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EVE Online is a persistent world multiplayer online game set in space. It is developed by the Icelandic company CCP Games and was published from May to December 2003 by Simon & Schuster Interactive, after which CCP purchased the rights back and began a digital distribution scheme. Players pilot customizable spaceships in an immense online environment. Players have a wide array of ship designs available to them, each of which is suited for specific uses. Eve Online is one of the few MMOGs in which all players exist in one large virtual universe at the same time, without the "sharding" common in other MMOGs (though there is now an second server intended for Chinese use).
Background The fictional background story for EVE Online explains that long ago, mankind had used up almost all of the Earth's resources, and had started colonizing the rest of the Milky Way to sustain itself. Eventually, there was no more room left in the galaxy, and war broke out. However, one day, a natural wormhole was discovered. The first people to pass through this wormhole found themselves in an uncharted system, which they named New Eden, in a completely foreign galaxy. Soon, colonists passed through the wormhole to colonize this virgin galaxy. Unfortunately, a cataclysmic disaster hit the EVE gates and the wormhole collapsed, cutting off the new galaxy from the Milky Way and throwing the colonists, suddenly without much needed supplies, into a technological dark age. Many colonies died out completely, though numerous ones survived. Only five known ones would ever return to any kind of prominence again, and they would eventually rebuild society together. These make up the five major empires in EVE, and players may choose from four of these when creating a new character. Races The Amarr, a group descendant from a fundamentalist group called the Conformists, were the first of the playable races to rediscover interstellar and faster-than-light travel. Armed with this new technology, they set about expanding their empire, enslaving several races in the process, including the Minmatar, who had only just invented space flight for themselves. The Amarr Empire found its expansionist vigor through the Reclaiming, a crusade to bring their vaunted ideals to the galaxy. This was swiftly ended after their confrontations with the Gallente and, most notably, the Jove. After the destruction of the Imperial Navy in conflict with a single Jovian mothership, the Minmatar rebelled against their masters and broke off to form their own faction in the EVE universe. They are the underdogs in the galaxy, holding the least number of star systems, and many of their people are still enslaved in the Amarr Empire or are refugee members of the Gallente Federation. The Gallente and the Caldari homeworlds were situated in the same star system. The Gallente homeworld was originally settled by French colonists from Tau Ceti, while the planet that would later become Caldari Prime was purchased by a mega-corporation, which began to terraform it. However, the process was incomplete at the time of the gate collapse, and Caldari Prime remained environmentally inhospitable for millennia, delaying the rise of advanced society. The Gallente, with a more hospitable homeworld, restored a working civilization some hundred years before the Caldari, building the first democratic republic of the new era. However, the Caldari were able to reverse-engineer the terraforming equipment, giving their technology a substantial boost. With their ideological differences, the Gallente and the Caldari proved incapable of co-habiting the same star system, and the increasing friction between the two races culminated in the blockade of the Caldari homeworld and the sabotage of the Gallente sub-aquatic city of Nouvelle Rouvenor on Caldari Prime which killed millions. These acts sparked the Caldari-Gallente war. During this time, the Gallente Federal Navy unleashed a campaign of orbital bombardment against Caldari prime. The Caldari, however, were able to hold off and distract the Gallente with their superior technology and great determination and sacrifice, allowing for Caldari Prime to be evacuated. The war continued for several decades until the Gallente came into contact with the Amarr, and finally brokered a peace deal. Meanwhile, the Caldari had encountered the Jovians, and benefited greatly from the older race's advanced technology. The Jovians (currently a non-playable race) themselves had been a human colony, or group of colonies located in a distant region from the EVE Gate. After the collapse of the gate and the crumbling of interstellar trade and travel-ways, the Jovians were able to revive their civilization almost immediately, losing very little time and very little information thanks to the shortness of their relative dark age. For years they expanded outward and explored their sector of space as the other races still huddled, overcrowded in their isolated home systems. Eventually, the Jovians turned to wide-spread genetic