- CCP Games
The vast world of massively multiplayer online games offers something for everyone at this point. Wanna pretend you’re a superhero, defending the helpless citizens of a modern metropolis? There’s an MMO for you. Wanna pretend you’re a futuristic soldier on a far away planet? There’s an MMO for you. Wanna pretend you’re an elf with a hard-on for decapitating orcs? There’s a dozen MMOs for you.
But if you’re a hardcore sci-fi geek, the kind who followed Battlestar Galactica like it was Jesus and who can explain exactly why it’s so crucial that Han Solo shot Greedo in cold blood, there is really only one MMO you should be playing.
EVE Online is the hardcore sci-fi geek’s MMO. Hit the jump for proof.
A few weeks ago I opened my apartment door to a delivery from FedEx. It’s not uncommon that I get deliveries from gaming companies, but normally those are simple thick envelopes, just large enough for the DVD-style packaging that protects modern releases. This box however, was comparatively huge. A foot and a half by a foot and a half square, and four inches thick, I was baffled at what the box could contain, so no sooner had I closed the door than I began tearing into it. I removed one of the sides of the box and spilled the contents onto my bed, noticing briefly that the sender was EVE Online creator CCP Games.
Included in the box was EVE: The Burning Life (the latest novel set in the EVE Online universe), the latest issue of EON (the EVE Online magazine), the most recent EVE Online quarterly economic report, and the standard description page courtesy of EVE’s PR folk.
First, let me say that while I knew that there were novels based in the EVE universe, and that CCP employs a doctor of economics to monitor the game’s fiscal ups and downs, the existence of the thick, almost inscrutably dense economic report left me with raised eyebrows and a gaping smirk. “The game’s inhabitants care enough about the fictional price of items that don’t actually exist to warrant a novella explaining the trends and financial theory behind the whole thing?” I thought, initially shocked, but quickly realizing that it, along with the other contents of the box say something really impressive about the world of EVE and its devotees.
- CCP Games
I’ll get to what exactly that is in a moment, but first, let me talk about the magazine, EON. Let me just say up front, my background in online journalism has left me a pretty blatant detractor of print. I’m of the opinion that print journalism is a dying enterprise, and at this point pretty much the only people willing to argue with me are those who make their living solely from writing in print, are unable to segue into writing online, and are terrified that they’ll be unemployed any second now.
That said, the people responsible for EON have put together a really gorgeous magazine. The graphics are glossy, the layouts are modern without being annoyingly “ultra modern” or so gimmicky that it will look dated in a few weeks, and the paper is both crisp and suitably thick. Most crucially though, the writing is better than 90 percent of the text you’ll find in its online competitors. Given the credentials and talent of most of those competitors — and keep in mind that I’m directly insulting my colleagues here — that’s not a huge accomplishment, but it is exactly what such a magazine needs to strive for if it hopes to succeed.
Still, I think the real plaudits for the EON team should come from the work they put into its content. Once you strip away the pretty pictures (no small task given that the magazine has 300 percent of your daily recommended allowance of eye candy) the actual text content can best be described as “player-generated fiction.” With a couple of exceptions, most content comes directly from the people actually playing EVE and their exploits in-game.
That concept has a lot of potential for being mind-numbingly stupid. In fact, I couldn’t imagine it working for any other MMO — attempting to chronicle any player interaction in World of Warcraft for instance would leave you with pages of stupid Internet memes, homophobic slurs and swears — but the denizens of EVE are so devoted to the fiction of their shared online world that stories of their daily exploits could double as compelling tales in one of those yearly sci-fi anthology books.
Sharing a single world with 300,000 sci-fi geeks devoted to a singular fiction enough that their interactions with one another make for intriguing science fiction stories? That is exactly what we were all promised when the concept of the massively multiplayer online game was first being kicked around in the mid-90s. It’s what we all hoped games like Everquest were, instead of the graphically impressive chat rooms that the majority of them wound up as. It took a bit longer than we had hoped, but as long as you’re into the dense sci-fi fiction that surrounds it, EVE finally realizes the MMO ideal.
