If you delve into the EVE forums, I am sure that you will see many threads discussing the current problems with the Dominion expansion.  Many people complain about the new sovereignty mechanics…

…NODE CRASH…

…clear cache on local client…

….2 hours later….

…and point to them as the cause of the current biggest problem to impact game play, lag.

Since Dominion was released, the lag in 0.0 has become severe enough to simply prohibit playing the game.  There are times that simply trying to…

…NODE CRASH…

…clear cache on local client…

….3 hours later….

…log into a system with only 40 people in local can take over 30 minutes.

Have a major fleet fight?  Forget being able to play.  Even with requesting additional hardware resources using the fleet fight requester, as was done with the recent engagements in 49-, server stability was a complete joke.  1300 on grid, node crash.  15 hours later, 1200 on grid, node crash.

I know that lag is a very complex problem that requires many solutions…

…NODE CRASH…

…clear cache on local client…

….2 hours later….

…to be implemented at the same time, but CCP is failing miserably at it right now.  Since Dominion, EVE has simply not been truly enjoyable.  I sometimes…

…NODE CRASH…

…clear cache on local client…

….2 hours later….

Sorry about that, the node just went down.  As I was…

…NODE CRASH…

…clear cache on local client…

…45 minutes later…

Again I am very…

…NODE CRASH…

…clear cache on local client…

…3 hours later…

Sense a pattern here?  Frustrating, isn’t it?

Makes you wonder why you continue to play Star Wars Galaxies.  OOPS, sorry about that Freudian slip there.  Well, it’s not hard you know.  Lack of stability of the gaming environment, not listening to your community about the issues encountered on the test server and then roll that defective code into production.  Am I the only one who sees the parallels here?

I hate to say it, but I have to agree with consensus that many are voicing.  Rollback the Dominion expansion.  It’s not stable and thus it can not be effectively played.

Am I being a bit harsh here?  I must admit that I am and rightly so.  I feel as many dedicated veteran players feel.  CCP has failed to improve the gaming experience with it’s latest expansion’s main objective, to improve the sovereignty mechanics.  CCP has in fact, reduced the quality of game play.

So, am I being harsh?  Look at it this way.  With CCP delving into the Short Attention Span Instant Gratification market, A.K.A. First Person Shooters on consoles, what would the reaction be to a node crash?

FPS Gamer: ‘WHAT?!?!  THE SEVRER IS DOWN?!?!?  THIS GAME SUCKS!?!

***dials phone***

Customer Support:  Hello, this is CCP customer support, how may I help you?

FPS Gamer:’THE SERVER IS DOWN!  WHY CAN’T I PLAY?

Customer Support:  I’m sorry, the logs don’t show anything wrong….click

***dials phone***

FPS Gamer: YOU HUNG UP ON ME FOR NO REASON!!  THE SERVER IS DOWN!  WHY CAN’T I PLAY?

Customer Support:  We are sorry sir, the node crashed regardless of being reinforced as was requested by the combatants.  You could try logging in again once population in the system has been reduced to manageable levels.

FPS Gamer:  YOUR GAME SUCKS, I WANT MY MONEY BACK!

Customer Support:  Sir, I am sorry that you are encountering difficulties.  Please clear your cache and

FPS Games:  click

My point?

To remind CCP that they are making the same mistakes that other companies in the MMORPG market made that led to their downfall.

CCP, you need to wake up.  Stop ignoring your stakeholders, your customers and your investors.

You need to fix your product and fix it now.

Tags: Dominion, Dust514, Lag, node crash, server stability

Related posts

• Yup, it’s the Friday post (2)
• Words, words, words… (9)
• CCP, what happened to your quality control? (27)
• Yup, it’s Friday! (0)
• To play or not to play… (0)

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!

Tags: Dominion, freighter, Infrastructure Hub, known issues, patch, planets, sovereignty, Territorial Claim Unit

Related posts

• It’s been busy (7)
• Finally, another week is done (0)
• Dominion is another SWG:NGE….unless it doesn’t go live (10)
• Around and around she goes, where sov will land, well, the TCU doesn’t know… (5)
• Yup, it’s Friday! (0)

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!

Tags: Dominion, EVE, EVEbloggers.com, Expansion, Jinx, Mynxee, OPML Download, Patch Day, Patch Notes

Related posts

• It’s been busy (7)
• WHAT?!?! We are losing an hour?!?!? (2)
• Links (0)
• Has it been this long? (13)
• Happy Thanksgiving (2)

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!!!

Tags: censorship, Chribba, Dominion, EVE Forums, Expansion, Google Reader

Related posts

• Dominion is another SWG:NGE….unless it doesn’t go live (10)
• Patch Day!! (2)
• It’s been busy (7)
• Finally, another week is done (0)
• Around and around she goes, where sov will land, well, the TCU doesn’t know… (5)

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.

Tags: CCP, Dev Blog, Dominion, EVE Blogging, EVE Forums, Google Reader, NGE Event, sovereignty, SWG:NGE

Related posts

• Around and around she goes, where sov will land, well, the TCU doesn’t know… (5)
• It’s been busy (7)
• Finally, another week is done (0)
• Aw crap, Ga’len’s at it again… (0)
• What a week… (7)