Here Be Monsters

Apologies for not blogging in months. I’ve moved cities with the family (1500km move), started a new day job, AND had to have a thesis proposal handed on 30 November for the 2nd part of my Msc degree.

Now that we’re settled, the wife has her dining room table and fancy curtains it was time for daddy to spoil himself again.

One of the local online retailers had SSD’s on sale and I bought a cheaper OCZ Vertex Plus 60gb. Not sure how good the drive is, but it was not expensive at all, and if it turns out to be a dud I’ll find some use for it elsewhere.

I’ve been reading Jester’s Trek with some fascination the last few weeks. @RipardTeg is one of the better bloggers that I follow in Eve, and from the start I would like to say I have great respect for his blog, and for his writings. Now with that out the way, I need to comment on parts of the posts the man has made the last few days.

Everyone and their dog has read the Eurogamer interview with CCP’s Hilmar. A lot of the people, including Jester, seems to feel that the apologies of Hilmar are real and that he is proverbially falling on his sword. I don’t agree. I’m more on the side Trebor of the CSM’s view on the matter. Those that made the shitty decisions are not the ones who are taking the fall.

One particular part of the interview that has me worried, and that is the basis of this uneasy feeling I personally have, is regarding this part of the interview, where Hilar states: But some of my concerns right now relate to whether the CSM is maybe focused on a particular aspect of the game and I’m starting to get feedback from players that they worry the CSM is too pre-occupied by a certain playstyle. 

I’ll admit, previously the CSM has been seen as a paper tiger, almost helpless in getting CCP to pay attention to changes that were desperately needed in the game. How many times did I see the question on the #tweetfleet “Hey, can someone actually list anything the CSM has accomplished?” during the CSM election time. Seeing this, The Mitanni (whom you may loathe or love) stepped in, manipulated the votes, and started getting the ball rolling to save ‘Flying in Space”.. as he himself writes here, CCP cares about two things, their subscription numbers, and their media image. Without being able to directly influence the subscription numbers, they went after the media image.

So, to cut a long story short, I suspect Hilmar doesn’t quite like the current CSM, because they weren’t a paper tiger. They hit where it hurt most. Did this possibly force his change of direction, and thus the CSM will pay the price in the long run. Will there be a CSM 7? I don’t know, but I will be watching this space to see the answer.

Looking at the hype around the winter expansion, we can see that CCP is really going all out to try and appease the masses that are still subscribed, and enticing those like me that have let their subs lapse. New ships, and a list of items that have been asked for for years are suddenly being paid attention to. The bloggers like Jester are all really happy to see this happen, and I’m glad for them. My concern is just the last statement Hilmar made in the interview.

Hilmar Pétursson: We are back in the spaceship business.

Why did you leave it in the first place, and when will you leave it again? I don’t share Jester’s optimism. I suspect the players of Eve will get a really good winter expansion, and then the rot will set in again. Twelve months from now, there probably won’t be a CSM, the numbers will have climbed, and suddenly dwindled again as players realise it was a once off ruse to get them back in the game again. Why do I say this? I myself (and note, I don’t speak for anyone but me here), held on for over a year hoping that CCP would fix the game before letting my subs lapse. I paid for three accounts, hoping each patch note would bring fixes to problems. They didn’t. It took me a year to realise that the problems weren’t getting attention. Now those problems and issues are being paid attention to. Those who renew subscriptions again, might hang on (and give CCP a breather) for another 12 to 18 months before lapsing subs when CCP fails them yet again.

…but how long before Hilmar steps out of the spaceship business again? 18 months? Or much sooner based on the above?

I’ve been reading a lot of the blog posts relating to CCP firing 20% of their staff, and there are some distinct differences in the way people see it, with the common theme that people are really sorry for the staff being affected. In my previous post I commented that it does have a hint of “you, as our customers, caused this!” in the new article.

