Originally Posted by Evasra

I just cancelled my Eve account in early December after playing for almost a year, but I can easily put it at the top of the MMO list. To say the game is a "beast" would be an understatement. Eve is truly for hardcore players, not to say casual players cannot enjoy it and have a great time, but the time commitment is eventually what pushed me away. The fact that time commitment being the reason I quit is quite ironic, due to the game’s acquisition of skills structure. You don’t have to do anything to gain skills (besides purchase them) to “level up” except click “Train Skill” and start a new one when that one runs out.

Though I cannot explain game play, as there are countless things you can do, I can share several huge mistakes I made early on in the game that decreased my enjoyment. First, I joined a great, mature RP guild, but it was a small guild and had been around a long time. This left me playing mostly solo, as I did not want to bother the other members for help, etc. I recommend finding a large corporation (guild) to join or join a training corporation like Eve University. I have heard so many good things about that group. Second, I plunged my skill training into mining and transport. I wanted to mine asteroids and enjoyed doing that, but as time went on, it became less and less profitable as I needed protection against pirates and “rats” (NPCs). True hardcore miners often run 4 accounts simultaneously: two for mining, one transport, and one protection. I do not have time for that or for the slave-like labor of mining guilds. Third, I did what everyone told me not to do and trained all my learning skills first. Learning skills provide no other benefit except to decrease the training time of your skills, I mucked about for 4 months training them all. This would allow me to save months of training time, but because I did this so early on I was very limited to what I could do and wasted the opportunity to truly get involved in the game.

Eve Online has great depth, a wonderful parent company, and is strengthened by the best community of any present MMO. The game fills only a particular niche of the market though but is definately worth downloading the trial and going through the utterly exhaustive tutorial. I came to Guild Wars and am enjoying it very much so far, as it is better fitting to the casual player. I have a 60 Priest in WoW, but do not want to continue running the same instances over and over…and I have no time or desire to play battlegrounds to get a better looking staff with slightly increased stats.

Here are some cool links to check out for Eve Online:

The Eve 0.0 Experiment. A newly created character plunges straight into lawless territory and attempts to survive. Start at the beginning back in July, I read for first several months or so and it was entertaining:
http://00experiment.blogspot.com/

A large fleet battle on Google Video, “Where Have All The Good Fix Gone?”
http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...fix+gone&hl=en

Eve Radio is a community-run and donation-funded 24-hour radio station. Tons of fun and highly popular:
http://www.eve-radio.com/

The Eve official tracking guide always cracks me up:
http://www.eve-online.com/guide/en/g26.asp