rawkryptonite: Eve is a good game, the only MMO I ever liked.
However, it needs a few things:
1-Player vs. Environment gaming (you're a target at all times, although most zones you'd be in for the first few months you're well protected--or at least they'll get blown up AFTER you're dead. You have to keep up (pay for periodically) a clone for your character in case of death as well as insurance for your ship in case it gets blown up. Let either of those time out before you get killed and you will NOT be happy.
2-Missions are repetitive (maybe not a year into it). You'll save the Coke formula several times, rescue the white birds several times...dull.
3-TIME. The main complaint. You train skills you need to enable ships, weapons, abilities etc. They all have levels and each level takes longer to train than the last. At first, it's quick. A few minutes. Then it quickly becomes DAYS (or longer) to train a single skill. At least there's a queue now that you can set up, that's step in the right direction. It just takes too long to build up in that game.
There are more issues, but those are the main 3. To really get the most out of a game, you need to take on the next level, which means corporations etc. Running/participating in a business, mining, manufacturing...all that. Just about anything you buy in the game was manufactured by a player from raw materials.
As a result, I've had a lot more fun buying a ton of SP games to get a more "condensed" Eve-like experience. More action, much better combat, a storyline, faster trade etc.
Eve is a game with TONS of potential. The problem is that you're perpetually a long way away from seeing that potential and never reach it, unless you gauge your gaming time in years, maybe months. Fun at first, but then it levels off and doesn't let you reach the cool stuff for a long time. Enjoy the demo, play it for a month and then come back here with the rest of us. LOL
Thanks for this post. I think you've done more to remind me more of the "long game" nature of this thing than anything else I've read. One of the reasons for my general lack of enthusiasm with regards to MMORPGS is I just don't have the time to dump into one. To get the most out of a game like this requires putting in the time and effort to not only build up the character, but to... well... social network and build up connections within the game. I wouldn't mind doing that if I were still, say a high school student who had nothing to do but come home after school and sit on the computer all day, but... yeah, those days are long gone. Heh.
I'll have to consider. :D