engineering in order to mould themselves into a people more suited to deep space life and long range interstellar exploration. However, for some reason lost to history, a disaster occurred in their genetic research programmes, causing massive information loss. The Jovian’s genetic experiments began to spiral wildly out of control, irrevocably damaging the race. The worst of their afflictions is a dreaded psychopathy, colloquially known as the "Jovian Disease", which inflicts an abject depression on the victim, who loses the will to live and generally expires within a short time of the onset of symptoms. The Jovians have since renounced genetic tampering, though have continued their genetic research in earnest, hoping to discover ways to cure themselves and continue their experimentations with much greater caution. When the Amarr encountered the Jovians, their first response was to attack and to attempt to subjugate them. The Battle of Vak'Aioth was a humiliating defeat for the Imperial Navy, as a single Jovian mothership massacred their proud fleet, destroying even the formidable "Apocalypse"-class battleships with a single shot. Seizing their moment, many of the Minmatar slaves used the consternation this caused within the Empire as an opportunity to rebel, successfully earning their freedom and establishing their own sovereign domain and founding the Minmatar Republic. Gameplay Players can engage in many tasks in the EVE universe. Examples include mining, fighting, manufacturing, researching, completing missions, trade, piracy, market interaction and transportation of cargo. Since its release, EVE Online has claimed awards for its graphics, gameplay, PvP, and creating company. EVE is played entirely on one large server cluster named Tranquility; however, a Chinese shard called Serenity is expected to launch soon. All the players (not testers) are on the same server cluster and in the same game-world. On September 4th, 2006, EVE Online achieved a new record for the maximum number of simultaneous pilots online with 30,538 concurrent accounts logged on to the same server. As of October 2006, Eve Online has about 150,000 active subscriptions. The servers have a scheduled daily downtime between 11:00 and 12:00 GMT. There is a test server cluster called Singularity (Sisi) where players may get a first look at new content, as well as help the developers test changes. Advancement EVE Online is different from MMOGs such as World of Warcraft and EverQuest II because the player characters do not gain experience points through actions or by completing tasks. Instead, the player "learns" skills by training a specific skill over time, a passive process that occurs in "real world" time so that the learning process will continue even if the player is not logged in. As a result, new players are unable to gain more skills than existing players who continue to train their skills. The time required to train a skill is determined by the player's attributes and how many "skill points" a certain skill requires. This allows all players to advance their characters' skills at a roughly equal (but not fixed) rate, regardless of the amount of time spent playing. The skill training system is connected with five attributes: Intelligence, Perception, Charisma, Willpower and Memory. Each skill has a primary and secondary attribute, thus the higher these attributes, the faster skills that use them are trained. There are also skills and implants that can increase attributes. Another distinguishing feature of this advancement system is that there is no upper limit for a player character. Currently, a character can learn a maximum of 340,000,000 skillpoints. The most specialized 'learning' character can learn at most 20,000,000 skillpoints per year; to reach 340,000,000 skillpoints would require 17 years of real time. In addition, the maximum number of skillpoints is increased with every expansion. To prevent confusion, the total skillpoint number above reflects a character which had specialized in the ships of every race, when in reality it is considered most efficient to stick to one race's ships. In addition, if a character trains the last level of high-rank skills, this training takes a very long time (many months), and the returns on this training are marginal, relative to the previous levels of the skill. As a result, a 3-month-old character could successfully compete with a 3-year-old character in certain areas, if the 3-month-old character had specialized in one field. By way of comparison, if WoW were to have an advancement system similar to that in EVE, a 3-year-old WoW character would be a healer, fighter, crafter, druid, hunter, etc. all in one. The hypothetical 3-month-old character in WoW would just be high level in one of the 'classes'. EVE is unique in this respect—in most games, players bring their characters to the maximum level possible and then create a new character of a different class. In EVE however, players can develop their characters to be one or all 'classes' from the very beginning. Skills are divided