Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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36 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The best Sci-Fi MMO, hands down!, August 11, 2005
Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars
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.
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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
High learning curve, but hopelessly addictive, May 18, 2006
Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars
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.
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
It's Not for Everyone, August 18, 2007
Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars
(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.
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by Tony Gonzales
