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[OOC] Blog Banter #2- what drew you to Eve?

This month’s EVE Blog Banter comes to us from *Brinelan* over at *The Shard* (http://www.theshard.org). He asks: What drew us into EVE, what keeps us playing the game and what brought us back if we’ve ever left? Here are his thoughts on it.

I always had an interest in spaceships from when I was a kid, and I of course played the eponymous Elite on my BBC Model B (am I showing my age?!). Wire frame and basic it may have been, but it was very deep, and more importantly, your character was persistant. A seed was planted.

I kept an eye out for the next great spaceship game, but nothing really fitted the bill. I got into PC online gaming, and during my stint of Planetside playing, the team I regularly played with started talking about playing a game called Eve. I looked into it, and signed up for it in early 2004. I don’t have much recollection of the game, but it seemed very complicated at the time. Maybe I wasn’t ready for it. Maybe it was my long haired Gallente character that was putting me off. ;-)

Fast forward to Feb 2005. While on a holiday in Goa, I was devouring the Peter F. Hamilton Night’s Dawn trilogy, and it reminded me of Eve. As soon as I got back, I signed up again, created Ombey and the rest is history. Interestingly enough, the early Devs of Eve were apparently inspired by the Nights Dawn trilogy as several names from that book have filtered through to Eve. Tranquility, for instance, was a giant space-station; and Wasps are drones in that world also. The name, Ombey, was the name of a planet, which is where I got my char name from (had I known there was an asteroid called Omber, I may have thought twice).

I sold my original character a couple of years ago, something I really regret now, but there’s no denying the ISK it raised came in very useful to me. That character has been in a noob corp for 2 years, so I don’t even know if he’s active.

What keeps me playing the game? The sheer, unmatched depth of Eve. The fact that 35,000 people are usually online at times when I play. The fact Eve is a harsh place, it’s not some tree-huggy, cotton wool lala land governed by reams of health and safety mandates. You stand to lose what you spent ages earning, but you also stand to gain a lot.

It’s also a very sociable game if you want it to be. Corps are hugely enjoyable entities to belong to, and it magnifies exponentially what you can achieve in New Eden compared to playing solo. However, it can also be played and enjoyed solo if that’s your style of play.

Another strong pull to the game is that there is not a grinding element to it, in terms of character progression. Apart from learning skills and implants, no-one can train faster than anyone else, regardless of how much online time they log. This means you don’t miss out on skill advancement if you go on holiday for 2 weeks. Grinding in games just annoys me to be honest, I have a family, a dog and job and they all need time. I don’t have time to grind, just to enjoy and play.

Then there’s the money making side. If you’re smart, you can find ways to make money while you’re offline. This relieves the pressure of having to make money when you are online, so you have more time to do other things.

I have never taken time off Eve in the (almost) 4 years of playing, as I have never been bored with it. Fed up, annoyed, frustrated- sure. But I think we’ve all been there with Eve- it’s a game I care so much about, it gets to you sometimes, but it never lasts.

One big part of Eve for me is the fact that there isn’t much in the way of random death. By this, I mean games like Call Of Duty 4, another game I enjoy. Although death hurts in Eve, getting killed in CoD4 by randomly spammed grenades or yet another airstrike is so much more annoying. Random death doesn’t happen much in Eve- if you die, you usually know why, and where you went wrong.

Finally, Eve provides a lot of people, myself included, with a creative outlet. In my case, blogging, the odd short story, Photoshop, and as a by-product of hosting a site, also learning about PHP, MySQL and ASP.

EDIT- this is why I play Eve- because it allows THIS sort of thing to happen! A harsh game where mistakes will cost you! Awesome.

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The rest of the Blog Banter participants are here:
Participants:

~ by Ombey on November 27, 2008.

4 Responses to “[OOC] Blog Banter #2- what drew you to Eve?”

  1. Thanks for sharing the Night’s Dawn link. I’m always looking for good scifi series. I’ll have to check it out a bit more.

    As you say, EVE has provided an outlet for our creativity. For me, it’s also provided me with countless opportunities to meet new people both face-to-face and online. It’s something which is a great part of the lure it has.

    CrazyKinux said this on November 27th, 2008 at 1436 UTC

  2. I hadn’t read that series either, thanks for the link. I just finished the last Culture novel in my possession and need something to fill in the gaps before I get the rest of them.

    How interesting to hear your background in EVE and where your name came from. Your comment about EVE being a game we care about…and the implication that is why it gets to us sometimes…sooo true. Do other games inspire the kind of supplemental activities such as blogging, third party apps and tools, etc., as EVE does? I don’t play anything else so have no idea.

    Mynxee said this on November 27th, 2008 at 1527 UTC

  3. Glad I put you both onto those books. Hamilton tends to be a bit wordy, but bear with him, as they are a cracking space opera of a read.

    I just read on the forum- this is why I play Eve: http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=934766

    The game allows this sort of thing to happen- people make mistakes and others get lucky. Wonderful!

    Ombey said this on November 27th, 2008 at 1535 UTC

  4. That was a crazy situation with that freighter, LOL!

    Mynxee said this on November 28th, 2008 at 0629 UTC

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