| Get the Flash Videos |
I've been addicted to EVE Online for the past week. It's a game I've always had an interest in but it has the steepest learning curve out of any game I've played before, so I gave up the last time I tried getting into it. This time though, my momentum has been a lot greater, I've received excellent support in my help topic on the official forums, and I'm about to join a well-known and respected pirate corporation.
If my last sentence wasn't enough of a clue, I've decided to walk the path of a space pirate in EVE. This is very hard to do for beginners, because it's like jumping straight into the deep end of a pool without knowing how to swim. A lot of people have been sending me in-game money just out of respect for my decision to dive straight into low-sec pirating. In fact, on my third day, I clashed with a high ranked solo pirate who is well-known in the community, so this too impressed many and motivated long-time players who had always wanted to try the PvP aspect of the game but were too afraid of being pwned by the pros.
So thanks to all the donations, I have enough money to fit over a hundred Rifters which are cheap but effective vessels for pirating. I'm going to lose many of these ships, but with each loss I will learn what ship types I can and cannot defeat in battle, among other things. What I love about this game already is the fact that there is some kind of epic win happening every week, some fascinating things are always going on.
This week for example, a guy was transporting 74 PLEX in a ship, and he was attacked by pirates. PLEX is a Player Licence Extension, it's basically an item that gives you 15 days of EVE for free. You can purchase game time cards which give you 30 days free, and convert them into two PLEXs which become in-game items that can be LEGALLY sold in EVE for about 300,000,000 ISK each. Basically, this guy was carrying over $1400 worth of items in his ship, and lost it all to pirates. Everyone has been laughing their arses off about this idiot for days.
Another thing I read today on the forums was very interesting. Most people in EVE don't play PvP, they stick to high security areas whee CONCORD can protect them, and they do things like mining and trading, stacking up massive amounts of ISK in the process. However, a corporation was asking for advice on the forums today because another corporation declared war on them. Even in high security, you are allowed to kill someone if your group has declared war, however there is a war tax that must be paid each week so it's not something you can do willy nilly. Here's where things get interesting though, the group that declared war does this for profit, they declared war on a mining corporation and asked for 200,000,000 ISK to cancel hostilities. The group actively destroyed any mining ships so the other corp cannot continue with business as usual, and CONCORD won't punish them because it is an official war declaration.
All this mining corp can do is wait until these guys get bored, pay them the ransom or hire a mercenary corp, give them the 200,000,000 ISK to fight back against the others. Either way, seeing things like this happening in high, low and null security space is fascinating to read about. People have actually written BOOKS about how to fight back against war declarations in EVE and shit like that, it's crazy!
Anyway, has anyone else ever played EVE Online? If so, how was your experience and did you enjoy it?
