The January EVE Online Economic Report Shows Destruction and Mineral Prices Soaring

CCP got us the New Eden Monthly Economic Report for January 2021 and, unlike the flawed December report, the numbers all look to be in on the second M2-XFE battle.

Also, I have a new banner picture for the MER that I think strikes the right tone. (Source)

Humans go in, crabs get richer

(For those unaware, “crabbing” is the in game slang term for doing things like mining and ratting in order to earn ISK or obtain resources.  It derives from the Russian slang for the practice and has become a common term in null sec.)

Destruction

Let’s go straight to destruction, where the regional stats indicate that there was 55.34 trillion ISK in ships and structures and what not destroyed in January, much of it in Delve.

Jan 2021 – Destruction by Region – Bar Graph

That bar graph shows Delve and then everybody else.  The top ten regions for destruction were:

1. Delve – 21.9 trillion
2. The Forge – 2.21 trillion
3. Catch – 1.82 trillion
4. The Citadel – 1.77 trillion
5. Lonetrek – 1.69 trillion
6. Sinq Laison – 1.69 trillion
7. Metropolis – 1.14 trillion
8. Vale of the Silent – 977 billion
9. Domain – 967 billion
10. Genesis – 830 billion

In an ordinary month The Forge is up at the top, ringing in pretty consistently with around 2 trillion ISK in destruction.  During the war you could tell which region was the most active battle front, as  it would pop to the top, as Fountain, Querious, and Delve have.  But the two battles at M2-XFE put Delve 10x The Forge for two months running.

Also, when it comes to the war, you can see that Catch, where Brave has been having such issues with The Initiative, is up in third place for January.

The Production vs. Destruction chart data, which keeps a running daily total of game-wide destruction, puts second battle of M2-XFE, the hull timer on January 3rd, at 15.35 trillion ISK in destruction, down a bit from the December 31st armor timer battle, which rang in 23.26 in destruction.

Jan 2021 – Production vs Destruction vs Mining

You can see the huge spike in daily data, and the temporary boost in the 30 day running average… the solid blue line… due to the two battles.

Of course, once I dug out that chart and the corresponding data I had to compare the totals to the region data and… they don’t match up, because of course they don’t.  The regional status total up to 55.34 trillion ISK, while the production vs. destruction data for January only add up to 51.71 trillion ISK.  That is a 3.6 trillion ISK gap, enough slop between the to data sets to hide a few regions worth or losses.  Go CCP.

Mining

Anyway, back to crabitalism.  According to CCP mineral prices continued to climb dramatically again in January thanks to their starvation economy plan.

Jan 2021 – Economic Indices

The mineral price index continues to climb at such a rate that it is skewing the chart and making the other indices look flatter than they would have in a more rational vertical scale.  And, in case you are wondering how the January peak compares to the historical highs.

Jan 2021 – Economic Indices – All Time

Yeah, we’re way out above any past peak.

As for minerals coming into the economy from mining, the regional stats put that at 20.4 trillion ISK in value, up from 19.9 trillion in December, though with the increase in mineral prices, that seems to indicate a further fall off in mining.  Though, honestly, it is opaque to me as to how the generate the basket of minerals to get the mineral price index.  The actual market price history in Jita doesn’t seem to reflect that much of a price spike.  But maybe the impact is being felt places that are not at the center of the economy.

The top 10 regions for mining were:

1. Oasa – 1.5 trillion (PandaFam)
2. The Forge – 1.2 trillion (High Sec)
3. Metropolis – 1.01 trillion (High Sec)
4. Sinq Laison – 937 billion (High Sec)
5. Domain – 932 billion (High Sec)
6. Lonetrek – 846 billion (High Sec)
7. The Citadel – 647 billion (High Sec)
8. Tash-Murkon – 626 billion (High Sec)
9. Everyshore – 610 billion (High Sec)
10. Heimatar – 585 billion (High Sec)

Aside from Fraternity in Oasa, mining remains a high sec game as AFK Orcas use mining drones to passively harvest veldspar to fill the tritanium requirements of New Eden producers.

