Eve Online: 28 Months Later

By Jim Rossignol Published 14 September, 2005

Who says we're not up to date?

As if by way of illustrating what a cruel game Eve can be, I just lost a fight in my most expensive, well-to-do battleship only minutes before opening up this page to write these words. The ship is dust and I'm royally pissed off. Way more pissed off than I would be at dying in almost any other game. While other MMOs might have coddled me with just a bit of money lost, or a few XP as punishment for my pitiful death, Eve has created several hours of concerted work. It's a bitch.

This might not sound like a good start for an upbeat analysis of Elite's (remarkably pretty) online cousin, but it's losses like this one that give the game its raw edge. Like the thrill of gambling, player vs. player combat in Eve is exciting because you could lose something palpable: the time it took to make the game-money that paid for that ship, along with all the shiny gizmos I kitted it out with. You feel that loss in your guts. And there are few games that can boast that.

Sucker Punch

With a bit of help from my friends I might make the cash back in just a few hours, but there are always other risks. Not least of these is the dangerous journey back from the safer climes of newbie-space, where I'm about to go shopping for technology. In Eve it's all about risk. No other game has provided me with the heart-stopping moments that Eve's PvP has, at least not since I was addicted to Quake 3. Back then I played to defend our league position and reputation, now I play Eve to defend a tract of beautiful space (and its precious resources) from organised and aggressive fleets of enemy players. It's a troublesome commitment and right now I'm fed up with it, but I will go back, and maybe even deal the same kind of blow that I took today to one of our many enemies.

I suppose it's a test of taste and character. Many people will get bored, log off in disgust and never return before they've even taken the first PvP sucker punch - Eve's deep but glacially slow progression isn't to everyone's taste. Personally I always go back, even after the big losses. Because, despite the loss being appalling, the reverse is also true: winning is sublime. Revenge is even better.

It would be easy to have made this recap of the last two years of Eve all about the things that the devs have added to the game since its launch. It's been crammed with content, although not much of it is of the kind you'd be familiar with from other games. I could have waxed on about the new ships, or the new cosmos missions for those people who want to get something from relatively lonesome single-player experiences. Or I could talk about the hundreds of new skills and all that jazz, but really what Eve is most honest about - what it was created to do - is player vs. player combat. It's this urge to conflict that all the best developments of the game have focused on. There's a ton of other activity going on in Eve, but if you're not playing to go to war then you're not really making the most of your adrenal glands, not to mention the cleverer-than-thou combat system that CCP has created.

Miner's Strike

'Eve Online: 28 Months Later' Screenshot 1

That's no moon... Oh, it is. And it must be surveyed for resources.

That said, I have to be glad of the miners, the traders and the economists, because it's thanks to their commitment to Eve's bustling cash and manufacture aspect that I can make money from the loot I accrue and get the guns I need for cheap. Eve has become about territory and about resources, and without the committed trade ships plying their varied commerce across this now-familiar galaxy things would be a lot less interesting. Each ship destroyed is a load of those resources lost, and it all has to come from somewhere. I'm only really in this game for the buzz of blowing people up, but I can't help but get caught up in the multitudes of what my friends and enemies get up to. From escorting defenceless industrial ships, to helping keep mining barges safe from enemy interceptors, I'll always have something to do - even if it's just so that I can be sure of where my next ship is coming from. Almost everything that happens in Eve is in some way about people improving their assets. It's the ultimate game of aggressive capitalism, where everyone is ready to fight for the virtual oilfields of peripheral space.

Unlike World of Warcraft, where the fun is generally limited to a bit of scrapping with horde and a lot of goblin-uterus collection, Eve is about the machinations of dozens of player-driven alliances, the memberships of which can climb into the thousands. Guilds in other games might give you a bit of role-playing geek, or just someone to quest with, but the corporations of Eve give you allies, enemies, plots, strategies, trading partners, backstabbing, financial enterprises and drunken Irishmen arguing with a surly Texan about the merits of fitting an electronic-warfare ship.

Smart Bombs

'Eve Online: 28 Months Later' Screenshot 2

This is definitely not the other time I got completely spanked, no sir.

