Eve-Online Review

[Martok]

So I decided to try out the 14 day free trial offered in my PC Gamer magazine. Took forever to get my validation email, but it was a fast download of the client.

After character creation (lots of options!) I started the tutorial. At first I would say it was a great tutorial as it was in depth and very long (several hours)....but when actually getting into the game... WHOAH. Eve Online is perhaps the most complicated game ever made. Its very realistic. What would you like to be? A fighter? Perhaps a miner? Maybe a tradesman? Industrial engineer? Mechanic (crafter)? or perhaps an elite research scientist? The choices are endless....and complicated.

The size of the game is hard to comprehend. There are HUNDREDS if not a thousand solar systems to explore. The game world is somewhat similar to Earth & Beyond....with more to do.

The most tedious part of the game is traveling. It does take a while to travel between systems, as you have to warp to a stargate from system to system.

I decided to become an uber tradesman! I shall build my fortune carrying cargo across the galaxy! Unfortunately, the market is a huge player run economy that takes some time to get into....so I decided to meet up with agents and take courier missions for my credits.

After my 3rd day of playing...I started to get the hang of the game a little bit. It's time for some fun! I open the planetary map and decide to sort by "pod kills" When your ship is destroyed, your escape pod is shot out....taking you to the nearest starbase. It is possible for an enemy to target and destroy your "pod". I hope you were cloned! If not, all your skills are lost!

I decided to take a 37 jump (thats right, jump through 37 systems!) to an outlying area rated a 0.0 security zone that shows major pod killage. 0.0 means DANGEROUS!!!! Its basically a free zone where anything can happen. There is absolutely NO protection from NPC's or PC's. Fortunately, there is an auto-pilot to travel from system to system.

About 45 minutes go by.... I do some laundry...make some dinner, I come back to watch my last few jumps.....

When I arrive at my destination, it took a few moments for the lag to clear up...there must be something happening in this system. WOWZA! I warped right into two massive player guilds going at it! Space is lit up with some major blaster fire, ion cannons, combat drones, missles, all sorts of things!

I'm in a newbie ship with about zero weapons and shields.... what fun! But all is not lost, it appears they don't know I'm there! Looking in the chat channel, I see several languages going on.... German, French, and some type of slavic...maybe Russian. Alas! I see some English being spoken!

It appears I haven't gone un-noticed... A few people ask me.. "what are you doing here newb? You lost?" Hell yes I'm lost!!! I find out that one of the guilds is made up of German/French/UK people and they are having a war with the slavic guild. Cool! They don't blow me up, instead they invite me to watch! I target one of the battle-cruisers from the UKish guild and approach. I thought I had a somewhat "decent" sized ship.... but the closer I get its obviously not the case. The only comparisson I can make is the head of a pin compared to a bulldozer.

The UK guild was very nice and pleasant. They jetisoned some cargo for me to pick up and sell for some credits and even extended an offer for me to join their guild...in a few weeks when I train up my skills.

As the battle raged on, its coming apparant that Stalin's forces are going to win... time for me to leave! I try to engage my warp drive to the nearest stargate to jump out...what the... my warp drive is being jammed! They have warp jammers!!!! Ok, no problem, I'll just fly to the jump gate on sublight speed. Ya right... Crazy Ivan in his battleship blows me up from a distance of like 15km. My weapons (if they would have scratched him have a 500m range).

My ship explodes and my escape pod shoots across the landscape to safety.

Eve Online is a fun game, but definately not for the casual player. It is a very complicated game to say the least, and I don't feel like I have learned even 5% of what you can do in the game.

It's definately worth checking out for the free trial. You can read up on the game wwww.eve-online.com and sign up for the free trial with www.eve-online.com/pcgamer

[Martok]

Eve-Online cool feature:

Player created missions!

It takes a long time to travel across the galaxy.... Player Corporations that are set up on fringe solar systems need supplies. They can buy materials across the galaxy through the market, and then create a contracted price to have it hauled TO THEM.

I find such a mission that my meager cargo hold can carry. 400 units of some type of narcotics. It requires a down payment of 300k to haul the load (otherwise I could just not deliver it and keep for myself) and the delivery mission pays 200k.

I load up and begin traveling to drop of my goods. Its only 12 jumps away, not too bad. Uh oh, whats this? I'm being inspected by customs at jump 6? Well, it appears that I did a bad thing... I'm not trained enough in evading customs, or strong enough to blow them out of the sky. My cargo is confiscated and I lose security standing. With my cargo confiscated I obviously can't deliver it, and I lost my 300k investment!!!!

I return to my home base and contimplate my revenge on customs....They thought hauling narcotics was bad.... just they wait...I have now decided to traffic arms across the galaxy to the corporations enemies!

[Borg]

At least they didnt kill your horse (ship) again like the stalinists.

hehehe

Martok always...>ALWAYS gets his horse killed.