http://www.eve-online.com for those of you who don't know what it is. If you've never played it, it's well worth trying out, though it has the steepest learning curve of any game I've played in a long time, so it might not be for everyone. If you do decide to give it a go, I highly recommend joining EVE-University, the classes they run are invaluable.

My character's name is Jonan Amraphenson, only about 3 months old, but already fairly skilled (I'm flying a Vexor at the moment, currently training Leadership V so I can help lead ops during wartime), but already earning a fair bit of isk ratting in lowsec (risky I know, but well worth it), and doing a bit of trading on the side.

So, does anyone else here play, and what are your character's names?

When I have money in about 6-7 years, I'll play then

Yea I play and I was in Eve University myself. That reminds me I need to set a new learning skill.

3 and a half month character, 5 million SP. Mostly carebear stuff up to now but most of my friends are already in 0.0 with PoS and stuff, so I'll probably make the trip there soon. Need to get my raven there some how so will have to wait until there's a carrier free to move it to 0.0. No way I'm gonna do 30 jumps through 0.0 with a Raven

lol, that wouldn't be a good idea... though most of 0.0 is actually pretty quiet, except for the systems leading out into lowsec

I don't really have any plans to go to 0.0 yet, though I will do eventually. I'm probably going to stay with E-UNI (I'm a mentor there) for another 3 months or so (minimum term of service for our navy, I just became an officer in it), then either move to a lowsec corp, or possibly head straight off to 0.0. If the uni can finally manage to secure a 0.0 system of our own, I'll probably stay there instead, and help defend it.

Ah, EVE, the one halfway decent MMORPG in a sea of horrid garbage. Despite all its balance issues and node-killing blob wars, I still can't leave that game. Currently I'm a nice little minion of Finfleet/BoB, flying interdictors/recons/command ships. For obvious reasons, I can't really help anyone out directly, my corp is invite-only and requires a real-life friend to give you a recommendation, but I haven't put my pirate past completely behind me. I know some people who are recruiting and can give you all the killmails you could hope for, so I can set you up with them and get you started on your way to the dark side.


Character name is Merin Ryskin, if you want to catch me in-game. And berood001 and Dark0ne, you still haven't posted your character names... afraid we'll hunt you down and pod you?

Ah just one more boat floating in the Sea in which all MMORPGs reside. One way or another, they are more or less equal. Heh, most here probably already read / posted in my thread about them ^_^

I remember Zero Puntuation's review on Tabularasa and to quote one word - "Grindtastic".
Nothing against MMORPGs in general, I just dont see the charm in them.

Guess you really haven't looked into EVE, otherwise you'd see just how different it is from most other MMORPGs. I used to feel the same way about MMORPGs, and then I found EVE, and realized just how much potential the genre has.




The charm is simple: a massive world where evil is not only allowed, but encouraged. Scamming, betrayal, murder, all of these are fair game in EVE. I live for the hatemail and obscene rants in local chat when I gank someone and take all of their worldly posessions, knowing that they won't just respawn in that ship 30 seconds from now, it's gone forever and the surviving wreckage is now mine. It's knowing that I can sneak into the corporation of my hated rival, build up their trust, and then turn on them, stealing all of their assets, killing all of them, and leaving them crying over the shattered ruins of their dreams. Oh yeah, and there's that trivial war between thousands of people on each side, fighting for control of over half of the EVE galaxy... apparently that's supposed to be fun?

That's why I love the game.

You sir, are not a very nice man.

Do you get any kind of bounty for pirates? In that case, I might join up.

Hmmm... well I still fail to see it, but than again some people like that sort of thing I guess.

Also some people find fat people attractive. I can't understand that either, but other people don't understand why I enjoy playing Lego Star Wars.




P.S.that wasn't meant to be cruel, so don't take it as an insult, it's meant to express an indifference and a light and comical view of the situation.

