“Capsuleer fucking rocks.” – CCP Oveur, Opening Ceremonies

Those three words, used together and independently, pretty much sum up Day 2 of Fanfest. Seriously.

My recollection of it all when trying to organize this post is failing. It’s all hitting me at once. There was just too much cool stuff.

So let’s start down this random journey as best we can.

COSMOS = NEW EDEN

COSMOS was apparently the codename for the project, which is now officially known as “New Eden”, as New Eden is the place where all players converge, ingame and out; we are making them a part of our universe.

Personally, and even though I now know some CCPers read my blog, I found both many positives in their strategy, as well as a few negatives, and you all know me, I won’t hold back.

THE GOOD

The overall framework and initiative on CCP’s part is brilliant, cutting edge, and really will infuse a lot of positives into the EVE Online universe. From a mobile strategy, to hosting corporate and alliance blogs, forums, killboards and more on their own secured, controlled servers, there will be a plethora of sanctioned tools to help every player leverage the EVE Online experience to the max.

Well done.

THE BAD

As I said, it is an initiative and a framework. To me, and again this is just my opinion, it almost seemed as though while CCP knew the direction they want to head with the game and the business development, their not entirely sure how to get there.

This could be under the good, as their not just pre-emptively saying “This is what we’re going to do.” and then head down a path of inexperience and bad decision making.

The reason I put it under the bad is simply because with all the hype surrounding COSMOS, I honestly thought it would be a bit more fleshed out, ready for the world to see. It’s not.

PLANETS

My jaw hung open for a good five minutes after see night side city lights on planets, as well as moving storm systems, then seeing gas giants with bands that also contained storm systems and movements within them.

Add to that atmospheres, multiple layers of shaders, two mixed normal maps, colour tints, cloud control, impact hits from the big ships, craters, ocean depths, sunlight reacting shadows on all of it, procedurally generated algorithms to create unique textures for each of the 50,000 planets in EVE, as well as the 240,000 moons PLUS the unique textures for each of the prime faction planets… phew, that was one long sentence.

Utterly breath-taking.

CALDARI MODELS

Two male and two female Caldari were dressed in fully authentic Caldari uniform. They were very militant, and far better looking than any Caldari I’ve ever met, but were actually fun to see.

I want to comment here.

One of the Caldari women was easily 6’3″ (and reminded me of Mynxee oddly), BEFORE putting on heels or having high hair. She was simply an amazonian goddess in the most flattering sense of the phrase… they got Roc autographs of course.

EVE API

I found this to be a most interesting round table discussion, both from the CCP developer side as well as the third-party app developers side. Really it was a flurry of note-taking on CCP’s part, as every developer present had plenty to contribute, and CCP calmly and professionally took it all in, and renewed their commitment to giving the API more love, stability, and power to meet the needs of app developers. Good times.

Bah, my laptop battery says 10%. I gotta go.

One more item of interest before I go.

Oveur likes horses. Sexually.

That is all.