New EVE Expansion Nears, Possible Mobile Plans 74
As the EVE Online creators ramp things up for the free Apocrypha expansion due out next week, lead designer Noah Ward sat down with MTV's Multiplayer blog to discuss the future of the game and what characteristics continue to keep players interested. Ward says they've considered branching out to consoles, but ended up deciding that the game doesn't really lend itself to console play. He left the door open to using smartphones for "augmenting" gameplay. Ward also mentioned that upcoming space MMOs Jumpgate: Evolution and Star Trek Online are so different from EVE that they're not really worried about direct competition; EVE thrives in part because of the player-generated drama and scandals, which few games pull off as well. Massively has gathered a variety of details about the Apocrypha expansion, which includes the game's first epic mission arc, and they've also posted some screenshots. CCP Games launched a website for the expansion containing concept art and interviews with some of the developers.
Re:EVE Mobile? (Score:1, Interesting)
advantage of EVE Online is that it doesn't really have any graphics so you could play it on anything, even a normal phone. Just select your spaceship to mine an asteroid or travel across the galaxy, put the phone back in your pocket and come back the next day.
I know you are trying to be sarcastic. It's true that mining in secure systems is just about as exciting as watching paint dry, but these days it's a very minor part of EVE.
And as for the graphics of EVE - you are wrong. EVE has upgraded the graphics engine about an year ago and with Apocrypha they are phasing out the old "classic" client and adding new models and effects to all the bits that weren't upgraded last time (weapon effects, asteroids, some mission-related models). The minimum for playing EVE after next week is Shader Model 2.0 capable video card. No cell phone does that.
Personally I expect the mobile device "augmentation" be a way to use a (smart)phone to track your character training progress, assets and perhaps play the "market PvP" part of EVE, adjusting your sell and buy orders - that bit is effectively just numbers and spreadsheets.
But no way you are going to be able to actually play the whole game on anything else than a PC. Even older low end notebooks are getting hosed a bit with the expansion (well, any 4-5 year old notebook with "Intel Extreme Graphics" is at least out of the question)
Re:Linux (Score:3, Interesting)
That's why the linux version was made in the first place.. but it was just a cedega wrapper and everyone continued to use wine. Eventually CCP dropped the "official linux client" since wine was better anyways.