Well, here we are.  Dominion has been deployed and ahead of schedule.  Well done CCP.

I am at a loss as to what to write about Dominion.  Many of my fellow bloggers have pretty much hit on most of the awesomeness and I am continuing to add blog posts to this Google collection, so, please do take the time to read everything.  There is a lot and it’s worth it for the screenies.  Planets look awesome!

After looking at all the new sovereignty structures, I can see that freighters will be used a lot and I mean A LOT.  If you want to deploy a Territorial Claim Unit to claim sovereignty, you can do that with a transport ship.

If you want to deploy an Infrastructure Hub, you need 750,000 m3 of cargo space to carry it.  That means a freighter.  You want to install an upgrade?  You need 500,000 m3 of cargo space to carry one upgrade.

So, if you build freighters for a living in game, get busy, they demand for them just soared.  Build away my little industrialists, your time to make lots of isk is at hand.

Now, with any patch or expansion, there will be issues and people will go nuts trying to sort them out.  Head over to http://www.eveonline.com/updates/knownissues.asp and get up to speed with the issues that currently exist with the new patch.  Just a note, as of this blog post, most of these issues are being addressed with the patch being released on Thursday between 0930 and 1200 game time.  Set those long skills again.

See you out there!

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We come to it again, Patch Day.  This is the time where everyone in EVE Online spends an entire day sitting with clenched teeth and butterflies in their bellies.

IF YOU ARE READING THIS BLOG POST AT THE VERY MOMENT THAT IT WENT LIVE ON MY BLOG, GO SET A LONG SKILL THAT WILL TAKE MORE THAN 2 DAYS TO TRAIN NOW!!!!!

I always seems to come across a post on the EVE forums that  someone complaining either before or after Patch Day that they forget to set a long skill or did not set a long skill to cover the extension to the Patch Day outage.  We have also seen in the past that Patch Day will start early and we have see Patch Day be extended longer than planed, SO FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THINGS SACRED, GO SET THAT LONG SKILL RIGHT NOW!!

Ahem, sorry about that, it had to be said…..AGAIN!

While we are all waiting for the Dominion Expansion to be deployed and for our updated game clients to download and install, you have some free time.  Go outside, breath the fresh air, clean the kitchen sink, do some laundry and when you come back, go do something else as watch Patch Day is like watching the kettle on the stove boil water.  It will take longer than you think it will.

While you are waiting, here are some things to keep you occupied:

• Read Dominion patch notes.
• Read all the blog posts concerning Dominion.
• I personally loved Mynxee’s post on Dominion, “extra special linky-love” here!! http://lifeinlowsec.blogspot.com/2009/11/dominion-patch-notes-novel.html
• Visit the EVE Online Dominion Expansion page (http://www.eveonline.com/dominion), watch the new trailer, download some screen shots.
• Head over to The EVE Online Portal (http://www.evebloggers.com) and update your RSS readers with the EVE Online OPML download file, we have almost 500 blogs in there you know!
• Go drool over the new EVE clothing at Jinx (http://jinx.com/eve)
• For some IT related humor, head over to The Website is Down (http://www.thewebsiteisdown.com) and watch some of the videos, they are truly hilarious!
• Go play a flash game, like Galaxy Wars.  Yes, it’s addictive and you will hate me for it! 
• And finally, take the time to finish your holiday shopping!

See you out there!!

Thanx to Seraphina Orina for the suggestion to listen to EVE Radio!

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Yup, it seems that Google Reader and I are quickly becoming good friends.  I’ve taken the time and created yet another shared items page.

With the upcoming Dominion expansion and all the discussion/rage concerning proposed changes, changes on changes and various confusing information that has been put forth, I thought I’d create something helpful.

So, enjoy all the wonderful posts our beloved community has written.  As more posts are made, I’ll add them to this shared items page!

Dominion blog posts:  http://www.google.com/reader/shared/user%2F03749674846786948488%2Flabel%2FDominion

Now, there have been some complaints that posts to various discussion threads concerning Dominion are missing from the EVE forums.  CCP is being accused of censorship.

People, remember this.  The forums are CCP’s property, they will moderate as they see fit and yes, there will be mistakes made by forums moderators.  Fear not, Chribba the All Powerful EVE Online God has a wonderful resource to combat this problem.  Head over to EVE-Search.com and you can read all the forum posts as they were originally posted.  You can’t respond to a post here, only read them.  So, head over there to read and post your responses on the EVE forums if you feel the need.

Here is the link to the EVE Information Portal section on the EVE-Search website:  http://eve-search.com/forum/3512.

So, enjoy your reading assignments, there is a lot to read!!!

