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[kalaratiri]

http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=74062

Holiday Dev Incursion!
reported by CCP Unifex | 2012.12.05 14:22:56 | NEW | Comments

The holidays are coming to New Eden again and it's time to spread cheer. Normally, we would allow Sansha Claus to come in his Revenant pulled by 9 Nightmares (one with red spikes) to deliver joy to everyone, but he's still busy locking down random constellations with his whole Incursion shtick, so it falls to someone else to take up the reins.

No, we aren't talking about the Thukker Bunny. We, of course, mean CCP.

And what better way to spread this joy than through a Dev Incursion?

 
Dev Incursion? What’s that then?

That's right, a Dev Incursion! For those of you who were around 12 months ago, you might remember some of the events we ran last year. They were all great successes and huge fun for both us here at CCP and the players we killed and got killed by. Who can forget the billions of ISK of destruction? Good times.

Now, for those of you who weren't around, let me briefly explain what to expect.

 
CCP Is Coming to Town

At some point, some time in the coming days, you will suddenly hear reports through our news channels, social media, and in-game events forum that a massive CCP fleet is gathering in Polaris and getting ready to make it's merry way out into the cluster. Upon hearing these ominous reports, you can rest assured that something bad is about to go down (because what else could a bunch of devs getting a fleet together mean but trouble?)

Shortly after, the fleet will depart Polaris and use what military experts are calling “devhax” to appear in a carefully selected system somewhere in New Eden, which we will then proceed to camp with authority and rain down terrible vengeance upon any who dare come our way.

 
Terrible Vengeance Doesn't Sound Very Festive

In New Eden, the holidays are a much more dangerous time. Presents aren't exchanged as much as they are pried from the cold, dead hands of all those who dared stand in your way. And it's in that spirit that the Dev Incursion will roll out.

Once CCP is out in force, it's up to you players to come out and get rid of us! Get your friends and form a fleet and come to make us pay. But be careful, because we definitely will not pull any punches. Last year, we had several rather epic slugfests that ended in much death on both sides. This year will not be any different.

 
What to Expect?

Many of your favorite devs will be there! CCP Soundwave, CCP Explorer, CCP PunkturIs, CCP Zulu, myself and more. This is your chance to shoot them. When else will you get this chance? It doesn't come around often.
CCP will be coming out in a tough, proven fleet composition provided by our very own guru of all things ships, CCP Fozzie.
We will blow you up if you show up. No mercy! It doesn't matter what you bring, we will try to kill you. Frigates, battlecruisers, even Titans... Oh, please please bring a single Titan. We want to kill one.
Except for pods. We won't pod you. We can't promise that other players won't though. So, as always, only bring what you can afford to lose!
 

But I Won't Be Able to Make It!

Well, you're in luck. Because this year, even if you are shackled down in the deepest, darkest dungeon, as long as you have an internet connect (and what self respecting dungeon doesn't these days?), you'll be able to follow along.

That's right, this year we'll be live streaming the entire Dev Incursion on our CCPGames channel on Own3d.tv!

Even if you are in game to come blow us up, you'll want to follow along on the stream. It will be hosted by CCP Fozzie (that guy is everywhere!) and feature special guests, holiday messages from CCP staff, and more. There might even be a song or two. So be sure to tune in to all the fun and come blow us up in game!

Fleet comps organised (and probably FC'd) by Fozzie? Good lord, CCP might actually be dangerous for once.

Sounds like a good time

[Esna Pitoojee]

Regardless of how dangerous they are, they are not going to be as dangerous as a ~200-man fleet looking for shiny PLEX drops.

[Lyn Farel]

:/

[Laerise [PIE]]

This is going to fall flat on it's face no matter what they do. They should really stop doing bullshit events like this one - or the "RP events" and much rather get back at fixing the goddamn game. 
All this does is create even bigger blobs of f1-monkeys, carebears and nullbears. It's nothing but a colossal waste of everyones time and throwing pearls to the pigs. 

[Tiberious Thessalonia]

Some of you people hate fun.

The planning of this is going to take.. what, an hour?  They can spawn in everything so its not like they have to wait for logistics.

It also adds a lot of value of fun for people playing the game AND CCP employees in the mean time.  As long as they dont try to brand it as a live event like they did last time, I don't see the issue of them taking a few hours to play around.

[Aldrith Shutaq]

Yeah you bums, stop being such kill-joys. This game is about ships exploding. Besides, any time when CCP plays its own game is good for their perception! This will probably be the first time some of the devs even get into a space ship!

[kalaratiri]

God I hope they put CCP's voice chat over the stream. I can't go and shoot them, but I can damn well get a laugh out of Fozzie trying to FC that lot.

