Back in June when I unsubbed all three accounts, I felt that CCP was committed to an “unretrievable failcascade” and I didn’t have the heart to ride down with it. But I also said CCP “might come to their senses and start fixing all the stuff that’s been neglected over the last few years.”
Yeah. It wasn’t very likely and I didn’t expect it.
But now, they are very definitely making the right noises. Hilmar’s apology, the features promised for the winter expansion, and the “they really aren’t faking here” layoffs and reorganization of the company to have a more solid EVE focus — it’s not features in the client, yet, but it’s more than PR smoke and mirrors. It feels like a serious commitment to remove the pants from the head and get back to work.
Can they execute? Well, recent track record hasn’t been good, and the 20% layoffs tend to suggest they don’t have a ton of time to get it right this time. And the “more of the same old failed not-fun shoot-the-big-anchored-pile-of-hitpoints” mechanic they are introducing with player-owned customs offices in Planetary Interaction suggests that execution is still a problem for them. Devs who don’t play the game — and thus can naively suggest, for example, that people in wormholes might put up a “freeport” customs office open for public use, rather than locking roaming strangers out as everyone will — may yet be the death of this game.
Be that as it may, I have been patching my clients this afternoon. And I’m going to resubscribe at least one of them, for at least a little while.
Am I really back? We’ll see. But I’ll probably stick around at least until the winter expansion is out. I’m interested in those new battlecruisers with battleship guns. And assault frigs fixed? Might be fun. Implant killmails? My pod-squishing Sabre would like to come out and play, please. For the first time in a long time, there’s new stuff on the horizon, and (cautious, easily-extinguished) hope for the future.
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October 24th, 2011 at 6:52 am
I hope to hear more stories about Ironfleet. Found you blog a week after starting to play.
October 24th, 2011 at 12:51 pm
So, basically, you may have, uhh, errr, how do you say in English? Oh yeah, ragequit?
October 24th, 2011 at 11:20 pm
Naw, Erick, not really. More like disgust-quit. I don’t do rage. And when I quit, I was in a mental space where I definitely didn’t care enough to rage. I was disgusted and sad. Now that CCP is talking a good game about pulling its head out of its ass, I’m a little bit less so. But still don’t have much faith in their ability to execute.
October 25th, 2011 at 6:37 am
Care less about CCP ability to execute and care more about the salvage! I live in NPC nullsec, with a small gang of guys – but how I loved reading about how you “removed obstructions to navigation” in Empire. Priceless!