EVE Online

Overview

EVE Online takes place over 21,000 years in the future when humanity has exhausted nearly every resource in local space, forcing rash action upon the discovery of a wormhole leading to an unexplored galaxy called "New Eden." Thousands of desperate colonists flooded through the gate (dubbed "EVE") built around the wormhole but were caught on the other side when it collapsed, severing all communication between the surviving colonists and Earth.

EVE Online features an "open economy" system that allows players to freely influence the flow of currency throughout New Eden, leading to larger-than-life player run banks and corporations and even bigger bank heists and corporate coups d'etats.

Character Creation

The game's cinematics are top notch.

Players begin by selecting race and bloodline for their starting character. When picking the faction, it may be a good idea to familiarize yourself with player opinions about the various factions, but ultimately it's down to what faction seems to appeal to you the most. The major races are the corporate Caldari, the tribal Minmatar, the dogmatic Amarr, and the Gallente. A fifth, advanced race, the Jovians, are not currently playable and serve as a buffer and a as game creator presence.

These choices make for certain traits that your character portrait will possess, and more vital to the game system, give you starting stats and a starting area from which you will begin. It also affects who will, by default, be hostile to you, and who will not automatically attack if you're nearby, like most MMOs. However, since players control a good portion of what happens in the game, it's no guarantee of safety.

Other background choices, like Ancestry and School (with Department, Field, Specialty, help further define your character through generating basic skill choices available.

Racial Ship Strengths and Weaknesses

Amarr

The strengths of Amarr ships are a strong armour defence, allowing them to shrug off many hits. They also use lasers in combat, which consume much less ammo per shot than other weapons. Some laser crystals can literally be shot an infinite number of times. Amarr ships also have large capacitor (energy) reservoir.

Weakness of the Amarr include weak shields. Shields on Amarr ships are more for decoration than anything else, providing only a handful of seconds before being taken off-line. The lasers Amarr use have the largest energy needs per shot, quickly depleting the natural reserves of capacitor found on many ships, and not lasting much longer, without assistance, in their own ships.

Caldari

The Caldari have the strongest shield defence of the 4 player races. They also utilise missiles more than regular guns, which have the benefit of using none of the energy reserves on the ship. The reserves can then be used on other functions, such as electronic warfare or afterburners.

Caldari do have very weak armour, so if the shield falls, the ship doesn't have long to escape before being destroyed. Missiles also take up more cargo space than other ammo types.

Gallente

Like the Amarr, the Gallente favour armour over shields, however, certain Gallente ships can be configured with shield sytems to rival the Caldari. Gallente favour drones over other methods when it comes to offense, though their ships can be fitted with Hybrid Guns (such as railguns or blasters) to add to the firepower of the drones. The guns can be swapped out in favour of using other modules to deplete an enemies capacitor or to repair the shields or armour of allies.

The main weakness of the Gallente is a reflection of their main strength. Drones, not be attached to the ship, can be shot and destroyed by the pilots' enemies, drastically reducing the pilots offensive capabilities if no replacements are avaliable.

Minmatar

The weapons used by the Minamatar are projectile weapons, similar to those used in warfare today. Unlike other weapons, which deal only 1 or 2 types of damage (drones and missiles can do 1 type of damage which can be changed with the drone or missile, Lasers do EM and thermal damage whilst hybrid guns do thermal and kinetic damage), Minmatar weapons can be configured to do almost any combination of 2 form the 4 damage types, depending on ammo. One ammunition is noteworthy in the fact it does 3 different damage types. On the defence, Minmatar go with the phrase, "if it doesn't hit, it can't hurt". Their ships can be configured to incredible speeds, causing many weapons to miss their target. When hits are taken, a well configured shield can brush these off without much worry.

However, if slowed down enough, Minmatar ships can be blown apart with relatively little effort, due to a much weaker armour and hull. They also lack the raw fitting options that provide the other races with a variety of offensive.

ORE (Outer Ring Excavations)

Whilst not actually a race on their own, (members of ORE are from the 4 above races), they do supply the world with non-combat ships.

Un-equalled in their main strength (mining and related activities for most of their ships, unprecedented salvage capabilities for one of their ships), ORE ships can be quickly taken apart by a single battleship or a small fleet of smaller ships.

Jovians

The race of the developers, Jovians are not currently playable by the players. The few Jovian ships currently in EVE are game breakers, belonging to only a handful of developers and GMs, that are hard to rival thanks to having the strengths of all the races, and the weaknesses of none. Currently, Jove ships have only been used by their owners to instill fear and to show off, as using these in combat could cause an outcry by the player populace.

