Eve Online: 28 Months Later Comments by Jim Rossignol

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

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...

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

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

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 ;-)

" Is the entire PC Gamer crew relocating to EG"

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

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 ;)

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

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!

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. :)

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.

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.

"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.

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)?

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

3 months? 7 days a week?

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!

:)

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

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.

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.

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

rubbish! everyone talks rubbish

(i havent read a single comment here)

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.

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

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

Is there a free trial period, perhaps?

Here you go, mate:

https://secure.eve-online.com/ft/?sk=GHELL

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?

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!

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.

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.

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

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-online.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.


[quote=TheAlbaniac]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! [/quote]


I agree. EG ftw!!!!1

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

"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

"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."

Game Cards

also, new vid!

http://myeve.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...)

"Game Cards"

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

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.

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.

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.

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