Welcome to the twenty-third installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week or so to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed to crazykinux@gmail.com. Check for other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!
With Incursion giving us glimpses of what Incarna will have to offer (the the Character Creator), this month's topic, by @Minerpewpew, comes just at the right time. He asks "What are your thoughts on how Incarna will effect the current EVE Online social dynamic?" I'd like to see this questioning go a bit further. How will this affect EVE's player base? Who will Incarna attract? New players to the genre? Seduce old players back into the game? Will we see new players come in that will never leave their station? Please explore to the best of your abilities!
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I know that I personally would not have been drawn back into EVE by Incarna. I was on Hiatus for a while, wondering if I'd ever come back because I was pretty bored of the Hi-sec scene and the month long training times for Logistics 5 and Battlecruiser 5. I have the feeling that not many old players would have been sucked back into EVE with Incarna mostly because if they wanted to have a walking avatar as the main gameplay, they would have signed up for WoW or something similar instead.
I admit, there likely would be some old players attracted by Incarna, but I think Incarna is mostly for the newer prospective players. When I signed up for EVE I had assumed there would be a walking avatar of me, and I was surprised when there wasn't. Had I not been completely opposed to WoW, ie upgrading from killing Wolves to killing spiders, I probably would have quit right there. So in this way I feel Incarna is mostly for player attraction as opposed to retention. People already playing know how much stuff there is to do just as is.
In terms of player attraction, I do think it will attract more women simply because the few female players that I know blog have said that it would have been easier to get them into EVE and keep them in EVE with it. Guys will probably remain steady in terms of new players, maybe a slight increase because EVE will become more inline with other MMOs. I don't expect a huge uptick though, just more retention of the newer players instead of new players looking for a different MMO and being thrown off and giving up.
Players that never leave the station? How much will there be to do in a station? I suppose it is possible, but I doubt more than 0.5 % of players would do this. What good is playing a spaceship MMO if you aren't going to fly spaceships? I think it more likely that there will be characters, mostly trade alts and manufacturing alts, that never leave the station, as opposed to actual players.
As for the current dynamic, I think Incarna will mostly suck people deeper into the MMO, to the point where people actually do live two lives instead of just pretending to live a 2nd. More bloggers will crop up due to the increased involvement with people's own characters in order to tell their stories and flesh them out.
I admit though that what I write is based in ignorance of what exactly Incarna will bring. I assume some in station walking, probably bars where you can waste a few ISK on booze and enjoy a bar chat, maybe some trade market scenery, but what else beyond that? Quite frankly I can't see anything that would go on in a station (short of FPS) that would be as important as what goes on outside the stations.
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