Feb
22
En Fuego
So today CCP dropped an official name on the upcoming summer expansion. Eve Online: Inferno promises lots of vague things that we are assured will be awesome (though amazingly they stayed away from actually using the word ‘awesome’). Right now all we can do is speculate on the exact nature of the expansion. FanFest is around the corner, which I’m sure will give everyone plenty to talk about regarding all things CCP.
What we do know is this: Faction Warfare will be addressed; War Declarations are getting a revamp; and there will be new modules. I can’t wait to see what the specifics are, but until then here are some predictions.
- Faction Warfare will see a new capture system that is in fact a beta for a new sovereignty model. CCP will be careful not to mention the words ‘sovereignty’ and ‘faction warfare’ in close proximity to each other.
- War Decs will see their spin up timers reduced. No more 24 hours of voting, 24 hours of ‘getting ready’, and then hostilities. To counteract the crying carebears at this, the ‘Surrender’ mechanic will be revamped to actually provide the opportunity to surrender to war deccers, giving risk adverse corporations the opportunity to stay safe.
- New modules will be implemented that allow for the hunting of cloaky ships. Whether this is in the form of a ‘depth charge’ search and destroy module (a la submarine warfare) or something else remains to be seen.
- Tech 1 cruisers will be revamped a la the Assault Frig buff.
- Crimewatch will be buggered to hell and back.
Of course, I’m no Nostradamus so take this with a grain of salt, but it seems to fit the announcement from the devblog, the recent round of FanFest emails sent out just today, as well as prior hints delivered via the horrifically vague CSM/CCP Minutes. The only one I’m really iffy about is Crimewatch – whether it will fit into the Summer release or be pushed back to the Winter expansion depends a lot on how much buggering CCP intends to do with it.
Furthermore, it is a pretty safe bet that the winter expansion will deal almost exclusively with Sovereignty. After their six month beta test with Faction Warfare, CCP will feel confident enough to deploy yet another sovereignty mechanic to the populace. In addition, Dust 514 will be out around this time in all likelihood, which as we all know will have a lot to do with whatever new sovereignty mechanic comes about.
What is really interesting is that we can see that CCP is sticking to their ‘FiS First’ ideology, adopted after the Summer That Shall Not Be Named. We can also pretty plainly see what their priorities are for Eve Online for the next year: War Decs, FacWar, and Sovereignty. Lowsec will not see any major changes this year (not counting FacWar), but neither will we have to put up with huge amounts of NeX Store/Aurum crap (that will come next year).
It also means that when it comes to CSM7, any candidate you cast your vote for should be able to properly address one or more of these concerns. We could pack nothing but pirates into CSM7 and it wouldn’t matter – this is the batting order for CCP in 2012. So why not elect people that can actually help CCP?
This brings me to the subject of endoresements. They seem to be all the rage this week, so later this week I’ll be releasing mine. I have three votes in this election, so I’ll be selecting three candidates I think you should vote for. However, I’ve decided not to split my votes – it’s winner take all on this blog, and I think the winner will surprise you.
Fly Smart,
Marc
