Between the slow decline of BRAVE and the mothballing of KiteCo after nearly everyone simultaneously got sick of playing EVE after several years, and Austin's recent QuickLook of MechWarrior Online, I've taken up playing MWO instead of EVE for my "realistic" online gaming fix. Not only am I finding that playing MWO scratches the same itch as EVE, but I am finding it more fun. Both games slant towards realistic gameplay (well, as realistic as spaceships piloted by reincarnating immortals or giant walking tanks can be), but EVE's gameplay is hampered by its adherence to realism.

Being able to bring as many people as possible to any fight causes 90% of the fights in EVE to swing wildly in one side's favor. Since you have to replace any ships lost in combat (which can take hours or even days of grinding), you're also encouraged to avoid any fights you can't win. This is a rough breakdown of fights in EVE:

• 75% of the time, you don't have a fight at all. A side sees they're vastly outnumbered/outgunned and just refuses to fight.
• 20% of the time, an enemy gets caught off-guard. Curbstomping ensues. One side is utterly decimated, the other isn't scratched and doesn't even break a sweat.
• 5% of the time, you actually have a "decent" fight.

Most serious commanders actually try to reduce the number of "decent" fights in favor of curbstompings; in EVE, it's seen as poor tactics if you can't guarantee you'll win a fight before the fight actually starts. After all, exciting fights in EVE cost money, and commanders don't want to waste their coalition's money. This has the downside of making for rather boring fights for the fleet members; most resort to comparing the value of their kills for entertainment in lieu of challenging fights.

The sheer amount of pilots you have to bring for most fights (anywhere from a few dozen for a Faction War skirmish, to 100+ for a NullSec sovereignty war) also means individual pilots have about as much influence on the outcome of a battle as... well, a real-life infantryman. Unless you're one of the commanders, the entire fight boils down to Follow Orders, Go Here, Orbit This, Attack on Command, with an occasional Call for Repairs if you're attacked. It is nearly mindless; a bot could make just as good of a combatant as you would. (The commanders would probably prefer to command bots, too; they wouldn't have to worry about morale, exhaustion, or boredom.) The dirty secret of EVE's big fights is that all of the interesting decisions/choices are in the hands of the 1% of the playerbase: the CEOs, the commanders, and the spies. Everyone else just follows orders.

Meanwhile, fights in MWO are set up like a typical FPS: 12-on-12, evenly-matched sides, no cost for losing a mech. There's faction warfare and outfitting your own mech, similar to EVE, but there's also no reason to avoid a battle, and keeping it set at a low number of players makes every mech vital. There's feints, diversions, misdirection, and bold strikes, same as EVE, but they're played out on the battlefield between individual players instead of behind-the-scenes amidst the corporations and their spies. When I play a match of EVE, I'm actually thinking about our positions on the battlefield and trying to predict where the enemy will be, rather than just following orders like I would in EVE, as a direct result of the "gamey" elements MWO lets into its "realistic" take on mech warfare.