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Revelations to the Second Degree

An Interview with Magnus Bergsson, CMO of CCP Games, on the Upcoming Expansion, Revelations 2

The universe is expanding again. No, it’s not the second “Big Bang” or some strange cosmic phenomena. I’m talking about the universe of EVE Online and the upcoming expansion being released by their development and publishing company, CCP|White Wolf. The expansion, gamely titled Revelations 2, is set to hit EVE Online consumers in late June and it brings with it a host of enhancements and improvements to the general gameplay and new player experience.

With around 210,000 players, EVE Online is one of the largest MMOGs on the market, and many expect that the game will continue to expand well into the future. To gain a glimpse into the content in Revelations 2, Ten Ton Hammer phoned Magnus Bergsson, CMO of CCP, and quizzed him on all the new refinements that are scheduled for Revelations 2. Get comfortable, because Magnus willingly answered all of our questions, which ranged from the recent GoonSwarm debacle to the upcoming enhancements to exploration. Enjoy!

The EVE Logo

Ten Ton Hammer: Before we get started with the Revelations 2 questions, would you mind commenting on the situation with the GoonSwarm and how that whole situation occurred? There have been a large number of media outlets following the story, so I though it best to ask the question up front, so we can move on to more important matters.

Magnus: The allegations have basically been proven false. We need to clarify exactly why this is happening from their end and so forth, and that’s best done in a statement so that nothing gets misquoted. They enjoy this obviously; now we just have to deal with it. We have a very open dialogue with our players, and this is one of the results of that. This is a game people take seriously, and some people take it a little too far.

I think that some people forget that this is just a game. Basically, there is nothing like this going on at CCP, and I think that goes without saying. They have people that might have a desire to hurt us, and then they have people that believe everything that is said about the game. Perception is reality, I guess. We just need to deal with this, and in the end it may lead to something really good. We’re doing a lot of cool stuff with the community, so it’s just a part of being with CCP and having an open dialogue with the users. It’s to be expected, to some degree.

Ten Ton Hammer: Ever since this story was released, I have a hard time wrapping my head around the reasoning behind a player base as large as GoonSwarm willingly undermining the foundations of the company that created their game. Why would a group of people do that?

EVE has a "Need for Speed" to make sure that future users do not bog down the system.

Magnus: They refuse to admit that they’re losing to another alliance, and the only explanation that they can figure out is that those guys are cheating. Not just that they’re cheating, but that they’re cheating in cooperation with employees at CCP. That seems to be the only logical explanation that they’re coming up with.

Ten Ton Hammer: In your dev logs, you’ve stated that the programming for Revelations 2 is done and finished. When is feature freeze going to happen? Are you still on track for a June release?

Magnus: We’ve actually already gone into feature freeze. We’re on time with everything, and we’re scheduled to come out at the end of June. Everything looks to be going really well, and there’s nothing showing us that we’ll have to delay anything.