I find myself in a hotel room, 1700 miles from home and alone. Plenty of opportunity to think and consider and meditate and decide.
I can’t do this anymore. I canceled my last non-PLEX account today:
I don’t want to pay for faction standings. I don’t want to pay for ammo. I don’t want the sandbox turned into a subscription-based macrotransaction festival.
Your game, your rules — but you can get your eggs from some other golden goose, because you just cut this one’s neck.
The lead designers at CCP apparently believe that the way to save EVE is to destroy it. No more sandbox, no more niche game that excels at being something so utterly different that people have to try it to see it.
Out of respect for my fellow players, I’ll explain a little further: as noted in my prior post, we got hold of a copy of an internal newsletter at CCP reflecting the opinions of some of its internal staff, including lead game designers and content developers like CCP Soundwave and CCP Molock. Various CSM volunteers have confirmed it to varying degrees, and Soundwave tweeted that he’s “watching everything”.
The upshot is that CCP apparently did not take to heart the lesson from last fall during the uproar about neural remaps for PLEX. “Only vanity items,” they said. “Nothing that affects gameplay,” they said. And now they would like to cut off one of the main entry points for manufacturers and mission runners who produce ammunition or provide it via the Loyalty Point store. The idea that microtransactions can replace gameplay cuts straight to the heart of EVE, way past GTCs for ISK. EVE may continue past this, but it won’t be anything remotely like the EVE we once knew.
I found the bits about friendship particularly telling. While I’m in no position to know or say anything about the friends of CCP employees, my friends don’t love me any more or less if I can buy them nice concert tickets. My wife doesn’t stay with me because I can buy her fancy dinners. Objectivism taken to extremes leads to destructively selfish personal relationships. Don’t believe everything Ayn Rand wrote. (If your relationships work that way, I urge you to get help of some sort.)
Emoragequit?
No. I don’t have the anger in me anymore. Instead, I feel sadness.
I’m sad for CCP, because I don’t doubt that many of their employees understand exactly what’s going to happen and they don’t believe in this direction. They have families and bills and they need their jobs.
I’m sad for me, because I’ve gotten so far out of balance that I’ve sacrificed my health to this game. I made excuses about work and stress and all that, but the truth is that, when I get home from the office, I just wanted to see what was new in New Eden. Instead, maybe I should take my kids walking for an hour. I’m sure it’ll do me a lot more good (and on several levels). Maybe CCP’s screw-up is the best thing that could have happened to me.
EVE Vegas is still happening. I’ve already paid for it and I have friends from the Tweet Fleet who I want to meet. And I want to give CCP this one last chance to explain themselves and maybe make things right. I can’t imagine how, but I want to see.
Some folks say that this is just a bitter vet talking, that we’ve gotten a sense of entitlement. I may be bitter, but this isn’t due to entitlement. I know things change: I anxiously anticipated Incarna and what it could have meant. Change can be healthy when it’s growth, or it can be deadly when it’s gangrene.
I still love what EVE represented. I still love the concept of the EVE I knew when I started playing four years ago. But I don’t love what it is and what it has become.
This blog isn’t dead yet. This isn’t even my last post. But this is a signal that things have changed. I’m leaving EVE and looking ahead to what I’ll do next. Homebrewing or coffee roasting? Single-player RPGs or Star Wars: The Old Republic? Self-directed technical education or a startup? Freeing up four hours a night, more on the weekends, and the energy and time-sharing in my brain during the day — those resources have cost a lot more than the n * $15 I spent every month on this thing.
Metaphors
CCP knows that EVE is their “golden goose,” but they miss the point of that old story. The farmer who had the goose who laid golden eggs eventually killed it to try to get to the eggs inside, only to find that the dead goose no longer produced anything valuable for him. A desire for short-term gain destroyed his long-term prospects and viability.
If consumerism is your god, then you might need a revival to get some old-time “religion”. Because, whether you’re religious or atheist or something else entirely, simple material consumption and purchased friendships will not make you happy.
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