Production

All those minerals are feeding somebody out there.  The top ten regions for production in January were:

1. The Forge – 22 trillion (High Sec)
2. Delve – 11.7 trillion (Imperium/PAPI)
3. Lonetrek – 6.8 trillion (High Sec)
4. Sinq Laison – 5.9 trillion (High Sec)
5. The Citadel – 5.5 trillion (High Sec)
6. Domain – 4.4 trillion (High Sec)
7. Vale of the Silent – 3.7 trillion (mixed small groups)
8. Heimatar – 3.5 trillion (High Sec)
9. Tribute – 3.4 trillion (mixed small groups)
10. Oasa – 2.8 trillion (PandaFam)

The total for production in January was 109.6 trillion ISK, which is about 2 trillion more than December.  Though, once again, if mineral prices are up as high as the indices show, it seems like that number should be going up more significantly as well.  The production/destruction data, however, only shows 80.6 trillion ISK products in New Eden in January, so once again CCP remains an unreliable witness.  But we have to work with the numbers we have.

Production remains heavily focused around The Forge and Jita.  Delve falls into second place, where the Imperium is still building, but PAPI has also been doing their own industry as well.  It would be interesting to know what the two sides look like on that.

And then there is production around Oasa, Vale of the Silent, and Tribute, which also happens to correspond with a low intensity war between Fraternity and the Freemen of the North.

Trade

Trade was up noticeably in January, with the total New Eden trade in the region data going up from 609 trillion ISK in December to 675 trillion ISK in January.  No doubt some of that was related to replacing losses after the fights at M2-XFE.  The top ten regions for trade were:

1. The Forge – 467 trillion (Jita)
2. Domain – 56.2 trillion (Amarr)
3. Delve – 29.9 trillion (Imperium/PAPI)
4. Sinq Laison – 20.8 trillion (Dodixie)
5. Lonetrek – 17 trillion (Caldari High Sec)
6. Metropolis – 12.3 trillion (Hek)
7. Heimatar – 11 trillion (Rens)
8. Essence – 5.8 trillion (Gallente High Sec)
9. The Citadel – 5.3 trillion (Caldari High Sec)
10. Tash-Murkon – 4.5 trillion (Amarr High Sec)

Delve and The Forge were both up noticeably, once again hinting at the impact of the war.  Amarr remains a solid second place, so it seems as though the removal of the Niarja route between it and Jita has not hurt it as a trading hub.

NPC Bounties

Finally, the big ISK faucet… or the secondary ISK faucet these days.

Jan 2021 – Top Sinks and Faucets Over Time

Once again, NPC bounties are down the list.

Jan 2021 – Faucet end of the chart

Commodities… drops from NPCs that you can turn in for ISK… brought 40 trillion ISK in to the game while NPC bounties brought in just 20 trillion ISK.   Well, 28 trillion ISK if we include the ESS Main Bank payouts.  CCP may need to add commodities to the top sinks and faucets chart and include ESS payouts in a chart somewhere.  I’m not sure if there is anybody around to do any sort of complicated changes any more… these charts look like somebody runs the scripts to produce them then publishes whatever they get without any error checking… once again, see last month.

Still, the regional stats seem to include the ESS Bank Payouts in their totals, as they also add up to 28 trillion ISK.  I am almost suspicious that two different CCP charts correlate.  So the top ten regions for NPC bounties were:

1. Oasa – 1.61 trillion (PandaFam)
2. Vale of the Silent – 1.29 trillion
3. The Kalevala Expanse – 1.26 trillion (PandaFam)
4. Cobalt Edge – 1.25 trillion (PandaFam)
5. Perrigen Falls – 1.13 trillion (PandaFam)
6. Insmother – 1.12 trillion (FI.RE Coalition)
7. Tenal – 1.1 trillion (PandaFam)
8. Delve – 959 billion (Imperium)
9. Branch – 924 billion (PandaFam)
10. Feythabolis – 890 billion (FI.RE Coalition)

Once again, PandaFam… Pandemic Legion, Pandemic Horde, NCDot, Fraternity, and some smaller groups… seem to be the biggest beneficiaries.  And, in the war, that is the group that has not had to issue any sort of bonds to raise ISK nor has had any Legacy Coalition style leaks about dire finances.  There was a report of alliance tournament ship sales, ever the Pandemic Legion ISK reserve, but nothing dramatic.  They seem likely to come out of the war in the strongest position as the Imperium and Legacy Coalition will both need to do significant rebuilding once the war comes to some sort of resolution, while PandaFam’s territory has remained largely intact.