Well your complaint against MMO's was that it's grind-tastic. Eve Online can be grind-tastic, but unlike most (all?) of the other MMO's out there, you don't need to grind in order to reach (considered) end-game content (or alternatively named; high-end content) such as huge fleet battles and 0.0 territory attack and defense. In Eve fleet battles, people who have been playing for only a couple of weeks can be valuable assets in huge 400+ person fleet battles; flying the small frigates that are going to keep the other smaller ships off the tails of the huge capital ships. They also help defend miners from pirates and ask as early recon for invasion fleets or system defense.

What Morrowind/Oblivion is to RPG's, Eve is to MMO's. Open-ended exploration, do anything you want.

Once you get into the bread and butter of Eve, 0.0, you'll never look back. I constantly find myself looking at the Sovereignty Map of Eve, which shows which player owned corporations own which sectors of the Eve universe, cause it's just so damn cool looking at who's been attacking who, and how they got there.

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As an update from my post I moved to 0.0 space this weekend and joined Brutally Clever Empire (BRUCE), cause all my Eve friends are in Icarus Wings corp. BRUCE recently took all their territory from Band of Brothers, who are currently getting nuked out of extinction by pretty much everyone; mostly instigated by Goonswarm and Red Alliance, and recently the Mercenary Alliance. Consult the Soveriegnty Map to see where we are. We've got to fortify our position as much as possible because once Goon and RA are done with BoB (probably about a month to two months) they'll want to try and sweep through all our territory too. BoB have lost a lot of territory, but they also have a huge capital ship fleet and atleast 4 more titans (the biggest ships in the game). The titans aren't a major problem, but the amount of carriers and motherships they have to support the titans are. I can't wait to read the reports and see the videos of the upcoming fleet battles of BoB vs. the universe!

EVE ain't the kind of game you just "quit" from after a while, correct? The people behind the corporations must be sitting on the comp 24/7. You gotta have to be a sort of businessman if you're supposed to control a whole empire.

To be in charge of one, yes. But the amount of time you put in is totally up to you. I recently commanded a nice 60-man fleet (small compared to some of the 0.0 fleets, but we were in Empire Space, so it was relatively big) in a war against Racketeers (RAK), who decided to declare war on E-UNI thinking that we were just a big group of noobs who didn't have a clue what we were doing. How wrong they were... they surrendered just 2 days into the war, leaving us with a kill efficiency of 84.91% (you can see all the results here). Proof that if enough new players in frigates (for many people, it was their first ever taste of pvp) get together in EVE, they can still do some serious damage. I'm only a pretty casual player (6-7 hours a week usually), and I managed to do a good job of it, especially considering it was my first taste of command (we popped an Abbaddon!), which goes to show that you don't need to play obsessively in order to do a good job of leading. Obviously, managing a 2-3000 man corp is something else completely.

It's definitely worth at least trying out the trial, and giving it a go, you might be pleasantly surprised!

Something tells me you haven't had the wonderful experience of a DD shot blowing away your entire fleet. I can't say I've been in one myself, but I've jumped in on the results... it's even more fun since we have multiple titans. You might be able to tank the first DD, but the second one will finish you off quite nicely. Sadly the videos may be a bit lacking... given our numbers, and the even bigger numbers of people who want to kill us, you aren't going to get much out of it. I don't know how many big fleet battles you've been in, but the slideshow lag is really not that impressive to watch. And that's assuming we can avoid crashing the node...


So I'll ask again... what's your character name? Just out of curiousity, I'd like to see if you ever show up on my killmails, and keep an eye out for your pod when I'm dropping bubbles.

That's wishful thinking. My character name is Dark Sensei. Feel free to stick a bounty on my head, too, if you like

One of our stations is actually named the Doomsday Survivors Retreat after the alliance fleet taking the system survived a DD strike. Might have been two, can't remember. A testament to the skill of the fleet, and BoB's over dependence at that time (from being too greedy and stretching themselves too thin, a foolish mistake) on their big guns. Seems your alliance is now paying the price quite heavily for their arrogance!

