Eve Online

I started the new year off with a set of carry over vacation days, which it turns out at my current job is required to be used by March 31. As a result, I spent a week off at the end of February, when the beautiful Mrs. Wrecklass wasn't able to take time off from the School.

As is often the case, the extra free time led me to looking around for a game to try out. I've just about run the gamut of stuff I was interested in doing in World of Warcraft, and to be honest, MMOG's are the only thing that really hold my attention for long these days.

I wasn't aware of any new games coming out that were of much interest. I tried Dungeons&Dragons Online in the Closed and Open Beta, and found the game was a rolled up version of Guild Wars, with a monthly subscription. I might play it with a friend, but the game taken by itself wasn't that much fun. I find I prefer games that I can play solo, with interaction with other players done as a social, rather than game play component.

So it was a surprise when I read about a game that has been around for over two years now, that was getting good reviews. Perhaps more important, they recently announced that they had crossed over 100,000 paid subscribers, which is a milestone for MMO games. When I found that Eve-Online was offering 14 day free trial accounts, I decided to give it a look. Not really expecting to find the game to my liking.

To describe what Eve is, it may be easier to describe how it differs from other MMOG's on the market. Eve Online is probably unlike any other game you've played before. I should also say right off, that it won't be for most people.

Let me give the quick summary for those of you who won't be interested in reading the full account:

1) Eve has a single game world. Unlike EQ or other games like it, there is only one 'shard' in Eve. That means that when 24,000 people are playing Eve at the same time, they are all on the same 'server.'

2) Eve uses a skill based system, rather than levels. Lots of games use Skill systems, but Eve does things very differently. For instance, you gain skill points over time. Grinding out experience points just doesn't happen. You set a new skill to train, you see how many hours, days or even weeks it will take, and go about your business. When the skill has finished training, you get a message. The big difference is, skills train even when you are logged out of the game. So people who grind for hours every day have no essential benefit over people who can only log in for a couple of hours a week. However, you are limited to only one skill training at a time, and you cannot 'queue' skills to have one train immediately after another finishes. So there is some reason to log in for setting skills to train. There are no limitations to the number of skills a character can obtain. The limitation is simply time.

3) Your equipment is your ship and the items you use on your ship (weapons, scanners, armor, etc.) In Eve there isn't much in the way of "Plus 3 sword of vampire slaying." Everyone can make and/or purchase virtually any piece of equipment. You are constantly upgrading ships and equipment, and never should feel attached to anything. This leads to:

4) "Never fly anything you can't afford to lose" mentality. Death works in a couple of ways in Eve. During combat your ship can be destroyed. When this happens (not IF, but WHEN) you will need to purchase and equip a new ship. If you are playing against other players (PvP) you may also be killed after your ship is destroyed. While there are ways of dealing with 'death' you will mostly lose cash and time. You can insure your ship and your body (through clones) to avoid any real loss. However, the time it takes to reconfigure a ship is a big reason to try to avoid getting killed. However, PvP becomes much less 'personal' in Eve, because losing your entire ship is just something you learn to deal with. It can happen in PvE as well as PvP combat.

5) Eve space is controlled by the players. The central galaxy is patrolled by NPC guards known as "Concord" and they will protect players being attacked by other players. However, as you journey outward from the central core, the security levels of systems gets less and less secure, and Concord is completely absent in the furthest reaches of the galaxy. In these regions Eve player guilds (called Corporations) control space. Players can build their own Stations where corp. members can re-equip, and take refuge when needed. There are maps of the current Eve galaxy which show which corporate alliances maintain control in which regions. It is this aspect of Eve that perhaps sets it apart from any other game out there.

6) Eve's economy is vastly complex, and essentially player controlled. To summarize how the economy of Eve works:

A) Players with mining skills go to the moons and asteroids to mine ores
B) Players with freighters haul the ore to Stations
C) Ores are refined into basic building materials
D) Players with Science skills create blueprints
E) Manufacturing players combine materials and blueprints into equipment
F) Players sell equipment.

That's the 30,000 foot level short version. Large corporations have players who do all of these things. Some corporations specialize, Mining corps who spend time getting ore, freight corporations who haul items from one system to another for a fee, etc.

