In short, because you can’t mirror Tranquility without mirroring everything you don’t want, like Alpha Clones and buffed Alpha Clones in the future. Also, those Tranquility events are not as good an incentive to pay as an event that seeds formerly precious modules/implants.
There are a bunch of Serenity Only SKINs and Serenity Only Ship variants. Some of them can still be seen in database records(EVE - Ship: 马克瑞级YC117年特别版). Since the EVE databases I know are well outdated and not often updated, I cannot confirm whether the Thorax and Phobos skin rewarded by these two events existed in Tranquility. I tried auto linking “YC118” for any candidates but there is no one looked like that. By comparison there are a bunch of "Serenity YC117 SKIN"s. BTW, this year is already YC119 and they are calling their event reward skin YC118? They may have already designed this skin back in YC118.
I may have to login with an account on Serenity and check the Item ID to get more clear answer, but I don’t play on Serenity.
However given the fact that Serenity didn’t update for almost one year, I’d believe those new skins are branched from line of Tranquility patch and developed by Tiancity alone. As I said before, I really hope CCP could do some custom SKIN system some day.
Besides, I think Tiancity’s Creativity in rather limited. The Phobos SKIN this time is exactly the same as the Thorax SKIN. I won’t be surprised now if Serenity offered a third or fourth same event for Vigilant/Deimos SKIN.
Another typical example of their creativity can be seen in this limited edition backpack said to be “inspired by an Obelisk”.
https://eve.tiancity.com/homepage/article/2015/06/05/46645.html
According to current Interim Measures for the Administration of Online Games (the quoted section is behind paywall) A game company must inform the users 60 days before closing/transferring the game. Any unused game currency/services should be refunded in acceptable ways (which sometimes in practice is not cash refund but only currencies of other games run by the company).
I think the Chinese EVE is quite dead and most people would think Tiancity is just trying grab the last bit of money from the dying game before it truly dies.
There are many factors in Serenity being dying in the first place. Being largely homogenous in timezone and culture means there is more tendency to unite the whole universe rather than to keep divided for years. Another factor is prevalence of bots and RMT. In Serenity it is often joked that out of 10000 peak onlines, only 1000-2000 were actually human.
Fighting bots and RMT is never a simple thing. It often takes months to collect evidence, sometimes you have to buy a bot to see how it is different from a human. I can imagine untold stories of spying and scheming more epic than what is known on EVE history. CCP may do that well but Tiancity as a publisher, might just be incompetent. And they even lose a lawsuit filed by an alleged botter.
Now the problem came in Ascension Patch, which brought the Alpha Clones. I think the most possible explanation is that
- Tiancity felt that their server will be overcrowded with Alpha bots that don’t subscribe–well the same phenomenon was on Tranquility to some degree too.
While this could also be the case
- Chinese Government suddenly thought there is some censorship issue with Ascension patch like they did to WoW: Wrath of the Lich King.
Either way, I think it a Tragic management indeed.
