Tyrannis Review

Ok so I’ve been slack, I missed out on even reviewing the last major Eve expansion, but on the plus side, I am ready to look at the latest planetary interaction expansion, Tyrannis.

Like all the Eve expansions, Tyrannis is free. I’m so glad to see CCP maintaining free expansions, mainly because it keeps the community together, and of course it saves players a few dollars.

No being left behind, locked out of new content just because you can’t afford it… I like that.

Tyrannis’ major feature is planetary interaction and the Eve Gate player portal.

Planetary Interaction

Planetary interaction, or “PI” for short, is the second way that Eve has allowed players to harvest terrestrial objects – the first being moon mining with a POS which was introduced I don’t know how long ago (feel free to enlighten us).

In what I personally believe was a halting start for PI, CCP allowed players to train planetary interaction skills, but didn’t allow them to buy the command modules to use them for 2 weeks. Odd, especially when you read the patch notes that practically screamed, “Go mine planets NOW!”.

What the 2 week gap did do, was allow alliances to wheel & deal with their members on who gets to mine what planets. A certain planet type (I think storm or plasma) for example has a valuable, easy to extract pos fuel as a resource, so those kinds of planets are no doubt causing heated debate everywhere.

Allowing instant access might have caused a few ruffled feathers in that regard… but on the other hand it wouldn’t have confused 50% of the player base who don’t religiously follow dev blogs and forums.

Perhaps another nice bonus that came from the delay, is that it let me train for 2 weeks and use improved command centers, rather than rushing out & using the crappiest command centers available & wasting my time. I’ve already spent another 20 million isk for 4 advanced command centers though… so I better get training!

Interface & Features

So far the scanning interface is nice. As you can see from these screens I’m really liking how CCP let you see the planets up close & personal. You can zoom WAY in to each site if you want/need to, or just view from orbit.

Very, very pretty looking new planet graphics from Tyrannis.

The only draw back — if you’re viewing in 1920 x 1200 resolution. Textures can start looking a bit low in resolution at max zoom in level. Otherwise, excellent.

The interface is also nice for scanning. Although CCP insists on sticking with its nasty right click menu’s for getting into PI, I’m really liking the scan interface.

Basically, you select the resource you want to scan for, and then use a slider to highlight which deposits are the richest.

The higher your scanning skills the better resolution you get, and the better you can place your command modules.

Here’s a bunch of planetary interaction screens from my first exploration of the system I hang out in – please excuse the blurry bits on some of the shots, better safe than sorry

[Show as slideshow]

Eve Gate

The browser based Eve Gate is a long time coming. World of Warcraft has for years had an in-game calendar system which has always worked very well for guilds. Now, apparently, we’re saved. We can now used calendars to help organize corp events and other important times.

The problem?

Apart from one member, hi Sky! it seems my corp and alliance have no idea the calendar even exists. Its still alliance mails and Eve mails for organising everything… so maybe this is just a growing pain/the way things have always been done, but I’d like to see some more calendar usage before I can judge whether this feature is working well or not.

Next is the mail system included in Eve Gate.

I can’t complain, it works fine and sends messages from outside of Eve online to “inside” of Eve online… sorta like talking over the phone to people in the Matrix when you’re in the Nebber… err, Nebu… however you spell it .

You also get to check your skill training without logging in, check your contacts, set your bio, and use a Facebook like status update which I haven’t seen anyone use yet! But its nice to have all the same, and I guess like the calendar its been too short a period of time to see if people will use it much.

But I imagine Eve Gate will be a god send for people at work all day who want to catch up with Eve online or just get their fix, albeit to a far lesser extent than playing.

The Other New Stuff in Tyrannis

Alienware keyboard effects.

Seriously? Keyboard effects? Why not make new sound effects that everyone can use. I know why of course, the mighty dollar. I have no issue with CCP making more money from Eve, but seriously, why not deliver an obviously valuable feature to all Eve players – Alienware users can still have the flashy-flashy stuff.

Some new image service? I can’t work this one out, I Googled it, but have no idea what its supposed to do or how to use it. Anyone that does know, please enlighten us in the comments.

A raft of other minor bits & pieces, a “mystery dungeon”… nothing to write home about, but generally all welcome.

So what next? If you’re a new player, or a vet thinking of getting back into the action, give Eve’s free 14 day trial a go and checkout Tyrannis for yourself.