I can't say that I'm all that stoked about it, at this point. But, I sometimes lack imagination when it comes to these sorts of things, so who knows... maybe they'll do something sufficiently interesting with it, eventually. Panel discussion during the Alliance Tournament IX indicated a possibility that sometime down the road characters may be able to shoot another character in station (as implied by a DUST 514 promo video). I'm sure some folks are salivating over that possibility, but so far I'm not... I get shot at enough already out in Wormhole space.

I'm pretty much with Jeevz on this one. I'd far prefer to see CCP spend a larger portion of their resources on fixing what is broke first. Their "Little Things" program of making tweaks (released about every 6 weeks) is a good one. They need to get a better handle on server issues and customer service, and fixing existing bugs/exploits. Yes, they should continue research and development for new things, but I think they are weighting that too heavily in their resource allocation. People are paying them good money each month, and they shouldn't have to wait a week to get the first answer on a petition (which of course is from a GM who frequently gets it wrong). All too often, it takes escalating things to a Senior GM to get it right, and that typically ends up being 2 to 3 weeks after the problem was initially petitioned.

On the other hand, I give them a lot of credit for their long term vision on bringing DUST 514 into the Eve Universe. Hopefully they will manage that properly, and not let it screw up Eve Online. New stuff is cool, but first you need to be on top of what you already do/sell.

I had heard that Dust 524 and Eve were to be linked. It would be great if it happened through planetary interaction and you 'recruited' an assault team to take a planet and then you set up your base camp etc.

It is Dust 514. check the EVE online thread. I put a post in their with a couple of links for info. It sounds pretty kewl!

Well, Incarna is deployed. A big download, but that was to be expected.

As fate would have it, our wormhole had attached to a system close to Jita, and I needed to fit out a new battleship, and refit another one differently... so off to Jita I went.

My impressions so far..... a mixed bag. They clearly put a lot of work into getting this out, and making things look good. Yes, it's nice to look at your ship floating in the hanger as you stand on the platform. So there's 10 seconds or so of "yeah, that looks cool." The Captain's Quarters... eh... I can see possibilities down the road as they add more capabilities into the program / User Interface, but so far I don't feel like it's a big improvement to the game / experience as it currently stands. Moving around in there is not a particularly smooth / fluid process.

Some of the graphics changes are nice. Many icons for modules have a new, more distinctive look. The new Maller model is getting good reviews, which bodes well for future model changes.

I wish CCP well in this, and hope it succeeds for them in the long term. Honestly though, they could cut the Captains Quarters / walking around business out, and I wouldn't miss it. That won't happen, of course, but it wouldn't bother me if it did.

I fully understand some people have mixed feelings with the expansion Incarna. Lots of people running EVE on a laptop and old hardware. They have issues. Or people waiting for other fixes.

Sometimes it is time to upgrade your PC. The gaming industry is moving fast. Right now I'm running an "old" i7 920 oc'd 3.20. My latest purchase was the MSI GTX580 and that one gave me a huge boost. In CQ I get 50-60 fps with fraps. Loading time to station with CQ only 2 seconds. Everything is smooth. I'm not a pvp player in EVE. I'm a missionrunner, miner, industry, research. trader and explorer type of player. Reading the official forums in EVE there are so many different players. And they all have an opinion and it seems their opinion is the only right one. I think its hard for the EVE dev team to make everyone happy. Like in the real world we have to deal with it. Adapt, improvise. If some ships need fixes then choose another one and get more backup and win your battle.

The whiny little babies on the official forums crying about this are annoying. They havent had to pay specifically for it yet they cry like its the worst thing to ever happen to them. Why cant they just turn CQ off and shut up? There is a option to turn it off right near the quit button...

And as for people having older hardware, if they were pandered to we would still be playing on Atari 2600s.

I turned off the station loading on day 2. I didn't see anything sufficiently interesting (yet) to warrant keeping it on. I may change my mind later if I hear about something else, but for now I can do anything I need/want to via the non-CQ User Interface, old school style. I could be wrong, but I believe it is getting me into the stations a tad bit faster that way (which isn't a bad thing with the protests that have been going on in Jita, Amarr, etc.).

I agree that CCP shouldn't be expected to design to ancient hardware. Conversely, they can't afford to only design to the latest and greatest... as that would exclude a significant portion of their subscriber base. I suspect that CCP is probably aiming for a sensible level of client machine capability.

If I am expecting the possibility of combat in a system I turn the station loading off too. It takes too damn long to load. On the other hand looking at how ugly my Typhoon is, is a plus.

Ayup, there is some nice eye candy in there (Incarna). The new turret depictions are nice. (Many of the dark on dark colored icons suck, as they are difficult to tell apart.). Hey, maybe they'll sell alternate icons in the NeX...