While we were at E3 we met with Magnus Bergsson, CMO of CCP Games. He told us a lot of stuff about EVE Online that we didn't know...mainly a lot about PvP and things we like hearing, like "we play our own game because we like it" and "Icelandians drink a lot."
He also gave us some 30 day trial cards that happened to be his business card.
Several of us took up the challenge and started playing EVE, and some people came along for the ride. Tortolia wrote us up a look at EVE from his perspective. Read on...
As anyone who has followed this community for a while knows, there’s no particular combination of words quite like "free trial." It doesn’t matter what game the trial is for or how unplayable it may be, it’s still free. And when most games struggle to even entertain past the trial period, you can see how much we value "free" just by taking a look in our wallets.
When recent IRC chatter began to focus on CCP’s EVE Online, I decided to check out the official website. All I knew of the game was its reputation as a massively multiplayer Microsoft Excel, and that it successfully pulled off the "one server" design strategy without sacrificing any of its actual playerbase in the process. The website’s players guide seemed rather comprehensive, as far as such references go, and hinted at many possibilities. Thus, convinced that it couldn’t be any more harmful to my mind and body than ROSE was, I decided to download the client. The installer was a relatively sane 455 meg file, with both HTTP and Bittorrent options available.
The first hitch came when I attempted to get a trial key for EVE. CCP allows registered users to have trial keys e-mailed to friends, but the CCP website wasn’t actually sending any e-mails out. With a bit of poking through the forums, I discovered a key generator for standard 14 day trials. Account creation was simple and fast, and CCP got bonus points for not requiring payment information just to play the trial. There have been some issues logging in during peak hours (as CCP has limited the number of trial accounts online), but generally it’s been quick getting into the game.
The first thing to do, naturally, was to make a character. There are four races available, each with two different bloodlines that have different looks and different base attribute distribution. The Amarr have slow, futuristic looking ships with laser weaponry. The Minmatar take the opposite approach, with swift junk heaps armed with traditional projectile lobbing turrets. The Gallente are futuristic Frenchmen (no, really) with a penchant for baguettes and hybrid turrets (think: railguns and the like). And last but not least are the obligatory wage-slaves, the Caldari, who use missile launchers. For the most part, it boils down to finding a race you like, as you can easily learn to pilot any race’s craft. Next up came my character’s portrait, using one of the coolest creation tools I’ve ever seen in a MMOG. Along with the standard options (costume, hair, skin tone, accessories), you could also choose to tilt the head, decide where the character is looking, and morph the overall facial structure (an effect even more impressive than what’s seen in SWG). After choosing a background and mood lighting, the final result was run through a graphics filter so that instead of slightly jagged 3D polygons, the portrait that everyone sees looked like an actual piece of artwork. Very cool. The rest of character generation was attribute allocation and my character’s “history”, which simply determined her starting skill levels.
Once I was spit out into the game at large, I was immediately overwhelmed. There were a lot of elements to the interface, with a full menu-bar on the left, chat window on the lower left, the ship’s equipment at the bottom of the screen, and a customizable targeting display in the upper right. The tutorial immediately took over, keeping me from becoming frustrated by the complexity of it all and quitting right away. The game also automatically placed me in a race-specific Corporation/guild, and in the newbie help channel, so there was easy access to other players for help and information. The initial tutorial was short, but taught me the basics. It covered how to look around, how to warp to stations, how to dock, and how to use the standard space station interface. Once that was complete, the game also introduced me to my first agent, who would continue my learning process.
Agents serve the now-familiar MMOG function of giving players semi-random missions to perform for loot, faction gains, and other goodies. This first agent had about half a dozen missions for me, all of which furthered my knowledge of the game. I learned how to use the map, how to reach other systems using my autopilot, how to mine (thoroughly boring, but it’s the only time I’ve had to mine), and how the combat systems work. Once these missions were done, I was referred to my second agent, who gave “storyline” missions. These missions were long and extremely tedious, but optional – at any point I could have broken off to find other ways of amusing myself, with the option of returning to them at a later point. The storyline missions were worth doing, though, simply for the massive faction boost I received at the end. From then on, EVE assumed I was capable of finding ways to entertain myself, and the tutorial (which took about four to six hours, all told) ended. For the most part, it was successful at familiarizing me with the game, but there are some extremely important details that were left out, the most glaring example being an explanation of the cloning system.
Cloning goes hand in hand with the skills system, which is EVE’s biggest selling point. Those of you familiar with Progress Quest should be quite comfortable with EVE’s skill training – essentially, all those interested in grinding for levels need not apply. Training comes down to finding a skill on your list (or, if you don’t have it on your list, buying a skill book), selecting “train skill”, then gloating to buddies later that you are über. There’s no need, even, to be logged into the game while you train. The early skills came fast for me, but higher-level ones can take multiple days to rank up. There’s no limit to how many skills you can learn or how high you can take them, it’s simply a matter of how much time you have. In this respect EVE is well above other games, because there’s no need to re-spec your character, no need for templates, and no way to gimp yourself – that’s right, you need not fear your drunken gaming choices any longer, because they will not come back to haunt you. Even after playing for nearly two weeks, I felt a certain satisfaction in knowing that my character was advancing regardless of where I was in real life or what I was doing. That brings us back to cloning. Imagine you’ve spent the better part of two weeks not babysitting your character’s progress. It’d be a shame for all of that invested time to go to waste, but that’s exactly what can happen if your character should die. Fortunately, the only way to die in EVE is for your escape pod to be shot down as you flee your doomed ship, and it’s looked down upon, so it’s pretty rare. But should it happen, you can buy some insurance by way of a clone. Clones are rated up to a certain number of skill points, and if your clone is rated higher than you are at the point of your demise, you lose nothing except the implants you’ve installed. The opposite is also true, however, in that an inferior clone will set you back. So be sure to plan ahead when making your cloning decisions.
