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Monday, July 19, 2010

Eve In China

I was surfing the net and came across a press release by a company called CDC touting a 25% increase in revenues since the launch of Eve Online's Apocrapha expansion on 16 June 2010.  My first reaction was, WTF?  Then I read a little further and realized I was reading about China and Eve's Serenity server.  So I decided to do a little research.

In 2006, CCP partnered with Optic Communications to open a server in China called Serenity.  In June 2007, Optic was acquired by CDC, which also owns the China publishing rights to Lord of the Rings Online.  

From what I can tell, CCP first produces expansions for the western market, and then localizes Eve for the Serenity server.  To give an idea how far behind the deployment curve the game in China may be, the Quantum Rise expansion was released on Serenity on 7 January 2009.  The name of the expansion on Serenity is actually "Wormhole", and I've gotten a kick out of how Google translates "Sleepers" into  "who hibernate".  

From the little poking around I've done, Serenity is currently experiencing a live event.  But instead of a Sansha invasion, the Sleepers have been let loose from their wormholes.  The two eyewitness reports were a bit difficult to read, but I think the Chinese are having as much difficulty with their invasion as TQ is having with its own.

I'm interested in what happens on Serenity and finding out more about the Chinese server.  I'd really like to see the head of CCP's in-game economy department CCP Dr.EyjoG (a.k.a. Dr. Eyjólfur Guðmundsson) do a comparison between Tranquility and Serenity.  The comparisons might not be valid since the two game worlds operate running different expansions, but seeing how players from China react compared to their western counterparts would be interesting.

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