EVE Online lead designer Noah Ward has a tough job. Not only does he have to keep hundreds of thousands of players who enjoy the service happy by constantly updating and improving the game for them, he has to try and expand its audience -- while also not ruining the game for its existing fans. He has to figure out how to get the online console shooter Dust 514, under development in CCP's Shanghai studio, integrated with the main MMO without disrupting it -- in fact, make it additive to the experience.
CCP's EVE Online Fanfest, which takes place in Reykjavik, Iceland, is coming up soon, and the team has been working extremely hard on all of these fronts and more. In this extensive interview, the lead designer speaks to Gamasutra about the influences that are leading to changes in the game.
It's important to Ward to make sure he balances out relations with EVE's player government, the Council of Stellar Management, with the need to attract new users.
He also talks about how the company is doing research and metrics-gathering on both player and economic fronts, which is impacting the design of the game, and how social games are influencing his decisions on the design of EVE.
Game Rant recently spoke with some long-time EVE Online players who all shared some key advice for any players jumping into EVE for the first time.
Whether they teach you the easy way or the space death hard way remains to be seen.
Eve Online Is A 9 to 5 unpaid job With A Strongly Biased Community Willing To Trap You Into Their Sunk Cost Fallacy.
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Wccftech interviewed CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson at EVE Fanfest to talk about Online, Frontier, Vanguard, and more.
