I can’t help but feel that website design has taken a downturn in usability somewhere over the years. Take a look at the new, modern main website. It is like any other modern website, that is to say, tries to cater to mobile devices too much and involves way too much scrolling to get anywhere useful. Not to mention it is also cobbled together from over 15 years of website redesigns; Of the 5 links deemed worthy enough to be placed to the top, 3 link are separate websites from 3 eras of the website evolution.
Well, lets start scrolling down and I can see a whole lot of screen real-estate is used to say very little. Small overviews about EVE as a game, blinks of the most recent expansion and link to the EVE mobile app. Quick glance of a few ships in EVE. After quite a bit of scrolling we get to the bottom of the page, where most of the other links are; account management, community, forums, support, starter guide for new players etc. etc.
I’d like to also point out that EVE’s Fiction Portal (https://fiction.eveonline.com/) is curiously absent from the group of links. Odd, considering the current Triglavian Invasion game expansion, is very heavily story based, yet you can’t even find anything about the game’s lore from its main website. In fact, there is NO visible link to the current fiction portal anywhere that I can tell besides here on this forum.
This is not the main point of this post, but I’ll mention it regardless; I’ve heard that devs have said only a miniscule amount of players care about EVE’s lore. But I’ll counter that with; how do you expect people to care about something they don’t know even exists? When the only way to find anything is by google, and knowing what to search for in the first place?
Now, back to regular programming and what got me to write this whole post in the first place: Take a look at EVE’s webpage from 2005. It is not flashy, it isn’t in your face like the current one is, it doesn’t involve scrolling on and on to get to the point - But it has one MASSIVE advantage over the new ones: Everything you need to know about the game, its community, its background story, fan works, everything you need is right there.
https://web.archive.org/web/20050125184524/http://eve-online.com/
I don’t know about you, but I’d want that old websites clarity and most of all, usability, back. CCPls!