[Alain Colcer]

i think this is not really for the players, but rather a cathartic experience to devs, finally they get the chance to go out and fly and shoot being themselves, and not some obscure hidden character

[Gesakaarin]

If it was anything like the last time CCP did this in Tama then I'll probably be there just for the glorious killmail whoring on all things until they get hotdropped by supercaps.

[BloodBird]

i think this is not really for the players, but rather a cathartic experience to devs, finally they get the chance to go out and fly and shoot being themselves, and not some obscure hidden character

I hope this is the case, and that they have loads of fun.

However if I were playing at this point I'd hope to be in a big enough group to go kill everyone ELSE who show up to kill CCP, simply because I don't like the fact that with 95% likelyhood this will be in null/low and thus x-number of null-bear alliances will send cyno-ships to drop their 500+ man fleets on top of the devs. If it does not crash the node/server, it will crash the fun for everyone else.

And I'd pray, if I were a religious man, that not one plex or overly shiny item is available on the dev ships. Ensuring the rich get richer and the entities with to few people get squezzed out is not my idea of fun - having a HUGE free-for-all where the only reward is PVP and possibly regular loot, is.

No-matter what happens, I hope one of the smaller factions, like a good low-sec or high-sec corp/alliance or a FW group get's the most glory. I'd hate to watch this feed (live or no) only to see some null-bear mega-fleet cyno in and one-hit all the dev ships one by one, loot the field and leave.

I guess this all depands on exactly how many devs we are talking about here, but I don' forsee anymore than a couple hundred, at most. Far to little, especially if few fo them have played the game.

In closing, here's to hoping I'm completely wrong and it becomes a good time for all.

[Esna Pitoojee]

In the past, they've shown up in halfway-competent fleets of around 60-ish people, that while not ultimately capable of holding off the hungry null-swarm did show that CCP aren't 100% clueless about fleet composition. During the Eve Open Tournament they mentioned that a PL Rokh fleet showed up and literally ran out of capacitor boosters trying to kill the CCP fleet.

If anyone shows up with intent to smash their face in (as opposed to intent to gudfite), then I doubt that kind of mistake will be made twice.

[Lyn Farel]

It is not about hating fun. It is about hypocrisy.

When they start to count every penny when you submit a petition about a loss, telling you how it would introduce money ingame and destroy the market balance (I have no problem with that), and then they start flying huge loot pinatas in nullsec to enrich nullsec alliances even more, at the same time nerfing high sec and making your farming life even more a misery, again and again, it starts to get hard to swallow.

Don't get me wrong, I couldnt care less if players in nullsec get richer and have an opportunity for fun. All the better for them. That's not my point here.

[Gottii]

Glad to see them doing this. 

[BloodBird]

Glad to see them doing this.

I'm not so sure I am, but that depends.

Lyn's point is seems to be pretty much the one I hold to - the null-alliances are pretty much the only ones that wil be able to overwhelm CCP's fleet in a short time and kill all their ships. It's not really a question of 'will it happen' it's a question of 'how fast' and 'what null-alliance/coalition got all the kills and all the loot'.

IF CCP learned from before and did not bring ANYTHING OVERLY SHINY on their ships, such as plexes or fancy  faction gear, then it won't be to bad, but even then it will be loads of loot for someone out there. For all the people who don't care about the potential PVP but instead the potential loot CCP may as well have spawned loads of NPC capitals with huge bounties in their home-systems for them to kill.

We will see soon enough - and likely on a direct feed, no less - how it goes. I'm hoping a large number of people will have loads of fun, I fear a large singula group will hog it all and gain a huge boost, by virtue of their numbers only. I am ofc hoping to be completely wrong.

Here's to me being wrong.

[Morwen Lagann]

Plenty of the devs actively play EVE - in fact they're all given three accounts to play with when they become employees. Whether all of them PVP or not is another story, but there's plenty of things to do in a fleet that don't require much more than keeping your eyes and ears open and following instructions.

My concerns with these caravan events are pretty simple: in the end, while they're going to be capable of wasting the ad-hoc "let's go blow up devs" fleets put on by disorganized groups of players who don't normally fly together otherwise, they are going to eventually succumb to the large null/low steamroller blobs - which is why these events generally end up with a distinct "let's feed expensive, shiny killmails to the powerblocs" aftertaste. Those blocs have a distinct advantage that everyone else lacks, and whether CCP likes it or not, it tends to mean that they're the ones who usually end up reaping the benefits of this kind of thing.

I'm pretty sure they'll be sticking to T2 fits judging by earlier forum posts on the subject, but I think that the devblog kinda indicates they're going to be carrying goodies in cargo. What those 'goodies' will be, no idea. Probably mostly the funny items that were added in the patch, but who knows? vOv

Me, I'll probably have to watch from the sidelines. I'm more interested in what fleet comp Fozzie is going to give them than anything else, anyway.