Its a nice promotional video for the MMO: Eve Online. Before you dump your dwarf/orc in World of Warcraft (WoW), and go try being Buck Rogers, just remeber one thing: The Learning Curve. The learning of most MMO's is fairly gradual from being (your a noob) to the end game content (your a noob with shiny gear). Eve does not do things quite that easily, which is unfortunate. Imagine scaling a cliff without any ropes, harness or even chalk. Now, as your climbing, you have to climb, inverted for a length of time, before going vertical once more and reaching the top. THAT, is Eve's learning curve.

And before you think, that such a learning curve rids you of those chowder heads you find in WoW, think again. The ones in Eve are about forty times more unmerciful to deal with. Which largely explains in one regard, why WoW has some 14 million subscribers, and Eve has about 1 million.

While the learning curve is certainly high, there is a lot of help. The new tutorials are miles above the old ones, and are a must to learn the basics. Those take a day or two at most to go through. Apart from that there is a VERY helpful newbie channel, filled with hundreds of people available to answer any question. On top of that, the forums are also fairly newb friendly. For the more advanced parts of the game, there are numerous corporations eager to accept new pilots, many of them have formal and comprehensive training programs.

So, while it takes more than a few hours to really get into, it's not like you're thrown to the dogs. The community is exceptional when it comes to helping new players.

I will never have enough time to devout to a MMO (well, maybe when I retire in many moons), but this is about the first ad to make me want to give one a go.


Oh, and Nithern... sorry to be a grammar nazi, but it's YOU'RE in every case you used it but one. 'your a noob' = 'you are a noob' = 'you're a noob'.

It's quite painful to read (the one case it isn't you're is 'dump your dwarf').

I get doing it once as a slip, but it's not that hard... any place you could write you are = you're, any place you can't = your. (well, there's also yore, but that doesn't really come up as much)

Everyone makes mistakes, but repeatedly doing that one (as well as they're, their and there) demonstrates just not knowing how it works.

I know I'm a dick for saying it, but man it is annoying to read it over and over.

Gawd, they make it seem to action-packed, when the truth of the matter is that EVE can be exciting in some scenarios, but if you don't want to be part of a mega corp, your combat is going to be not dissimilar to two people in wheelchairs circling and spooting intermittent spitballs at each other.

The learning curve is ridiculously steep.

But with a steep learning curve successes within the game become that much more rewarding. Progression is far more marked. You really get a sense of improvement with your character and tactics rather then simply grinding up a certain pre defined skill path. At the higher tier of the game you start to specialize into roles be cloaking scout, heavy interdictor, tackler, sniping battleship, remote repair battleship and many more combination within the game.

Last night my alliance sent out a bait battleship group with a cyno field on board (a device that allows the creation of jump portals), the majority of the gang sat in the home system waiting for the bait gang to be engaged, when it was our titan (the largest most expensive ship in the game) created a jump portal for the rest of the gang, hot dropping the enemy with over 55 battleships and interdictors. We suffered one loss and destroyed and killed over 15 enemy targets. It sucks we didn't run into larger enemy gangs, but it was fucking awesome.

I never really liked MMOs, I hate grinding. But I been an EVE player for over 3 years now. This is by far the best ad they have created for the game. Alot of people confuse EVE with their own expectations of what a space MMO should be like, a mixture of tie fighter and elite, I think EVE comes close. I will be seeing how Jumpgate Online will be progressing though.

I don't think the fact that the learning curve in Eve is harder than Wow's explains why it has more subscribers, I mean, I doubt many of the WoW players have even tried Eve. I think it's mainly because of the massive amount of money that Blizzard put behind Wow. The people who made Eve; CCP, have one product, and that's Eve, and they publish it themselves now. That's explains why Wow has more subscribers.

