EVE's Starbases (or Player Owned Stations) are supposed to be useful orbital structures that give corporations the ability to create a rest-stop in strategically important locations. Think motorway service station, but in space. Unfortunately, given that their acronym is POS, even CCP admit that the feature is "in need of several changes to bring them up to the usability standards of modern EVE". With that in mind, they're embarking on a series of improvements due to dock with the free Odyssey expansion in June.

"We’re working hard to get as much of the backlog as possible done for the June 4th Odyssey release," writes 'CCP Fozzie' in a dev blog update.

Even so, he warns that not every planned feature will make the expansion's launch. "This is our educated estimate of what we think we can deliver based on this time period, but we cannot rule out roadblocks arising including but not limited to: unforeseen technical hurdles blocking a feature, the starbase code gaining self-awareness, seizing the building’s climate control system and roasting us all alive, and/or emergency response tasks taking developer time from feature work." All seem like valid concerns.

CCP are giving the highest priority to the number one item on the CSM's list of requirements: private starbase hangers. Both an item storage and ship storage version of the structures are being developed, although CCP are currently unsure whether the ship storage will be ready in time for Odyssey. "We are aware that for wormhole residents especially the ship storage version of a personal hangar would be the most valuable addition, but we are starting with the simpler implementation task before tackling the more complicated personal version of the Ship Maintenance Array." Here's what they have planned:


"Similar fittings to a Corporate Hangar Array, but higher build cost.
"Normal members viewing the structure only see their own items, in the same way as when someone views the contents of a planetary customs office.
"Corp directors have the ability to see what members have items in the hangar, but do not have the ability to take or place items from/in the hangars.
"No limit on the number of characters that can use the structure, but storage is limited per character. The exact per-character volume is undecided but we are currently considering a range from 10,000m3 to 40,000m3.
"If a member leaves the corp, his or her items are left in the structure but cannot be accessed unless the player rejoins.
"If the structure is destroyed, it drops some but not all of the loot contained within.
"If the structure is unanchored, all contents are destroyed. A confirmation box warns the player if the structure is not empty, and ensures that the items are not destroyed by accident."


Other changes include repackaging of undamaged modules and drones for stacking, the ability to swap and fit a Strategic Cruiser's subsystems, access to all Starbase structures from one location inside the shield, UI improvements, and the removal of the sovereignty requirement from Capital Ship Maintenance Arrays. As a non-EVE player, my face would struggle to look any blanker right now. Fortunately, EVE fans can get a detailed overview of what these changes will involve from the update post.

You can read more about Odyssey's planned features here.

CCP's decade-old space sandbox (starbox?) will be changing once again on June 4. Odyssey, the 19th free expansion to the game, is slated to bring more incentives for exploration and a "fresh and accessible user interface." This will not be the first such overhaul for Spreadsheet Commando's UI, and seems in line with a general design direction of making the game less dauntingly byzantine for new pilots.

Also on the dockett are "universe-wide resource redistribution and ship rebalancing will shake up the entire EVE metagame." I'm not sure what kinds of redistribution are planned, but its sure to cause chaos as alliances maneuver to control the new high-yield systems. Beautiful, wondrous chaos.

We'll no doubt be hearing more about Odyssey at Fanfest in April. Along with, maybe, some more soild info on that other game CCP's supposed to be working on. *COUGH COUGH COUGH*

CCP Games today announces that their epic ships-n-stats sci-fi MMO has soared past the 500,000 subscriber mark, filling the interstellar skies with an ever-growing number of ruthlessly Machiavellian space-bastards for a tenth year running.

EVE looked a little wobbly a while back with a full-on rebellion among its players, dismayed at the apparent disinterest of the developers, typified by the introduction of ludicrously expensive microtransactions. Since then, CCP bosses have expressed contrition and devoted themselves to recovering the good will of their audience. On a conference call yesterday, a tremendously bearded Hilmar Veigar Pétursson said that the surge in numbers was evenly split between new players and returning players, and driven by the game's relaunch in China and the release of the free Retribution expansion, back in December.

