I feel that I greatly underestimated Crucible in terms of its overall impact on EVE (at least day-one impact), which is somewhat surprising to me since I watched all the dev videos and read all the blogs. I thought I knew what was coming and how important/noticeable it would be, but nope.
The new nebulas are amazing. They look phenomenal, and the whole “they actually exist between different systems” is more impressive than I first gave it credit. What was/is obvious, and what I somehow missed, is that the new nebulas improve what you are looking at when in space, and “when in space” is a pretty significant thing in EVE. In other words, this change is more “we upgraded all of the terrain textures in the world” than “we made a single zone look better”, to bring in a more standard MMO example. This also makes traveling between systems more interesting, as rather than seeing similar-looking backgrounds, you now have distinct focal-points all across New Eden, which just happen to look really cool.
The UI changes: Being able to jump to and through a gate is one of those “this just NOW got added?” changes that is a lot cooler in-game than it seems on paper. Same for MOTD in non-custom channels. UI scaling works as expected, but that’s a very good thing. I’m sure in the days to come I’ll notice a lot of other little new things that just make playing more fun.
My Caldari Navy Raven looks like a beast now. Sure digital camo paint makes little sense in space, but whatever, it looks cool. The ship still looks like a Raven, but the changes to it make it look far more deadly. Good stuff. Same but lesser effect on all my other Caldari ships; they just look better than they did pre-expansion, and while that’s something we should all expect from our MMOs, it seems to rarely work that way.
Shots missing + lasers = win. Running a Sansha mission last night was like being in a disco lightshow, but in a good way. Same deal for the engine trails; a little thing that is noticeable the first time, and stays looking cool the 10th time.
And in non-expansion but EVE news, DiS is at war again, this time from a random 7 man corp. DiS members suspect it’s due to this blog, and if that’s true, can someone please comment to confirm so I can take full credit for bringing action to the Corp? Thanks.
Last night one of our members got caught at a gate in his Noctis, and I was able to fly over before he went poof in a lightly fitted Merlin frig. The enemy switched his scram off the Noctis (full of mission loot) on to my ship, suspecting I might be a real threat. I wasn’t (he was in a speed-fit Crow vs my meta 1-fit ship), but the distraction saved an expensive ship full of loot, and my total loss after insurance (go go platinum) was less than 50k ISK (he also flew away before looting me, so I was able to recover what dropped). Sadly I can’t play tonight, but hopefully they stay active and more action happens. No better way to learn how to PvP than by actually doing it, right?
Hardcore Casual 
“..Being able to jump to and through a gate..”
Awesome change, imho.
“..at war again .. DiS members suspect it’s due to this blog”
Knew you’d push Tobold too far one of these days.
Can’t be him, the people we are fighting understand EVE.
“””Knew you’d push Tobold too far one of these days.”””
Heh I find carebears kind of scareh actually.
Soooo creepy as they are full of impotent rage at all the “griefers” (which is apparently anyone that plays a pvp game) in the world.
One of my favorite small changes is a combination of
* they have put extra larger stars for the neigbouring systems (not part of the background texture from the look of it)
* The jumpgates now point at these stars
So when you ship goes “whoosh” through a gate, it is actually visibly being shot in the direction of the star.
“Soooo creepy as they are full of impotent rage at all the “griefers” (which is apparently anyone that plays a pvp game) in the world.”
True bears love a sandbox, so long as everyone is playing _their_ way with the sand. ;-)
And who needs wardecs for that? I went cruising around Sortet scanning down missioners in fat BSes and looting wrecks to see if they’d aggro… none did, and a few even smacked in local (ballsy move — lots of times THAT will get a wardec) thinking they’d “grief” me back. Simple fact is, I enjoy smack, both giving and receiving, and consider it an important part of the psychological metagame — and I really don’t care if you don’t aggress me. Eventually I’ll find some idiot who will, then it’ll be funtime for one (me) or both of us. Don’t worry, I bait like this in lolsex — sit in a pile of wrecks in a PvP-fit ship, wait in a pile of wrecks, and play “ohnoes imma lil carebear what do I do plzdonthurtmeez….*scram-web-ZAP!* haha…sucker.” I figure turn-about is fair play too, and would welcome someone to bait me like that. Might actually lead to a :goodfight: instead of a :goodblob: ;-)
Anyways, back on track — personally, the more I think about hisec, the less I think OF hisec. Wardecs especially. Personally if you guys need some neut RR or scouting of your own, let me know in-game (same name) and I’ll bump you guys an alt assist. ;-)
For the record: I’m not a pirate, I’m an economic terrorist. Pirates you see coming from a mile away. Me, I look just like the innocent sweet bear next door… ;-)
Dude, your blog. It is unreadable. Geocities went out of style years ago – white or black backgrounds are perfectly acceptable.
Works fine on Chrome. Perhaps if you gave some more info as to what exactly is wrong that’d be more help. But thanksforplayin. ;-)
What more do you need to know? Your blog is unreadable. Use a white or black background.
The text is hard to read due to the background behind the text being an image, rather than white.
Works fine? Yes. Legible? No. Especially where the image goes nearly white… white with white text. But none of it is comfortable. Use the background image for the margins and the plain black of the margins for a background.
Or don’t. It’s your blog, of course. But I have *a lot* of time to kill at work, and even I can’t read it. I can’t imagine I’m the first one to find my way to your blog, calculate the value of my eyes and a headache vs the value of whatever you have to say, and leave without reading anything.
It does work well in Chrome – because you can pop open the dev tools and quickly disable the background image that makes it completely unreadable. :-)
Crucible may be the all time fav of players. Just too many things that make playing easier. The warp and jump is one of those that just keep on giving. I just did a 30 jump trip in an Orca and it didn’t feel like being tortured.
I am actually looking forward to the next expansion.