Recently (well 9 months ago) I started playing Eve Online for 3-4 months.   I stopped for various reasons at the time, lack of my time being the main one - and I have recently found myself playing again in a new light for past month…

For those uninitiated, EVE is a funny game, though its player driven economy is what really has interested my in my current fixation upon the game.

Unlike many games your experience isn’t determined by how many enemies you kill and a grind.   You train skills, and this continues when you are offline.    Basically the longer you have played the better you are.    But this does not mean (after a few months) you will not be able to contribute - new players join all the time, and the gains from training higher skill levels take longer for little additional benefit, meaning a newer player doesn’t need take long to get good.    That said, you will find it takes 3-6 months to learn the game - its complicated in a good way.

To explain EVE in detail would be really quite complicated, but in short the below is a description of those ingame dynamics that attracted me to it:

• One group of players, the miners, pretty much produce most of the minerals that can be used in the game to create item.    They mine asteroids, then refine them into minerals, which are the “building blocks” of the game.
• Another group, the Industrialists, take minerals, and use them to build items using “Blueprints”, which they purchase from the market.    There are 2 classes of item - Tech 1, for which you can buy a blueprint.   Tech 2 (better version), which you need to copy then research a blueprint (which is an expensive/time consuming thing to do).
• You then have “mission runners” - these are players focused on flying their spacecraft in PvE engagements (that is player vs computer generated opponents).   They earn money from bounties, and from goods dropped in the shells of the ships defeated.     These can be reprocessed to minerals or sold.
• You also have PvP, player vs player, where you can sign up with one of the 4 races in the game to fight other races in a galactic battle for supremacy - this is new
• But, making things more interesting, there are Corporations and Alliances.    Now these corporations and Alliances can “own” space in the majority of unoccupied (ie non central sectors of thegame).   In unoccupied space, there is no law, so any ship can fight any other ship… This leads to massive battles for supremancy.

Now onto my experiences - I actually run 2 characters in game (on 2 monitors, in true geek style).     One is industrial, one PvE currently- this to save on time, and make the most of the resources collected in PvE to the best of my ability (making the bad items into saleable ones)…

The industrial side of the game I’m really enjoying - making a mini-empire of equipment I buy low, and sell high - as well as equipment I manufacture then sell for whatever the local markets will bear.    The way EVE works is there are trading hubs (Jita, Rens) where everythign is pretty competitive, but people don’t want to take 30-60mins in real life to fly their ship to Jita to go collect items sometimes, so the local markets are fiercly competitive for items manufactured and sold locally, as well as items imported.      Getting more complex, some items are only sold in certain places, so money can be made taking these “rarer” items, and distributing around the game world, for a mark up you understand.

PvE is something else, its tricky, not just a click fest.  I’ve been playing with tactics and lost 5 ships in past 4 weeks due to not getting away quick enough when I bit off more than I could chew.    I’ll post more about this in future, but its the industry side I’m concentrating on right now.

Anyhow, I highly suggest you try this game, its a free download, with 14 day free trial available from the main game site above.

A tip though… with current exchange rates its cheaper to buy the game via  Shatteredcrystal/another time card vendor who uses USD as its currency.     As its €19.99 first month.. €14.99 thereafter, and the same in dollars - a shattered crystal GTC for 60 days (paid in dollars) makes sense for me, worked out at under £9 a month for me last time I done it - which is better than the direct EVE costs - and makes it one of the cheaper mmo’s.

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