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

Last week we had the opportunity to discuss the recently released Apocrypha expansion for EVE Online with Associate Producer Arend Stührmann for the 8th episode of Loading… Live on Voon. Arend provided some excellent answers to questions posed by Ten Ton Hammer’s Jeff “Ethec” Woleslagle as well members of the audience who were listening in. A broad range of topics was discussed, providing some useful insight into everything from the New Player Experience enhancements, special effects improvements on up to the tactical potential of wormhole space. For new and veteran players alike, there’s plenty of great information waiting to be discovered in our full transcript of the Q&A portion of the event!

Jeff Woleslagle, Ten Ton Hammer: For those who might be new to Apocrypha, would you mind just running through some of what you feel are the more exciting things about the expansion for new players, older players, veteran players?  

Arend Stührmann, Associate Producer, EVE Online: Well, that’s a difficult question – everything about this new expansion is exciting. For new players, we have a completely revamped tutorial and a completely revamped learning structure to EVE. We’ve really focused on letting people learn how to play the game by actually playing it as opposed to confronting them with walls of text and odious tasks.

For experienced players of course there’s the Tech 3 ships’ modular hull concept. Also, wormholes – we’ve added about two and a half thousand more solar systems to the EVE universe and peopled them with new kinds of NPCs that have brand new AI, which is a lot more challenging, and from which you get the components to construct the fore mentioned Tech 3 ships.

So that’s just for starters.

Jeff Woleslagle: I’ll ask you a little bit about the exploration part of things, ‘cause I know you’re big into the wormhole side of things. What sort of player is exploration targeted at? Is it something that I as a relatively new player can train my scanner skills at, and sort of forge headlong into to gather materials for my Tech 3 stuff? Or had I be pretty powerful, or bring powerful friends to enter a wormhole?

Arend Stührmann: Well, the wormhole content is designed to accommodate a variety of experience levels. Depending on from where in known space you set out on your exploration trip, you’ll actually find varying levels of difficulty out in wormhole space. So the wormholes that you’ll find in high security space will probably lead you, at first, to wormholes that have NPC content which is slightly easier than that which you would find from say, low security and 0.0.

Can a completely new player expect to survive in there on their own? Probably not, but if a new player for instance trains up their scanning skills they can definitely be a viable member of an exploration party and do the scanning down of the wormholes and the exploration sites. As always in EVE, it really doesn’t matter too much how long you’ve played – it’s the skills you’ve trained and the niche that you’ve decided to fill. So I can certainly see new players still being a very viable part of an exploration group that’s out there. So maybe being the scanner person, maybe being the hauler pilot or the scout, and leaving the heavy duty combat and logistics to slightly more experienced companions in their party.

Jeff Woleslagle: And wormholes, will they appear entirely within all security space?

Arend Stührmann: No, that’s important to stress. Wormholes will appear throughout the EVE universe; in high security, low security and 0.0. So no matter where you are in the EVE universe if you’ve got your scanner and your probes you’ll be able to try and scan one down and set off into the unknown.