CCP has spent the last 28 months expanding and refining the already-complex combat system in Eve. It mixes turret-based guns, whose tracking speed and ammunition must be considered, with shield specialities, smart bombs, multiple grades of missile technology, armour resistances to four different damage types, propulsion jamming, target jamming and all the electronic countermeasures you could conceive of. The modular system has been steadily evolved through constant PvP testing, so that ships can be loaded out very carefully, each player complementing the next. The big ships might be powerful, but they need smaller ships to apply electronic webs and jamming to their enemies so that losing ships can't escape that final deathblow.

My mistake was taking on a small but tougher ship without support. I just wasn't set up to deal with him. Had I been in another ship the story might have had a quite different ending. And of course there would be no agreement in the chat channels as to what the best ship to do that would have been. Everyone has their favourite steed, and their personal biases for equipment, and the skills necessary to use them. Eve is both broad and deep - and growing in both directions. So the Texan and the Irishman will never agree, because their experiences of the game, sat in front of their screens on far sides of the world, have been so wildly different.

They Will Come

'Eve Online: 28 Months Later' Screenshot 3

Even with its three-year old engine, Eve still deliver visual treats.

That international angle is just one aspect of Eve's shardless nature: it's just one game, one world. There aren't dozens of servers to choose from, just a single galaxy. Once you log in, you're in the same game as the thousands of other players. That economy of scale creates an environment in which players must compete for space, literally... Eve's map is a fascinating tool, and it can be used to track the wars and the movements, the mining operations and the struggle for sovereignty. Eve's closest cousin in this regard is perhaps the Lineage games, where player guilds fight to take castles and the related tax resources. In Eve they fight to take the deepspace stations - vital outposts around which player activity will thrive. But there's more to it than that. As with everything in Eve, there's another layer of complexity. Players can build their own structures too, the cheapest of which cost less than the ship I lost earlier this morning, while the most expensive are fully-fledge starbases, from which empires can be ruled with a titanium fist.

The introduction of player-owned structures, essentially simple space stations anchored in orbit around moons, have given players another level in which to invest in the game. You can feel like you're building something, that you are a vital cog in the large machine of your corporation or alliance. It has been CCP's wisest move. It's realised that if it gives the players tools, then they will build. The last two years have been about delivering those tools, from the immense station-killing dreadnoughts, to the tiniest, cheapest frigate; everything is being given a role. It was obvious when Eve launched that no one really knew what those roles were going to be. It was only by playing, and seeing how tens of thousands of players would want to work in space, that Eve was able to move forward.

Now, at the dawn of Eve's third year, the game is entering a new phase. CCP has made it rather clear that there is no definite path for its future. While other games can plot the feature lists of their forthcoming expansion packs and content patches, Eve has something else: 50,000 players. And there's no way we can tell what they're going to do with their future.

Picture of Jim.

About Jim Rossignol

Read more articles from Jim by visiting the Jim Rossignol archive page.

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Comments (46) Latest comment 6 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • gamesb*tch #1 7 years ago

    They should bring it out on PS2... that would look 'nice' ;o)

  • UncleLou #2 7 years ago

    Excellent article, and you hit the nail on the head what EVE is and what it is not. I really loved the game, but I quit ages ago because I had a life to live and wasn't so sure that was still possible...
    Edited by 1 at 14/09/05 @ 13:21

  • symmetry #3 7 years ago

    Lovely game. I've cancelled my subscription twice. Only renewed it once but the thought of the Dreadnoughts is very tempting.

  • marilena #4 7 years ago

    Is the entire PC Gamer crew relocating to EG? Not that I mind, I always had a soft spot for that magazine. Just asking.

  • Lawlost #5 7 years ago

    Eve always sounds so fantastic, but it also looks as though you need to commit many hours a week to get the full experience. Rather than the time commitment what has put me off is the subscription fees, like almost all MMOs we are asked to shell out £9-10 a month to play as well as the cost of the game itself, usually £30ish. Perhaps the success of Guild Wars with no subscription fees will encourage developers to make games such as Eve without the subscription fees. Unfortunately Jim we don't get subscription free accounts like you games jornos ;-)

  • kangarootoo #6 7 years ago

    " Is the entire PC Gamer crew relocating to EG"

    Thats where I had seen the name. Thought I knew it from somewhere.

