One thing about CCP…they know how to name their expansions:
Apocrypha means ‘hidden things’ in Greek. The Apocryphical books of the Bible fall into two categories: texts which were included in some canonical version of the Bible at some point, and other texts of a Biblical nature which have never been canonical.
Another thing is that they have a great development model for Eve Online with LOTRO a very, very close second with how they feed content to their players. I don’t know, both Turbine and CCP seem like they are delivering a continuous experience instead of a patchwork one. Don’t get me wrong, companies like SOE and WoW really do give us great expansions, but they seems like stand alone stories that are disconnected from the existing ones already in the game. Come to think of it, WoW and EQ2 seem to heavily rely on live events in an effort to link upcoming content to an already existing world. Not a bad way to do it….it certainly is fun, but I think LOTRO and Eve have a nice continuity to them.
Now, back to Eve…yes, I’ve managed to resub for this game in order to get ready for this upcoming expansion. I had to cut off my last jaunt into Eve very prematurely due the continuing failure and greed of certain CEOs within this city….who, btw, are still asking for bonuses regardless of said failure. Random question….raise your hand if you think CEOs do a job that is 1000 more valuable than the average employee. Sometimes, I just want to punch these guys in the face.
Ahem….aaaaannnnywho.
/gives himself a shake
Yeah…Eve Online…expansion….fun…good….
Eve Online is coming out with their latest expansion, Apocrypha and it’s pretty big. The features that stick out for me, very clearly, are the wormholes and the skill queue. Really, the skill queue is a “quality of life” issue that really just had to happen. When you’re talking about skills that advance in real time, it’s kind of nice to not have to worry about a skill that will end at 2am and miss possibly a whole day before you start another one. I say “whole day” because there is work, kids, wife, and self to take care of before you log on. One has to be balanced after all 
. The wormholes are just plane interesting. For me, it brings back what a space game should really be about: the unknown. To be honest…Eve is missing that “unknown” element of the void of space. And while we’re on the subject…where the hell are the aliens?!! I guess that’s what The Sleepers are? Eve lore buffs…feel free to rip me a new one.
This should be fun. Both Jonathan (Through the Aftermath) and my self are now in John’s corp and ready to go into some of these wormholes. We are looking forward to having our butts kicked.
D out.
Entries (RSS)
March 9th, 2009 at 9:17 pm
Sorry Darren… still no aliens.
The Sleepers (along with the Takmahl, Talocan, Yan Jung , and Jove) are an empire that survived the immediate collapse of the Eve wormhole that connected New Eden to Earth. They survived for various times after the collapse but eventually all but the Jove disappeared and out of the chaos the current factions arose starting with the Amarr.
March 9th, 2009 at 9:50 pm
I could never get into Eve. I think I came to the scene too late after it was out. Although every says such great things about it, so I wish I would have been able to see it in the beginning.
March 9th, 2009 at 11:46 pm
Hey, I think the Gallente are aliens.
March 10th, 2009 at 8:57 am
Their french, which is basically the same thing.
Not 100% on this, but I though wormholes where kinda ‘high end’ content? With the whole sleeper AI and all that?
March 10th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
I can’t speak for the lore surrounding EQ2, but I can say that the stories delivered by WoW not only fit together, but they continue the story started with Warcraft: Orcs and Humans, the first RTS game. To boot, the books written for the Warcraft universe are a part of the overall story arc, and are not just throw away stories with characters who never show up in game. Hell, I just finished a massive quest line in WoW for Krasus, a prominent character who first appeared in the first WoW novel.
Don’t get me wrong, I love LOTRO’s book system, but from my experience LOTRO seems to reply heavily on instanced content to forward the story, where as the new phasing technology used in WotLK offers a much more unobtrusive way to make individual players feel like they are having an impact on the world around them … like they are a part of the story, even though everyone else is going the same thing.
Again, no offense, and I an certainly not bashing LOTRO in any way, but to discount the progress WoW has made in the arena of storytelling is unfair to WoW and to say that the storyline between the RTS games, WoW, TBC, and WotLK are disconnected from one another is just false. I think it IS fair to say that LOTRO’s method of doling out the content over time is better than WoW. Big content releases from WoW tend to be new raid instances, focusing on the content, and not the story as much.
March 10th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
The Sleeper AI and the resources gained in W-space are high end content but wormholes themselves make this content accessible to everyone because they appear randomly in space throughout EvE universe.
So unlike WoW during pre WoTLK you don’t have things blocking you from entering W-space like attunements or keys.
As for Sleepers to my understanding they are another human faction just like all the rest. What makes them unique like the other 3 factions Kirith mentioned is that they had retained and developed on technology from the golden age that everyone had before the gate collapsed. These factions are powerful but reclusive types for the time being.
March 11th, 2009 at 8:54 am
@ Syncaine
The 2400 wormhole systems can be divided into Unknown, Dangerous, and Deadly with the difficulty of encounters found increasing from the first to the last. So you can enter an Unknown w-space system, scan down some cosmic anomalies, and find the Sleepers there to be hard but not impossible. I’ve read today of a guy in a Rifter killing some frigs in such a site, and passive battlecruisers being able to take on other sites.
So while the majority of the content is high end and only tackable by the most experienced and well coordinated fleets, there is still a lot of low end content for players that are less experienced or like to fly alone.
But remember, its all null sec so watch your back!
January 8th, 2010 at 12:23 pm
I found This Blog while I was searching aol on key term books supply. I like information posted. Keep up the excellent work.Thanks for sharing!