When you click the “News” link in the game launcher, the (probably misnamed) “Articles” pages open up, which includes links to:
- EVE Online News
- Dev Blogs
- Patch Notes
- The Scope Videos
- The Pulse Videos
Players who don’t navigate EVE Online’s webpage past links from the launcher, however, might be surprised to learn that there is a different “News Channels” webpage which includes:
- World News (live lore events - some of the stuff that RPers talk about in the Intergalactic Summit)
- The Scope Articles (different from videos, which include both lore events and also player interaction such as interviews)
- Awards and Accolades
- RSS Feeds
Yes, World News and The Scope articles are a thing, and they need increased visibility! Just look at how many there have been over the years!
Additionally, the News Channels contains a link to the Articles page above and direct links to the Dev Blogs and Patch Notes sections of the Articles page (but not the News section itself). These are on different subdomains, however, and the layout and functionality is totally different. While there are readily accessible direct links from News Channels to Articles, there does not appear to be a readily accessible direct link from Articles to News Channels, so they are fairly detached and makes the “exclusive” functionality more difficult to get to (at least from Articles to News Channels).
Here is a side-by-side of the Articles page most players are familiar with on the left, and the News Channels pages fewer players are familiar with on the right.
As you can see, there is some partial overlap in content and a lot of redundancy in functionality between News Channels and the Articles page that could be consolidated into a singular portal that would be accessed when clicking the “News” link from the launcher. In addition to eliminating non-beneficial redundancy, the biggest benefit would be to increase visibility to the World News and The Scope Articles, which many players are unaware of. There are numerous ways in which this could be done. One straightforward short-term solution, for example, could be to add another header within the existing Articles page for World News and sidebars for the ISD articles (since they appear less frequently) and RSS feeds. This would provide immediate visibility of this news content with minimal overhaul and doesn’t even require that the News Channels itself be shut down or anything like that.
World News and ISD Articles should be treated as first-class citizens alongside EVE News, Dev Blogs, and Patch notes. Please make the necessary short-term and long-term changes to increase their visibility and make this happen!