Pure Digital Thought

I’ve been neglecting my site a bit. I’ve been a little addicted to another game I’ve been playing. I know I keep saying I’m going to finish my article on The Ultimate MMO but I never seem to find the time. Between World of Warcraft and my new game, EVE Online, the time just flies.

About EVE though, it’s a space MMO. Warren somehow found out about it I think through an article over at AFKGamer and decided to suck me into the game like a crack dealer. “Here John, have a free 14-day trial. The first two weeks are free”, he says. Yeah, thanks buddy :-). So, I’m playing EVE Online now.

At first glance, I was a little hesitant. See, I played Earth and Beyond beta and it was a heaping pile of crap. I just didn’t understand that game. The rotten experience I had with it and other space/futuristic MMOs made me a little concerned. But, Warren assured me it was fun so I decided to give it a shot. Besides, the first two weeks are free ;-).

I actually really like EVE Online. The first part of the game has you jumping around a bit to different stations doing delivery missions. But, the game starts to open up after that. The appeal I find in this game is the amount of player run stuff in it. There aren’t any hard lines. You don’t start in a certain faction which has default hates/likes for others. You start out as a regular pilot. Should you choose, you can stay on the side of law or you can become an outlaw pirate. There aren’t any levels just skills that you learn in realtime whether you are playing the game or not. Guilds are called corporations and they are much more than just a group of people playing together. It is a corporation just as the name implies. They have a CEO and a CFO and members. You can invest in the corporation to give them capitol to buy ships and stations. Corporations can wage war on one another, put out bounties for other players, and put out mission contracts for other players to complete. This allows for a large degree of player run events, ideas, and actions. And in EVE, it seems to work well. Need work and tired of NPC missions? Go see if your corporation has bounties to collect or if they need someone to help collect supplies for their new space station or corporate battleship.

EVE has pure PVP. It’s the hardcore PVP all of the people on the WoW forums talk about but have never actually played. If your ship is destroyed, you better have bought insurance. Otherwise, you lose your ship and have nothing but what is in your bank account and space stations. If you get killed with your ship, you better have a clone that is up to date on skillpoints otherwise you lose out on a lot of skillpoints. Of course, if you are in a good corporation, you are able to get some support from a loss like that.

All in all, I like EVE so far. And I think I’ll continue to like it for a while longer. We’ll see what I think in a few months though.