Filed under: Professions

In EVE Online's early years, one of its core design philosophies was adherence to a strict risk vs. reward balance scheme. There were riches out there to be found, but to get them, you had to put yourself in the firing line. Police ships patrolled high-security space to keep players safe from piracy, but the only resources available there were low-bounty frigate NPCs and inexpensive ores like Veldspar, Scordite and Omber. In the lawless far-reaches of nullsec, huge NPC bounties and rare ores containing Megacyte and Zydrine tempted hundreds of pilots to head out and make their fortunes.

Nullsec offered absolutely no protection against player attacks, and the only safety to be found was in sheer military force. The biggest and best corporations hoarded these gold mines for themselves, locking down the few entrances into the regions and patrolling the skies for unwanted visitors. Low-security space offered a middle-ground between these two extremes, a place where the everyday pilot could enjoy increased income and pirates were easier to spot. At some time in the past nine years, lowsec lost its place in the game and became simply not worth the effort. But how did that happen, and what can be done to fix it?

In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at why lowsec systems are now ghost towns and suggest an alternative design philosophy that I think could revitalise these under-used areas.

Inferno is right around the corner, with the Escalation to Inferno patch due to hit in two days on Tuesday, April 24th. The patch prepares EVE Online for the coming PvP apocalypse with titan balance tweaks, a new interactive status effect bar, and two very important changes to the NPC drop tables: Manufacturable tech 1 modules will be removed from NPC drop tables, and Rogue Drone NPCs will have their mineral drops replaced with ISK bounties. These are changes players have been suggesting for years, and together they have the potential to bring back mining as one of the most profitable professions in EVE.

If someone asked you where all the minerals come from to build the thousands of ships destroyed in EVE on a daily basis, you might say that you assume most of it comes from mined ore. Mining was originally the biggest source of minerals in the game and one of the most profitable professions, but over the years, that's changed. When level 4 missions added an infinite source of battleship-sized NPCs to high-security space, mission-running quickly overtook mining as the most profitable profession, and bizarrely, as a very good source of minerals. When the drone regions were later released, ratting there also became a huge mineral faucet far in excess of that produced through mining.

In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at the problems faced by mining as a source of minerals and speculate on what will happen to mining as a profession when the Inferno expansion hits.

Funcom's been pretty quiet since its GDC reveal of The Secret World. Today, though, lead designer Martin Bruusgaard has dropped the smack down on the information void via a lengthy blog post on the game's official site.

You'll probably want a couple of caffeinated beverages for this one because Bruusgaard has a lot to say about The Secret World's abilities, skills, gear, progression, and crafting systems. We would try to summarize it for you, but we'd still be typing this time tomorrow, so suffice it to say that basically every mechanical question you have about the game is at least touched on in this post.

There are plenty of interesting tidbits too, like the fact that TSW is shaping up to be one of the more non-linear experiences to be found among the latest crop of AAA MMORPGs. "The players are free to go wherever they want from the beginning, but they will most likely get their ass handed to them in the more difficult zones," Bruusgaard explains.

The second Guild Wars 2 press beta weekend has come and gone, and Massively was there every step of the way. Stay tuned throughout the day today for even more guides, impressions, videos, and Q&As to get you ready for the highly anticipated sequel to Guild Wars.

My Guild Wars 2 beta weekend started off with a whimper instead of a bang. As I fired up the client and got a load of that sexy 2/dragon logo prior to character creation, one of the video cards in my gaming tower decided to give up the ghost. I didn't know this at the time, and as I slogged through the game's opening sequence, I wondered why it was running like pure Charr poo even with the settings dialed down.

I could barely move around the starter village, and after 15 minutes or so, I closed the client in disgust. Later I fired up EverQuest II on that same system and experienced similar subpar performance, so I quickly downloaded the GW2 beta to my laptop.

Ah, now that was more like it. Here was the Tyria I'd glimpsed via screenshots and video over the past few weeks, and I rolled up an Engineer to help determine whether ArenaNet has anything to offer a crusty old newb.

When, oh when will my expansion get here?
Oh when, oh when could it be?
With its new recipes
and crafting dailies,
Oh when, oh when can it be?

I just can't get this song out of my head. No matter how hard I try, I can't keep my mind away from Aion's upcoming 3.0 patch/expansion, Ascension. Ignoring it didn't work. Taking one little peek didn't either. Perhaps sharing and getting the tune stuck in someone else's head might do the trick? Nope; I've tried that for the last two weeks to no avail. I have even tried replacing it with other ditties, jingles, and orchestrations, but the melody always morphs back into something about that tempting little patch. My last hope is to play, but since that won't be a viable option for a while (still no definitive date, dagnabbit!), I guess that leaves me with just one choice: If you can't beat it, join it.

Yup, I will just have to hum along while busying myself learning more about all the neat little tidbits, like the ones coming the way of the crafters. Ah, you thought that perhaps adventurers were the only ones getting the goods? If so, you thought wrong. Beyond recipes, Ascension actually introduces some intriguing (and useful) new features specifically related to crafting.

Anyone who's familiar with EVE Online will have heard stories of the game's criminal underworld, from devastating corporate infiltration to the daily grafting of common con artists. Most players will never perpetrate a scam, but those who do are constantly coming up with new tricks to part you from your hard-earned ISK. For every genuine smooth-talking con-artist who comes up with new schemes and socially engineers his way to a fortune, you'll find dozens of copycats who flood popular chat channels with scams they've seen perpetrated in the past.