- CCP Games
Next up is that novel I mentioned, EVE: The Burning Life. This is far from the first novel based on an MMO, or even the first set in the EVE universe, but it also serves to offer EVE fans more reason to love the world in which they virtually live. I wouldn’t say that the book offers much over similar sci-fi novels for those who don’t play EVE, but for those who spend the monthly subscription fee to pilot a ship around the EVE universe, reading a book set in the same spaceports they visit on a daily basis adds an indescribable depth to both the reading and the gameplay experience. Fittingly, I can’t quite describe it to anyone who isn’t addicted to an MMO, but it’s close to that special kind of geeky joy one gets from recognizing esoteric references in Alan Moore’s comics or grasping the more complex gags in a Douglas Adams novel. If you’re the sort of person who EVE might appeal to, you’ve certainly felt it before, and you’re exactly the target demographic for both the game and the novel.
The problem I have with recommending all of this excess fiction is that I can’t imagine it appealing to anyone not already enraptured with the MMO. So why am I even writing this? Because, as I’ve said every other time I’ve mentioned EVE here, I think it deserves a larger audience than it already has, and I think Portland is home to a lot of hardcore sci-fi geeks who would really dig EVE’s world and its endlessly deep fiction.
If any of this even remotely appeals to you, I urge you to give the game’s free two week trial a shot. It runs on both PCs and Macs, doesn’t require a top of the line computer and won’t even ask you for a credit card.
Then, if after those two weeks, you decide to sign up for a monthly subscription, you should really look into the novel or EON or any of the other dozens of forms of added fiction that CCP and its fans have created.
Just don’t complain to me if you end up forgetting about reality. The modern world is a whole lot less entertaining than CCP’s world of space pirates and laser cannons.
Eve is cool in concept but it gets pretty boring. Skills can literally take years to level up and you’re playing against folks who’ve been in it since the start. There’s only so much entertainment to be gleaned from mining asteroids.
Now Dust514 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_514 is intriguing to me. It’s taking the Eve universe planetside. The conflicts that occur in Dust actually will have an impact in Eve and there’s likely to be some sort of coordination between the related MMOs. I’m very interested to see how that pans out.
Eve is a sandbox. It’s only boring if you make it boring. There are also no skills that take a literal year to train. I think what you mean is there are years worth of skills to learn, but if you pick a direction and focus then skill training doesn’t take very long at all.
It only takes about a month to really start doing any of the starter professions and 6 months to get really good at them. Planetary Interaction will be do-able by 1 day old characters, so saying skills take years to train is really exaggerating.
Yeah, I’m going to have to disagree with BabyBoo here. I was set to write up a bunch of reasons why I’m disagreeing, but kalmanaka wrote a pretty concise post that covered all my points, but didn’t include any of the swears or the unnecessarily long story about my Cat falling asleep on my leg.
Thus, kal is right, Boo is wrong, and my Cat is really pissed that I moved my leg and woke him up.
@kalmanaka: With the perponderance of “other shit to do,” why would anyone invest six months into a video game to even begin to get payback on time invested? Hell, I could take those same six months, go to a community college and get some more useless credits towards an ecominics degree.
@BabyBoo: Even though skills can take quite a while to train (Though not years) you don’t need a lot of skills to be an effective pilot, even if you’re just flying one of the entry ships with low-skill equipment you can be useful in a battle.
And in EVE bigger isn’t always better when it comes to ships.
Seems strange that this review is limited to just the EVE ephemera, and doesn’t actually mention the game…?
I’ve always been sure I’d love EVE. That’s why I’ve never tried it – I expect I’d just fall down the rabbit hole and never get back out. I’ve got to monitor my video game usage like a drug, to keep me out there rockin in real life.
I’ve played a bunch of MMOs and after you’ve burned through their content, there’s always Eve to fall back on. Always something new to do, new aspects of the game to explore and NO hand holding and being told what you can and can not do. kalmnanka is right, if you find it boring then it’s all on you … not everyone likes to be lead around by a nose ring and spoon fed content and/or experiences. That being said Eve is NOT for everyone, it’s not for people who have a skewed sense of “fairness” … if you don’t pay attention and keep your wits about you, you will be burned. Grow from that or pout and cry, the choice is still yours. Those that make the cut will find themselves in a game environment that will not disappoint.
Seriously though, I love how people say it’s boring, and then never gives Factional Warfare or Piracy a try. Once you get a dependable income of PLEX’s in lowec space, losing a frigate (Rifter, Punisher, Incursis, etc.) isn’t a big deal at all. You get your frigate PvP skills up, hop in a cruiser for roams with your corp mates…
Yes you can start out mining, but unless you’re using it as an alternate account for free ships, I wouldn’t recommend it.
