Over this past holiday weekend, CCP invited the Council of Stellar Management (CSM) to an meeting in Reykjavik, Iceland to discuss the recent events involving the launch of Incarna and the NeX store. In a response posted on the Eve Online Dev blog, CCP confirmed that there are no plans to introduce non-vanity items into the NeX store. The following statement was issued by the CSM,
Game-affecting Virtual Goods: We are convinced that CCP has no plans to introduce any game-affecting virtual goods, only pure vanity items such as clothing and ship skins. We have been repeatedly assured that there are no plans for ‘gold ammo’, ships which have different statistics from existing common hulls, or any other feared ‘game destroying’ virtual goods or services. We have expressed our deep concern about potential grey areas that the introduction of virtual goods permits, and CCP has made a commitment to discuss any proposals that might fall into these grey areas in detail with CSM at the earliest possible stage.
CCP also acknowledged that the roll-out of the NeX virtual store was done poorly and will be issuing more details and price structure in the near future.
CCP acknowledges that communication surrounding the launch of the virtual goods store should have been better. To address that, we will write up dev blogs that explain the pricing strategy of the NeX store and the price tiering system. We will also communicate that we intend to put the focus on further fleshing out the lower price range and give visual examples of upcoming items.
It seems CCP is taking steps in the right direction to calm nerves and win back its fan base.
Below is a video of Eve Online senior producer Arnar Hrafn Gylfason (CCP Zulu) and CSM Chairman “The Mittani” discussing what happened during the meeting.
Aren’t these the same guys who were saying forum reactions are predictable and not really indicative of what the overall player base will go with? You’ve got it linked in ‘the eve online player overreaction’. Their CEO saying “Currently we are seeing _very predictable feedback_ on what we are doing. Having the perspective of having done this for a decade, I can tell you that this is one of the moments where we look at what our players do and less of what they say. Innovation takes time to set in and the predictable reaction is always to resist change.”
And here we are, them holding a meeting that ostensibly looks like they are looking at what their players (or atleast one player) says.
Well this is now twice that CCP has confirmed and reconfirmed that non-vanity items would not be sold in the NeX store. So if they really did lie, that would pretty much assure the end of Eve Online.
For now I’ll take CCP at their word.