When Eve first came out, It fascinated me. Some of my friends were playing it in school and would tell me about corporations, bitchy CEO’s, mining, wars, etc. At the time I had no way of paying the monthly subscription. Time went on, and a few years later I read about a guy who scammed billions of isk from people and gave it to a random guy and quit. This made big mmo news and shown how epic, unforgiving and intriguing Eve is.
After reading up more about Eve, I really wanted to play this amazing game, but I felt I had let to much time pass between the beginning of Eve. I would be caught in the same trap then every other older mmo out there. The same rules that most mmo’s go by regarding time and time spent playing do not apply to Eve. If I knew these things before, I would of started playing eve much earlier. There are probably many people in the same boat was I was who are putting off playing Eve because they will be alone, have no skills and no isk that older members will have. After being on Eve for almost 2 and a bit years, I can now explain why its never to late to start playing this fantastic, amazing and sometimes fulfilling game.
Will I be alone when i start playing?
- There are always new people playing eve. Eve’s sub base is always growing, so you will always be with someone on the same playing level as you. Also, remember a newbie is very capable of surpassing in many ways someone who has been playing for a year, which leads to point #2;
Everyone will be better then me.
- Skills are what let you fly better ships or the same ship much more efficiently. There are so many skills its easy as a newbie to surpass someone who might of fast tracked to battleships but neglected to train skills to fly frigs and cruisers better. with less then half the skill points, you could probably tackle the battleship in a T2 frig, or kill the guy easily if he is flying in a frig, since his skills are focused on battleships and not small weapons, navigation, frig to level 5 etc. Frigs are a great example of how a newbie can still own a older player. Also, don’t make the mistake that frigs are newbie ships. They are integral to solo pvp and small gangs.
Everyone will be better then me anyway.
- A carebear will make much more isk then a pvper but will have next to no pvp skills, and actually fear anything below 0.5 security space. A pvper will own a carebear or anyone whos been in empire for to long pretty easily, but will most likely be broke from losing ships. This is important to know because whatever path you choose on Eve, not everyone is going the same way as you, so its hard to compare skill level and competency as a good pilot to everyone else.
Corp’s dont want newbies to look after, they only want skilled players.
- Corporations and Alliances generally want newbies to join their ranks. Its worth training a newbie and gaining the loyalty from supplying, training and supplying them. If you join the right corp, you will most likely have skill books and frigs paid for. Corporations in Eve require loyalty to work. Not alot of people would hop corp once trained up and acquainted with corp members. Some people have been in the same corporation for 5 years because of the people they have known in game and the history the corp might have that they had a part in creating, and those core members are the backbone of a successful corporation.
How can I have any impact Eve?
- Eve is mostly social engineering. No matter who you are, you will find a corporation that suits you and who you are. Also, if you can gain influence with the right people, you could hold more political power then people playing since Eve began. If you want to grief people, see them cry in local, collect tears etc then piracy is for you, and within that kind of circle holds its own culture. Normally alliances have a industrial corporation who constructs capital ships, but not always. Informal contracts are formed between corps and alliances to external corporations for very large ships, which for a industrial corp would be very profitable. The CEO’s of such corps are of varying skill ranges, their success is in able to branch out, communicate, convince and gain trust.
I could probably go on and on. In summary, time spent on eve + skills does not = better then you. The differences of actually flying a ship (which takes most skill of all rather then what levels you have) vary greatly between every eve pilot, and no matter how new you are, you are probably doing much better then someone else.
If anyone has something else to add to this feel free to comment. Its an important topic if you want to see Eve grow even more, so give a comment and maybe, just maybe, someone will be convinced to give Eve a try.
Kai.
