Customer Reviews

EVE Online: The Second Genesis

5 star:		(59)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(11)
1 star:		(20)

 

 

I've recently stumbled upon this little gem called EVE Online after ditching a previous Sci-Fi MMO I used to play. I was kind of skeptical getting into a MMO that was already two years old. I was worried about the grind that would be necessary and the fact that I was one to two years behind most of everybody else. To be short, I am glad I got into it.

EVE Online is by far the best Science Fiction Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO) game I have seen, and quite possibly the best MMO in general. The graphics are incredible and very pleasing to the eye, suprisingly since the game is built on technology two years old. The user interface is crisp, clean, and very easy to manage. The sound and music are also incredible. The music soundtrack is amazing.

But the one thing that makes EVE so unique and incredible is the gameplay, more specifically skill advancement. Most other MMO games are a simple grind. You waste your time doing the same thing over and over just to get enough experience or XP to boost your skills. EVE is not a grind by any means. Experience is gained automatically and put towards a skill you choose. In fact, experience is even gained while you are offline. That's right...you can advance your character in your sleep. For example, before you go to bed, you could train in say Small Projectile Turrets Level 2. When you choose to train you are told how long it is going to take (for sake of example we're going to say 5 hours). You choose to train, log off, and go to bed. Five hours later when you wake up (short nap), viola! You're trained! No more grinding!

Of all the MMO games I have played (which includes just about every single one except EverQuest), I must say that EVE is by far the most dynamic, and easily the largest one bar none. When they say the game is large...they mean it. The game is MASSIVE (and even that is a small word for it). It would simply take years to explore every planet and every possibility in this game.

If you are worried at all about getting into a MMO that is a few years old, just like I thought. Do not be. Do not look away from EVE Online. The game is great, the people who play it are great, and the experiences you get playing this game are great. This is one game you won't want to miss.

(Skip to the bottom for a "much later" edit.)

I'm about 10 days into playing this game, having finally decided to try the online 14-day free trial. I've already ditched the trial and purchased a full membership, though: This game has a lot going for it, but I will say it's not for everyone.

First off, though, don't think that you'll start the game and be useless. EVE has some interesting approaches that mean even new players in small ships can fill important roles amongst long term players in huge, expensive ships. Pirates abound and a lot of them prefer to do their piracy in small, cheap ships, the same ones that will quickly be available to you as a new player. By comparison, PvP in a game like WOW will have to be delayed by a period of months while you level your character up! Not so in EVE.

If piracy isn't your style, there's plenty of other things to do, and its impossible to say which one of these things could be called the game's "focus". They are all legitimate ways to play and advance your character.

* Guild vs guild warfare. Guilds, called Corporations in this game, can form up and carve out sections of the universe for themselves, building space stations, claiming territory and battle neighboring guilds for control of resources.

* Mining and trading. Remember an old game called Tradewars? You can do that here, except now it's in 3-D with exceptional graphics. Throw in some asteroid mining and occasionally having to fight off pirates and you can make a whole career out of just this.

* Crafting. As you might expect in a space game, you get to craft spaceships and spaceship parts, amongst other things. Perhaps you'll buy your supplies from the miners and traders. Perhaps you'll get them yourself. I suppose you could even become a pirate/crafter, where you go out, blow people up, salvage their ships and turn them into supplies to go learn crafting with.

* Pirate hunting and mission running. Not all pirates are players. There are also NPC pirate factions and a mission (quest) system that will send you after them for great rewards. Player pirates and NPC pirates have bounties on them that can be collected, plus the valuable booty they no doubt had on board their ship.

* Other stuff? As I said, I'm 10 days into this game and how you choose to play it is really wide open. In all likelyhood, you'll do some combination of the above. You may choose to be a pirate in a corporation. Or you might join a mining corporation. Or you might pirate today, hunt pirates tomorrow, mine asteroids on Thursday and build spaceship parts on Sunday afternoons.


