Tag: eve-online

Beau Hindman, a Massively writer who is as zany as he is endearing, long ago penned an opinion piece titled The road (much) less traveled. In it, he argued that MMOs ought to give players strong, palpable reasons to travel and explore the amazing worlds we so often take for granted in our rush to what is so frequently a…

Massively’s Mike Foster coined this lovely phrase last week. “EVE Online offers me many opportunities to engage [a] sense of curiosity and my love for ‘horizon gaming,’ which is my term for playing just to see what comes next,” he wrote. Not for gear. Not for levels. Not for ganks. Not for socializing or achievements or a fat gold purse….

I’m almost afraid to talk about EVE. And that makes me beyond livid. By now, everyone’s heard about Mittens’ apology, resignation, and temporary ban from EVE for comments he made during a drunken panel at last week’s Fanfest in Iceland. During the live event, “The Mittani,” leader of the the player-elected council that represents the playerbase to CCP Games, urged…

When I look over some of my past Daily Grind posts on Massively, I notice a recurring theme: I’m apparently subconsciously interested in the ways people try to influence the design of the games they play. I’ve asked about the efficacy of exit surveys, the dangers of player representatives, what sort of sub fee we’d pony up for an awesome…

Ever hear the phrase “common sense isn’t very common”? It’s true. Arguments from common sense are logical fallacies because there’s really no such thing. We’re all terribly susceptible to the idea that the things we find obvious are obvious to our peers. After all, what sort of horrible person wouldn’t agree with me on something so basic and simple? If…

My boss invited me to guest-host on this week’s Massively Speaking podcast, on which you can hear the decidedly midwestern accents of Shawn Schuster, Rubi Bayer and me as we discuss EVE Online’s upcoming expansions, the Minecraft craze, sparkly vampires or lack thereof in World of Darkness, hack-and-slash freemium game Vindictus, MMO crafting pitfalls, the state of the MMO industry,…

EVE Online is one of those sandboxes I wish I could love. It’s in space. It’s pretty. It’s got partly open PvP. It has neat races and backstory. It has crafting. It has harvesting. It has an awesome trading system, and distance matters. You can make money from players just by moving products across the galaxy. In short, it theoretically…