Life in EVE

It may be considered misleading, but you never actually get to see your character walking around a world. This has changed in summer 2011 with the release of the Incarna expansion. The character is the pilot for your current starship, and his or her stats provide the basis for how well the ship performs. In a sense, your current ship is more your avatar than the character is, or at least, they are considered as one until your character pilots a new ship.

The game offers pretty complex ship customisation tools.

Through the course of battle, should your spacecraft be destroyed, your ship will automatically eject your character in a life pod. This pod will eventually transport your character back to port. The game allows, though, for these pods to be destroyed. Should it be destroyed, then your character is resurrected using the last saved genetic template you made (in a sense, like a save state), preserving the level of skills you had when you saved.

Characters begin in an NPC corporation, but many players will switch to a player-run corporation, which are just as volatile as those in real life due to the game's open economy system, where commonly controlled funds may be embezzled or outright stolen, and purchases can be made using group funds that would be difficult to make if a single player was attempting to make them. These corporations convene in a variety of ways, and in their attempt to achieve dominance they can be as brutal and efficient as any historical empire, all dependent upon their organization and leadership.

The skills you began with will likely dictate how well you perform at certain careers, although characters are not limited to those careers throughout their life. Rather, it's up to the player to build the skills they want to use for the equipment that best fits the job they want to have. At times even a poorly developed character can still run a corporation, so sometimes it's all down to your people skills, but in general it's good to plan out your character's development to bring about an optimal result. Careers can be acting as an agent in NPC or player missions, mining for materials that garner ISK (the game's currency, which has the currency name used for the game developers' own country of Iceland) or manipulating the market to net billions of ISK. Other careers including salvaging the wrecks left behind by others, exploring NPC complexes in the depths of space, or hauling vast quantities of items and materials from one place to another.

Skill development takes place over real time,

Although the interface will be familiar to most MMO players, EVE Online is not a traditional game.

whether or not you are currently logged in. A skill takes X amount of time to study, regardless, although there are stats which can shorten the time a character takes to learn a skill. There are hundreds of skills to study, many in skill trees. It's seemingly impossible to learn everything, though, so it's best to find a sensible skill development rubric, and a good idea to back up your character often to prevent this progress, which translates into actual money being paid in your monthly fees, from being lost.

Levels of Safety

When actually exploring the many solar systems of EVE, it's important to note the safety level of a given area. Safety is rated from 1.0 to -1.0. This is broken up into 3 regions: high-sec (1.0 -0.5), low-sec (0.4-0.1), and null-sec (0.0--1.0). High-sec is naturall the highest relative level of safety (although you can still be wiped out even here!) with Concord police actively patrolling and protecting well-behaving craft. Aggression in high-sec invariably result is Concord destroying the attacking ships. Low-sec is significantly less safe, ships agressing are merely prevented from docking or using stargates for 15 minutes. They are also fired upon by, quite survivable sentry guns if they approach either. In null-sec none of those rules apply,it is lawless(or you could say that it's up to the players controlling the area what sort of law there is). A new type of lawless space was introduced in the Apocrypha expansion. So called W-Space (wormhole space) is different from normal 0.0 systems, low-sec systems and high-sec systems (collectively called K-Space (known space)) in that a W-space system can only be entered or left through a wormhole.

Unlike other games with several servers, EVE has a single, persistent server, and the game is always PvP. There are no safe zones, even in heavily patrolled areas, and a player could easily lose everything if they're not careful, explicitly targeted for elimination, or just unlucky.

Combat

It can be argued that EVE has a strong equalizing factor in the way it handles combat. Even in large-scale wars, the simplest of characters with the lowest level of experience can still contribute to the fight. They will not necessarily be direct aggressors, but beginner-level ships can be equipped with helpful machinery that can turn the tide of battle in the favor of their allies. Newbies can function as scouts, for example, reporting enemy movement, or tacklers who prevent the escape of ships being pummeled by more experienced characters.

Combat itself is similar to combat in other MMOs, where players have sets of abilities, dictated by ship equipment and enabled by character skills. These abilities have rates of fire and strengths, which are compared with the targets' relative strengths, and their activation is dependent upon a ship's capacitors which, like real life, store power for later use.

Different ships can help in different roles, like the classic tank or healer, but because equipment is modular these roles are far less rigid. You are able to create certain builds which optimize speed, damage, armor, drones, or any number of other features, any of which may be useful to larger groups. For smaller missions it tends to be better to have foundations in the basics though, especially in low-level NPC missions.

