More Character Portraits

Time for a few more portraits from Eve Online's forums stolen borrowed for RPG goodness. As usual they're a mix of good, bad, and indifferent. There's a long standing tradition of What's the avatar above you thinking? threads on the forums, these were all taken from one of those threads.

Character Portraits

A while back I mentioned Eve Online had a new character creator, one that could be used to build some fairly nice looking, science fiction-ish character portraits for use in RPGs. Later I mentioned you could find characters through the Eve forums. Oddly these minor articles get quite a bit of regular search traffic. Apparently there's some demand for character portraits, so... have a few. I picked a few random portraits out of the forums to give you some idea what's available.

Eve Online - Deleting Threads Won't Help CCP

Copy of an internal email message concerning recent Incarnageddon update. This was originally posted on the official Eve forums, then deleted and the poster banned. Oppression wins you no friends CCP. Message purportedly from CCP Hilmar, leaked from the same source as a previously leaked and confirmed message. Maybe authentic, maybe not, but preserved for posterity in any case:


We live in interesting times; in fact CCP is the kind of company that if things get repetitive we instinctively crank it up a notch. That, we certainly have done this week. First of we have Incarna, an amazing technological and artistic achievement. A vision from years ago realized to a point that no one could have imaged but a few months ago. It rolls out without a hitch, is in some cases faster than what we had before, this is the pinnacle of professional achievement. For all the noise in the channel we should all stand proud, years from now this is what people will remember.

But we have done more, not only have we redefined the production quality one can apply to virtual worlds with the beautiful Incarna but we have also defined what it really means to make virtual reality more meaningful than real life when it comes to launching our new virtual goods currency, Aurum.

Naturally, we have caught the attention of the world. Only a few weeks ago we revealed more information about DUST 514 and now we have done it again by committing to our core purpose as a company by redefining assumptions. After 40 hours we have already sold 52 monocles, generating more revenue than any of the other items in the store.

This we have done after months of research by a group of highly competent professionals, soliciting input and perspective from thought leaders and experts in and around our industry. We have communicated our intention here internally in very wide circles through the Virtual Economy Summit presentation at the GSM, our Fearless newsletter, sprint reviews, email lists and multiple other channels. This should not come as a surprise to anyone.

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.

We went out with a decisive strategy on pricing and we will stay the course and not flip flop around or knee jerk react to the predictable. That is not saying nothing will change, on the contrary, in fact we know that success in this space is through learning and adapting to _what is actually happening_ and new knowledge gained in addition to what we knew before and expected.

All that said, I couldn't be prouder of what we have accomplished as a company, changing the world is hard and we are doing it as so many times before! Stay the course, we have done this many times before.

CCP You Slay Me

Say what you will about CCP, the developers of Eve Online, there's one thing I know for sure. They have a great sense of humor! This was their most recent banner ad that popped up on the client login:

Eve Online - CSM Voting is Open

Make your voice heard.

For those that don't play Eve, the CSM is the Council of Stellar Management, a player feedback organization set up by CCP to represent the player base to the developers. They've done some good stuff.

I need two of those "I voted" stickers they give out at polling locations here in the US.

Eve Online - Character Creator: Round II

A while back I wrote an article about Eve Online's new character creator, and how it would be a nice way to put together portraits for NPCs in RPGs. Of course it has the big problem of requiring the Eve Online client and an active account to actually use it. Fortunately, there's a Better Way (TM).

Current Events

In which I discuss various forms of stuff that I am doing. Last week was a big loss due to a rather nasty bug I caught (along with most of my family). Since I really don't like posting "I'm not posting" posts, things got quiet here. Too quiet. I'm pretty well recovered now, just in time to get hit with more bitterly cold weather. Luckily I managed to get in a nice walk around the neighborhood yesterday, something that's all too rare an occurrence during the winter months here. So with the chit chat out of the way, here's a rundown on the current state of entertainment here.

Eve Online - Character Creator

As you may or may not know, Eve Online is an MMO focused on flying around in spaceships doing spaceship stuff. The publisher CCP recently introduced their new character creator, which is used to create the look of your character. The previous character portraits were rather... primitive. The new portraits are a vast step forward. There are still some rough spots with the tool, but I'm very pleased to see CCP modernizing the look of the game.