djork's Full Review: EVE Online: The Second Genesis for Windows
EVE is a massively multiplayer online role playing game with sci-fi settings. It is a good getaway from typical fantasy MMO games since it doesn't feature dragons, spells, orcs and elves, but instead it has spaceships, stations, stars, and planets. EVE tends to appeal to players who appreciate some measure of realism in games and do not like cutsie 'cartoonish' type MMOs.
Game info: This game was incepted in 1997 and published in May 2003. It is owned by CCP, Crowd Control Productions, an Icelandic company with offices in Reykjavik, Atlanta, and Shanghai. In five years of existence, EVE's number of subscriptions kept slowly climbing up, currently being at over 230 thousand paying accounts and over 50 thousand trial accounts. EVE Online has no multiple shards or private servers. Everyone plays on one server - Tranquility - which goes from 20,000 concurrent users near downtime to over 40,000 users during peak playing times. This means that all players play the same game together in the same virtual world, but it also means that lag is sometimes an issue. There is also the test server, Singularity, which gets mirrored from Tranquility and is open for public, and Chinese server Serenity which peaks at about 5,000 concurrent users. EVE is pay-to-play which means it has a monthly subscription fee of 10.95-14.99 a month. There is an activation fee for the first month making it cost a bit more. PC, mac, and linux clients for EVE can be downloaded for free at EVE's main website. Players can get a two week free trial period to try this game out, even several of these trials.
Backstory: EVE space is populated by very ordinary humans who arrived from Earth through a wormhole. These colonists were then cut off from main civilization by collapse of this same wormhole. Thousands of years have passed that the colonists of different planets had no contact with each other or with Earth since secrets of space travel were lost. In this time they developed into five races each distinct in culture, language, beliefs, history, and each following its own doctrine. Eventually space travel was rediscovered. All of the different races came in contact, which was followed by lot of conflict and wars. As people grew tired of war, a universal peace agreement was drafted and adopted. It lasted for a 100 years until present day. Nevertheless races that had the most conflict with each other still retain bad standings in game.
Setting: EVE universe consists of about 5 thousand systems. Each system has one or more jump gates leading to other systems. In each system there are typically a few stars and planets surrounded by moons and asteroid belts. Celestial objects do not orbit one another like they do in real life so coordinates of everything remain static. Some systems have NPC stations to which you can dock to repair, resupply, refit, while others have no stations at all. According to the backstory the known universe is much greater, however, jump gates can only be built in binary systems where interactions between two stars create artificial wormholes. This greatly limits the number of systems to which humans can travel.
Characters: Players can currently play for four out of five existing races, each race featuring three bloodlines. This is similar to all other MMOs, however, the great thing about EVE is that your race and bloodline do not limit your character from what it can do in game. You can re-specialize at any time and do not have to start from scratch. Your character has the potential to do anything any other character can do, provided you train up corresponding skills(sort of like in real life society). You can also travel anywhere you want, even live in space of faction that is enemy to your own. Race and bloodline of your character do determine which set of skills it will train faster relative to other sets. You can pick your character's name, gender, and specialization. To pick appearance you use a morphing system, which is quite fun to play around with. It allows you to create a unique portrait for your character. The characters currently do not have full bodies and cannot walk around stations or get out of their pods. However this feature is planned for one of the upcoming expansions, as a lot of players have been looking forward to this.
In game each player is a person at the employment of one of EVE's corporate or military powers and a pod pilot - a space traveler. To travel in space the pilot is placed in a capsule surrounded by fluid with wires attached to his or her body allowing the blending of pilot's conscience and ship's controls. This pod sits inside a spaceship that your character gets the ability to control. You spend all your time inside a spaceship, either flying around in space or sitting docked at a station. You can control only one spaceship per character, but you can own many spaceships or play several accounts side by side. Many players can get together and form gangs or fleets of ships. Each ship has to be fitted with modules and both ship and modules require certain skills. The game features a huge variety of ships and modules, such that it takes several months to start recalling all their names and what each of them does. New players typically feel a certain information overload when they start trying to pick among all the options available. Developers work constantly on keeping these ships balanced with respect to each other, so the game is more of rock-paper-scissors type of deal where each ship is good for some jobs but not so good for others.
Leveling system in EVE is one of the best ones in my opinion. There are no distinct levels and no level cap. Instead EVE has over 350 different skills that any character irregardless of race and bloodline can purchase and train. Training these skills gives you new abilities. Each skill has 5 levels and it would take nearly 20 years to max out all skills. It will take you this long because training is based on passing of real time. For example an easy skill would go something like this: ten minutes to complete level 1, one hour to complete level 2, four hours to complete level 3, one day to complete level 4, five days to complete level 5. So you can max out this skill, get all 5 levels trained, in about 7 days of training. This is the best part of this system: skills train while your character is logged off! You can be at work, attending classes, on vacation, working on a project deadline, spending time with your family and your character will be skilling up and getting new abilities. Some players, including myself, like this system very much because it allows us to achieve something in game even if we do not have time to play several evenings through. But I also met players who hate it because they are used to leveling by performing some actions in game. Because skills train independently from what you do, these players do not get a sense of a achievement per time and effort put in. Skill-wise whether you play 70 hours a week or 7 hours a week you will remain on the same level as another player who created a character at the same time as you. The trick here is to understand that the grind of EVE is not done for new abilities but for ISK, the virtual currency.