Let's not also forget the t20 incident that got you into this mess in the first place!

ooh, Dark0ne, I see you're online now... if I knew where you were, I'd come and fight you, just for the hell of it, but I doubt my T1 fitted Vexor could do much damage

Also, I believe uni has a NAP with BRUCE, so it'd probably cause a major diplomatic incident, so I'd best not

Someday when I've moved to nullsec, we'll have to do a bit of sparring

In other news, I just broke the 20 million isk mark for the first time! Yay!

Well I'm only in a ratting Drake (lol...using HAMs and a MWD) but ratting in 0.0 is so different to mission running in empire that you don't need to worry half as much about tanking. My raven should be arriving tomorrow from empire then I'll be making about 30mil an hour from ratting; I was making 20mil an hour just now after chaining some decent rat spawns.

How many SP is your character, Terminator? You should seriously consider moving out to 0.0, either with your corp or by changing corps; it's such a different climate and makes the game 100% more enjoyable. What is stopping you at the moment?

I'm about 2.7 million SP, and the biggest ship I can fly is a Vexor. That's what's stopping me.

Also, last month I signed up to the ILN (Ivy League Navy, Ivy League is e-uni's alliance), which has a minimum term of service of 3 months, so I'm staying with uni for a while.

I've got a friend going out in small PVP gangs taking out BS's and stuffin 0.0. Think he's only got 2mil SP, can never have too many tacklers! Honestly, low SP isn't an excuse. You can have a useful PVP ship in just a couple of days!

What happens if you break the minimum term of service? :X

It's not a perfect defense, but multiple titans are really not something you want to face. I suspect with more and more alliances getting them, they're going to get a nerf in the near future. One DD is bad enough, 2-3 will kill pretty much all fleet ships, and with more titans you start getting DD shots every 15 minutes. Sure, you can still swarm through it if you're willing to take enough losses (Goonswarm anyone?), but it's not easy.

And I'd hardly say it's arrogance to depend on titans. They do the job very well. The only problem is the sheer numbers against us. It's going to be really amusing once we finally lose our last sovereignty claims and everyone suddenly finds themselves without a target to unite against. I don't think BoB is going to stay dead for long... once you all start fighting each other, we'll just sneak back in and grab a few regions.




No, let's not. Let's also not forget Goonswarm's DOS attacks on the forums, and how they released their fake "CCP are cheaters" story to every major gaming news source. I really get tired of the whole BoB are cheaters bit... the T20 incident was bad, but we're hardly the only ones with a black mark on our record. It's just nobody seems to care when other alliances do it.

The arrogance reference was more towards your open policy on wanting to rule the universe, expanding into regions you couldn't possible hold onto if some wars broke out, and then your dependence on pet corps to keep you going! :X



Yes sir, I can't wait for that day. That's why we're so busy trying to fortify Fountain, it'll probably be one of the first targets for Goon or MC with them knowing we've only been there for a month or two. I'm really hoping that Goon and Red Alliance will go at it, but I highly doubt that will happen.



I think you're right. I think it may even suit BoB to have a new leaf to start from and do a bit of the old guerilla warfare on regions. Wonder how the current warring states will take to BoB coming back though?



You are public enemy number one at the moment. That's sort of how it works :X

*laughs*

Everyone wants to rule the universe. At least we're honest about it.

The pet thing is pretty much true of everyone, once you get to that scale. It's just not possible to hold that much space without making some deals with people. I mean, look at Goonswarm/RA/MC doing exactly the same thing. You BRUCE people are pets, they just give you a different name and boost your ego a bit more.



They won't really have any choice about how to take it. What are they going to do, drop the current war and protect their pets? "Hey, sorry guys, we just blew up your towers and took all your systems... but can we be friends again?". No, once the anti-BoB faction splinters, there's no chance of getting it back.



