CCP Addresses Concerns About EVE Online's Clone States

Following the other day's news that EVE Online would be adding a free-to-play option in November, the game's existing playerbase immediately became concerned about several issues that might occur in an environment where the game can be played for free. CCP has addressed some players' concerns in a blog post that was published earlier today.

Players have request a limit on simultaneous logins for Alpha Clones, as there is concern that free accounts could be used to create swarms and cause various types of havoc. According to CCP, "there’s significant complexity here, especially on the technical side," but it is looking into it.

Another concern is that of the existence of Alpha Clones making ganking more prevalent. CCP has stated that it will be talking to the CSM about the matter. The company also stated the following on the matter: "we know we can use the safety system to ensure there won’t be a problem if we need to, but we still aren’t sure if that will be necessary."

On the matter of the New Player Experience, CCP is "working to include the first phase of Team Genesis’ new player experience improvements alongside clone states."

Additionally, matters such as "sensitive gameplay areas like faction warfare, combat alts, wormhole scouts," corporations being run by Alpha Clones, and how much access Alphas will have to the API are being looked into. With that said, the company did note that some of the effects of Clone States "will be impossible to predict" and used the following example: "We’ve seen questions like ‘what will happen to the market when returning players suddenly reclaim enormous amounts of assets’. Well, we don’t know exactly!"

You can find the full blog post here.