With EVE Online being today's Steam daily deal I thought "My bank account sure is £3.74 higher than I want it to be, why not buy EVE Online?" So that's exactly what I did. Obviously I knew a little about the game: it's player run economy, heavy focus on ships and mining, and it's love for spreadsheets; I forgot that it's also one of the most overwhelmingly, complex games to merely 'jump into'.

Qualon Crendraven

As soon as I logged in I was taken to the character creation screen, which is always one of my favourite parts of a videogame. I was able to choose my race and what I believe to be faction? I'm not entirely sure so I left it as it was - Gallente - and then chose the most caucasian looking character; not because I'm a racist, but because I'm white. The fun bit of this came at the end, where I was able to pose my character's face and take my portrait picture. Now obviously I made my character look as much of a buffoon as I possibly could and set it as the picture everyone else will see when they interact with me.

Stargates

Now, the first thing I had to do after creating Qualon was traverse Space, which is quite complex if you don't listen to the tutorial very clearly; something I wasn't doing due to listening to Will, Norm, and Gary. The first couple of missions are simple tutorial missions comprising of going from one Space station to another using Stargates and ship Accelerating machines that I've forgotten the exact name of; all very simple and straight forward, IF you know where to go and which stargate you need to warp to. After a while it tells you you can hit auto-pilot and then you never have to worry about that again.

After all the tutorials I got to choose a career path of sorts, and I picked the most business-y sounding one - I want spreadsheets damnit. So far all I have done is mined an asteroid for far too much of the material the guy wanted, converted a ship upgrade in to material by accident, sat and destroyed a part of space I didn't really need to, and complete about 5 courier missions, all in the name of Loict Mensier. Mid way through writing this I discovered the game has a windowed fullscreen mode - something more games need - and I have written most of the last paragraph whilst my ship is jumping through numerous stargates on autopilot. I imagine there will probably be more things to do whilst the ship is autopiloting, but at this time, I am glad I have this to do else I'd be bored watching my ship go to it's destination without so much as a click from me.

ISK

Now I'm not entirely sure what will come from these missions, and what happens when I get to see some spreadsheets, but I kind of hope I'll get to manage businesses or something, I really have no idea. The space warfare seems a bit boring if I'm honest, you just lock on to a ship and hit the blasters button, and I know it'll probably get more interesting with bigger ships and better weapons and such, but I want people to do that bit for me.One thing that I found odd for a videogames: I was taxed on my reward. Taxed I say. Admittedly once you think about it it fits in pretty well in this world, but still, it seemed weird at first. I have no idea how much is a lot of money in this game, but seeing a 40 billion ISK bounty on someone's head put things into perspective, especially compared to my tiny 500,000 ISK, but then I've only been playing for 3 hours.

The Future

The future indeed. I am going to try and further myself in the world of EVE online, as, I think, it is a game I should be absolutely interested in, but tbh we'll see, Battlefield 3 is out next week. But damn if I'm not going to try.

I also realise the title to this blog sets you readers up for some sort of fan fiction... Sorry, not from me. This is merely some thoughts I have that I felt like typing out. I should probably make another one of these, maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day. I may even write down some notes and save it all up for a larger, more interesting update for the end of the week, we shall see.

Thank you for reading, see you next time?

Alex.

With EVE Online being today's Steam daily deal I thought "My bank account sure is £3.74 higher than I want it to be, why not buy EVE Online?" So that's exactly what I did. Obviously I knew a little about the game: it's player run economy, heavy focus on ships and mining, and it's love for spreadsheets; I forgot that it's also one of the most overwhelmingly, complex games to merely 'jump into'.

Qualon Crendraven

As soon as I logged in I was taken to the character creation screen, which is always one of my favourite parts of a videogame. I was able to choose my race and what I believe to be faction? I'm not entirely sure so I left it as it was - Gallente - and then chose the most caucasian looking character; not because I'm a racist, but because I'm white. The fun bit of this came at the end, where I was able to pose my character's face and take my portrait picture. Now obviously I made my character look as much of a buffoon as I possibly could and set it as the picture everyone else will see when they interact with me.