On an average day, over 90% of the chat in Jita's local channel is people posting copycat scams, with legitimate offers completely drowned out. There may not even be anyone at the helm with these scams, as a script could easily paste the scam message every few minutes for an entire day. Not confined to Jita, these scams are often replicated across all of the game's main trade hubs and popular mission-running systems. Knowing how these scams work is the first step to protecting yourself from making an expensive and extremely embarrassing mistake.

In this week's EVE Evolved, I explain the trick behind five of EVE's most common copycat scams and how to protect yourself from them.

The Dungeons and Dragons Online developers have been enjoying the game's success, and things are running smoothly, but fans know that doesn't mean the team's been kicking back and relaxing. We've had content updates regularly, and not just little token patches but rather new adventure packs, new races and classes, the addition of crafting, and much more.

Have you enjoyed the past year or so in DDO? Well, hang on to your hats because we spent some time chatting with Eric Boyer and Fernando Paiz and... well, those updates aren't the only thing the developers have been working on.

Click past the break to see what's about to take DDO by storm.

BioWare has created an enormous world with Star Wars: The Old Republic. Over and over again, developers explained that this is absolutely™ the biggest single project BioWare has ever undertaken. This also means that it is the most complex, and not everything you want to know about the game is easy to find.

Every week for the last three years, the community team at BioWare has released tidbits of information, and sometimes when the information trickles out over that span of time, it's hard to keep track of it all. Therefore, the crew here at Massively decided it would be a good idea to compile some of the more common questions that have been asked about SWTOR, all in a single place. Catch all the questions and answers after the break, and if you have any other (serious) questions, feel free to ask them in the comments -- we will do our best to get them answered for you!

HTML5 is somewhat of a mysterious beast. We've probably all heard whispers of the "new" version of the standard web coding language, but to most of us it means very little. After all, why is it number five? Why is there a buzz about this new way of coding websites? Is "coding" even the right word? Oh, I've learned a thing or two over the years; I've built a few websites and have figured out some of the basics. My wife is a graphic designer, so I have learned a lot from her, including some of the stuff that makes up Flash and other graphical... things. But I am far from an expert.

So I decided to ask Ben Adams and and James Niesewand, CTO and CEO of Illyriad Games, respectively, about HTML5. They are really starting to push the boundaries of the language with their game Illyriad. It's fun to learn about this stuff, and it's always nice to know how our mobile games are being made. Click past the cut and read the interview!

Warning: Big words ahead!

If there's one common cry on the City of Heroes forums, it's "give us new power sets!" Fortunately, the upcoming Freedom expansion aims to deliver just that. This morning, CoH's Phil "Synapse" Zeleski offered up a new dev blog outlining one of the planned power sets, Beam Rifle. Available to Blasters and Corruptors (as a primary set) and Defenders (as a secondary set), Beam Rifle is heavy on the AoE and features a signature cascading Disintegrate effect, which can be spread to nearby enemies and causes targets to take ever more damage from the power set's attacks. In a nod to style, Synapse noted that "plasma beams from movies, games, and other sources were the inspiration for the style of beam used by this power set" and that it has "a synthetic, futuristic sound with some 'grime' added [to make it] sound powerful."

In related news, Paragon Studios has reiterated that various CoH-flavored purchasables on the NCsoft store website, including the booster packs and expansion boxes, will be discontinued in advance of the looming F2P conversion. If you can't live without a Steampunk costume in the meantime, you have until August 30th to get your fix.

[Update: A second dev blog outlining each of Beam Rifle's powers in-depth is also now available on the official website.]

In years gone by, exploring the unknown far reaches of the EVE Online universe meant setting a course for nullsec. With no way to install a permanent residence in the most lucrative far-off systems, players would launch dangerous expeditions into the deep with the hope of striking it rich. Nullsec was the only place to mine rare ores containing megacyte and zydrine, and piracy wasn't as common as it is today. For putting themselves at the risk of pirates, miners were rewarded with an income stream greater than that of any other profession in the game. It was a golden age in exploration that wasn't to repeat itself until March 2009's Apocrypha expansion opened 2500 hidden wormhole systems for exploitation.

Things have changed considerably since those early days of EVE. Player-built starbases and outposts have transformed the face of nullsec, allowing alliances to build themselves an empire in the void. December 2009's Dominion expansion brought a complete revamp of the nullsec sovereignty mechanics, allowing alliances to upgrade their space but dramatically increasing the cost of system ownership. Despite all of these updates and improvements, over the past several years we have somehow lost a lot of what made nullsec great in its glory days. Local industry has been replaced by risk-free logistics, and nullsec's risky but rewarding mining profession is now greatly overshadowed by safe highsec mission-running.

With a new iterative nullsec revamp scheduled to begin this winter, I use this week's EVE Evolved to speculate on what can be done to bring back the glory days of nullsec industry.

What are these two Star Wars: The Old Republic companions working on? If you've been following the game for any extended period of time, you know they are working on Crew Skills. This is BioWare's answer to crafting in SWTOR. But Crew Skills reach well beyond crafting; players can gather resources and accumulate faction, as well.

When BioWare introduced us to the system a long while back, only eight crew skills were revealed. However, on Friday, the Community Team gave us a stealth update to the Crew Skills page, revealing all the categories. For example, Archaeology is now listed under gathering skills. Crafting skills will apparently grant players Armstech, Cybertech, and Synthweaving. And finally, we will be able to send our companions on Investigation and Underworld Trading missions.

The Star Wars: The Old Republic Crew Skills page has all the latest information; check that out, then watch Massively next weekend for all the TOR PAX information.