Eve Online Expands Its Horizons With Kali

After a not-so-enthusiastic initial reception by skeptical gamers, Eve Online can now say that first impressions are indeed wrong. Having recently hit 130,000 subscribers, there really is a reason to celebrate, it being a full 1% percent of the total MMO market. And it is still growing. Continuing to become more popular and more versatile, Eve Online is now ready to expand with the launch of a second Chinese-language shard. Although merely in its Beta Stage, it already pulls in 30,000 concurrent users.

But more imminently being watched out for is Kali.

Kali is the next phase of the game, and is a massive multi-patch expansion. Nathan Richardsson, Executive Producer of CCP, is heading the coordination for its Reykjavik team.  According to an interview granted by Richardsson, it represents a kind of mature phase for Eve, it being the manifestation of the lessons that developer CCP has learned in the creation process of the game. The scope is huge and will leave few aspects of the original game untouched.

“Kali is something which was has been talked about for quite some time, growing to a size where we were of course going to conquer the world – and then some…The risk applies to both gameplay, where a feature can be too disruptive or simply not work, or in the worst case scenario, cause direct harm to the universe if it turns exploitable.”

The dangers to be faced by the player in the game come in varying degrees: The new modes to interact basically allows players to generate their own content via missions. The significance of this is that Kali could produce new ways for in-game entrepreneurs to use the people around them, and to out-compete their rivals.

NEW TOYS IN SPACE

For each race, there will be eight new ships, a battleship and a battlecruiser. Also, there will be Combat Boosters acquired through Gas Cloud mining in unique 0.0 COSMOS regions and processed in player Starbases and a whole lot of other improvements to the current systems. The Combat Boosters are space drugs which leave players debilitated after getting pumped-up for a fight.

BIGGER PLAYGROUND

Eight new regions will also be opened in space, thereby expanding the territory where players can build their empires. “With the growing population of the EVE universe, more and more people venturing – or wanting to venture – into 0.0 space, we felt we needed to open up this virgin territory, which requires players to build up from scratch,” explains Richardsson. Furthermore, “We like that people are afraid to go into 0.0 space (the dangerous peripheral area), it’s supposed to be that to a certain extent, but we believe we need to introduce these players to the gameplay happening there and at the same time adequately balance the risk-vs-reward of the inner-systems vs. 0.0, so that even though they suffer losses, the reward is worth it.”

Fingers crossed, gamers will soon be able to experience the ultimate space exploration experience through Kali this September.

After a not-so-enthusiastic initial reception by skeptical gamers, Eve Online can now say that first impressions are indeed wrong. Having recently hit 130,000 subscribers, there really is a reason to celebrate, it being a full 1% percent of the total MMO market. And it is still growing. Continuing to become more popular and more versatile, Eve Online is now ready to expand with the launch of a second Chinese-language shard. Although merely in its Beta Stage, it already pulls in 30,000 concurrent users.

But more imminently being watched out for is Kali.

Kali is the next phase of the game, and is a massive multi-patch expansion. Nathan Richardsson, Executive Producer of CCP, is heading the coordination for its Reykjavik team.  According to an interview granted by Richardsson, it represents a kind of mature phase for Eve, it being the manifestation of the lessons that developer CCP has learned in the creation process of the game. The scope is huge and will leave few aspects of the original game untouched.

“Kali is something which was has been talked about for quite some time, growing to a size where we were of course going to conquer the world – and then some…The risk applies to both gameplay, where a feature can be too disruptive or simply not work, or in the worst case scenario, cause direct harm to the universe if it turns exploitable.”

The dangers to be faced by the player in the game come in varying degrees: The new modes to interact basically allows players to generate their own content via missions. The significance of this is that Kali could produce new ways for in-game entrepreneurs to use the people around them, and to out-compete their rivals.

NEW TOYS IN SPACE

For each race, there will be eight new ships, a battleship and a battlecruiser. Also, there will be Combat Boosters acquired through Gas Cloud mining in unique 0.0 COSMOS regions and processed in player Starbases and a whole lot of other improvements to the current systems. The Combat Boosters are space drugs which leave players debilitated after getting pumped-up for a fight.

BIGGER PLAYGROUND

Eight new regions will also be opened in space, thereby expanding the territory where players can build their empires. “With the growing population of the EVE universe, more and more people venturing – or wanting to venture – into 0.0 space, we felt we needed to open up this virgin territory, which requires players to build up from scratch,” explains Richardsson. Furthermore, “We like that people are afraid to go into 0.0 space (the dangerous peripheral area), it’s supposed to be that to a certain extent, but we believe we need to introduce these players to the gameplay happening there and at the same time adequately balance the risk-vs-reward of the inner-systems vs. 0.0, so that even though they suffer losses, the reward is worth it.”

Fingers crossed, gamers will soon be able to experience the ultimate space exploration experience through Kali this September.