I was wondering if you were entertaining the thought of adding EVE Online to your list of compatible games. I've used your web hosting for a WOW guild but I am currently playing EVE and in a corporation that is looking for a hosting service. I have really come to enjoy the ease of maintaining a site with DKPsystem.com, not to mention the excellent customer service and varied options.

The very basics that you already have would be nice for any corporation (ie "guild"): being able to keep an updated news page for corporate information, having an events calendar, access to a customizable forum section, recruitment, corporate "guild" roster/ranking system, etc. The biggest addition that would be helpful would be the ability to use the [item] tags for things within the game. An example of some of the items could be viewed here: http://ineve.net/skills/implants.php.

As for DKP systems I am unfamiliar with any types that are actually used in EVE as "loot" dispersement is dependent on how the corporation is run. Usually everyone gets a portion of the total value of the items dropped or possibly a base amount of ISK for participating and all loot goes to the corporation.

Is this something at all planned? The very few web "corp" hosting sites I have found for EVE are all based on being paid via ISK (in-game money) so this could be an untapped resource....not that I'm trying to persuade you in any way! *hint hint*

At the moment, EVE isn't supported directly*, but it's something I've always wanted to do.

I've been under the impression that EVE's model is so different from typical MMOs that the site might not be conducive to it.

What sort of features would you recommend to make EVE Online supported more fully? I'm admittedly a bit in the dark when it comes to EVE Online.


* Note, though, that pretty much any game is indirectly supported though the new custom game interface.

Now that I have a little more experience in working in a corporation (Guild) some of the basic things that I have seen are the following.

Corporation membership is typically based on a rank or role/function. Those ranks may vary depending on what type of corporation you are running. Some corps may have LOTS (25+) of ranks while others may only have a handful. Some corps focus solely on mining, missions (Quests), PVP, manufacturing or industry (etc) while others combine all of those things. Some of the goals of a corporation (and there can be many) are to create Capital Ships and POS (Player Owned Starbase) while others wish to be mega corps focused on production, manufacturing and owning the market in a particular area to control that region. Others wish to be all of everything. The bottom line is each corps' mission varies from small to grand. With that, corporations often form with each other to create alliances. That can happen in any game so I don't really see it being an issue. You have the site setup so that you can put in individual guild ("Corp") names for each person who has an account. If the site owner wants they can now just create a 'Corp Roster' and an 'Alliance Roster' since typically there is one corporation who is in control of the alliance - though not always true I suppose.

An interesting article I found on EVE Corporations:
http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2007/12/the-strange-com.html

I've been doing a lot of research on EVE corporation websites and most of the corporations just use the one available from eve-online.com. This is just a forum based system that you can post info about your corporation similar to the WOW recruitment forums.

Each corporation has very basic needs of roster management, recruiting, news & information dissemination, rank system, individual character information and event management (calendar). There are other things that could be really nice to incorporate into the site but there are lots of various resources that already publish them (Corporation and Agent list; Corporation Loyalty Point items (NPC Corp stores); etc). Here is what the Forum based eve-online.com sites look like for the corp I am currently in:

http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=802536 (Tenichigo Kaigun)


Things you currently have that could be incorporated towards EVE:
- Refocus the use of "Guild" to "Corporation" along with a customizable rank system and a spot to indicate what your Alliance name is if you are in one.
- Customizable character creation using "Race" (Caldari, Gallente, etc) as well as "Ancestry" and "Bloodline" (ie I'm a Gallente Reborn Intaki). Taking that further it could include drop down menus of what your career and specialization is (My career is Industry and my specialization is Engineering).
- Customizable forum section.
- Ventrilo/TS server info.
- Customizable menu to create various links to guides, sites, etc.
- Recruitment section/status for customizable positions. Each corp would be looking for different types of people. This could include looking for people to fill specific roles "PVP Coordinator" or functions like "Engineers with talents A, B & C" or "Tacklers" (a specific role as a pilot during PVP).
- A News section to keep all members of the corp/alliance up to date with what is going on.
- A customizable calendar to coordinate events for the corporation/alliance.


