My First Two Days Playing Eve Online

Day 1: PHP Is Not A Recognised Skill...But Missiles Are!

Sad to say, but I was unable to make a living in Eve Online as a PHP programmer. Aww... After booting up the Eve client I was greeted by an Introduction video detailing some of the back story to Eve Online. It's standard sci-fi fare as Tor would publish in a cut-sized paperback. Yep, a total cliche, but the backstory just set's the scene - it can be as cliched as it likes. Anyway, does WOW not have the same? Afterwards I input my trial account username and password, before being greeted by the character creation screen.

Creating a character for Eve Online should not be done lightly. Read up online about what kinds of attributes, skills and race/bloodline mixes are best suited to what you want. I wanted to kick other player's asses (PVP/PVE) so I went with a Caldari Achura who had taken up the Soldier profession. I added my 5 attribute points to Perception, Intelligence and Memory (2-2-1). This gave me quite a collection of skills for in the area of Missiles, Gunnery and Calderi Frigates. More besides - but these are great ones to start a Soldier with. Adding a portrait is simple with the client's facial morphing abilities though each race has distinct Earth profiles - so my Calderi Soldier has distinctly Asian features.

The game opens with a tutorial of sorts. It's slightly eratic on two fronts. Firstly it doesn't automatically warp your ship to the tutorial area all the time (so you need to warp to a station, and restart the tutorial whose steps are thankfully easy to fast forward past). Secondly, you need to take instructions literally - for example when they talk about shooting a pirate with a blaster in the first tutorial don't assume to do it now - otherwise the next screen which does say to activate your guns will freeze. Why? Because the pirate is probably dead now after a few shots, and the tutorial doesn't realise you can't activate your guns anymore (no target). That's another route ripe for a restart .

Otherwise the tutorial isn't all that bad - it gives you the basics, introduces you to an Agent who provides missions, get's you up and running.

I spent the next day running missions. During this I made sure to a) have a Clone Beta on hand and move it to any new station I decided to base myself out of, and b) make sure I insured any new ships I received. Keeping all your off-ship cargo stored in a station is a really good idea. I consolidated my assets on my chosen station twice so far. In a few more days I suspect I'll need to consider a semi-permanent central station in the region to consolidate items and other ships in. In truth I spent the whole weekend in about 4 star systems around Uitra which is bot bad for a Rookie in a 5000 star system game .

I started out in a Rookie Ibis ship. Basically a tincan with a Railgun and a Mining Laser. As a Soldier, I followed Agent Missions first. After a few I was awarded a new Calderi Condor Frigate which is a bit better than a tincan but only has 2 possible weapon points which I armed first of all with Blasters, but finally with Standard Missile Launchers. Missiles appeared more effective at the time - they deal a lot of damage from long range and even gave single-shot kills. Hybrid Turrets (Guns) are shorter ranged and take more time to kill anything with (as a Calderi at least). Long ranged combat simply makes sense since you're further from the target's own guns and they tend to use lower yield Rockets for long-ranged engagements.

Most of the first day was spent learning skills (usually level 1 and 2 for stuff like Learning, Clarity, Mechanics, Science, Navigation). I found my weapon skills were already at levels 3 and 4 but supporting skills for ship systems, shield and armor upgrades, afterburners, propulsion systems and capacitor upgrades were untrained. These are essential to add new ship subsystems like hardened shields, damage control modules, sensors, capacitor upgrades, etc. One of my current concerns is power. Your ships are never fully loaded up with equipment because available power is never enough - something I need to focus on. Processing capacity seems a lot better - but I'd bet that becomes a limiting factor later too. So yeah - train those skills. If not playing for a day or two - pick a big 60hr skill to train while you're offline.

Overall impressions: It was a good start. As I suspected it's not the most exciting game full of thrills and spills. It takes patience and acknowledgment of having to plan and execute a long term strategy of skills training, ship research, corporation membership and cash inflow (Missions, Corp work, Mining, Trading, etc). I intend training skills continually - only takes a quick login to start a new one training (lvl1 about 30mins, lvl2 about 1.5hrs and lvl3 a lot more!). I also intend working my way to a new Calderi Kestrel or Merlin which are the most powerful Calderi Frigates. I'm sticking with Agent Missions for now. My Condor doesn't have the cargo space to go mining for cash and the starting Missions are more profitable for now, as well as being part of an interesting storyline.