Only the newbs say that it’s boring. Get past the tutorials and epic quest (helpmymission channel chat has people that will help you out), train your learning skills (there are two per stat), then I’d suggest heading to lowsec. Get T2 frigate skills (both T2 weapons and T2 modules, with your chosen racial frigate skill to 4). Only way to play the game (until you get T2 skills for a Battleship, at which point you may want to consider 0.0 security systems for the ISK’ies). Also, make it a point to at least lose your ship at least once in lowsec before you let your account run out.
Bam, instant roadmap to great times in EVE. Now can I stop hearing about how EVE is boring, mmmk?
Yeah, the EVE fans make EVE sound even fucking stupider than it probably is.
@ Reymont: Who said it was a review? This piece was specifically about the ephemera, not the game itself.
@ Graham: Wow, did EVE kick your dog or something? The game isn’t your cup of tea. We get it. If this is so incredibly boring to you, feel free to go back to work on that ecominics degree.
@Graham, I’m in my second month of EVE and I’m enjoying every second of it now, so I already got the paycheck of time invested, you should try it, but this game does not tell you what to do, you need to decide what to do in it, or you will stay stand still, it’s not a ride in a plastic theme-park, it’s a sandbox just as real life, if you get me.
Also @ Reymont: But yeah, the risk of life altering addiction is present in any MMO, though I’d argue that, if the content and core gameplay mechanisms of EVE interest you, it holds a higher risk than most for two reasons: 1) free, frequent, sizable content upgrades and 2) the scope and immensely deep background fiction of the game offers literally years worth of things to read, explore and learn about if you start the game now. And that’s not including anything added later in any of the free, frequent, sizable content upgrades I mentioned earlier.
I would still recommend trying the free trial though, if only to see if it appeals to you. It really is unlike anything else out there, especially if you haven’t done the MMO thing before.
@Graham, And the community of EVE mostly more mature than just using pointless offending words for comments, so maybe it’s not your cup of tea..
Not to mention the type of degrees the average EVE players hold. So sure you set your direction to a community college as a priority.
I’m glad you guys like the game. It wasn’t for me.
For me the best part of an MMO is exploration. This goes back to the run to Qeynos from Gfay in EQ1. I really like checking out what the games creators have done, seeing what’s over the next hill, etc. If it means some grinding or pvp to get there, depending on the amount necessary I’ll do it.
When I first heard about Eve years ago I thought it’d be great to jump in your ship, fly around and universe and check things out. For me Eve didn’t have enough variation to support that type of gameplay.
I’d really get behind an Eve where you can hop in your ship, fight through sectors to get to your destination, land (or depod) and be able to check out the world. This is not what Dust514 but it’s step in my desired direction. In my experience (didn’t get around to Star Wars galaxies) the Battlecruiser games came closest to this concept, but I’ll opt out on getting into why they didn’t quite work out.
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I’ve been playing Eve sine December, and I enjoyed it right from the start and still do. I have never, ever been bored – in fact, there is often too much to do, no single character can do it all so you have to pick who you want to be and then go that route. A new character starts with enough skills to fly frigates, which is all you need for level 1 missions. Within a week or two, you could be fighting other players effectively if you choose the right skills.
If you’re bored playing Eve, then it’s not for you. Get over yourself and go find something you will enjoy more.
The best part about training in EVE is that you don’t have to play to increase your skills. Training happens in real-time, even when you’re logged out. This means you don’t have to spend hours on hours “grinding” through levels like you do with World of Warcraft and the lot. There are also hundreds of professions you can undertake. If you’re into PvE, you can run missions, mine, manufacture, trade, transport, explore anomalies and wormholes. If you like PvP, you can take part in Faction Warfare, Sovereignty Warfare with alliances of player-run corporations, you can be a pirate, a ninja salvager, a spy/scout, trading (player-created economy means even buying and selling is PVP), or even just declare war on defenseless industrial/mission-running corporations and harass the hell out of them.
EVE is an amazing sandbox game. To me, it doesn’t matter that there’s not 10 million subscribers. 300,000 players, all playing on the same shard/server, means that nearly everything you do impacts SOMEONE in the game, be it the industrialist that builds replacement ships for combat pilots, miners in wormholes over saturating the market with rare minerals, causing the prices to drop, or pirates who gatecamp, destroying juicy hauler targets trying to move assets around.
Bottom line is that EVE is not for everyone. If you don’t have the patience to make it through the first month or so of the game, you probably won’t make it. It’s a cutthroat game where you’re not safe anywhere in space, and I love it for that.
