Anyone play EVE Online?
If not, well, I guess the normal response would be to say that you simply must play it because it's amazing and one of the best games ever.
But really, EVE is deep, rich, and complex. It takes skill, patience and intelligence to play EVE. Anyone with a double-digit IQ can play WoW or LoTRO or whatever, those games basically tell you what to do. The story is set out, and you follow it when the quest tells you to free 5 slaves (make sure they're the ones being raped by the dickwolves), or kill that band of orcs, whatever goal it is.
EVE has missions, (I haven't played long, I believe they do go up to more advanced play), but they help you get started, aimed more at new players, from what I see. Regardless, missions are just there, not a part of the main game.
EVE is one big sandbox. Other MMO's have servers that are pretty much separate from each other. What you do in one has little to no impact on the other(s). EVE is a single 'shard' universe, everyone plays in the same game space.
This allows what some might call the Butterfly Effect. You know, you go back in time and kill a seemingly innocuous butterfly, but that action could end up having enormous repercussions.
You might do something small, saving a mining ship from some pirates, for example, which could instigate a series of events that lead to a full blown war which affects every single person in the game, directly or indirectly. Yeah, wars happen, and literally thousands of players can be involved. Cooool.
Another thing about EVE is the economy. It has a real, player driven economy. I personally find it fascinating, perhaps others don't.
Almost everything in EVE is player made. Ships, ammo, modules (things that fit to ships, guns, mining lasers etc), all that stuff. This creates a genuine supply-and-demand economy model. CCP, the company that makes EVE, actually employ a real economist who writes quarterly reports about the game's economy. Amazing.
Let me tell you about some cool things that have happened in EVE. These events are pretty famous, sort of like that bug in WoW where a whole city got infected by some disease spell from a raid boss getting passed onto everyone. But these aren't glitches, they're part of the game. Learning about these events is what attracted me to play EVE in the first place.
I'll start with a smaller one. In EVE, you have PLEX. You can buy these from other players, which allow you to extend your subscription to the game by 30 days. Basically you don't have to pay real money. CCP still makes money because PLEX have to be bought with real money themselves from the company. The player can then sell them for ingame money to other players.
A player had 74 PLEX in his/her possession, and for some reason decided to take a decrepit old ship into lawless space (very dangerous). Predictably, they were destroyed and lost it all. The PLEX totalled roughly $1700 in real life money.
This next is my favourite out of the 3 events I'll explain here. In EVE you can have corporations. They are similar to guilds or clans in other games. But they are that- corporations; they have a function within society. There are different types, decided by the player who made it, not by some option the game provides. Some are mining corps, others are smugglers, pirates, etc.
This company involved in the event I'm explaining was called GHSC (Guiding Hand Social Club). They specialised in corporate assassinations and infiltrations, and mercenary work. They received a contract to kill the CEO of a very large corp.
Now, just rushing the place with a load of ships wouldn't work, this place was heavily defended.
What they did was much, much more effective.
Over the course of a year, (yes, you read that correctly), they infiltrated the corp. They gained ranks and ended up in trusted positions within the corp. When everything was ready, they started the operation. In just a few hours the entire corp was liquidated, its assets were all sold and other things to maximise the profit. What's more, the corp CEO (leader) was persuaded to go into lawless space (dangerous) with their most expensive ship, carrying their most valuable objects, just to show off their wealth and power. Some of these objects were blueprint originals. These are original documents for designing ships and other stuff, unbelievably valuable. It was destroyed and the CEO was killed. In total, GHSC stole billions of ISK (the ingame currency). In real life, this was worth about $16,500. Not only that, but the stuff lost took years to acquire, too.
The entire occurance was completely within game rules. As far as I know, no-one was banned or anything for this.
The last one is less impressive than the previous, but I left it til last for the wow factor.
A player made himself a bank corp. He offered competitive interest rates and other incentives, and soon lots of players started depositing money. After four months, yes you guessed it, he took off with all the current deposits and flew away. In total he snagged something like 790 billion ISK. In real money? $170,000. Mind blowing, and again, completely within game rules. I believe there was a serious amount of controvery with this, the player may or may not have been banned, and then unbanned again after pressure from general players. Still, mighty interesting.
So that is why EVE Online is such a brilliant game. I've been playing less than two weeks and already I can see how deep and complex it is.
I consider this forum to contain more intelligent people, on average, than most forums and other parts of the internet. Perhaps some of you might take an interest it in.
If you are, you can do a 14 day trial from the site, or if you want, I can hook you up with a 21 day trial instead. If you do the 21 days, and then decide to purchase a full account, I get a free 30 day subscription extension, woo.
So there, EVE Online is more or less unique in the MMO world. You can do whatever you want to. You could be a pirate, a trader, a miner, a politician, and more. EVE is whatever you want it to be.
TL;DR? If you want a TL;DR, this game isn't for you.