into fifteen groups: Corporation Management, Drones, Electronics, Engineering, Gunnery, Industry, Leadership, Learning, Mechanic, Missiles, Navigation, Science, Social, Spaceship Command and Trade. New players start with a small number of core skills (depending on choices made during the character creation process) and need to buy skillbooks in order to acquire new skills. Each skill has a different multiplier, or "rank", that determines how long each subsequent level takes to train. For example, the basic skills, with low ranks, may take the player 10 minutes to train to the first level, while high-ranking skills like capital ships may take a month or more to train to the highest level. Skills may have the requirement that other skills that must be trained to a specific level before the new skill can be trained. Economy There is a single currency unit in EVE Online, the Inter Stellar Kredit (ISK), which takes its name from the Icelandic króna, whose ISO code is ISK. Players can barter between themselves for items, or may use the extensive in-game market system for ISK-based transactions. A large proportion of the in-game economy is player driven; NPC merchants supply some basic equipment, as well as tech 1 blueprints and trade goods. Players, through the use of blueprints and in-game skills, can gain the ability to build items ranging from basic ammunition to cutting-edge capital ship hulls, and manufacture them for personal use or for sale. Pricing and availability of goods varies from region to region within the EVE universe. These aspects contribute to an economic environment influenced by factors like scarcity of resources, specialization of labor and supply/demand dynamics. The economy is closely tied with the (also player driven) political aspect of the game. Player corporations (the EVE equivalent of guilds) rise and fall as they struggle for market dominance as well as territorial control. One example worth noting is when an independent industrial corporation was attacked by a military alliance to prevent it from delivering a prototype capital ship to their enemies; a demonstration of the level of interaction between the in-game economy and politics. From a technical point of view, the economy in EVE is known as an "Faucet/Drain" or Open economy, that is there is no fixed amount of money or materials in the universe. CCP did attempt to implement a Closed economy (that is an economy where there is a fixed amount of currency and therefore materials) early on in the game's existence, however it proved too difficult to balance the effects of new players entering the game with the capabilities of older players able to earn more ISK or obtaining more materials. The current Open economy is automatically balanced by introducing extra materials in underpopulated areas to encourage an even spread of players. There is a second, smaller market which does not operate under the same rules as the regular market. It is entirely player-driven and was initially conceived by players. Called "escrow", it is generally used for very high-price items to avoid market tax, for selling limited-run blueprint copies (impossible on the normal market), or for very rare items. Escrow has the added benefit of being viewable from any region. The developers have stated that this system is to be replaced by a Contracts system in the upcoming expansion codenamed Kali. Combat
Security Index System EVE features an open PvP system where every player can attack any other player without warning everywhere in the game universe. To balance this "free aggression", EVE has implemented a "security index system". Every solar system in the EVE universe has a public security status which ranges from 0.0 to 1.0. Systems with a rating of 0.0 are completely lawless. 0.1 to 0.4 have absolutely no protection by CONCORD (NPC law enforcement) but offer a somewhat limited protection by sentry guns at stargates and stations. 0.5 to 0.8 have increasing amounts of sentry gun cover as well as NPC security patrols. 0.9 and 1.0 systems are considered extremely secure, with constant security patrols at every major point and heavy CONCORD presence. Any time a player commits an act of aggression in a system with a security rating at or above 0.5, CONCORD ships and/or stationary weapons platforms will attack and destroy the aggressor. It is worth noting that while breaking the law in high-security systems usually means certain death for the offender, this does not guarantee the absolute safety of the victim: a well-planned suicide attack can still successfully destroy a ship before CONCORD and sentry guns turn the aggressor into space dust. For example, the system of 'Jita' in Caldari space is known as the most dangerous system in EVE, even though it has the highest security rating (1.0). This is partly due to suicide attacks, where pirates will scan ships passing through Jita, looking for expensive cargo. When a ship is labeled a target, pirates will destroy them to get the cargo, even though they know CONCORD will destroy their own ship. To ensure