And this is the annoying thing... everyone focuses on "omg BoB are cheaters", and forgets that every other alliance is doing the same thing. I mean, just consider the Band of Developers name, when in reality, there are more devs in Goonswarm than in BoB. Yeah, the T20 thing might not be going on everywhere else, but a lot of the other stuff that BoB got a bad name for definitely is. Like POS bowling... everyone thought it was so horrible that BoB would use an exploit like that and get away with it, when in reality, it was IAC that invented the whole tactic!

In a just world, Goonswarm would be public enemy number one, and everyone would call a temporary truce until every goon had been driven from the game. I can respect most of the alliances on your side... good PvPers or bad PvPers, at least you play the game for honest ambition. Goonswarm on the other hand seems to have the single goal of proving themselves to be the lowest humanity can come up with... and then finding a way to dig even lower. Spend five minutes with them in local, and you will know exactly what I mean. The moment they pulled that little "threadnaught" stunt and started spreading false rumors in the general gaming news, CCP should have banned every player in their worthless excuse for a corp.

Actually having given EVE a try I can say this MMORPG takes this genre to a new level. Not only is EVE a grinding game, it’s grindtastic on its own plateau.

I will say that of the two space MMORPG’s, EVE takes the gold as the best, but such fails to remove the fact that even the most basic of tasks – say Asteroid mining, takes somewhere in the neighborhood of eight consecutive hours.

Having EVE use real time as opposed to an in game calendar representing time may sound good in theory, yet it still leaves the fact that you have to stay monitoring your task else risk being picked off by a random player who decides it’s fun to use you as target practice. Adding invulnerability during long tasks would have been a balancing feature but it wasn’t on the developers’ flow charts when they thought it would be fun to force players into basic tasks for one to two thirds of a day while arguing that you can have as much enjoyment playing for 10min as someone playing for 10hrs.

I can’t see what fun it would be coming back to your computer to find you’ve been killed six hours ago and being forced to scrape together another ‘everything’ to try and do it all over again.

I suppose any player of an MMORPG is going to defend it to the core (as they’re the ones throwing their money off a bridge each month), so this will fall upon deaf ears. Play it if you wish, but personally I have more fun modeling a space battle with LEGO bricks; that way I can design all the ships with tits.

Awww...carebearing in Empire space? We've all been there, got bored, and joined a corp. Moving into 0.0 or even low security space is like starting a new game; it's where the fun is at. A 60 man BoB fleet invaded our space last night and we helped a local Alliance take out a Carrier in local space. 200-odd people being coordinated in an effort to take out a cap ship, getting it down to half armour and having 3 more carriers jump in on top of us to try and help the carrier going down...now there's some fun

My friend lost his Drake 2 days ago to a Red Alliance defense force that jumped a Titan (biggest ship in the game) ontop of them while they were trying to pop a PoS....next thing he knows there's a big flash of light and he, and most of his friends are dead in a Doomsday blast. Now there's some fun.

To me the idea of a huge universe, controlled and dictated by the players, that is being fought for not just in military terms but in industrial and economic terms is a real turn on. I can understand that the depth, learning-curve and sheer amount of time it takes to really sink your teeth into the game is a turn off for a lot of people, especially for those FPS people who want to just pew pew each others' heads, or the laid back RPG folks who just like to kick back and play a story. I like both FPS's and RPG's, but sometimes it's good to get into something a bit deeper and a bit more long term. And of course the beauty of Eve is that I can stop playing it for a few months and my skills will still be training, so when I come back to the game my character will be more skilled than before and I can pickup right where I left off.

The average age of the Eve Online player is 27, quite a telling number I think.

I think you've sumed it up better than I ever could, Dark0ne.

Another thing that should be mentioned is the sheer number of things to do in the game. For example, last night, I spent a little while mining, before some friends asked me if I wanted to go out pirate hunting. We couldn't find any pirates, so instead we went ratting. After that I went to Jita and sold all my loot, before spending a while trading. After that, I flew back to my base, stopping to kill an ore thief who was harasing a corpmate, did a few missions, started a couple of manufacturing jobs (100,000 units of depleted uranium S ammo, and some medium armour repairers. Both fairl slow movers, but with quite a high turnover), and going to bed.