I think the collective outrage at CCP regarding this has actually got quite a bit to do with the deep seated rage that the player base has had in the last few years. We all know that Eve players are a hardy bunch, passionate about their flying in space game. The game is like no other. I was there, I loved it..in some way, I still love it. When the 18 months bullshit plan was announced, the playerbase said that CCP better re-focus on their game, else there was going to be shit in the universe. CCP didn’t listen. Expansions offering nothing came, and the playerbase cried out. CCP didn’t listen. We got “frying a video card” aka “walking in stations’, and didn’t want it. CCP didn’t listen. Then they tried to do the whole Nex thing, and the community said “get that shit out of our game”.. CCP didn’t listen.

The final thing, after the protests was what some 4500 subscribers, including me with two accounts did. We unsubscribed. I use the word “we”, because I too rage quit. I will admit, I had a $30 a month (two accounts) stake in someone going home yesterday to his family and saying “I was laid off, sorry honey..” Now, while Hilmar has fired 20% of his staff (but still pulling a huge CEO salary), spins the story of “we are sorry”, and “we will focus on flying in space” and “WoD will take a back seat”. The rage in the community, in my opinion, is not about CCP finally admitting their mistakes, it’s because they did not listen long ago, when the players told them to listen. Now the players are shouting “if you listened, people would not be without their jobs you asshats!!”

Personally, I’d like to use this quote from Serenity:  -The Operative - “You know, in certain older civilized cultures, when men failed as entirely as you have, they would throw themselves on their swords.” Where is Hilmar, and why has he not thrown himself on the sword yet? I bet is that he is probably sitting in his office wondering “Why the fsck did they have to unsubscribe!? Stupid Eve players!” (A opinion which might have some truth if you follow Helecity’s tweets)..

You will remember that in my previous post, I compared Hilmar’s act of a ‘open apology’ to the CEO of another company that is not doing that well (my former employer). Today, in a text book move, Hilmar announced that CCP is shedding 20% of the work force. Not surprisingly, the same move was done by my former employer when they started hitting problems. Here is one article on it: http://www.businessday.co.za

I really feel for the employees who are losing their jobs. I don’t feel one inch of sorrow for Hilmar or CCP. Remember the ’18 months’ bullshit? Guess what, 18 months later, your player base was right, you were wrong, and your stupidity not to listen to your customers are now costing people their jobs. Some of these people have families to feed, mortgages to pay, and kids to send to school.

Now, you may ask why I don’t feel sorry for Hilmar (or the other CEO I listed). Trust me when I say that if CCP closes its doors tomorrow, he has made enough to be set for a very long time, and won’t have 10% of the financial worries that the grunts have. So no, I don’t feel sorry for Hilmar.

PS: Someone on the #tweetfleet mentioned that the article also sounded very much like a “you didn’t support our ideas, you unsubscribed, and thus you are to blame for this!”.. interesting point..

It’s interesting that CCP’s CEO released a dev blog yesterday with an apology and a lengthy statement on how CCP lost the way and how they are going to focus on fixing their core game (flying in space) etc etc. If you’re reading this blog, I bet you’ve read the dev blog, and have read at least a dozen people’s blog posts on how this is a good thing, or how this is just word play.

My approach is slightly different, due to personal circumstances. On Monday I resigned from my job, a large retailer here in South Africa with a near 35 000 work force. During the last two years the company has not done well. For the second time in a year, the company has released a ‘earnings warning”, article here. During the last earnings warning, the CEO did almost exactly the same as the CEO of CCP; that is, released a open letter to the customer explaining where the company has failed, and where the company is doing good, and what the company plans to do to get more in touch with it’s customers.

While I have no doubt that both CEO’s feel passionate about their businesses, the similarity of the approach to a crises in the organisation reeks of “we learned to do this in MBA school”. I’m not saying either is good or bad. That is open for personal interpretation.

I’m not planning on re-subscribing to Eve any time soon, so Hillmar’s blog makes no difference to me any more, but I did find the similarity of approach interesting enough to blog about.

Watched the Blade trilogy this weekend with my other half, then yesterday this gem arrives via email.. (she’s a big Twilight fan)..