@wahsh, Regarding the level of education of the players in our corp of 30 players we have at least 4 PhD’s, a handful of engineers of various types and one owned an oil company in the US (billionaire I think…)! The biggest problem is that everyone is so busy IRL to play any extended time in one sitting! Judging from @Graham’s writing skills, I am not surprised he does not like the game… It is not usually tolerant of immature players with no writing skills.
Oh and @Graham, I think that $45 million per year stable income (300 000 people who pay around $150 per year) is not ” sales numbers stuck in the dozens.” Perhaps you should take that economics course.
@thumper22: If you’re having to base the quality of the game on what people are doing when they’re not playing the game, your game is retarded.
@Graham – Wow, I haven’t seen this much vitriol from you in any other thread. You’re angrier about this than the elections or police shootings or…anything!
There’s 300,000 subscribers, so I don’t see how you can defend “sales figures in the dozens.” And folks here started out by saying – if it’s not for you, that’s understandable, don’t play it. So why come in swinging?
@Nex – No! I will not succumb. A free trial? Pushers ALWAYS say the first hit is free.
@Reymont: I’d been trying to be nicer in the comments section. But weeaboo spreadsheet nerds get my hackles up.
I have been playing Eve-online since 2004. I have 2 paid accounts. My main character has 65 million skill points. For me this is this game has greatly evolved over the years with regular free expansions. I know that I still have much to learn. I have tried many MMO. Eve is the one I always come back to because of the depth of play.
Graham, weeaboo?
Ah, you’re a goon. That explains the cretinism.
Ok, so on the one hand I’m really proud that the article generated some genuinely constructive commentary from fans of the game and people who have never played it but are curious about it.
On the other hand we have Graham losing an argument against a strikingly polite group of people (which is especially shocking given that this is the Internet and all) and bizarrely responding with an angry slur that he apparently doesn’t quite know the meaning of.
Polite group, you guys rock. Way to represent the EVE playerbase as the surprisingly polite, helpful, knowledgeable group that my experience indicates it has always been.
Also @ Reymont again: As a side note; really? Pushers say that? I mean, I’ve always heard that stereotype too, but I’ve never had ANYONE ever offer me free drugs!
By the way, if any of you happen to be dealers who want to get me hooked on smack, I would totally accept your free drugs that stereotypes tell me you always offer for free initially.
@Nex: Thanks for summarizing for the short attention-spanned. But I still stand by the fact that the EVE community are a bunch of weeaboo spreadsheet nerds.
But really, can you trust the entrenched user-base of a niche-MMO to provide an open and honest dialogue about the value of their game? You’re getting people who’ve spent thousands of dollars in order to drink the Kool-Aid; they are by defintion the most biased of observers. Almost every fan of the game talks about the stat system and learning curves and all that kind of crap. None of them ever seem to talk about gameplay or UI or the controls or what you’r actually doing while in the game. Is the game fun in and of itself, or is it Dwarf Fortress writ large? A game where the user is forced to create a narrative out of an incredibally dense and nonsensical jumble of outputs. If the userbase wants to explain how the game is actually fun to play and not just a simulation of the corporate world set in space, I’d be interested in hearing that argument.
Graham, I encourage you to keep posting like you’re as important as you think you are.
I might be the exception to the rule when it comes to eve. I neither role play, nor would I consider myself a big sci-fi fan. What few here mention is the combat. CCP has done an exceptional job making an experience that is equal parts balanced, fresh, and heart-poundingly exciting. Eve pulls a mature crowd because effective piloting takes mental discipline and situational awareness. The ability to win outnumbered and outclassed remains untouched by any other online game. Remember, if they don’t have one ship that can stop you, they can’t stop you.
No one in the game has maxed out all the skills. There are so many different levels of play, that maxing the skills for a specific ship/fit really doesn’t take that long.
The people who will be annoyed with a game like Eve are the ones who want to sit down with a game and grind it for a month to say “Look at my rainbow boots of the whale! They say I’m better than you!” You can’t grind status with other people and that’s what it takes to be powerful in Eve. It is a true MMO, not a single-player game with a bunch of other people.
Boring is button mashing to get some pixels (like most MMOs).
@Graham, If you want to know how the game play is and the UI is read about it, the stories that pilots tell about how they escort a freighter through a high risk system and get ambushed isn’t just some fan based fictional writing. It is how the game really feels and what happens, jumping in and attacking a player owned station while keeping scanners on and hoping they aren’t going to attack you back while enjoying the super charged light effects and graphics is better than numbingly staring into any screen safer lol.