Anyway, such is what we get to see about the New Eden economy.  While I may kvetch about some issues, it is still more data than we get from any other MMO that I know of.

BlizzConline Spoiled

I was going to write a night before/morning of prediction post about BlizzConline, which kicks off at 2pm Pacific Time, 22:00 UTC, today.  There were some likely bits of news we were going to hear as well as some speculation as to what other items Blizz might announce.

BlizzCon Online Today and Tomorrow

And then somebody at Blizzard accidentally let the WoW press kit out of the bag and the gaming news sites raced to publish every detail a day before the event.  That kind of takes the edge off of guessing whether or not we’ll get The Burning Crusade in classic form or what the next step for Shadowlands will be. (Here is the WoW Head version, if you’re dying to see it.)

Yes, there always seem to be leaks of some sort when it comes to BlizzCon.  The company even attempts to signal things to the fans now and then.  But when you straight up get the press release a day and a half in advance… well, the anticipation is somewhat drained.

I am still going to watch the presentations.  As I have said before, you can glean a surprising amount of information from somebody speaking about a topic that might go unmentioned in a groomed and vetted press release.  Naturally, there will be a post-con write up of my impressions.

And there are still questions about other Blizzard franchises.  What will be the news of Diablo IV?  When will Diablo Immortal finally ship?  Will they confirm a Diablo II remaster?  Does Blizzard have anything else new and/or exciting to announce?

The event schedule looks fairly anodyne, but we have seen in the past that Blizz can update the schedule based on announcements during the keynote.  Remember in 2018 when all the Diablo panels became Diablo Immortal panels?  Okay, forget that one, that was a bad example.

Who knows.  Maybe the WoW press release was just a plant, a diversion, and J. Allen Brack will go up on stage and tell us we don’t really want The Burning Crusade and we’ll be retweeting variations of that Willy Wonka “You Get Nothing!” meme all next week.

CCP and the Transition of Project Nova

One of the news items that popped up while I was away for the last week… the last few posts were written in advance… was about CCP and Project Nova.  I saw multiple headlines saying it has been cancelled but, as with everything around this project, it just isn’t that simple.

Project Nova, the FPS game that CCP has seen as something of a successor to the late DUST 514, has been kicking around as an idea or concept or plan for quite a while now.  We even had a blog banter topic back in May of 2016 about Project Nova, which pre-dated the actual end of DUST 514. It isn’t a new thing.

It was even said to be “closer that we think” back at Fanfest in 2018 and we were shown demos and allowed to sign up for alpha at EVE Vegas later that year.

And then about a week later it was announced that the whole thing had been postponed.  Nothing like building something up at a convention only to pull the rug out immediately afterwards.  Of course, that was just after the Pearl Abyss acquisition closed and things were going to change.

Since then there has not been a lot of news about Project Nova.  What there has been is a series of job postings for a CCP project in the UK.  Then, in the Pearl Abyss earnings call it was apparently mentioned that Project Nova had been cancelled, so the headlines were based on that.

But we got the following announcement over on Reddit to clarify the situation.

We’re continuing to develop our sci-fi multiplayer shooter game concept, actively evolving it beyond the original scope for what was formerly codenamed Project Nova. Development efforts on this concept are now the full focus of CCP’s London studio. Project Nova team members based in Iceland have been moved onto other projects at our Reykjavík studio.

This decision was taken because Project Nova’s gameplay experience as presented at EVE Vegas ’18 would not have achieved our ambitious goals for this concept. Moreover, it is very common for games in active development to evolve over time, often substantially. We remain committed to offering a rock-solid, action-oriented gameplay experience with stellar visuals, but due to significant changes in the scope and direction of our sci-fi multiplayer shooter game concept, it also made sense to update how we refer to this project internally. So, we are no longer using the codename Project Nova for this game concept.

Furthermore, we are moving away from publicly announcing our internal project codenames and will wait until we’re ready for a full reveal. We want to show you rather than tell you how we have evolved this concept and we’re looking forward to doing so when the time comes to present this concept as a fully-fledged game.

So there is still an FPS under development at CCP.  The development is now being done in the UK at CCP’s London studio.  It isn’t clear if integration with EVE Online is still a goal of the project.  And, finally, the whole thing is no longer called Project Nova, but they are not going to tell us what the new code name is for it so we’re all going to either refer to it still as Project Nova, or possibly The Project formerly known as Project Nova.  I am not sure either is exactly an improvement.

