PAX Interview: Noah Ward, Lead Designer for EVE Online

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Written by ReesyCup

Tuesday, 02 September 2008 03:41

PAX Interview: Noah Ward, Lead Designer for EVE Online

PAX had it's fair share of heavy hitters this year, and one of the most recognized and respected exhibitors was CCP, Developer and Publisher of EVE Online. CCP was a show favorite, with a crowd of over 50,000 gamers eagerly waiting to get a glimpse at what lies ahead for EVE Online, which continues to be one of the strongest and well developed MMOs on the market. Trade and commerce have always been the cornerstone of this ever expanding game, but with the deployment of the Empyrean Age, Factional Warfare now brings a new frontier to this immersing title.

During my time at PAX I had a few moments to pull Lead Designer, Noah Ward aside and get more details on a few things such as the latest patch and the status on the Achievement System. When discussing the 1.1 update, Noah was quite proud of the new update that has been coined the "Power To The People" patch and indicated that all of the design departments really pulled together to try to eliminate any of so called "Annoyances" that gamers reported. New content is grand but smooth gameplay is a must. We of course are used to bug focused updates, but the whopping 1,000 plus bug fixes that accompany 1.1 is impressive.

With a lot of pesky bugs out of the way, attention is now turned to 1.2, and what changes the dev team has made regarding the release of more achievement system content. Certificates allow more credibility when dealing with players, and give more incentive to master their trade. CCP was hoping to get these systems in place with the 1.2 update, but not at the expense of quality. When asked about the Certificate System, Ward stated,

"We might take the certificates, medals, and achievement related systems that were going to be in 1.2 and we might roll that into the winder expansion. Since we have the 1.1 patch coming out, and then with 1.2 coming out and our demo walking stations that are coming up at Fanfest and the winter expansion, it is kind of a heavy workload on QA to do the regression testing cycle because we have to test everything before we put out one of these things to make sure we are not breaking something.

So it seemed like a better idea to roll these things into the winter and it basically gives our QA department like another month to focus on it. So we think it will make our Winter expansion better and more feature rich, more tested, and also give us more time to polish the things that were going to be in 1.2. What we are probably going to do is have an internal release, we're going to keep the same milestones that we had and not change any of the deadlines that the developers are working towards, just change the last part of it of putting it in deployment and all of the extra testing that has to happen: Just roll that into the winter."

I agree, this is a smart move for CCP in order to keep client related issues to a minimum while players are getting familiar with the new war elements in the game. It wouldn't make much sense to release an update prematurely with issues immediately after such a great victory against any "annoyances" in the game. Keeping things well oiled and balanced is what is important.

With balance in mind, I wanted to get an idea of any game related economic issues that were sparked by Factional Warfare since this opens up many new opportunities for trade and if the PvP system, that was implemented in the Empyrean Age expansion, effected the overall economy as expected. Ward indicated that It hasn't had a drastic effect on the economy, but there's definitely room there for people to kind of carve their niche and get in there and sell stuff to the people PvP'ing. "I think it's a different customer who's doing a lot of factional warfare, but people are definitely taking advantage of ships bowing up. Its pretty cool, its been a great addition to the game, factional warfare has."

He went on to add that It has allowed people the PvP aspect that alot people were missing because, for example, if you were a pirate and you were camping..."that just gets boring, and you're usually picking on people that don't want to fight and that gets to be not good anymore." Of course if your in zero space and you're looking for large warfare, that could take hours and some people could be flying around and don't even see any enemies, so he acknowledged factional warfare has really helped out with PvP.

As we concluded our discussion, I was quite impressed with the excitement that the development team has about the direction it has taken and of all opportunities that lie ahead. I also see the importance that they place on making sure they get things done correctly rather than just releasing content before it is ready. Although players may have to wait a few more months for the Certificate and Achievement Systems, the wait will be worth it as the winter expansion is just around the corner and is getting better with each new announcement.

-Reese