In Retrospect: Stargate Trailblazer

Potential Squandered

How it Started: New gates coming - if the players will it!

How it Ended: These gates will be built no matter what - also, here's a bunch of overbearing rules associated with the event:

 

This event had a lot of potential. It had the potential to flesh out more of the science fiction lore behind the game and elucidate how stargates work. It had the potential to be aesthetically interesting as the "Stargate Construction Sites" changed over time and buzzed with NPC activities - it would have been cool to actually watch Federal Strategic Materiel ships out gathering resources, hauling stuff around, and actually doing things. Don't stargates involve the creation of artificial wormholes? Wouldn't the Drifters, Triglavians, or even the remnants of the Jove haven taken an interest in this? Wouldn't there be system-wide effects as the wormhole was potentiated and then actualized?

Will there be an in-game event to christen the new gates? Will we even get to see the activation, and witness the EMP wave? Probably not. In all likelihood we'll log in after DT and the gates will just be there. Stargate Trailblazers had the potential to introduce new things to interact with in space; like repeatable Security, Mining, and Distribution agents that would send players into LowSec where they could be "interacted" with by other players.

And most importantly: It had the potential for players to be able to impact the shape of New Eden - to influence whether or not these new Stargates got built. It was presented to us, originally, as player driven. Instead what we got was Resource Wars 2.0 and a scripted outcome couched in the language of player influenced (until CCP Foz's last minute announcement), along with a mountain of rules micromanaging player interactions to bandaid over poor game design.

The event was lucrative in terms of raw ISK and limited edition vanity items but was otherwise unengaging and uninteresting. There were so few people running the sites in Solitude that I maintained top position on the leaderboard despite only running it for a few hours in total. Classic World of Warcraft had more player involvement opening the gates of Ahn'Qiraj than this did. Servers competed to be the first. It took many weeks and months of farming and turning in resources to open the gates. How soon the gates opened was dependent upon player engagement. CCP didn't even give us that much. There was no hidden progress bar to fill: players could not even influence the timetable.

The sites were all the same and varied only in scale. There was only one resource to gather. Apparently Gallente stargates are built utilizing only "mossy rocks". The Stargate Construction Site appears exactly the same as of 6/6/21 as it did on 6/1/21.

In short: If you ran the sites you could make decent ISK in addition to purchasing some very limited edition vanity items which look decent. Beyond that the event was underwhelming and disappointing.

SW-TC Immortalized

The silver lining to all of this is that Solar Winds Trade Conglomerate will be forever memorialized. When people jump into The Crown from Placid, they will see our name on the door. Because The Crown is ours, and always will be - only ours.