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
