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I am an old school gamer in the deepest meaning of the word, I am also a true fan of EVE Online. This blog will be where I will expound on my thoughts about EVE.

Author: Mopar63

While I am writing this blog entry from the perspective of EVE, this will apply to all MMO gamers to some degree.

When we jump into a new game what is the first thing it seems everyone wants to do? Get to the biggest, baddest ship I can ASAP. In the case of fantasy, get to the highest level I can as fast as I can. This is human nature when it comes to gaming, we want to be the best. However in our quest to rush forward we many times end up with the appearnace of knowing what we are doing and not in reality having a clue.

Let me regress to my LOTRO days for a moment to give an example. As I played up my Burglar I took my time and explored each new skill with a vengence. While others where making 2 or 3 levels a day I was lucky to see one every three days. I was not playing less, I was just staying at lower level quests and mastering solo play. After all this is what a burglar should be best at. The result was by the time I had reached level 30 I was better at using my burglar than most level 50s. In fact upon hitting level 45 I knew a lot of groups that would not want the lvel 50 but would rather I join them instead.

The same theory applies to EVE. Since my return I have taken the slow and deliberate approach. I have trained my learning skills first and added my base skills when I had time to micromanage the skills. I mean switch them literally as they come due. I have also curtailed my desire to get straight to bigger ships and have instead focused on mastering where I am.

Right now, if I truly wanted to I could be in a battlecruiser in 2 days, thats right 48 hours and I could be piloting one of the toughest ships in the game. Yet I am content right now to stay in my Slasher. SLASHER? You heard me right, Slasher.

My reasoning is simple. RIght now the Slasher is a ship that is inexpensive and easy on the skills to fly. As I skill up the effect on the Slahser is obvious. I seed speed boosts and my Nav skills come up. As Engineering skills advance I watch my shields get noticably tougher and my power grid improve.  I can see the changes with even one level change and this makes me better bale to fine tune my skill advancement.

Even the frigate pilots though rush forward to get into their Rifter. I stay with the slasher because it is the ultimate of Minmatar, my race of choice, style. It is all speed, that tied into decent fire power, three guns and a missile, and I am finding that I have yet to have an issue with a level 1 mission.

Staying in the Slasher has taught me prudence in combat. I do not feel invulnerable, in fact I am usually a little scared in some of the tougher missions. This is the same Slasher that I got from my agent early in my carreer so I have an attachment and am doing my best to not lose it. This prudence will serve me well in PVP where sometimes it just makes sense to retreat.

Now I still have the normal human desire to be the best so I have shifted my goal, I am going to be th best Slasher pilot in EVE. This means I still have a lot of skills in Gunnery, Engineering, Electronics, Navigation, Mechanic and Missiles to work on before I can achieve that goal. However once that goal is achieved it means when I move to the next level of ship I will not start barely able to fly it. Those same skills will move upward as well and I will be that much more effective when I am in the bigger ships.

So fi you are new to gaming, EVE in particualr, then my advise is avoid the rush. DO not sweat getting into the biggest ship you can as fast as you can. Stay calm and putter around a bit in your frigate. Leanr to master the smaller ship, make it your own. Trust me it will pay off, be a ton of fun and when you hit the bigger ships, watch out!

Well tonight I finished the EVE novel. It was a fun read and as an avid EVE fan it gave me some great insight to what was going on in the game world.

As I read the book I recalled a time many years ago when I was an ACTIVE mech warrior player. At that time I devoured the Mechwarrior books as fast as I could find them. However I was not so enamored that i felt they where great literature. They where good fan fiction that took a game world I loved and fleshed it out, but as far as overall scifi went they where B grade at best.

I wanted very much for the EVE book to be a great novel but it is, like the Mechwarrior books a great book for an EVE lover but only a B grade scifi novel.

The book does a great job of explaining the current situation in the universe of EVE. The Caldari are trying to return to former greatness, the Minmatar are seeking to regain their lost heritage and the Amarr are looking for the fullfillment of a great prophecy.

You might have noticed I did not mentioned the Gallente, well the reason why is they are basically a backdrop in the novel. You are left with the impression that the Gallente Federation is the greatest achievement that mankind will ever have and this is actually pretty sad. there is some great back fiction such as the move by the Intaki to leave the Federation, that could have been exploited with all this other chaos. However with three other races having MAJOR upheavel I guess one race needed to be stable.