  • Phishy #7 7 years ago

    The success of Guild Wars? Most people that ran off from WoW to GW came running back crying 'I've been to hell...' ...muwhahah Cheap asses ;)

  • binky #8 7 years ago

    Does EVE consist of turn based combat or full on space battle dog fighting like Frontier?

  • TheAlbaniac #9 7 years ago

    I like these articles. They offer so much more than 'just' a review. I hardly bother with reviews anymore and tend to read game sites/mags with these kinds of approaches (escapistmagazine.com comes to mind).

    Keep it up!

  • UncleLou #10 7 years ago

    Does EVE consist of turn based combat or full on space battle dog fighting like Frontier?

    It's real-time, but you control your ship "indirectly", so to speak, not with a joystick but with mouse commands like "fly to" etc., which makes you feel more like, say, Captan Kirk than Han Solo. :)

  • wattoo #11 7 years ago

    I left the EVE universe many moons ago due to redundancy, relieved to have retired still human having not had to resort to clones.

    It was a lovely feeling arriving in some star system to indulge in another mexican standoff where wary space pilots circle round each other not knowing the other's loadout.

    It was a MASSIVE time hole though. Definitely not one for the pick up n play crowd.

  • SenorGrande #12 7 years ago

    I'm not playing it at the moment but I always go back to it. So much more in depth and so much more rewarding than other MMOs. It really is for the "hardcore" gamers. I can't kepp it up for long so I take a break for a while and go back to it.

    Hammi raids in City of Heroes are one thing, but being part of a 200 strong armada going up against an equally sized enemy force is just.. breathtaking.

  • Gl3n #13 7 years ago

    "Eve always sounds so fantastic, but it also looks as though you need to commit many hours a week to get the full experience." -What are the quotation tags again?

    That's a semi truth. The main time sink is travelling and mining or hauling minerals around the galaxy. That can take time. Although you won't even notice the time pass once you find a corporation to join, which isn't exactly difficult.
    I found it very easy to play for just an hour a night. The way they have implemented the skill system is really intuitive. Instead of beating on space pirates for hours on end to level, it happens without much effort.
    What i mean is that you just open your skill list, click a skill and then click 'learn'.
    Then after the designated period of time has past, viola! you have now learnt how to fry a space omlette with a space frying pan.

    Theres a tech-tree in place and only the initial skills are actually in your skill list. The more advanced skills come in volumes of books that take quite some time to learn (the very latter skills take weeks!).

    This all really adds to the rewarding aspect of EVE. The first time you get that super huge capital ship and fly it amongst other player's smaller frigates is awe-inspiring :) especially during pvp.

    The first time you fly in a huge organized attack/defence fleet is even more pant wettingly cool.

    Edited by 1 at 14/09/05 @ 14:38

  • MrWonderstuff #14 7 years ago

    This game certainly has a devout following. I have never played Eve as, and this may seem daft, the learning curve seems a little steep. What safeguards are there for new players? How important are guilds (very from what I've read)?

  • afray #15 7 years ago

    Lawlost: The whole point of these games is the subscription fees. GW was different because they only ran small servers -- the main game was instanced on the client side, reducing load. In that respect it's really no different to games like BF2.

    "Proper" MMORPGs, like Eve and WoW, require massive amounts of resources to keep running. To fund this, and, yes, to make money, they use the subscription system.

    Maybe micropayments for more content may one day compete with subscriptions, but until then it's the only way to fund the persistent world everyone wants.

    Cheers.
    afray

    EDIT: some tiding
    Edited by 1 at 14/09/05 @ 14:43

  • Lutz #16 7 years ago

    3 months? 7 days a week?

  • Stickman #17 7 years ago

    I'm afraid to say I'm one of the people who played it, got bored and has never been back. I so, so wanted to love this game, to be a small cog in a big machine in a galaxy spanning corporation, or an elusive, predatory bounty hunter, but Christ it's boring at first! Go here (autopilot), now go here (autopilot), now go here (autopilot), and repeat for a month....

    Someone PLEASE convince me why I should try again!

    edit: can't spell!
    Edited by 1 at 14/09/05 @ 14:47

  • marilena #18 7 years ago

    :)

    I wonder if that edition of the readers revews is still around. Great fun it was.

