The Triglavians have redoubled their efforts of invading New Eden systems amidst reports of further breaches into various planet and system-wide communications networks. A CONCORD spokesperson stated these latest hacks seemed not to be in line with previous ones such as the CONCORD Billboard hacks across High Security Space. This time they seemed to be gleaning more personal user data—the “browsing history” of common citizens—as well as some site owners tracing spikes in various site traffic to possible Triglavian sources. 

CONCORD was unwilling to speculate on the intent behind this, though many civilian and corporate analysts have said they believe it is possible the Triglavians were attempting to learn more about average life and culture in New Eden. “They must not have liked what they found though,” one hosting server representative told us. “Shortly after we started seeing the breeches, many servers that our clients use for fanart and fan fiction hosting were attacked and shut down.” 

CONCORD will not confirm the cyber attacks were of Triglavian origin; though the timing suggests it might have been. Interviewing citizens throughout the constellation, we encountered some individuals who confirmed websites that they knew hosted content known as “shipping”, as well as smut art and fanfiction. Triglavians, Simo Reshar Fitness characters, and other underground material we can’t delve into were all shut down in the attacks.

Shortly before publishing this breaking story, a new message was broadcast by the Triglavian Collective on billboards across New Eden. The new message states that Zorya Triglav “Will not suffer such degeneracy as we have witnessed” and that “it shall be extirpated along with all who corrupt The Flow.”

Mister Monsieur, Eve Online Capsuleer and self styled “Jita Market Maestro” has called for a boycott against the developers of Eve Online, CCP Games, after receiving an unsolicited email containing a personalized video that he calls “a personal attack” on his “moral character”. Mister Monsieur has taken to Facebook as well, calling on all similarly attacked capsuleers to speak out against the “deliberate act of cyberbullying condoned by the larger EVE Online community”. In an online interview with Mr. Mister Monsieur where he reviewed the video, commenting on each section and its pointed attack against him and his play style. 

The first 8 seconds of the video show a Gila undocking from an Amarr station in a section of space Mister Monsieur has “never been!”. He continued by explaining: “Sure, I have dozens of Gila’s in market orders, but I have never flown one. Nor have I have ever been to Amarr! I haven’t even left Jita in 3 years!”

Then the welcome message of the video appeared:

    HELLO 

    Mister Monsieur

    you and your 0 alts have been

    up to a lot in EVE this year

This set him off again. “Who has time for Alts?! I’m too busy with playing the game to have alts, and here they are rubbing it in that I don’t pay them for multiple accounts! It’s money grubbing guilt tripping at its worst, I tell you!”

Next came the travel stats. Even though they were displayed on the side of a Bowhead, this did little to assuage the anger in Mister Monsieur: “Of course I made 0 jumps” he exclaimed, exasperation evident in his voice. “Yes, I only warped around a dozen times! Sure I only ever visited 1 system, it’s called J I T A. It’s where I live!”

The market transactions section seemed to be the only part of the video that didn’t completely apoplexy my guest: 

    You made 919,012 market transactions

    Your most traded item was

    PYERITE

    500,000,000,000 units

Yet even here, he found fault. “Where does it tell you that I am the top 1% of traders in Jita? Nowhere!”

The skill points section was a wash at only 300,000 SP gained. “Once you max out your Alpha ‘toon, you cannot get more skill points. They are back to guilt tripping again” Mister Monsieur said dismissively, not even looking at the screen. He did however tense up and become extremely rigid the next moment when the message flashed across the side of a Munnin:
    Based on your             You had

    ACTIVITY             Success with

    this year            PVP

The howl of rage emitted from Mister Monsieur caused me to instinctively grab my headset and thrust it at arms length from my ears. As the noise abated, I returned to hear him fitfully recounting the last time he undocked from Jita IV-4 to move trade goods between stations.

“I’m a market trader. I buy and sell. I only lost one ship, it was a Myrmidon, not a hauler! Who cargo scans a Myrmidon these days? I just wanted to fill the station-only buy order at planet VII. One Thousand skill injectors. Who wouldn’t? The mark-up was insane! Even if the minimum purchase amount was set at 1000, it was like printing ISK! I had to move them all at once. But can you blame me? And they got the pod too! Who pods in hi-sec? It was my special training clone, with the implants I couldn’t get without going Omega again. I hate this game. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it, I hate it…”.

I watched as the video continued its montage of uncaring statistics. He had blapped zero ships, he had no frequent targets, his nemesis was someone no one had ever heard of, and he had been podded only once. 

By the time the on screen Gila warped off in a shower of bright fireworks my guest was sobbing quietly, unable to respond to further questions or offer additional comment.

“It was difficult to admit the truth,” the engineering manager acknowledged, “but there it was, staring us in the face.”

It is no secret that CCP has been wrestling with code quality since shortly after the turn of the millenium. Facing a legacy of spaghetti code, CCP developers have struggled mightily to deliver new features to meet both player and executive demand. From deleting boot.ini (2007) to game-breaking exploits allowing infinite damage (2014), to a bug that prevents capsuleers with corporation roles from opening their wallet (2019), defects have ranged from the bemusing to the absolutely mind-boggling.

“At first, we thought we could manage publicity long enough to resolve all our legacy code issues,” the engineering manager admitted. Public relations started with traditional responses, such as “can’t reproduce,” then escalated to “that’s not a bug, that’s a feature,” and finally settled into “POS code.”

Then, in 2019, the ultimate breakthrough.

