The Giant COSMOS Post

There had been a lot of speculation and hype around what might be in store for us come the end of this year when CCP releases the next EVE expansion. Alas, our dreams of finally evolving into bipedal hominids were bursted into fireworks display of tears when it was recently announced that Ambulation would not be included…or maybe that was just me. The arguments for why it’s better that they focus on the frustrating sovereignty system are justified, for sure, but it’s always nice to get entirely new content, and for a moment there, it didn’t look like we were…until CCP released this gem of a statement.

COSMOS, a “fully functioning social network website coupled with EVE interactivity”, is being released in conjunction with the winter expansion. This is incredible news, and frankly, I’m surprised I’m not seeing greater buzz among EVE players about the announcement. This is not a slight gameplay tweak or a cosmetic nice-to-have. This is enormous. This is the kind of feature that, if done right, could not only change the EVE community as we know it, but set a new standard for MMO communities in general that I’ve seen as a long time coming. In case the impact of this announcement hasn’t quite hit home with you, I’m going to attempt to explain:

The Importance of COSMOS

Every MMO, at its core, is a community. Strip the graphics, grind, and even gameplay mechanics, and in the end we would be left with a fully self-sustaining culture. This is not to say that the game itself is not important, as it’s needed to give the culture a common love and bring them together in the first place. But the community is why we come back to EVE, and what keeps us here. Lets face it, if this was a solo game, not a single one of us would have given it the full trial.

That said, an MMO needs to give the culture a means to communicate and thrive. The de facto standard in accomplishing this, of course, has been to do it in-game. We get chat channels, guilds and corporations, alliances, mail systems, buddy systems, etc. Unfortunately, this in-game limitation has always left its players to form their own means of communication outside of the game—because its true that even when we aren’t logged in, we’re still looking for ways to live the culture of the game. So we make twitter profiles for our characters, hundreds of blogs spread across dozens of platforms, clunky corporation and alliance forums, IRC chat rooms, podcasts, and character email accounts. We are then left to our own devices to unify this smattering of content all over the web through portals, lists, referals—any way we can bring eachother together, we try, but the fact is none of us will ever read or perhaps see 95% of the EVE culture that exists outside of the game. We are diluted.

To me, it’s incredible that with the utter success of non-game-related online communities like facebook, it has taken this long for an MMO to realize that providing their players this means of communication outside of the game could strengthen their culture exponentially. Some third party platforms have attempted to tackle the problem, like AvatarsUnited or Gax (which recently announced its closing), but in the end it’s just another outlet for dilution when it has no real connection or integration to the game we love. The value of having an official place to house our culture outside of the game will ensure that, number one, because it’s connected to your already created game account (and not another damn social networking account to manage) it will be used. Two: it will potentially be able to integrate into the game’s mechanics in ways that is off-limits to third party API developers. And one that is not as minor as it sounds, three: we will be assured that it will look and feel like an extension of the game we know and love…and not a half-assed attempt at ripping it off. Official is good.

What We Know

So lets get down to the nitty gritty. What is COSMOS going to be exactly? Frankly, CCP didn’t offer us much of an answer, yet. They explained that while they will launch initially with a few limited features, they will be releasing more “bit by bit” in the future. Here are the features they said will be available at launch:

• Character, corp, and alliance profiles
• Mail system and contacts

They also added, which I assume is what CCP was alluding to in their mysterious response to the related question in the CSM Q&A, that a new “forums” system will be added in the future. I put “forums” in quotes because whether or not this will be a direct reskin of the current official forums or a new imagining of how the forums should operate entirely is still in question.

And that’s it for any specifics we know, according to CCP. The rest is left up to our imaginations for now, which is where the real beauty behind the idea of an official EVE social network really takes hold: its utter potential.

What It Could Be

Admittedly, if all we ever get are simple profiles, mails systems, and reskinned forums, then I’m drastically overhyping the importance of COSMOS (because WoW has had this, save the mail system, in the Armory for over a year now). But I have hope that CCP chose their words carefully when they described it as “fully functioning social network”, implying all that comes with modern internet community sites. With that assumption, if you still don’t buy the importance of what is coming to us this winter yet, lets look at what COSMOS could be in a year or two from now:

All features listed below, while possible, are complete speculation. Should your heart be broken if I tell you unicorns exist and you never get to ride one in your lifetime, you might want to stop reading now. If you believe in magic, join me for a ride on Falkor to see what the future might have in store:

• Introduction of advanced character profiles with built in blog/commenting systems, a la facebook.
• Networking features like tagging profiles (“salvaging, rifters, roleplayer” or “carebear, jita, casual”) that allow you to find other players with your interests, in your home system, etc.
• Corporation and Alliance profiles with built in forums, recruitment systems, charter terms, alleviating the struggle most Corps have with housing their own communities on the web (because so many Corp websites are so bad).
• Global, Corp, and Alliance calendar systems for organizing and inviting to events, ops, etc.
• Everything searchable, always.
• Non-corp groups for any general interest or purpose (pirating, traders, stealth bombers, men with women avatars), leading to possible user-generated forums on said topic.
• Official item databases, which would lead to…
• Built in ship fitters and skill planners, with means to save and share creations. (I’m sure plenty of people would still prefer EVEMon and the like out of habit, but this would be a good solution for those on Mac systems, for example, that are sorlely lacking in this department)
• New mapping system for monitoring sovereignty, Corp war progress, faction warfare.
• Posting/sharing in-game screenshots and videos for photo albums, like facebook, again.
• New ways to keep up with EVE news and happenings, through feeds, status updates, etc. News can spread faster and more accurately than ever before.
• Official live killboards.
• New ways to monitor economies, banking, markets.
• Means of importing outside blog feeds, twitter feeds, etc, to house all other external data in one location (a very standard feature in social media now).
• And of course, mobile apps that allow players to do all of the above.

And those are just off the top of my head. CCP, I’m sure, has lists much longer than this, that are integrating game features that we can’t anticipate. So just imagine if COSMOS did even half of what I listed above. It will be a monumental shift in how our community thrives and would make EVE the first MMO to offer such a rich out-of-game experience. No longer would we turn down a Corp of great people because their lack of web knowledge left them with a poor forum architecture or gaudy website. Everyone looks professional here, so we can base judgement solely on content. No more archaic (though much appreciated) lists of every EVE blogger in the ‘verse (everyone hear CK breathe a sigh of relief).

Incentive for CCP

This all sounds great for the community, but what’s in it for CCP? It seems like a titan-sized load of work, and like any efficient business, they need to know it will be beneficial in the long run. After all, such an elaborate out-of-game presence for the community sounds like it could even hurt the in-game experience, right? Not true.

Contrary to intuitiion, it’s not necessarily in CCP’s interest to keep its players logged in-game. Being a single-shard MMO means that stress on its servers is a real problem. With EVE enormous advertising presence lately, we can be sure that CCP is seeing growth in New Eden like they’ve never seen before. But a web-based network could (would) live on seperate server altogether, taking much needless stress from Tranquility.

Yes, CCP needs pilots in-game in order for everyone to have the most fulfilling experience, but players that would be doing these more administrative, networking, planning, or organizational tasks are only going to be docked in-game anyway, adding to the server load while providing little enjoyment for pilots in action. CCP could seperate the server workloads entirely, helping them control the expansion of their player base. And as far as CCP is truly concerned, as long as they’re getting subscription fees, they probably couldn’t care less whether we’re in-game or not.

It is also a possibility that in the distant future, CCP could provide features to COSMOS that only exist on COSMOS. Building new features in a website framework would be infinitely less resource intensive than screwing with their game architecture to introduce new functionality. This, I imagine, is the same reason why WoW’s armory only exists on the web. The amount of server-calls it would take to house a full item database in-game would only add to lag, and design would require them to do some major adjustments to the UI in order to introduce new windows and search forms.

And finally, it will be a major draw to new players. Facebook isn’t even a game, but people are addicted to it as much as any MMO in existence. People understand social networks now, and to hear that a game they have slight interest in has a fully fledging social community on the web as well, it won’t be hard to convince anyone that enjoys that aspect of online gaming. COSMOS can offer new, faster ways for people to find the right Corp for them, meet friends with common interests, and sustain their devotion to the community when they don’t have access to the game itself (yes, I’m talking about browsing at work).

In Sum

I’m sure, even after this enormous celebratory rant, there will be some that are still skeptics. Some will be convinced it will bring new problems, and draw people away from the game experience into unknown territory. But what is more in the spirit of science fiction than exploring the unknown? We all should be proud of the fact that CCP is taking a leap forward into a realm of social connectivity that even the more prolific MMO’s haven’t attempted yet. This may just set a new standard for online gaming, and as cheesy as it sounds, putting more attention into what truly draws us into New Eden time and time again—each other. I, for one, can go without walking on two legs for a good while longer, if it means we see the potential of COSMOS sooner.

Notes