When purchasing a piece of equipment, you can see how much it is selling for in nearby systems, and there are even graphs generated by the game which shows you the price history for the item, along with moving averages for the past day, week and month. There are people who make money simply by purchasing equipment made cheaply in one system, and hauling it to another system where they can sell it for much more.

Of course, all of this within an essentially hostile environment. A freigher will want to have friends in combat ships to escort them, lest they lose their cargo to pirates. Yes, there are also pirate corporations which make a living off of the hard work of others, and anti-pirate corporatons who try to keep the pirates at bay.

The complexity of the Eve economic system gave rise to a singularly unique event in the Eve game world last year. In October 2005 a large player corporation of mostly dedicated PvE players decided to create a safe haven for players in a war torn corner of the Eve galaxy. To that end they decided to build an independent space station open to players who agreed to not use the station for agressive purposes. To finance the station (which are very expensive) the corporation sold stocks based on in game money. 3600 shares where sold to about 1200 players of the corporation.

The station was built during a player get together (like an Everquest Fan Fest) during which so many players were gone the station could be built in relative secrecy. The station collects money from players who come in for things like repairs and purchasing or selling items at the station. The station was seen as being so valuable to neighboring corporations, that nobody challenged it. In fact, the corporation that started the idea found it so lucrative, that they have used the profits to start other stations in player controlled space.

All of this because the Eve system gives players the ability to conduct business in a way that is very nearly as free wheeling as the real world.

So after all of that, I still haven't really talked about how one 'plays' Eve.

Eve is a Space sim style game. The 'world' of Eve is in fact a galaxy far far away, but not that galaxy. You play the game from the inside of a space craft, which you fly around doing various missions, exploring the vastness, and occasionally getting shot at by NPC's and other players.

As I mentioned earlier, Eve has only one 'live' server. Although in fact the Eve universe is hosted on 70 IBM blade dual core dual processor servers. Interestingly enough the Eve cluster was recently upgraded, and currently qualifies as one of the top 500 super computers in the world. All that for just one game. On any given evening there can be as many as 20,000 people online and, they have gotten as many as 24,000, all in the same game 'world'.

But it isnt just he hardware and number of concurrent players that has given the folks at CCP (who created Eve) the right to declare Eve the "Largest online gaming world." The Galaxy of Eve is made up of nearly 5,0000 separate solar systems, each containing multiple planets, moons and asteroid belts. Although players cannot disembark onto a planet, the sheer scope of Eve is very literaly mind boggling. The size of Eve gives one the feeling of infinite space to explore. To better understand this, let me talk about how one travels in Eve.

There are three forms of movement within the Eve universe. All of which can be done using the space ship your character occupies. The first and slowest would be the equivalent of Star Trek 'impulse engines.' Allowing the ship to travel at speeds approaching 1000 meters/second, this is the basic method one uses to approach a station for docking, or perform combat in Eve. It is the 'tactical' method of maneuvering.

The next form of transportation in Eve is what is called the "Warp drive" system. With it you can move quickly between planets, moons and other bodies in a single Eve Solar System. These systems are each huge, typically being as much as 50 Astronomical Units(AU) from one end to the other. Some of you may recall from high-school science that an Atronomical Unit is the average distance between the Earth and the Sun, or about 93 million miles (150 million kilometers.) With warp drive you can travel to a planet 10 AU's away in about 20 seconds.

The final form of transportation in Eve are the large Star gates, also called Jump gates. You use these to instaneously move your ship to nearby Solar systems. The game revolves around jumping between systems to deliver cargo, find new equipment for your ship, and interact with other players.

The jump gates essentially form the 'zone lines' within the Eve world system. It's entirely possible that the entire system is 'zone free,' but it would be impossible to determine. The only way to travel outside of a system is by he Jump gates. I considered what it would take to simply use Impulse power to find out if there are in fact zone boundaries, but the math is against it:

Consider, at 1000 m/s, given that an AU is 150,000,000 kilometers (150 billion meters) it would take a player nearly FIVE YEARS in real time to travel one AU. So traveling several light years (1 ly is about 24,000 AU) the matter of whether or not you can move freely to a different solar system without the jump drives is completely meaningless. And remember that I said there are nearly 5000 solar systems in the current game. Endless exploration is an understatement.

