EVE Online: Crucible

What? You were expecting me not to write a blog about this?
Yesterday (Tuesday), during an extended downtime, CCP deployed Crucible, the 2011 winter expansion for EVE Online.
Today, I installed the expansion, and started checking out my new shinies.

Sw33t, but I wasn't as excited as I'd expected.
I understand the new ship-skins, new ships, new nebulas, new CQs, new nebulae, new ship trails and new shadows, and Time Dilation, were a lot of work, and entirely worth an expansion, but...I just couldn't get excited about it on launch day. The trouble is, I've seen most of this stuff on Singularity and in dev blogs over the last few weeks, and to be honest, it kinda spoiled the actual release for me. Yes, they are nice and I like them, but the ones that I'll interact with (I don't do big PvP fights, and the new BCs aren't really my thing), aren't a completely new experience, or a surprise, any more. I'll be suitably excited for the rest of the V3 skins when they come, but again I'll likely be most excited when I fire up SiSi after they go live for testing, and not so much on TQ release day.

They need testing, so this is unavoidable.
Yes, I could just not go on SiSi. I'll probably try not to, but eventually I will and another surprise will be spoiled for me. There's nothing CCP can do about that, and I don't blame them for it. I'm just a little disappointed that other than a long download and install, today's EVE for me is largely the same as Monday's was. My Cormorant looked shinier, and fired a little faster I guess (that one didn't seem to show up though), but the rats went down like they had before, I killed about the same number as I usually do when someone's already gone through the belts, and I didn't play around with any interesting new features, because...there weren't any, not that could be actually played around with, and affected me. Yes, there were more T2 modules, but those will be ridiculously expensive for the first few months (at least), and are mostly of modules I have no use for.

Next expansion, can we get some more active features?
When next expansion rolls around, I'd like to see more stuff that can be played around with, and affects players outside of null-blobs. The epicsauce PI suggestion in F&I, some more new ships, custom shipskins that aren't NEx-exclusive (or if they are, then not so expensive that AUR-less players can't easily buy them for ISK), and [shameless self-plug]Stellar Cartography Agents and Faction Militia patrol-ships[/shameless self-plug].

TL;DR
Well done CCP for sw33t new stuffz,  but for me the surprise was spoiled, and there weren't really enough active new features.