Meanwhile, the awesome scenes of gigantic player-driven events, like the Battle of Asakai, have drawn a lot of attention. In fact, Hilmar said these sorts of events were the game's best advertisements - chief marketing officer, David Reid was himself inspired to join CCP when he read about the operatives of the Guiding Hand Social Club in an article by PC Gamer's very own Tom Francis: Murder Incorporated. The cross-platform integration with Dust 514 has also helped drag some gamers away from their consoles and into the larger, more sophisticated EVE universe, and the game's profile at large has increased thanks to its induction into MOMA's collection of videogames.

As for the future, Hilmar said that sandbox would certainly continue to expand - as it has with the addition of new territories accessible through wormholes - but also that they were looking to grow the game inwards: "There are lot of things within the solar systems that are yet to be explored." Hilmar also alluded to some distant future event which would truly unify the game worlds of Dust 514 and EVE Online.

The late April EVE fanfest will kick-off a year long celebration of the game's second decade. What this celebration will entail remains vague, but David Reid pledged that it would go off with a bang: "We haven't even shown you our best work yet."

As Hilmar then rejoined: "EVE will outlive us all."

This week in eSports: EVE Online gets its first ongoing, competitive league. The IPL could be changing hands. And only the final four remain in the GSL Code S. Get ready to face-check your weekly helping of competitive gaming news. gl hf!

EVE launching Syndicate Competitive League


Organized, competitive spaceship scraps have been around for quite a while in EVE Online. Now, for the first time ever, the Syndicate Competitive League is framing structured PvP in an ongoing format with regular, live streamed tournaments, commentators, and rankings. The prize pool will be drawn from sponsors within the EVE community, such as Monocle Madness and EVE-Bet.

You can check out the official site for more.

IGN ProLeague looking to change hands
As part of the restructuring that was announced for IGN and its affiliated sites this week, Ziff Davis CEO Vivek Shah has announced his intentions to sell off the IPL. He revealed in an e-mail (via Polygon) that Ziff is "actively engaged with parties interested in acquiring IPL. IGN's role going forward will be to broadcast and cover a variety of eSports events."

IPL is a relative newcomer to the eSports scene, having launched in 2011 with a focus on StarCraft II. Their most recent season offered a $100,000 prize pool, with the top spot claimed by Leenock. If you havee a chunk of change sitting around and want to own an eSports league, this kind of opportunity probably isn't going to come around terribly often.

We're not sure how this will affect the IPL Season 6, still tentatively scheduled for March 28-31 in Las Vegas. We'll let you know as soon as we know more.

StarCraft II


Blizzard released its final preview video for Heart of the Swarm this week, focusing on eSports-centric features. Resuming games from the exact moment of a hardware failure and fully-customizable observer UIs are sure to change the way we watch StarCraft II over the course of the next year. And it's all coming just in time for some of the most intense events of 2013.

Upcoming Events
 
Four players remain in the GSL Code S: Symbol, Curious, TaeJa, and RorO. By this time next week, only two will stand. The most prestigious match in all of competitive StarCraft, the GSL Code S finals, are scheduled for March 9.

Watch it: GomTV

MLG's Winter Championship Showdowns have qualified five more players for the main event in Dallas on March 15: Ret, Creator, Mvp, Seed, and MarineKing. We're more than halfway through the Showdowns series, with the qualification matches of prominent players such as MC, TaeJa, IdrA, and HuK still on the line. MC vs aLive, this Sunday at 2 p.m. PST is a particularly anticipated match.

Watch it: Major League Gaming

Other Stuff
 
In a cosmic twist of fate, Day's recent Funday Monday (focused on Terran drop harassment) featured players "TheButcher" and "DaMilkMan," two current roommates who went to school with yours truly. In Johnson County, Kansas. Where Day also went to school, a couple years earlier and a very short drive away. And here I am writing about it.

He also released a Heart of the Swarm-focused Newbie Tuesday, for those of you looking to jump in/jump back in when the expansion releases in a few short weeks.

