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Hardcore Players Need not Apply

It seems EVE is pulling a very brave move with the forthcoming introduction of faction warfare to the game. They are effectively banning hardcore players from joining in the fun. Hardcore EVE players indulge in Alliance scale warfare in lawless zero-zero space but members of alliances will be excluded from faction warfare.

This has sparked much choice comment on the blogs and fora but but the decision is justified in a well thought out developer blog entry.

There is some technical justification for the block but it seems it is mainly a deliberate design choice. The blog cites role play reasons: the block is required to fit in with the game lore. Also and perhaps more significantly they don't want this new form of pvp endgame to pollute the hard core alliance war end game and nor do they want the hard core alliance end game to pollute this new game.

It sounds to me as if CCP want zero-zero alliance warfare to remain the pvp endgame for hardcore players and are introducing faction war as an alternative for the less dedicated.

Interesting times. I wonder if they will get away with it. Can you imagine if Blizzard introduced a new endgame dungeon into WOW but excluded any one who is in an established raiding guild from entering it?

Comments

Nuyan said…
I see it as weak design reason, but it could help stopping some of the initial influx of players when they release Factional Warfare. They hinted that they might add alliance functionality later.
mbp said…
Hi Nuyan, I have to admit that I am too new to EVE to understand the full implications of this. I can sort of understand a game introducing a variety of PVP which is restricted in order to give less experienced players a fairer chance. On the other hand it sounds like faction war will bring a lot of cool new content and it seem unfair to prevent a certain group of players from enjoying this.
Anonymous said…
As far as I understand it, and what factional warfare is meant to represent, I think players in Alliances are *already* doing this kind of factional warfare already; the grand 0.0 game.

They probably want this stuff to exist alongside in it's own right, rather than be reduced to another kind of resource/cash/faction grind to fund the 'real' game in 0.0. It does make a kind of sense; a player alliance is an entity equivalent to an NPC Faction.

Probably needs some kind of diplomatic and military alliance (small 'a') way into it all for organisations that big, rather than just signing 2000+ people up at the local recruiting office one afternoon!
mbp said…
One thing I don't fully understand is the apparent assumption that the only end game in EVE is alliance warfare. From the little I have seen of EVE it seems to me that there are so many other ways to play the game.

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