EVE Online: I’ll take your brain to another dimension!

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I started playing World of Warcraft in 2006. After a year I quit. Every now and then I wake up in the middle of the night, screaming. Screaming about the role of the Druid. About the forced Restoration stints. The mockery when I tried to tank. The heckling when I tried to DPS. Aside from the horrific, mind shattering nay-saying about Druids, I loved being a Druid. Jack of all trades, master of none. That’s me. Best way to be. Prowl as a, um, purple cat, rage around as an ugly, tiny faced bear and ponder like a bearded, pompous, green haired giant.

Ah, life was good!

After about nine months, I started to get bored. WoW had reduced itself to a game of numbers and boredom. Generally speaking, if someone is a higher level than you, you’re toast. Generally speaking, if someone sits on the game for days and days and equips themselves with disgustingly perverted equipment (with those pesky plus numbers attached), you’re toast. Generally speaking, if you play Warsong Gulch and you’re the shiningly good Alliance, you’re toast. Our guild was turning into a managed, moan-fest, the friendly people were leaving and I was tired of the grinding. That great feeling of exploration had gone. After twelve months I’d had enough. I cancelled my account and said goodbye to Azeroth.

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Some months later I was introduced to EVE Online and I kept it at arms length. I played the odd hour here and there, never really took an interest. You see, EVE is complex. EVE is it’s own world. It isn’t just gold farming, it’s galactic commerce, mining, espionage, taxes and contracts. It was too much for my WoW self to handle.

So, a year on, here I am again, navigating the sun hazed beauty of EVE. Suffice to say, my experience will be an ongoing one. It’s impossible to review EVE in a few words, part of its appeal is that it is constantly shifting. Players decide the fate of the galaxy through their own actions. Pirate? Bounty hunter? Miner? Corporate whore? Your choice.

EVE has the potential to terrify. However, it could turn you into a closet geek who from now on gets his valuable vitamin D from an alien sun (albeit through a monitor).

I’ll post more soon, including some performance comparisons between the Mac and Windows client.