I started playing Eve Online back in 2007. For the first few years, I just played against the NPC’s (non-player character) and learned the extremely complicated Eve Online interface. It is said that Eve Online just might be the hardest game to learn to play in the world. The learning curve is definitely one of the steepest as far as games go. Eve Online has internal corporate intrigue, space battles across all the empires (the biggest online LIVE battles in Internet history I might add), noob hazing and so much more it would literally take a novel to explain it all. There’s mining for those who have skills running galaxy-wide conglomerates mining moon ores and balancing the books at the end of the day. Maybe you’re a die-hard hippy out to save humanity from the clutches of deadly space viruses that try to invade our skin. Maybe you’re a hard-core warrior who only needs a frigate with some guns and missiles attached to make interesting things happen. Religious zealots, 24x7x365 Scammer, troll, pirate, whatever Eve Online can accommodate you can make it happen.
At heart Eve Online is a ‘space’ game. You build and outfit your ship for combat, exploration, mission running, or a myriad of other career and game paths and set off in the huge world that is Eve Online. Ships consist of propulsion models, shielding and/or armor, guns, various data analyzers, and a myriad of other modules to kit out a ship. All of this happens in a station where the ship is in sort of a drydock where you can perform any maintenance that needs to be done. There is also a HUGE trading portion to the game with its own stock market and store and in-game cash. In fact, the Eve Online economy is run by the players through manufacturing, researching, inventing, and of course, buying low and selling high in whichever part of the Universe needs it. When you’re ready to depart from a station you undock and start charting space lines using an intricate in-game map or you can randomly select a course. There are 4 ‘official’ career paths but Eve Online is such a huge sandbox you can do whatever the game allows. On top of all that there are also pirate factions whether NPC or the actual player base and this tends to lead to high intrigue in all parts of the game. You can side with one of the 4 empires, one of the 4 pirate factions, multitudes of player-created corporations, or strike it out on your and let the winds of fortune jump gate you to your ultimate fate, capsuleer.
By 2010 I had become extremely bored of running NPC missions and playing the non-PVP components of the game as it had become stale running the same missions over and over just to try and up the in-game money I had to buy better parts to run the missions better. So I started PVP’ing and never looked back.
I lost the first 200 PVP fights before I won one. Then I started winning 1 in 10. Then 1 in 5. And now, though I do win 99% of fights against all the people I face in the game in 1 on 1 PVP I am far from one of the top players. So I continue to play this game even now 14 years later. It still holds my interest, is a cutting edge MMORPG in a single shard world, though shard is not a term associated with Eve, only used here as example, and continues to be updated and refined. I logged in just recently after a 6 month hiatus to a host of new features and some long awaited refinements to the game. I can honestly say as the years go by the developers listen to the players and the game gets better year after year because of it.
My in-game name is ‘rljpdx’ and I live in Amamake, in the Heimatar region. If your ever in-game and wanna fleet up to dust some noobz shoot me an email. If you need some ship fits or general PVP advice, shoot me an email in or out of the game or touch base here in the comments to get a reply address. I might write a couple more articles on this subject including some of my favorite ships, my favorite fighting styles and whatever else I can think of.
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