the pirate who did the work gets the cargo an "alt" (alternate) will often be used. The pirate's alt character will be waiting near by, ready to come in and get the loot. Death Jump Clones Expanding the cloning system further, Jump Clones were added in Red Moon Rising to allow advanced players to mitigate risking their advanced cybernetic implants by using Infomorph Psychology to jump into a cloned body in another station, without requiring their existing body to die to achieve this. The original body (complete with its cybernetic implants) is then stored in a station medical facility and may be returned via another clone jump (after a 24-hour waiting period). Through this method a developed character may engage in risky combat operations, something they would otherwise be unwilling to do if they were putting several billion ISK worth of cybernetics on the line to do. Jump Clones are only offered on stations where the character's player corporation has a very high standing with the station owners; for this reason many jump clones are installed in player-constructed outpost stations, balancing the removal of risk that a jump clone provides with the possibility that the outpost may change ownership and the jump clone stranded in hostile space. Although a player must have very high standing with a station's owners to initially place a jump clone at the station, once the clone exists, the player may travel to any other station before jumping back to his or her original clone. A station does not even need medical facilities for a player to leave a clone behind when jumping. Players also use jump clones to instantly travel great (or short) distances across the Eve Universe for any purpose, not simply combat. Trader characters may do business in one trade hub, and then clone jump to another hub to continue their buying and selling. Cost EVE currently costs €14.95 / $14.95 a month (the European cost is higher as VAT is included). Like other MMOGs, the cost can be reduced by paying for larger subscription intervals. Players can pay via online payment services or by mail order. The mail order costs more than online payment, though the large subscription discount still applies. CCP purchased distribution rights back from Simon & Schuster in 2003, and now distributes the game client via free digital download. Those who are playing EVE Online can send 14-day trials to their friends via the 'Buddy Program', available from the EVE Online website. A trial account is able to perform almost all of the same functions as a full account with the exception of training certain skills (such as industrial ships), using the escrow system, and transferring ISK to other players. If the buddy upgrades their trial account to a paying account, the person who sent the invitation will be entered into a monthly raffle for various prizes. Free 14-day trials for EVE Online are also available at: https://secure.eve-online.com/ft/?aid=100001 It is also possible to pay for a subscription through the in game purchase of ETC (EVE time cards) using ISK (in game currency). This system was instituted by CCP and the transactions are protected by CCP staff. This allows more advanced players able to generate the needed ISK to pay for their characters without any real money. The ETC sellers are also players and they gain in game ISK in trade for the purchase and resale of the ETC's. ETCs come in 30-50-90-100-180 day increments, and are treated just like normal subscriptions in every way. Demographics As of October 2006 the average age of an EVE Player was 27. 95% of players are male, and 5% are female. The average weekly playtime is 17 hours, or just under 2.5 hours per day. Gemini Gemini was not actually a content patch, but is included here for the sake of completeness. When EVE Online: The Second Genesis was released, the base was codenamed Gemini, version 1.00.0000. Castor Castor was the first major content addition. It focused on refining current functions along with adding Tech Level 2. With its release, EVE players saw conquerable stations in 0.0 security systems, the introduction of the agent system, the introduction of research agents, and many other features released between the launch of Castor and its follower, Exodus. Castor was released in December 2003. Exodus Exodus was released on 24 November 2004 and added new content such as player owned starbases, multi-level "deadspace" scenarios, new environments, a new alliance system (which included formal alliance formation), new ships, better handling of conflicts, new market functionality, user interface improvements, and an updated in-game web browser. Starbases now counted towards "Sovereignty," the ability to own a system in-game. Prior to its official release, this expansion was codenamed "Shiva". Cold War Edition Cold War Edition added larger structures and ships, new environments, more user interface changes and new agent functionality. Newly added "COSMOS" constellations contain new in-space agents with story-driven missions and unique rewards. The content patch also contained