BETA | DUST 514


CCP’s Shanghai studio (pictured above) is handling the core gameplay of Dust 514, working with the Iceland HQ, and tech and design studios in the UK and the USA


“Console is about to leap forwards and it


won’t look back,” he tells Develop. Eve Online launched in 2003 when online PC gaming services were somewhat primitive. From the MMO’s humble beginnings, at a time when dial-up connections were still common, Eve expanded and evolved through various updates and edits. CCP’s direct connection to its customers allowed the game to adapt to their tastes, and today the subscriber base has steadily grown to near 350,000. The average weekly playtime is said to be 17 hours; about 2.5 hours per day. Eve is elementally a universe-sized battle


arena. There are more than 7,000 star systems within the MMO for the player to explore with custom-built ships. Travelling across just ten of these star systems, without distraction, would take half an hour.


There have been cases where


players have engaged in incredible


skulduggery. Thor Gunnarsson, CCP


Death in Eve can be unbearable. Hours of time and millions of ISK (in-game currency) can be spent on building a perfect ship. If destroyed, it becomes a floating metal carcass. The pilot escapes out of the game, while those who attacked it can ransack the remains for valuable parts and items. The player has to start from scratch. But herbivores have a place in Eve too. An industrious player dedicated to mining ore on asteroid belts and manufacturing ammunition could make as much as 500


20 | NOVEMBER 2011


million ISK per month, which can be used to buy equipment, ship parts, weapons, and other such items. To give an idea of the currency exchange rate, a month’s subscription of Eve will cost around $15, but can also be bought for 370 million ISK. The inherent tension is that there are too


many players and not enough space for everyone to live in harmony. The best places to mine for minerals are usually located in the roughest areas in the universe, while attacking a fleet of enemies could, if successful, offer a richer bounty far quicker. And so, players organically form alliances


to control areas of space, to plunder planets, raid enemy strongholds and establish their own networks. The result is self-organised groups who amass online and wage war around the world and across the universe. The theory is fascinating; take away the script and the players write history themselves. Ask the community about the Eve’s rich history of battles, and many will recite war-time stories that have passed along the way. Others will tell you their own tale.


A SUICIDE MISSION There is one story that sticks out. It is called a Titan. A supermassive all- purpose mobile battle station. The strongest possible ship in Eve. It costs about 60bn ISK to produce (that equates to $1,000), and takes roughly a month to build. Of the 350,000 Eve players, only around 150 such ships are known to exist. Yet despite their rarity, these battleship


giants are subject to much controversy. Each Titan is fitted with a doomsday device – a nuclear bomb that will destroy any player engulfed within its vast blast radius. As a way of regulating the ship’s overwhelming power, CCP ensured that each Titan’s doomsday weapon shuts down for a whole hour after activated.


But that, in turn, left the ship essentially defenceless for sixty minutes, so again it was revised and fitted with a warp generator that allows it to flee an area near-instantly. But there was one Titan, owned by an


alliance called ‘Sev3rence’ that managed to exploit the rules and take full advantage of its arsenal, and as a result left players incensed. The vessel would spring into star systems, kill everything on-site, and warp away to safety. As the predator left, a fleet of ships would collect the scraps and split the earnings. It was a game-breaker; a strategy that paid off time and time again with very little other players could do in defence. But something, clearly, had to be done. On July 21st, 2009, a rival alliance called


Cry Havoc tracked down the Titan and its base of operations. Their plan appeared suicidal. A handful of heavy battleships entered Sev3rence-controlled air-space and advanced on the enemy; a clear declaration of war. In flew the Titan, which launched its doomsday device and cleared the area. It was at this very moment that a small Cry


Havoc vessel snuck into the battle arena. It was called a HIC, a ‘Heavy Interdictor’; barely able to scratch the Titan’s paint-job but equipped with a unique device. This David-sized ship headed straight for Goliath and attached itself onto the Titan’s hull. The HIC then activated its only weapon; a scrambler, a non-lethal device that negates the warp abilities of nearby vessels. So the Titan, having already fired its doomsday, had effectively been put into an hour-long paralysis, unable to fire back and unable to warp. And at that perfect moment, in flew Cry


Havoc’s full battalion, reportedly around sixty heavy ships, which had been waiting on the outskirts of the area the whole time. An unrelenting barrage of laser fire lit the sky.


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