  • Gl3n #19 7 years ago

    MrWonderStuff: It doesn't really help that the game is so open ended. The factions in the game are all player built and run. Theres no 'good or evil' choice when you create your character. It's up to you to either freelance it or join a Corp (in my experience the latter is far more interesting). But anyway, once you've learnt the core gameplay elements it's really a case of discovering the community whichever path you take.

    Did anyone ever play that web game, planetarion? the structure of EVE is kinda similar.


  • MightyPenguin #20 7 years ago

    Accept that planetarion is basically a spreadsheet. No, wait, it *is* a spreadsheet.

    And you can't move. And combat is just as long and as interesting as reading the bible in a language you can barely understand.
    Edited by 1 at 14/09/05 @ 14:59

  • jimmyjimbob #21 7 years ago

    God I hated this game. Possibly one of the most boring online games I've ever had the misfortune to play

  • red_shift #22 7 years ago

    rubbish! everyone talks rubbish

    (i havent read a single comment here)
    Edited by 1 at 14/09/05 @ 15:49

  • UncleLou #23 7 years ago

    God I hated this game. Possibly one of the most boring online games I've ever had the misfortune to play

    Well, like probably no other game, it gives you back what you invest. It doesn't drip-feed you entertainment like, say, WoW does. The players really create what's happening here, and if you have no interest in taking part in that and/or following what's happening, I guess it's boring. If you do so, it's a gaming experience like hardly any other.

  • Bsport #24 7 years ago

    skill system is one the biggest things for me, no "hes played x more hours than me so i cant join him on that mission" as you get with WOW COH etc. and yes some poeple might not like the open ended nature of eve, but that what i would class as a real MMORPG.

    also reaching top a top lvl like WOW and COH means you have basicly completed the game so might aswell play a single player game and forget the monthy subs ,were as eve there is no top lvl. but some ppl like that some ppl dont

  • binky #25 7 years ago

    Just downloaded it, and I'm going to have a look this weekend.

  • lemonfist #26 7 years ago

    Is there a free trial period, perhaps?

  • Taurus #27 7 years ago

    Here you go, mate:

    https://se cure.eve-online.com/ft/?sk=GHELL
    Edited by 1 at 14/09/05 @ 17:13

  • pavs #28 7 years ago

    I hated the fact that the spaceships has a maximum speed, other than the speed of light. Maybe they tried to do it with proper mechanics and that didn't play good but seriously, a spaceship with the non-warp top speed of 400 m/s while firing it's engines full speed? Since when is empty space frickin syrup?

  • Shrui #29 7 years ago

    I've seen most aspects of gameplay in Eve. I started in solo play, running missions, doing some mining. Then I joined a nice corp of good folks running round "Safe" empire space more for the company. We did mining ops together, got drunk on teamspeak toghether while mining and protecting each other from the NPC spawns.

    Then we went to the frontier systems with other friends, claimed our own bit of space and we started seeing PvP, running small gangs of up to 10-20 ships of different sizes, running folks out of our space and working together to carve out our little niche. An alliance was formed and we worked with other small corporations.

    Then war really came to us and we had a week of running massive 200+ space battles, a feeling that cannot be compared to any other game I've played aside from possibly Planetside. Our honour intact (but alas not our ships) we played on.

    We've had our victories, our betrayals, our losses but mostly we got the feeling of being part of something!

    I'm not a subscriber anymore because the game demands alot of time but I will return when I can. I've played WoW, Everquest 2, Planetside, Auto Assault, City Of Heroes etc and they all have their merits. But none stay in my heart like Eve.

    Oh and it is still one of the most gorgeous games out there, playing it on a 20" widescreen monitor is heaven!

  • ave #30 7 years ago

    EVE:
    Skill system designed purely to keep you paying a monthly fee.
    Not really a space game, imagine L2 or EQ2, only your character looks like a poor ship model, with old/ugly textures. Physics are non existent, exploration is pointless(very few hidden things, and those that there are, are just the same old pirate "outposts".
    No sense of the vastness/majesty of space.
    Poor graphics(nice when they launched, but the textures are tired now).
    PVP is non immersive, a clickfest, and if you have over 50 people or so fighting in the same area, there's crippling lag that makes PVP virtually pointless.(Yes that's right, a space MMOG that dies when over 50 people try fight)
    Non-PVP activities are crap, and for the most part ignored by CCP.
    The universe is badly designed, look at the map and 90% of the people are in several small core area's, with most of the 0.0 regions being lucky to have 20-30 people in space at night.
    Game is still suffering from massive balance changes that make months/even years worth of skill training pointless.
    Community is one of the most militant of any MMOG I've played, never seen so many threads devoted to rubbishing all the other big MMOG's, and devoted to voting other MMOG's down, and eve up on rating sites.