This game features some great graphics and design. Many new players report that EVE space looks simply stunning (as a veteran you get used to this a bit). There is a variety of combat effects that you can observe during battles. Ships are modeled with a lot of detail and range from very symmetrical to highly disharmonious designs. Ship design goes hand in hand with the characteristics of each race. For example while Amarr ships have symmetry and are plated with gold-like material ("golden fleets") reflecting the focus of Amarr race on order, stability, and their general haughtiness and self-righteousness, Minmatar ships look like giant flying scrapmetal parts flimsily attached to each other with duct tape, reflecting the fragmented state of Minmatar race which is divided into many tribes with a good portion of their people living outside of Republic, some still in slavery of the Amarr.
Tranquility is a PVP, PVE, and role play server combined. This means that EVE has something to offer to all sorts of players. PVE in EVE consists of fighting pirate NPC ships in missions, asteroid belts, exploration and cosmos sites. These pirates have bounties that you get to collect when you kill them, so in essence you are playing role of a bounty hunter. In EVE this activity is simply called "ratting" rather than bounty hunting. All major NPC faction have agents that offer missions. You can pick whether you want to do mainly combat missions or mainly courier missions if you lack combat skills. The missions are taken from the same database so they eventually begin to repeat. Players looking for richly colored cool-looking high level bosses will be disappointed with EVE because EVE does not feature this. In my opinion the PVE side of EVE is rather repetitive and gets boring quite fast. Higher level missions, however, are good sources of income so there are those players who specialized in running them. As a reward for doing missions you earn loyalty points and can get rare ships and gear.
Many players learn the basics of combat in fighting NPCs and then progress to player vs player combat. The PVP that EVE has to offer ranging from 1 vs 1 engagements to fleet engagements involving hundreds of player is what many players consider to be the best part of the game. There are no arenas, but there are systems where players are free to hunt for and fight one another. These open-pvp zones offer good rewards - rich ores, high bounties on NPCs, exploration complexes that drop some of the best items in game. Different groups of players aim to gain control over these high reward areas and in turn this incites conflict over territory. Players form corporations, corporations can form alliances. These groups constantly fight and befriend one another such that EVE's political scene is quite volatile. Fights numbering dozens of players are common. Fleets numbering hundreds of players clash with each other every week in different regions of EVE universe. There are also those who prefer to roam and fight solo.
It is important to remember that no where in EVE a player is completely safe from being attacked by other players. Even in so called high security space one can be killed in a suicide attack if one's ship is loaded with expensive goodies. While some players do not like this high risk adrenaline rich environment EVE has to offer, others keep playing the game exactly for this reason. It is possible to keep yourself safe from being attacked by other players. However this requires some understanding of game mechanics and thinking your actions through. Majority of new players do not bother to read the player manual before starting to play EVE. Unfortunately later on some of them find out about game mechanics the hard way and become very frustrated. In words of CCP Wrangler: "EVE is a dark and harsh world, you're supposed to feel a bit worried and slightly angry when you log in, you're not supposed to feel like you're logging in to a happy, happy, fluffy, fluffy lala land filled with fun and adventures, that's what hello kitty online is for."
Another great aspect of the game is its highly developed economy as well as legality of some forms of scams. As previously mentioned there is a huge variety of ships, modules, ammunition, drones, building materials in game, all of which can be traded. Players can speculate with the market, develop IPOs, trade stocks, and start up various businesses and service enterprises. There are also players in game that use their social engineering skills to trick others out of their wealth and items, or commit corporate theft. While to some this might seem unfair and harsh, scams, pvp open zones, ability to declare wars on other corporations and alliances provide a sort of Darwinian force that allows the better informed, more intelligent, more attentive, and more decisive players to advance further in the game.
Perhaps one of the things I found lacking in EVE is that the game doesn't really force players to connect. Unless you take the incentive to find a group to play with, you can really play alone all the time. This is good in some respect. It allows players who like playing solo to achieve goals, level up, and get rewards same as everyone else. But to newer players the vast expanses of space can start feeling quite lonely. The game does provide tools to get involved in group play, however, but you have to take some incentive to use them. If you feel that you are ready to join a player corporation you can visit the official Recruitment channel where all kinds of corporations - mining, building, pirate, mercenary, role play, training - recruit players into their ranks. There is also recruitment forum where corporations post their ads. There are always more recruiters looking for players than recruits looking for corps so even 3-day old newbies can find a group to join.
Another important mention about the game that doesn't sit well with some players is that EVE is slow-paced compared to some other games out there. For certain activities there is no instant gratification. I personally like it this way because I think it adds to the game's realism. Capital ships and stations should not take a mere week to gather components and build. Establishing an interstellar alliance should not happen over one summer break. Space travel should not happen in a blink of an eye. Logistical side of warfare should be something that requires some thought and effort. Players who are naturally patient have no problems with this characteristic of the game. EVE does reward those who can wait and play towards accomplishing a self-set goal. This might be one of the reasons why EVE attracts players who are past their teens, with the mean age of an EVE player being reported at 27 years. In this game I rarely met anyone in 10-18 age bracket. I have met a lot of people who were in college, nearing 20 or in early 20s, or already in their 30s or 40s.
So what is the point of this game? Out of game the point is quite obvious - to have fun. If you aren't having fun playing a game, then you shouldn't be playing it. Some of the better defined in-game goals are conquest and power, of course for new players there is also exploration. EVE world was designed to be open-ended. Where you find yourself in this universe and what name you make for yourself is completely up to you and how you want to play this game.
So, after reading all of this do you think that EVE Online might be the game for you?
Well there is only one way to find out - it is 2 weeks long and it is free!
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