Eve Online—the cold, harsh, unforgiving space social simulator of an MMO—announced that it will be offering a free to play option for players to partake in their grand space opera. CCP Seagull, the executive producer, announced the introduction of Alpha clones. With this new feature, players will be able to maintain their presence in the game world albeit in a limited capacity. This will effectively gate the progression of players by limiting the ships they can fly and the modules they can apply to their ships. In return, subscription cost will be waived.

In CCP's latest video dev blog, CCP Seagull said that the subscription model has been identified as one of the primary reasons players choose to leave the game. In an industry that is littered with free to play MMOs, it's difficult to compete for attention when your game still works on a subscription model. From that perspective, this change makes sense.

Think of Alpha clones as an account state. Once the feature goes live, a genuine new player could play the game without a fee with the following restrictions.

Reduced skill training time. Racial locking. Can only train up to racial cruiser with Tech 1 modules and weapons – currently the absolute limit to training is 5 million skill points. Cannot train Cynosural Field Theory, Cloaking, and greatly reduced capacity to farm raw materials. If a player chooses to upgrade to a normal account status, the Omega clone, all restrictions will be lifted. If the same player chooses to stop subscribing, the account will revert back to an Alpha clone and all restrictions will be applied.

In general, the feature announcement was met positively. As the shock of the news subsided, entities quickly broke out the drawing board to see if this change was actually a fair one. However, Eve players being Eve players, the more profound question is, “how can we break this for our own gain?”

Not long after the announcement, Eve media personalities were quick to show the limits of the Alpha clone and how best to use them as cheap NPC farmers. To no surprise the single ship that would be the best to train in order to accomplish this will be the Vexor Gallente Cruiser; thanks to it's diverse and complementary mixed weapon systems of hybrid guns and. As far as best miner, that honor goes to the Thorax Gallente Cruiser. Suffice to say that at feature launch, the Gallente faction will see a marked rise in population.

Now that we have gone over the basics of the Alpha clone feature, let's take a look at what the future landscape may be like after implementation.

Once the novelty wears off, only a small number of Alphas will upgrade to Omega and actually stick to it long term. The new player experience is still extremely lacking. CCP must do their due diligence and find ways to intelligently present the first few hours of Eve Online that will result in new players that can maneuver through space. Otherwise, fresh capsuleers will lose interest due to frustration.

The common response is players should find a player corporation to teach them the ropes. However, that is poor advice for someone who may never pick up the game after the first session because they can't figure it out themselves. If CCP fails to deliver on a New Player Experience that has enough substance and instructional value, then true new players will not be able to enjoy the first few sessions as an Alpha clone, let alone a paying Omega clone.

Resourceful alliances will work towards weaponizing the Alphas. Alliances will be keenly aware of the limitations and will work to maximize the efficiency of the available ships in the battlefield. Due to the skill point ceiling imposed by the feature, the horde of Alphas may be relegated to support or anti-support roles in large fleet battles. Only time will tell if this is enjoyable enough of a role for each individual Alpha or if this will actually motivate some to take the plunge and upgrade to a paid account, and begin training into main line ship doctrines.

Regardless of whether the Alpha clones are accompanied by a suitable New Player Experience, Alpha clones will be more actively used by current paying subscribers as personal support characters. New players simply don’t appreciate the power of alts in the beginning of their journey in the universe of Eve Online. However, experienced players know and may have been applying this knowledge for years. They will be the group of players that will most fervently abuse the luxury of Alpha clones.

Experienced players will allow their main accounts to be relegated into Alpha status when the full use of their skill sets is not immediately required. If there is no war, then there is no need to keep subscribed. This is viable due to alliances being able to support comprehensive ship replacement programs to support players in general. Even in Alpha clone state, players will still have the ability to socialize with their friends; to some that is the true value of this change: the ability to stay connected with fellow players.

Potentially, this is the most economically damaging aspect of the new feature in terms of the actual business of CCP. The greatest catalyst to bring back old and new players alike is war. Without the hype of sustained combat over null sec empires, there won’t be great surges of players coming into Eve Online. Unfortunately, wars in Eve take time to materialize. Alliances simply aren't in the business of haphazardly committing large amounts of their assets for fun. Internet spaceships is serious business after all.

During these lulls, it's not impossible to imagine a fair amount of players simply reverting back to their Alpha state while still being able to connect with their friends via corporation and alliance channels. To some, the social aspect is the most appealing and for that ability alone, they will continue to hang around in the body of an Alpha clone.

With the advent of the Alpha clones, CCP will effectively solve the quality of life issues that plague those coming back and trying to quickly pay for their subscription via PLEX. Although this may not seem like a big deal, any kind of improvement over the laborious task of coming back to the game is always welcome.

Ultimately, I believe that the Alpha clone feature will be marginally successful given the current state of the game at the time of this writing. However, if key changes are made to the New Player Experience and the interface to teach new players then that will assist in further realizing the potential of this hybrid business model.

It is difficult to see through the hype and general positive feelings of the player base. It is times like these when people may feel secure in the future even without any objective game play changes that can actually materialize that dream. Only with constant investigation and iteration on the feature can CCP actually push their product to a new and genuinely excited player base. It is time for CCP to take control of the narrative and dictate the progression of their new players, at least just enough before they reach the true gauntlet of this universe—undocked, curious, and hungry to take on any comers.