15 years after its birth, Eve is still making headlines and conducting large scale pvp on a mind boggling level. I tried it and it wasn't for me (too slow) but a part of me wishes it was. Nearly every other MMO loses its essence over time (and wanes/dies trying to cater to the lowest common), but Eve seems to, after 15 years, still be the same ruthless political madness that it was on day 1. I admire that immensely after being orphaned by numerous MMOs that couldn't hold on to their essence.
> Nearly every other MMO loses its essence over time (and wanes/dies trying to cater to the lowest common), but Eve seems to, after 15 years, still be the same ruthless political madness that it was on day 1.
Speaking as someone that's been there from day 1 (before actually. I've been playing since closed beta back in 2002), EVE is absolutely not the same ruthless universe anymore that it once was. It's increasingly become a fancy pile of garbage, where complexity is removed and the game streamlined to "make it more accessible".
In other words: It's on the best way of becoming yet another World of Warcraft clone and that's mightily showing in the community these days. EVE lives and dies by its community and frankly the community has pretty much degraded to a bunch of screaming children crying for instant gratification and the removal of the last essence of what made EVE be EVE.
So yeah, the only reason EVE is still around is because it's a niche game and it's literally the only available choice in that niche. If CCP had even the slightest sliver of competition, EVE would have already gone the same way as so many other MMOs that lost their aim, spirit and essence before it.
But well, people have given me the title "Epitome of Bittervetism", so maybe take this with a grain of salt. But in all honesty, you're not missing out on much anymore.
I played briefly, for about a year back in the 2009-2010 era. Played quite a bit, joined a corp, even had multiple accounts/characters. Left for 2 reasons:
1. The massive time/money suck and complexity. Playing Eve started feeling like its own career. Having to log in constantly to skill, having to be available at all hours for missions (getting texts at work that we were jumping into WH space where are you???), having to maintain vast excel spreadsheets to optimize ISK income. It was too much, stopped being fun.
2. At its heart Eve was(is?) a PvP game. Sure, you can stay safely in hisec, mining and trading, and getting called a carebear, but if you did, you were experiencing at most 25% of the game. I always found PvP unpleasant and wasteful, and wished the devs made hisec-only play better. But if you wanted to get your money’s worth that meant living in nullsec or WH space, and having to deal with the griefers. Also, if you wanted to make enough ISK needed to fund your accounts through PLEX you had to be in WH space and live with the slugfest. So much was geared towards PvP, and if you didn’t like PvP, the game was ultimately not for you.
1) In the past, you couldn't enqueue skills beyond 24h, basically forcing you to log in frequently. Now, paid accounts ("Omega") can load up their skill queue indefinitely. There are a lot more casual corps in the game these days, and the player base has finally figured out that newbies are really valuable, rather than seeing them as easy marks for scamming. I only have time to play a few hours per week, and being in one of the big corps makes it okay for me to not show up at 3am for a stratop. Optimizing ISK income is something you can do if you enjoy that sort of thing- and a lot of people do. For the rest of us, we convert cash into PLEX, and sell those in the market for ISK. My time is worth too much to spent it trying to figure out how to set up an optimal production system or to mine rocks all day.
2) This is pretty much true. The "heart and soul" of Eve is in its player-run corporations, particularly ones that engage in PVP. Funding accounts by making enough ISK to buy game time (PLEX) is a bad decision for anyone who has a real-life job. A month of game time is roughly $15. It takes lots and lots of hours of grinding or market trading to generate enough ISK to buy a PLEX in game. Unless you enjoy the grind, and if you make more than minimum wage, it's cheaper to buy PLEX with cash and sell them for ISK than it is to buy PLEX with ISK.
> and the player base has finally figured out that newbies are really valuable, rather than seeing them as easy marks for scamming
What are they valuable for? (Honest question)
Is it even worth it to join Eve now as a newbie? Or is this one of those games like CS where it's impossible to play because everyone's been at it for a decade and has 100x more experience at that game than you.
In the context of PVP, they are good as eager bodies. It takes only a couple trains of training to begin flying the simplest ships in an alliance's doctrine, and only a month or so to fly a slightly better ship. Get a couple hundred low-sp but highly-motived players, and success can be yours...
>> So much was geared towards PvP, and if you didn’t like PvP, the game was ultimately not for you.
That was a big blow to many of the early players. We wanted WC:Privateer. EVE was pitched as a trading/economy game, which it was in the early days. There is still a huge market for a Privateer-style game. Star Citizen is proof that the money is out there. I'd play an EVE online where strong NPCs were the predominant enemy, with PvP being an exception. That was early Eve, back when corps were still struggling to push outwards.
I ultimately moved on to Elite:Dangerous, which although is much more shallow gameplay-wise, has the killer feature for PvE players: Solo Play. You’re still in the full online game/universe, just minus the other human players. It’s pretty much a griefer off-switch.
re: "Bittervetism", I could be accused of the same. If I try to look at it objectively, I think it's a symptom of just being around anything for a long time. Change is, after all, inevitable.
Perhaps nostalgia has ingrained the "holy wtf" UI/spreadsheet experience of yesteryear into my mind without any updates. I (mistakenly) thought that the game hadn't really strayed from the complexity that made it so niche.
