Storytime - when a Dev drops in

Hello everyone.

I will be leaving EvE for an indeterminate amount of time. I don’t think the “why” is important, moreso because that was already hashed out in the appropriate thread. But my subscription is ending now very soon, so I wanted to share something before I’m gone.

*No you can’t have my stuff, it’s stored close to Jita in the event that I return someday.

A while ago…it feels like a couple of years now…I had a friend that I managed to get interested in EvE. He had been an avid player of Final Fantasy…something. The first MMO one, the more popular of the two. And after he stopped playing that, he was jonesing for another MMO to play. I’d told him stories about EvE over the years, so, with a bit more prodding I got him to sign up for a month.

During the first day of his subscription, I logged in with him to help him get started. I was showing him how the interface worked, gave him my overview settings, described the galaxy cluster and security stuff, how ganking worked, all the basic stuff. After showing him how the game worked for about two hours, I took a “bio break”. When I came back, he excitedly told me about something that happened while I was away.

Apparently, someone from CCP opened up a chat with him. Of course I was very skeptical about that, but I had already told him about the scams in this game and how not to fall for them. But he assured me that this CCP person hadn’t asked for anything. Just opened up a chat, looked to see that he was getting around okay, if he needed any questioned answered, and just wanted to make sure his initiation into the game was going smoothly. That was it.

So, I asked for a screenshot and eventually got one. That, however, was lost when I upgraded my computer and left behind most non-essential files, so I don’t have it to share. That means that the identity of the person from CCP is now lost to time. But my friend still talks about it from time to time. He didn’t end up sticking with the game, but he tells people about it. That the game with a reputation for the hardest learning curve, had devs checking in on some new people just to help alleviate some of that learning curve.

I imagine this has to be a seriously rare event. I mean, thousands of new players are made all the time. Many of those new characters are being started up by vets. It didn’t make much sense for this one guy, my friend to be singled out and identified as a genuinely new player. But I have a theory that maybe his account was flagged (in a good way) by something. I do recall that he started up a trial, played for a few days with that (again, with some of my guidance), then subscribed with one of those starter packs on Steam. Maybe something about that made his account stand out to any devs monitoring that sort of thing.

Either way, it made a heck of an impression on him. Like I said; he still talks about it, even though he doesn’t play the game.

I know I’ve often been negative on the forums, and not always grateful. It’s why I wanted my (probably) last posting to be something positive. Something I wanted to share. That even if the galaxy cluster is pretty large, all in all, maybe it’s still kind of a small community. One where sometimes, a dev drops by your game to say hello and make sure your introduction to the game is going okay. And you know what, that’s cool. That’s really feckin cool.

Fly dangerous, but above all, have fun guys. :slight_smile:

3 Likes

Cool post, man, and wherever the game gods take you, best of luck out there.

I know a lot of people talk about their favorite moments in EVE being some massive battle or kill or something along those lines, but for me, I always like stories like this- where somebody did some random act of niceness. Not sure why, but in a a game like EVE, know for it’s harshness, seeing somebody do something cool for a random player seems that much more exceptional to me. Yeah, I’m a total carebear :rofl:

o7

This wasn’t uncommon for a very, very long time. Heck, there were times where devs showed up in starter systems to check in with the fresh locals.

Then again, I also remember getting nuked by (now former) Oveur in a Concord ship at a spawn point once upon a long ago …

2 Likes

I’ve never heard of anything like that happening; good fun!

o7

1 Like

@CCP_TrashMob

nomen est omen !!!

(for those who are properly educated and know Latin)

To be fair, I suppose some of us figuring out how to tank Concord probably deserved a response, nobody saw the actual response coming though :stuck_out_tongue:

I could tell you stories …

Suffice to say that CCP once was young too :slight_smile:

That said, I do think that today’s CCP overestimates some by now historic stuff, underestimates the relation between presence and product / brand management opportunities (along with community management).

It happened to me also, but it was GM asking if I need any help. It was back when you had only option to subscribe to play. No alpha clones.

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