The history of the game's development and updates

EVE Evolved: The making of EVE Online

by Brendan Drain Oct 5th 2008 at 3:00PM

The Evolution of EVE: Stages of a Long Journey

The development of EVE - from concept to release - took a path different from the usual MMOs. Emerging from the hidden dream of a single individual about a space online game, today EVE has evolved into a massively popular MMO. Instead of rushing to “do everything at once,” the development team at CCP chose a phased approach. The game was redesigned eleven times, and each step brought EVE closer to the intended goal. During its launch process, EVE underwent five rewrites, where almost the entire game was thrown in the trash and rebuilt “from scratch.” There were also six partial redesigns.

Let’s take a look at the journey EVE has taken - from the initial concept to the current version.

Big Plans:

CCP set itself a difficult and intriguing goal - to create a game that would be the absolute leader in its field. They wanted to provide players with the rules and tools that would allow them to build their own virtual society. The first major challenge was to convince people that this was fundamentally possible and the project was worth existing. This applied not only to potential investors but also to the specialists that needed to be recruited - real programmers and designers. The journey began from absolutely nothing, and the next important step was the creation of the company structure and management methods to make the most efficient use of the staff being hired.

Before coding began, the developers made several important decisions about which programming language would be used and what server architecture would be adopted. As we now all know, the choice was made in favor of stackless Python and the Windows SQL server. Since the launch of the very first alpha test, developers have constantly had to juggle the need to fix bugs that were discovered and to create new features. Remembering the difficulties of that time, the Chief Technology Officer (and now the president of CCP) Hilmar Veigar Pétursson says that already from beta, players played as if it was a finished product, rather than a test version.

Release:

When coding was mostly complete, EVE went through its “phased delivery” plan in eleven parts and quickly evolved from a simple two-dimensional client and a couple of servers to a truly imposing three-dimensional version. EVE was officially released for sale in May 2003 under the title “EVE Online: The Second Genesis.” The publisher was Simon & Schuster Interactive. The boxed versions of the game included a manual, a CD with the gold release of the client, and a CD key for online registration. Shortly after the release, CCP bought back the publishing rights from Simon & Schuster and since then fully switched to exclusively digital distribution methods. Owning the publishing rights to its own creation gave CCP a unique creative advantage, allowing them to experiment with risky game design ideas that other publishers would never consider being tied down by the commercial side of the issue.

Updates:

Unlike many other MMOs, in EVE updates and major expansions are completely free. To maintain novelty and interest, major expansions are directly added to the game universe, and players are required to update their clients to the latest version. Even if one wishes to play an old version of EVE and finds an old client on disk, unfortunately, it won’t be possible to log in because the servers supporting that version no longer exist. But for the free nature of these expansions and updates, players pay with new bugs constantly creeping into what seem to be polished updates. The Q&A department at CCP has to work tirelessly around the clock to keep up with this rolling snowball. Over the five years that separate us from the release moment, EVE has gone through eight major expansions. This results in an average of one expansion every six months, or thereabouts.

Expansion #1 - Castor:

Released in December 2003, Castor was the first expansion of EVE. In addition to numerous balance adjustments and improvements to current gameplay elements, this patch included several new objects and mechanisms that players consider to be from the “beginning of the world.” For example, the thirty-second cloak after a jump through a gate was introduced in Castor. Before that, jumping into a potentially dangerous system was a big game of Russian roulette with enormous risks. T2 modules and ships also made their debut in this update, with the first such module being the Miner II, and the first class of ships being the Interceptors. This patch introduced several player-capturable stations in null-security regions. These precursors to today’s outposts had all the properties of standard NPC stations but lacked today’s capabilities related to defense and sovereignty.

Expansion #2 – Exodus:

Initially named “Shiva,” Exodus was released in November 2004 and was, in fact, the first fairly substantial content expansion of EVE. Personally, it was the first major update for me, and, as I remember, it significantly changed gameplay. This expansion introduced destroyers and battlecruisers to fill the gaps between frigates, cruisers, and battleships. Miners were overjoyed when they were also gifted their chunk of content: specialized mining barges and brand new mining strips. But apart from that, as if the new classes of ships and T2 modules were not enough, Exodus also brought us the system of complexes and POSes.

The “complexes” system paved the way for a revolution in mission design. The familiar “multi-level encounters” system was created in Exodus as a sequence of pockets linked in a chain - one after the other. Players had to clear one pocket to unlock the gate to the next one. This allowed structured mission scenarios to be created, turning them into something akin to dungeons. This patch also formalized the gaming mechanics of alliances, which had already existed for some time de facto, but were manually implemented by players. Exodus, however, first showed us new types of NPCs, such as rogue drones, commander spawns, and the dream of every hunter - valuable NPC officers.

Expansion #3 – Cold War:

Cold War was not a full expansion per se; however, it introduced a significant amount of new game content. Special COSMOS areas were created with high-reward one-off missions that reminded many of the favorite quests in other MMOs. Player-placed outposts first appeared in the form of functionally limited versions of NPC stations. POSes began to play their role in establishing a sovereignty system that reduced the fuel consumption of POSs by a quarter and allowed for the construction of outposts. Additional T2 modules and the first capital ships also made their debut.

