Beitrag von: Aura am Juli 31, 2013, 12:45:07 Vormittag
Asakai. J5A-IX. Z9PP-H. 6VDT-H.
These events draw a lot of attention to EVE. As such, they also attract many new subscribers into EVE.
There seems to be far more press coverage of these events now than three years ago. It's not like large space battles are a new phenomenon to EVE Online. They've been happening with not uncommon frequency over the last seven years, yet reporting has increased by orders of magnitude. Not only from gaming press, but mainstream press too.
One of the reasons is improved accessibility to streaming services. Major conflicts are now captured live, and the very largest EVE battles attract audiences in the thousands.
Yet, three years ago, you didn't see streams of the major battles. Granted, streaming wasn't quite as simple as it is today, but there were EVE streams available. Just not so much for the major conflicts. I would gather that had to do with the state of those conflicts at the time. Time dilation did not exist. If you got two thousand plus people into a fight, what happened wasn't worth viewing, it wasn't an experience worth bragging about. Dropped connections. Frozen screens. Unresponsive clients. Those issues don't play well to an audience. There's little for a commentator to describe other than to curse at the experience.
Then comes time dilation. There is now something stable to follow, thus something worthwhile to stream. Even if the action is 10x slo-mo, there is something to describe. Watch any Mad Ani stream, for instance. He does an excellent job of not only streaming large conflicts, but of describing them as well. He draws his audience into the action, no matter how "dilated" that action might be.
CCP knows this better than any. They do everything they can (even when it results in the odd mistake) to ensure that their servers can handle the loads demanded by large-scale combat. They know better than most that these battles attract viewers, and that viewers can be turned into new and interested subscribers.
Interest in these wars is served by an increase in the popularity of streaming. Streaming spectator-friendly wars would not be possible without time dilation. Time dilation may be CCP's greatest EVE Online achievement over the last half decade. Without it, this heightened interest in the wars and politics of EVE would be almost non-existent. You never would have seen top ten BBC articles on EVE Online three years ago.
Source: Is Time Dilation CCP's Single Greatest EVE Online Achievement? (http://)