As most of you know, Yesterday the Eve-world was hit by a bomb shell of Hellmar proportions; the massive, and deserved, letter to the fan base.
Now other than that dev blog already being inaccessible, and the terribly worded unavailable notice, I'm just not all that surprised to see this letter from CCP.
Why? because it comes too close to being just another ploy, and already an effective one. If just by releasing this blog CCP starts to see more people re-sub, or new players come in from the attention it will undoubtedly draw then it was a full on success. CCP's in a unique place here. Theoretically at least, they have the resources to draw from now that they did not have before(this being close to the end of their 18 months, or at least 13-14 months), with the last of the CQ's being completed, even though only one person in a time in there please, they now have some dev cycles they can use to fix parts of the game that need some fixing and have since either their release, or in some cases (hybrids) for the last 2+ years.
Right now is the perfect time for Hellmar to draw people back in with promises to address those things nearest to our hearts, the spaceships. I was expecting this blog for as long as Jester over at Jester's Trek and I guessed it's content with perhaps some more clarity or at least accuracy than he did a few weeks ago looking at problems with the game from my perspective.
The task list looks impressive, but how much of that will actually get done in the next 2 months? or how much will just be heavy-handed, and forced into some kind of change so they can mark the checkbox next to the problem with a big ole check even if their "fix" just breaks 10 more things with eve gameplay.
It's a good start; but one that shouldn't have taken this long to bring into place. I'm reserving judgement on this until I start to see how these changes will happen, and over what time-period. I suggest you do the same. As always, nothing has changed in-game yet, so if you still hate Eve's current problems, you are still going to hate eve's problems because nothing has changed. If you still have fun with Eve then Eve's still fun. Now, as always, all that's left to do is wait to see what CCP does with this letter, and momentum change, will they capitalize and turn the game around, fixing all those things they can in a admittedly short time, or will they devote 1/4 effort to every project and in doing so fail to fix any of them?
Time, not Hellmar, will tell.
True, it may just be a clever piece of marketing; or it was meant, but the corporate bureocracy manages to dilute and distort the intention - we won't know until the Winter release rolls out. And then what happens in the releases afterwards - will their commitment to EVE remain steady?
ReplyDeleteAt the same time, by going public with these two devblogs, CCP set itself a very high bar, and the public will remember. If CCP fails to meet these self-set expectations, their credibility will be shot. EVE players are in general quite smart people, and their word-of-mouth does carry weight.
I think what I'm trying to say is that I am impressed by the guts and boldness of their move: Succeed, or die in a flame. I take that over the usual corporate wishy-washy PR any day.