Future WIS Musings

Introduced with the Incarna update Walking In Stations (WIS) was a long promised expansion to the game of Eve Online that should have expanded the options available to game play and the amount of players in the game as a whole.

As we now know WIS was more or less DOA, the new currency known as Aurum (AUR) was mostly useless with items well over priced and without much function, and the lack of development for the space ship part of Eve Online was very evident.

Things went bad.

However to their credit CCP have recognised they dropped the ball, have reorganised the company and seem to be kicking some goals of late with the Crucible update and subsequent mini-updates.

Lurking in Eve Online we still have the Captains Quarters, the only Walking In Stations part of WIS actually released.  Called that room Walking In Station is quite deceiving but it sounds better than Trapped In A Small Room I suppose.  We also still have the NEX store and the Aurum currency.

This week CCP announced they are continuing with work on WIS, and by extension the NEX store and Aurum.

This is fair enough as WIS has the potential to expand the player base as it will cater to a new audience, while Eve Online Internet Spaceships has on average probably grabbed the most amount of players it will.

So CCP have dedicated some staff to figure out the best direction for WIS to take, which also pretty much confirms the last four years of WIS development has been mostly pointless.

So CCP needs a direction.

How about a shared corporation room so the avatars of my corp mates can gather.

Then a map showing our sovereignty space and surrounds, then a scrolling news board that displays the corp bulletins.

Then perhaps some mini games, they don't even have to be new creations, like chess, or go, or whatever.

But you can gamble ISK and/or AUR on the mini games.

Then have a common area that people of the alliance can meet in, with much of the same stuff as the corp rooms.

All this rolls out over time so CCP can keep pace with the updates and also deal with any major issues as they arise.

Finally we arrive at public areas, and by this stage the DUST514 folks should also be able to participate in some way.

What about a complete free to play option.  People will be able to play DUST514 free as it will be a F2P title, but what about Eve Online?

The F2P folks can wander the station, take part in some activities, play some mini games, etc, but they cannot undock a ship and enter space as they don't have a licence, a PLEX.

They can then purchase this PLEX using real money or even ISK they have obtained somehow, undock and explore the wonders of New Eden.

Then the F2P player has been converted into a potentially paying Eve Online space captain, and if you looked back far enough we'd have Incarna to thank.