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

Had Incarna been produced in an era of more competence and less groupthink, we would be seeing more newbies, perhaps entranced by the hypertech stylings of their Caldari quarters. We would also be sailing past Incarna and moving into a spaceship-focused release cycle. The fact is that Incarna was a good idea, even if the execution was utterly botched.

Pulling Out of the Dive
If there’s one thing that all of the Incarna chaos has taught us, it is that CCP listens to only two masters: their subscription numbers and the media. Under pressure from both, the company appears to be actively attempting to repair their image and recover from the recent debacles. This is a good sign and it should be encouraged.

With the re-release of the new forum software, there has been an obvious push by CCP employees to communicate more with the playerbase. The front page of ‘Eve General Discussion’ has CCP replies to almost every thread, in stark contrast to past behavior. Meanwhile, Torfi has released a dev blog announcing the return of ship spinning and the old hangar functionalities, repairing one of the greatest offenses of the Icarna rollout.

In the past, CCP has been vehement that Incarna would not be optional; the fact that Torfi has announced a checkbox to allow pilots to never leave their ships is an extremely significant (and welcomed) about-face. There are other signs of sanity returning to CCP; though I can’t disclose much of anything about the CSM’s recent meetings with CCP, I’m once again bullish on the future of the game. If CCP can disentangle itself from the Incarna mire and produce some actual spaceship-focused expansions, New Eden might begin to recover from its Incarna-induced stagnation.