an extensive new tutorial sequence and a storyline background introduction. The Cold War Edition was released in July 2005. Red Moon Rising Red Moon Rising added new content, much of which was originally slated to be in the 'Kali' expansion. Red Moon Rising was split off in order to maintain a more regular patch schedule. It included many code optimizations and updates to combat, research, and manufacturing. Red Moon Rising added new Tech 2 ships and rebalanced the existing Tech Level 1 ships. Added to the ship classes were Recon Cruisers (cruiser class ships designed to cloak and/or operate in support roles), Command Cruisers (battlecruiser class ships that grant bonuses to leadership), and Interdictors (destroyer class ships that can pull ships out of warp). Mining and manufacturing players have new items, implants, and ships to use. Carrier, Mothership, and Titan ship classes were added. Some of these ships utilize extra-large drones (or 'Fighters') as their primary weapons systems, and have many abilities focused at supporting fleets of lesser ships. Titans additionally have special abilities such as wormhole generators and super weapons. Finally, NPC ships have received a significant overhaul, with new abilities and new ships. Red Moon Rising or 'RMR' was released on December 14 2005. Bloodlines Bloodlines is the codename for the small content patch that added one new bloodline to each race. The Achura, citizens of the Caldari State and expert scientists; the Jin-Mei, members of the Gallente Federation renowned for their legendary leadership traits; the Khanid of the Amarr Empire, the primary fighter-warriors of their culture; and the Vherokior of the Minmatar Republic, the established manufacturers and engineers of the tribes. This patch included additional code optimizations and bug fixes, and was released on 2 March 2006. Dragon Not a content patch, but again added for completeness. This update was major as it brought the codebase from the Chinese server (Serenity) and Tranquillity together and it was heralded as the "road to Kali". The changes included an important update to introduce Unicode and incorporate updates from Chinese server creation. With this patch, EVE could no longer be played on Windows 95/98, ME or Windows 2000 SP1. Revelations Revelations is the upcoming fifth content patch, also known by its codename, Kali. With it comes new Factional Warfare and Combat Organization such as introducing Medals, Ranks, Titles and Certifications which are to be awarded to players, corporations, alliances, and factions. Factional Warfare allows a pilot to declare allegiance to a side in the inter-factional conflict in the EVE universe. A contract system and combat boosters will be implemented, as well as the arrival of Tier-3 Battleships and Tier-2 Battlecruisers. The Red Moon Rising content patch was split off from Revelations and included many features originally slated for this release. CCP has announced that the release of Revelations will take the form of three content patches, with the first expansion scheduled to be released sometime during December 2006 and the third expansion in April of 2007. Revelations is also to include fully integrated and tiered voice support for the client designed by Vivox. Although full details have not been announced at this time, developers at CCP have stated that the new voice system will allow for simple and effective communication within corporations and gangs, even as far as allowing gang leaders to mute the whole channel to communicate within it or even listen to multiple channels. Serenity and the Chinese EVE-Online As discussed in the dev blog with LeKjart, Serenity is the nickname given to a EVE-Online partnership with Optic Communications to bring EVE-Online to the Chinese mainstream. Serenity is in its early stages, and was in closed alpha testing on a small cluster for some time, with about 3,000 players chosen from an initial pool of 50,000. The Chinese EVE web site is up and running and some events have already been held. At the end of March, several CCP Devs went to China to participate in PR activities in preparation for Launch of EVE China by the end of summer, 2006. Following the alpha, Serenity went into closed beta running on the brand new hardware that Optic has invested in to run the game. The code base between Serenity and Tranquility will be strictly in sync, so that any new development will be distributed to all players. The main new addition needed was converting the whole of EVE-Online to Unicode, as well as putting in place a whole new back-end system to enable localization of each and every aspect of the game's content and UI. The Chinese open beta test began in June 2006, and prices are believed to be around 3.5USD for a CD-key promo package (includes a CD-key card, DVD client, player guide, and postcard), with an 8.00USD monthly fee after that. The game has gone through an extremely severe examination by China's authorities in order to prevent Chinese players from coming in contact with anything that might violate Chinese