Tuesday 6 May 2014

Return to New Eden

My Miasmos ore hauler leaving a station
Where was I?... Oh yes, video games! Jon over at How to Murder Time has recently re-posted all of the old Van Hemlock podcasts and I've been slowly working my way through them. The early ones are quite heavily EVE based, and being of a highly suggestible nature I am of course now playing EVE again.

Eve Online is a strange beast. It can be utterly impenetrable to the newbie, yet has the scope and scale to allow it's player driven content to make its way onto international mainstream news. Massive battles with hundreds of thousands of real-world dollars worth of ships being destroyed; intrigue and espionage allowing a single player to destroy a massive player alliance from within. EVE is the epitome of multiplayer. The vast bulk of its content is derived from players interactions with each other and yet here I am, soloing it and soloing it hard. I've only been back a few weeks but I've easily put in 100 hours in that time and all of it has been solo.

My Thorax, bristling with rail-guns
I'm kind of intrigued by the prospect of joining up with a big corp or alliance and heading off into the wilds of 0.0 security space, but it feels to me like I'd need to make a commitment to the game I just don't think I want. I think the added pressure of that would make me burn out on the game altogether more quickly than I would do otherwise. So here I am, treating one of the most hardcore PvP MMO's as a kind of relaxation aid. I load up into my Mackinaw mining ship, head out to a nice quiet asteroid belt in high sec and start mining some big juicy space rocks. Since getting a nice new 27" monitor my old 20" Samsung has been given a new lease of life as a second monitor. Most EVE players in this situation would have a second account running to provide assistance to their main account, a hauler maybe, so the mining vessel never need leave the asteroid belts. However, as is fairly obvious, I'm not most EVE players. I'm using my second monitor to browse the web, read and write blogs, catch up on missed TV or power watch a series of something on Netflix. EVE is my perfect companion to a few hours of idle surfing, happy to get on with something by itself and only requiring occasional input from me. And all the while the ISK, (in game currency), keeps trickling in, be it from the sale of unrefined Blue Ice or from my little Catalyst, (a Destroyer class spaceship), production line that most of my asteroid grazing goes towards supplying. If I fancy a change of pace I can hop in my Rifter or my Thorax and run a few Agent combat missions, pew-pewing against AI controlled drones and pirates. I'm in the process of training up to be able to fly and kit out a Battleship in order to do some higher level agent missions and really start making some money off them, but for now they are a fun way of mixing up my more sedate industrial activity.


I'm 100% sure that if any real EVE player was to read this they'd sadly shake their head before calling me a n00b and telling me I'm playing the game about as wrong as it is possible to play it. I'm well aware of that, but you know what? I'm really enjoying it the way I'm doing it for now, so sod off!

3 comments:

  1. Joining 0.0 coprs/alliances would be to much commitment for me. It's like all politacal and stuff out there. I shudder at the thought.

    I'd suggest hooking up with people that roam once in a while though. RvB's Ganked or the Redemption Road public roams. Or why not go into w-space and murder people? Or go into w-space and do sites. Odds are you'll get a fight that way!

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    1. W-Space might be an option. I did scan down a wormhole once and that moment when I decided to enter it was quite thrilling! Unfortunately it just linked an area of Sinq Laison with The Forge though, high sec both ends, which was a bit disappointing.

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  2. Ah. Well, hook up in game if you want to tag along. Wednesdays just as when Van Hemlock organized it. We do PvE (mainly) but the rest of the days are usually hunting.

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