An Open Economy

Unlike some MMOs which rigidly control their economies to prevent devaluing and inflation, EVE is considered to be a more open economy. This means that production and resource availability is largely dictated by player actions. Miners will mine raw materials, which are in turn moved by transportation ships, then production facilities will produce ships from NPC bought blueprints and fit them with industry produced gear.

Gear and materials can also be looted from wrecks, which encourages player missions against NPC or player-characters ships, as well as general piracy. This method of obtaining materials (or minerals) often provides enough for mission based players to build and replace their own ammunition, though little more can be accomplished.

The open economy extends generally to the market, where players can buy and sell using general indexes as a guide, although they can make their own deals. Since the company doesn't refund ISK based on poor purchases, this can result in player fraud, from individual purchases up to defrauding whole companies.

There is some economic manipulation to keep areas balanced, in the form of introducing new resources in under-populated areas. CCP is also keen on preventing fraud that moves outside the reality of the game, and have frequently banned players who try to break this barrier through scams involving real currency. There are also occasional problems with CCP staff being involved in corruption due to their super-user capabilities allowing them privileged, world-changing abilities, which are also dealt with to prevent player disillusionment.

In-game ISK lost through fraud or theft, though, is considered fair within the confines of the game, even if this translates into a sizable investment of time and real money on the part of the players who lost these resources.

Expansions

Since its release in May of 2003, EVE Online has undergone several graphical updates and expansions in order to stay current. CCP release these expansions for free to EVE subscribers. Those expansions are:

Castor

Released: 18 December 2003

The first major content expansion, dubbed Castor, refined the original game. It added more components and ships, as well as space stations that could be conquered by players in deep space.

Exodus

Released: 17 November 2004

The second expansion, Exodus, added new ships, environments and multi-level scenarios called Complexes. It was originally codenamed Shiva.

Exodus: Cold War

Released: 29 June 2005

The Cold War expansion revamped the existing tutorial and a storyline introduction. It introduced freighter and dreadnought capital ships, and improved NPC pirate AI in deep space.

Exodus: Red Moon Rising

Released: 16 December 2005

The Red Moon Rising improved performance and updated combat, research and manufacturing. This expansion also revamped many ships and introduced twenty-three new ships.

Bloodlines

Released: 2 March 2006

This expansion included new Asian bloodlines for all races.

Achura, citizens of the Caldari State and expert scientists Jin-Mei, members of the Gallente Federation renowned for their legendary leadership traits Khanid of the Amarr Empire, the primary fighter-warriors of their culture Vherokior of the Minmatar Republic, the established manufacturers and engineers of the tribes.

Revelations

Released: 29 November 2006

This expansion introduced EVE Voice, a Voice over IP tool used from within EVE (licensed from Vivox). Eight new areas were added, in addition to a contract system for players.

Revelations II

Released: 19 June 2007

Revelations II added a new optional tutorial, as well as refinements to the original. Existing features were expanded, such as additional content for solo exploration and a broader scope of player-owned star systems.

Trinity

Released: 5 December 2007

Trinity updated the graphics engine. It also added new ships in new ship classes. Trinity came in two variants: Trinity 1.0, and Trinity 1.0 Classic. The former added the updated graphics, and the latter did not. However, they both contained the additional content.

Empyrean Age

Released: June 10, 2008

This expansion allowed players and player-run corporations to fight for NPC factions against each other for different sections of space.

Quantum Rise Released: 11 November 2008

This expansion added further graphical improvements and streamlined communication between the server and clients. It overhauled the speed system for ships and rebalanced industrial ships. It also added a certificate system that gave verification to a player's advancement in a group of skills and medals that can be awarded by corporations.

Apocrypha

Two ships near a wormhole

Released: 10 March 2009

The Apocrypha expansion added a training queue for player skills and the exploration of uncharted areas through wormholes. The artificial intelligence of the NPCs was improved and a new NPC faction was added, called the Sleepers. Sleepers differ from other NPCs in that they can and do change target at will, often targeting weaker ships in fleet, similar to tactics used in EVE PvP.

Apocrypha 1.5 was released on 20 August 2009 that added four more epic mission arcs and performance improvements for Factional Warfare.

Dominion

Released: 1 December 2009

Dominion updated the sovereignty mechanics, making it easier for areas to be taken and re-taken. Updated the in-game web browser to use the Chromium Toolkit.

Tyrannis

Released: 26 May 2010

This expansion allowed players to build structures on the surfaces of the planets.