policy and related laws. This is believed to have resulted in a shrinking of the game's content, as Chinese law requires that all "drug dealing, political, or religious content" must be removed or changed. It's expected that many of these elements have been saved however, by appearing in a different form. Ships Ships in the EVE universe are organized into a variety of different classes, varying from minute frigates to titans thousands of times larger. Each of these types has its own advantages and disadvantages in the game. One should not simply assume that the bigger a ship is, the better. For instance, a frigate is incredibly small compared to a battleship, but many users outfit these smaller ships with equipment that impairs the abilities of the battleship. This leaves the battleship vulnerable to attack from other ships. However, some of the weapons available to the battleship could destroy that frigate in a few shots. The balance between ships is also maintained by the implementation of the signature radius. The smaller an object (ship or otherwise) is, the harder it is to target. The enormous scale of some of the newer vessels in the EVE universe can been seen in this ship scale comparison chart. Using the Caldari fleet as an example, the small vessels in the top right of the chart are Frigates, along with the Shuttle and Destroyer. Moving counter-clockwise around the Caldari fleet, the next four vessels are Cruisers, while the following is a Battlecruiser. Following the Battlecruiser are the two Battleships, then the Carrier, Mothership, Titan, Freighter, three Industrials, and finally the Dreadnought. The Eiffel Tower, for comparison, can be seen in the far bottom left hand corner. Weapons Weapons in EVE are divided into four types: turrets, missile launchers, drones, and smartbombs. Each type requires a different set of skills in order to use effectively, and have distinctive behaviors and tactical uses. Each of the four playable races favor a different subcategory of these weapon types; missile launchers (Caldari), energy turrets(Amarr), hybrid turrets(Gallente), and projectile turrets (Minmatar). Additionally, certain modules have an important effect on tactics used in combat including warp scramblers/disruptors (and their counter, warp stabilizers), webifiers, energy vampires and energy destabilizers. Every weapon has its advantages and disadvantages. Missiles, for example always hit the target regardless of range, although the effectiveness of a missile diminishes quickly as its size increases and the target's decreases. The effectiveness of a turret however, is determined by several variables: its tracking speed, the distance between it and its target, its target's relative velocity, and the signature radius of the target. Unlike missiles launchers, ammunition used by turrets affects both the optimal range of the turret and the standard damage inflicted by each hit; closer range ammunition causes more damage, and longer range ammunition causes less. Other offensive systems include electronic countermeasures (ECM) modules that keep an opponent from achieving a target lock or interfere with weapon systems, although these can be countered using various ECCM (electronic counter-countermeasures) modules. Equipment Equipment in EVE is divided into different categories - ammunition, deployable equipment, drones, electronic warfare, electronics and sensor upgrades, engineering equipment, hull & armor, propulsion, shield, smartbombs, turrets & bays, civilian modules and gang assist modules. Within these categories different versions of individual items are available, each version has its specific advantages. For example: cheaper to produce, doing more damage or repairing more shield points a time. Graphics Engine and Windows Vista On March 14, 2006, the EVE-Online development team announced that they would be upgrading the graphics engine of EVE-Online to a DirectX 10 / Vista graphics platform. As a five-year-old engine, the 'Trinity' engine that EVE-Online currently runs on is nearing the end of its lifespan. However, there is no requirement that players upgrade to the new Vista compatible client, and an enhanced version of the existing DX9 compatible client will continue to function. The current version (Eve Classic) is likely to continue to be the preferred version for performance and stability unless Vista becomes the industry standard. Milestones Quafe Quafe is both the name of popular drink in EVE and the name of the company which produces it. On the October 22, 2004, CCP made a marketing first when they launched the virtual drink for sale in the real world. CCP sold the drink from their website for $1.50 (USD) for a single bottle, or $15.10 for a multipack, but sales of this drink have since ceased. Quafe has a distinct lemon-lime taste. The drink is a repackaging of the real-world soft drink Orka from Egill Skallagrímsson. Awards See also Official Third party Articles & Stories | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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