The amount of travel you do in Eve, and the time it takes to move from system to system is oddly one of the things that attracts many players. Rather than the mad dash games of instant gratification, Eve has a much slower pace to it. One can actually carry on conversations with other players, and yet it doesn't have the same feel as downtime in other games. Whether you are mining or going on a series of 'jumps' to complete a mission, you have the feeling you are accompling something in the game.

There is also the 'looking over your shoulder' aspect of the game that makes travel just a bit more interesting. Since the game is PvP, and other players could attack you at any time, you have to be 'on the alert.' This is especially true in lower security systems.

Even combat is at a slower pace in Eve. Combat feels as much like an RTS game as it does anything else. For instance, on missions, you may enter a "deadspace region" where NPC pirates are reported to be at. Once you spot the pirates you will want to evaluate their numbers and strength. In order to attack someone/thing you must move within the range of your ships weapons, and perform 'target lock-ons' to those threats you have decided are most immediate.

You may also deploy drones, if you have acquired such skills and have the drones aboard your ship. Drones are a kind of 'pet' that you can order into combat with you. However, drones come in different speed, size and power combinations, each having slightly different capabilities.

While combat is fairly slow in it's pacing, you are required to do a fair amount of multi-tasking during a battle. You must monitor the health of your ships systems, acquire and allocate targets for both your ships weapons and drones, and decide when to use other support systems. A ship has only so much energy available, so you must decide how many of your resources to put to work. It can be daunting at first. The first time I lost a ship in combat was because I simply hadn't been paying attention to my ships health, and found myself puttering along in an escape pod without warning.

As complex as the game is, you can imagine that the interface is equally complex. While that is true, the interface is very well thought out, and you can open and close windows to customize the information you have at your disposal during various different tasks.

While Eve is like a space sim, it isn't a flight sim, and you don't generally have to worry about flying your ship. You can set out a course and hit the autopilot to get between systems. During combat you can select to approach an enemy ship, or to keep it at a specied distance, or to orbit it at a set distance to keep your ship moving. All of this is done by simply clicking on buttons on your primary display.

Explorers will find Eve to be a fascinating play ground. Every system has it's own atmosphere, with suns of various sizes and colors from blue dwarfs to red giants. There are typically nebulous 'clouds' nearby, which add to the feeling of vastness in each system.

Planets come in a variety of types as well. I've watched dust storms moving across the surface of a planet very much like Mars, skimmed the rings of large gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn, and seen the lights of major cities on earth like planets. One of my more interesting discoveries came when I noticed a faint flash on a planet I was orbiting, and on closer inspection I could see lightening storms moving across the planets atmosphere. Eve is a cornucopia of things to see for the amateur astronomers out there. While you cannot visit the planet surfaces (in fact you cannot leave your space craft even at space stations) there isn't any obvious limitation to the types of systems you might explore. If you find time.

Well, after all of that you are probably thinking "Thanks Wreck, but I guess I don't need to play Eve now after that exhaustive description." However, I will, of course, rejoin with "But I haven't even scratched the surface." Which would be quite true. I haven't described the myriad ship types and classifications. Or the fact that after 2 years of play, even the oldest Eve player corporations have not accumulated the resources needed to build the largest class of ships, called appropriately "Titans." While I mentioned skills, I didn't yet mention that there are 15 different skill categories, each having as many as two dozen specific skills. Which adds up to hundreds of different skills that a character can learn. Thus making the liklihood that two pilots have the exact same skills extremely unlikely. While your character appearance is only a small aspect of the game, and rarely considered, the amount of player customization in skill sets is, pardon the pun, astronomical.

Finally, I dont' expect to see many of you in the Eve Universe. As I said before, the game is really not for everyone. It is highly complex and can bore those with a desire for fast action. However, if you decide to play, please remember that I'm on the Tranquility server.

Of course, that's the only live server in Eve Online.