I stopped playing the game after my first child was born years ago but I still have an affection for the game. CCP is both brilliant for making it and foolish in their managing of the game. I recall during a war that had virtually every PvP player engaged that lasted years the side I was on felt like we were actually fighting the company itself since one of their employees was involved with cheating on the other side's behalf. As I recall the employee was never fired for acting in a way that managed to really piss off thousands of paying customers. Many left but many stayed just to not be whiners about it.<p>I can't say I'm surprised that they made such poor choices in directing the game. They want it to not be a niche game but that's what they have and they should probably be happy that they have what they have. Unless you're engaged with other players it isn't even a game at all. It's actually more like playing a video game within a video game. Shallow doesn't even describe it-I've felt more engaged playing missile command.<p>That said it sounds like they're going to try to fix things which is good. I hope the game does well. I enjoyed my time there-I just never want to go back to it for the sake of my daughters :)
This is well-written, candid and interesting, but I feel like I'm missing out on a lot because I've never played EVE. Can someone who is familiar with the issues (for example, what is "ship spinning"?) give an overview of what led to this?
The line that made this seem more than a PR move to me was this line:<p>"...without disrupting the space combat simulator that many of you are, or at least were, very much in love with—and without delaying..."<p>It's one thing for a CEO to say they were wrong. But for them to say that customers might have been right to fall out of love with their only product - that takes balls.
Can't help but to contrast it with the Netflix "apology" note, which basically said "we're sorry... that you're mad, suck it, we did nothing wrong". This one accepts full blame for mistakes, and that's a welcome thing.<p>Time will tell if Netflix did the right business move or not... but way they communicated it will certainly go down as a bad approach.
Are there any other persistant/mmo style space sims, but favouring action over the simulation?<p>A friend once linked me some picture of the "eve learning curve" and it was a precipice, never inspired me to want to play it<p>found the image<p><a href="http://dragsa.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/eve-online-learning-curve.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://dragsa.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/eve-online-learnin...</a>
I alway thought that the whole point of EveO was that you were locked permanently locked into your ship (like The Matrix meat batteries). I had no idea there was supposed to be a world beyond the ship.