Freighters first left the docks and began to navigate space. These behemoths of the universe were initially required for establishing outposts, but ultimately came to be used almost exclusively for massive trading operations within the empire. Next came dreadnoughts, designed for attacking outposts rather than POSs. Their high cost and skill requirements limited the number of dread pilots for almost a year, preventing them from becoming a serious threat. Today, however, it is not uncommon to see fleets of over fifty dreadnoughts deployed at the frontlines of a star system.

Expansion #4 – Red Moon Rising:

One of the largest patches at the time - the famous RMR: Red Moon Rising - was designed to lay the groundwork for the intended faction wars. In RMR, we received three new capital ships: the carrier, its “big brother” the mothership, and, of course, the Titans. A whole bouquet of new T2 ships emerged: from T2 barges and command ships to specialized interdictors and recon ships. In this patch, drones were also significantly nerfed: the number of simultaneously active drones was limited to five, but at the same time, their combat and defensive characteristics were enhanced. The Amarr and Gallente races finally obtained their long-awaited COSMOS constellations, and a month later, each race received a new bloodline (to make things more fun for new players and less boring for old ones).

Expansion #5 – Revelations I:

Perhaps the most significant expansion of EVE ever seen - Revelations - turned out to be so massive that at one point CCP realized that it would not be possible to complete everything intended by the set deadline. The project was broken down into several sequential stages, with the first (and largest) being called Revelations I. I remember that as we entered EVE right after the patch, it felt as if we had accidentally logged into a completely different, entirely new game. During this patch, eight new regions were opened, filled with belt drones, whose hunting yielded alloys in wrecks, instead of the usual bounty and “regular” loot. A full set of Tier 3 battleships and Tier 2 battlecruisers was introduced, one for each race. Honestly, these new ships were not particularly necessary for gameplay. It seems to have just been a concession for players who had to rely on T1 ships due to the extreme costs and skill requirements of T2 ships.

After all T2 modules were introduced into the game and BPO for them were placed with players, CCP officially announced the end of the T2 BPO lottery. It was replaced with a new invention mechanism. Invention allows players to create their own T2 blueprints. And while they may not be very efficient in terms of ME and PE, and have a limited number of runs, the advent of invention brought T2 module and ship manufacturing out of the “narrow circle of limited individuals” - BPO owners - into the masses.

This patch also introduced decent scaling capabilities for the star system and galaxy map view. A new type of module, called rigs, was introduced. All T1 ships have three rig slots, while T2 ships only have two. Rigs were designed as costly “elite” attachments that mainly enhance the defensive characteristics of a ship. This innovation spawned yet another mini-profession - salvagers: players who salvage wrecks and collect parts to build new rigs. This patch also brought a completely new contract system, which replaced the old escrow system that had existed from the beginning and was much less convenient for finding specific items.

But perhaps the most significant upheaval was caused by the new exploration system, called “exploration.” Within this concept, hidden plexes regularly respawn all over the gaming universe's systems. These plexes can be scanned down using probes and cleared for associated profits and, of course, fun. The best profit from exploration, of course, comes in deep nulls, in those regions where the most enthusiastic and earliest adepts of exploration earned tens of billions selling found BPOs to data interfaces. These data interfaces are necessary for invention, and the first people who got their hands on these lucrative veins raked in huge mountains of ISK from the unbelievably expensive T2 ships and modules, the true cost of which was far from market prices.

Expansion #6 – Revelations II:

Revelations II was a mini-expansion focused on revising and expanding some already existing game mechanics. POS warfare received a boost with the introduction of faction towers, cyno-jammers, and stationary cap-neutralizers. Additionally, jump bridges were introduced, which effectively function as miniature gates allowing players to link two systems together. All defensive structures were moved out of the field, making them accessible for attack. There were attempts to create specific anti-fleet weaponry in the form of expensive area-effect bombs for stealth bombers and remote ECM bursts for motherships. However, neither innovation proved particularly effective against fleets.

As a result of this patch, new plexes for exploration and new missions appeared, including the long-awaited level five missions designed for completion with capital ships or small gangs. Unfortunately, the rewards from these level five missions turned out to be disproportionately small compared to their difficulty level, resulting in relatively few players engaging with them. Again, most level five missions do not allow completion with capitals.

This patch launched a new initiative called “need for speed,” under which the development team began to seek sources of lag and optimize parts of the code. In the second Revelations, a mechanic of “overheating” was introduced, allowing users to overheat modules for a short time to improve their effectiveness.

Expansion #7 – Trinity:

If the first Revelations wasn’t the largest expansion, then Trinity certainly was! The entire spectrum of ships was completely overhauled from top to bottom, with numerous improvements made to ships of all races. Amarr ships, in particular, received significant benefits from this patch. A whole new bouquet of T2 ships became available: from nimble and efficient electronic attack frigates to just as unwieldy, yet expensive descendants of freighters - jump freighters equipped with jump drives. Heavy interdictors opened a new era of tackling, combining powerful tanking with excellent tackling capabilities.

