Talk:Eve Online/Archive 19

Python
Added stackless python software section to Development and added CCP hf's EVE Online to a commercial usage for python. Interestingly it was done to make the article more encyclopedic after noticing no Python upon browser search feature and  then I noticed it was in the todo list :) Alatari (talk) 12:06, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Active editors
I've become very inactive on wikipedia so removed my name from the list and since Aexus has been highly active added his name. Is everyone else in the list still active? I'm sure about Richard. Alatari (talk) 12:27, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

-- Aexus (talk) 12:30, 16 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Whoa, okay. I'm comfortable with my name being in the list. Though that might entail editors asking for my advice and actually following it. I don't know if that'd be a good thing. If I become uncomfortable with it I'll remove it. But it's good for now.

This article may be too long. What do you think?
Arperry has put the template in the Eve Online article, indicating that it may be too long. Personally I don't feel the need to change the article's length or split off more support articles like Spaceships of Eve Online and Expansions of Eve Online. I'm going to leave the discussion open for as long as editors want to discuss the issue. What do you think about the article length? What should be the course of action here? Do you see weak points in the article, length-wise, and if so, how do you want us to improve them? -- Aexus (talk) 10:00, 22 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Yeah. Sorry, I should've put a note here. I don't personally play the game (or any MMOs), and while I find the information generally interesting, it's an overwhelming amount of information for someone just trying to get a feel for the topic. --Arperry (talk) 16:56, 22 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes, it's evidently getting too long at 79k. That it has two cruftastic offshoots just now does not indicate that it has been sufficiently split up per WP:SUMMARY; ideally, more information should be moved out, and material which does not have established real-world notability removed. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 11:13, 22 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I would reiterate what I said elsewhere: that with a Wikia wiki, at least 2 full-scale independent Wikis and CCPs' declared intention to establish an "authorised" EVEcyclopedia, the time would appear apposite to strip this article down to the essentials of a computer game, and export all other material with one or another of the "outside" wikis. Would the editorial team of an "ordinary" encyclopedia allow an article on a computer game to grow to this extent (and, as User:thumperward says, crustiness) ?? -- Simon Cursitor (talk)


 * Indeed. Most of WP's Warhammer 40,000 community migrated to the various external wikis a while ago, and the content is now following. What's left will hopefully be that core of the material which matters to those outwith the community. This is good for the community and good for Wikipedia. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 14:51, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

-- Aexus (talk) 11:42, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
 * After having read WP:SUMMARY and WP:SIZE that's linked from there I agree with you both. When I followed the instructions on how to correctly calculate the number of printed pages of an article it gave me 47 kBytes spread out over 11 pages. Find the instructions in footnote 1 of the WP:SIZE article for you to double-check. Since WP:SIZE suggests 10 pages and 30 to 50 kBytes as limits I think we should move parts of the article out to a new one. Or several new ones. Or maybe shorten this article. I'll look into this. Thumper and Simon, how do you suggest we improve this article?


 * Not looking to weigh in on this discussion, but am a bit confused by Aexus' last comment. It seems that, at 11 pages and 47 KB, this article very much falls in line with the suggestion(not rule) of 10 pages and 50 KB.  Yes, it is at the upper limit of a suggestion, but that doesn't necessarily make it too long.  If a wrestling weight limit is 250 lbs and I'm 249 lbs, then I'm at the upper limit, but no one would assume that I am way too heavy to compete. TheCommodore7 (talk) 19:32, 23 July 2008 (UTC)


 * POLITE CORRECTIVE to User:Aexus's comment above. I am not advocating moving parts of this article out to any new ones.  I am advocating pruning this forest of words back to one single plant (then to be ring-fenced against further cruft-pansion), and letting all of the game-cruft be taken over by the dedicated Wikis.
 * I suggest something of the order of "It's a game. It takes place in outer space.  It was started in 19**.  It is reckoned to have [number] subscribers.  On [date] it managed to get [number] of them online at once.  Among MMORPGs, its main notable feature is that all players [include exception here for the China shard] play on the same "instance": there is no sharding.  This is achieved by the use of Cray supercomputers in London overseen by hyper-caffinated hamsters in Iceland."  Insert wikilinks as desired.  Does the ~pedia need more ? -- Simon Cursitor (talk) 06:52, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

-- Aexus (talk) 08:30, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I'll be reading and rereading the article and approach the matter slowly but surely. The first section I think we can shorten is the Races section. Its parent Background paragraph introduces the Races and that may already be enough for the article. I'll see what comes up the next days.

