Tuesday 2 December 2014

DAY 336 / GAME 336 EVE Online

DAY 336 / GAME 336


EVE Online


      EVE Online is the kind of MMO game that I've always read about but took me forever to try.  One of the few massively multiplayer games that has continued to run alongside World of Warcraft, EVE draws a somewhat different crowd of gamers.  Gamers who are interested in what can be considered work with a sprinkle of large interstellar wars thrown in.  


       I used to read about EVE Online in gaming news all the time.  Screenshots and trailers full of simply massive space battles involving hundreds of players at war with each other.  Tales of real heists where content worth thousands of real-world dollars were stolen in-game.  And among other things, basically a world that exists the way it does because of the players and not because of the developer.  CCP Games created a virtual world where players can do whatever they please, so long as they are doing it within the game's context.  Start a war, mine asteroids, get people to invest in a orbital platform and then sell it off and leave with the money when they aren't looking.  It's full of good and bad and a whole lot of beautiful starship porn in between.  


      Most of the time, or at least, the time I spend in EVE, I was running tutorial story missions, exploring a little and mining a lot.  Because I could raise funds for fighter craft by spending a few hours mining asteroids, I tended to do a lot of that.  And usually while I was playing another game on my TV.  A friend of mine who decided to jump in with me at the same time would run the odd exploration mission with me, which was always good fun, but I was surprisingly happy chipping away at the floating rocks in my mining ship.  Dreaming about that new Gallente Catalyst destroyer I was going to purchase.


     There was no real downside that I saw to EVE Online, it was slow and strategic but also didn't require too much dedication since training your pilot happens while you are offline.  I simply ran out my 3-month subscription and didn't renew, for no good reason other than I was interested in playing other games.  I am always tempted to jump back into EVE, it's scale is beyond fantastic and the whole game is strangely satisfying.  I can't say EVE is for everyone, in fact, I'm not sure who I'd recommend it to.  It just gave me the same sense of zenfull peace flying through space as Toyko Xtreme Racer does driving along the highway.  And in a sense, I'm simply glad EVE Online even exists.  

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