In my last article I wrote about Perpetuum Online, and I promised I would write a little bit about EVE Online(Eve), the game that inspired Perpetuum Online.
I intend to keep that promise in this article.
Eve was and is a very unique game on the market. It was one of not many full sandboxes that survived and somewhat thrived during the World of Warcraft era. Not to mention that the game remained a subscription only MMORPG for a very long time. Even today Eve has a subscription as well as a free to play option, which has limits, but if you are looking to try the game there more than enough to do with the free to play option.
Eve never reached the subscription numbers of say WoW, or some of the other themepark MMOs that were on the market, but it had a strong subscriber base of very loyal players.
What set Eve apart from most other games on the market, was its “hardcore” nature. The learning curve in Eve is incredibly high. So high in fact that there is a University in the game ran by players to get new players into the game easier and lessen that learning curve.
You could do almost anything in the game. The only laws that were enforced were those by other players. There is thievery in game, betrayal, ponzi scheme, all kinds of nonsense that is against the law in the real world. And I really think that’s what attracted a lot of the players, the sheer freedom to do what you wanted, and make your way through the game however you see fit.
Eve is often times described as a game that’s more fun to read about than to play. Part of the reason that is true is because of the way Eve is designed. The game can feel very slow, if you are coming from a themepark MMO, there is no hand holding. However if you get rid of those preconceived notions and look at it as a life simulator in space, you start to realize that the game play is so different and nothing about the game is slow. You don’t really need a ship at all to make your mark on the game and its players.
The economy is run by players, pretty much everything you see in game can be made by other players. It is a very interesting way to play, you don’t need to be killing things if you don’t want to, you can play the market if you want to, you can build things, you can go exploring, you can be a politician and lead an alliance. What attracted me the most to the game was the promise of owning your own areas of space. I always thought that was the coolest thing. Housing is big for me in MMOs, which is funny, because my favorite MMO has no housing to speak of really.
In 2006 is when I jumped into Eve and created my first character or capsuleer as the game refers to them. I came up with a really stupid name by today standards, at the time it made perfect sense to me, and I can’t even change it… probably my biggest frustration with the game at this point.
The learning curve was incredible, nothing in the game felt like it should. The skills you trained were time based, there was no way to get better at something faster than the skill training would allow. From what I remember you could only train one skill at a time, so you had to constantly log in to set a new skill to train. The training queue was set up later in time I believe. There was no way to understand what skills should be trained first. At least not to me, so I trained whatever came to mind as most logical. So my play sessions consisted of reading tiny font descriptions of skills and modules you could fit to your ship. After the required reading was done I would go out to do some quests, known as missions in Eve. I came from World of Warcraft, so in my mind quests is what you do.
Then eventually I learned there was Null Security space, where anything goes! What a dream, the lawlessness, you could be anything you wanted to be. The dream of being a pirate, a mercenary, a gangker were my driving force for joining a Null Sec corporation and going out there only to learn that I am of the Lawful Good alignment…and I can’t do any of those things without feeling incredibly bad. I wouldn’t want someone to do that to me so why do it to other people?
So after a while I stopped playing Eve and started playing other MMORPGs. I have gone back to Eve over the years, been in many corporations, both in High Sec and in Null Sec. I have never participated in any big scale wars or anything like that. I have been on the receiving end of a war at one point in Null Sec, and the effort it took to move assets out of that area to our new staging area, was terrible. I never want to do that again. So what I started doing is leaving my main assets in High Sec and then buying whatever I needed in Null Sec.
For me, Eve is very hard to play long term, I just don’t see the appeal of scamming people, of sneaking around corporations and spying on them. Tricking people and playing politics is the main attraction in Eve it would seem. And I don’t want to do any of those things, so I am left with PVE side of the game… and let me tell that was almost non existent. It is getting better however, but as that part is getting better the player base is dwindling. So I am not sure if what’s good for me is good for the game. I am not the type of person that comes to game and demands for it to tailor to my play style, I am there to learn what this game is about and if it’s not for me I move on. I don’t think a lot of people are of the same mindset.
I have recently resubbed to Eve and have been running L4 Missions in a Rattlesnake, the other day joined a Null Sec startup corporation and hoping to go ratting and have some fun. Will this be a long term game for me… probably not, it is still a fun one to jump into and play for a little bit and then move on to something else.
Have you tried Eve? What’s your play style? What do you enjoy most about it?
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