Personally I try most MMO's and whilst I'm interested in spaceships, whacking things as a mythical creature is more appealing for some reason. Maybe's its because I read Tolkien's books before I read the Hitch hiker's guide to the galaxy.

i played eve for just over 3.5 years, but quit a year ago - it was just too time consuming (the way i was playing it), even though i worked online from home most of the time

playing from china on the us/euro server meant that i often didn't have many of my western peers and friends online at the same to play, as well as no broadband internet and horrendous ping times - so combat wasn't a readily available option

instead i slowly and efficiently surveyed literally thousands of moons for their mineable materials and carefully entered the results into a keyword-searchable spreadsheet -- at a time when very few people understood how the moon-mining and reaction to advanced-materials process worked, i became one of the few experts... and had all the information at my fingertips to build a massive mining/reaction operation deep in 0.0 space -- one that i ran with only my own four accounts (12 characters) and the help of another friend here in asia

we produced and stockpiled ferrogel for almost three years... until a year ago this past spring, when the price of ferrogel skyrocketed as players across the spectrum finally realized its rarity and importance

we slowly began selling, while constantly manipulating the market to drive the price ever higher -- i eventually amassed nearly half a trillion isk (eve currency), and then decided to leave the game - as far as i was concerned, i'd conquered it (in my own little way)

-=shameful postscript=- i sold the ingame eve money to chinese "gold farmers" for $30 us dollars per billion, even auctioning off all my very well-trained characters and all other assets for isk and selling that to the chinese (to resell to lazy american and euro players for $55 per billion)

my wife (and many o' friend) had often ranted at me regarding the time i spent playing the game and how much the four yearly subscriptions had cost me... but i ended up leaving the game with close to 13,000 us dollars and bought myself a new motorcycle and some other goodies

anyway, great game - but i won't miss it =)

^Damn you all, I just wish I had the time

>> ^spoco2:
... sorry to be a grammar nazi, but it's YOU'RE in every case you used it but one. 'your a noob' = 'you are a noob' = 'you're a noob'.
It's quite painful to read (the one case it isn't you're is 'dump your dwarf').
I get doing it once as a slip, but it's not that hard... any place you could write you are = you're, any place you can't = your. (well, there's also yore, but that doesn't really come up as much)
Everyone makes mistakes, but repeatedly doing that one (as well as they're, their and there) demonstrates just not knowing how it works.
I know I'm a dick for saying it, but man it is annoying to read it over and over.


I think he was saying "your" instead of "you're" on purpose, to mimic the experience of dealing with chowderheads in an MMO. If you ever play one, your going to see that alot.

My complaint is that this isn't a very good demonstration of the butterfly effect. In this example, the player's decision only impacted whether or not the player got to participate in a huge battle. To really demonstrate the butterfly effect, they'd need a counterpoint, say:
If the player chose to fly on by, the "friendly gang" would have stopped to battle the pirates, and by diverting from their path would not have been detected by the rival conglomerate, and the large-scale battle would not have occurred.

>> ^ReverendTed:
My complaint is that this isn't a very good demonstration of the butterfly effect. In this example, the player's decision only impacted whether or not the player got to participate in a huge battle. To really demonstrate the butterfly effect, they'd need a counterpoint, say:
If the player chose to fly on by, the "friendly gang" would have stopped to battle the pirates, and by diverting from their path would not have been detected by the rival conglomerate, and the large-scale battle would not have occurred.


A real "butter-fly effect" would have been if the decision made in Eve to help the lone miner had actually caused, by way of thousands of other random events, a tsunami in japan.

Great video and interesting comments. I still find myself unsure of whether I should try this or not. I did for a brief amount of time (like a couple hours), but became overwhelmed by all the choices. I wasn't sure if the uninformed decisions I had to make initially would conflict with my later, experienced self. I love the idea of Star Trek and this sort of reminds me of that. Exploration, alliances and confrontation.

My main concern is realizing my idea of this game would be something along the lines of this video and the reality would be more like Engles comment, "Gawd, they make it seem to action-packed, when the truth of the matter is that EVE can be exciting in some scenarios, but if you don't want to be part of a mega corp, your combat is going to be not dissimilar to two people in wheelchairs circling and spooting intermittent spitballs at each other."

