At Penny Arcade Expo 2007, we interviewed Noah Ward, one of the developers. Eve has been a frequent subject of ours, we love our sandbox games. We had the opportunity for an impromptu peek at the development and history of EVE online. Unfortunately we didn’t get the best audio recording of our interview so we’ve transcribed the chat for your reading pleasure! Video and Transcription under the jump.
Right, and you can just go out and pew pew, as they say.
Here’s the video, again, the audio wasn’t the best, so I transcribed it to the best of my ability.
Here’s a transcript of the interview!
Zug:
Hello, Endgameradioers! This is Evilzug. I’m here live at Penny Arcade Expo 2007, with Noah Ward from EVE online. We’re here to talk about EVE.
We talk about [EVE] frequently on our show [EndgameRadio Prime], it’s one of our favorite subjects; in terms of community driven and ’sandbox’ games.
What kinds of systems are in place that would help new players get into the game without getting squished the first five minutes they step into the game?
Noah Ward:
I think the best thing new players can do is to join a player corporation, because that’s really where you’re going to learn the most. You have players interacting with you,if you have any kind of questions, you can find answers to them. Also, the rookie corporation they start out in, there’s a lot of people there who are veterans, who like to stick around and help.
Z: So what kind of resources exist to players who are looking to see what kind of corps are out here to join?
NW: Well we’re working on making more tools for corporations to advertise themselves. Like “looking for group,” but “looking for corp.” We don’t really have in-game meeting tools right now so there’s the forums, where you can read about people recruiting, but people recruit in the game, more and more around in space. Corporations are always looking for new members.
Z: So regarding the physical layout of the universe: the center seems to be more strict and regulated, more policed, if you will.
NW: It’s kind of the safe zone, and when you go outward, it becomes kind of lawless.
Z: Sure, and so [the outskirts] are set up by whatever people put their flags down
NW: Right, that’s kind of where all the the political stuff happens out there.
Z: Now speaking of politics, one of the things that has always amazed me about EVE is that the players themselves create the lore to the games. You guys don’ have as much lore delivered constantly in the game, as other games do. Like [in other games] when when a new expansion comes out, it’s about a new story, or a new chapter in the book. You guys have cinematics and stories and things, all completely player created. What kind of undertaking is that to document that all that information?
NW: We have a great volunteer team that helps document things like news reporters, and then make news posts about that stuff. I think one of the things that really drives the whole players-making-story [concept] is the fact that we only have one server cluster. There’s not many servers, it’s not a sharded world. So if a corporation, or alliance, or one person does something heroic or newsworthy, the entire player base is affected by that. It’s not just one guy got the one blue armor on this shard, it’s a special thing for the entire server.
Z: What kinds of things are in the game so that can help players have a good time who don’t necessarily have a lot of time to to invest in the game?
NW: One of the things that sets EVE apart [from other games] is the skill training system. There’s no concept of levels in EVE; you just pick a skill and train it. You figure out whatever skill it is you want to train, and that trains in real time, and when you’re off line. You just log in, you pick what you what your character to be skilled at, and then, even if if you only have 20 min a week to play, when you come back, your character will have skilled up at something so you’ll have something new to play with.
One of the other things is, if you do things like trade or manufacturing, those things continue while you’re offline too. So you can set up buy and sell orders, set up manufacturing jobs. You just have to come in briefly and put stuff on the market you just built, and you don’t have to grind away at things.
Z: What kinds of evolutions have taken place in the game, since it’s come out?
NW: A lot has changed. When the game was released, it was just the map and some the asteroid fields everywhere. There was no political structure, and all of this stuff started really organically. We’ve always tried to nurture the evolution of things; When players started to form alliances, then we introduced the alliance system, and formalized that. Then players started to conquer space, we brought in system sovereignty. Then as that evolved, we introduced constellation sovereignty. We’re trying to embrace and watch what everyone is doing in our game, and then find out what it is that that they want to do, and then give them features in the game that allow them to formalize these things.
Z: What kinds of things are in the most recent expansions that people are excited about?
NW: We release free expansion packs every 6 months, and Revelations II was the latest one. We’re also patching on Tuesday. The patch has some balancing fixes; probably the biggest feature of that is the new capital industrial ship. This is the first massive kind of ship for industrial players. Prior to that in Revelations II, one of the biggest features of that would probably be constellation sovereignty, and outpost upgrades. Players can build up outposts, which leads to siege warfare, because as the enemy builds up his constellation and puts upgrades on his outpost, you wanna go in there and take out all these things in these constellations, so it gives the alliances and players more and more things to fight over, and more scale to the warfare.
Z: What would you say would be some exciting things to look forward too?
NW: Lots of stuff on the horizons, like the upcoming graphic upgrade. It’s going to be huge for us, because EVE’s won lots of awards in the past for how great the graphics are but we really want to stay on the cutting edge, so we’re redoing the graphics engine, and all of the art assets of the game. We’re going to have new, higher resolution models and higher resolution textures, things will look more amazing. So that’s one thing we’re excited about.
The next thing we’re really excited about is factional warfare, which is structured PVP. As the alliances are doing their own thing out there, a lot of people say “I want to PVP but I don’t I don’t really know how to get into it.” So faction warfare will pit the NPC alliances against each other, and you can join up as a soldiers, and that will give you a kind of instant actual PVP, right away…
Z: …and not have to worry about politics or stepping on peoples toes?
NW: Right, and you can just go out and pew pew, as they say.
Z: Yes, pew pew, very much! So speaking of pew pew, we must take leave now, and go on some more adventures at penny arcade expo 2007! Noah, thank you very much for the interview. Keep in mind there’s always a free trial, you can go to www.eve-online.com free trial, if not, you can purchase the game there, the clients pretty small, it’s about600 megs, relatively speaking bioshock demo was about 1.5 gigs pretty awesome, very very cool game. We’ll definitely be talking hopefully more in the future with you guys, great, and thank you very much!
