Live Events: Only the Beginning
Without going into too much detail about how much fun we had doing the Sansha Reborn live events last year or how pleased we are with the overwhelmingly positive reaction to them (you can watch/listen to CCP Dropbear and me whining about all that here, here, here, here, here, here and here), we'd just like to say thank you to the EVE Online community for once again amazing us with your input and helping us define one of the game's most iconic expansions. Seriously, without the dynamic storyline that evolved largely due to player activity, live events and Incursion wouldn't have been nearly as exciting. Nobody wants to sit around chatting about the good old days for hours on end, though, so on with the new stuff!
As some of you have already noticed, Sansha is back (uhm… again) with a vengeance (uhm… another vengeance), having switched his focus from abducting civilians off of planets to hunting down the people who worked to thwart that operation: capsuleers. He's upgraded his armada to include the types of ships found in incursions and he's no longer going to just sit around and wait for capsuleers to interfere with his plans, so he's never been more dangerous than he is now. If you're heading into incursion systems thinking you know what to expect, think again.
Beyond that, there are entirely new live event plot lines in the works, with at least one of them already in its initial stages of deployment. As both CCP Dropbear and I have advanced onset ADD, permanent insomnia, chronic workaholism, we're going to roll them all out simultaneously. There are going to be several stories unfolding, hopefully enough to appeal to a wide array of play styles. We’re aiming to please you lore hounds with some in-depth historical revelations, but everything we learned from the Sansha events let us know that players love to fight as well, so be ready for more of that, too.
The most important thing we learned, though, is that we're only half of the live event team; without a heavy involvement by the players, it's just static content, and that’s not what we want out of this. If you really want to get involved in the story of EVE Online, there’s never been a better opportunity!
It’s going to be one hell of a summer.