“This absolutely guarantees we will never again encounter a new bug in EVE Online,” the manager announced as they concluded an internal meeting. For a moment, the room was silent. Then, chaos erupted, as developers lept from their seats, exchanged high-fives, and one normally quiet lass erupted with “YEEEEEEEEEEEE HEEEEEEEEEE!”

The solution, and its rationale are blindingly clear, once stated simply:
“There is a clear relationship between the amount of code we write, and the number of defects we create or expose in existing code. Thus, the optimal solution is to write no new code. To achieve this end, effective 2019.12.16, Developers may now play [EVE]. We are entirely confident that no productive work will occur from this day forward, and thus no new defects will be created or exposed.”

There are currently several well maintained and customizable player overview packs that someone can choose from with no single one being the best for every situation. Many of these player-made overviews have color cues and iconography that aid in comprehension. Everyone who has played EVE for more than a month has encountered scenarios in which having properly configured overview tabs were lifesaving, and the absence thereof meant certain death. With the addition of the UI Pointer tool, helping newer players figure out the labyrinthian UI and Menu system has become easier. The problem remains however, when a newer player can’t find or doesn’t want help in their first few hours of play. These first few hours are statistically the most important in determining if the player will stick with EVE, or become some dead-ass do-nothing that plays Mobas or casual Battle-Royale knock-offs.

CCP Larrakin explained during an episode of The Meta Show that, “Nobody actually likes the default overview and it’s really confusing to new players. CCP metrics on highsec players and players who will eventually join null have one glaring thing in common. They all end up using a player overview pack.” When pressed for how CCP would decide which overview pack to make the default, CCP Larrakin stated that they would “create a new menu that lets players choose between the top three most popular overviews based on CCP analytics.” He went on to explain that player choice and individuality are “the cornerstone of the EVE Online experience,” as such this new system will allow players to “hot swap” between overview packs and saved configurations.

After explaining that this new feature is currently being tested internally, CCP Larrakin confirmed that the new streamlined overview meta-slot and its associated features would be available in the April release of EVE Online.

Kemiönsaari, Finland – “Fanfest at Home” is in full swing with CCP Games livestreaming many interactions in the intimacy of a household setting. But what might have been lost in the fanciful banter as CCP Burger operated what was essentially his own cooking show, was his answer to the most important question of the event: “What is your favorite burger?” 

“Oh my favorite burger is like, is like pizza. I…I like them, I like them grilled. Always grilled. But if I am doing it for myself and my wife is not eating with me that night, I put anchovies into the ground beef.” 

His answer drew immediate condemnation from the off-screen interviewer, who was “disgusted.” But CCP Burger doubled down, responding, “No, it is amazing. It’s a lifehack.”

But could the unconventional ingredient at the heart of the burger, the meat itself, demonstrate secret core design principles of EVE Online’s “Age of Chaos?” 

Food is oftentimes the center of EVE Online controversies. Fleets have been decided by the fiery debate of whether pizza can actually be called pizza when ruined augmented by pineapple, with some FC’s declaring fleet members who hold to the travesty triumph of the culinary arts as fleet primaries. Even the highest profile betrayal in recent years—that of The Judge and the Circle of Two Alliance—had its beginnings in a Reykjavik restaurant.

But how can anchovies be reconciled with the burger? The concept may be foreign to many EVE Online players, but so was the notion of rapid, iterative changes to once-bedrock features and mechanics governing New Eden. If the perfect burger to CCP Burger is broken down into core components, many familiar parts of the game may be explained by the metaphor of the ground beef. The ground beef of a burger—especially for those burgers that do not stray into “Impossible” Whopper, salmon, veggie, or other anti-burger territory—is the building block upon which the popular food item is constructed. For CCP Burger, the metaphor of the anchovy is the adventurous burst of taste to turn a spacefaring MMORPG from just another game in the genre into a masterpiece of lasting design. 

The unexpected and unconventional have been key to the gamut of changes rocking CCP’s flagship game in recent months. Depending on the personal tastes of many players, the patches have either been a smashing success or a complete letdown—just as a burger marred enhanced by anchovies can be a hit or a bust. In fact, CCP Burger’s answer is illustrative as he even admits that this theoretical favorite burger would only be created if his wife was not joining him for dinner. Although he did not elaborate on the reasons why he would need to be only cooking for himself to enjoy his favorite burger, the implications weigh heavily. 

This admission speaks to the heart of recent attempts to “shake up” the defined meta of EVE Online. What might be perfect for a developer like CCP Burger may be unpalatable to many. Of course, CCP Burger also did not reveal the exact proportion of anchovy to ground beef—the off-screen interviewer was so shocked by the very concept that they did not make an attempt to follow up on CCP Burger’s ideal recipe—so it is a mystery as to the specific ratio of ground beef to anchovy that CCP Burger envisions as burger perfection. 

Nonetheless, the battle lines have been drawn among EVE Online players. For months, the debates on the official forums and the r/eve subreddit have leaned towards the divisive and dismissive. Players from both camps have already started raising banners, with both sides mustering for the inevitable confrontation. Anchovy adherents have pledged solidarity with CCP Burger and have declared they will exclusively consume anchovy-laced burgers at EVE Meets and future World Tour locations, while opponents to the Age of Chaos have outlawed any deviation from traditional burger recipes. Yet, as if given form by CCP Burger’s unconventional recipe, the champions of change have a new mascot upon which to shake the very foundations of EVE Online: the anchovy.