News

By: Jarno Kokko Jan 14, 2009

EVE To Discontinue Classic Client

About an year ago EVE got a lot prettier with the launch of "Premium Graphics" client with EVE: Trinity. Since then, EVE has been playable with two different clients - "Classic" for old systems and "Premium" for modern setups. It looks like the developers of EVE have figured out that maintaining two separate clients with two separate art asset sets is too painful. Yesterday's blog entry from CCP indicates that the old client is most likely going to be discontinued with the release of EVE: Apocrypha on March 10, 2009.

One of EVE's unique features (along with being an awesome game on a single server) is that it can run on pretty much any computer built after 1998. The minimum spec for graphics card and CPU has always been very reasonable to say the least, so the barrier for entry into EVE has been relatively low compared to other games. Developing the client in this manner hasn't always been a given. It requires us to downtune our graphics engine quite a bit, for one, as well as maintain the "Classic" client version of EVE along with the Premium one. That means creating two versions of each art asset we want to put into the game. It complicates build and patching processes considerably and, for the most part, it simply doesn't allow us to make EVE look as beautiful as we want.

The solution to the problem is simple - bump up the minimum requirements.

What we'd like to do is a two step approach to ensure that EVE continues to be jaw-dropping gorgeous:

Step 1: In Apocrypha, March 10th, we discontinue support for ShaderModel 1, making ShaderModel 2 (GeForce FX (5 series) or ATi R300 series cards or compatible) the minimum requirement and discontinue the "Classic client" version of EVE, replacing it with "Premium Lite"

Step 2: In the Winter Expansion 2009 we are considering discontinuing support for ShaderModel 2 and make the minimum specification ShaderModel 3 (GeForce 6 class cards or ATi x1300 or compatible)

Assuming things go forward as planned, the minimum requirements for EVE Online would go up from "ridiculously low" to "low". No word yet if the minimum CPU is going to be bumped up from the museum-grade "Pentium III 800Mhz", but I'd imagine so. Naturally as soon as we have the official requirements for the EVE: Apocrypha (which will actually also appear as a retail box), we'll add them to the Game-o-Meter.

It should be stressed that this is not yet set in stone - CCP is soliciting feedback on the subject - but it seems like a reasonable move to me. Even GeForce FX 5x00 / ATI Radeon 9800 level cards are already museum pieces (I've personally upgraded my system twice since it had Radeon 9800 in it), so the only casualties would be really be low end laptops not really designed for gaming in the first place - and even those systems tend to have SM2.0 support these days.