If not, well, I guess the normal response would be to say that you simply must play it because it's amazing and one of the best games ever.
But really, EVE is deep, rich, and complex. It takes skill, patience and intelligence to play EVE. Anyone with a double-digit IQ can play WoW or LoTRO or whatever, those games basically tell you what to do. The story is set out, and you follow it when the quest tells you to free 5 slaves (make sure they're the ones being raped by the dickwolves), or kill that band of orcs, whatever goal it is.
EVE has missions, (I haven't played long, I believe they do go up to more advanced play), but they help you get started, aimed more at new players, from what I see. Regardless, missions are just there, not a part of the main game.
EVE is one big sandbox. Other MMO's have servers that are pretty much separate from each other. What you do in one has little to no impact on the other(s). EVE is a single 'shard' universe, everyone plays in the same game space.
This allows what some might call the Butterfly Effect. You know, you go back in time and kill a seemingly innocuous butterfly, but that action could end up having enormous repercussions.
You might do something small, saving a mining ship from some pirates, for example, which could instigate a series of events that lead to a full blown war which affects every single person in the game, directly or indirectly. Yeah, wars happen, and literally thousands of players can be involved. Cooool.
Another thing about EVE is the economy. It has a real, player driven economy. I personally find it fascinating, perhaps others don't.
Almost everything in EVE is player made. Ships, ammo, modules (things that fit to ships, guns, mining lasers etc), all that stuff. This creates a genuine supply-and-demand economy model. CCP, the company that makes EVE, actually employ a real economist who writes quarterly reports about the game's economy. Amazing.
Let me tell you about some cool things that have happened in EVE. These events are pretty famous, sort of like that bug in WoW where a whole city got infected by some disease spell from a raid boss getting passed onto everyone. But these aren't glitches, they're part of the game. Learning about these events is what attracted me to play EVE in the first place.
I'll start with a smaller one. In EVE, you have PLEX. You can buy these from other players, which allow you to extend your subscription to the game by 30 days. Basically you don't have to pay real money. CCP still makes money because PLEX have to be bought with real money themselves from the company. The player can then sell them for ingame money to other players.
A player had 74 PLEX in his/her possession, and for some reason decided to take a decrepit old ship into lawless space (very dangerous). Predictably, they were destroyed and lost it all. The PLEX totalled roughly $1700 in real life money.
This next is my favourite out of the 3 events I'll explain here. In EVE you can have corporations. They are similar to guilds or clans in other games. But they are that- corporations; they have a function within society. There are different types, decided by the player who made it, not by some option the game provides. Some are mining corps, others are smugglers, pirates, etc.
This company involved in the event I'm explaining was called GHSC (Guiding Hand Social Club). They specialised in corporate assassinations and infiltrations, and mercenary work. They received a contract to kill the CEO of a very large corp.
Now, just rushing the place with a load of ships wouldn't work, this place was heavily defended.
What they did was much, much more effective.
Over the course of a year, (yes, you read that correctly), they infiltrated the corp. They gained ranks and ended up in trusted positions within the corp. When everything was ready, they started the operation. In just a few hours the entire corp was liquidated, its assets were all sold and other things to maximise the profit. What's more, the corp CEO (leader) was persuaded to go into lawless space (dangerous) with their most expensive ship, carrying their most valuable objects, just to show off their wealth and power. Some of these objects were blueprint originals. These are original documents for designing ships and other stuff, unbelievably valuable. It was destroyed and the CEO was killed. In total, GHSC stole billions of ISK (the ingame currency). In real life, this was worth about $16,500. Not only that, but the stuff lost took years to acquire, too.
The entire occurance was completely within game rules. As far as I know, no-one was banned or anything for this.
The last one is less impressive than the previous, but I left it til last for the wow factor.
A player made himself a bank corp. He offered competitive interest rates and other incentives, and soon lots of players started depositing money. After four months, yes you guessed it, he took off with all the current deposits and flew away. In total he snagged something like 790 billion ISK. In real money? $170,000. Mind blowing, and again, completely within game rules. I believe there was a serious amount of controvery with this, the player may or may not have been banned, and then unbanned again after pressure from general players. Still, mighty interesting.
So that is why EVE Online is such a brilliant game. I've been playing less than two weeks and already I can see how deep and complex it is.
I consider this forum to contain more intelligent people, on average, than most forums and other parts of the internet. Perhaps some of you might take an interest it in.
If you are, you can do a 14 day trial from the site, or if you want, I can hook you up with a 21 day trial instead. If you do the 21 days, and then decide to purchase a full account, I get a free 30 day subscription extension, woo.
So there, EVE Online is more or less unique in the MMO world. You can do whatever you want to. You could be a pirate, a trader, a miner, a politician, and more. EVE is whatever you want it to be.
TL;DR? If you want a TL;DR, this game isn't for you.