EVE Online has always been home to a universe and a community that defies conventional logic. Many of EVE’s veterans often share with us the political intrigue and engaging conflicts that fuel the (in)famous escapades of the inhabitants of EVE. In addition to these unique and often extravagant events, there is the basic set of rules that seems to apply to MMOs in general, regardless of their theme and content that, in EVE Online, takes everything we know about how people interact in online games and throws it completely out the window.
Over the past six or seven years, the group size required for the most epic of epic content in MMOs has been steadily shrinking to accommodate how people interact and play these games. Finding 39 other people on the same schedule and interested in doing the same thing as you is no easy task in any community, real or virtual. It’s actually near impossible. However, in EVE Online, almost daily at least 150 players find each other, ‘fleet up’ and head off to battle, often to clash with another group of 150 players that not only managed to do the same thing, but did so at the same time in the same corner of the not-so-small 7,000 star system universe. Mobilizing 300 warriors to dine in Hell (or at least, at their keyboards) is the stuff legends are made of, especially in a game genre where 40 has long been considered too daunting to even consider.
It is a consistent pattern among MMOs to grow for several months and then fight an endless war against the gradual decline of the game’s population. Even the wildly popular behemoth, World of Warcraft, which has staved off decline for over a half a decade has finally felt the natural shift toward a declining player base commonly seen among subscription
MMOs. The universe of EVE Online is organic and filled with life but it is anything but natural. In recent announcements from CCP Games, it has been relayed that EVE Online is still growing, bucking the trend once again and retaining its title of the subscription MMO that has consistently grown every year since release.
That universe is getting larger soon. How soon, you ask? DUST 514 to be exact. The game is a first-person shooter that takes place on the planet surfaces within the EVE universe. While DUST 514 is separate in both gameplay and platform, the intent is to link the two virtual worlds together so that actions on one sides can and will affect the other. Aside from being a revolutionary step forward for online gaming and being yet another one of CCP’s thundering hammerstrikes at the wall of the impossible, such a project could potentially expand the EVE community to include the throngs of avid FPS gamers – a legion that has their own unique crazy, as well.
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