Opening statements by CCP Orca and CCP Guard. CCP Orca reports that this EVE Vegas is the largest single meetup in terms of attendance. Attendees come from as far as way as Iceland, Russia, China, Singapore, Sweden, Australia, and New Zealand. Solid competition from USA. More than half of the crowd is first time EVE Vegas attendees.
TEST Alliance Please Ignore won the Alliance Cup for most attendees.
Photo slideshow of previous EVE Vegas photos, CCP Orca talking about how many of us are here for the first time, and how this event is a great community event. CCP Guard talks about feedback channel and getting feedback from the players: “Player passion is a big part of the driving force behind ongoing development.”
CCP Hilmar (Hilmar Petursson) takes the stage. “Whole lot of stuff going on at CCP,” he says. Whole Keynote dedicated to EVE Online, so he’s “mostly going to talk about external factors.” EVE is still core focus. Haltlingly postpones talking about these things to recap the last year since Vegas and the time since Fanfest. Very happy with how this year’s CSM meetings went and new developments with China and Pearl Abyss.
Breaks into explanation of BDO and Pearl Abyss, and their position with regard to purchase of CCP. Thinks that the graphical expertise and hardcore game culture fit well with CCP and EVE, and future projects. He is very happy with being in EVE Vegas, and excited to see where EVE is going, and hopes to pull off new, bigger changes.
“CCP is in a super strong position,” Hilmar reports, but reports that new games won’t be released until the players will be happy with them first and foremost. Further, that new games won’t be released until gameplay and visuals are solid, and that the CCP devs are themselves happy with it. Internal development and external partnerships they have been putting in place are aimed at ongoing development and announces that Serenity server will be taken over by Chinese Partner NetEase. CCP have been laying down roots of a working beta for Chinese players, and Hellmar plans to travel to China to speak with the Chinese player base.
Doing another thing with NetEase – re-imagining of EVE Online as a mobile game. Talks about progress since EVE Fanfest. Official name “EVE Echoes.” Actual footage taken directly off of mobile platform, extremely faithful rendition of EVE. Faithfully recreated some of the trails bugs from EVE Online. Echoes will be a separate experience from the EVE Online experience (separate game, separate shard). The lore explanation of this separate shard is that it is linked to Caroline’s Star, the cataclysm splitting off a tiny branch reality.
Hilmar then goes on to talk about successful beta of “EVE: War of Ascension,” the mobile real-time strategy game. He shows video and example screens, and in-game engine footage of the new release. “There is a lot of excitement around the development of the game.”
Hilmar assures that outages in phase 1 of EWoA are being fixed and will be resolved soon. Some stats from the first phase of development:
- 276K battles fought in v1.
- 483K ships built.
- 621M resources mined.
- 35 battles fought where all combatants destroyed ?!?
The last one kind of sounds like ending up on your own killmail.
And a new game announcement from Hilmar: Project Nova. A new video of the game has been released. Players can navigate to http://ccpgames.com/projectnova to register for an invite-only Alpha which launches in mid November. Hilmar then announces to much applause that everyone attending EVE Vegas will receive an invitation.
CCP game director for Project Nova then takes the stage, and Hilmar exits. He announces the game will be co-evolved with playerbase. New premise for Nova is that the combatants are ‘Warclone’ soldiers, revived soldiers who have been augmented with cybernetic and clone technology to fight for their factions. (They are functionally Clone Soldiers). This program of conscription is being led by Aegis, a new CONCORD initiative aimed at defending against external threats. Fighting external groups (Sansha’s Nation, etc).
The game has two primary Gameplay modes:
- Onslaught: Rescue missions (objective-based)
- Hijack: Take over capsuleer ships (zone capture)
Teamwork and tactics are key – offering integrated PoV and Squads from day-1. Fighting will be from the view of a Warclone fighting on ships during fleet battle (on surface of ships). Procedurally generated missions. Upgradable tech-as-you-go equipment; I will reserve judgment about what sounds like grindy gameplay advancement (akin to Warframe), live demo to be here on the show floor. Time will tell if CCP follows Warframe’s microtransaction model.
One Universe/One War is the focus of this game development for Nova.
CCP Guard and Orca retake stage to talk about live streams which will be coming. Orca speaks about 72-hour EVEathon event for charity. She calls EVEathon “a truly remarkable achievement.”
Able Gamers charity draw (raffle) will run through Sunday afternoon. All money goes to Able Gamers. There will be two attendee raffles, green and orange. One puts you in a pool for all-expense-paid EVE Vegas next year. The second draw is for a high end AMD graphics card.
9:00 Friday night TopGolf event. Main EVE Vegas party at Drai’s Beach Club tomorrow. Permaband will perform at EVE Vegas – Drai’s Beach Club.
CCP Guard shares awesome story of how Corrin Mor and he are connected and didn’t realize it, as their mothers are best friends going back to the 1970s. Shows a picture from 1987 of the two of them as children in a family photo. Small world. #EVEConnects.
Review of Schedule for Saturday and Sunday – Into the Abyss, Structures, and Art. Comical technical issues with presentation. Player presentation to come. Examples: Ship Fitting Misadventures, How to lead without being CEO, Why stream? etc. EVE Keynote 16:00 Keynote.