That said, this game isn't for everyone.

It's not a high action "shoot em up". It's a space game, and space is BIG. Expect to spend some time travelling, navigating and planning your next move rather than simply "joining a battleground" and mulching some hyperactive players as in some other (shallower) games.

The game is pretty friendly towards casual players, though. Skill gains occur 24 hours a day whether you're online or not, so someone who plays more than you won't be advancing in skills any faster (though he'll doubtlessly be making more money and friends than you!)

The graphics were really surprising to me. I knew the game was old but the graphics are brand new. Apparently they did a major update recently and while I don't know what it looked like before, it looks GREAT now. I was impressed from the first time I entered warp speed, saw a dot in the distance grow into a massive planet, then zip past me and shrink to a dot again in the background.

The game community is still doing well, I'd say. I've seen anywhere from 17,000 (early morning) to 32,000 (peak) players online. Considering some of my favorite online RTS games are lucky to have 1000 players online at a time, I'd say that's pretty good, as games go. Development is still involved and active and the game gives every appearence of continuing to thrive.

Google for it and look for the official site, which will almost certainly still have some kind of free trial available. Give it a shot. Do the turtorial. If you read this far and haven't been turned off, then you'll probably be doing yourself a favor to give it a try.

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"Much Later" (edit to the original review).

After such a glowing review you might ask, "Why isn't this game way more popular?" The answer, I think, is simply this: combat is boring. I was highly impressed by the game at first but canceled my subscription after about 3 months primarily for this reason. I enjoy basically everything about the game except for the fact that the combat is extremely simple. On a small scale there are almost no tactics worth discussing and on a large scale the only strategy is "focus fire" -- everyone shoot at the same target. That's really it.

Your ship has shields and armor but there's nothing tactical about it like "facings", e.g., it doesn't matter if you're being hit from in front, behind, above or below. Basically you can think of shields + armor as one big bar called "HIT POINTS" and you and the other ships trade shots until one of you blows up and the biggest decision you need to make is when to start running away (and sometimes this is not an option).

There is a very small tactical portion to combat that consists of energy management -- balancing energy for repairs with energy for combat or other special devices -- but there's really not a lot to it. Battles are largely pre-determined based on ship loadout as there simply isn't much player involvement in the actual act of shooting each other. When it comes to combat, 99% of player skill is in loading out your ship and then steering into or out of danger. Once the guns start firing, player skill plays only a very small role.

I've been playing EVE for about 8 months now, and although the first month or so was a bit boring as I did the newbie grind mining and ratting with my starter gear, I was eventually invited into a corp, and with a small loan from the corp, I discovered my niche as an industrialist.

Today, I have 3 accounts so I can fly three characters simultaneously (it takes a bit of work and practice, but due to the nature of EVE it's very possible), and make 4-10m ISK - the ingame currency - an hour mining and running trade routes. My second account runs "protection" for my mining operations, and the third account flies a freighter - the largest class hauling ship in the game - under an NPC corp's flag, so when war is declared on my real corp, I can still move massive amounts of corporate assets "under the radar" of the enemy.

There's something in EVE for almost everyone. If you want to become a tycoon without getting blown up, you can train for hauler-class ships: industrials, transports, and freighters. If you want to get into PVP, there are mercenary and pirate corps willing to take you in, and all sorts of ship loadouts to suit any style of combat you prefer. If you want to run missions, there are player-created courier missions and bounties as well as NPC agents to give you plenty to do.

As other reviewers have mentioned, the skill training system is nice in that you don't have to spend time online to train the skills up - you train them in a fixed amount of time, whether you're online or not. You simply have to buy the skillbook, meet the prerequisites, and start the training, and the rest is automatic.

EVE is suffering from a crop of release bugs, but it's definitely something to get into if you are looking for a deep online experience...even with the current issues.

You either love this game, or hate it. That much is evident when you scan the reviews.