I will not give away story details so as not to ruin the book for anyone else reading it. I will say the ending is such that we know a sequel is on the way. The rumor I have heard is that this is the first of a three part series. Also this novel has been heavily incorporated into the game universe of EVE, this is a gutsy and excellent move.

This move deepens the backdrop of the EVE storyline and has the potential to add a TON of new material down the road.

If you are an EVE player then you will REALLY enjoy this book. If you are a general scifi fan then this book is okay but nothing to really write home about.

In other MMOs you choose a race for what it will give you at the start but in EVE the reasoning falls back almost always to simple RP, choose a race that fits something you want to play.  Now the EVE site gives all the "official" race descriptions, what I am posting is my take on the backstories and a simplistic description of the BASE rap for each race.

Amarr: These are religious zealots that truly believe they are the chosen of God. Because they alone are the chosen of God other races must be brought to God and they feel the way to do this is through sacrfice of self to God's good, which means being slaves to the Amarr.  Imagine a cross between old testiment jews (yes they had slaves and did war on none beleiver, read the Bible to see) and crusader catholics.

Minmatar: A tribal society that was massively enslaved by the Amarr only over the last few centuries have broken free. A full third are still enslaved and the Minmatar want to free their brothers. The standard comparision to African tribes is classice and over used, this could also be the American Indians or even the nomadic Arabic tribes. In fact I really believe based on the sub racial descriptions and the fiction I have seen that in many ways it fits the American Indian models the best.

Gallante: It is hard to desrcibe the next two races without falling on political ideology sterotypes. The Gallante are the extreme of the socialist movement, take the US and French government, combine them and move them as far to the political left as you can. They believe in freedom for all and if you do not want to choose them then you must be forced to.

Caldari: This is the political opposite of the Gallante and in the end proves that both extremes are really the same. The Caldari are all about their economy with a military bend, imagine Japanese work ethic with an American economic model and a seious military bend, all taken to the extreme.

Now be aware that from an RP perspective there are always exceptions and I have described the most vivid and sterotypical of considerations for each race. Some of the excpetions are pretty interesting, for example there are Minmatar that have chosen to aceept their slavery and believe it has them on a path to God. There are Amarr that have decided slavery is an abomination and so work to free slaves.

The point is choosing a race in EVE is not about what you can get but what you want to RP.

Now there some consideration concerning base skills but thanks to the skill based system you can do anything you like. When it comes to base skill, ship and weapons here is my take.

Caldari: The easiest of the races to play if you stay with traditional ships. Caldari ships use missiles which are a shoot and forget weapon, they only miss if they are out ran or out of range. Caldari ships rely on shields for their primary defense, this means they have a self repairing defense system. This all means that Caldari are the least dependent on advanced skills to be effective.

Gallantte: To me these are second easiest of the races to place at base technology. Galantte ships rely on a mix of guns and missiles (Caldari also use guns but are heavily set to missiles) Gallantee also rely on drones. Drones are basically small robot fighters, send them out and they kill stuff.  Gallantte ships use armor for their primary desfense which means some skills for repair are needed. This means that from a weapons view point they need a few more skills than the Caldari to be effective but still have a lot of fire and forget no miss firepower. For defense they need more skills than Caldari and their defensive systems require effort in all cases.

Amarr: The Amarr come next in my opinion, they are a more skill intense combat race due to their relience on guns primarily, guns that require power and thus skills to be used effective. While ammo may seem to be an issue for the other races, the Amarr have to change out crystals to be effective and they are limited to only two types of damage with their primary weapons. As such higher skills have a bigger impact early on for the Amarr in gunnery. Concerning defesne the Amarr like the Gallantte use armor and so must have a bit more skills and effort to keep armor up in a long fight.

Minmatar: These are in my opinion the hardest of the races to play IF you stay with the base equipment. Minmatar ships use Ballistics weapons for attack as their primary skill. This means like the Amarr they need to learn some good gunnery skills to be efective. The good news is Minmatar weapons allow ammo shifts that change the damage type giving them an advantage over the Amarr. This is advanatge is off set by the fact they can and do run out of ammo during a fight. The defense however is where they become much harder than the other races as they use bioth shield and armor with no one standing out over the other. As such they must develop skills for both forms of defense. They also add a second type of defense, speed. Minmatar ships are very fast and use this speed to ry to dictate the battle terms, this means navigation skills are vital.

Now reading through this blog you might be confused by my statements, first I say the races do not matter for what they give and then I show each race has very different skills levels for combat. The second section is more about the ships of each race rather than the race itself. Any race can fly any ship if you do the training.