But again this game isn’t for anyone, I myself have left and came back to the game several times over the years. But every time I come back I want to kick myself for missing all of the new features of the expansion packs.
@Johaoo: Damn! That’s some high praise indeed!
“is better than numbingly staring into any screen safer[sic]”
Where do I sign up?
@ Graham: Dude, seriously, stop using that word. You do not know what it means and every time you attempt to use it you look really, really dumb.
As regarding this comment, “But really, can you trust the entrenched user-base of a niche-MMO to provide an open and honest dialogue about the value of their game?”
Yes, you have a small point. But, I, and the readers here, can trust my own opinion. Or, if they don’t, they can choose to not read the article I wrote. Which, by the way, was based entirely on my own experiences with the game and its associated merchandise. Did you think that my positive opinion of the in-game world came from second-hand stories I’d heard about it from Internet people? Instead of, say, the free press account that I get for every MMO in existence by virtue of my profession? Why would I listen to anyone’s opinion of anything when I can simply experience it myself for free?
Walk away from this argument. You’re just making a mess of my comments section and soon enough you’re going to drop another comment that pisses off whoever deleted your earlier remark and you’ll be banned. Which, regardless of whatever retort you’re thinking of at this very moment, you will regret.
Now I’m done. I wash my hands of this whole thing. It’s ruined.
@Nex: Weeaboo has two meaninigs. It started as a Perry Bible Fellowship joke. It then got taken up as a /b/tard thing to make fun of the wannabe Japanese kids. Mainly out of a video advertising Sakura-Con in Seattle; that big dumb goth looking kid with the eye-shadow IIRC. At this point it’s devolved into a general all-purpose insult (e.g. asshole or hipster). So yeah, that’s weeaboo.
But if you think it means something else, enlighten us.
Also, nope. We can’t trust your opinion. You’re receving this crap for free. We as the consumer have to pay money for it. Our value-based judgment of the quality of the merchandise in inherently different from yours. Is the game worth $40 plus monthly fees? Unless that’s coming out of your own pocket, I don’t trust you to answer that question. You just out and out claiming that you’re free from bias because you didn’t pay for a giant bag of swag makes no sense whatsoever.
In addition to that, you at no point have said anything about the actual game. You said, “[this] piece was specifically about the ephemera, not the game itself.” Are you going to weigh in on the game itself? Or just talk about a whole bunch of fanfic?
@Graham: Weeaboo has only ever been meant as a synonym for “wapanese”. If you think it’s a general insult, well, it’s fair to say you’re pulling it out your ass.
Re: Eve being fun. People who saw “bawww it’s just mining” or “durr hurr spreadsheets in space” are either too dense or too unimaginative to see the real beauty of Eve: Eve is what you make of it. You can do just about anything, and many facets of gaming are present. There’s something for everyone. What appeals to me about Eve is how unforgiving it is with PVP. When you fight, something is actually on the line and stands to be lost. Battles in Eve are exciting and tense because of this; it’s not just dickwaving where everyone goes home just as rich as they did before like PVP in other MMOs. Even a minor victory in Eve is something to celebrate.
“Is the game worth $40 plus monthly fees?” Shows how much you know! Activating a full account is a one-time charge of… gasp… five dollars. Monthly fees approach $10 the longer spans you buy it in… plus a free expansion every six months. Yes, to me, it’s worth it.
@Zeptorem: Um… you’re wrong. Sorry. Try again. You can’t retcon reality. Weeaboo is derived from a Perry Bible Fellowship comic. A comic that came before /b/ turned it into a random insult. lrn2lurkmor
I’d like to direct the concerned audience’s attention to Graham’s comment. This is known as a “red herring”, a dialectic tool used when one party can no longer discuss the main topic. Let’s ignore the fact he’s supplied false information, and the fact he picks and chooses sentences instead of responding to an entire post. Let’s instead realize what we’re arguing is a matter of opinion. We can be sure of one thing: Eve doesn’t appeal to everyone. Why is this a problem? The last time I checked, this was America. This brings up another reason to play Eve. Graham isn’t there.
Eve is awesome. I hope I get flamed by Golden Grahams.
Eve is not for everyone. When you lose a ship worth millions of isk, it’s gone. If someone steals your ore whilst you mine, it’s gone too. In that regard the game is cutthroat but you will meet some of the most helpful and friendly people ever there too. It’s not WOW but it is always expanding. It takes thought and preparation to play. A well executed ambush, a lone scout hunting Worm Holes or the the camaraderie of a mining operation. It’s up to you, what you do. And you’re never locked in, you can always change direction.
