Recs.
Updated
SpecsUpdate
Pros
Pro Amazing freedom of play
You can do almost anything in the game. You can become a massive entrepreneur and deal with billions of ISK, set up a pirate base in wormhole space, explore anomalies, build massive ships, become CEO of a player-run industrial corporation. There's tons and tons and tons of stuff. This is likely the most sandboxy of MMO sandboxes.
Pro A consistent sandbox game unfairly maligned for not being "progression on rails"
CCP refuses to dumb down the game for casual subscriptions that would end up being short term anyway. Though many features have been added, the game play has remained consistent for over a decade, making for a complex but knowable game.
Yes, the game is the "Wild West". Some places are like Kansas City, others are like Tombstone, Arizona. There is always danger. What fun is a game without it? But you can pick your level of danger. You will blunder into bad situations, but is there an MMO where you can't end up in a place far above your level, and is it really fun for a game to be a nice, safe "playpen"?
Yes, there are griefers who enjoy being flamed at by angry players. This complaint is not about the game, but about a small subset of gamers found in all multiplayer games. The vast majority of Eve players are mature and even helpful.
Yes, if you stuff everything you have into a ship all at once and fly out into the void, you can lose it all. "Losing six months of work" is just nonsense. If you get killed, you should always have many other ships to fly somewhere safe, even if you're nowhere near being good at PvP. The heightened challenge that other players provide over some AI is nice, because it makes it so much sweeter when you beat a gatecamp or a mining gank.
Yes, the game economy is complex enough that some people actually use spreadsheets. It isn't a requirement. If you just want to shoot, loot, and sell, it's no different than any other game.
Yes, there are scammers, but nobody can just steal anything from your inventory. What you turn over to anyone is by deliberate actions only, again, like any other MMO.
Yes, you are at a disadvantage early on in PvP. Name a game where you can start out in PvP with the same gear and skills as everyone else. The way training scales, you won't be at a huge disadvantage for that long.
Eve is unlike most other MMOs in a great many respects, and like any game won't be for everyone. But it really should be judged on its own merits, not berated simply for not being another game.
Cons
Con On the decline
The player number is about half of what it used to be and continues to decline. The game has been around for 19 years so it's hardly a surprise.
Con Toxic community
Lose everything you spent 6 months building because you can be attacked anywhere. The perpetrators do it because they say they love the tears and then tell the victims to go play WoW instead and Eve Online is not for everyone. The player base plummets and the PvPers blame CCP, the devs, for a decreasing number of potential targets, because they say the game has become too "carebear" friendly.
A large driver of the game is an external site called Killboardz that tracks your ship kill/loss ratios. The emphasis is on quantity of kills and not quality. This means many successful players will evade difficult fights and will prey on the weakest and mostly newer players.
Con It's about screwing over customers for as much $$$ as they will tolerate; pay to play greed at its worst
The custom appearances are hastily built and don't even look good. The worst is that CCP indirectly supports those who are cheating. There are a few corps that post videos of them clearly cheating and yet they are not punished. It seems clear that the ISD members signing the confidentiality agreements are causing players to lose ships and encouraging them to pay real money to replace them. The new content is hardcore and buggy forcing a lot players to spend money besides their monthly sub fee or quit.
The PvE content is minimal and redundant. The Pvp content is a joke. Gang bang abushes or religious fanatic style suiciding. No ladders. No Ranking.
Con Lots of time spent driving around, a few really nasty players
If you KISS (keep it simple, stupid) it helps, but dealing with travel, inventory management and admin can be a significant part of this game. As an experienced player, I recommend using an "I don't want to mess with items under X value" approach and simply reprocessing or scrapping anything below that.
And yes, there are flat-out sociopathic people here, and even just regular jerks who would like nothing better than getting you angry and ranting. Eve is not politically correct, and is moderately right-wing as a rule. Don't feel afraid to ignore buttheads. Realize that with some people, it's simply impossible to "win" the argument or get them to treat you nicely, and that if they hurt your feelings or offend you, CCP in all likelihood won't do anything about it.
Just like Real Life
Recommendations
Comments
Flagged Pros + Cons
Pro Real freedom
You can do anything. Literally anything. You can become a massive entrepreneur and deal with billions of ISK, set up a pirate base in wormhole space, explore anomalies, build massive ships, become CEO of a player-run industrial corporation. There's tons and tons and tons of stuff. This is likely the most sandboxy of MMO sandboxes.
Out of Date Pros + Cons
Con Requires lots of time invested
Because of the open market thing even going out on a quick mission may require you to gear up your ship first, which takes ages as you jump across multiple stations to get the two dozen different modules required to outfit your ship.
EVE feels a lot like a second job sometimes.
Con Spreadsheets in space
At the very core, that's what it is. You'll be looking at tons of stats, calculating % resistances and DPS. It's a paradise for math savants and economics geeks, but not so much if you just want to blow things up quickly.
The graphics are there, but combat takes place at a few kilometers at least, so you won't be ever seeing your ship and the enemys' at the same time (unless as tiny silhouettes). Which only enhances the feeling that combat is a set of dynamic spreadsheets rather than a real visceral thing.