English Version

March will be a very important month for Eve Online history and CCP. Thank to the partnership with Atari, EVE online will be on the shelves in a box version. This event will coincide with the launch of the new expansion pack, Apocrypha. A great relaunching then for this game, that's persisting to have a deserved success since May 2003.

We had the opportunity to interview Ned "CCP Manifest" Coker from the icelander software house.
Here's what he told to us.

Can you talk about the new T3 modular ship? What's the differences between them and T2?There will be modular ships with T1 and T2 components in a next future?
In general, the T3 ships are going to be quite powerful—and a fair amount of that power comes from their customizability, of being able to switch components around and adjust your mid, high, and low slotting as well as capacitor and powergrid capacities. They might not always be as powerfully specialized as the T2 counterparts in one specific area, but the ancient technology going into them will not disappoint.

Could we finally add corporations or ally emblems to our ships?
That’s not currently in the plans for Apocrypha, but there will be some additional choices available to the owners of Tech 3 ships.

What is your thinking about racial civil wars? Are you satisfied? In the new expansion there will be news about this aspect?
Well, with the addition of adding a lot more people to the mix with the box being in stores, we’re going to be giving them a shortcut to factional warfare.  It’s still the quickest way to get people involved in the sort of PvP that EVE is well known for.

The "ambulation" of our avatar is very anticipated by fans. The delay of this feature depends of implementation problems or is it impossible to add ambulation in a programming code that contemplates spacial ships only?
Nothing impossible about it.  We showed a “vertical slice” of some of the functionality of it at Fanfest this past November.  It’s also not an implementation problem. It’s simply the time it takes to perfect what is essentially a whole new type of interaction and gameplay to an existing MMO and make it as realistic as possible.

What about the new graphics? There will be improvements also for non-premium users? And the game will be playable in a large array of PCs as always?
You should check out here. It’ll explain more than I can type out.  We will be improving graphics in each expansion—adding new assets and revamping old ones similar to the reconstruction we did in the EVE Online: Trinity expansion.

Can you talk about your partnership with Atari and your return on the shelves in March?
We’ve entered into a distribution deal with Atari where they leverage their great historical relationship with the gaming industry and CCP handles full publishing ownership of EVE Online and its development.  EVE Online: Apocrypha will be released as a part of the box as well as a few other key goodies for those that purchase it.  However, for existing subscribers, our expansions will always be free and we have no plans on changing that. Atari and CCP are very excited about bringing EVE back to the retail space after several years of being solely available through digital download.
 

What kind of skills we'll need to pilot a T3 ship?
You’ll have to jump on the test server to figure that out.

Could we scan or use "show info" to understand what kind of T3 ship we engage or meet?
It’ll work just like current “show info” on ships.  You won’t know, of course, what’s fitted to it unless you use a scanner.

You have announced the potentiation of npc's AI. It's the first step to improve the single player experience?
While of course there are hundreds of different ways players have found to fly “single player", changing the NPC AI is one of the steps we are using to revamp the “single player” experience. We’re adding a huge epic mission arc to the new player experience and we’ll be adding more of them in the future.

Is it possible to lose the ship in a wormhole? And there will be new ships dedicated to "True Exploration"?
You can definitely lose a ship in a wormhole--if you are destroyed.  There will be some ships that are better at exploration than others, especially if they have bonuses to scanning.  However, wormhole space will be pretty dangerous so flying around in a fragile little ship without friends to protect you will be as dangerous as it always is.



We'd like to thank you Ned and CCP for the interview, and Insurgent New Eden Tribe, an italian corporation, for help us with the questions.