice to have something readable for once. The avatars were on the large-ish size but I could live with that. But it turned out the whine was about to turn to vinegar.

I won't go back into the details, Helicity Boson has already done a better job describing the Epic Forum Fail than anyone could have.

After various attempts at quick-fixing the problem which looked more like fixing a steel frame with duct tape, a few weird/idiotic posts on Facebook, the banning of the player who prooved how bad the situation could get, and finally the complete roll-back to the old forums, I came away extremely disappointed with CCP's handling of the situation, and my already dwindling interest in EVE has taken yet another hit. As I commented on Helicity's post, I can live with a few lag issues because all multi-player games have them to some degree. I can live with bad design if the game behind it is interesting enough to me. I can even live with faulty/broken/unbalanced game mechanics along the lines of hybrid guns and over-powered ECM because there are other ways to have fun in the game. But a direct threat to not only my game account but to my entire computer? From a company that two weeks ago was basking in its own glory and and flaunting its commitment to excellence and delivering the goods? I'm sorry, but this is unacceptable.

So am I ready to emoragequit yet? No, not quite. I do log in a lot less these days, but not just in EVE. With the awesome weather Montreal finally got it was way more fun to be outdoors doing urban exploration than to sit at my computer reading the rage of other players. When I do log in there's plenty of fun to be had down in Curse. But when I look at the big picture of EVE, not just my little corner of the universe, I realise that the thread attaching me to this game is getting thinner by the day. There are already plenty of things I have zero interest in, and shenanigans like last weekend's are only bringing me closer to the proverbial "Fuck that noise". My subscription renewal is coming up in June. I don't think I'll be saying I'm leaving forever, but I seriously think that I will take the summer off and see if CCP can get its act together, especially knowing that a significant change in the gameplay (ie: Incarna) is on the way. So no, you can't have my stuff; I will try to get it gloriously blown up first!


Fly hard, but if the game fails fly something else.

o7