Summary & Thoughts:
When I logged into Eve Online for the first time, I expected the heart pounding action packed starship engagements that I saw in the game trailers. What I found was a tiny oval shaped pod, surrounded by what looked like a space station hangar. My screen was filled with various buttons of an almost overwhelming UI.
I had heard from friends that Eve had a big learning curve. They were right. The friendly tutorial voice starts to explain Eve. She tells you that you are in a pod, and that she will walk you through a series of missions. Then she tells you to undock from the space station. So like any good MMO player, I reached for the “W” key. Nothing happened, and so I began to trying various keys and mouse clicks in an attempt to move my pod.
I am not proud to admit, that 30 minutes and a youtube video later, I found the giant “undock” button at the top right of the screen. Never-the-less, I grinned victoriously as my pod exited the space station. I’ll spare you the rest of my Eve tutorial story, but it’s safe to say that it is not a tutorial I would ever recommend skipping.
Eve Online is one of my top 10 favorite games of all time. It is a giant open world in space, where you can do just about anything. Once you learn how to use the “overview”, and figure out how to navigate space, you are released into the wild. There are a bunch of great noob friendly starter missions to cut your teeth on, and I found the Eve community to be very friendly. There are various internet guides to get you started, and there are also plenty of players that are willing to help new people.
I’d say that the goal of Eve is really whatever you want it to be. Eve offers npc missions, pve encounters, pvp objectives, an advanced player market to buy/sell, and a very extensive crafting system. It is one of those games where instead of asking what you can do, you should be asking, what you can’t do.
If you like guild, clans, and player interaction, then you can join a corporation. Corporations serve as Eve’s player organizations. If you enjoy combat, there are tons of ships, objectives, missions, and things to do. There are many different weapons and ship components to choose from. Combat is fun, and requires thought. It is not a point and shoot system.
As far as making in game money (or isk), there are many ways to go about it. When first starting out, I would recommend completing all of the optional “starter missions”. This will get you a good amount of isk, and several starships for each kind of job. By the time you complete the starter missions, you will have plenty of assets to experiment, with as you find what you enjoy doing in Eve.
Next you can become a miner and blast rocks for a living. Mining seems to be where most people start out. Mining consists of flying out to an asteroid field, and destroying rocks to collect ore. Then you can sell the ore back at a station to make a profit. This is a very tedious job, as you can basically tell your ship to start mining, and then walk away from your computer while it does so. You will have to tell your ship to switch rocks from time to time, but the majority of beginner mining can be done AFK. I tend to do a lot of mining.
Trading to make isk is my favorite way to play. Flying around eve sight seeing as I buy low & sell high allows me to see a lot of what Eve has to offer. Each star system has several stations that you can buy and sell from, and people have to travel to pick up purchases. So if you save people some time, you can charge them more.
You can also run contracts. People create contracts that ask players to deliver items from one star system to another. Doing this generally requires large industrial hauling ships. Contracts can be accessed by the top left drop down menu, under business.
Now, in most MMO’s you gain experience points and level up by fighting, exploring, and crafting. But in Eve, you gain skill points passively by adding them to your skill que. Skills can take anywhere from minutes to months to learn, and the timer continues to tick even while you are offline. This means that the longer you play Eve, the more skills you can have. I don’t particularly enjoy this system of the game, but it is what it is.
What I do enjoy is mining, trading, and meeting new people. I also like to explore, and dabble in combat. The ability to do all of these and more, with almost no restriction, is what makes Eve such a great game. The UI in Eve is complex, and very detailed. It offers plenty of maps & stats, and is what has earned Eve the nickname “spreadsheets in space”. It takes some getting use to, but then again so do most games.
There is only 1 Eve server, and everyone plays on it. It is also a PvP server, which means that players may attack each other at any time. This can be frightening to new players, but fear not! Eve star systems are divided into different security zones: High Sec, Low Sec, & Null Sec.
In High Sec, there are Npc “Police” that discourage players from attacking each other. Attacking a player in High Sec will get you swarmed by police vessels and destroyed. This however does not stop the occasional suicide ganker. Low Sec offers slightly better mining and missions, and only grants safety near stargates. (Stargates are how you travel between star systems.) Null Sec is the “wild west” of Eve. It consists of hundreds of player controlled systems, and player made space stations. There are no rules, and there is constant territorial warfare. The largest corporations in Eve make their home in Null Sec, and they do their best to provide security to those aligned with them. Null Sec offers the best mining, and the most dangerous npc encounters.
I’m not going to cover everything in Eve, mainly because my review would never end. But wormholes make an appearance in Eve, and can be lived in or just used to jump around the galaxy. There are also 4 main starting factions to the game.
In closing, Eve has been around for quite a while, and has a very dedicated following. It is a sandbox MMO, meaning that you basically create your own fun. I would recommend this game to any adults looking for a fun space adventure.
If you want to try an extended free trial, feel free to use my referral code. After doing so, hit me up in game, and I will help you get started. My in game name is “Tor-ren Tek”.
Follow this link to get started: https://secure.eveonline.com/trial/?invc=294eddeb-e0ab-4aae-984a-c987a3c769df&action=buddy
Release Date: May 6, 2003
Rated: T
Price: Free with $15 subscription
HFR Rating:
