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

The core mechanic of the Corruption expansion is the 'system corruption level' that the forces of good and evil fight over - except that the forces of 'good' are vigilantes and privateers, not easily distinguished from the corrupters who they combat. Players enlist as either Corrupters or Vigilantes and slaughter each other to adjust the system corruption level. Criminal-themed missions can also be run, but PvE impacts corruption level at a much slower rate than PvP. As the corruption level of a system changes, Corrupter or Vigilante-themed abilities are unlocked. For example, Corrupters are able to bribe station managers into secretly increasing the docking timer on another player, adding an abrupt and panicked end to anyone trying to play the undock-redock game. Bombings and sabotage are also an option. Vigilantes unlock Concord payouts from destroying Corruptor ships, allowing them to truly be bounty hunters, since podkilling someone in lowsec without a dictor bubble is nearly impossible. Either side can pervert a system's sentry guns to shoot the opposing group, assuming a system has swung to them.

But this isn't enough to make lowsec unique; the winning group decided that lowsec needed a defining resource, something that would attract a black market separate from hisec hubs. The answer was drugs, lots and lots of drugs. Fill lowsec with harvestable gas and give boosters - currently a virtually ignored part of the economy - a huge buff, but limit the use of the 'enhanced' boosters to lowsec only. To make drug production less arduous and give corrupters and vigilantes something to fight over, introduce a capital industrial ship like a jury-rigged Rorqual that flies into a gas cloud, enters siege mode, and produces boosters, putting itself at risk of attack for ten minutes at a time. "Like a capital meth lab?" asked one of the crowd, and the "Methnaught" was born. Meanwhile, the rest of the lowsec economy could be made unique through the use of lowsec-only items, banned in highsec, such as 'Smuggler's Cloaks' which temporarily remove a ship from the local channel. Kill rights - currently of not much use - could be commoditized and sold to other players, creating a market for bounty hunting that leaks into hisec.

To add interest in the PvE side of Corruption, missions specific to Vigilantes and Corrupters could be created. LP and rat drops could offer lowsec-only items. One particularly unique idea was that - with the proper Bribery or Extortion skills - belt rats could be bribed by players, paying them off to not attack a mining op, or to immediately gang up on anyone newly entering the area. Taking the criminal theme further, stations could offer a variety of in-game gambling and casinos against the house - creating a much-needed isk sink.

Drugs, gambling, crime - Corruption was a vision of Vegas itself. Better yet, I had my spaceship words at last. Oveur turned the 'Dev Q&A' on its head and spent the first fifteen minutes personally interrogating our group about Corruption, rather than answering questions from players. One can only hope that this is a sign that, at some point in the future, the Methnaught may stalk the skies of EVE, crapping out endless supplies of high-grade smack for the playerbase.

The real Dev Q&A had a number of enlightening moments. The reason behind the refusal to add another turret to the Naglfar? Apparently the art department pointed out how many thousands and thousands of polygons this would muck up, making a ship model change resulting in a  nightmarish amount of man-hours. Freespace 2-esque 'mega beam' lasers were offered as a possible supercapital weapon, and it was hinted that something similar might be in consideration as part of the new superweapons. The lack of proliferation of T3 ships was registered as a disappointment among the dev team, and something might be looked into to increase their spread.

After the Q&A, the event finished up with three hours of open bar, swiftly degenerating into drunken Vegas-style chaos. It seemed like the vast majority of our ticket money had gone to providing booze and an excuse to party; I dived right back in, and events became pleasantly unclear. I'll be back next year, and perhaps by then - if we're lucky - we'll begin to see hints of Corruption taking hold in New Eden.