Burying the Lead or Capitalizing on Fervor?

While I'm going to need some time to write my thoughts of Eve's new free-to-play mode, which was just announced today, I do want to take a moment to comment about the timing.

Suffice it to say, the timing is not coincidental, with the announcement of "alpha states", an in-game description for a method of accessing Eve on a limited, free-to-play basis, occurring mere days after a particularly controversial and long-desired change to command links. With the community worked up about one topic, CCP released info about a second, more controversial one.

This was a deliberate tactic, but its meaning depends on whether CCP feels the conversation about command links is a healthy, excited one or not. My guess is that they expected the change to command links to be well-received by the community, so they timed this F2P announcement to capitalize on it. As it turned out, I don't think the response was as favorable as they hoped. Time will tell whether this tactic supports or sabotages their efforts.

Nonetheless, the timing is interesting, and gives some insight into CCP's thinking.

More in a little while, after I've had a chance to collect my thoughts and write them down. Looks like my regularly scheduled posts are going to be bumped once again...