I just checked on the recent changes of the World of Warcraft article. Since April the article has its gameplay-related sections moved to a separate article named Gameplay of World of Warcraft. It may be an option for us, too. What do you think? We shrink our Gameplay section to one paragraph and place a link to a separate article that in turn has a stripped-down version of the current Gameplay section.

In-game items can probably be dropped without substitution. Development, Public perception and Players and communities sections make sense in my opinion. Though they may very well be changed content-wise. That's an outline of what I think the article can benefit from. What do you think? -- Aexus (talk) 10:36, 29 July 2008 (UTC)


 * think that's the right call. One paragraph is perhaps a little too much reduction though; WP:SUMMARY suggests a 1:3 ratio for split content. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 11:26, 29 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I haven’t chipped into this discussion yet and haven’t edited the article for quite a long time. The first point I will make is that there appears to be a group of editors patrolling Wikipedia and trying to shut down articles on fictional topics they haven’t heard of instead of trying to fix them. We should be wary of forking valid content into locations where they can AfD it. Fortunately there seems to be quite an active community focused on a limited group of articles, so fixing problems here is achievable, particularly since there are lots of external and helpfully comprehensive external sources.
 * The second point is that the article has indeed grown and become crufty over time. I would suggest that there are two areas we can meaningfully cut down: (a) the background and (b) the gameplay. (a) The background starts off okay, but then degenerates with childish trivia like "It should be noted that a Nyx class Gallente mothership crashed into a station recently". That can be cut right out. Also, some of the key sections are wrong (e.g. there were more than 5 colonies that survived the collapse). Once again, this section needs to be rewritten. (b) The gameplay section has been breeding sub-sections. These can be condensed. E.g. the short essay on death used to be a three line paragraph. There should be a happy medium – same goes for the other bits.
 * I would also consider cutting down the "Players and communities" section as there is quite a bit of name-dropping on non-notable fictional entities in the corporations and tournaments sub-sections.
 * The sections covering external aspects (Development, Public perception, cost etc) are actually encyclopaedic and should be kept in as User:Aexus has pointed out. Wiki-Ed (talk) 11:43, 29 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Speaking as one of this alleged cabal of deletionists (who get really bad press for no good reason at all), I should point out that I didn't suggest splitting this article's fictional content, which I feel is an appropriate length and needs only relatively minor edits to remove cruft like you suggested. (The spaceships article is another matter.) And I'm quite pleased that there's relatively little clancruft here for an MMORPG article. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 12:05, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

I've shortened the In-game items section so that it briefly explains the concept of ships. The link to the Spaceships article leads readers to a more detailed explanation of the topic. The other subsections like the ones about implants, boosters, mods, ammo, drones and trade goods are simply gone. Personally I don't think they need to be in the article anymore. Of course, feel free to disagree with me and to suggest different changes. -- Aexus (talk) 13:29, 30 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Maybe this is a bad place to bring it up, but I've been working on separate articles for the playable races on my own time. All four are mostly complete save for images, and this could allow for the Backstory section to be shrunken a bit (which seemed to grow considerably between last time I looked at it and today.) It would be minimal, but still something. Aexus, I know you weren't too keen on this idea, so I anticipate your response. DerekMBarnes (talk) 07:58, 2 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Check the archives of this talk page and you'll see that not too long ago I tried to external link eve-wiki and got severly opposed and reprimanded. It was my first encounter with an edit war and I don't want to see another repeat of that endeavor in supreme frustration.  I agree that the article has much cruft that can be cut out.  As for externally linking another wiki you will find some serious opposition to that move for it has been tried on several occasions.  As for the spaceships article the points were solidly made.  It does read like a game manual and needs a rewrite.  However the ships are akin to being a new character skin/outfit that then can be modified with appliances/modules.  It's like a WoW character and his gear switching entire bodies and gear when he needs to.  This is a major functional difference between the MMO's.  Alatari (talk) 12:04, 5 August 2008 (UTC)


 * A link to eve-wiki.net is not bad by default. It is potentially useful for readers and has its place on the Eve Online Open Directory page. Derek, as for the articles you've been writing, do I understand you correctly in that you suggest to shorten the texts about races and the backstory in this article and instead provide a separate article especially for this content? If I do get that right I disagree. The Eve Online-related articles are not being shortenend generally, they are being stripped of their game guide-like information.


 * I do agree with you that the background story and the texts about races can be shortened. However, I don't think that moving the information to another place on Wikipedia will do the articles' cruftiness any good. I do think that readers benefit from an overview of the game's playable races. And that can almost certainly be shorter that what we have right now. A good place for what you've already written can be for example eve-wiki.net or eve.wikia.com. Both wikis have articles about races and the backstory. Articles that may have room for improvement.