In StarCraft, I constantly have this problem where I'm trying to engage something, but I've forgotten the rules for doing so. Axslav has us covered again this week, as usual, with Rules of Engagement. Check out the high-level breakdowns of the ongoing Winter Championship Showdowns. MVP vs Curious is particularly interesting, showing off how a top-tier player uses Reapers in their new (and probably finalized for HotS at ship) role.

League of Legends


Curse is currently leading the LCS Season 3 with an undefeated 6-0 record, followed by Dignitas at 5-2 and TSM Snapdragon at 4-2. You can check out the full match schedule on Riot's eSports Pro Site. Check out some highlights from Week 2 put together by theoveNTV in the video above.

Other Stuff
 
New player looking to get in on the competitive LoL action but aren't sure where to start? Have a look at long-standing community resource site MobaFire. It's continually updated with guides for specific characters that are voted on by the community, and generally does a pretty good job of making sure things relevant to current patches and metagame strats are easy to find.

Dota 2


Eizo, prominent sponsors of DreamHack (possibly Europe's biggest eSports event) have announced a partnership with joinDOTA to bring their Eizo Cup to Valve's MOBA. 16 teams will compete every month for €1,750 in prizes. joinDOTA has announced coverage in English and Czech, with more languages provided by "all other streamers who are interested in broadcasting the matches." The fight begins Monday.

Watch it: Eizo Cup

The list of surviving teams in The Defense 3 is shrinking. Only Dignitas, Virtus Pro, Team Liquid, Mousesports, Evil Geniuses, and Fnatic remain. The next match is Liquid vs Mousesports in the lower bracket, scheduled for Monday.

Watch it: The Defense

Other Stuff
 
Valve has announced the addition of user-submitted Hero Guides to Steam. You'll be able to create, share, and browse strategies for specific heroes right from the Steam client, with more functionality than currently exists with the standard Steam Guides. You can read more in this blog post.

That's it for this week, eSports faithful. Let us know in the comments what you think of this week's stories, if there's anything to add, and what eSports events you're most looking forward to in the coming weeks.

gg!

EVE Online's complicated inter-corporate politics are often held together by fragile diplomatic treaties and economic agreements. So fragile, in fact, that a single misclick can lead to a fracas that quickly snowballs into all-out warfare. That's what happened to two of the spacefaring sandbox MMO's largest player alliances in the Battle of Asakai, a massive fleet vs. fleet onslaught involving 3,000 players piloting ships ranging from small interceptors to gargantuan capital ships.

Straight from the wreckage-strewn outcome of the battle, we're breaking down the basics of what happened for everyone to truly fathom one of the biggest engagements in the game's history.

The nutshell

On January 27, two of EVE's largest allied groups—the ClusterF*** Coalition and the HoneyBadger Coalition—clashed with full force in the low-sec Asakai VI region of the Kurala constellation. Both sides continually supplied reinforcements for hours, including Supercarriers and Titans, two of the largest vessel types in the game. In the end, the HoneyBadgers emerged victorious against the Clusters (as we're calling them).

The details

The belligerents

The Clusters are led by the GoonSwarm Federation Alliance, a gigantic gamer horde originating from the Something Awful forums. Its leader, The Mittani, keeps and updates one of the most popular blogs charting the various events transpiring within EVE.

The HoneyBadgers are a coalition leading the Test Alliance, the primary collection of EVE gamers populating Reddit. A sub-alliance within the HoneyBadgers, the Pandemic Legion, focuses on PVP and inciting fleet actions wherever possible.

Years before, the Test Alliance was part of the HoneyBadgers in a hulking super-coalition. Seeking to carve out a piece of the galaxy for its own, a large portion of Test broke away from the accord to form HoneyBadgers, an independently operating group still pledging allegiance to Test but not to GoonSwarm. Strained relations between Test and GoonSwarm reached a breaking point after the leadership threatened open warfare against each other.

The cause

A single misclick.

No, really: A Titan pilot beneath the Cluster banner was attempting a "bridge"—using a ship to act as an artificial warp corridor for other ships—to Asakai VI when he accidentally warped himself straight into a very surprised Pandemic Legion fleet. The pilot, named Dabigredboat, immediately came under heavy attack as the Legion pounced on the extremely valuable ship.

