Good morning,
Latest development post can be found here - March 2024
The PANDORA Agency system has gone live following almost 1 year in development and testing, with intense public beta testing coming to an end after 3 months.
The PANDORA Agency has been around in one form or another since around 2006. In that time, it was more of a combat system for members of T.R.I.A.D only to recognise kills and allowing for the placement of bounties on players - all through a PHP driven website. Rewards were given to T.R.I.A.D Corporation members for killing enemies or claiming bounties.
By 2008, a new version of the website was built - giving the ability for any citizen of New Eden to run missions for T.R.I.A.D. This was hugely successful and was THE FIRST AND ONLY public player-driven missioning system in EvE Online. This was well received by its users and saw itself in the news spotlight on several occasions.
EON magazine, a quarterly magazine for all goings-on in EvE Online also published an interview regarding the T.R.I.A.D Agency system in issue #023.
In 2014 V3 of the Agency system was built and evepandora.com was launched, bringing a huge change to how the agency worked overall. Other corporations and alliances were now able to implement their own missions and give their own rewards to the citizens of EvE for taking part. Soon, alliances were able to launch full scale campaigns, enemies were able to create their own counter-campaigns also offering rewards. The idea was to build a system so that leadership of alliances and corporations could build events and campaigns to drive the lore and their own backstory forwards.
One of the most popular campaigns titled INTO THE ABYSS was aimed at taking the fight into Amarr and Jita itself with large rewards for those taking part. This had a huge story arc which was unlocked depending on the outcome. It involved many encrypted campaigns which interlinked and auto-generated based upon other campaign outcomes. However, it was in mid 2018 that PANDORA went offline due to unseen circumstances - shortly after, coincidentally, âINTO THE ABYSSâ also became the name of the next big expansion to EvE Online.
Today, you are looking at V4 - a much smoother experience of all the nuts and bolts of V3, but with the addition of member statistics, standings gains and losses for mission running and campaigns and a much simpler campaign and mission implementation experience for users.
One of the regular questions asked throughout the testing period was - what is Pandora, whatâs it about?
The short answer is: Content.
The long answer goes much deeper than that.
Back when I first started eve way back in beta, EvE provided the perfect opportunity for us players to help in the lore and formulate how each race would be represented and the factions within. This saw the ability for capsuleers to choose who to work for in the way of agents and to build up their loyalty and standing with the NPC corporations of New Eden. As you worked for these corporations, you also gained standing with their factions. As your standing goes up with these corporations from running missions, so too does your % added mission bonus the next time you run missions for them, etc, etc.
2003 saw eve go live. We began to see the roleplaying corporations of eve form, many of us leading these corporations - players who had come out of beta with an idea of how these factions should be represented based upon the backstory that had been built up. The Peopleâs Republic of Minmatar (PRM) was formed from several roleplaying Minmatar corporations - a coalition of like-minded corporations. At the same time, PIE Inc., Blacksheep Squadron, Imperial Dreams and several other Amarr corporations had formed their own united front. War would rage between the two regions between these coalitions. This period allowed us to build up our own representation and a face to our own factions. Roleplay on the forums at this time rocketed and ingame events would take place amongst all four key factions being represented by their own coalitions of these corporations.
When we founded UshraâKhan in 2004 and PIE Inc., Imperial Dreams and their allies founded CVA shortly after, it more than ever became a realisation to many that we the player base were capable of being the content drivers for ingame storylines. As such, ccp became heavily involved in the UshraâKhan and CVA story and implemented many events which helped shape our paths and gave meaning, purpose and recognition of what we were about , what we stood for and what we were doing. In essence we were the roleplaying, warring factions that were a pre-cursor to faction war.
But there was always one thing on my mind - wouldnât it be amazing if others from outside your corporation or alliance could get involved, as though you were their agent, to give you a face as one of the main players in New Eden, someone that others can run missions for?!
Thus, the T.R.I.A.D agency was born which allowed anyone to run missions for T.R.I.A.D from a website portal. Several EvE News posts were made related to this, such as:
https://www.eveonline.com/news/view/t.r.i.a.d-corporation-agents-ready-to-offer-missions
Several versions of this website were created, expanding into faction warfare and allowing for those outside of T.R.I.A.D to kill our targets through missions but we wanted to expand to be able to allow everyone in eve, not just T.R.I.A.D, to be able to create missions or campaigns for their own corporation and alliance. However, at the time, the technology to create such a thing to be able to handle such a website was very limited compared to today.
With todayâs version of evepandora, it is now capable of being a roleplay/content driver for all those interested and is capable of doing what it was meant for. You can create campaigns over set periods of time against target corporations or alliances or in specified systems with rewards to those taking part, whether from within your corporation or alliance or complete strangers.
Through creating content, key players can evolve - evepandora recognises who is creating content and singles them out for recognition. Important impacting content is put into a monthly news video release. Those who have taken part are given recognition for their involvement.
It is a tool to enable you to create news and unique content and story arcs where outcomes can change your path.
Imagine the following possible scenario:
You just created a campaign to invade enemy territory, where your campaign is locked and only visible to your alliance members. However, someone manages to hack your campaign and releases its details to your intended target. This intended target then creates a counter campaign to kill your alliance members in the territory you had chosen to attack - a campaign forcing them to defend against your upcoming attack on a date that you had set but is now known by your enemy. This then snowballs into assassination missions being placed on your fleet commanders, singling them out and breaking your offensive campaign. Following defeat, you place multiple supply missions to setup a production HQnearby the enemy HQ. Missions runners in evepandora are ferrying minerals to you and before you know it you now have a fleet of battleships due to those youâve never met providing you the materials in hours. Another campaign to make a second attack is made and victory is yours.
With itâs own standings system, those who run missions and make claims on campaigns they have been involved in will begin to stand out as having loyalty to certain individuals, corporations and alliances.
Evepandora allows you to be the driver of this content where you create the events and forge your own path and can change the destiny of others. With our monthly news broadcasts and eve insider news giving storyline updates within our website - you could use this as the catalyst in pushing you, your corporation or your alliance forward.
Donât let the NPC agents get all the love.
Be the agent. Make history.
DeT Resprox (evepandora).
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