Day 2: Suicide Runs, More Missions, Corporation Recruitment Drives

I started Day 2 on a mission to destroy the lair of a Pirate. Outside the Station at Uitra VI Moon 4, a bunch of Rookies were annihilated in an "incident" after opening fire at another player. I also witnessed a wicked looking cargo ship shambling up to the Station for docking and had a quick conversation with the pilot. He was in from a 0.6 system to make a quick sale and get some repairs done. Dangerous places down past 0.8...

After another mission I was awarded a new Calderi Kestrel Frigate. Local chatter advised me it was the finest Calderi platform for Missiles in the Frigate Class. I was happy enough to load it up with 4 Missile Launchers and another 3000 missiles as ammo. Ammo was seriously being chewed through by now from the more powerful Pirates I was taking Missions against. My ship's power continued to be a problem so I set to on a training track to provide skills I could use to increase capacitor output. Really need to get more supporting systems for my shields and armor in place - but first I need the power capacity to run them!

I spent a block of time spectating the local traffic. Basically just picking out ships, reading their information, and getting a feel for which ones were good, bad or indifferent. Most of the ships were Calderi, but I located an Amarr Industrial which marks a first for another species. I gather I'm so deep into Calderi space it's a rarity to find anything not Calderi yet.

After some bumming around I felt the need for a little exploration so I headed to the Jita System. Or as the local chatter were calling it: LagFest. Turns out Jita is a system at the confluence of three others which makes it a prime trading spot. It was so popular that the CCP servers in Iceland were having a bit of trouble keeping up with the populace . It was very laggy, but I purchased a few items at a supremely low price. It's almost a supermarket for the region with low prices and thousands of customers and a *lot*.

After my expedition of a whole 3 jumps from Uitra, I returned to Uitra VI Moon 4. One of the high points of the day was watching two Destroyers (my Kestral being a flea in comparison) start up a firefight. Between the missile barrages, shield flares, and beam weapons flying around a big crowd of Rookies gathered. Into the fray came a few extra ships including a few Frigates. It was an impressive display though one or two Rookies lost all sense of survivability and fired off some Missiles to see what would happen. With some restraint the opponents replied with a single low-yield missile. The antagonisers quickly warped away before the next one!

After some checking of ship, pilot and corporation affiliations of the battle members I realised the whole battle was a deliberate show - a publicity stunt of sorts for a local Corporation. As a recruitment drive it was a good one - Uitra is where most many Calderi Rookies end up so it was their first look at a full scale battle between 5-6 Frigates, Destroyers and Battleships. Such a show of force also underlined what players of 2-3 months can accomplish, which obviously underlines how huge a role patient plays in Eve Online. It takes real time to train up those skills and accumulate the cash for such extravagant ships and equipment.

I finished off the weekend of Eve Online by moving down to the Perimeter Star System a few jumps away. There's a Calderi Naval Assembly Station here and it's closer to my eventual possible home in another week down in Venelin. I've setup a Missile oriented skill to train which will take about 20hrs (sufficient time for me to sleep, go to work, and take my time recovering at home before logging in again for a quick check and a new skill to set training - maintenance mode on weekdays).

Final impressions: Read this http://atomic-tourist.net/AAR.pdf for a something interesting about Corporation play out in the real world of Eve Online in 0.0 security space. Long term is the keyword. Jumping into Eve and expecting to crush everyone inside of a few days is pure stupidity. It takes planning, strategy and research to pull off a good game. This undoubtably explains Eve continued disparate subscriber count. At 200,000 it's respectable but not even remotely close to what WOW pulls in. The fact is Eve Online is a different game. It's quite easy to get into, but whether you have a personal makeup capable of blasting away Pirates, mining for a few hours with a good book (obviously you need some in-game entertainment - which may seem counter-productive but then you're missing the point!), or trading. Personally if I take up Mining I intend on taking full advantage of the fact I have a PC which can run Eve, Firefox and Eclipse at the same time, and in the future a MacBook Pro too. Eve is not just about having "fun", it's about accomplishment on a large scale over an extended timeline. Other folk would find this all dreadfully boring and lack the patience and extended mindset to create their own fun and enjoyment from the game.

So the story so far at 2 days? Eve Online is attractive, skills can be trained offline, but it requires patience and long term commitment. The commitment needn't be time consuming either. I could play for a few hours at the weekend, or a few minutes at a time on a week day, and it wouldn't put a dent into my free time. With skills training offline there's far less pressure to be online all the time, or even a lot of the time. Many corporations clearly state they are looking for players who play "once a month or more" even...