EVE Online (or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Internet Spaceships)

I have previously written about this game. I thought that perhaps if the early game were better, then I would be able to stick with things long enough to hit the epic endgame of 0.0 space warfare. This thought is why I didn't enjoy it. EVE isn't like any other MMO I've played; it doesn't obey the pattern set forth by Everquest and (arguably) perfected with WoW. So, if you want to enjoy it, you have to forget everything you know about MMORPGs. Character advancement is never ending, so the concept of a level-capped "endgame" is meaningless. People who use the best gear in PvP are not gods, they just have more isk than brains*. Nearly everything is player-driven. Bigger does not necessarily mean better, and nearly every ship can play a useful role in a fight. Once I got these concepts through my brain, the game seemed to change.

So how did I wind up in New Eden? It began with introduction of the new honor system in the 2.0 patch of WoW. Open-world PvP had been struggling, but was still reasonably healthy up until that point. But that patch finally pushed things over the edge. With the mass emigration of PvP into instanced areas died the sense of danger and excitement that came from living on a PvP server. This was what had really gotten me hooked on the game; the idea that a mundane activity like picking herbs could (and often did) turn into a brawl at the drop of a hat was thrilling. As time went on, I found other things I enjoyed, but they were all transient, and somehow the game always felt as empty as the Aezeroth that now served as merely a connection between instances.

Fast forward a few years. With the realization that WAR is just not going to run on my computer behind me, I am now in the early weeks of my third attempt to get into EVE. I had recently joined up with the now-defunct Eth3real corporation, and had gotten a taste of 0.0 up in the Venal region (before Morsus Mihi came and booted us out). The entire area was crawling with hostiles, and it was an adventure just moving beyond the two or three systems that we had staked a claim to. I had had my first taste of fear in years, and it was glorious.

But what really hooked me was when we were back into empire space and I got to turn the tables. A small group of us got together in a high security system with some cheap destroyers, fit for raw damage. We waited in a safe spot a few thousand km away from an asteroid belt, where a guy was peacefully mining, blissfully unaware of our intentions. When the signal was given, we all warped in right on top of him, and blew up his fancy mining ship, with a 9-figure price tag, before getting ourselves blown up by CONCORD, the EVE equivalent of town guards. Our total loss was under 10 million. This immediately brought back fond memories of my glory days in WoW; ganking people in BRM, wiping people doing elemental dukes in silithus, destroying people in Ironforge and the deeprun tram. Here at last was a game with the kind of hardcore PvP that I had been missing for years. Nowhere and nobody was ever truely safe.

A few months later, I somehow managed to get my ass into one of the largest alliances in the game, ATLAS. Given my newbie status, I really have no business being here, but I sure as hell don't want to leave. I wound up on the right side of the current conflict rampaging through new eden between Goonswarm (think /b/tards, only not funny) and their pets, and the alliance of Band of Brothers, Against All Authorities, ATLAS, and others. I'm fighting alongside some awesome human beings (and a few people that are even more retarded than I am) against a foe that is dedicated to victory by any means necessary, no matter how dishonorable. At stake is not just a rating or a title, but the essential resources that fuel the war effort, and our home space itself.

None of it is scripted, none of it is instanced, and none of it will get reset in the interest of "leveling the playing field". Fuck your battlegrounds, fuck your epic loot, fuck games that don't really start until 6 months in. I'm through fighting a long and epic battle that somehow manages to have absolutely no consequences on the game world. I have an internet spaceship now, and I am loving it.



*Note that this can mean that the player is either rich but terrible, or that they are actually pretty good, but are richer than god himself. Thankfully, the first is far more common than the second