iGame Radio

CCP has announced the launch of Incarna 1.0, providing pilots of EVE Online their first opportunity to step outside of their spaceships with the introduction of the Captain’s Quarters.

The Captain’s Quarters brings with it a ton of features, including Strategic Data and News Feeds, a walkway balcony that allows you to view in its entirety your ship, and panels for managing your planetary structures and selecting agents for missions. You’ll also be able to do a ton of more customization with a mirror specially developed for creating new wardrobes and changing your appearance.

In addition, Incarna 1.0 has added updates to ships and turrets, improved performance and balanced gameplay more, and added the Noble Exchange, where luxury items, rarities and articles of distinction can be purchased.

Looking at the patch notes, we were interested to note that on Macs, depth effects had been disabled but only if you have an ATI card. We have a question regarding this into CCP, and will report back when we get a response.

Check out more details at the Incarna section of the EVE Online site, or view the video introduction.

 

What’s inside this episode:

• Host Omaha Sternberg and co-host Peter Cohen of The Loop talk about the week’s news in Mac and iOS gaming. The opening act covers the ESRB announcement to rate games using a computer program. Omaha and Peter talk about the potential ramifications of this move, and why the world won’t end.
• EA has gone shopping again, this time purchasing Firemint. Why is Firemint just fine with this? Is EA no longer the bad guy of the industry?
• An SEC filing shows an investment firm has dropped $4.7 million on top of the Humble Bundle folks. That’s a whole lot o’ bundles!
• Two MMOG games celebrated long b-days this week: EVE Online at 8 years, and CoH at 7. Why do gamers come back again and again to play certain games?
• Omaha and Peter talk about games that they’ve played in the past week.
• Do you think iGame Radio should get a new theme song, or stick with the one its got? This is the last week to weigh in on the poll, or send in your thoughts to be part of the decision.

Music Notes:

• Digital Droo produced our theme music here at iGame Radio.
• Digital Droo featured music from Active Lancer; pick up the Active Lancer soundtrack
• John Gatti for featuring music from El Ballo; pick up the El Ballo soundtrack

CCP has released some initial information about a big feature coming in the next update for EVE Online…Incarna. This feature, the Captain’s Quarters, will change the way individual players relate to the game.

From the EVE Insider blog:

Captain’s Quarters are your place of power, center of your control, operational nucleus, living room and home office. They are the dusty motel room for the vagabond capsuleer. Whether docking your ship to a station or entering EVE for the first time through the character creation, you will enter the Captain’s Quarters as the living, breathing EVE You. It’s a new dimension of immersion. For all players ( the future newbies/future points on your killboard), it finally gives EVE a human face, a sense of familiarity to “real life” and other games.

You can read more at the EVE Insider blog about this cool new feature.

Yesterday the incursion began. Droves of capsuleers are being shot down in the wake of the first attack by Sansha Nation ships in New Eden. Thus begins the final stage of EVE Online: Incursion, this winter’s free expansion by CCP.

To mark the occasion, CONCORD, the coalition-based security force of EVE Online, released a video detailing the threat for all pilots. To join in the battle, you can download EVE Online and try it out for a 14 day trial, if you can survive it, and join the hundreds of thousands of others who play the game, breaking their Peak Concurrent User record last Sunday at 63,170 players in one world space (EVE Online is not a sharded world).

UPDATE: The patch notes from the previous 1.0.0 release made mention of Fixed and resizeable Windowed-modes not working in the Mac. Those still seem to be disabled, but anti-aliasing has been enabled now for Snow Leopard users only (disabled for Leopard because of client start-up problems).

CCP, developers of EVE Online, has released the final stage of the free Incursion expansion for EVE Online. Incursion 1.1 includes the Sansha Incursion/PVE play and the long-awaited Incarna Character Creator.

The Sansha Incursion is both a main storyline addition as well as a new PVE aspect to the game. Sansha Kuvakei was a messiah of a Nation, bent on creating a Utopia. Until everyone found out that he was creating cybernetic “True Slaves” by melding man and machine. The last Alliance of Empires supposedly wiped him, and his nation, out of existence. Now raids by Sansha Nation ships and claims that “The Master” still lives cast doubt upon this belief.

The PVE aspect means random as well as purposeful encounters with NPC characters in-space at the level of large-scale encounters. The focus will shift from awards for knocking off NPCs to completing objectives. The idea is to tie all of those objectives into the larger picture of the Sansha incursions.

Incursion 1.1 also includes the Incarna Character Creator, a character creation tool for creating highly detailed and individualized characters. This tool alone could end up sucking hours of your time away from your day.

CCP, developers of EVE Online, has released the first stage of the free expansion, Incursion, for EVE Online. This portion focuses on storyline and ship additions, game mechanics, and user interface improvements.

Changes in Incursion 1.0.0 include the addition of over 80 new storyline missions, the Noctis salvaging ship, and rebalancing rockets and Tech 2 ammo. The update also includes improvements to EVE’s user interface (UI) based on player feedback. A full list of changes is available in the patch notes. It’s important to note that a few of the changes have not made it into the Mac client yet, such as the new windowed-modes and anti-aliasing.