Incursion

Released: 30 November 2010

Introduces live, escalating, large-scale NPC combat encounters, performance improvements, enhancements to the EVE Gate social networking platform, and an improved character generation component.

Incursion 1.1 was released on 18th of January 2011 and included the new character creator, a prelude to the Incarna exansion which will allow players to walk in stations.

Incursion 1.4 was release on 6th of April 2011 and included more character customization, new DED Conplexes and many little fixes by Team BFF. An extensive list is available on the expansion feature page.

Incarna

Released: 21 June 2011

Incarna marked the arrival of the first phase of the highly anticipated "Walking in Stations," or simply WiS, feature that has been in development for the majority of Eve Online's life. It also introduced new new models and animations for all the turrets in the game, updated designs for the Amarr's Maller hull, the arrival of the NeX shop, a completely new beginner tutorial, ECM changes for NPCs, changes to the Jump Bridge mechanic, the ability to check you faction standings, and various other minor performance improvements.

Incarna 1.1 was released on 1st of September 2011 and included improvements to Eve Gate consisting of Activity Notifications, for your in-game characters, and Personalized Backgrounds. It also marked the changes to Eve's API which included Contract Information and Customizable Keys.

Four days later, on 5th of September, the new Eve Online forums were introduced with a host of brand new features while the old forums were deactivated. However, CCP has archived the old forums in a read-only format.

Incarna 1.1.2 was released soon after and marked the return the Ship Spinning feature that was removed at the release of Incarna. 1.1.2 also included various graphical fixes.

Incarna also arrived with a fair share of controversy. The WiS feature only launched with one Captain's Quarters consisting of the Minmatar race when it was supposed to launch with four, one for each race. The WiS feature was supposed to include multiplayer environments as well, as the CQ is only a single player environment, but there was no news on their progress.

The new NeX shop that arrived with the expansion was CCP's way of introducing micro transactions into the game. Howvever, due to the high prices of items in the shop, many players became unhappy with the management of the game. This issue was further escalated by leaked emails from CCP employees discussing matters such as selling ships and ammo in the NeX shop, speculation of CCP preparing to transition Eve to a free-to-play model, and many other things. Many players revolted in the forms of in-game protests and cancelled subscriptions. All of these events later became known as 'monoclegate' in reference to a monocle item sold on the NeX that, when converted to real world currency, essentially costs $65. Ironically, the monocle was the most popular item in the shop which some attribute to the fact that it was used to instigate players who were angry with CCP and the NeX shop.

The CEO of CCP, Hilmar Veigar Pétursson (CCP Hillmar), later released an official apology describing the mistakes that were made and how he takes full responsibility for everything that went wrong. Many players saw this as the first step to CCP getting back on track, but many players still left the game claiming it was too little too late.

Crucible

Released: 29 November 2011

Set out to make right the problems of Incarna.

Inferno

Releasing: 24 April 2012

Expanding upon the success of Crucible. A lot of working is being done to tie into Dust 514 such as EVE pilots being able to bombard active games in Dust, betting on Dust tournaments that are streamed in real time, and planet side bases.

System Requirements

Windows

Minimum System Requirements:

OS: Windows® XP Service Pack 2 / Vista / 7
CPU: Intel Pentium® or AMD @ 1,5 Ghz or greater which supports SSE2
RAM: XP (SP2) – 1 GB / Vista – 1.5 GB
HD space: 20Gb Free Space
Network: DSL connection or faster
Video: ATI X1600 or NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT or higher graphics card with 128 MB of Video RAM* which supports Shader Model 3
Drivers: DirectX® 9.0c (included) and latest video drivers
DVD-ROM : 2 speed DVD reader or greater required.

*Note that older graphics cards such as the Nvidia 6000 series may work but is not officially supported

Recommended system configuration for running EVE Online:

OS: Windows® XP Service Pack 2 / Vista / 7
CPU: Intel Pentium® or AMD dual core @ 2 Ghz or greater which supports SSE2
RAM: 2 GB
HD space: 20Gb Free Space
Network: ADSL connection or faster
Video: ATi Radeon 5750 or NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460
Drivers: DirectX® 9.0c (included) and latest video drivers
DVD-ROM : 2 speed DVD reader or greater required.
Note: CCP has listed a recomended Windows Experience Index Rating of 4.0.

The minimum screen resolution for EVE is 1024x768.

Audio hardware must support SSE and be Direct Sound compatible. For optimum performance, use latest drivers available.

Please note that Windows 95, 98, ME, NT and 2000 are not supported.

Mac