Welcome to the first installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed here. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

This month’s topic comes to us from PsycheDiver: Ambulation: What are your hopes for your avatar and new functionality of stations?

Walking Around…

It doesn’t sound very impressive does it? That may well be due to my lack of headline creativity (I am a little stale in that respect) or perhaps due to the fact that “Walking In Stations” doesn’t sound all that exciting really. “Ambulation”…well it’s a little better, but let’s be honest most people don’t have a clue what “Ambulation” means when they first read it. It’s ok though, the context is quickly made clear so…don’t worry about it too much.

Truth is, whilst walking around in a superstructure doesn’t sound that exciting (it sounds a bit cold to me!) it is actually one of the best things which could possibly happen to EVE Online…seriously. The ability to connect with your own avatar is something which EVE has lacked ever since its inception in 2003. Players have, for the most part, identified largely with the ships they fly rather than the pilot controlling them. Your ship becomes your avatar (albeit one which changes regularly) and its fittings become your limbs. Not anymore! With the ambulation expansion players will for the first time be able to truly craft their avatar. Sculpters, take note!

So, “hope”fully you have gathered that I have high hopes for this addition to the game (if you didn’t gather that…then I need to stop blogging and writing altogether). I don’t have high hopes because I want to stand in a bar and look cool, or to stand facing a wall inside my local Home Guard Assembly Plant, no. For me, it’s all about the immersion factor.

I don’t mean that I RP…I don’t. I have nothing against Role Players, infact it’s something I have dabbled in in the past in other games but something which I didn’t want to do with my EVE character. Immersion for me is playing the game and not fully realising that I am playing a game, the hours tick by and then when my mind cautiously reminds me to check the time I emit something which sounds like a “WHOAH!” and realise I’ve been playing for three days without eating…Well…OK, not that bad, maybe 5 hours or something…Whatever, you get my point!

So, having established my constant desire/addiction to immersion in games, we can then link ambulation to that deep yearning. Finally, I will be able to stroll around a station, take in the lights…the sounds…the sights…the smells…Ok, not the smells… I will be able to stand next to my ship and say “Yup…I did good didn’t I?!”. I will be able to marvel at my own immortality as a member of the pod pilot community. I will be able to walk into my corporate office and chair a board meeting. With ambulation, all these ideas become a reality. I will be able to keep a dress code if I want to (for all those fancy dinners and wine and cheese nights that I host). Ambulation, for immersion freaks like myself is EVE’s holy grail, a sword in the hand of the graphics and realism King, the magical tome to the immersion Wizard… I sincerely apologise that my metaphors are pretty darn bad today.

Ambulation is not just a gimmick, it is an expansion in the truest sense – almost a whole seperate game to the space ship flying game we all know and love and in my opinion Ambulation and the projects which will follow it will continue to keep EVE relevant in the MMO industry for years to come, it is EVE Online’s very own “Deep Thought”. Also, it will keep me interested and space drunk for a hella-long-time, but that’s just the kind of guy I am!

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