But then reading other accounts of the game it sounds exciting. Just not sure whether to try it further or not and if so, what initial path to take.

so this is like super mario brothers?

You don't need one realm to see the same effects. If you think about it, Videosift, Youtube, each particular MMO, and any other similar online "location" that pulls a portion of the real world into a persistent virtual one, experiences the same butterfly effects displayed in this commercial.

Personally, when it comes to massive online games, I like the casual (with possibility of hardcore) element of browser RTS's like Tribal Wars, Travian, Ikariam, and OGame. I think I'm officially done with EVE, WoW, and the like. If you have never experienced the browser MMORTS genre, check it -- changed my life forever.

Kirk is superior to Picard.

Cool video, but man, do I ever hate that game. It has to be the most boring MMORPG I've played.

I'm pretty sure there are only around 195 recognized countries in the world, not 230.

>> ^ReverendTed:
My complaint is that this isn't a very good demonstration of the butterfly effect. In this example, the player's decision only impacted whether or not the player got to participate in a huge battle. To really demonstrate the butterfly effect, they'd need a counterpoint, say:
If the player chose to fly on by, the "friendly gang" would have stopped to battle the pirates, and by diverting from their path would not have been detected by the rival conglomerate, and the large-scale battle would not have occurred.


I guess they were saying that if the player hadn't saved that ship, the ship would have been destroyed and then would not have subsequently been spotted by the enemy who sent a freaking armada after it for some reason.

It's a clever marketing approach given the sort of geeky audience they're after. Of course the reality is quite the opposite, the common feeling with MMOs is that you never effect anything. All you do is run through the same scripted missions that have been played by others millions of times, and engage in endlessly repeating deathmatches.

The best you could aspire to is to frack up some small sub sector of the economy as Diogenes did.

Does it still work such that if my ship gets blown up, it's gone forever?

Cause if so, I maintain my prior stance: screw that game.

>> ^braindonut:
Does it still work such that if my ship gets blown up, it's gone forever?
Cause if so, I maintain my prior stance: screw that game.


yes

and if you dont like it hen go play any other mmorpg... or for that matter any single player rpg since they are essentialy the same

I picked this game up on a trial once, and here's how the tutorial/introduction welcomed me to the game:

Welcome to EVE! There's a small asteroid over there, go and mine it, you might find some stuff!
*i mine the asteroid*
Well done, you have mined the asteroid! Now you have minerals which you can sell. By choosing the right place to sell the minerals you may have to travel further but you will maximise your profits! Try and find more asteroids to mine, you can make more money and buy a bigger ship that will carry more minerals!
*me repeatedly spamming alt-f4*

That was the best this game had to offer me at the time i gave it a try. An endless loop of mining/selling minerals to buy a BIGGER SHIP!!!!! .......to sell more minerals with. Genuinely, that was what i was greeted with and that's what the game suggested to me, it was many years ago, perhaps the introduction is a lot more enticing these days.

And don't get me wrong, i played everquest from the day it started, the learning curve/difficulty in that game was hard as shit, but it drew me in, and that's something EVE has completely failed to do with me.

Boring, boring and boring are the three words i'd use to describe my experiences with EVE, and if a game doesn't snag your interest, it doesn't matter if it turns into HL1, HL2, quake, duke nuken forever and duke nukem 3d all wrapped into one, cos you'll never play it enough to get to that point. It's got to make you want to play.

Also, as a coincidence, i played in a TF2 clan with a guy called "lofty", who perpetrated one of the biggest ever EVE scams (so i was told) that pretty much every EVE player knows about. It was big enough to affect the whole game, iirc.

>> ^Hex:
>> ^braindonut:
Does it still work such that if my ship gets blown up, it's gone forever?
Cause if so, I maintain my prior stance: screw that game.

yes
and if you dont like it hen go play any other mmorpg... or for that matter any single player rpg since they are essentialy the same


The sparks of nerd-rage have been STOKED!

