CCP has announced the official release date for the new free EVE Online expansion, “Trinity”.

CCP, one of the world’s largest independent game developers, today announced that the highly anticipated EVE Online: Trinity expansion for its popular massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) will be available on December 5, 2007.

This is going to give the graphics in EVE just a bit of a boost, as you can see in this comparison:

                     

Before Trinity                                                       After Trinity
What’s interesting about this to me is the fact that, if you judge by the announcement that accompanied the release date information, convential wisdom would indicate that a major upgrade to the game isn’t needed.

This expansion comes on the heels of another important milestone: more than 200,000 players now subscribe to EVE Online.

That’s right…EVE Online just broke the 200,000 subscriber mark for the first time. Four and a half years after launch. Are there any lessons for other game development companies in this?

You bet your sweet jetcan there are…at least in my opinion.

• Pick a concept that will be fun to play.
• Don’t try to be a “me too” and follow the flavor of the month, which right now is code for “World of Warcraft”.
• Never stop improving your product.
• Don’t give up on your game if it’s not a huge raving success after three months.

And note that the reasons that some give for a game being successful or not…bugs, balance issues, exploits, too large of a world and lag, things that have all been mentioned as a reason for Vanguard’s failure at launch…have all been present in varying degrees of severity ever since EVE launched in May of 2003. And yet, it continues to grow in spite of that. So, what’s the secret formula for CCP’s success?

Doing a good (and ever-improving) job of providing what a group of gamers consider to be fun…that they can’t get anywhere else. Period.

• Socialize this!
  
  • Subscribe
  • Bloglines
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • Technorati

Rate this:

2.5

If you liked this, then you should seek medical attention - right after you subscribe to my RSS feed!!

Tags: CCP, Eve Online, games, gaming, mmo, mmog, mmorpg, Trinity