Sunday 15 January 2012

Why Do I Play EVE?

I read a fellow bloggers post recently and it touched in why they play EVE. It made me think, why do I play EVE?
 
There are a few reasons that come to mind, do in no particular order....
 
My first introduction to MMO's was through World of Warcraft the same as many other people. I joined WoW back in the vanilla days and was part of a guild that used to raid eventually becoming an officer and the guilds main tank for 40 man instances. This I did hardcore for about 3 years. Crossing into the first expansion, Burning Crusade I rolled a new main character, changed my focus and set myself the objective of being the first player to have 10 level 70 characters on the server. I achieved this too. It was after Burning Crusade that I switched to a different guild to do more raiding which came at a time I had been made redundant. I ended up gaming at least 16 hours per day for nearly 6 months. At this time my wife and I were relocating to Cornwall so after 6 months we moved. I took it as an opportunity to go cold turkey, realising that I had allowed WoW to take over my life. I managed just fine, flirting with games like LoTRO, Guild Wars, Warhammer Online and Magic Online off and on. It was during this time that I remembered EVE as the guild master of my original WoW guild once posts about it. I did research and subscribed to blogs, absorbing as much as I could. I then went back and forth to WoW a few times always walking away, although in fact I went back to WoW briefly during my recent absence. It's too easy now tbh and still had a horrible habit of snowballing in terms of taking my time. I ended up trying EVE and started blogging about it at the same time. What helped me stick with the game is that I can ensure it doesn't take over my life; my character gets better when I am offline.
 
Next. The shakes, I rarely get them anymore but when I do it's incredible. That adrenaline rush. If you haven't pvp'd in EVE yet then I urge you to do so, you are missing out on something possibly unique in a game. I mean on occasion they've been that strong that I have had to dock and log and go for a quick walk to stop them!
 
Next. The camaraderie, I fly with The Tuskers. They are a great bunch of people, family friendly banter, extremely competent pilots who are dedicated to exploding spaceships.
 
Next. Spaceships bro! I mean I get to fly spaceships! A fair amount of my childhood once we actually got a computer was spent playing Frontier Elite 2. I still play it from time to time. EVE is something of über Elite 2 on steroids to me.
 
Variety. I love the variety in EVE. Depending how much time I have I can log in and pirate, carebear, trade, haul, or just chat, whatever takes my fancy.
 
The graphics. Although I run EVE on low settings, whenever I buy a new ship I haven't flown before I crank them up to max. The graphics can be breath-taking.
 
Now this will sound sad, spreadsheets. I get to use and make spreadsheets to use in conjunction with a game, admittedly I am an Excel junkie and yes I will seek professional help :P.
 
Every character is different and nothing may be what it seems. Ok some will have the same skills, but no two people are the same. In piracy I love this and when you warp in in someone, as Forrest Gump's momma said "you never know what you're gonna get".
 
So that's a long-winded me, what about you?

2 comments:

  1. Yeah absolutely agree. EVE is a one of a kind game and offers an experience I have never found in any other game.

    I used to get the shakes frequently as a young pirate flying around in my rifter. Just entering warp towards a ratting cruiser in a belt set my heart to beating rapidly and my palms to sweating. That died after a few months though and for a while the game started to become fairly day-to-day for me.

    Recently though I have begun soloing in null sec in anything from a frigate through to a battleship. I purposely seek out gangs or more powerful ships to fight and see what I can make of a very tough situation most pilots would flee from. This has brought back everything that I love about EVE, especially the shakes which I now get consistently in over half my fights. I'm currently enjoying EVE possibly more than I ever have. Probably excepting those first couple months when everything about the game is brand new and breathtaking.

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  2. I started playing as an industrial, which got boring within 2 weeks. Then I joined a wormhole corp, which was exciting because of the money that I was bringing in, and the mystery and excitement of exploring, and the actual risk involved. However, I still remember my first pvp experience...my corp went wormhole ganking, and caught a solo abaddon in a c1. I was in my manticore, and did top damage.

    The thrill was so exciting that when my corp moved to nullsec I jumped the carebear ship and haven't looked back. I am by no means very good at pvp, but that doesn't stop me from enjoying the thrill of the hunt, or fleeing for my life.

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