BB36 – Empires to Burn
Welcome to the thirty-sixth edition of the EVE Blog Banter, the community discussion that brings the collective minds of the EVE blogosphere together to chew the cud, exchange opinions or troll the world.
“With the Inferno expansion upon us, new seeds have been planted in the ongoing evolution of EVE Online. With every expansion comes new trials and challenges, game-changing mechanics and fresh ideas. After nine years and seventeen expansions, EVE has grown far more than most other MMOGs can hope for. Which expansions have brought the highs and lows, which have been the best and the worst for EVE Online?”
As the blogosphere warm themselves by the blazing Inferno, they stare wistfully into the flames and conjure memories of expansions past…
I started playing close to four years ago and had barely dipped my toes into the water when the Empyrean Age expansion was released. It will always stick in my memory at least in part because of the log in screen. That music was something special, you got that on log in THEN started flying past massive battleships in your tonka toy sized frigate. That, if nothing else, evoked a sense of awe.
I still remember the day when I undocked from a station and saw four marauders clustered around a scimitar. I think I docked out of sheer WTF and undocked again just because I didn’t quite believe it. Seeing a rare machine like an Ishtar was a big deal back then. But four marauders..?!?!?!
Each subsequent release brought something new to the game – but it was that sense of scale and how small you were by comparison that will always make Empyrean Age something special for me.
As far as the other expansions go – I’ve now experienced some good and some not so good, and some quite frankly, that did absolutely nothing at all for me.
Here’s something of a summary of highlights and lowlights:
Quantum Rise – Orca. Nothing else to report. Move along…
Apocrypha – Wormholes (awesome!). This is itself expanded where we can go in EvE and reinforced just how dangerous it can be. Both absolutely necessary. Add to that T3 and a better training queue. In many ways (imho) the second most successful expansion.
Dominion – Meh.
Tyrannis – Found it to be meh and a PITA from the perspective of running a POS. In hindsight, I actually think it’s pretty good as PI adds another passive income generation stream. Even found I don’t mind doing ice mining. Good god.
Incursions – Loved the idea of it. Never done it. When it became apparent that the AI was insufficiently complex and that runners could effectively game/farm the system to their hearts content, it effectively became the new L4 iskie grind replacement, I kind of turned off to it. Sigh. The Noctis was a real highlight. Too bad they went and nerfed the loot tables later on… oh well.
Incarna – Walking in stations. Played with it for about a minute and turned it off, never to be switched on again. Enough said.
Crucible – This was a real return to form for CCP. I’m slightly biased in that I’m a Gallente pilot, and their ships seriously needed some love. Between the speed and agility upgrades and the rebalancing of hybrid weapons, Gallente are now competitive. They’re not at the top of the pile by any means, but at least we have a better chance of doing well in a fight. Other highlights include faster POS anchoring and onlining times (I could kiss you just for that alone) and damage output being shown in your fitting window. Gun DPS? Check. Drone DPS? Check. Combined DPS? Awesome 🙂 This was a real return to form by CCP and well overdue. Putting aside the misty memories of Empyrean Age, this is hands down THE best expansion to date imho with Apocrypha next in line. They also made EvE damn pretty 🙂
Inferno – New missile graphics. The drone DPS module. Doing some material research right now, but will see how the T2 version makes a difference to some of my favorite ships. Not quite so keen on the new inventory system, but we’ll see how that goes. Right now it’s too early to say, but as far as EvE goes it continues thematically with ships in space which is a very very good thing. Moar please. Definitely!
Other BBanterers:
http://structuredamage.org/2012/05/25/bb36-a-noobs-view/
http://eveoganda.blogspot.com/2012/05/bb36-wonder-and-blunder.html
http://www.sobaseki.com/wordpress/2012/05/25/bb36/
More to come when posted
FS
H
P.S If you’re out there hunting down sites and you come across a Proteus whose drones are utterly tearing the site apart, it will probably be me….
Aggressive Logistics 