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Incarna incoming
Dec. 24th, 2010 02:09 pmIt's been a LONG time coming. I first saw a test of Eve Online's Incarna -- what was at the time variously known as "Walking in Stations" and then "Ambulation" -- three and a half years ago, two weeks before I built my first character and huddled trembling in a station, half-expecting to be blasted to pieces by NPCs the moment I stuck the nose of my Velator starter ship outside the hangar.
Yeah, that was a long time ago. They kept pushing release back. And back. And back. If there's one thing I've come to learn about CCP, it's that when they rush a development out the door, it flops (Tyrannis, anyone? Possibly the least popular expansion in the history of the game). But when they take their time over something, though, it's usually well worth the wait.
The current expansion, Incursion, is being released incrementally, and they've upped the amount of communication from the dev team to let players know what's going on. I approve of both of these things, they improve both the game and the developer-player connection. We've already seen small changes ingame (rockets and tier-2 ammunition don't suck anymore; can has boost to blasters nao plees?) and how they're improving their efforts against lag in PvP situations. Motherships -- formerly the least-useful capital ship in the game -- now outnumber Dreadnaughts and have become quite a concern on any field (been there; NOT fun).
The next part of the expansion will be in early-mid January and will have two things I expected three and a half years ago: the first steps toward having a human avatar to interact with when you're not piloting a ship in space, and marauding NPCs which can and will shred you if you undock and provoke them.
Well, it's about bloody time.
Mind, we won't be able to hop out of the ships and explore just yet, but the character creation system is drastically updated. Observe:
Old character creation
New character creation
This is an update on a system which is more than seven years old, and while it still feels badly limited in the scope of customisation provided -- you want a fully-developed chargen system, take a look at APB -- it's far less cartoonish and fits more closely with the hyper-realistic style of the newer graphics that have been introduced ingame over the years.
Full version of Incarna is slated for late 2011, though I'm thinking it won't really go live til early 2012, because what I'm thinking they plan to do with it is make "face to face" interaction possible between players of Eve and players of the in-production console-based FPS Dust514. At FanFest last year, they did mention that Incarna and Dust development are closely linked (it's in one of the videos somewhere, but I'm too lazy to go sorting through CCP's YouToob videos for it); if interaction is what they have planned, they'll need a lot more development time to make it work properly.
But I like where this is headed. Hopefully they'll be able to live up to the players' very high expectations (omg, you have no idea; no, really).
Yeah, that was a long time ago. They kept pushing release back. And back. And back. If there's one thing I've come to learn about CCP, it's that when they rush a development out the door, it flops (Tyrannis, anyone? Possibly the least popular expansion in the history of the game). But when they take their time over something, though, it's usually well worth the wait.
The current expansion, Incursion, is being released incrementally, and they've upped the amount of communication from the dev team to let players know what's going on. I approve of both of these things, they improve both the game and the developer-player connection. We've already seen small changes ingame (rockets and tier-2 ammunition don't suck anymore; can has boost to blasters nao plees?) and how they're improving their efforts against lag in PvP situations. Motherships -- formerly the least-useful capital ship in the game -- now outnumber Dreadnaughts and have become quite a concern on any field (been there; NOT fun).
The next part of the expansion will be in early-mid January and will have two things I expected three and a half years ago: the first steps toward having a human avatar to interact with when you're not piloting a ship in space, and marauding NPCs which can and will shred you if you undock and provoke them.
Well, it's about bloody time.
Mind, we won't be able to hop out of the ships and explore just yet, but the character creation system is drastically updated. Observe:
Old character creation
New character creation
This is an update on a system which is more than seven years old, and while it still feels badly limited in the scope of customisation provided -- you want a fully-developed chargen system, take a look at APB -- it's far less cartoonish and fits more closely with the hyper-realistic style of the newer graphics that have been introduced ingame over the years.
Full version of Incarna is slated for late 2011, though I'm thinking it won't really go live til early 2012, because what I'm thinking they plan to do with it is make "face to face" interaction possible between players of Eve and players of the in-production console-based FPS Dust514. At FanFest last year, they did mention that Incarna and Dust development are closely linked (it's in one of the videos somewhere, but I'm too lazy to go sorting through CCP's YouToob videos for it); if interaction is what they have planned, they'll need a lot more development time to make it work properly.
But I like where this is headed. Hopefully they'll be able to live up to the players' very high expectations (omg, you have no idea; no, really).