I also agree with the comment made that the article was not really about the game. One thing you must realize is that this game is a management/strategy game… a thinking man’s game. The player/players who plan(s) the best wins. That is why a player with a 2 week old character can take on a player who has a 2 year old character and win. And like the others have said, you risk your ship, your character’s upgrades and all the cargo in your ship every time you leave the station. Games like WOW all let you re-spawn with all your inventory (usually minus a little cash). There is not as much excitement for me in these games. I also enjoy FPS like BF2142, but it is the same there. I upgrade my character and he keeps the upgrades even after he is killed.
In Eve I need to put in perhaps 8 to 10 hours of game time just to pay for one ship. When I am attacked (in particular PVP), I get an adrenalin rush because I know if I make a mistake, I will lose those things I have with me. One time I lost 500 million ISK in equipment to a pirate camping a gate because of one mistake. No matter how much WOW or BF2142 I play, I have never experienced an adrenalin rush with these games… and that is why I still play Eve.
@Graham I am going to comment on this: “If you’re having to base the quality of the game on what people are doing when they’re not playing the game, your game is retarded”
Of course I do not base the quality of the game on what people do outside of the game. I also do not judge a game based on who plays, if I like it, I like it, friendly players are a bonus.
Your argument that the game is retarded because of my experience that intelligent people who have a love for sci fi tend to play it makes no sense to me what-so-ever. According to your logic, perhaps the game is more attractive if I say that one of the better fleet commanders I have flown with (organizing 50 people to work together) was only a teenager living with his parents!
I believe that the author of the article does just this… he bases his judgement of the game on what the players do outside of the game. If you believe that this makes the game retarded, then perhaps you are missing the whole point behind MMOs and why they are so popular. It is because people like to socialize. People like to meet and talk to people who share common interests. If you are not social and/or not interested in this type of Sci fi then you will most likely have a bad experience or find it boring. I think you only need one of those qualities to enjoy the game.
The asocial player might enjoy the game, but may never experience a 500 ship battle or ‘low sec space’ because they did not reach out to meet and join other players as a part of a group (called corporation or alliance of corporations in the game, but the same as a guild in WOW).
A social player might not find the game play so exciting but they enjoy making deals with people, affecting the politics of the game world, wheeling and dealing, backstabbing or stealing. Eve has both types of these players.
I think that to enjoy Eve to its fullest you need to be a mix of these two types. Most players belong to this category.
Grahm is the only person here making any sense. I can tell because you EVEtards continue to make one personal attack after another and refuse to answer a single one of his criticism of the game. EVE is a game for people who love to exploit and abuse their fellow players, and nothing more. It has the smallest userbase of any pay MMO on Earth because it appeals to a tiny subgroup of MMO players, and because of its incredibly low quality programming. Any other game with such an anemic user base would’ve been critically panned and shut down ages ago. Have a nice day.
@truthmonger (?) I smell a troll/graham.
If you don’t like a game, fine. My flat-mate isn’t a fan of EVE either. But he’s a homicidal maniac in most FPS’s. The real question is why waste so much of your time/energy flaming a game you hate. My guess, you got your butt kicked and did a “Rage Quit!”. They did you a favor then, you need a thick skin to play EVE. Saw a guy lose a Titan last weekend, biggest ship in the game. He got dragged down by 90 warships. That ship was worth more than the combined value of the attacking fleet. Know what he did, when it finally fell? Went and grabbed a Battle Cruiser, got back in the fight. That’s not “spreadsheets in space”. That’s a Hard Core, Sci-Fi Gamer.
“EVE is a game for people who love to exploit and abuse their fellow players, and nothing more.”
Before the comma, this would be true – EVE does allow for exploitation and abuse. However the “and nothing more” part is way off – it also allows for huge amounts of cooperation and comradery.
I’ve met so many people who will just help you out because they can, as well as all the scammers and griefers. It’s part of what makes EVE a social game – you’re not playing against the game itself, you’re playing against (and with) the entire player base.
playing EVE takes maturity and intelligence. It is a truly rewarding game. The sandbox analogy is apt, and a person’s willingness to learn and adapt will be rewarded by the possibility of creating new content and styles of gameplay that other players or even the developers could not have conceived.
Plus, internet spaseships are super-important business.
Also: you know, theres a freakin forum for portland/area/oregon players and an in-game channel, “Portland, OR” and “PDX”
COME ON people join up!! im trying to get my booze on w some other eve players…. =P