However, it is probably a good thing for them to stop telling us about things that aren’t anywhere close to done as they can’t seem to keep themselves from giving estimated ship dates that are nowhere close to reality.

Anyway, “cancelled” didn’t really seem like the right word.  They didn’t say they were throwing away all the work and starting again from scratch.  But it makes for a catchy headline.  And, as with Titan over at Blizzard, we may not end up getting something that lines up with past visions of the project, but which may still contains elements of earlier plans.  We shall see.

Related Posts:

• Massively OP (and follow up)
• The Nosy Gamer
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• Eurogamer
• PC Gamer
• PC GamesN
• MMO Bomb

Towards the EverQuest Tutorial

As part of the post last week about the EverQuest progression servers that Daybreak announced for the 20th anniversary, Bhagpuss and I ended up exchanging comments about the tutorial.

There is a tutorial, though it was added at some point well after launch.  Neither I nor Bhagpuss nor Google could say exactly when… so if you know, here is an opportunity for you to leave a comment… and it has been through various iterations, so there is probably somebody out there who longs for the “classic” tutorial.

Anyway, I said that, despite its unknown provenance, I kind of like the tutorial.  I’ve been through it a couple of times, though not recently.  In fact, I think the last time I went through it was when Daybreak opened up the Vox server, which I think coincided with the game going free to play… which would make it 2012.

It has been a while.

Anyway, all this thinking about it made me want to go try it.  At least it would get me warmed up for the game in time for the big day next month.  So I cranked up the EverQuest client, logged in, and looked at the old server list window once again.

Choose a server, choose a race, choose a class…

There I realized that I was still subscribed to Daybreak All Access.  I mean, I knew that in some part of my brain… and I’ve let it slip some since I was playing EQII late last year because I did the three month at a go subscription, but they stop giving you Daybreak Cash if you unsubscribe early and so I let it run, log in to collect, but lose track of the point when I should subscriber… so they’ve clearly got my number on that one… but the fact that I had all the pay to play progression servers on the list kind of pressed that home on me.

Also, I like the little scroll window that first tells you how many of the expansions you own… a useful number I suppose… and then proceeds to list out, by name, in order, all of the ones you do own, followed, again by name and in order, all of the ones you do not.

Given that there are now 25 expansions in the wild, that can take a while, even if most of them are just three word names.  I had to wait a bit for the scroll to come around so I could get a screen shot with my own count.  I own everything through The Darkened Sea, which was more than I could mentally account for… but whatever.  Even watching that list scroll past I kept seeing names that seemed like they only just shipped, but.  Everything from House of Thule forward seems like it was recent.

Once I was done staring at that I decided to go back to the Vox server once more.  I have characters on all of the progression servers… my thing seems to be to at least roll up a character and stand out in front of Qeynos even if I don’t play… but I wasn’t sure where any of them stood these days and I didn’t want any special rules of restrictions.  I wanted the tutorial.  So Vox it was.

I already have four characters on Vox, three in their low 20s and one at level 85 from that time they gave a free boost and then I couldn’t get to where the game was telling me to go.  That was almost five years ago.

Also, I thought surely the launcher was wrong when it was telling me about level 85 boosts.

Level 85 is hardly your best these days

Seriously, that was what the boost was five years ago.  Since then the level cap is 110 now.  Though, I guess looking through that list of expansions, it was 100 back then so it was hardly an invite to battle with anybody’s best back then as well.  The boost for EverQuest II has moved forward, but like so much in EverQuest, the boost there stays locked in the past I guess. (Bhagpuss seemed similarly bemused about this.)

But, again, I wasn’t here to boost, I was here for the tutorial.

So I rolled up a fresh character.  I had already done the usual suspects on Vox already, a paladin, a shaman, a warrior, and a druid, so I went out for something I hadn’t looked at in a while.  I considered a bard.  I do love EverQuest bards.  However, bards have always seemed like more of a group oriented class to me, and I wasn’t planning to group.  Instead I decided to go for a cleric.

EverQuest clerics are good, old school clerics, wearing heavy armor and beating people with blunt objects.  I like a healer that can take a punch and have always been a bit chagrined in WoW with cloth wearing clerics.  I mean, sure, they have mind control.  But wearing cloth like some sort of common mage?  But I guess you have the paladin if you want an armored cleric in WoW these days.

