Eve Online

[DarkStar]

Anyone here playing Eve Online? I just started on Sunday night, with a trial account, and boy did I get hooked! I ended up signing up for a full 30 day account already as on the trial there are certain ships you don't have access to.

If you haven't played it the only way I can think to describe it is as an MMO version of Privateer, although that does not really do it justice as that doesn't even scratch the surface.

[theDreamer]

You, and others who have played, can you give a brief overview of the game?

[XBarbarian]

Its space based, right?

do you level up avatars? or fly stuff around?

[whorton5]

As a veteran of Earth and Beyond and SWG, I tend to veer away from Space-based MMOs. Eve Online has been out a long time, hasn't it?

[DarkStar]

Sorry it took me so long to post but It's been crazy around here lately.

A brief overview of Eve Online? That's harder then you would think, mainly because the game has such depth. I'll try but I am sure it wont do the game justice.

You pilot a starship which can be replaced with any of dozens of others ranging from small shuttles to giant titans which are basically mobile space stations. Skills are trained instead of earned via combat, and training takes place in real time so even when you are offline your character is training (simply put training various levels of different skills take varying amounts of time ranging from 15 minutes to a month or more. You can only train one thing at a time so you have to decide, do you want to increase your mining ability and use it to raise money or do you increase your weapons abilty and become a pirate preying on others.

There really is no limit on how you can play the game, some people play as outright pirates, attacking and destroying other players ships so they can salvage the remains, other pirates will hold expensive ships hostage by basically surrounding them and threatening to blow them up if the owner does not pay X amount of dollars.

Piracy not your bag? Well you can early a living running cargo runs, mining ore, performing courier runs, or even hunting down pirates as negative actions can often result in bounties being placed on people's heads. Hell if you annoy someone they can put a contract out on you and there are corporations (which is what they call clans in this game) whose sole purpose in the game is to make contract hits on other players.

The game takes place in a massive universe (see pic below) and you travel between the solor systems but you have to keep in mind that each has a security rating, some are heavily patrolled by NPC security forces, others are completely lawless and anything goes in them, but of course most systems are somewhere in between.

Sorry if this is disjointed but I am trying to hit a few of the main points but the game is so involved that even after a week of playing I can't really describe the basics of the game.


keep in mind that each of the white dots is a solar system that can be explored, mined, plundered, traded with or even taken control of!
http://www.eve-online.com/bitmaps/map/universe/9___0_2_08512.png

[whorton5]

Sounds a lot like Earth and Beyond (circa 2002). I enjoyed that game for a while, but then the subscriber base stated to shrink. I only played it for a little over a month. Thanks for the rundown.

[DarkStar]

Well when you log onto Eve online the main page shows how many players on currently online. When I logged in a couple hours ago there was over 18,000 people on.

Eve's website offers a 14 day free trial if you think you might be interested.

[whorton5]

I am always interested in a new MMO. :) I may have to check it out. I won't see the new rig for another two weeks at least. I'll check with you again just before the system arrives and see if it still has staying power for you.

[RottynDawg]

Sounds pretty interesting...might have to check it out sometime.

[DarkStar]

Well, it's been a little over a month since I started playing and it's even more fun now then when I started. I've actually opened a second account so I can have one character for PvP and one industrial character which will support both once I get him skilled up properly.

[Tamayo]

I've been playing EVE Online since 2005. It's the only MMORPG I still play...

It's the best PvP MMO out there...real risk...real loss... :wink: 8)

My character name is the same as my Maingear user name.

[whorton5]

I am still playing LOTRO, but I only stay with it because my brother in Virginia and I play and chat over headphones the whole time. I am looking around for a new MMO.

[DarkStar]

Well if you are looking for a new MMO I would suggest you give Eve Online a try, they have a 14 day free trial so giving it a shot wont cost you anything.

[DarkStar]

UPDATE:

It's been over a year since my original post and I now have 3 active accounts for Eve Online so I would have to say that I am addicted to it now as I ever was. :D

[golfman560]

I was thinking about trying Eve Online a year or so ago but I thought it would be too slow because you have to wait days sometimes to get skills

[DarkStar]

Yes some skills take days to train, but remember that they train even when offline so there is not the usual MMO grind.

Also when you start most of the lower levels of the early skills only take hours not days, but the higher the skills the longer it takes (for example the racial Battleship lvl 5 skill take roughly a month.)

Most of the long skills such as battleship lvl5 open up other trees, for example you need lvl 5 in a races battleships in order to train to fly that races capital ships (carriers, motherships, dreadnaughts, capital industrial ships and/or titans.)

The thing about Eve is that while you can be a lone wolf, it is truely more of a team game especially for players just starting out. For new players I would suggest you complete the entire tutorial and then consider joining one of the corps in Eve University, if you don't know of another player corp you want to join.

Eve has a sharp learning curve, some call it a learning cliff, but truely it is easy to get the hang of it if you join with experienced players and keep your eyes and ears open.