Updated: More Serenity Merchandise..with a twist

Merchandise and Eve are not two words you are likely to see together. Getting a merchandising deal together has so far proved to be beyond the wit of CCP. We were promised something at Eve Vegas which wasn't very overwhelming but that seems so have fallen through. We were then told the New Year would herald a new beginning and now presumably we are into fanfest territory for any sort of announcement. So maybe by Eve Vegas this year you might be able to buy a Amarr keyring. But then again, maybe not. 

Meanwhile in China, Eve's partners Tiancity don't mess about and you can actually buy official merchandise there. I bought a Laptop Backpack late last year for example. In fact, their whole approach to marketing has been innovative. Now the Chinese New Year is finally over a new promotion has just been announced. This one like the last one is a something that the CCP Iceland crew fully know about if only because it needed Dev time. I'll come to that bit later, but first let's look at the latest product that is being offered.

First thing to say it that "Terrans Force" is a brand name of a Taiwanese Laptop manufacturer well known in Asia - sort of an Alienware tribute band but probably more powerful and cheaper. They are sponsoring and selling this Eve product. But what is it?

Its a limited edition commemorative stamp album. Actually a bit more than stamps..metal stamps

and 3D postcards

and envelopes

and there are some medals too.

Clearly a lot of work has gone into creating this. It costs about $90 or £60. BUT THAT IS NOT ALL. I mentioned the Iceland dev link. Well in some way this promotion appears to be  integrated into Eve Online itself. I am indebted to @darkblad for pointing out an asset he found on Schildwall Playground. What he found was this:

The rough translation I could do isn't that reliable, but talks about "Terrans force(future humanity) have been given official rights", and then "momentoes for future humans", that "witnesses every captain's emotional journey through the infinite universe filled with stars" and "There's never been a memento like this before and it's of great value to collectors" The button in German says "Show Market Details". I had a look on SISI last night but could see this but there have been several builds since this first appeared so it may have been removed now that it is on Serenity.

So this poses an interesting tinfoil question. Is it or will it be possible to buy a virtual object in the game market that can then somehow be turned into a real and tangible object - like a medal lets say - that then gets sent to you for you collection? Possibly they are dual promotions and have no hard connection whatsoever. Either way, the Eve players in China are continuing to get a much better set of goodies than we are.

UPDATE:
Darkblad has kindly provided more information about this and the skins I talked about in SP Serenity gifts in comments resulting from his probing. Top guy! 

Serenity SP Gifts

I have waxed lyrical about Skill Point trading since it was first announced just before Eve Vegas. I'm not going to plough up that debate again because it is going to happen regardless. My existing concern has been and still remains that it is a trojan horse for the introduction of F2P or some other feature yet to be announced. Now that isn't necessarily a bad thing in itself if it brings new players to the game and makes CCP's profits more robust.

The issue as I see it is existing players are being encouraged to mess with their skills without necessarily being given all the facts. The skill points I buy once the February release is shipped might be worthless in say 6 months time because CCP announce the next phase which manipulates the supply and/or the cost of SP.

On the surface, I might appear a bit paranoid and obsessive about this. The reason I am deeply skeptical of CCP motivation is in part due to the way this was announced and that SP Trading alone doesn't seem  to justify the time spent on it. The other part is I try to follow what is happening in China on the Eve Serenity server. The China instance of Eve is interesting. It doesn't have the history of Tranquility so in a way there are less taboo areas for their partners - Tiancity- to steer clear of. It does seem that CCP are trying out ideas in China that could be targeted at Tranquility in the future.

Eve China had a fairly disastrous start because the local gaming culture was to RMT the hell out of it. The game was essentially reset and players were encouraged to return with hefty bribes of Skill Points. I mention all this because CCP/Tiancity are now handing out Skill Points again for a Chinese New Year promotion. I took a google translated screenshot below:

 You can find the chinese link here

There is also a cool video on Youku:

So it is clear that in the right circumstances CCP are quite prepared to shower players with Skill Points. If I were thinking of selling my Skill Points (I am not btw), my instinct would be to sell the SP at the first opportunity because CCP might just flood the market. If you are thinking of buying SP you might want to reflect on what is happening in China where CCP seem quite prepared to mess with the supply. On the other hand CCP could just make it clear what they really intend to do.

Eve Store - Maybe Next Year

At Eve Vegas this year, CCP announced they had entered into a commercial arrangement  that would in theory enable you to buy Eve merchandise. This was to be put in place before the end of the year. So time marched on and , well nothing. You may recall from the outset that I wasn't particularly encouraged by the announcement at the time. This was for a couple of reasons. 