The battle

Both Dabigredboat and members of the Legion "bat-phoned"—called in reinforcements—additional members of their alliances over the course of the battle. Eventually, nearly the entirety of Test and GoonSwarm became involved in the tremendous tussle, including the deployment of extra Titans and Supercarriers into the fleets.

Titans and Supercarriers are two of the most expensive, deadly, and rare ship types in EVE Online. A single Titan, bristling with gun emplacements and heavy armor, can need upwards of over 900 pilots to beat down into submission. Read that again: 900 pilots. And there were more than one of those behemoths in the battle.

The results

For the HoneyBadgers, losses sustained included six Dreadnoughts, 11 Carriers, and one Supercarrier. The Clusters suffered far worse: 44 Dreadnoughts, 29 Carriers, five Supercarriers, and three Titans.

Ultimately, GoonSwarm leader The Mittani called the Battle of Asakai "a complete rout" for the powerful Something Awful alliance. Estimated ISK (EVE's in-game currency) cost in damages are still being calculated, but early totals reach beyond 700 billion for both sides combined.

The full might of the HoneyBadger and Cluster fleets in pitched battle. Notice the umbrella-shaped Titan cruiser on the right.Source: themittani.com

Multiple Titans eventually warped in to add their withering firepower to the frenzy.Source: themittani.com

The cloud of blue and red blips in this map overview represent all the pilots involved in the battle.Source: themittani.com

CCP are approaching the culmination of their ambitious cross-platform/cross-game EVE/Dust 514 experiment. Following some scheduled downtime, Dust 514's Playstation 3 userbase will be taking a battleship to Tranquility, EVE's central server.

What does this mean for existing EVE players? CCP's Nullarbor explains the switch in a community update. "DUST mercenaries can belong to existing EVE corporations if you’re willing to accept their applications. Similarly you will see corporations started by DUST mercenaries recruiting EVE pilots to join up with them. You can share corporation chat including voice chat and invite them into custom channels or private conversations."

Of course, this isn't just a social visit. While CCP's decision to make Dust a PS3 exclusive is downright bizarre, at least you'll get the chance to order them about the place. "We are also introducing the first component of higher level gameplay as part of Faction Warfare. DUST mercenaries can accept contracts offered by the NPC Faction Warfare miltias and fight to attack or defend them in the form of corporation battles."

Naturally there's a risk/reward element to this, with the potential to lose a collateral payment of ISK. The benefit is control of a district of Faction Warfare space. As Nullarbor notes, "the more districts a militia has control over the fewer victory points will be required for EVE Faction Warfare pilots to take ownership of the system."

To tip the balance of battle, Orbital Bombardments will also be enabled. These use the blueprints already available in EVE's markets, and can be used to rain down fire on the little men below. Probably while cackling. One Reddit user has already captured the Orbital Bombardments at work.



Not the most exciting video, admittedly, but getting live from-the-ground updates of your artillery barrage does sound cool as hell.

Dust 514 is currently in closed beta, so don't expect a huge flood of new players. As the game progresses towards launch, it'll be interesting to see how this plays into EVE's economic meta-game, and the audacious stories it sometimes creates.

EVE Online's Retribution expansion increased accessibility to the spacefaring MMO with its interface adjustments for guiding new players to their untimely death—er, their first few steps. But speaking to Eurogamer, CCP Executive Producer John Lander stressed the importance of retaining EVE's mystique in the wake of Retribution's release, saying, "I don’t ever want Eve to be nice and fluffy."

“I want to try and reduce that barrier of entry to playing Eve," he said. "I think there’s a place in the MMO world for a dark and dangerous, really good sci-fi world where you can be the goodie, the baddie, a criminal, or the Good Samaritan. But it’s very important we allow as many people as possible to get access to that game.”

Retribution implements a number of major additions to EVE's starry sandbox such as a hard logout, a no-crime toggle, and a bounty system overhaul. Lander hinted at further expansion content in the works to supplement EVE's small mountain of add-ons.