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I’ve been spending the morning reading the new Dev blog on how CCP is fixing sovereignty.  I’ve also been reading the comments thread on the EVE forums (at 23 pages at the time of this blog entry) and I have to say, the majority  of the responses are not in favor of the changes.  Most people think it will break EVE Online to the point that no one will want to be in 0.0 space.

The TL;DR version is that a typical system will take roughly 2 billion isk a month to maintain once you have it fully developed.  Given all the upgrades to the space that you can add, you simply can not generate the needed income if you are an alliance that is considered small.  I have to agree with the sentiment on the EVE forums here, this simply will not work and all the thoughts that come into my head are already being spoken on the EVE forums and the EVE Blogging community.  The best response I’ve seen on the EVE forums sums everything up by Bobby Atlas and oddly enough, it’s been quoted in post number 666 (I’m not kidding), http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1210267&page=23#666.

Yes, our beloved EVE Blogging community, in a rare event, is agreeing with the sentiment on the EVE forums.  For ease of reading, I have setup a shared Google Reader page for those responses:  http://www.google.com/reader/shared/user%2F03749674846786948488%2Flabel%2FSOV.  As more blogging articles are posted talking about the soverignity changes, I’ll add them to this shared page.

Everyone, keep reading, thinking and posting your thoughts as there are intelligent discussions going on both the EVE forums and the blogging community.

The debater in my heart is happy to see such discussion but by the same token, I am very concerned that the upcoming changes that caused this debate will simply break 0.0 in EVE.  One of two things will result.  People will simply not go to 0.0 as the risk exceedingly outweighs the rewards or many people will simply leave EVE as it’s becoming World of Warcraft in space with 0.0 becoming arenas.

Many people are claiming that these changes are going to have an NGE effect on EVE Online.  To refresh everyone’s memory, SWG:NGE was a bait and switch upgrade.  Buy the next expansion and change the game to a new game and not let anyone know about the change until after it happened.  I was there for that and let me tell you, it was not pretty.

The sovereignty changes to EVE are not another NGE.  We all can see the changes coming and that’s what makes this different.  The part of the NGE event where Sony did not listen to the players however, has the potential to happen here.  I’ve not seen such consensus of thought and discussion on the EVE forums since the proposed speed balancing.  We all remember what happened with that change, CCP listened to the players, modified what they planned and released a better patch to the game.

I hope the CCP listens to the players again and revises what they are planning on releasing on December 1.  As it stands now, they need to delay the expansion and make the changes that everyone on the EVE forums is calling for. People think it will be another NGE, I have to agree the the potential for an NGE event set of results is there.  We will have to simply wait and see.

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CCP’s announcement of Dust 514 has everyone in a “Awesome Sauce” frenzy and yet I sit here and I can’t get excited about it.

It’s a console game, no PC version announced.

Well, that sucks, it’s another first person shooter for the console market.  Haven’t we had enough yet?

It’s a console game.

Yep, in case you have not figured it out yet, I am not a fan of console games.  Don’t get me wrong here, many of the consoles and the games for them are well written and visually stunning.  If Dust 514 is held to the same quality standards of production that CCP holds its graphical content, all other console games will simply pale by comparision.

And yet, I can’t get excited by it. I’ve watched the videos, looked at the screenshots and as stunning as everything looks, I sit here wondering when Walking in Stations will go live.  I sit here waiting to be able to leave my pod, walk around the stations, interact with everyone and then possible board a corporate drop ship to go help take a planet.

But, I won’t be able to do that, because Dust 514 is a console game.

I play EVE Online because it’s NOT a console game.  I simply do not like games that limit what you can do.  There are only so many iterations of a map, so many ways you can use a combination of weapons in a FPS before it’s a collection of bored people shooting people because their fingers have siezed holding the fire button.  It’s a rent it for your XBox for the weekend type of game.

I can understand why CCP has released an FPS.  It’s money in their pocket.  Take an established product, give it an FPS that is visually centuries ahead of anything else that is on the market now and/or ten years from now and make a huge amount of money.  They would be fools to not release Dust 514 and honestly, if it were my decision, I would release it in a heartbeat, it’s good business.  One has to tip their hat to CCP for making such a product.

But, it’s a console game.

Yeah, I am impressed but not excited and I am left wondering, will this have the same effect on the game that Faction Warfare had?  Create a lot of buzz, get a lot of people excited and then die out as people loose interest?   I hope this is not the case.

Yeah, it’s a console game.  Release a PC version and you may have a better chance of keeping people from loosing interest as they won’t have to leave the PC to fight on a planet.  Release a PC version as this will increase the immersion in the EVE universe.

Console games area a great way to create income but a lousy want to add to immersion to an existing product that is PC based.

So, I will get excited when I see the PC version announced and released.  Until then, I will just keep my bottle of “Awesome Sauce” corked and in the fridge.

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