Firstly, there was the products themselves. You could spy them from the footage and pictures from Eve Vegas. In quality terms they looked absolutely fine. If anything they were a bit over thought and too worthy. Cheap and cheerful they weren't. Bear in mind I was comparing this with CCP's partners in China - Tiancity. 

Tiancity definitely do cheap and cheerful and I am a very proud owner of a £30 Eve Online laptop bag. The problem is you have to fetch it from China. However, the original Eve Vegas announcement didn't offer much of an improvement. The plan was a US company would sell the products. Fine if you live in the US. Not so fine if you don't and  you have to lump in shipping and an other taxes your local tyrants wish to extract from you. It seemed a missed opportunity

But now we belatedly have a new announcement. This all looks rather promising. They are rethinking the product mix and addressing the shipping costs. Furthermore, they intend to tailor the products to in game events. A Drifter doomsday torch would be nice. Let's hope they manage to get this together this time.

In Other News

Eve. You know? The game? Yeah, I actually played some. Space ships and stuff. To recap, I have been looking for a wormhole for some time and sorting out my characters to support the operation. I thought I had found a wormhole that looked promising. It was C2 with a lowsec static, one abandoned POS and abandoned POCO's. Traffic was low and the last kill had been early in the month. My main had been parked there for ages. I am not sure why I was holding back but I had a gut feeling. 

It was more procrastinaion than a desire to do any research but I took another look at the killboard to try and counter the negative vibe I was getting. Looking back a number of years, I suddenly noticed a name that had cropped up three times. The odds of a player finding the same wormhole over a 5 year period and killing someone seemed a bit long. The player's most recent kill was for a different corp in nullsec so they were unlikely to be an ongoing threat. I was in full detective mode by now however. I decided to look up the corp the player had been a member of when they had been killing people in the wormhole. That was illuminating. It was only a small corp but one of the current members had killed someone quite recently and there had been a whole chain of kills by the corp for the hole I was in over many years. My conclusion was this was wormhole was contnuously parked with a hunter from a single player corp. 

Presumably he/she switched the alts when they were sufficiently trained and only played the wormhole character when not doing something else. Either way, I was not alone. A hunter had been in that wormhole for years and was still acive. I was in the pixel space equivilent of a lobster pot. Now knowing you are in a trap can be used to your advantage. But it is not as if things aren't complicated enough already. So I resisted the opportunity destroy my non PVP credibility by hunting the hunter. My search for a wormhole goes on. What I will say is this exactly why I enjoy travelling in wormholes. There is a history and a mystery to them all. The cost of finding that out can at times be expensive. 

I also had another quick stint on the SISI server last night. The probe map has changed again. The probe spheres are now a lot brighter. Not sure why that has changed as I didn't think that as a problem before. They definately give your retinas a sun tan now.

And in other, other news, my Eve Online laptop bag finally arrived! If you have been following, I bought it from Tiancity, CCP's partner for the Chinese instance of Eve Online. A combination of friends and relatives and relatives of friends have acted as couriers. The bag cost about 35 pounds but it is not cheap and nasty looking which was a primary worry. It is well made and nicely detailed with Eve logos both on the outside and on the lining inside. It is also a limited edition. Number 120 of 800 (I think). Why CCP can't do anything like this in the west is still beyond me. I know they are setting something up in the US but the goods on display and EveVegas looked pricey and a bit over-thought. An Eve selfie stick would work for me. And anyway, shipping costs from the US will probably make the proposition a bit too expensive for us yokels living in the uncivilised world

Drifter Complexes Done the Serenity Way

I came across this awesome video on Reddit of all places and it was uploaded by guy called "copyliu" It is a documentary on how a group of pilots on the Chinese Serenity Server tackled and overcame the Drifter Complexes. It is in Mandarin but has English subtitles and also has graphic explaining their approach to the rooms in the Drifter sites. In short, they studied some of the approaches we have used on Tranquility and rejected them. Instead they theory crafted their own approach using Bantams as the focus. If Drifter complexes are your thing then you might be interested because they also use much smaller fleets than the ones I am aware of. It is not quite Rooks and Kings (can they ever be bettered?) but there is a strong flavour of that style of storytelling. Well worth a view and thank you copyliu for sharing.

Gold Serenity Skins (updated)

Just a quick one today. From the official Eve Wechat account I saw these skins being promoted. Apparently gold duct tape for Minmatar ships is a thing on the Serenity server that hosts the Chinese version of Eve. (updated: see video below)

Updated: Came across this video on the Tiancity site: