CCP - Not resting on laurels.

[Landslide]

People sometimes ask me why certain games are mentioned on The Escapist more than others, and I always answer the same: Some games work hard at being noticed, some games work hard at doing great things and some games work very hard at both. Those are the ones we like to talk about. Hell, if you want to know what I mean, check their site - "We care more, we work harder." Empirical data suggests that this claim is nothing but the truth, and it's extremely reassuring.

Today, I went to check up on EVE Online, CCP's flagship title. Admittedly, I was unprepared - no appointment, no forward notice - just a notepad and an eager desire to see what new things were in store for my favorite MMOG. Not a problem. Moments after introducing myself, I was ushered into a private demo room, where Magnus Bergsson walked me through some of the new things in store for EVE.

 

[Landslide]

Original Comment by: Thomas

The VoIP feature sounds really neat but the press release from CCP mentions it as being a premium service. Any words on what that exactly means?
Cause if you only gain access to it by paying extra then my guess is that people will keep using teamspeak and ventrilo... despite the lesser (but good enough) sound quality.

 

[Virgil]

Probably depends on the fee. The problem with using Ventrilo or Teamspeak is that you need to connect to an external server, using an external program, to do it. Anyone you want to talk to also has to be using that same program, and connecting to that server. Also, any moderation or admin type stuff you want to do means switching out of the game toanother program, and in many cases being a server admin.

Bringing the functionality into the game adds a huge ease of use factor. having played with ingame voice chat support in DDO, I found it to be much more convenient than trying to use an external service. It might not be right for a large pre-organized group, but for ad-hoc groupings or even multiple simultaneous voice channels (for example, a fleet commander broadcasting orders to squads under his command, who only talk to their squadmates) you can gain a lot from moving the voice chat controls to within the game interface.