EVE naturally weeds out those who want a more structured gaming experience. Those who are left are communicative and interactive. The key to EVE is social. If you are waiting for EVE to tell you what to do, you won't last very long. You need to explore the possibilities, focus in on a plan, and execute. There are things you can do in this game that you can't even imagine in other games. However, if you can't interact and tap into the player culture, you won't get much done.

Those who miss the community aspect quickly tire of mining, interacting with AI agents, blowing up AI pirates, and leave.

Those who stay, love it and never want to leave.

It's definitely a game for the intelligent, decisive, high-initiative player. Sci fi fans of Isaac Asimov's "Foundation", or Frank Herbert's "Dune" will love this game. If you need to be told waht to do, and how to do it, you'll get lost in the numbers of items, things, places, agents, players and ships.

It FEELS like the real world, in space, thousands of years from now, after the apocalypse as decribed in the trailer.

It's not all about mining, though that is a large part of it.

Hundreds of thousands of ISK can can be made in a few minutes by keeping a careful watch on the market and buying low and selling high (and remembering that the Gov't charges 10% sales tax, off the top).

Low volume cargoes of .1 or less mean you can haul 90,000 items, per load in a 9000 capacity ship (Industrial hauler class not available to trial players).

With a profit margin of 10 per unit, there's almost a million ISK in just one or two jumps, about 10 minutes' work.

Rigging a ship up is a combination of needed skills, and equipment, most of which can be found as salvage. Offensive defensive, power, scanning, jamming, targeting, maneuverability, and even larger cargo bay options are all avaailable, for a price.

Weapons range from autocannons to guns to lasers, including a variety of missiles and rockets, each also able to be adjusted or modified, with a specific attack profile to target an enemies' shields, armor or hull.

Definitely the type of game for a long term player, as it takes time to do the tutorial (which is crippling if not completed), find a corporaton to join, and grow in skills, wealth and power.

A few other reviewers have stated that "You can't compete against veteran players".

This is just not true.

On a one for one basis, a battleship piloted by a veteran will will against a new ship. But the corporations dynamic allows for large scale tactics, and strategy, with all kinds of real world options for political intrigue...penetration agents, turncoat spies, doubles, even triple spies, I've seen it.

Mercenary strike forces hitting targets, paid for through cutouts, who never really are sure who they are working for, and to what ultimate goal.

Savvy play is required, as there is a lot of double dealing. Don't give the keys to your station to some guy you just recruited off the street.

Definitely Ace for graphics, sound, and intrigue.

I see a lot of players go out "Pirate hunting" and then quickly get bored, or dismayed when attacked by a real pro, with a tricked out ship.

But pirates only typically hit the frontier zones of security .4 or below. So it is a case of "Don't go there, without a gang of friends, it's a bad neghborhood."

Yet some still go, and cry foul, even though, If given the chance they themselves would skyjack a new player.

Fun, and nice to meet good solid players that are in it for the roleplaying aspects.

As a CEO, I had earned the 2 million requred in 2 days of play, and thorugh a combination of mining, dealing, and shrewd market transactions, made it to Megacorporation status with 51 employees on the roster in two weeks.

Making the first 100 million was difficult, but do-able. Of course it will take the average player some weeks to buy that bigger ship, but as in the real world all good things must be earned through effort, (in this case patience) or they're not appreciated.

For those seeking hard core shoot 'em up, go play a Doom-like game. If you've ever wanted to trade among the stars, or run a stellar megacorporation, this game is your vehicle to accomplish it.

Planning and flexibility are essential, and if you've ever played the real world financial markets, those skills will directly transfer to this game.

EVE Online while no longer available to purchase via CD (The software is now downloaded via EVE's Website at www.eve-online.com ) this game has the potential to outlast many of the MMO's that came out at the time this game was released.

