Friday Bullet Points about the EVE Online ATXX Finals and Empires of EVE Vol. III

It is Friday again and it is EVE Online bullet points again.  What else do I need to say before I get into it?

• Alliance Tournament XX – Final Matches

Tomorrow kicks off the second weekend a big finale for Alliance Tournament XX.

Smarter people than I have written up summaries, but I will let you know that last week I bet all my channel points on Goonswarm in the GSF vs. Pandemic Horde grudge match… and figured I had lost them when GSF spent the first few minutes of the match remembering how to kite while losing a key ship.

Then they appeared to rally long enough to make a “69” joke with the score.  I know this was not on purpose, yet it happened.

They then managed to kill everything save Vily’s Vindicator, which they then evaded as Vily appeared to have burned out his prop mode, leaving him alone and ineffectual as the timer closed out the match.

A metaphor for World War Bee?  Then I stopped betting and Goons lost their next match and were eliminated, but we beat PH and I doubled my channel points and am close to earning another SKIN, and that is what is really important here.

Otherwise, last year’s winner Fraternity hung on and made it past last week, so they still have a chance.  Matches set for tomorrow kicking off at 15:00 UTC on CCP’s Twitch channel.

All matches after that will depend on who wins and will feed into Sunday’s final round which culminates with a best of five battle for the crown.

Brackets and other tournament information can be found on CCP’s site.

• Empires of EVE Vol. III Announced

If you pledged to the Empires of EVE Vol. II Kickstarter campaign back in 2018… has it been that long… you may have seen a few updates from Andrew Groen about figuring out whether or not a Vol. III was a good idea or not.  But raw enthusiasm from several people in comments, myself included, seems to have diverted him from good sense and the healthier life he has achieved and convinced him to dive back into the swamp of New Eden politics for a third and final time.

From his announcement on the campaign page:

This initial phase is going to be the biggest departure from previous Empires of EVE projects. In the past I’ve sought funding for the project before getting very deep into the writing so that I could understand the scope of the project that I had to budget for. However, in order to make this new project work, I’ve decided I need to go into the Kickstarter campaign with a book that is already in an advanced state of completion.

In order to do that, I’m seeking supporters to help me fund the research and writing of this volume separately through a new site at empiresofeve.substack.com.

The goal of this new publication is to be the headquarters for Volume 3 for the next year. I’ll be releasing a steady stream of updates similar to the monthly updates that have been a feature of previous EOE campaigns. What will be new is that I’m enabling a premium subscription tier where those who support the research and writing of the next volume will have access to chapters of the book as they’re being written. Each chapter drop will also include its audiobook version read by me.

The first two chapters are available today. Called A Eulogy for Death Parts 1 & 2, the story is a tribute to one of the greatest EVE players ever, and one of the most important sources who helped make Empires of EVE possible.

This is a departure from how we’ve done things in the past, but I’m confident this is the best strategy moving forward. Creating the book first before funding the printing of the final volume on Kickstarter will allow us to create the most streamlined campaign yet.

I’m deeply excited about this new paradigm because it not only solves some of the difficulties of previous Empires of EVE projects, but it also allows me to bring the community in much closer to the creation of the book.

You can sign up for free or be a financial supporter to help bring this final entry in the series to fruition.  There is even a retrospective video in with the announcement.

I am all in on this.  The first two volumes were excellent, so I hunger for a third.

CCP has been out there pitching the upcoming Revenant expansion.  Last time it was the corporation goals update that was the focus, this time around it is about the new mercenary dens.

Trying to summarize, these new dens will attach to Skyhooks, but only above temperate planets, to siphon of resources that can be used for fun new stuff.  At least that is what I think it said.  The cat came in and started pestering me about dinner mid way through so I stopped paying attention.  The Deathless and Zarzakh figure into this.  I’ll wait for the patch notes in November.

• EVE 20th Anniversary Edition PLEX Subsidy Delivered

Somewhere a bit back CCP let me know that the PLEX subsidy they promised to help offset the rather pricey shipping costs for the 20th Anniversary Collector’s Edition had arrived.

That put 1,000 PLEX in my PLEX vault, just in time to cash in on the next tidbit.  You would think that might help drop the price of PLEX, but I guess not enough us bought the package.

The price of PLEX has climbed to around 6 million ISK per lately.

This has led to people becoming very angry on r/eve.

I neither buy nor sell PLEX, being content to just pay my subscription and not feel like I have to have a second job in space to keep my account in Omega status.  But I do enjoy the rants and conspiracy theories and sheer pig ignorance that goes into the threads.  There have long been people claiming that CCP is manipulating the PLEX market.

While CCP has been driving an inflationary economic policy for a while now through incompetence… remember, the mineral price index just hit a new all time high after a number of failed attempts by CCP to fix it… the motives attributed to CCP range into the absurd.

One of my favorites is that CCP wants to stop the freeloaders from paying for their Omega with ISK, something that completely ignores how lucrative PLEX is to CCP and that everybody who uses PLEX to subscribe is effectively earning more money for CCP and not less.

Anyway, I don’t know why PLEX is up so much.  One theory is that the GSF move from Delve to Tenerifis spurred a PLEX purchase binge to subscribe capital alts.  Or maybe we’re all selling our assets and investing in PLEX, a good long term hedge against inflation… both natural and CCP induced.  And PLEX does have a long history of going up.  I remember when this was the price of what is now 500 PLEX.

Somebody pointed out we’ve been at a 5 million ISK plateau for a while now and we had a PLEX pricing panic just two years back.  As I have said about a number of this this month, the MER should be interesting.

• PLEX Destroyed during a Rage Quit

Long time EVE Online streamer and candidate for the CSM Torvald Uruz… he placed 12th in the CSM18 election so could have been one of the CCP picks if they had been so inclined… has apparently had it with EVE Online.

As part of this he took a Gila with 38,400 PLEX valued at over 200 billion ISK… the kill report pegs it at 194 billion but the current price of 6 million per makes that number closer to 230 billion… along with some other stuff and let it die in an Abyssal pocket where it is gone, never to be recovered.  Obligatory r/eve thread about it.

So, if you were thinking about the age old New Eden question, “Can I have your stuff?” the answer is a pretty hard “No.”  I have no idea what set this off… I mean, I have been critical of CCP for a good five plus years running about their messing up the economy and haven’t hit that point… but there it is.

Taking that much PLEX out of the economy… and, perhaps ironically, letting CCP vest it and claim it as revenue… won’t help bring the price down.

Finally, CCP’s next EVE Online spin-off title, the mobile 4x conquest title EVE Galaxy Conquest is set to launch on Tuesday the 29th.

Will it be any good?  I don’t know.  Last year they said they would look into a PC version of the game.  But that is the sort of promise a company like Blizzard can deliver on with something like Diablo Immortal.  Does CCP have the wherewithal for that sort of thing?  We shall see.

That is about it.  We’re still waiting for the CSM19 election results and CCP has said it is the last call for early bird tickets for FanFest 2025.  More to come.