Last week with the new patch released, my Eve stopped working altogether. I would log in, and the client would crash within a minute or two. We went away for the weekend, and when I logged in tonight, I found the client crashing before the station UI got loaded. One characters training queue had finished. I can’t start a new skill, since the client crashes.

So, unwilling to just rage-quit I tried several solutions. I changed screen resolutions, swapped between full screen and windowed mode and some other in game changes. This didn’t help. Tried to run the game in compatibility mode as Windows Vista SP2, and even XP sp3. None of this helped.

I think my tiredness with CCP and their shit finally just caught up to me, and decided “fuckit”. Logged in to the website and cancelled both my accounts.

To use and adapt one of the coolest quotes by a space ship captain ever: “Final report of the Tengu class ship HMS Jennifer, Captain Serotta Ortot reporting. My Eve client isn’t working. With a little luck, CCP will one day give a fuck about flying in space again. All other assets and cargo are packed and secured in storage. This is Serotta, last survivor of HMS Jennifer signing off”

How convenient that just after the latest set of negative media regarding CCP’s lack of caring about “flying in space”, we see this article from MMORPG.com. I quote:

Phew… that’s a lot of stuff, and EVE players have every reason to be excited about Tranquility as it feels like CCP is getting back to the space part of their game with a lot of fervor.

Erm…thats nice, let’s get the players excited and have them wait (and keep them subscribed) another few months until we release some more bullshit walking in stations crap, and hope they buy in to it.

Oh and then there’s this official statement from the CSM here. More NDA shit, and lip service by CCP and buying time. They can’t even publish un-fucked-by-CCP minutes of the emergency meeting, now want to publish more official statements.

I call bullshit on the whole thing. CCP’s against the wall and buying time. Then again, I’d love to be proved wrong…(because then this game I’ve loved for over 4 years would be awesome again!)

“The greatest stories of EVE are not about going into your room and changing into a new pair of sunglasses.”

Can’t say it better any other way! Find the original article here.

Right, so firstly, I stole this graph from Helecity Boson’s blog. Ask him where he got it, not me. Secondly, if anything is true that this graph indicates, Hilmar needs to pull his head from his ass and wake up. I looked at the Eve client tonight, and there was just over 40 000 users logged in, so the accuracy of the graph doesn’t quite make sense.

Nevertheless, if it is possibly even remotely true, it scares me. Where are the days that Eve was smashing records of over 56 000 users logged in or the top record of something like 63 000 users? We haven’t seen that in a very long time. The statements made are true. We didn’t want Incarna and some walking in stations shit, we don’t want new stuff to wear, we want new fucking in game content! If the amount of complaints aren’t proof enough, the numbers are certainly showing it. Less people logging in, less people playing, and I suspect, less people keeping their subscriptions going.

Even if we take the 63000 user peak, and look at the amount of folks logged in tonight (40 000), we’re talking what…30% drop? It’s mid week, and not the weekend numbers, but if we play some averages, and reduce that to 25% less people, that means in the last 8 or 9 months, CCP has lost a QUARTER of it’s customers! The game has been in existence since what? 2003? It took over seven years to build that PSU, and it’s shed a QUARTER of  that in 9 months? For their sake, I hope two things.. One: there is another Twilight movie, so that their vampire barbie game makes them some profit, because we know Eve paid for it, and two: that Dust 91210 is a success, so that it makes them some profit, because Eve paid for it. They will need income from the two games to survive, because the Eve player base won’t be paying their salaries much longer at this rate.

Personally, I’ve been giving shit away, and even gave a friend of mine in game a Nightmare, because, well, he always wanted one and said he can’t afford one because his play style won’t allow him enough time to grind for one. It’s simply me still winding down. I don’t see myself as a CCP customer in 2012, unless they make some very serious changes. I would love some different lvl4′s, some different PvE content, and some serious love for my former alliance mates out in 0.0!

If I can quote this excellent article at Rock, Paper Shotgun: “CCP have created a service, and that has created expectations. They are not being met.”