“We will put in some really good big expansive things we’ve been looking at," he said. "We’ve done a lot of prototyping over the last year, but also we’ve got a backlog of things which could probably take us through another 20 years. There are some good things coming. We almost have too much choice, which is a great first-world problem. As soon as we’ve prioritized what it is we want to do, we’ll start communicating that out.”

The 18th EVE Online expansion, Retribution, is now being transmitted to subscribers. Retribution rebalances EVE's ships, introduces new destroyers and an industrial frigate, and adds many new features, such as safeties to prevent accidental crime, greater potential consequences for committing crimes, and improved enemy AI. All of Retribution's new hardware and deep space tweaks are described in detail on EVE's official site.

They're all notable, but I'm most interested in the reworked bounty system. Prior to Retribution, bounties just didn't work. They were notoriously used to transfer currency between alts with self-placed rewards, and even legitimate bounties could just be claimed by a target's friend. As long as the reward covered the minor damages, it was a win for the target.

To squash these exploits and make bounty hunting a legitimate occupation, the new system bases payouts on how much monetary damage is done to the target, so hunters will never receive more than they cost their victim, and targets can be killed as many times as it takes for the payouts to deplete the bounty pool. The change should prevent exploitation and make bounties more meaningful: they're now about inflicting monetary losses, and money matters to EVE players way more than easily-replaceable clone bodies.

Retribution also makes UI changes, adds new sounds and situational music, and according to Executive Producer Jon Lander, will make EVE "feel revitalized" as it enters its second decade. For me, the last EVE expansion had the following effect: Oh, right, I have an EVE account. I guess I should log in, but do I really want to--well, that does look cool. Alright, I'll play for a bit. *Logs out of life for two months.*

In this case, Retribution has to fight PlanetSide 2 for my time. It's going to be a tough battle.

Modern art is all about finding the meaning in a collection of abstract shapes, so games are pretty much a perfect match. It's fitting then, that from March 2013, New York's Museum of Modern Art will install an exhibition of 14 games as a precursor to an intended collection of 40. Paola Antonelli, the Senior Curator for the museum's Department of Architecture and Design, has written a lengthy blog post to explain the selection process.

"Are video games art? They sure are," writes Paola, settling that argument. "They are also design, and a design approach is what we chose for this new foray into this universe. The games are selected as outstanding examples of interaction design — a field that MoMA has already explored and collected extensively, and one of the most important and oft-discussed expressions of contemporary design creativity."

The game's selected range from extremely complex simulation, to quick, fun bursts of action, but they all share a singular, driving focus of intent. Unsurprisingly, the majority of them originated on the PC. Here's the list of titles relevant to our interests:


Myst (1993)
SimCity 2000 (1994)
The Sims (2000)
EVE Online (2003)
Dwarf Fortress (2006)
Portal (2007)
Passage (2008)
Canabalt (2009)


The museum is planning to display each game in a way that can do justice to its particular type. For short games like the Passage, that means a playable version, but more in-depth games like EVE and Dwarf Fortress require a different approach. "To convey their experience, we will work with players and designers to create guided tours of these alternate worlds, so the visitor can begin to appreciate the extent and possibilities of the complex gameplay."

The museum hopes to bolster their collection over the coming years, eventually planning to add Minecraft, Grim Fandango and NetHack, among others. You can see the full list at the MoMA website. Any games that you'd like to see immortalised as works of art?

Thanks, Joystiq.

If you walk into New York's Museum of Modern Art in the near future, you might discover that its curators have taken a stance on the issue of "Are games art?" And that stance, it seems, is "Yes." Fourteen games including player-driven space MMO EVE Online, perplexing puzzle shooter Portal, and ASCII graphics-based breakdown of civilization simulator Dwarf Fortress will serve as "the seedbed for an initial wish list of about 40 to be acquired in the near future, as well as for a new category of artworks in MoMA’s collection that we hope will grow in the future."

Other PC titles in the initial collection include Myst, SimCity 2000, The Sims, and Jason Rohrer's Passage. The games will be on display and presumably playable in the museum's Philip Johnson Galleries starting in March. You can read more about the collection on the MoMA official site.

Do games belong in art museums? Let us know what you think.