    Oh, and it has a completely borked economy.

  • AOFanboi #31 7 years ago

    I resubbed during the last World of We Cant Keep The Bloody Servers Up lagdance, and am enjoying myself, even though I know it's a window system with a pretty backdrop.

    ave, you are so full of it that brown spots are starting to form on your skin.

  • ave #32 7 years ago

    nice one AOFanboi, dont point out what I'm wrong about, just make a stupid comment.

    Tard

    Are you saying that the economy isnt fucked(and hasnt been since the start)?
    Or that the graphics arent tired?
    Or that the PVP system isnt a clickfest and pretty non-interactive?
    Or that the servers dont crap themselves during large PVP battles

    Must.try.harder.next.time

  • Shakermaker #33 7 years ago

    I haven't got a lot to do this weekend. I might go for the try-out. Any tips for a n00b like me? I already have the URL for the New Player Guide (http://www.eve-on line.com/guide/en/).

    And to get a perspective: I think some of the sights in Freelancer are still awe inspiring (played it earlier this year). How does Eve compare to that game in the graphics department? I know the gameplay is totally different, combat-wise anyway.

    I like these articles. They offer so much more than 'just' a review. I hardly bother with reviews anymore and tend to read game sites/mags with these kinds of approaches (escapistmagazine.com comes to mind).

    Keep it up!

    I agree. EG ftw!!!!1

  • Lacero #34 7 years ago

    ave, Eve has the only MMORPG economy that works.

    Your skills still train if you stop paying your monthly fee, you just can't change them. So the skill training system with some skills taking >3weeks encourages breaks of at least a month.

    I don't know much about the rest, I don't do combat PvP. I only fight price wars.

  • marilena #35 7 years ago

    And what MMORPG supports battles of over 50 people? What MMORPG has a working economy?

    I'm not an EVE fanboy and I'd never play this kind of game, but I still can help but feel that some people are just throwing stupid arguments at it just because they want to hate it. The graphics are tired? That's it, the game must be crap then.

    /goes to play Civilization 2

  • Gl3n #36 7 years ago

    EVE are sponsoring Gamespot's coverage of TGS and are offering a 14 day trial
    here: http://www. gamespot.com/promos/eveonline/

    You can download the client from the eve website and avoid all of that DLX shite.
    Edited by 1 at 15/09/05 @ 11:51

  • godevil #37 7 years ago

    Are you saying that the economy isnt fucked(and hasnt been since the start)?

    No, the economy is brilliant, afaik this is the only MMO where you can be a trader as a profession (and of real items that have real demand, not just NPC objects).

    Or that the graphics arent tired?

    The graphics could be improved, but it has been around for 3 years, and personally i'm happy that CCP are concentrating more on improving gameplay than the graphics, which are good enough eye candy anyway.

    Or that the PVP system isnt a clickfest and pretty non-interactive?

    No, PvP is the best, most intense out of all the MMOs i've every played. And if you think its no interactive, you obviously havent played enough.

    Or that the servers dont crap themselves during large PVP battles

    That is true, but only on overcrowded nodes - out in 0.0 its fine.

  • AOFanboi #38 7 years ago

    The economy works, the graphics look great on my 64M GeForce 4 Ti 4200, and their relative simplicity makes it much easier for the client to support massive multiplayer battles, combat is as non-interactive as in any other auto-attack mmorpg (ie. all of them except Neocron and Planetside)...

    In short, you were wrong about everything so I didn't bother pointing them out.

  • Ryuken #39 7 years ago

    "I like these articles. They offer so much more than 'just' a review. I hardly bother with reviews anymore and tend to read game sites/mags with these kinds of approaches (escapistmagazine.com comes to mind). "

    It's not like other sites don't revisit games like this you know, just check out some mmo-zines like mmorpg.com .

