I think the thread may have to be renamed again, for I've been keeping track of CCP's progress on EVE and I am impressed.
The power projection changes are now live, but I have yet to see any massive changes on the surface of EVE. At least the Sovereignty map looks very similar. People are also very happy about their unlimited skill queues.
But now CCP is announcing what's coming up in their Christmas patch, and it's a nice set of features.
# A ship shipping ship. You know, one of these:
(Read: New Freighter with a huge Ship Maintenance Bay.)
# T3 Destroyers. While these will not be modular like the T3 Cruisers, they will have modes, so plenty of sexy ship transformations incoming. These Destroyers will be released one at a time over the next four months, with the Amarr getting the first one.
# Currently you must keep your clone "up to date" as it can only hold a particular amount of skill points safely, if you're podded with an inferior clone you LOSE skill points. CCP has decided to do away with this entirely, you no longer have to worry about clone grades, or fork over stupid amounts of ISK for the high-end ones.
# 6 million trial accounts that never became paying accounts will be deleted from the EVE database. For players this means that some cool character names might free up.
# 101 new wormhole systems. Some of these will only be intended for frigates, most of them will be part of some new story-based part of the game, but it's the 101st system that has people excited: A named wormhole system with stations. This system will serve as an entryway into wormhole systems by adding some features currently not found there. It will also be a humongous system (warps up to 342 AU are doable) and will NOT allow capital ships.
# A new tier of weapon: Polarized weapons. They're about 15-20% better than current T2 guns, but the tradeoff is that they set all your ship resistances to 0%. Great for suicide ganking if the price wasn't so high.
# Lots of visual enhancements to the ships and to the UI. The Blackbird hull will also get a makeover so it no longer looks like an optical illusion.
# The possibility for manual control of the EVE ships. This is currently in beta, but could become part of the game soon enough. Then again, it could not.
Overall these changes suggest that they're both "dumbing down the game" by removing needlessly complicated game elements, but also making it easier to reach various parts of the game. That they're also nerfing the hell out of capital ships at almost every turn is also a huge plus. So it seems someone at CCP has a plan.
On a personal note, I had a chance this week to playtest EVE: Valkyrie using the Oculus Rift...and a gamepad, urgh. Even though it's just an alpha build it looks very nice and the gameplay is just basic multiplayer dogfighting in space, complete with rolls and guns and missiles. Speaking of the missiles, getting a lock with them means you having to physically look at the target ship for roughly 2 seconds, which I found to be very cool.