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EVE Online's Next Frontier
If you look at the graphs over at MMOGChart.com, most of the lines that aren't WoW seem to be heading downwards. The little engine that could, though, is personified by the Icelandic dynamo EVE Online. FiringSquad has an interview with CCP Senior Producer Nathan Richardsson. He discusses the popularity of EVE right now, and goes into some of the company's plans for making sure the game stays that way in the future. From the article: "This iterative process is based largely on our crazy future views of how EVE should be and a lot on player feedback. We then want to do some revolutionary stuff to the EVE universe and then evolution comes and bites us in the ass, reminding us that it's not cool to always throw new stuff in, the current game needs to be constantly maintained and evolved. In the end, we're never happy and I guess this is part of what is fuelling our continued passion for EVE."
Great. Now how about a Mac version!
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I'm playing EVE right now.
EVE I consider somewhat like Shadowbane-in-space, without the sb.exe and with a far better engine.
EVE graphics are great. Far better than anything else on the market that is an MMO.
I love the depth of EVE - you can trade, mine, pirate (PK), pvp, run NPC missions, or kill NPC pirates.
The huge amount of players online at any given time is great too - it isn't like standard MMOs with everything being on seperate servers.
EVE has a different levelling system also - basically time based. You set a skill up, it finishes after a set amount of time. No need to kill a mob over and over again, then move on to tougher mobs. Just time, based on the attributes of your character.
EVE requires a high performance system in order fully experience it in all its glory. I am using a p4 2.8 C, 1 GB ram, gf fx 5900 ultra typically at 100hz @1024x768 and my framerate is somewhat substandard. Going to build a new system specifically for this.
Also, alt usage is rampant in EVE. Because you can only train up one character at a time, a significant % of people run alts. I know of people that have as many as 5 accounts!
EVE's territorial, and risk vs. reward system is far superior to most other modern MMOs. In most other MMOs, there is no risk really, because of the watered down pvp. You die in WOW, you basically lose nothing. Not so in EVE. Dying in EVE can be seriously painful because of the massive expense of well fitted ships.
My only gripes with EVE is the time based levelling has some of the oldest players nearly at 55 million skill points (SP) so newer players cannot dream of competing with them, not for years. There is significant amount of time to be spent in your initial learning tree, and follow on into chosen skills based on your professions.
For a few months now. I think the biggest thing keeping people playing it is the complexity. On eve-online there are programs to help you choose the right types of weapons for range, speed, ship size, ammo type, and so on. There are about five different types of each turrent, going from really cheap to really expensive...and there is a definate difference in game play. Hundreds, if not thousands, of different combinations of different ship moduals that can change various attributes of the ships such as CPU usage, power output, sheilding (against four different types of damage like explosive, thermo, emp) all combine to make a complex game just to start out with.
.4 or lower (on a scale of .0 to 1, with 0 being mad-max land) anything goes pretty much. A few times I've come through a gate to be immediatly attacked. If I have a mission into low-sec space I'll put 2-3 warp coil stabilizers on the ship just so I can escape if I'm jumped.
Throw in corporations, pirates, wars...it really is like a different world. What I find most interesting in it is the fact I can start my character training on something, and then don't really need to go back and mess with the game until the training is done if I don't want to. The biggest problem is the amount of ISK (in-game money) that things cost. It takes weeks to get enough ISK together to build a decent battleship, and you can loose it in less than a minute. You sit in your escape pod...hopefully you bought some insurance, and even that isn't enough to get a ship like you had. There are pirates everywhere in low security space, and once you've dropped to
EVE is definetly not a game for the casual player. To get a really good character is usually takes at least 6mo to a year to build up one character. But, if you enjoy space combat and corporate subterfuge, it is a very fun game. Also, even though it have great graphics, it's not overly-taxing on the system like WOW and COV.
Maybe we DID take the blue pill. You wouldn't remember anyway.
You only fought NPCs. You were in high security space the entire time.
You mentioned nothing of true tactics in ship vs ship pvp.
When it comes to player vs. player in EVE, EVE has so much more tactics and strategy than most other MMOs. The simple reason behind this is the massive variety of ships, loadouts, skillsets. Whereas WOW has certain classes that specialize in killing other classes, and strictly defined skilltrees, EVE has far more variety.
Yet another newbie posting on a game. This is like a level 5 nub in WOW talking about endgame.