The Marauders, as a T2 battleship class, were finally introduced to the public, taking the prestigious title of “Best agent-running ships in the Universe” away from faction battleships. With four weapon or missile slots and a hundred percent bonus to damage, Marauders are effectively equivalent to eight-slot ships, yet consume only half the CPU, powergrid, and ammunition. The extra high slots are used for utility modules, for which Marauders also have bonuses on speed and range.

To improve the efficiency of covert operations, a new class of battleship - Black Ops - was created. These ships are equipped with the same armaments as their T1 prototypes but also come with a full jump drive and can use a miniature jump portal generator to transport a gang of cov-ops, recons, and bombers to an enemy system. The potential and versatility of Black Ops are so great that they are compared to a Swiss Army knife capable of slicing through the delicate fabric of EVE's balance. For this reason, Black Ops were originally pre-nerfed, and their capabilities will be further rebalanced upwards in future patches.

In Trinity, scripts were introduced that can be loaded into many modules to modify their actions. The need for buffs to specialized drone-carrying ships led to a rethinking of the approach to drone management. The drone bay on many ships was increased in volume. However, to prevent the use of inappropriate drones by frigates and cruisers, a new restriction called bandwidth was introduced - drone bandwidth. This parameter limits the total number of active drones you can control at any given time. Thus, it became possible to confidently increase the drone bay volume of the ship without the fear of unbalancing its damage output.

Trinity also introduced important graphic improvements, albeit in an optional mode. Since then, and to this day, a premium version of the client exists in parallel with its “classic” prototype, and both are updated simultaneously with every patch. The premium client requires a graphics card that supports shader version three and significantly enhances the quality of graphics compared to the classic client. The remainder of the patch was devoted to countless fixes and performance optimizations.

Expansion #8 – Empyrean Age:

Initially planned as one of Trinity's features, but later split into a separate project, Empyrean Age was introduced in the form of a series of small patches. We are currently at stage 1.1.2, which is a micro-update of version 1.1.1. The main content of this expansion is the faction wars system, which allows both corporations as a whole and individual players to register for the voluntary militia of one of the four main NPC factions and engage in combat against the opposing faction's militia. Since the first launch on June 10 and until now, very few innovations have been introduced into this system. Unfortunately, by this point, many participants in the faction wars have grown quite tired of it and have switched to other activities. Initial engagement was also not stellar: only about five percent of the subscriber base joined this game, with several role-playing alliances unable to join the faction wars since joining the militia of entire alliances was not covered by the game's mechanics.

Each race received a new faction variant of the cruiser, and the Amarr, due to their own greed, somehow snagged a new frigate as well, justifying this by saying they wanted to “not to be worse than all other races.” In the Empyrean Age 1.1 patch, some important changes were made to Concord's actions. In response to the extreme ease of life for suicide gankers, CCP decided to tighten the strap on the oxygen supply hose to their capsules slightly. The reaction time of Concord was significantly reduced, with penalties to security status nearly tripled for attacks. Plans for the elimination of insurance for ships destroyed by Concord should ultimately set most suicide gankers on the path to rehabilitation.

Expansion#9 Apocrypha

Apocrypha is another free expansion for the multiplayer universe of EVE Online. Released on March 10; thanks to a deal between CCP and Atari, the boxed version of the game can be found on the shelves of all major stores. Apocrypha includes:

— Wormholes. Pilots will have the opportunity to explore thousands of new star systems by entering them through randomly appearing “Wormholes” scattered throughout New Eden.

— New ships. The game has introduced third-tier technological ships; players will not only be able to pilot these ships but also build them themselves. With modular subsystems, the number of variations of these ships exceeds a thousand. Currently, three variations are available for each of the five modules.

— Manufacturing. Advanced manufacturing systems will allow for the creation of blueprints for producing various components of third-tier technology.

— Training. The training process has been redesigned, allowing every new player to learn more about the universe.

— New missions. Players will undertake thousands of new tasks, for which they can earn mind-blowing rewards.

— Skill queue. Apocrypha will introduce the long-awaited innovation: players will be able to queue skill training, significantly reducing time lost.

— New fitting window. The expansion includes a completely redesigned ship fitting window, which has become drastically more user-friendly.

— Localization. Full Russian localization, including a complete knowledge base and support for Russian players, will be available soon.

The Future:

The next big expansion of EVE is expected to be “Ambulation,” colloquially referred to as “Walking in Stations.” This expansion does not yet have a clearly defined release date, although the latest video trailer shows how far development has progressed. When we finally receive the release, the already exhilarating gameplay of EVE will transition to the next level. EVE is a constantly changing and evolving MMO. And this is the main reason why I am still playing it after all these years, and I can’t help but itch to look at the next page of EVE's history - what else awaits us there.

Video from the upcoming update: