Thank you very much everyone for placing me on CSM 6 and now on CSM 7 where I am currently serving as the Chairman! If you would like to contact me directly, do not hesitate to just send me an eve mail in game. Keep your eyes here and watch for new posts.
The dates are now locked in: December 7th - December 9th.
We've had one "pre-Summit" meeting with CCP and a couple more on the horizon. While I expect this summit will be much different in tone to the others, things looks promising overall. There will be no Kool-Aid drinking on the CSM, but we've been encouraged by what we've seen recently. The tone of day to day chats with CCP is unrecognizable compared with just a couple months ago. The numerous written dev blogs and video blogs should keep coming right up until Crucible's release.
One thing we want to make sure of is that we get what information we can about the Summit into your hands as soon as possible. As the Summit gets closer, we will make sure to re-post links to blogs, twitter accounts, etc... so you can follow the non-NDA stuff in real time (more or less). We're also hoping to get a much quicker turn around this time on the official summit minutes, holidays permitting.
Feel free to suggest stuff for us to ask about / discuss and we'll post more in terms of official details / agenda as soon as we can.
About three minutes after Hilmar's Apology letter to the community was posted, CCP Zulu released a dev blog that gave everyone a look at what the immediate future of EVE looks like.
The blog has been met with mixed reactions because many people seem to think that we're getting short-changed by what looks to be nothing more than a lot of 'small stuff' with no major bling / content. On the plus side, Zulu improved his posting by at least 60%. I want to clear this up so everyone has a better idea of where things are now and where they are going:
1.) If it's not been made clear by the numerous blogs and dev postings,
CCP basically had to scrap their August release planning because, "What
is this shit... I don't even... we are fucked..."
2.) As a result, they spent the last 3-4 weeks not only changing course
but re-shuffling resources and prioritizing what they could do with the
time and resources left before December.
3.) While all this was going on, CCP also had to unfuck their public
relations which meant letting certain people speak up and telling others
to shut up. In the end, Hilmar decided to just stomp on it all and
attempt to right the ship from the top down. Granted, this should have
been done months ago, but at least it's done now and in a way that
leaves CCP no room at all for error.
4.) What we will get for Winter will be in preparation for much larger /
bigger / shinier stuff come next year. While all of the 'fixes' and
updates are going on in the trenches, the Art department and such can go
ahead and start working on NEW STUFF that can be coded and mechanically
integrated next year.
5.) The next CSM summit is going to focus on whatever 'new
stuff' CCP decides to go with for Flying in Space (FiS) and they've said they intend to
keep the CSM and the players in the loop as they move toward that.
Basically, winter is going to be all about fixes and updates with a few small new
things. I don't know and don't particularly care if they even name it
as an expansion but considering the long awaited balancing of hybrid weapons, this seems like a good suggestion:
Click on me for Epic Awesome.
Establishments NOT in Winter 2011
In addition to all of this, last night it was confirmed that after the new racial Captain's Quarters are released, there will be no further development for Incarna in the near future.
"Sadly, the
Establishments feature will not be coming in the winter expansion. We
hear you guys loud and clear and realize that there is still strong
support for a multiplayer, avatar based experience in EVE (we also hear
those that don’t want it). However, we think you’ll agree that it has to
be a compelling experience and there was a feeling amongst our people
that the direction we were taking with the Establishments feature was…
well, not that fun. Additionally, we wanted to ensure that our rendering
technology was finely tuned to a point that would ensure all of your
characters continued to look great while performing well.
It’s
humbling to see the support in this thread for a multiplayer Incarna
experience and we are still committed to providing it, as and when it’s
ready. We want to take the time to do it right and ensure you guys get
something that is both fun and involving. There are no promises about
when this will happen, just rest assured that while you are enjoying
your space based updates this winter, there will continue to be movement
on this."
My thoughts on this are simple - in order for Incarna to have any chance whatsoever, there needs to be
solid, interesting game play. That doesn't exist, nor has the CSM seen
anything on the horizon that looks to change that. Since there never appeared to be a solid idea about what
'establishments' would bring to EVE, CCP basically postponed a feature
that didn't exist in the first place.
Incarna has the potential
to be amazing but in terms of importance, for example when allocating
resources, it pales, or should pale, in comparison to spaceships.
Certainly now, and probably for a long time to come as well. In the end,
you can take Incarna out of EVE, but you can't take spaceships out of
EVE.
Final Thoughts
I am still not sure if certain people in the company 'get it' at all
(actually they are probably mad about a lot of this) and won't attempt
to de-rail this effort. This is why I'm going to continue to beat the
ITERATIONS ITERATIONS drum often and loudly, no matter what ~words~ are
released. Still, I think that CCP, with the help of the CSM and
continuing to actually LISTEN to their community, has chosen a smart
path for the immediate future.
Last night the CEO of CCP unleashed a political masterstroke and a heartfelt plea to the EVE community all at once. The politics of business: making a stand as a man, with the gesture of an apology, but without the recognition of root causes and concerns. Commendable and smart in many ways, but is the mere gesture sufficient?
I've been very vocal about my support of this letter both on the forums and on Twitter. It reminds me of why I dropped everything in my life back in 2006 to go to
work for CCP. This sounds like nothing else that has come out of CCP in
a looooong time. I'm very impressed with the candor and tone of this letter. Hilmar has done something that few CEO's do in public which is outright admit he was wrong and say so effusively and sincerely. For that, the man has my thanks and has re-kindled my hope that EVE might one day reclaim the wonder that caused players like me to crusade for new subscribers and even end up working at CCP.
Almost exactly a month ago, I released what I considered to be my 'last straw' blog. Reality Check was my attempt to get across a message that summed up everything I felt about where EVE is and the black hole it seemed to be spiraling into. Over this past weekend, the Reality Check blog surpassed 15,000 reads making it the most viewed article I've written so far. While I received comments from several CCP employees about it, which were unanimously positive, I have no idea if Hilmar read it but his letter did address several points I made and that's a good thing.
I believe Hilmar's letter represents the first tangible step required to take for CCP and the player base that has spent most of the last 18 months in a state of disbelief with regard to the direction CCP seemed to be taking their product. The reactions to the letter are very warm, with players welcoming the sentiment of the letter. The most telling of those reactions are those of CCP employees on the forums, Twitter and Facebook roaring their approval for this admission of wrong thinking and change of course. Hilmar spoke of not paying attention to people in the company "raising red flags"; it really makes you wonder just how much the internal communications of CCP need to be improved so things do not get to this point again.
Regardless of what happens in the future, things are never going to be as they were again. Many in the playerbase have compared Hilmar's letter to the old Peanuts cartoon, where Charlie Brown trusts Lucy to hold the football for him to kick and she always pulls it away at the last second, sending Charlie crashing to the ground. Over and over, she promises to not do it and over and over she does it anyway. It's an apt analogy because EVE players have seen ~words~ and heard promises before. This time it is going to take more.
This reminds of of something I saw a while back and I'm going to include a link to it here:
There's a lot of wisdom in this chart that should be heeded.
The next CSM summit in Iceland is going to go a long way toward my (and
other CSM's) continued investment in it all. I know a lot of folks don't
want to give us any credit but the CSM has spent a shitload of time
these past few weeks hammering away at every mis-step and reminding CCP
of where their mistakes are / how to fix them. I am satisfied at the
moment that we, as a community, have successfully managed to get our
message across. I have a much different outlook going forward than I did
a few weeks ago but I won't stop pushing for iterative gameplay that allows players at all levels of EVE to enjoy the game again.
A quick word on the change that hit SiSi over the weekend. Supercaps have sat untouched for two years now. There was supposed to
be continued iteration, balance, tweakage, new modules, counters, etc…
but after CCP's self-inflicted debacle of rolling them out hap-hazard in early 2010, no
one at CCP could even be bothered to realize (scared to touch them)
what was going on until the problem was so far out of control that we
are where we are today. However, change is coming and all that!
I can pronounce this. Can you?
The Doomsday weapon for titans has finally been iterated on to where it can only fire on capital-sized ships.
I will never regret getting rid of the AoE DD. Changing the DD to a single shot pop gun was a good alternative. As the person that actually made this change, I'll state publicly that
this should have been done sometime last year during or shortly after
the Tyrannis patch. After
seeing how stupid it was getting (dozens of titans one-shooting entire
logi wings) it should have been iterated on and changed but apparently
there was no one at CCP that ~played EVE~ or cared to follow up on the
work done during Dominion.
It's fine for people to look back over
the last two years and say, "It should have been like this in the first
place!" and froth at the mouth if it makes them feel better, but the real issue
is that this sat unchanged for the better part of two years. This is
the price of Flying in Space features not having a dedicated team or a
designer dedicated exclusively to balance issues, both of which are
being effectively solved now.
EVE is an ever evolving game. This
applies to all aspects of the game, even giant e-peens. Folks that are
pissed about this change need to just be happy they had a couple years
of ~good fights~. I'm glad some work is finally being done on these ship
classes
UPDATE - I've seen several comments on this change that follow this line of thought:
Now where's the solution to logistics wings having more combined repair
capacity than opposing fleets have DPS? I'm not looking forward to Titan
level alpha being the only way to clear capitals off of the field,
which does not feel like an unlikely scenario.
I don't disagree with the sentiment here and this seems to be the main
line of argument being taken by people that are opposed to the change.
However, ~overpowered~ logis should be addressed at a different level of balancing.
Titans shouldn't even be in the discussion. "Balancing" spaceships is a full time job, one reason CSM 6 has pushed heavily to keep a dedicated designer on it.
I've had a surprisingly strong reaction to this blog and I'm going to explain why. I'll try not to cover old ground much but some things bear repeating.
This looks better than the Minmatar craphole.
The Good
The damn things look great. I mean, seriously. The one thing you can never fault CCP at is their artwork. Releasing just one CQ initially was a mistake; releasing the Minmatar one and making it look like a cheap hotel in downtown Tokyo was even worse. With these three new CQ's, we finally see something that says 'sci-fi'.
The best thing about this dev blog tho is that CCP finally took heed of something the CSM said back at the May summit which was, "If you are going to show off something really cool, please please please include a video of it!" Look what we got!
It's atmospheric, well-made and shows off the new shiny stuff in a way mere pictures and words never could. So kudos to CCP for going the extra mile and doing this.
The Meh
Shortly after the blog was released I began tweeting about it and made a somewhat snarky post on the first page of the thread referencing the fact that a lot of people that just don't like this stuff would summarily disable it and go back to having 'the door' which was the crappy default background image if you didn't want your video card to melt. So the question was asked, "Will those of us with CQ turned off be receiving updated door pictures?" We got a rather surprising answer from Torfi himself:
"The door will be replaced by a ship spinning in a hangar, actually."
If this is true then it's great news. The 'meh' of it is, why not include such an obvious piece of information in the actual blog? If you have forgotten about all the Ship Spinning info, here's the dev blog on that.
The other thing that got left out and had to be clarified is that, according to CCP Fallout,
"The CQ you get is based on the race of the station!!"
I suppose not tying the CQ to the race of your character makes it an interesting way to ensure that players get a chance to see all four styles, but it also leads to something that really worries me: the complete lack of choice and customization.
I am no longer in MY Captain's Quarters; I am just in a hotel room that I hang out in when I dock in a station.
Meh.
The Bad
The NeX store is missing some key items...
I understand it needs to be done in steps and I understand it can't all come out at once, but five years after the concept was first shown at FanFest 2006 we have:
No interaction with other players.
No defined game play.
No definitive information on when either of the above will happen or what shape they will take.
It's actually been longer than five years, but just so people don't think I'm pulling that number out of my ass, have a look at this post-2006 FanFest dev blog published by Torfi on November 17, 2006:
It's kind of mind blogging when you think about how much else has happened in EVE, yet how little has happened with regard to Walking In Stations / Ambulation / Incarna.
The latest blog did not contain one word about 'Establishments' or anything else related to actual character interaction and / or gameplay. What has been said was said by Queen of Straight Talk CCP Fallout in one of the forum replies:
"For those of you inquiring or wondering about walking in stations via
establishments: we will be releasing more information. I currently don't
know the timeline for the info release. I do know that my answer will
annoy some people, and I apologize. If I run into Guard later (he left
for the day) I will see if he's familiar with when that info will be out
(Guard is the new king of blog publishing :)).
Adding an update: we are currently expecting more information on this next week."
I'm curious to see what information is coming because this is where I start to get annoyed again. Seriously, what is the point of making my character all snazzy if there's no way for other people to see her / him strutting by?
Where is the personality?
If I am ever going to appreciate or use Incarna in any way, I have got to be able to make the content I see on my screen actually MINE. I love Legos. I like to build things. My old alliance, Mercenary
Coalition, was the first alliance in EVE to build all four racial
outpost types. The Caldari one was shit, but we did it anyway because...
FIRST! I've spent at least as much time in EVE building stuff as I have
destroying it which is why Incarna is such a disappointment to me.
I've written several times about how I think CCP has completely missed the boat with their ridiculous vanity items pricing strategy for dresses and pants, etc... It seems the obvious next step of this would be allowing players to choose whatever CQ template they liked the most and then accessorize, more importantly personalize, it with all manner of crazy shit. I want carpets from endangered animals, a desk made out of wood sacred to some hippies, a couch shaped like a doughnut, mirrors all over the ceiling a disco ball and pet slaver hound.
I also want to add onto my CQ, kind of like the old XCOM game where you could customize your base layout and make it your own. I want a frozen corpse trophy room so I can show off my old XirtamVOTF and KIAEddz trophies or a big walk in closet that stores my various shoes, trench coats and handcuffs.
Of course, so long as CCP is charging $20 for a shirt, they'd probably want $500 for a disco ball so maybe it's better that none of this ever sees the light of day.
Spaceships?
There is literally nothing wrong with this.
All of the above is my attempt to write down some of my frustrations with where things stand in Incarna. In the end, I still subscribe to the idea that EVE is, first and foremost, a game about spaceships. It's where my passions lie and where I put most of my energy into as a player and a member of the CSM. However it doesn't mean that from time to time that I don't think about the missed opportunities of Incarna or how it might be improved or better sold.
It's obvious to anyone that's been paying attention that 'something is up'. It should be obvious due to the fact that the CSM has slowed down our rhetoric a bit after a couple Skype meetings with CCP Zulu, EVE Online's Senior Producer, and the fires burning in the player base didn't turn into full fledged forest fires. For anyone wondering why players are on the edge of walking away from EVE or the reasons for their frustration, go read my Reality Check blog that I published a couple weeks ago.
Back? Okay.
In a nutshell, I can sum a lot this up by pasting a comment from one of my corp members last week. This is a guy that's been playing EVE for about four years that's decided to leave the game and here is why:
"You get to a point where you wonder if you're going to see anything new
in the game you've played for so long. I don't think that I am, which is
why my last paid subscription runs out 12 October. When I say I want something to do, I mean I want something else to do. Going on ops and doing the same thing I've done countless times before isn't the be all end all for me. EVE used to evolve along with its players and that's just not happening anymore."
If you play EVE, how many times have you read something like this over the past year or longer? It's something I see happen constantly, especially with people that have been playing at CEO / Alliance leader levels for years.
Many players have hung on just to see if anything will change and if EVE will ever return to pushing the envelope as the spaceship MMO that made it what it is today. I don't think it is coincidence that CSM6 is largely made up of that demographic - long term veterans with a mind to wake CCP up and help convince them that features like Incarna may eventually (if it's ever finished) bring in new subscribers, but it's going to lose them the people that have been paying the bills for the past eight years.
This is pretty accurate tbh...
Time Machine Dev Blog
The potential rage of both the players and the CSM have simmered down a bit due to the implied promise that 'change is coming'. The fruit of the meetings CSM6 has had with CCP Zulu and the information in them will be borne over the next few weeks. I believe the reception to what's coming will be positive. CCP has already started to put out a series of dev blogs last week detailing a few bits and pieces of things they are finishing up at the moment but the dev blog we all seem to be waiting on hasn't materialized yet.
As the CSM understood it, the 'big reveal' was supposed to be early last week. That got pushed back a couple times until CCP Zulu released 'The Moments that Define History' last Thursday which left pretty much everyone that read it saying, "That's it?" For our part, the CSM was unhappy to say the least. We'd been led to believe that there would be some actual meat in the blog for players to chew on over the weekend. It made no sense to whiff such an opportunity to get some good PR for a change.
Since Thursday, the CSM / CCP Skype channel has been a near constant wall of text with us voicing our frustrations at the current situation. One of those things we've done the wake of CCP Zulu's last dev blog, is start a thread on the internal forums (the CSM / CCP ones) that we, once again, be allowed to review dev blogs with potential major impact prior to their publication. To best illustrate our intent, I'm going to publish the post I made to CCP on the internal CSM / CCP forums.
Let me preface this by adding that the actual 'Time Machine Dev Blog' was authored by former CSM Chair Mynxee and published on Failheap Challenge last week. It has been re-used with her permission. Here is the text of my post to CCP:
For those that remember what EVE was like back in 2003, this game became
great because in the early days the developers of EVE saw EVE's players
as a resource to be tapped. A large part of what made EVE successful
was due to the game duplicating and improving on things players were
already doing without the in-game mechanics. Yet for whatever reasons,
there are voices within CCP that see players as the enemy and the CSM as
'terrorists' whose input is designed to tear CCP down. I cannot fathom
how anyone familiar with the political process of getting 'elected' in
EVE combined with people having to take RL vacation days to come be
Video Game Politicians thinks we would want anything other than for CCP
to be successful. Our frustration is because we don't get how CCP
continues to blow opportunities to energize the player base.
With
the exception of CCP Soundwave and his team's clearly written and informative
blogs (because tbh, when BFF posts, it's pretty Space Bro language),
there is very little at all 'Fearless' about the complete lack of
transparency about what is going on right now from the 'management'
level. Technical / QA blogs are a whole other animal and don't tend to
cause riots in Jita.
I'll just use CCP Zulu's last dev blog as an example since it's the most recent example of how things continue to break down.
*** Gets in a time machine and pretends we had some input on Arnar's last dev blog ***
Intrepid pilots of New Eden!
We
are listening to you and we want you to know that your pleas for more
attention to EVE's Flying In Space features have been heard. In recent
weeks, CCP has been doing some extensive introspection about our focus
and priorities in response to what you have been asking for. As a
result, a decision was made to refocus and reprioritize on a scale
unheard of within our company. These are indeed defining times.
Torfi’s
most recent dev blog provides a small taste of what’s to come. Going
forward, we intend for Flying in Space features to be primary and
receive as many development resources as we can feasibly allocate to
them. As discussed with the CSM, the Winter Expansion will focus on null
sec changes, but there is a lot more to come. As you can imagine, such a
large scale refocusing impacts a lot of people and resource
dependencies. We are in the midst of working up a plan. As soon as we
have it mapped out, we'll share it with you. Not the satellite view, not
the microscopic view, but the big picture view with enough detail to
provide a "warm fuzzy" about the immediate future of FiS features and to
permit constructive feedback from the community.
You have often
told us that we over-promise and under-deliver. Our tendency in that
regard has bitten us in the ass many times. Not fun. So, to avoid it
we're taking the time we need to produce solid, realistic draft plan for
the FiS features you have said need the most love. By 'some immediate
future date', we expect to share the plan with you for feedback and
refinement. Meanwhile, I will post at minimum weekly briefs so you
remain aware of our progress. Once we share the plan, I will keep the
dialog going as the hard work of implementing that plan and tweaking it
as necessary continues.
We all want EVE to be the very best game
it can be, the game YOU love, the game you can't not play. Together, we
can and will make it happen.
Watch this space.
Arnar Hrafn Gylfason Senior Producer of EVE Online
See? There are even a few weasel words in there to allow for some "flexibility". But
at least this kind of information would have given people something
tangible to count on as well as the sense that there is a process
happening that is organized and makes some sense.
I'm sure
some will dismiss this as more ramblings of a former employee that has
actually been playing the game for over 8 years and has some inkling of
what goes on in player's heads. Yes, I'm mad, because it happened when I
was at CCP and it continues to happen to the people elected by the
players to liaise with CCP. I've watched this game and the company that
makes it change from both sides and I don't understand why things
continue as they are. It's obvious that I'm not alone in this feeling
due to the number of current and former CCP employees that do speak to
the CSM about how frustrated they are.
I honestly don't care
about any sort of 'blanket' rule or anything that sounds like the CSM
'demanding' anything. What I am tired of seeing though, and I know that
a lot of people inside CCP are tired of seeing, are the people in
charge of actually talking to the player base through dev blogs
continually screwing it up.
Once again, no one is asking for
detailed plans or post it notes or meeting minutes from release
planning. What is being asked for is a common sense approach to dealing
with a very intelligent and involved player base. Part of that is using
the elected representatives of that player base in a way that helps
everyone feel they are getting maximum benefit from the process.
Responses to my post and those of the other CSMs have been fairly positive so far. I honestly don't think that CCP wants to continue stumbling over and over again with it's messaging but they have obviously got to change the way they are doing things.
It could happen.
Worth the effort?
The good news is that the CSM isn't alone in feeling this way. Certain folks in CCP are frustrated as well and are becoming more and more vocal about how communication with the players continues to fall short of where it could be. So, yes, I believe it is worth the effort of the CSM to keep trying and for players to hang on just a bit longer.
Another effort the CSM has started is this thread here to make sure it is public record exactly what we unanimously support in terms of EVE Online's resource allocation:
Have a read and please give the thread your support. Don't 'like' it tho because Trebor is whoring up the likes and rubbing our noses in it, the bastard.
As I noted in the post I made to CCP above, some within CCP already use the CSM regularly to funnel ideas and blogs through but, so far, it's not been an issue we've pushed hard for. Considering the potential for large amounts of information starting to emerge for the 2011 Winter expansion and the course of CCP in 2012, the CSM is doing everything we can to make sure those in CCP that want to improve communication with the players have an opportunity to do so.
We have another meeting with CCP Zulu scheduled for this Wednesday (Sept 28th). Hopefully we'll see something in the next few days that shows they 'get
it' and I can start blogging and talking about happy things. I'm tired
of all the negative crap tbh but it's been a frustrating road to walk
lately.
So, at long last the meeting minutes for the Emergency Summit held a couple months ago are public. I blogged about the issues with the delays last week, complete with a timeline as to what happened and when. Early this week, everything seemed to be resolved and here they are:
As expected, people haven't wasted time in diving right in and finding
what's not there, dissecting the layers of meaning and whatnot. Unsurprisingly, my favorite prolific blogger Jester has already published his overview. Here's an even more succinct / humorous version on EVE News 24.
What's my overall take? Well... heh, it could be a lot worse. It almost was! I know some folks are pretty bent over the fact that the minutes aren't full of the CSM going full retard and raging constantly but that doesn't mean there weren't some very loud and heated exchanges at the summit. I've been reading a lot of the forum replies and I'm kind of freaked out that just because the minutes do not read like a Stephen King novel everyone assumes that the CSM quietly sat around and nodded our heads at everything. That's not the case at all; it just doesn't look good to anyone for the minutes to sound like Shadoo FC'ing a PL Fleet. Take this, for example:
After reading the CSM statement, Hilmar made some suggestions as to its tone. The CSM thanked
Hilmar for his advice, but decided that it properly expressed their conclusions. It was released unedited.
It doesn't take much to realize that the CSM is trying to be nice here. I listened in on this entire session and we were all pretty much, "Huh? No. Dude! This IS the nice version."
I've seen these summits both as a CCP representative for Game Design and now as an elected CSM member. I can say with all honesty that the tension in the room for this summit and the level of, "No, that's bullshit WTF is wrong with you guys?!" far exceeded anything I've seen previously. It was a complete 180 degree difference from the much more cordial setting of the first official CSM 6 summit. It was a very emotional couple of days. So... like... relax. We raged when it was appropriate. Hell, I'm pretty convinced that Trebor performed a ritual that caused the volcano to go off that weekend.
So, moving on, something truly interestng / cool happened this afternoon...
CCP Zulu has the eyes of a serial killer.
The Bat Phone Rang
The Senior Producer of EVE, CCP Zulu, arranged to speak to the entire CSM (those available) on a group Skype call today. The official version of what went down was published on the EVE forums but I'll re-print it here because it will make this blog entry look longer:
Amidst the recent forum activity about reports of
decreased subscriber count, discontent about lack of resources
allocated to "Flying In Space" (or, as we know it, Eve Online) and,
despite Gridlock and Team BFF's efforts, general stagnation when it
comes to fixes and improvements, the CSM just met with CCP's Senor
Producer for Eve Online: CCP Zulu.
During that meeting, we
discussed the players' concerns with the man who has the ability to
resolve them. We cannot share the details of the meeting itself because
it is heavily NDA'd, but ways to resolve your concerns have been
discussed and a follow-up meeting is planned.
Stay tuned...
Meissa Anunthiel, Vice-Chairman of CSM 6
So, that's the basics. WTF does it mean? Well, I made myself pretty clear on my stance on things in my Reality Check blog a couple days ago.
This meeting was something of a surprise and the content of it was
enough to convince me that CCP is taking the concerns of the CSM and the
players very seriously. Beyond that I cannot say more other than Zulu doesn't tend to bullshit people.
It's times like this that I loathe the "NDA" and wish we could say more. I understand why it's not happening now, but it doesn't change the frustration factor for anyone. I believe that CCP understands the current situation is something they cannot stay silent or inactive on, hence why Zulu asked to speak with the CSM today.
I know
it's hard for people to accept but the CSM is pushing very hard for complete
and solid information to be passed along to the players as quickly as
possible. We are scheduled to have another meeting soon and the CSM will
continue to push for MORE SPACESHIPS and less Incarna Catwalks (holy shit, right?).
