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Something unexpectedly thrilling happened on Friday, during CCP's annual Eve Fanfest event in Reykjavik. Following last year's death of an in-game leader of the Amarr Empire faction (think very angry, very ruthless space monks with a fetish for lasers), players were tasked with representing the various fictional sub-factions hoping to fill the resultant power vacuum. The outcome of a series of matches between these representatives would determine the in-game heir to an empire.I was a shy roleplayer even at the the height of my obsession with Eve, but I am Amarr4Life and I can assure you that this final showdown between the remaining champions was a thrilling example of roleplay writ large across the Harpa centre's cavernous hall. Dry ice hissed and puffed its way ominously into the main chamber, the competitor's banks of PCs rose hydraulically into view, and Eve's endlessly tense soundtrack throbbed and hummed to tremendous effect in the background. The high-level combat that followed was as impenetrable as ever, but it was still a fabulous bit of theatre that laid an effortless bridge between two very different worlds.
Player agency is soon to change the game in even more significant ways than this, however. Eve Online might be more than a decade old, but it's set for one of its most significant shake-ups with the release of this week's Citadel expansion. The long-promised process of removing economic and industrial power from the hands of NPC factions, and instead placing them directly under the control of the players themselves, begins right now - and the prospects for conflict between all factions have never looked better.
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