With a few days of playing time under my belt, a variety of skills trained, and some money from my early missions, I decided to buy a ship for combat and do some pirate hunting. Combat in EVE leans more towards the tactical than the twitch-based, which will surely disappoint people searching for the next Freespace game. You’ll spend your time locking onto targets, managing ammunition selection, staying at an optimal distance from your targets, and generally keeping yourself in one piece, all the while enjoying the scenery. I can only assume combat becomes more complex later on with bigger ships and more varied missions. My early pirate hunting consisted of dogfighting with similarly short-ranged craft and watching them explode. It wasn’t the most thrilling thing I’ve done, but there was certainly some joy in blowing up my foes with autocannons and nuclear tipped missiles. Each pirate I destroyed earned me a bounty, and many dropped loot that could be sold or recycled into raw minerals for later use or sale.
Outside of combat and exploration (I haven’t mentioned exploration yet, but it’s certainly worthwhile – the game is as beautiful as the screenshots indicate), there are other ways to kill time in EVE. For those of you who aspire to be tradeskillers, you can build virtually anything you want if you have the materials. It’s not an aspect of the game I’ve explored, mainly due to being poor, but a simple look at the list of available research and creation skills indicates that there are a lot of options. Lazier players can also choose to haul cargo for fun and profit. Yes, you too can be a space trucker. The familiar business axiom – buy low, sell high – applies here, with ample opportunities for making bank. Impressively, the economy adjusts itself based on what’s being bought and sold, so trade routes adjust over time. I had to adapt when I bottomed out the tobacco market, for example. On the whole, hauling cargo has been a popular choice for EVE players here at the Corp, and our chat channel has been full of discourse on milking the most out of moving cows. The market tools (which may be the basis for all of the Excel jokes) are quite detailed and come in handy for things of this nature, but also for commerce in general. Whether you’re dealing in ships and ammunition or just buying for personal use, it’s easy to search your entire region for the best deals. Mining is also an option, with many valuable ores available in the less protected regions of space. Again, I found it boring, but it can be lucrative, and it is certainly a laid back way to earn cash.
EVE is completely PvP, but your level of danger varies. Solar systems are divided into security zones. High security areas (ratings of .5 and above) are full of CONCORD police officers and sentry guns that will blow the crap out of anyone raising a fuss. Less protected areas (ratings from .1 through .4) have very little security, and can be dangerous. You can die in these regions. If you venture out into zero security space, you are on your own. Anything goes, and these systems tend to be controlled by large corporations who eliminate uninvited guests with extreme prejudice. When planning your routes, you can see a list of all the systems you’ll be passing through, along with their security ratings. The game will warn you if you’ve routed yourself through a lower security zone or have a mission objective in one. It’s quite possible to prosper in the safer zones, and you can also set your autopilot to avoid low security systems (or, if you’ve been bad, those with high security), even if you have to take the scenic route. For the most part you don’t have to worry about being player killed unless you put yourself at risk. If your ship is destroyed, ejection occurs automatically, and you’ll receive an insurance payment for your ship (depending on how much you paid up front), so it’s not a total loss. As mentioned above, should someone go the extra step and destroy your escape pod, your cloning decisions will come into play. Death is inconvenient in EVE, and potentially expensive, but the game assumes you’re able to weigh the risks and make smart decisions.
EVE isn’t without its flaws, of course. It’s a slow-paced game. It wasn’t uncommon for me to plot a course and do something unrelated while en route. EVE also seems geared towards large player corporations. It’s certainly playable solo, and in that respect may be one of the better options for truly casual MMOG gamers, but it seemed apparent early on that the higher end pursuits – low security mining, PvP, advanced tradeskilling, etc – will be significantly harder, if not impossible, to do alone. It’s an open-ended, make-your-own-fun kind of game, not a more focused experience. Players who typically find themselves bored in this type of MMOG may not get much from EVE. Lastly, outside of your character portrait, there’s no customization. I wanted to customize my ship so that it didn’t look like every other ship of the same class, but it wasn’t to be.
Still, I had enough fun that I decided to subscribe for at least a month. The absence of skill grinding means that I can log in and play when I feel like it, without that nagging feeling that I should be leveling. There are many paths I can take my character down without being locked into anything, and I appreciate that flexibility. The fact that there’s only one server means that everyone plays there, and the universe actually feels like it’s populated, not like a series of ghost towns. Ultimately, it’s just something different. CCP has done some nice things with EVE, and it’s worth looking into.
Thanks, Tort, and thanks to Magnus Bergsson over at CCP for dipping us into the kiddie pool end of things.
Magnus also told us during E3 that the new-player experience would be changing with the next content update, so starting out will be easier in a little less than a month.
I've already paid up for my first month, though. See you in the stars.