I'm disappointed that something you clearly enjoy has morphed into something else before your eyes (I know the feels). I appreciate your correction because I don't miss MMOs (too much) these days for this specific reason.
I too was in the closed beta. Was there when the first 'miner2' blueprint was dropped. Ragequit when i lost my second battleship. I tried again last year. I prefer games of skill. Eve is all about having the most buds with the cool toys, being in the right clubs. If you can dominate a chatroom with posts, you are good at eve. It is facebook with lasers.
It's funny, what you hated about Eve is what I liked. Success was about brains, persistence and relationships, not grinding or mouse & keyboard skill (although those certainly helped). Not totally unlike real life.
It's been five or six years since I played though, no idea what kind of hot garbage it's turned into since then.
Eve for my corp became all about politics. Instead of working as a team to find and hold territory, it became all about who was going to be in charge of the team. There was no skill beyond having friends. Battles are now directed, with everyone simply contributing firepower to the slugfest. The only actually combat is between team leaders.
I was a scrounger for my corp (Oberon). I was the guy who went out and bought 100x of some rare bit of gear. Wanted stuff would just appear in our hangars. Quiet cargo swaps in disused systems were my thing. Now corps are so big, the travel system so alterable, that such meetups require days of offline negotiation. That isn't fun.
It doesn't make much business sense these days to develop another MMO like early EVE. There's so many good games out there that it's hard to keep someone's attention. People will quit when they see it takes months-years to get access to shiny things to improve their character. Especially if people prioritize playing with their friends in any game versus playing one specific game.
Plus I think the newer generation of gamers are less patient and the older generations have less time to spend on games.
Just wondering if any of today's MMOs will reach 100 years. That would be a really interesting point in human history, having a virtual world run for so long.
I think about it like this. Good stories have incredible staying power.
Disney movies like Cinderella, and Snow White can always be remade with newer technology because there core story is worth adapting to the new mediums.
World of Warcraft started with some very good lore. I remember enjoying the huge back stories that came in the instruction manuals before the game even became an MMO. So I think it has a chance to hit that 100 year mark.
That doesn't mean it will have a continuous virtual world for the entire 100 years though. But I think through a couple revivals it could make it. I also worry the IP is not really unique enough to guarantee it will be here, but I do think they are working that.
Then I suggest that you come and hang out with us. It is close enough to the real thing that I never reflect much on the difference. Mainly it is an old server, so the economy is a bit wonky. But the community is fantastic for 99% of the population. Come hither!
EQ took my MMO cherry at the tender age of 15. RIP High School initiative. Vanilla WoW had the same effect. No other games have come close to those (approx 2yrs each) experiences.
I think there is something about the unknown and danger that vanilla games have. Then you level up, you have been all over the world a dozen times, you become goal focused. I remember the most fun I could have would be with a friend and we would run around leveling, exploring, trying to go into zones that would kill us. Something magical about that newbie experience.
I hope to see a roguelike multiplayer RPGs where things can be random, surprising, broken, confusing, (hopefully not to frustrating) created a deeper sense of adventure.
For those intrigued: Eve Online has "free to play" Alpha tier, if you want a taste. There are certain limitations (ie, a skill point limit (think "levels" in other games)), but even an Alpha character can join player-run corporations and take part in the economy, join these thousand player battles, etc.
There are also newbie-friendly corporations (Brave Newbies, Brand Newbros, Karmafleet, Pandemic Horde) that are part of the major power-blocs, if you want to get into the politics.
These corporations have IT infrastructures that put most real-world businesses to shame; web sites with custom applications that tie into the game's API (swagger: https://esi.tech.ccp.is/latest/ ), authorization services, voice chat services, Slack integrations, custom ERP systems for in-game industrial management, HR systems etc.
You can step into the "fun" aspects of the game pretty quickly if you don't mind being cannon fodder for one of the larger corporations that will even pay for your ships.
Eve's progression is entirely based on feed-the-meter, where you skill up by scheduling your skills to be learned over time. My knowledge is out of date, but it took me hundreds of hours of paid time to get into higher tiered ships to reach what I would consider the "fun" aspects of the game. YMMV.
EVE progression is pretty unlike other MMOs. On one hand, you can't really speed it up, it just kind of plods along. On the other, even brand new players are useful. For instance, in most MMOs, a lower level character has no chance against a higher level character, once the gap is wide enough. No matter how many level 1 WoW characters you have fighting a max-level WoW player, the level 1's won't make a scratch in him. EVE is different, you very much can use quantity over quality to do damage.
You have to just log in and train skills for a couple of months. Then you can try some pvp. Otherwise you're just getting ganked by players who've been there for 3-5 years (git gud lul).
Though you can join a corp where you can provide (limited, since you can't even use more advanced tech for a month or two) use in mass pvp.
It's amazing sometimes how much EVE mimics real life. I used to know a guy that ran a bank there.
My little brother used to be really into it, eventually leading fleets during fights, and he credits that experience with giving him the skills he needed to manage teams at an IT company.