I think Eve Online was best summarized by Yatzee in his Zero Punctuation review...

"I just don't understand the appeal of having a second job that you PAY for..."

I'm not sure how many former Ultima Online (UO) players are in the audience (and will know what I mean), but that game and the experiences I had with it set the bar too high for any subsequent ORPG to reach (imho).

By way of background, UO was player-killer (PK) friendly everywhere except for cities (you could still kill people in cities, but the guards would come after you) and if you died, your corpse (along with everything you were carrying (which could have taken you months to acquire)) sat on the ground ripe for the picking until you could run back to it in ghost form from the nearest rez point. What that resulted in was bringing real emotion into the game with you. Running for your life from a guy intent on ending it actually felt a bit like running for your life. It was great!

I’ll never forget the time I happened across a ship that had been left unlocked, right next to the keep belonging to the Mercs (the most notorious PK guild on my shard). After waiting in the woods for a good 20 minutes (mainly to build up my nerve), I ran onto the boat, grabbed a ton of loot from the hold (these guys were loaded) and took off running, right as at least a dozen black-robed plate-armored Mercs came pouring out of their castle. The ensuing pursuit, not to mention the potential haul (I’d managed to grab more high-end gear and stuff than I would have earned by myself in 6 months of playing) made for one of the most enjoyable experiences I’ve ever had with a video game.

Newer ORPGs certainly have a lot going for them, but I don’t think they’ll ever give me butterflies in my stomach again.

Alot of people say EVE is boring, like a second job and so on. I understand that totally.

However it allows you to create your own emergent game play opportunities. I PVP mostly with an alliance based in low sec space. However I also trade components in High sec for the sheer enjoyment of manipulating one of them most largest, most complex virtual economies. It's not always explosions and large capital engagements, sometimes you are simply working out have to fit your ship for combat, or trying to make ISK to buy better modules and ships.

My main investment in the game is high tech research and development components, most of which I find in secluded magnometric sites, that need to be probed out using a triangulation method and a covert ops ship. This takes hours usually in dangerous systems where I could risk my ship. However the process is enjoyable to me, it hits that 2001/Blade Runner sci-fi setting for me. I dig the atmosphere.

But these moments of building up to large battles (heists, production completions, pirating, capital warfare whatever) only makes it that much more interesting, because I have invested time with the game, that ship and it's modules is perhaps weeks of mining, shooting, looting and trading. When I triumph with it I will feel elated. When I lose it I will feel crushed. There is real emotional investment with the assets. The reason so many people quit the game in emo-rage when their shiny new battleship gets jumped by a blob of pirates. The reason so many people play to kill others and see them emo-rage quit when their shiny carrier gets trapped in a large interdiction sphere and can't warp.

Thankfully CCP has reworked and keeps reworking the introduction tutorials to make it easier for new players now outlining career paths that pilots can take.

I still understand its not for everyone. It's not and it's good that way. Because they haven't diluted core elements of the game trying to become WOW.

Real life works like that too...

>> ^aceofkidneys:
Real life works like that too...


Yeah, some fucker podded me on I40 on the way home from work last night.

My crew caught up with him at the next overpass though.

This game looks insanely cool, but personally I'm more of a fan of difficult endgame content that is unchanging. Epic spaceship battles do look awesome, yes, but every 3 to 4 months Blizzard comes out with a new endgame dungeon. Call of the Crusade came out yesterday and I'm fucking stoked. Having unchanging content also means I can brag to my friends, "I downed Algalon, did you? Oh right, your guild's still on Auriya, n00b". Saying, "My alliance killed 80% of the so and so alliance" is arbitrary to me.

I suppose this game just isn't for egomaniacs.

As an experienced MMO player, I gave Eve a try with the assistance of an experienced Eve player at my side. The learning curve was not a huge problem. I just found the entire experience sterile and boring. That's a shame because there is a lot to like in the larger scale game mechanics.