Eve is one of those niche games that does what it does very well. With walking in stations coming the future is bright..
- Graphics
- Sound
- Player driven economy
- Players can take over the galaxy and change it
- No levels
- Not linear
- complex
- Biggest mmorpg to date with over 35k people on the same server at the same time at peak times.
- Polished
- Great future ahead like atmospheric flight and walking on stations.
- Mature community
- Lots of risk involved in dying, not forgiving.
Cons:
- Doesn't appeal to everyone and theres a high chance you wont like the slow gameplay style.
- Patch days can be nightmare
- Doesn't have full characters yet but they're coming in with walking on stations.
I played Eve Online from launch 2003 until late 2005 so my opinion will be on then and on upcoming changes which might get me back. So Eve is a beautiful looking game with more graphical updates to come like high res textures sooon. It's a very niche game because it's very slow paced and takes alot of your time + really really complex so it will turn most people off who are just looking to have quick fun after work or school.
Basically in Eve you create your portrait of your character but you can't see the whole body because you wont see your character apart from that picture for the whole game. Your basically in a pod in your ship so all you'll see is a pod or a ship. However Eve Online has fantastic changes coming which will add atmospheric flight on planets and walking on stations where fianlly we'll have whole characters. You'll log into the game and have a fantastic and well made tutorial which is quite long and tells you the basics of the complex galaxy of EVE. You'll have few options at the start but as you play longer the galaxy of EVE will open up to you with so much freedom. Basically as a new player you'll have a option to mine asteroids and then sell them for money. You could gain skills in crafting and buy blue prints and craft items then sell them on market in which you could buy the materials you need to make the item or you could mine and kill NPC pirates for some of it but sometimes you just have to do both. You can run agent missions (most popular and just like eve's version of quests) which you'll have 3 basic types at first and ones kill quests where you hunt down NPC's or the other is fed ex missions where you deliver stuff and finally protection missions. Also you can do trade routes which is buying low selling high.
Theres no classes in EVE so basically you'll just train one of the many many skills the game has (more than you could ever train) so i'd recommend you specialise in something like combat or mining or industry etc etc. Most people try to do everything at once and get nowhere and realise you have to take your time and not rush, your not going to be the best in a month, it'll take much longer to advance in EVE. Skills train over time and you can only have one skill training at a time, you can also train them when you've logged off and then come back whatever time the skill said it would be finished and train another one. So your character is constantly evolving even without you playing.
In EVE it's all about money and money = power, kinda like the real life. The game has a full working player driven economy which has been compared to real life and they even have a guy hired to work just on the economy of eve. You'll just spend your whole time making money in Eve to buy more things and to get you somewhere with people. So theres no XP grind in this game which is great but you could say because you need money that this is the grind in EVE.
As a new player you should get into a player corperation and players will help you out soo much because EVE is a lonely game to play on your own. What comes with a corperation aswel (player guilds in otherwords) is player events for fun and group missions and mining etc etc. What also comes with Corps are the corp wars and territory gains and stuff like that. Basically all the major corps fight for 0.0 space which you can place player made stations and defend them constantly. Theres always corp wars going on because people want their own territory so only the strongest survive.
Eve is split up into different security space and 1.0 and 0.9 security space are totally harmless and you can't be killed there by any pirate NPC's because they don't exist. Also if you get attacked by another player then the police will come and destroy his ship which is too much risk. When your ship is destroid then you'll be left with a pod and players can pod you in PVP which means if you havn't got a clone of your character then your going to lose Skill points which are really valuable because you can't get time back. However Clones get more and more expensive the more skill points you have so make sure you always have spare money for one otherwise you could be screwed.
Then 0.8 - 0.5 space is still safe from PVP because the police will come but theres NPC pirates which can destroy your ship. Then 0.4 - 0.1 which will have weaker sentry guns to by stations and jump gates which will still atatck you if you attack another player. However Asteroid belts are game for anyone and thats where the PVP will be in these zones for ore and theres also tougher pirate npc's. 0.0 sec space is where the game starts for alot of people and these places are controlled by player coperations and anything goes because theres no rules and no police. Basically if you get podded here then thats your fault and noone will protect you but your corp. This 0.0 will be constantly PVP wared for by corps and if you get int he way or take their ore or anything then they'll pod you.
Eve is mainly a dynamic player driven and changed galaxy which is sooooooooo massive that it takes days to get to the other side of the map like. It's all about unforgiving PVP where you can lose alot if your stupid and the game doesn't really have much PVE compared to games like WOW but thats because it's not designed for this.
The graphics in eve are really fantastic and the game has lots of atmosphere also a new engine upgrade soon which will make the game look better. The sound in eve is also really great with a nice little voice over of your ship telling you stuff. Also Eve has a jukebox with music built into it which are very nice to listen to.
Eve Also has a nice Ui and so it should because you control your ship via the UI and not by the wasd keys or w/e so theres no free flight where you control your ship. It works very well however and you can point and click to move like other games like Guild Wars which is nice too. I thought i wouldn't like the controll system when i heard about it but it works soo well with the game and suits it where in other games it would be horrible.
So Eve online is a innovative and revolutionary and a masterpiece of our time in the mmorpg world. Everyone should try this game specially if they're bored with the same old fantasy EQ format mmo. It also has free expansion packs which add great value for moneyw ill the game because the games free and you just py the standard monthly sub and get expansions for free.