I had the same leadership training with minecraft, leading factions in RP servers and trading with other cities, complete with alliances, trade deals, and wars. Eventually I became an OP and eventually an admin, with all the responsibilities that entails at the age of 13. But obviously EVE is another level of complexity.
It's amazing to me how people can link to articles they once read seemingly off-hand. I can't reference most of what I read, because I can't seem find it again: I rarely remember enough for a successful google search and history searches seem to be generally ineffective.
I run all my one-off less-popular not-easily-searchable-in-google articles in pinboard bookmarking tool, sometimes I forget to do it though or don't tag it enough.
It's been a while for me but there were definitely some server mods starting to pop up that would allow that kind of cross server play/material transfer. With mods the sky is kind of the limit for what you can do in MC even on servers.
I used to lead Counter Strike 1.6 teams in my teens- I often reflect on how that was some of my early leadership "training".
Good memories of motivating my teams of 15/16/17 year olds to get online at 6/7am in the morning to work on our skills before school, and for epic days during the summer.
I used to GM some pen and paper RPGs with a team of adorable and mischevious players. It taught me to be paranoid about every little flaw or loophole in rules. "Can my 'create water' spell work to flood this bad guy's heart?"
I think to prevent tax evasion, tax law should be written by people with 5+ years of GMing experience...
hallmark of a good game! The cutthroat-ness, and the non-consensual pvp nature is what makes the game act like real-life; after all, you don't get to have consensual pvp in real life either!
Nice read into a world I've never visited and know very little about.
I am really interested in how the economics of the newspaper work. How are they able to obtain the ships they report from? Do people have a subscription, donate? A pity this wasn't addressed in the article.
They sell ad space on their website to player-run groups in EVE. These groups pay ISK for the ad space, the in-game currency. [1] That ISK is paid to writers for each piece they write.
The ships they report from are cheap as chips, so not really a sourcing concern given that their reporters need to be hardcore enough EVE players to understand and write about their subject matter—and as a result, would have made enough money in the game already to afford the type of ship you need to do this.
A good little ship that supports cloaking is maybe... a 2-3 weeks of training in terms of skills and relatively cheap at 30-40m for a basic fit with bonuses to warping and agility.
Could easily source that yourself over a few hours but no doubt, they more than likely take donations to their corporate wallet in game.
You could probably beg for a covops/stealth bomber/etc in about 20 minutes of casual jita spam. There's usually someone feeling kind (it's even been me on occasion)
This type of in-game realism is fascinating. It's a kind of immersion you can't get through graphics alone. The Discworld MUD has also been running player-led in-game newspapers for a long time: https://dwwiki.mooo.com/wiki/Newspapers
No way, the Discworld MUD is still alive? I used to wake up at 6am to play it before school in 1998-ish because that was the only time I could get 1-2 hours of uninterrupted dial-up uptime.
I wonder if the LAG is still around to kick, and if someone has ever managed to kill Carrot :)
They don't control the entire game, or even the entirety of the area in which they operate, but they are likely the biggest and most powerful entity in the game.
Yeah the cartels are really really powerful. The political landscape is actually "the game" for many pilots.
Many smaller orgs long for further reductions of the meat-factory alliances. But you can't compete with economies of scale and the clout they have with the devs/management.
Weren't the goons the ones betrayed and stolen from when there was a large ship released? I remember reading an article about this big backroom-deal betrayal but I forget who the actors were.
I miss EVE, the game has all over MMOs pointless :/ Its been so long since i played for real too. Still got a fair amount of assets, although i suspect 50 bil is probably pocket change nowadays.
Good game, VERY complex. I play it on and off since 2004 but I can't do it for more than a few days/year. It's incredibly slow paced and full of politics.
I've seen this twice in my journeys in IT as a consultant.
Two separate IT Directors had a second PC in their office that just had Eve on it. While working with them, they didn't pay attention to it, but when we would take a break or I was setting stuff up they would hop on for a few minutes here and there. Both said it was their part time job, and they did make some ISK out of doing it. I don't know anymore details though.
It was kind of distracting in the same sense as people who hop on their phones for a minute between pages or whatever.
I'll give them this, they did pay attention to the training or whatever and I had no issues with working with them.
If you're talking about the total game, politics, and all the other stuff that influences the game as a whole, a whole lot.
As an individual player who's not involved in politics or things like that, more than half your time is spent in game. It's a thinking game with a ton of complexity so the thing about it being "spreadsheets in space" is kind of true.
Curious how the fundamentals of (good) journalism (impartiality, being seen to be impartial, sourcing facts reliably) all transfer to a galaxy far far away
EVE reporting have a long history of being very biased, some of the largest organizations in the game usually run their own news sites.
I think it's very difficult to make people see you as unbiased in a world where everyone is an enemy, even your "friends" are probably spies waiting to stab you in the back and steal all your stuff.
I've seen long time friends F each other for all they own or to gain favours in the greater political hierarchies.
It's savage once you get to a certain point in terms of resources or logistics.
Wait. You don't think 'friends' backstab each every day to get ahead at work? Or that 'friends' hold each other back out of jealousy? The crabs in a bucket analogy has been around long before Eve.