I ended up with a dwarf cleric named Dolenz because I was thinking about Circus Boy the other day or something.  I clicked the tutorial option… it is a bit confusing, because there is a button there on the character page that says “Tutorial” but I wasn’t sure what it did, so I clicked it a couple of times and figured it was just a toggle to indicate whether or not you wanted to go through the tutorial.  But then I couldn’t remember its initial state and, honestly, even if I did remember, it was not clear to me which state got me into the tutorial and which would drop me straight into Norrath.

Whichever I ended up choosing, it turned out to be the right one, because it sent me into the tutorial as I had wanted.

The tutorial, unlike a lot of what I remember about EverQuest, has a story of sorts.  It isn’t a very original story.  You’ve been captured by kobols and are in kobold jail and have to escape… because by industry convention all RPG starting stories must be a jail break or a ship wrekck scenario… and after a bit of an intro you end up in a room with a shirtless barbarian named Arias who has come to help.

Look at that oiled chest, 100% in my book

Arias takes you under his wing and introduces you to the basic concepts over EverQuest, like movement, the quest log, looting, and beating the tar out of kobolds.

Arias and I have done him in

I recognized the quest log, was hazy about being able to click on the keywords in dialog rather than having to say them, and was surprised a bit by the looting mechanism, which was a new one on me.

Well, new-ish.  It seemed to be very similar to what I saw had ended up in LOTRO when I came back for the legendary server there.

The loot just waits for you

It looks a little better in LOTRO, but it seems to act about the same.  And it was comforting.  One of the things I forgot to mention in my ramble about returning to World of Warcraft was how, after three months in Middle-earth, I kept forgetting to loot.  You get used to the loot just showing up in a window for you to pick and choose among.

After looting that key and learning again how to hand it to an NPC, Arias led us out of the initial story and into thee stronghold of the revolt.

The revolution begins here

From there I was set to learn a whole range of game mechanics.  But I will pick that up in the next post.

Citadel Destruction Unleashed

A major aspect of the February update released last week was the Upwell 2.0 revisions.  Those were designed to make blowing up citadels… at least unused or neglected citadels… much easier.

An Astrahus meeting its end

A couple items… the shields being vulnerable at all times along with the new “low power” mode that removed the armor timer from the mix… were combined to make the removal of citadels easier.  You could no longer just leave one sitting unfueled with the vulnerability times set to an awkward hour and expect people to leave it alone because it wasn’t worth the effort.

Or such was the hope.

But any revamp that comes with a flow chart can be a risk in the comprehension department.

How to blow up a citadel

Fortunately it seems that the prospect of blowing things up is enough to get people to pay attention and focus.  CCP Quant posted a chart showing a huge surge of structure reinforcements the day the Upwell 2.0 changes went live.

Structure Reinforcement Spike, Feb. 15, 2018 – That should be M, L, and XL

Reinforcing Upwell structures was easy now though.  You could do it whenever you wanted.  The question was whether or not people would follow through.

Looking at zKillboard it appears that they did.  The first short timers started to come due on Saturday, Feb. 17, 2018, and if you look at the losses for the various Upwell structure flavors for that date there is a clear uptick in kills.

Astrahus citadels, the most common structure floating around in space, saw a wave of destruction.  Looking at losses for recent days, 5-20 seems to be about the range of kills on any given date.

Saturday saw 218 Astrahus kills by my count, most of them being purged from wormhole space.  WH space also happens to be the part of space without asset safety so, unlike elsewhere, there is a chance to find a loot pinata.  This led wormholers to go after them with gusto I gather.

Likewise, the Raitaru, the other common medium structure, saw 95 blown up on Saturday.  Again, this was heavily in WH space.

Other Upwell structures also saw an increase in destruction save for Keepstars and Sotiyos… both are big investments and unlikely to be in low power mode… though nothing close to the above two.  even Tataras saw a slight uptick with three going down on Saturday.  So op success I suppose.  Structures made easier to kill were killed en mass.

Who will pick up the pieces?  Who brought a salvager?

After this orgy of destruction it seems as though the pace will slacken.  The easy targets have largely been singled out and blow up I imagine.  And, aside from those found in WH space, the incentive for blowing up these structures is just kill mails and the joy of seeing something explode.  But sometimes that is enough.

Anyway, more things going “boom” in New Eden.