Stargates

Now, the first thing I had to do after creating Qualon was traverse Space, which is quite complex if you don't listen to the tutorial very clearly; something I wasn't doing due to listening to Will, Norm, and Gary. The first couple of missions are simple tutorial missions comprising of going from one Space station to another using Stargates and ship Accelerating machines that I've forgotten the exact name of; all very simple and straight forward, IF you know where to go and which stargate you need to warp to. After a while it tells you you can hit auto-pilot and then you never have to worry about that again.

After all the tutorials I got to choose a career path of sorts, and I picked the most business-y sounding one - I want spreadsheets damnit. So far all I have done is mined an asteroid for far too much of the material the guy wanted, converted a ship upgrade in to material by accident, sat and destroyed a part of space I didn't really need to, and complete about 5 courier missions, all in the name of Loict Mensier. Mid way through writing this I discovered the game has a windowed fullscreen mode - something more games need - and I have written most of the last paragraph whilst my ship is jumping through numerous stargates on autopilot. I imagine there will probably be more things to do whilst the ship is autopiloting, but at this time, I am glad I have this to do else I'd be bored watching my ship go to it's destination without so much as a click from me.

ISK

Now I'm not entirely sure what will come from these missions, and what happens when I get to see some spreadsheets, but I kind of hope I'll get to manage businesses or something, I really have no idea. The space warfare seems a bit boring if I'm honest, you just lock on to a ship and hit the blasters button, and I know it'll probably get more interesting with bigger ships and better weapons and such, but I want people to do that bit for me.One thing that I found odd for a videogames: I was taxed on my reward. Taxed I say. Admittedly once you think about it it fits in pretty well in this world, but still, it seemed weird at first. I have no idea how much is a lot of money in this game, but seeing a 40 billion ISK bounty on someone's head put things into perspective, especially compared to my tiny 500,000 ISK, but then I've only been playing for 3 hours.

The Future

The future indeed. I am going to try and further myself in the world of EVE online, as, I think, it is a game I should be absolutely interested in, but tbh we'll see, Battlefield 3 is out next week. But damn if I'm not going to try.

I also realise the title to this blog sets you readers up for some sort of fan fiction... Sorry, not from me. This is merely some thoughts I have that I felt like typing out. I should probably make another one of these, maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day. I may even write down some notes and save it all up for a larger, more interesting update for the end of the week, we shall see.

Thank you for reading, see you next time?

Alex.

This game (especially the business stuff) intrigues me to no end, but I just don't have the power to dump all my gaming resources into it. It seems EVE needs to be the one and only game you play forever and ever.

Well, here's your first mistake: you picked Gallente. Everyone knows the Caldari are where it's at. Everyone.

As for the taxation, you can leave the starting corporation if you don't want to be taxed. If you form your own corp, you'll get to set whatever tax you want for your members -- anywhere from 0% to 100%; if you join another player-run corp, it'll be up to whoever's in charge. The starter corporations had tax added to them a while back as a money sink, as well as to get new players used to the concept. It's generally higher than what most player-run corps keep their tax at, so it's also something of an incentive to go see what other corps have to offer.

This blog looked longer in the editor, hmm.

@wolf_blitzer85 said:

This game (especially the business stuff) intrigues me to no end, but I just don't have the power to dump all my gaming resources into it. It seems EVE needs to be the one and only game you play forever and ever.

I hope I don't have to spend all my time in it, not at this point of the year anyway.

@EchoEcho said:

Well, here's your first mistake: you picked Gallente. Everyone knows the Caldari are where it's at. Everyone.

The text was too small so I didn't bother reading it. In hindsight, maybe I should have.

If this blog gets me stuck playing EVE again I will fucking find you and destroy everything dear to you.
 
I have your name.
 
Remember that.

@AlexW00d said:

@EchoEcho said:

Well, here's your first mistake: you picked Gallente. Everyone knows the Caldari are where it's at. Everyone.

The text was too small so I didn't bother reading it. In hindsight, maybe I should have.

It's all good. You can always migrate to Caldari space if you feel like it. It's mostly just an aesthetic preference -- I like the Caldari history, ship design, and color schemes. But there is one gameplay reason to pick Caldari: the biggest trading hub in the game -- the Jita system -- is in the heart of Caldari space, so it's good to have your base of operations nearby early on. Makes it much easier to get anything and everything you're looking for without needing to range far and wide to find it.

