Eve Online

[tomokato]

Unique mmo with a couple interesting things going for it:

1. Everyone plays on the same server/universe. Means that you're never separated if you want to play with your friends, and there are always 50k people potentially out to get you. Can get laggy in exceptional circumstances.

2. Can do whatever you want. This gets thrown around a lot, but it's more true here than anywhere else. Like PvP? Can spend all day shooting spaceships. Like shooting rocks? Can mine all day. Like daytrading? You can do that too. All of these will give you money.

3. Can pay for your sub in in game money. While it's difficult to do for your first month, after that it's fairly doable to get enough money to buy another month of game time in a month, making it pretty much a free game.

If you want to give it a shot, send me a PM with your email and I'll toss you a trial invite. These are 21 days instead of the normal 14 day ones, which is always nice.

 

[Dark_Angel]

Note to mods - This isn't spam.

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On topic - I really disliked Eve. I found it incredibly difficult to get into (and never did, tbh) and found the entire character progression massively cumbersome. I have never played a game so mind-boggling and difficult to work out.

Put simply, the game is for hardcore gamers with a lot of time to spare. Which is a shame, but the visuals are extremely impressive and the idea of a space MMO is really quite cool. But they've ruined it by making it all too complicated for the average gamer, who doesn't have time to dedicate to numbers and statistics.

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It is also very, very expensive for an MMO. It costs £15 per month to play, which I think is quite "cheeky", given they're far from the most popular MMO, World of Warcraft, which is quite a bit cheaper.

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Avoid it, imo.

 

[Ogluk]

Play Black Prophecy instead, it's free

Might not have the same, economy side as Eve, but is that really a bad thing?
All you do is fly around in your sexeh spaceship, blow up bad guys, level up, collect new bits for your ship. Can play solo, or in groups, its perfect for the hardcore and casual sci-fi mmo gamer

 

[Bobbin]

I play Eve Online. I love it.

 

[Max]

I tried Eve, and I enjoyed it very very much! Unfortunately, some of the "developments" and character building just take too long (obsene lengths of time such as 1-2 weeks, 1-2 months... etc.) so you have to be pretty commited to it. I don't have that long an attention span

 

[Kuda]

I've been playing eve online for over 7 years and whilst it can be difficult to get into and can be very time consuming to progress it was never meant to be a quick and easy to access MMO like WoW or LoTR, etc

As the internet tends to joke the learning curve in Eve Online is basically vertical. If you only have an hour or 2 a day to play an MMO this is certainly not the one for you, if however you want to get something more immersive and have the time to dedicate to playing it and learning all of the nuances then it can be a very rewarding experience.

Once you start playing you need to realise you aren't going to start flying around in super carriers straight away, hell you'll be lucky to be flying one after about 2 years. Set yourself a strict learning schedule. The main problelm ppl have in eve if they do not focus on their training. e.g. they train a bit of gunnery, a bit of engineering, etc. If you set yourself a goal and focus on training what you need to in order to achieve that goal it can be very rewarding.

Use something like Eve Character Manager to help you:
http://forum.battleclinic.com/index.php?topic=2422.0;Eve-Character-Manager

And for the lols heres the diagram of the Eve Online Learning curve

 

[Dark_Angel]

What is mind-boggling, though, Kuda, is that there is such a small market audience for a game like Eve. The people you describe are few and few between, those with hours-per day to devote to a game.

Gamers want instant gratification. They don't want to see something cool in a game and think to themselves "Oh, I'm only two years off that".

The truth of the matter is, the vertical learning curve in Eve is extremely off putting. I found playing it a real effort, in as much as that being small in a very big world is not very exciting.

The problem with Eve, for me, is the problem I have with every MMO. They have to design everything so huge, in scale, because there are people who can dedicate half their existence to it and would clear all the material very quickly.

This leaves semi-serious, but not particularly casual gamers (I don't consider myself to be a casual gamer) in a position where they feel there's not enough excitement and pace, and that to achieve anything its going to take an unhealthy amount of time.

Eve has an awful business model, in that respect - because of the MMOs I've played (WoW, LOTRO, Final Fantasy, even Bush, I guess) Eve is the most overwhelmingly complex and - the key word here, belittling. It is a gaming experience that makes me feel extremely, extremely small - with no prospect of ever doing anything of significance unless I commit more time to it than I can afford.

 

[Kuda]

It is a valid point DA, the game can seem sometimes too expansive. I haven't really played it recently myself but I guess I was fortunate to start playing it very early on so even now it doesn't have that out of reach issue for me.

The main thing with eve is that there is actually no ceiling or lvl cap like in other mmo's such as Wow where you can hit 85 at present with the latest expansion and get no higher. This means once you hit 85 you can effectively obtain quite rapidly whatever you are aiming for. With Eve there will always be something so far out of your reach it becomes mind boggling.

The problem eve faces is you have a fairly rigid timescale for learning. you can only learn one skill at a time although you can queue several skills so once one finishes the next starts learning. You also end up where I have for example over 100m skill points and someone starting today has 10k, the only way they can ever catch up in skill points to myself is for the next 6/7 years I basically dont log on or do anything in eve ever again.

Eve can be very rewarding tho and quite quickly if you do focus but again people tend not to focus. e.g. you could easily become a pirate to ransom and kill other people who are playing longer than you by focusing on propulsion jamming, engineering, electronics, small gunnery, frigates, assault frigates. Once done these are all prerequisites to moving on to heavy assault cruisers where you can become an even bigger menace to the galaxy