For Science! Eve Gets Better

  It seems crucibles aren't just for the laboratory anymore. No, my friends, interweb spaceships have them and boy does that mean a thing or two. The novelette of patch notes have been out for a bit and they are a read.

  So what's good about this expansion? The real question is closer to being what's not cool about it all. There's a metric tonne of information to go through and I have yet to really even run into the majority of it in game. Admittedly, a few other games have been taking my attention (looking at you BF3, Deus Ex, and Skyrim) and RL and all that. But the giant patching process went smoothly for me, not something all can say it seems, and getting in game was quite the experience. I'll just go through my impressions.

  Logging in, I was immediately presented with visual anarchy. My windows were all reset, so I took the time to put them all back where I like them. I found that I can no longer pin them, an issue that annoys me greatly. I was worried all my settings were gone, but thankfully they were all where I left them.

  I had one particular thing in mind that I could easily check, so I did. Holy moley, Batman. Corp Bookmarks are the sex and I will never let them go. Even with the time delay the server has the have, it's beyond amazing and useful in wormholes. Having the entire chain of bookmarks without much fuss for the entire fleet is going to alleviate so many headaches. Well...that is as long as nobody screws them up in the first place.

  But a problem I had immediately was the font. I almost want the old font back, it's so hideous. As a graphic designer I play with type a lot. When your font library is as big as your music library...yeah. There simply is no way that it looks good and the way it meshes, or doesn't in this case, with the entire UI just makes it all garish. CCP, please hire someone who knows what they are doing to choose or make a font for you. Please.

  The new tier 3 BCs will be quite fun toys to play around with once I get a chance. Couldn't get out to a good highsec exit while I was on, but it's for the best. Prices were a bit stupid around 200 mil or more and even though they quickly started dropping I won't touch them til they are around 60 mil ISK. I am pretty excited to try them out. It will be a bit more training to get T2 large guns in more races, but seems well worth it. Rumor has it the Naga can get around 500 dps out to 200 km. That's just nuts, I can only imagine the kind of dps these things can do with real weapons fit to them. Just don't let anyone sneeze at you or you'll lose it. And you don't want to lose that pod along with it, since everyone now gets to laugh at the way you mix +2s with +3s and the odd hardwirings you chose.

  Scanning also seems a bit borked, so I have heard. There have been signatures that multiple, well skilled players could not scan down so hopefully that gets resolved quickly.

  Cloaked ships don't decloak each other now. While this is cool, I would like to say "boo" as well. This should only have been implemented as it pertains to fleet members. Now I can't be cloaked, watch some idiot in a T1 frig cloak off a hole, motor over to him and surprise him with a nice warm cup of facemelt. It makes bombing runs easier, sure, but we've gotten some pretty hilarious kills with cloaky on cloaky action.

  And as a PI junky, I can tell you messing with POCOs (player owned customs offices) is going to be a real kick. They have the tank of a small POS but who knows what kind of action you can get if it generates a notification as well as a killmail. Oh the possibilities for trolling and shooting are endless.

  I will be finally making my way into a Proteus just in time to get in on the hybrid love. Ammo is smaller, dps is even better...hopefully. It's gonna be sweet. Too bad I still have to hump people to do it. Although I hear hail got its penalties removed entirely. *Looks at void* Thanks CCP...
I am also pretty sad I don't have my Vindi now to really enjoy it.

  There's time dilation, new captains quarters, new T2 modules and so much more. Look at the notes for it all, it'll be a good bedtime put-you-to-sleep light reading.

  Overall, I think this is one of the best expansions since Apocrypha. CCP did well to grab a ton of low hanging fruit that will make this game so much more fun. While there is more to be done, I think we will be chewing on this hunk for a while. I know it'll take me time to really digest it all and take advantage of all our new options. Yea, there's stuff that annoys me or I hate but it could be worse. You could have lost your boot.ini file...again.

I'll give it all a good test drive and let you know more of what I think later
-Mem

Ninja edit for the trailer