Thoughts - Winter Expansion

Yes, the winter expansion.  What I feel is usually the better of the two yearly expansions and this time it will be no different.  First off we have all the ship balancing that CCP Fozzie has done which is around 40 ships has of the current dev blog with the possibility of more to come.  Plus, there is the tease of new destroyers and the mining frig that I am very excited about (mainly the new destroyers).  That is not what everyone is excited and/or worried about tho...... No, this expansion is looking to bring Dust 514 into reality and change that way that Eve is played forever. 

There has been some talk about the possible controversy that this will bring, mainly in the fact that with the incarna expansion there was not much "space stuff", and this expansion could turn out the same way if it is mainly focused on Dust.  The real question is, "Is this a bad thing?"  I say, "No", in fact I say, "It is completely necessary".  Dust is going to change that way Eve played, no longer will it all be about important internet spaceships but important internet mercs has well, and I for one can not see anyway of getting around the fact that this requires a full expansion to integrate into an already expansive universe.

CCP has also realized that, and that is why, at least I feel why, CCP Fozzie was moved to the ships rebalance team.  With all the ship changes there is going to be a lot of time spent by players theory crafting and trying out all the new changes.  Now, I know it is of a ship class that the T1 versions are, well, lets just say, almost never used.  T1 cruisers are pretty much only used by people who do not, or can not, fly the T2 version or who do not fly battle cruisers for what every crazy reason (yes there are player who do not fly them because they feel that they are OP).  With that being the case revamping these ships could do great things for Eve.  The T1 cruiser roam may no longer be a suicide roam seeing if you can kill something more expansive than your entire fleet.  They might become legitimate threats to other roaming gangs that are not a set fleet doctrine.  I for one love that idea.  The idea of more variety to fleets mainly small roams of lets see what we can kill also I hope it makes it so player who start out as anything other than Winmatar have a fighting chance and their ship choice is not immediately laughed at.

The winter expansion, yes, it might be light on "spaceship stuff" right now but it is a necessary evil to fully implement what CCP is trying to do.  I feel that they are doing it very well and am looking forward to blasting all those mercs with BS high in orbit.

Now I jut hope CCP seeing what could possibly be a real controversy.  Ship balancing of already in place and widely used fleet doctrine ships....