Like I said though, there's nothing stopping you from migrating over there -- as long as you don't opt into the Faction Warfare stuff. If you've signed up for Faction Warfare, then flying into high-sec space that's under another empire's sovereignty is inviting people to come try to kill you. Which if you want early-game PVP is great -- but it didn't seem like that's what you were looking for.

There's possibly a decent trade hub somewhere in Gallente space, but I honestly wouldn't know about it if there is. Might try asking the people in your starter corp. Believe it or not, a good chunk of people who've been playing the game for years still hang around in those starting corporations, so there should be some vets around to answer questions most of the time. At least that's how it was on my side of the fence, over in the Caldari State War Academy.

Mining is what I did, find a good corp, and get yourself into a mining barge. Corp Mining Ops are kinda awesome, especially when you get to work alongside an Orca Or Rorqual. Strip mining an entire belt with the glow of 30+ mining lasers is kinda epic, if a little repetitive.

As for money, yea, I had a ton of price tag shock coming into the game, you quickly realize how much money some people have, but by the time you start running Level 2 Missions, you can easily pull in a 800K Isk each mission after bounties, salvaging and rewards. Also, you can buy a whole lot for 500K.

@wolf_blitzer85 said:

It seems EVE needs to be the one and only game you play forever and ever.

This, a million times this, you cannot be a gamer and a regular Eve Online Player, they don't mix. At all.

@EchoEcho said:

Well, here's your first mistake: you picked Gallente. Everyone knows the Caldari are where it's at. Everyone.

Mhm, Caldari is the best, Missiles and Railguns for everybody, plus, we have Jita.

@Mikemcn said:

Mhm, Caldari is the best, Missiles and Railguns for everybody, plus, we have Jita.

Indeed -- probably worth mentioning: regardless of your starting empire, you can always train to use any of the other empire's ships, you just get a headstart for your own. As Mikemcn mentioned, Caldari ships are big on missiles, and missiles are the best PvE weapons around. Since you'll undoubtedly be doing a fair share of PvE combat early in the game (whether you want your character to be combat-focused or not), it's not a bad idea to consider investing in some of this skill-wise.

Here's my EVE advice, not that I'm an expert or anything.

• Fit your ship to its bonuses.
• Fit an armor or a shield tank. Not both.
• There are modules that increase damage. It took me an amazingly long time to learn this.
• If you have a drone bay, fill it up (Hobgoblins). Drones are cheap and it's essentially free DPS. Just call them back before you warp.
• Lots of people in high-sec will try to trick you into attacking them so they can kill you. Even if it looks like they are vulnerable, they probably have a friend nearby to help smoke you, or will just switch to a better ship.
• Unlike most MMOs, mobs don't just reset if you leave. It's perfectly valid to leave a mission, fix up at a station and come back. Their shields will repair, but not losing your ship is way better.
• Avoid Goonswarm. Their corp is practically devoted to scamming folks. It's totally part of the game, so I'm all for it. But they live to get people to go buy hundreds of real dollars of ISK for a capitol ship they will never get. And not believe the 500 million ISK fee to join either.
• If you buy PLEX, do it while you are docked in a trade hub. Flying around with PLEX in your hold is begging to be suicide ganked. And that can happen anywhere.

@YoungFrey: I'll try to bear all of that in mind. I think, even though I have 10 hours of play time under my belt, I'm still massively overwhelmed by this game. And am still just doing low level missions in the starting areas, if they are starting areas? I still don'y really understand much of what attributes ships have, or even my character has. But I'ma try and stick at it, I still have like 27 days of play time available.

@mfpantst: No idea, I got 30 days of time with the game. £8 maybe?

EVE is one of those games I'd love to play, but goddammit I just don't have the time. I can barely play the games I have now let alone the massive time-sink that EVE is. I tried out the free trial for a bit, and it was absolutely fascinating. But I'd never actually get anywhere with it.

@haggis: Oddly, I find eve to be one of the least time intensive MMOs i have ever played. It certainly has a steep learning cliff, but beyond that there is not really a huge required time investment