Incursion features two main aspects, the Sansha Incursion and the Incarna Character Creator. The Sansha Incursion is both a main storyline addition as well as a new PVE aspect to the game. Sansha Kuvakei was a messiah of a Nation, bent on creating a Utopia. Until everyone found out that he was creating cybernetic “True Slaves” by melding man and machine. The last Alliance of Empires supposedly wiped him, and his nation, out of existence. Now raids by Sansha Nation ships and claims that “The Master” still lives cast doubt upon this belief. Incursion will also include the Incarna Character Creator, a character creation tool for creating highly detailed and individualized characters.

The second portion, 1.0.1, will be released on December 14th. Though CCP has not revealed all the details of what will be in this patch, they have said it will include removal of learning skills with another holiday gift for EVE players. The final portion of the expansion, 1.0.2, will include the Sansha Incursion storyline/PVE and Incarna Character Creator, as well as updates to EVEGate and the Planetary Interaction feature, and will be released in mid-January 2011.

CCP, developers of EVE Online, is in the final polishing stages of their upcoming expansion, Incursions. So we thought we’d give a quick update about what you can expect from Incursions and the updated timeline for the release.

Incursions features two main aspects, the Sansha Incursion and the Incarna Character Creator. The Sansha Incursion is both a main storyline addition as well as a new PVE aspect to the game. Sansha Kuvakei was a messiah of a Nation, bent on creating a Utopia. Until everyone found out that he was creating cybernetic “True Slaves” by melding man and machine. The last Alliance of Empires supposedly wiped him, and his nation, out of existence. Now raids by Sansha Nation ships and claims that “The Master” still lives cast doubt upon this belief.

The PVE aspect means random as well as purposeful encounters with NPC characters in-space at the level of large-scale encounters. The focus will shift from awards for knocking off NPCs to completing objectives. The idea is to tie all of those objectives into the larger picture of the Sansha incursions.

Incursions will also include the Incarna Character Creator, which shows some of the most awesome character creation tools that I’ve seen in a game. You could spend hours just creating your own characters for EVE Online. The trailer for the character creator below says it all.

The entirety of the expansion will not be released in one fell swoop, however. The first release, by November 30th, will be a big patch that is intended to pave the way for the rest of the expansion. It will probably include 80 new story lines, tech updates, and UI and bug fixes. A second patch will be released before Christmas, but CCP has not yet revealed what will be in this patch. Most likely it will depend on what made it into the November patch. And finally, the Big Momma of the expansion, the Sansha Incursion storyline/PVE and Incarna Character Creator, will be released in January 2011.

CCP, developer of the Sci-Fi themed MMOG EVE Online, has announced their next expansion for all users of the game. EVE Online: Incursion will focus on the escalating attacks of the Sansha’s Nation, a group intent on instituting their own utopia and destroying anyone who stops them. Pilots can join public fleets and cooperate to destroy the Sansha Incursions, returning the universe to normal, receiving wealthy bounties, earning loyalty rewards and high commendation.

Features of Incursion will include improvements suggested by the Council of Stellar Management, hardware upgrades, software improvements, and new cluster components aimed at increasing game and fleet battle performance to even higher levels. Updates to the character creator will be made with CCP’s Carbon character technology for fresh pilot portraits. Ships will be added as well, including a Sansha Mothership and fighterbomber, and the Noctis salvaging vessel. EVEGate, the web-based social networking platform for pilots, will also see improvements and additions, such as new forums.

More details and features can be found at the EVE Online: Incursion site. The expansion is set to release this November.

One developer I really wanted to catch up with at PAX and couldn’t was CCP, makers of the popular sci-fi MMOG EVE Online. The few times that I could get a chance to pop by their booth there was never anyone available…they were that busy! Hopefully, I’ll be able to bring you some chats with them soon, but in the meantime here’s a great trailer about cause and effect in the EVE Online world, Causality.



Also, CCP is holding a new contest, the Universal Glory Sweepstakes. Entering the sweepstakes could net you a custom EVE Online gaming PC system (yeah, just a PC, not a Mac, but you get what you get), one year EVE online subscription, gaming keyboards, mouse, decals and mousepads. The contest ends October 3, 2010. Go to the Universal Glory Sweepstakes homepage to check out details and to enter.

CCP and Bigfoot Networks will be presenting the Killer 2100 Plexplosion event throughout September. Participants can win prizes every day, including 30 PLEX, 30 T-Shirts and two Killer 2100 network cards. In order to participate you need to “Like” both the EVE Online and Bigfoot Networks’ Facebook pages. Two prizes will be awarded daily and winners will be announced on Facebook (presumably both EVE Online and Bigfoot Networks’ Facebook pages).

You can also participate to increase your chances of winning by visiting the CCP booth at PAX and signing up for the event.