For example if you like the RP of the Minmatar but want the easy of early play from Caldari ships then train Caldari ships and enjoy. By the higher levels of the game the selection of race will amke little difference except from RP,  but we are playing an RP game right?

You know as a serious EVE player I get this question all the time. The person is typically playing a fantsay based MMO and wants to know how EVE compares. My usualy response is that a direct comparision does not work since to me that is comparing apples and oranges however the other evening my brother cornered me on this and would not relent until I would discuss it.

Lets begin in such a comparision not with the game itself but the company. Afterall a great game with crap support will be a crap game sooner or later and a crap game with great support could eventually be great.

CCP right now is, in my opinion, the best MMO copmpany in the market. They have for five years produced EVE, during that time and something like 8 major expansions, no player has been asked to pay extra. No special addition versions, no paid expansions, no version two to fix the issues in version one. In fact CCP has publically stated from the start that the are dedicated to never charging for an expansion and they will not make a version 2 of EVE, just continue to expand the original.

Add to this the fact the company has gone so far as to let the players have their own oversight committee for the games development and you have a company that has shown it is dedicated to it's game and the people that play it.

Next comes the fact that EVE does not have an end game, there is no cap in the game, no point where you have done all there is to do in the game. The strength of the fantasy based MMO in this case also becomes it's strength. Lets use as an example LOTRO. This game has a deep, rich and very developed storyline for the game to revolve around. This storyline however also limits the way the game can go and just how far it can go. After all once the ring is destroyed what is left? Oh I am sure there can be ideas but the problem is the players will not directly effect those ideas.

EVE has a good backdrop of a story but the story does not drive the game, the players do. Oh sure sooner or later the Amarr / Minmatar conflict will end but even when it does the universe is still huge and there is much that can be done.

Also speaking of huge universe consider the fact that EVE could expand thier universe whenever they choose and even have plot hooks already in place to do so. The epxansion would not mess with the story of EVE in any way other than to expand it as well.

In the fantasy based MMO this is just a lot harder to do. The base sotryline limits some of the potential outgrowth. Also most fantasy games have pretty set areas of good and evil. The open system in EVE makes good and evil subjective based on your own actions, there is no black and white but rather infinite shades of grey.

As for game play the level based system is okay but it does not really make any sense. Think about it, when should a human EVER be harder to kill than a dragon? I am talking physically. Also show me one single week old character in WOW that could go into PVP and even hit a 2 year old character with the appropriate levels for his age, much less kill him. Yet in EVE this can and does happen. Oh sure the older character was probably being dumb but even that is a viable weapon.

The skill based system in EVE also means that causal players will advance and stay cloe to more serious, I have no life, players. Before those serious players complain, rmember that while they may match your skill points you will still have them beat in cahs and likely equipment.

Laslty, gone is the class system, in EVE you do not log in and get stuck with a choice. The skill system menas you can be whatever you want to be whenver you want to be it. For example using LOTRO, I start the game as a Burglar and at about level 20 I decide I might like to learn a little of the skills a Minstrel has. Well unless I roll a new character this is not going to happen.

In EVE I might start as a warrior, out to defend the Amarr Empire. After many months of fighting I grow weary of it and want to settle down so I change my skill training to become more skilled at ore mining.  Now while I may not be advancing my combat skills it was from my choice not a limitation of the game and I did not lose any of the skills I acquired. So when a pirate jumps my mining expedition he will find a battle hardened pilot to deal with not some miner elite. After a few months of mining I decide I might enjoy doing some R&D so I switch my training path again, see the idea..

Next we come to PVP, most fantasy games have PVP zones or servers, in EVE the whole game is potentially PVP. Also unlike fantasy games where death might mean a repair bill in EVE death could mean losing a LOT of equpiment, a LOT! It has a real consequence to the actions of the player.

Speaking of actions EVE is also one of the few games where the players actually have an effect in the game world. In LOTRO if you do not defeat the Ranger turned Wraith you will not see the Rangers all slowly killed off. If the Creeps gain control of the Moors you will not see the darkness grow stronger.

Actions in EVE has consequencies in many cases. For example missing a Cruiser as it slips past your gate camp could mean that many of your friends could die from a pirate raid. Or the enemy now has intel on your area of control and you could see a massive fleet attack. 

I guess however in the end EVE can best be compared to most other MMOs with this explination. In most MMOs there is a story and you are along for the ride and can experience. In EVE there is a story and you are creating new chapters for it as you gon, not riding along but actually driving it.