Things that would be nice to see:
- [item] tags for all the various ships, modules, skills, in-game items, etc.
- A way to upload your current skills, clone level, skillpoints, etc from the game (see a mod called EVEMon)
- A feed from battleclinic.com to get info on various ship loadouts (ways to outfit your ship with different modules), training paths, etc.


Extras:
- A 'killmail' list (killboard) for the corporation and its members. When someone kills another player they get what is called a killmail which has identifying info about you, your opponent and each others ships/equipment. Maybe this is something that can be used in a similar way as GRSS is currently? (I have no idea honestly)
Killboard info:
http://eve-kb.com/
http://eve.grismar.net/wikka.php?wakka=KillBoard
- A way to access a corporations in-game assets and wallet (accounts receivable) to be viewed by whichever rank(s) the CEO determines.
- A map of the entire EVE solar system that you can interact with by plugging in a starting and ending location and come up with a flight path.
- Info on current corporation manufacturing (current items being made, future items wanting to be made); mining needs (minerals/materials/ore needed); etc.


It has actually been hard to even find EVE corporation sites, let alone hosting services. It seems that most try to create their own forum section and/or killboard and it eventually dies due to not being able to maintain it for a long period of time (business opportunity!) which is apparently what happened to the current corp I am in. A couple that I did find are:
BIG: http://www.big-eve.com/index.php
XmX: http://forum.xmx-corp.ru/
EVE Corp Hosting: http://eve-cbs.com/?
Webring: http://eve-webring.com/sitelist.asp

I took a quick snapshot of my character screen with the skills section highlighted to give you a general idea of the info we have. Each menu option on the left has various info within it.

So I bit the bullet and bought a membership to give this a try. I did not realize what you meant by the new custom game interface as everything was already pre-made for me in WOW but you are right, you really can use the custom one for EVE (or just about any game). It would be nice to have the pre-made one eventually and after setting a few things up, I don't think it would be that much work.

At this point the biggest bonus would be to have the item tag ability for EVE items. The other things would be really nice but it might be beyond the scope of what dkpsystem is designed for as it caters very specifically to EVE and may or may not be a ton of work (or it may just be very easy - I have no clue).

How hard is it to get item links working?

The first thing I'll add for EVE is the item links.

I have to say that the last large upgrade you did to the website really makes it easy to fit any game in. I've been working on it for a couple of days and I can pretty much get everything I need already. I didn't realize how many things became so customizable. Awesome work Now if I just knew something about web/graphic designing!

The item links would really help out because each item contains so much information. It would really make discussions on modules, ships, hardwiring, etc so much easier.

One thing that seems to be a bug is the following. I created a set of ranks and then created a set of event categories. Each event category got a specific minimum rank access. I then realized I needed to add another rank at the top of the rank list. When I did this I happened to notice that the minimum rank access of event categories shifted one. It seems like the rank access section of the event category section is looking for the rank ID vs the rank name. I checked the forum access levels and they remained correct.

Just FYI the EVE-Online site has an item database:

http://www.eve-online.com/itemdatabase/EN/default.asp

I believe the file can be downloaded.

A second request for Eve Online

Stuff like Killboards and Member API's are an easy thing to add as well.

Most the documentation is available online and gets generated via XML.

Yeah, I'll be looking a bit into the EVE online stuff. I can't vive an ETA yet, but it's something that should be added.

I would definitely reactivate my account that just expired in January 2009 if I could see some eve online examples. Dkpsystem was exactly what I needed when I ran my WoW guild. I have graduated up to EveOnline; hence the only reason my dkpsystem site is no longer used.
There seems to be a heavy emphasis on Alliances and Alliance operations. Things that I would like to see:
-Eve Online Themed forums page.
-separate login for corporation memebers vs. Alliance members (this might be accomplished via permissions of some type)
-separate forums for Corp members vs. alliance members (again, probably handled via permissions)
-Item Links
-calculator to tell you what minerals an item will reprocess down to depending on your stats and your standing with a certain station
-agent locator
-donate ISK button to dkpsystems account to keep it running you can purchase an in game 30 day pilot's license (PLEX) to add 30 more days to your account.
-link/sync up your dkpsystem acct with the eveonline account using the API that you can import all the character stats. Eve allows up to 3 characters to be created. Let the login acct just sync with a main.