By the time you all see this, dear readers, Mr. Macgoo will have his copy of EVE Online: Incarna, and my brain will likely have melted out my ears from overexposure. I am super-stoked for this new build of EVE, and I am eagerly awaiting almost every aspect.
First and foremost is walking in stations. This is by far the biggest and most fanfare-ish new feature of Incarna. The new characters released in Incursion was a lead up to this, and soon people will by wandering around their captain’s quarters or stations in their full carbon-powered, graphics-card-murdering glory. I mean, generating the models in the character creator took my computer nearly 15 minutes, and so imagine what it will be like in Jita where the in-station population routinely numbers in the hundreds or even thousands! I can just imagine watching in horror as the titanium body of my iMac melts into a pathetic silver puddle at my feet and then quietly weeps to itself…but back to what I was talking about.
The captain’s quarters is also a new feature, and it’s where you will likely spend most of your time in stations. These quarters will have a nice balcony for viewing your ships, lots of necessities like a couch, a mirror, and a big, low-quality viewscreen for watching irrelevant news shows. If they let you surf the web or access files from your computer, I will totally play games while playing a game.
Other new things we be included with the Incarna release. No doubt the war on lag will continue, as will the need for more explodey explosions. In the fun department, the new turret graphics are due to release with Incarna, as is a new skin for the Maller, an Ammar cruiser. Due to the fact that I fly a Maller (and that I take pride in my turrets) this is a big improvement for me. I always thought the Maller looked mundane for an Ammar ship, but I flew it for its effective armor bonuses, and now that they look awesome, well…bonus!
The last thing that will be coming with Incarna is forewarning that an unprecedented link of game genres will be just around the corner. Dust 514, CCP’s pending console-based MMO/FPS will be linked to the EVE Online universe, allowing the two games to effect each other. I have no idea how this will work, because it has never been done before, but the potential for awesomeness is limitless. I have attempted to research other precedents, and the only hits on Google and Yahoo are simply not related or are about Dust 514. There is quite literally nothing of this scale that has been done before. This could turn out the be the biggest flop in history, but, knowing CCP, this will likely be the most awesome combination of games since…well, okay, it has no precedent.
More updates will come as I play with the new build, but until then, good luck, fellow capsuleers. Have fun with the new features!
You forgot to mention that most macs probably won’t run EVE properly due to severe slowdowns in graphics performance. I wonder how long it takes CCP to fix it this time.
Also all ATI cards got nerved on settings and most recent iMacs use ATI cards. So how good does Incarna look now…
I just installed the patch, can’t log in yet, but if the login screen is any indication i’m gonna need a new iMac. And this one is just over 18 months old now.
Arnan, EVE has posted some fixes to this on their website. I simply re-downloaded the client and it works fine, albeit with some slight lag due to the age of my computer. It’s nothing I’m not used to, but if you had better performance before, I can see how this would be annoying.
Jacob it is not about the fixes, but about the older macs not supporting the sm3 (shader model 3). I have a 3 year old macbook and a 2 year old Imac. On both my graphic cards do no support sm3 (although CCP mentioned on their blogs both graphic cards were will usable (but apperently only for PC…). All in all a big FAIL.
And the irony : http://www.apple.com/macbook/features.html look at the image at their new graphic card.
But the only thing i’m still wondering. Is this a mac fail or a CCP fail?
Or a Transgaming fail?
Lucky for me it wasn’t all that bad after i had figured out CCP once again borked the upgrade/migration script.
Still they did a poor job on announcing the system requirement increase. Anyway, i got away with it this time.
I wrote this thread with how i fixed it. Not sure if the redownloading is required. But removing the folders definately is: http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1535776
All I know is I was lucky enough to find the devblog suggesting that you redownload the entire client before I had tried to upgrade. It is working fine on my 4 year old iMac.