Anyone here play Eve?
It's a space based MMO, primarily build around PvP. After a 2 week free trial, I fell in love and subscribed.
It all takes place in space.... you never actually see your characters, they live in ships, and hop from one to the other depending on what you are doing. (PvP, PvE, Mining, Trading, etc...) There are no separate servers, everybody plays in one big universe... sometimes 30-40 thousand people at once!
Unlike most games, you immediately start out in a Corporation. (Like a guild or clan) Later, you can apply to a different Corp that suits your interests. After spending the trial in my Newbie Corp (Which was full of knuckleheads) I applied to and was accepted into "Eve University" which is a large, and awesome bunch of people dedicated to teaching the game to new players. They hold "classes" that you attend in game and over teamspeak where experienced players take you through things like fleet maneuvers, or "tackling". (A PvP role where you take a small, fast ship and try to "lock down" a larger ship by employing electronic warfare devices like warp scramblers so they can't warp away and your own ships can pound away at it!)
And lemme say, the learning curve for this game is STEEP! The interface alone is mind bogglingly complex, it is not at all user friendly, and takes some getting used to. So, having a good Corp really helps ease you into the game.
Another thing that is really different about Eve is the skill system... you don't gain skill points by doing something over and over... you actually gain skill points in real-world time, even when you are logged off! And some skills can take weeks of real world time to train, but the low level ones only take 20 minutes or so... So this means that people that have been playing for years can fly huge "Star Destroyer" type ships, while players that have only been in for a month are limited to small frigates. But, that doesn't mean you can't PVP as a newbie! Small ships are cheap and easily replaceable if they get blown up, plus the big ships have a hard time hitting the small ships. (Big guns have low tracking rates, small ships have high velocity)
Space in the game is rated in terms of security. 1.0 space is the safest, 0.0 is completely lawless and deadly. In High-sec space, NPC police will attack anyone who makes an aggressive move, so you can fly around, run missions (like quests) for NPC's and mine for ore in relative security. In Low-Sec space, you can easily get your ship blown up, and even killed. Blown up ships are lost for good, although you can (and should) insure them so you get back a chunk of the money. Dying means... you die... your frozen body floats in space! But the good news is you can buy clones, and wake up in a shiny new body a bit later.
So, exactly 1 day after I joined my new Corp... another Corporation declared WAR against us! This means their ships can attack our ships in ANY space, even high security 1.0 space! This makes it extremely dangerous to do anything basically... In fact during wartime we are not allowed to even UNDOCK from a station (safe spots) alone. We can not mine, or run missions. Basically, once wartime comes, you have to hide in a station, or join up with the Corp fleet and fight!
Wars are expensive for corps, every ship lost costs $$$, and to even issue a WarDecc (War Declaration) costs a huge amount of money. Each week (real time) that the war goes on it costs both sides, but costs the aggressor more usually. So why declare war? The Corp that has WarDecced us, "The Racketeers" are basically griefers... they want to ruin any ones fun, especially a "carebear" corp like us. (Similar to the grief that BFM gets from other, unnamed clans in the Halo community, hehe...) Our main goal is educating people and helping train pilots, not fighting in PvP, so a lot of other corps think lowly of us, and think we are "easy pickings" because we often have a large number of members who are new players. Well, we aim to show them the error of their judgement!
After a War is declared, both sides have 24 hours to prepare before any fighting is allowed. Once that time passes, the local police will no longer intervene, and the missiles start to fly! During war, recruiting is closed, and we are often put on lock down (Don't leave station for any reason!) while recon ships and stealth ships gather intel about enemy forces. Eventually, fleets will be formed, and war ops will start taking place.
We have retreated into our own sovereign space, and are waiting inside our Stations shield bubble for things to get rolling... it's not a quick process. The typical story... hours of boredom followed by 2 adrenaline pumping minutes of frantic activity! All of the warp gates out of our solar system are camped by enemy forces, and we are waiting for them to poke their heads in and start skirmishing. Which is good... we want them to come to us where we can defend from a strong position.
After the war was declared all classes were canceled and I attended 3 emergency sessions. War 101, Fleet Maneuvering, and Tackling. Since I am new, I will pilot a small, cheap ship called a Rifter. My role will be to try to lock on to enemy ships as called out by the Fleet Commander and nail them with a warp scrambler. (Have to be within 20 KM) This keeps them from escaping by warp. (Like the interdictor cruisers in star wars) Then I try to get in close (About 10 kilometers) and nail them with a Webber. This knocks their sub-warp speed by about 80%. Then I try to come in EVEN closer (About 5km) and hit them with an energy vampire. This basically sucks juice from their batteries and transfers it to mine. When their batteries get low enough ship systems will start going off line and they become a sitting duck for the DD (Damage Dealers) in the fleet to pound them to bits. If I have any spare juice, I can fire my missiles as well, but that is unlikely.
The ship I will be flying is small and very fast (Have it fitted with an afterburner and 3 overdrive modules, zoom!) but weak. 1 or 2 shots from a decent size ship, and I'm toast. But, each flight group usually has 4 or so tacklers. I expect to get my ship blown up. When that happens, you automatically eject in a "pod", which is a basic life support module with a warp drive. At that point the enemy will try to "podkill" or "pod" you, meaning to kill your body by blowing up your pod. So, you basically try to warp away as fast as possible when your ship gets blown up to avoid having to buy a new clone. Plus, and cranial implants (give big skill boosts!) are lost when you are "podded", and those things are EX-PEN-SIVE! On the flip side, we WANT to "pod" the enemy as much as possible to hurt their war funds. The sooner they decide the war is not worth it, the sooner the war will be over and we can get back to normal operations.
So, needless to say, this game is huge, deep, fascinating, hard, and fun as heck. I'll post some screenies later and give updates on how the war is going!
-Loqii