-- Aexus (talk) 13:15, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
 * An Eve Online article with a more consolidated section about the backstory and races? Yes, please. Providing more information about the backstory and races on Wikipedia? Probably not.


 * I see your point, Aexus, and now tend to agree. Wikipedia is after all a source of factual information dealing with the actual world. Of course, by this same standard I would think the entire set of links in WP's list of fictional governments should be deleted and deferred to their respective dedicated sites. (That's not likely to happen for, say, the United Federation of Planets.)


 * And yes, the Eve-Wiki articles could use some improvement...as in, not be cut and pasted from someone else's hard work. (This is why previous articles in WP on the EVE races were removed.)


 * So thank you for explaining your position on the matter; it reclarifies what WP is and is not. I'll try not to be so "cruftish" in the future. DerekMBarnes (talk) 03:49, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

-- Aexus (talk) 12:44, 16 August 2008 (UTC)
 * You're welcome. The note about the article's cruftiness wasn't directed at you, Derek. All of us editors have let the article grow; mostly in a good way. Sometimes, however, with information that doesn't quite fit into Wikipedia. Like the much cited cruft. Now that we're here we just keep improving the article bit by bit and in the end everything will be fine :)


 * Read up on cruft via your link. Very informative; thank you again. And now since this section of the talk page is almost as long as the article itself, I'll shut up now. DerekMBarnes (talk) 06:00, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

System requirements
Can somebody add system requirements for this game? --78.0.207.61 (talk) 11:52, 4 September 2008 (UTC)


 * The system requirements are now part of the article, 78.0.207.61. With three operating systems plus (for Windows) the difference between Classic and Premium content the list of minimum requirements and recommended hardware is too long in my opinion. I'm open for any other approach to this issue. -- Aexus (talk) 11:28, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * System Requirements of Eve Online? :D TheChrisD Rants • Edits 23:43, 9 September 2008 (UTC)


 * lol, yeah :) That would be an improvement. -- Aexus (talk) 12:45, 11 September 2008 (UTC)


 * What makes the system requirements pertinent article information? DerekMBarnes (talk) 23:19, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

-- Aexus (talk) 10:35, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I'd imagine there's a guideline that suggests including a game's system requirements. The WikiProject Video games' article guidelines suggest that video game articles should have "an infobox, completed correctly and appropriately." The regular Infobox VG template does have room for system requirements - but in our case not enough. So it's not sensible to complete this template at all costs. Instead of including the Infobox VG template, "completed correctly and appropriately", the next best option appears to be VG Requirements. That way we have all the content that's usually part of the smaller Infobox VG template. I've just read that it's possible to load the system requirements box collapsed by default. I've enabled this option. At least readers who have JavaScript enabled can enjoy a pretty much undisturbed article. Maybe the extensive requirements list is just a sign of Eve Online being special in more than one way. I won't change the box for now. What do you guys think?


 * So just to put things in perspective: assuming we do this, we'd need information for Windows, Mac, and Linux, both minimum and recommended requirements, for both the classic and premium modes as per Trinity 2.0, organized into a readable format. If you can manage that, more power to you. But personally, I still wonder if system requirements are important information or just clutter. Seems to me an encyclopedia would be more interested in describing the game itself rather than being an offsite FAQ section. DerekMBarnes (talk) 19:14, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

-- Aexus (talk) 12:19, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Windows, Mac, Linux, minimum and recommended and (in case of Windows) Premium and Classic graphics, yes. That's exactly it. I don't know if I can manage that. I tried. For ten days the system requirements have been part of the Development section. Feel free to form your opinion on whether or not the current layout means I can manage it. The off-site FAQ argument is thin though. If we didn't want to include information from the official website then we'd need to strip the article from other topic-related information. For example how Advancement works, how the Economy runs or what Combat is all about. Whether the info comes from the Knowledge Base, like it's the case with the system requirements, or from the Player Guide, the actual F.A.Q. or what have you; that's not all that important as long as the data has a place in this article. I sggest we either don't include system requirements at all or we do it properly. In that case Eve's three operating systems mean that the list will be longer than what your average PC-only game has. One option is to go with just the minimum requirements and remove the recommended hardware just like the regular Infobox VG at the top of video game articles does. That wouldn't save enough space to actually shorten the list so there's not much point in it. How would you go about this?


