Eve Online

A big selling point for most subscription based games, I find, isn't really how awesome the game is, but whether or not my friends are playing.  A game could have everything going for it, but if I don't have social interaction in a genre that usually consists mostly of going from place to place I tend to tire of the experience (or lack thereof) rather quickly.  Social interaction got me into my first MMORPG Earth & Beyond in late 2002, and after that pulled me into Star Wars: Galaxies (which was amazing thanks to the guild I was in).  Wanting to bond with co-workers brought me to World of Warcraft, and now, moving 1800 miles away, my friends have pulled me into Eve Online.


So I guess I'm not a TOTAL n00b when it comes to a typical MMO game, but Eve Online isn't your typical MMO game.  Ok, yes, it has combat, and it has crafting, and it has lots and lots of travel.  Where it differs comes in how each similarity Eve has with other MMO games has its own quirk that enchances the depth of the game to make it stand out.


The Eve experience starts out by just throwing you into the pool so to speak.  You're in a ship, a rather ugly, piece of crap ship, with an anemic computer voiced tutorial guiding you on the VERY basics of the game.  Once that tutorial ends you're tossed out into the universe to learn via trial by fire.  I like that.  Instead of long winded NPC conversations trying in a clever but not so clever attempt to hide a tutorial in storyline, you get something that flat out tells you do this, do that, you probably want this, and you really should do that.


If you are into doing missions, grinding XP, and getting to the highest level as fast as you can, you shouldn't be playing this game.  Yes, you can do missions and blow stuff up, but there is no XP.  Thats right, no XP.  You learn skills over time.  You pick what you want to learn and after a certain amount of time you learn them.  You don't even have to be online to learn them.  Its about time a developer created a system that didn't penalize players for the inability to be constantly logged on doing stuff.


Even if you aren't into doing missions and combat, theres still plenty to do.  Theres a corporation system, which essentially is the guild system, that is so in depth that you can spend your entire time managing it like a business.  There are skills that aid choosing to go in this direction and, from what I've seen, alot of people choose to go this way.


Eve Online is cool in that it offers you a full 14-day trial to get a feel for the game, which you really need to check out if you are considering the game.  It is very obvious this game isn't for some people, and the developers seem to be comfortable in that.  Unlike World of Warcraft type games, which feature countless servers and millions of subscribers and costly expansions, Eve features one giant server environment and every expansion is free.  One you buy the game you have it, you don't have to pay more for it other than the subscription fee.  Eve seems to concentrate on what makes it different from other games, making the people it caters to happy, instead of making everyone content.  It doesn't have the biggest following in the world, but most of the people I've talked to that play Eve seem to be very happy with it.


As a noob to the game I like what I've seen so far and I've only seen the tip of the iceberg.  For the low price of $20 US, which includes your first month of the game, if you are into this sort of deep future sim it is very much worth the price.


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