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This month's topic is a request from CCP Sisyphus who wants to know how important is Lore in EVE Online?
"How important is “fluff” in Eve online? Would eve online be the same if it were purely numbers and mechanics, or are the fictional elements important to the enjoyment of the game? Would a pure text, no reference to sci-fi or fancy names still be an engaging game? Should CCP put more or less emphasis on immersion?"
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From an on-again, off-again roleplayers angle, Eve online lore, for me, is sometimes very important, and other times nothing at all.
Let me explain. When I start roaming the interwebs for games to play, lore built up around a game is one of the deciding factors. If the game developers can't, don't, or won't come up with a convincing or at least semi-good reason for their game universe it speaks a lot to their dedication as a company towards that title.
In short, if there is no backstory, then I usually won't play the game. Besides, what am I going to be reading while the game downloads and installs. This goes back to the olden days for me where I would pour over every word in a game's manual, looking for insights into the game while it installed. Then I may or may not have never looked at that manual again.
Once in Eve the lore becomes less important, UNLESS you end up RPing at all. Not just troll RP people. If you choose a character you have to submerge yourself in the lore for a while to get to a point where every other statement you make is either wrong or everyone ignores you.
Otherwise I think that Lore pretty much falls under the "nice to have" but not required to play category.
On the other hand, what would Eve lose if there was no Lore? I think it would lose a lot of the allure that attracted me to the game. But on top of that, I think it's important to have a good story. If, as some others have said, it was just "+5 damage to blasters" or something more generic in skills and descriptions of ships, well then it'd be pretty boring. I do spend time in game, almost every time a new ship is released, or new modules, like a huge nerd, reading the information about the new item. Both in game and in the wiki. It's fun to read all the quasi-science output by CCP.
Additionally the sci-fi names, and fancy backstories for nearly everything in the game adds quite a lot of interest because of the sci-fi background it adds. For instance, if this was just space game one and not called Eve online, and all it was ended up being the spreadsheets in space and a combat game, do you think it would have lasted as long as it has? Would it have developed the same backstory that it has? I don't think so.
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