 * Actually, what's there right now looks pretty good. As for your counter to my argument, I consider Gameplay part of said description (of which Advancement, Combat ans Economy are all a part). Sorry for any confustion. DerekMBarnes (talk) 01:00, 20 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Alrighty, I'll leave it the way it is. It may not be beautiful but it serves its purpose. -- Aexus (talk) 13:25, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

This article may be too long. What do you think? (Part 2)
Tl;dr version: Moved Gameplay section to its own article, Gameplay of Eve Online.

Full version: The first part of this discussion has been archived on September 16, 2008 after 30 days of inactivity. Please find it in Archive 19 of this Talk page. We've been talking about how to shorten the Eve Online article. I suggested to move the Gameplay section to its own article - just like editors of the World of Warcraft article did in April when they created Gameplay of World of Warcraft. Since that discussion I've slowly but surely summarized the Gameplay section and today moved its remnants to their own article, namely Gameplay of Eve Online. If you disagree with what I've done then please, do speak up. Or modify either one of the affectd articles directly. While I've paid attention to not breaking anything, bear in mind that I'm human and that something may very well be broken. Feel free to fix it :) Other than that I hope this change further improves the quality of Eve Online-related content on Wikipedia. -- Aexus (talk) 15:34, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

The Corporations and Alliances section
I've made a few edits in this section that may or may not cause a stir.

I've rewritten the paragraph concerning pirate corporations to make it more accurate and to fix a link that died when the Gameplay section was split into a separate article.

Removed the phrase "jump points" as there is no such thing. The author may have referring to a cynosaural beacon, although that still would have been inaccurate, since you can't "stake out" something that doesn't exist until it is created by another player.

Removed the bit about "few groups" pod killing other players for being inaccurate. Many players will destroy any pod that sticks around long enough for them to obtain a weapons lock. I've done it myself :)

Removed the bit about pirates "almost never prey[ing] on beginning characters". Some pirates will, some won't and I don't believe either group has a significant enough majority to justify the line.

Also, the previous version and even the current version of this paragraph as I've edited it may be a bit too detailed considering where it is located. A description of piracy should probably be in a separate section and possibly in the Gameplay of Eve Online article, not in a section of this article dealing with player corporations. Perhaps "Character Careers in Eve" or something.

I have a problem with the accuracy of this next paragraph, but have decided not to edit it to avoid possible conflict of interest. My own EVE character was involved in a major ingame conflict with some of the entities mentioned here.

''Alliances based in lawless space often group into political powerblocks, such as "The Greater BoB Community" and "Providence Holders", for the purpose of joint operations and logistics. Currently, the largest of these political blocks is "The Southern Coalition", consisting of alliances such as "Goonswarm" and "Red Alliance".[21]''

The "Southern Coalition" no longer exists and Red Alliance itself has, for all intents and purposes, collapsed. I believe the Northern Coalition is probably the "largest" political block at the moment, although it has been invaded by another block and may or may not survive the experience.

At any rate, the existence of political blocks at any given moment is going to change continually and may happen very abruptly. I'm not sure mentioning specific political blocks is necessary or desirable.

My temptation is to cut it down to the following: "Alliances based in lawless space often will form unofficial political powerblocks with other alliances. These powerblocks typically are referred to as 'coalitions'." and just leave it at that. I'll leave it to someone else to deal with it because of my possible COI. Rooker75 (talk) 23:19, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

-- Aexus (talk) 23:11, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Sounds fair to me. I've changed it according to your suggestion and removed the examples of political power blocks. While I was at it, I've changed the territorial control map to the one that's most up-to-date - with its last update just Tuesday. CCP Mitnal's thread EVE Territorial Maps shows that the map by Verite Rendition is maintained well enough to replace the former link to Joshua Foiritain's map. I've done that.

Developer Misconduct
I edited this section for the sake of neutrality. I also removed the sentence about the CSM. Their job is not to provide internal oversight.Travia21 (talk) 17:18, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

-- Aexus (talk) 16:50, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Neutrality is always good. Removing the CSM note at the end of the section seems fair, especially with the tasks the Council handles nowadays. Actually, I like most of your changes and you seem to have put much thought into them. I've fixed some slip-ups that seem to have gotten through.
 * Fixed grammar as the section talks about the developer as in, the developer CCP.
 * Removed "original" from the blueprint description. Wiki articles describe their topics in a way the average reader can understand them. Average reader as in, unfamiliar with the topic. The difference between a Blueprint Original and a Blueprint Copy isn't explained in the article. Just because we know it were BPOs doesn't mean the reader cares or understands.
 * Fixed spelling of EVE to Eve
 * Changed the dismissal sentence as yours wasn't making sense: "Some [...] asked for t20's dismissal, but CCP decided not to."

