I’ve been playing EVE for some 10 months now, progressing from noob frigate pilot to master of an awesowe Battleship capable of mounting huge weapons and laughing at the damage from fleets of bad guys.
Anyone who remembers Elite and wished for a little more from it will find most of what they could have envisioned in EVE. The universe alone is huge, with hundreds of systems holding thousands of players and NPCs, and the graphics are stunning.
The skills system is well thought out. Plenty of scope for defelopment of character.
The number of different ship classes, mining barges, frigates, haulers, destroyers, battleships etc. is impressive, and there is a ship suitable for almost every type of operation you can thnik of, be it mining in safe space, battling pirates in remote regions or shipping goods about from station to station.
Various corporations exist. Some conrtrolled by NPC’s, but a fair few run by players. You can even, with the appropriate skills, form your own.
PVP is supposedly limited to outside of faction space, although if someone declares war on your corporation, they can come into your safe area and frag you. Although if you enjoy PVP, you’ll find all that you can handle outside of “civilised” space.
Sadly, the instability of the server cluster lets it down. It is far too easy to lose in seconds, a ship and equipment you spent weeks mining/running missions/trading to put together.
Customer support is pathetically bad too. There is a wait of days before receving a response and this is invariably a stock reply that doesn’t really address the problem.
There is also the ever present problem of e-bayers who play the game purely as a way of making money. These abound in EVE and despite CCP’s claims to be doing something about it, the economy is goin the same way as Everquest’s; prices for rare items reaching silly levels as the greedy and selfish profit from the confusion and lack of support for the ordinary gamer.
In short, EVE is a game that fails to fulfill it’s enormous potential, due entirely to the lack of control that CCP has over the environment it created. This is great shame, as I personally like EVE, but, like others I deplore the lack of support and capriciousness of the GMs and developers.
Try before you buy (free trial currently available), and be prepared to have to make up your losses on a regular basis.
