EVE Online at Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMOG Gamers to the Next Level!

Since the Dominion expansion, one of the best ways to earn ISK in EVE Online has been through the harvesting of materials mined on planets, and manufactured into valuable materials. CCP has announced some major changes to the way this works, and it is having serious repercussions on the market. This guide is a look at the upcoming changes and some observations about the effects on the market.

One of the best things about EVE Online is that it actually allows players to conquer, develop, and destroy areas of the game world in a meaningful fashion. Letting players change the game world is still fairly rare in MMOs (how many even let you open a private store?) while no other mainstream MMO has the single-server model that gives EVE market events the same weight (though Diablo III will surely change this).

How Planets Work

The basics of planetary interaction as they are now: a player builds a command center on the planet surface and spiders out a network of harvesters, factories, and storage containers, then jets the resulting goods off-world to a customs office floating in orbit. There is also a less-used option to send small quantities of goods into orbit via rocket, bypassing the customs office but limiting the amounts moved.

Changes To Planets

The first major change will be the removal of customs offices from everywhere except high-security space. Players using planets in low-sec, null-sec, or wormhole space will need to rebuild the customs offices using blueprints available only from the CONCORD loyalty store and the faction warfare loyalty point stores, as well as a pile of ingredients that are produced on planets. The ingredients can be sourced on the market or via high-sec planets, so there is no chicken and egg problem.

The second major change is that the corporation that owns the newly rebuilt customs offices will be able to levy a tax on materials that pass through it. These taxes will be in lieu of the ones currently charged, though high-sec customs will still continue charging taxes.

There are also some minor changes:

• The bandwidth of the connections between planetary structures will be multiplied by five.
  
• The tax rate in high-sec space will be doubled.
  
• Customs office owners will be able to deny access to corporations that they don't like. This could potentially be very important in low-sec and NPC null-sec, though it is more likely that the owner would rather collect taxes.

Finally, players will be able to attack and blow up customs offices located outside of high-sec. They will not be able to get any loot from so doing, but could conceivably do this in order to set up their own customs office for taxes or to deny their enemy the ability to produce local planetary goods.

For EVE Planet Users

This will have immediate ramifications for players that rely on planets. Here are some possible scenarios:

High-sec Dwellers

Players that live in high-security space can expect to pay more taxes on their goods, resulting in a reduced competitiveness with established planetary setups based elsewhere. These changes will likely push at least some people out of low-sec, as well, who will move to high-sec and increase competition for the better planets. Plasma and storm, I'm looking at you.

Low-Sec Dwellers

There are a surprising amount of people that capitalize on planets in low-sec. If you can fly a blockade runner and are used to moving around hostile space, it is not hard to run your planets from afar, and just go pick up goods once a week. Immediately following these changes going live, there will be no customs offices in low-sec. That means that in order to continue as they were, players will need to either build and install their own or wait for someone else to do so. The taxes coming off these are lucrative, and it is likely that there will not be much fighting over them at first, except in areas adjacent to high-sec or near where lots of players are living. Over time, things will settle down and most decent planets will have customs offices built, and players will likely have to pay slightly higher taxes than in high-sec. Since the planets in low-sec are the richest in the game, this will probably still be worth it.