Game Music
This article has nothing about Jon Hallur's wonderful score for the game. 65.54.154.145 (talk) 11:34, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

-- Aexus (talk) 12:20, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Feel free to enhance the article with any sources you find. The Audio section of the World of Warcraft article has an example of how the format may work out. A difficulty in case of Eve may be that there isn't much documented info about the sondtrack. The Eve store offers the 13-track official soundtrack and that's it. The dozens of other songs players find within the game's STUFF files aren't listed on an official page as far as I know. Though if you find anything appropriate with sources, feel free to add it to the article.

Minor Edit not so Minor
I marked This Edit as minor by accident. Don't think anyone will mind, but oh well. Happy pew-pewin' Mjf3719 (talk) 14:55, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Merged "Cost" and "Buddy account" setions
Tl;dr: Removed pricing info from Cost section as per Wikipedia policy; merged rest of it with Buddy program and trial account section

Full version: On November 13 Oe1kenobi added the average price of an Eve Time Code to the Cost section. I had a feeling that this info was inappropriate and went to look for a policy. First of, I checked articles of other MMOs that offer game time codes to see how these articles managed pricing information. I checked the articles about Age of Conan, RuneScape, Tabula Rasa, Warhammer Online and World of Warcraft and it turned out neither of them had pricing details. Which made me think of an actual policy that we Eve editors might have ignored so far. I actually found it.

The policy What Wikipedia is not has a section called Wikipedia is not a directory that writes, "product prices should not be quoted in an article [...] ." Possible exceptions include sales of rare collectors items and others that don't apply in our case. The policy is also linked from the article guidelines of the WikiProject video games.

Long story short, as per the policy I've removed pricing info. With that change in mind, an section headlined Cost didn't make sense to me. The topic is similar to the one about buddy and trial accounts so I figured, why not rewrite both sections into one? Just a single section so that the reader knows how Eve handles accounts. I've done that. The merged section is now called Accounts and subscriptions and contains pretty much the info from the two former sections minus the pricing info plus an easy-to-comprehend structure.

If you see the need for improvement please do tell me about it.

-- Aexus (talk) 16:52, 14 November 2008 (UTC)


 * No pricing information? Does anyone have any idea why this policy? It is a significant piece of information for somebody (like myself) who read a reference to this MMOG elsewhere online, and came to this page to find out more about it. Does anyone else apart from me think that this policy might need re-examining? Centrepull (talk) 11:17, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

-- Aexus (talk) 14:17, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
 * You are not alone in thinking that the policy might need re-evaluation. Which may be one of the reasons why pricing details show up in articles every now and then. The Talk page of the WP:NOT policy has discussions going back to 2002, with for example this discussion and this one revolving around pricing information. The consensus that eventually resulted in this particular policy apparently is that Wikipedia provides encyclopedic content. Articles may include everything necessary to understand the topic at hand. The price of a product, however, helps readers to compare it to similar products; it's not necessary to understand the topic.


 * You could always search the actual internet (as opposed to wikipedia) to find pricing - 122.111.179.54 (talk) 13:20, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Backstory inaccuracy
Edited part of "story" section. It said that EVE took place around 35,000 years from now. According to the timelines from the "Backstory" section of the EVE Online website, EVE takes place in 23341 AD. I edited that part. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.62.119.196 (talk) 21:13, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

-- Aexus (talk) 11:07, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I see what happened here. Editors have changed this number before while for example the Empyrean Age feature page says that the game is set 35,000 years in the future. In that case, not even the Eve website has consistent information. That explains these repeated edits and counter-edits. For simplicity's sake, let's assume the timelines on the main Eve Online website are right with 21,000 years, and that the 35,000 years noted on the Empyrean Age page are a slip-up. I've copied the appropriate source to the number.

Distributors - Valve?
Should Valve be added as a distributor of EvE Online? It is available via Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/8500/ -- Greyed (talk) 06:45, 10 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Clarification, I do see that the summary paragraph notes it is on Steam and it is mentioned elsewhere. I was specifically referring to the distributors list in the infobox. -- Greyed (talk) 06:59, 10 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Seeing that distributors' tasks include marketing and improving a product's circulation I'd say that Valve does just that with its 21-day trial offer. So yeah, makes sense to me to add Valve as a distributor. I've added the distributor tag to the Infobox VG template and Valve as its value. -- Aexus (talk) 16:31, 10 December 2008 (UTC)