    Never played Eve, but I know too many people who are addicted to it. That fact and this nicely written post-release review should make me taking on the trial. Concept sounds nice, they should combine this with PlanetSide and you may have the perfect fit for everyone.

    Although, there probably isn't another way to pay except for silly CC's (speaking from Belgium here)? I don't mind a fee at all but it's a pity that you just can't pay. Say about WoW or some other mmo's what you want but those pre-paid cards were a brilliant move.

    EDIT: typos
    Edited by 2 at 15/09/05 @ 20:17

  • Shrui #40 7 years ago

    "Although, there probably isn't another way to pay except for silly CC's (speaking from Belgium here)? I don't mind a fee at all but it's a pity that you just can't pay. Say about WoW or some other mmo's what you want but those pre-paid cards were a brilliant move."

    <A HREF="http://store.eve-online.com /store/comersus_listCategoriesAndProducts.asp?idCategory=7">Game Cards</a>
    Edited by 1 at 15/09/05 @ 22:44

  • Biggles #41 7 years ago

    also, new vid!

    http://m yeve.eve-online.com/download/videos/

    If they get rid of the gratuitous sexy women and stick this on tv or use it as a trailer at the cinema... well then you get into worrying about 'flooding' the game with newbs.. server problems, effects on the economy (time to start making loads of low-end crap and advertise that in game...)

  • Ryuken #42 7 years ago

    "Game Cards"

    Yeah, really great if you can only purchase it online with a CC...

  • ave #43 7 years ago

    The economy works?

    Tech 1 started off ok, in the beginning it was a struggle for any corp to get a bpo, much less produce larger items like battleships, but after about 2-3 months pretty much every corp either had, or had access to almost every bpo.

    The fact so many had bpo's, meant everyone was making bpc's which further inflated how many people could produce, leading to every item selling for a miniscule amount over what it cost to make. Add to that that you could get 100% insurance on ships meant losing a ship was no real loss.

    Basically, all supply and no demand, the economy was all about money coming in from infinite sources(infinite mining, killing npc pirates for isk and loot) and no artificial means of taking it out.

    Tech 2 is in some ways worse, a "lottery" for the limited amount of bpo's, led to ridiculous prices both for the blueprints and the items made, and to the formation of cartels to completely control the production of single t2 items(although this has lessened).

    Tech2 was a kneejerk reaction to what they thought the problems were with t1, and resulted in being almost as bad.


    "And their relative simplicity makes it much easier for the client to support massive multiplayer battles"
    You think 50 people is a massive space battle? I had 60 players at OP wars in neocron, on the smaller english server ffs.

    Listen, if you like it's PVP - you're made, and wont find a better game out there.

    If you dont like it's PVP, everything else in the game is pretty poor, and WoW, GW or EQ2 is a vastly superior choice.

    ps, I was in MASS & GHSC so pls dont say I never pvp'ed, I did, and found it crap, the only enjoyment that comes out of it is the risk of losing a ship+equipment, whereas in WoW/NC I actually have(had in NC's case) FUN in pvp, outside of just the risk.

  • Lacero #44 6 years ago

    I'm sorry I wasn't clear ave, when I said the economy works I mean theres actual thought and gameplay in making money from it.

    If you want to sell everything you make for profit automatically, EQ and the like would be better suited to you.

  • Krun #45 6 years ago

    This was by far and away the worst game I every played.

    Its like watching paint dry, while waiting for someone may come and murder you.

    if you like dull slow games that take ages and ages to get anywhere, and looking at the bland emptness of space. Then having the chance some random punk will destroy all that stuff the tedium has earnt. Then this is the game for you.

  • Minor_Threat #46 6 years ago

    Yeah, really great if you can only purchase it online with a CC...

    See thats not true at all...

    There are localized sites/companys that offer Game Time for Eve and other MMORPG's and allowing payments via wire-transfer, cash via mail, paypal, moneybooker etc.. for all those ppl out there that dont own a CC or refuse to use one (coz of safety concerns)

    check http://www.game-time.info/

    Ive been using this service every since i got really hooked on eve after my trial, probably 6 months ago now and it works perfect...

    cheers