Produced by a small Icelandic Corporation named CCP this game provides probably the most intense PvP oriented MMO out there. Skills play a small factor in how one performs in combat but it's just a small percentage of the overall factor. What it comes down to is how you allocate your experience points.

The Econemy is Player based. (CCP sets a Base Price and the price fluctuates based off how players set the future prices.)

The jobs you can get in this game are rather endless. You can be a builder, miner, or a straight out combat pilot as your primary areas. Skill training is Time Based. You set a skill and it trains in real time while new skill books are bought from NPC's or players on the market and you can train these immediately as soon as you meet the prerequisites.

So players are forewarned EVE Online is now only playable if you have Windows 2000 or later since Microsoft stopped supporting anything before that. Also in the coming months EVE is undergoing a Graphic's Upgrade which will be coming in the next three patches next year codenamed Kali.

This Graphic's Upgrade will make EVE Online fully playable on Windows Vista and utilize the new features being introduced by Microsoft. With that said this game will still be playable on Windows 2000 or XP as well.

If you're willing to put thought and do a bit of study you can do rather well in EVE. If you're one that wants to grind to the best in the shortest amount of time you're in for a suprise when you find yourself in a ship that is totally gimped.


The EVE Universe is absolutely huge which in part is a drawback but it's also great. To travel from system to system you utilize what are called Jumpgates. This will transport you to the next system and trips can last from a few minutes to an hour easily.

Also EVE soon will be releaseing other materials. They've merged with White Wolf makers of Worlds of Darkness and there were promises of alot of material coming out within the next year or two.

I'd just like to inform people that want to buy this, that they should go directly to the main website and purchase it from them. Its fast, since you can just download it from them. And its also MUCH cheaper. You can get it for $19.95 directly from them. You can also start playing once you download it and install it and patch it up. It is MUCH easier to purchase it straight from them.

I just signed up in October and at that point they had 15,000 users. Every weekend since then they have broken a new record, the latest is 17,300 players all on one server at the same time. No other game has that many players all on the same server. They just spent close to a million dollars upgrading their hardware in early November and are converting all code to 64 bit processing to handle the expected new players (they are hoping for 30,000 all at once). Performance is now virtually lagless.

You will find reviews of people in 2003 that played while only 4000 users were on at once. I'd say it's an entirely different game since then.

A couple of notes, you will hear a lot of complaints about slow travel times. Well, there are a few ways to deal with it: (1) you can do something else while transit in game (chat, sell/trade/buy goods, research market data, research territories, plan plan plan), (2) You can do something else on your computer, many people work or surf the net, (3) You can do things around the house that a traditional MMORPG causes you to forget about (dishes, laundry, TV) (4) You don't have to travel. Yes, number (4), you don't have to travel often. You can receive missions that require less travel than other MMORPGs before your kill. So, you can choose whether you will be an 'AFK' player (i.e. you want to play a game that won't eat your life away) or you can be an active player or a mix of both.

In December we are getting a FREE, yes free content expansion. It is going to be huge. Guess what? In spring another one is planned! Free!

There are very few bugs at this point. The grindless leveling system requires strategy for leveling up rather than hour after hour of slaughter.

In the end, this game is not for everyone. They have a free trial going on right now and you can determine whether or not it is for you. It is 'a thinking person's game', it is chess vs. checkers...WoW vs. Eve-Online. It will take you a long time to learn how to play, but not a long time to learn whether or not you'll like it.

The pristine No Man's Land between video games and business simulators has been sanctimoniously crossed, and done so with a fair level of grace and aplomb. Many MMOs (massively multiplayer online games) certainly elude to the idea that they are immense new worlds, bottomless in scope and design, teeming with player characters and indigenous life forms, all lavish in brushstroked presentation; but none so much as Eve Online. This isn't a mere re-creation of the streets of L.A., nor is it a sizable fantasy-based island continent; CCP (the European masterminds behind Eve) are literally presenting a universe of possibilities. A galaxy built from scratch. You may think you know, but you have no idea.