That is one example of an average 3 hours playing eve, and I by no means did everything I could've done. Plus, as Dark0ne said, there is a lot more to do in 0.0 as well, so there are really endless possibilities. Soon, for example, my corp has decided to go on a rampage: several hundred of us running around lowsec, killing anything that gets in our way. Great fun.

btw, Dark0ne, how big are the rats in 0.0 usually? I'd like to know what size ship I'd need to be able to fly before I go there.

Frigs, Cruisers and Battleships. I'm tanking and killing easily in a DPS Drake at the moment; my Raven should be brought in from Empire on the next carrier run, hopefully tomorrow. Frigs go for 20 - 30k bounty, Cruisers for 80 - 300k bounty and Battleships for 500 - 2mil bounty. There's no dire stuff; it's like taking out a normal NPC rat in empire except you get way more bounty and much better loot. Plus there's the chance of a faction spawn; had one today that was worth 10.5mil for one ship and dropped about 50mil worth of loot

Pew pew

Hmm... well, my T1-fitted vexor can handle 0.3 rats with ease... I might wait to get into a BC before moving to 0.0 first, though, so I will have a better chance of surviving.

btw, I noticed BRUCE are entering the 5th alliance tournament... will you be fighting? Either way, it should be fun to watch.

LoL...no, I won't be entering. The few alliance tournaments I've seen have been a bit meh...either 10 second flash battles that are over before they start or 15 minute armour tanking boredom! I wish CCP would setup some nodes with some serious server rigs that could handle a 100 v 100 alliance fleet tourney!

Heh, Ivy league was going to enter, but we completely missed the chance to sign up, like BoB and Goons, etc. In fact, I've only heard of a couple of the alliances entering, which is a shame. As for the fleet tourney... THAT would be something to see, but imo if they bought a new server node like that, it would be better spent on Jita... I dream of someday being able to trade at normal speeds...

Had a rather large fleet battle last night that lasted about 3 hours. We moved in on Reckoning to say hello with a heavy BS fleet. They brought in 4 carriers to begin with, which we happily tanked. Managed to take down one of their carriers but then they brought in 7 more carriers and 2 motherships in a cyno-jammed system, so our caps and super caps couldn't help. Needless to say they came off better, but it gave us further experience and we learnt a lot about how they operate. BRUCE industry is really well setup so they'll easily take on the losses and reimburse everyone.

I lost a Raven and a Drake and the lag was shocking; 180 people fighting in local with drones and fighters out = lagtastic. It took 5 mins to jump into the system with a 30 - 50% chance of disconnecting on arrival. Once you're in your FPS is about 0.5 and commands take about 2 minutes to register. If there's anything this game needs it's not better looking graphics or more content, it's a complete overhaul of the netcode to enable the fleet battles that are supposed to be what people are grinding in empire towards. The Jita area is in similar need of rescue, but that's easily recitified by like..not going into Jita.

Hm... the largest fleet battle I've ever been in was 107 people, and it wasn't too laggy - it could have been better, but considering we were in empire, flying around the Korsiki - Jita pipe, it wasn't bad. Only took around 20 seconds to jump into a system. Then again, the corp we were at war with only had 97 members, and only 6 of them were online, so there weren't many enemies lagging things out for us. All in all, it was pretty fun, even if our hulking behemoth of a fleet was too slow to catch any WTs, and we only really got moving at around 2am

As for Jita, I really need to get my trade alt to train marketing, but I'm loath to have to take time out of my main's training (I'm getting Gallente cruiser IV atm, and after that connections III), so it looks like it might have to wait for a while.

EDIT: Did you hear about the conflict between Triumvirate and SMASH/RK? It's going to be making my favourite lowsec ratting spot, Oijanen, very unsafe, and I can imagine the lag caused by battles in Korsiki and surrounding systems, which is where I'm based... should be a fun few weeks

Sorry to bring up an old topic, but I just had to post this... it's so true: