[Jester's Trek] Quote of the Week: Christmas
Quote of the Week: Christmas
QOTW this week comes (with permission) from a private chat I had over the weekend with riverini, the editor of EVE News 24. We were chatting about the CSM Summit Minutes when he remarked (edited slightly):
Is it just me... or we ain't getting shit for Christmas?And that question was so casually and cheerfully profane that I had to go with it. ;-)
Now granted, the 2012 winter release is still about four months off and a lot can change between now and then. But so far, the release is looking rather light. We're told flat-out about the expansion:
The theme for the winter expansion will continue to be 'WAR', or more specifically the stimulation of blowing stuff up and there are to be no 'Jesus features' (large new shiny features). This will allow CCP to iterate on features already in the game and lay a stronger foundation for 2013.A careful read of the Minutes indicates that the feature list is going to look something like this:
New Features
- One ORE mining frigate
- Four new destroyers (one for each race)
- Salvage drone
- Player-to-player contracts
- Continuing tiericide and adjustment of roles for all racial frigates
- Adjustment of roles for the existing four destroyers
- Ability to rename POS mods?
- Iterations of the Crimewatch system (might be delayed until 2013)
- Iterations on operation of Sentry guns
- Iterations of the war-dec system
- Iterations of the faction warfare system
- Iterations of new player content/Incarna (might be delayed until 2013)
- Minor iterations of the e-war HUD bar
- Minor iterations on Unified Inventory
In particular, I point you to that "new player content/Incarna" work. What exactly the CSM was shown in Incarna is NDAed in the minutes (page 50). But apparently it was a first look at prototype Incarna game play... perhaps Slay or something similar? But the implication was that it's at prototype stage and I suspect we won't see it in December. However, other NPE content was mentioned, but perhaps this was the work already done for the August release.
The other potentially major change affecting a lot of players are the Crimewatch updates, but it was emphasized that these updates might not see the light of day in 2012. CCP will be playing that one by ear and deciding whether or not to release it based on the state it's in as December approaches.
As for the rest, any way you look at it, it's kind of a short list. It also doesn't lend itself well so far to a marketing campaign. How do you sell this list to new players? What on this list encourages unsubbed players to resubscribe?
In short, what are we getting for Christmas? So far, it looks like austerity isn't just for government budgets.
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