Unfortunately, I would call it utter crap. I've never been opposed to Incarna like some of our players, but what we're seeing is not at all inspiring to me. When they said they'd release the captain's quarters first, I was a bit dismayed because interaction is the great possibility here. Well, interaction and realizing some types of game play not possible earlier.
To look closer at what's "utter crap" to me, let's see. Firstly, there's the gameplay aspects which in this iteration are just replicating station services. They do that in a rather unimaginative manner, too. So, pardon me for not waving the company flag and singing the anthem. Sure, there could be more stuff coming down the pipe, but there's only talk of some contraband business. Ok... hope it will be interesting, but how about building on what we already have? Maybe some corp management stuff that can only be done in this type of 3d environment? Fleet visualizations? Combine that with sovereignty mechanics and create a whole new profession in Eve of the strategist or planner who sits in station and plots, plans and leads, interfacing perfectly into current mechanics. That's just one idea of meaningful gameplay. Instead, we get station services and then later maybe something we've never heard about before.
Second, there's the visuals. Eve is a game that looks good (on a good 'puter). The CQ is still work in progress so it will get a bit better and smooth, certainly, but those graphics are absolutely nothing to write home about. In fact, they are disappointing.
The third disappointment is about characterization. At the beginning of the design process, CCP was talking a lot about how the players react and interact with the environment. They said it was gonna be awesome and I thought "wow, they're really going to make something that's different from all the other MMOs, where our avatars just sort of stand there". There's no talk about anything like that, nor any sign of anything like that in the current incarnation. We'll get our one way to stand, one way to do idle animations, one way to wave, one way to fail. Right this way to RP heaven, people. It's back to chat channels.
Interestingly, for me the best thing about WoW was the character animations. Other games have avatars which barely fit into the world and have clunky animations with a lack of verisimilitude. It's odd that a game with so old graphics as WoW can still be the king of that, but you can't beat quality designers.
Anyway, here's hoping this will evolve and grow a lot more towards what is possible. Best thing about Eve is the possibility of further growth and iteration, but at some point CCP will have to start reaching towards their lofty goals and not just paint pictures of a tomorrow which may never come. Right now they're going for the very lowest hanging fruit so that they can say "look at us, we did it! We can walk on stations!"
