EVE Online To Fill In The Blanks

By Paul Munn | August 13, 2008

I listened to the most recent Drone Bay Podcast Episode 15 — whose carebear mission-running cohost CrazyKinux joined us on Aeropodcast #36 in June — and heard them do a roundtable question you don’t often hear from fans of a given game. “What does this game really need that it doesn’t have?” Of course the PVP mavens chuckled and asked for more new players to shoot, but they all agreed that the game needs new PVE content. A brand new EVE Online Newsletter dropped into my inbox yesterday promising just that starting this fall.

CCP has hired a number of freelance writers and has set up a PVE mission development group headquartered in their new Atlanta office. They’ll be adding new types of missions in addition to the basic fetch and kill missions you’re given now and even hint at “epic mission arcs” or some such. PVE content, in case the MMO lingo isn’t your thing, is Player Versus Environment content, or stuff you can do to earn currency, points, or whatever while fighting for or against NPCs and AIs instead of other players. World of Warcraft, among others is renowned for the strong theme and story of its PVE content, and the Drone Bay guys recognized that in their descriptions of why more PVE would make EVE Online a better game.

Other changes mentioned includes a new referral bonus so those guys on the Drone Bay can finally hook up a banner and get some pocket change in return for all the people who have started subscribing to the game thanks to their Don’t Panic segments that explain things to new players.

Am I subscribing? No, not yet, but I want to once I can put a serious dent in my PS3 and PSP game backlog. And I have the Drone Bay guys to thank. I’ll be clicking through their banner if they put one up when the time comes to subscribe.

To read the full newsletter, go here.