Keeping things personal within the science fiction genre is a tall order, and keeping things human within the machinations of corporate structuring is arguably impossible. Both of these chilling elements are deftly handled within the overwhelming confines (if such a word is applicable) of the Eve universe. Advanced morphing technology grants your character all manner of unmasked enthusiasm or listless ennui, accessories range from flightline glasses to hellraiser acupuncture needling, with various background and lighting schemes to transform your avatars anywhere from Darth Mal to Mall Rats.

After crafting your character from any one of eight racial identities stemming from either the Caldari, Minmatar, Amarr, or Gallente bloodlines, you're immediately placed within a space station and into a non-player character (NPC) corporation relevant to your occupational field.

From that moment on, any MMO claiming to offer limitless possibilities is essentially <em>lying</em> when placed shoulder-to-shoulder against Eve. Corporations and independent companies vie for control of precious mineral resources mined from asteroid belts and moons, bounty hunters and pirates light up the blackness with blinding pyrotechnics, scientists and traders traverse solar systems to further their research and fatten their wallets. All the while, newscasters diligently report on galactic politics, policies, and police activities. Criminals have their mugs plastered on gigantic in-space viewscreens while a ticker tape slides across the bottom announcing that the Ammar Empire has once again declared war on an offending nation. And so it goes.

The "living and breathing" elements of Eve may appear scarce, with only a wallet-sized photo of yourself in the upper-left of your screen and the icy emptiness of space to console you, but the artwork invested into this gigantic universe falls nothing short of the "breathtaking" category. Do not be surprised if you lose track of your mission simply because you're gaping at the magnificent twists of gasclouds (the stuff of formulating stars) or perhaps at a passing Gallente battleship. This is high brow sci-fi, and without the presence of alien life forms (all of the races are direct descendents of Earth) the realism factor is kept at a maximum. For science fiction, of course. But, with the mind-boggling level of statistics that are the meat and drink of the Eve universe, science fiction inches frighteningly close to science fact.

To be sure, this is less like a videogame and more like a certifiable business simulation; one that is simply drenched in gorgeous graphical overlays to provide the illusion of "fun." Not that a degree in economics or business administration is necessary to play, but it wouldn't hurt either. The real life facets of financial operations maneuver too close to reality for comfort, the player-driven market economy is cutthroat and effective, while the supply-and-demand curve rules more of your life than anyone would care to admit. Of course, pirate hunting can be a lucrative calling as well, with one kill and one bounty collected to keep the accounting books nice and simple.

Not for the casual gamer, Eve Online is a test of patience and diligence in ways that other MMOs don't dare touch. A world (if you will) of sparing yet lush detail, wrapping its fingers tangibly around the immensity and principles of the universe, while unleashing its player populace into that same universe of possibilities.

This game is so huge with so many options for upgrading and careers that you really must play it for several hours (it is kind of tedious to start your character out mining) before you really see the depth of the design. The bugs are actually pretty minor. In beta-testing (a few months) I have very rarely had the game dump me to the login screen which is much more than I can say for a lot of "full release" games and other software. Another reviewer complained of warping through objects, while this is true I should point out that this 'bug' (could be the way the warp engines create a 'quantum-slipstream'(ST:Voy)) only takes place while warping. When moving at impulse your ship will avoid and run into objects including stations, asteroids, and cargo containters. I think that is certainly more worthy of mention than warping through things as in "Earth and Beyond" you can pass right through any object ANYTIME. Lag hasn't been too bad for me except when they have been tweaking servers, and it hasn't changed much as the server structure has changed. I do see various scripting errors popup, but they don't cause any problems with my game play, nothing goes wrong, so who cares? I imagine that in the release they might suppress error messages that are minor and have no effect upon game play. I've played "Earth and Beyond", "Freelancer", and "EVE", and while each has strengths and weaknesses Eve is easily my favorite, and certainly worthy of my monthly gaming budget.