Alleged_Alec:
I see a lot of people saying that Eve is one of the best MMO's ever. On the other hand, I see a lot of people saying that the first few weeks suck, and somehow, I can't put those two 'facts' (?) together. A game which isn't fun for the first weeks you play it, isn't worth to be called the best MMO.

Really, those first days should make you want to play the game more. I don't know if you guys have ever played WoW, but I know that when I did for the first time, I was blown away. I was amazed by the lore behind everything. I had a great time. I'm not going to play a game if the first few weeks, I don't enjoy it.

My experience with WOW was that it started off awesome at level 1, went downhill from there to become flatly mediocre towards level 50-odd - by which time I was playing purely out of habit and a misguided sense of guild loyalty; it perked up a bit at the start of the raiding phase as we Fourty Stooges-ed our way through the beginning of Molten Core, and then got gradually more boring again as we got organised and made progress. The low point for me, and what ultimately led to me quitting, was when we beat Vaelastrasz for the first time and I realised that I actually didn't give a toss, because we were just moving on to the next scripted grind-wipe-discuss-repeat.

Compare that to my experience of Eve. At the beginning, the lore was good but the play was merely passable; I orbited things and auto-shot at them, occasionally pausing to get a different ship. But then I joined a corporation, and there were mining ops and a sense of community; and then that corporation was in a war and I discovered PvP; and then I joined an even bigger corporation, and there was an even bigger war; and then I was having so much fun with PvP that I abandoned the nicey-nicey corporations and set off to become a pirate; and then, etc., etc. In a nutshell, I was having more fun and discovering more cool aspects as time went by, whereas with WoW, the more I played, the more I got the sense that I'd already had the best times I was going to have.

For me, an MMO that has an okayish beginning and gets solidly better from there is far preferable to one that has a brilliant start and then gradually dribbles away into tedium with occasional diminishing fun-spikes. When you play an MMO, you measure your time wasted on it in months and years and it's essentially open-ended, so for me, "how much fun was the first day?" is less of a pressing issue than "how much more fun will I have after this particular bit of fun?"

Yahtzee, I'm a fan of yours. I'm critical of games and that's why I like you. But I am also a fan of Eve. Having played, hated, and sickeningly come crawling back to virtually every MMO ever released, and being a 3 year veteran of Eve, I feel qualified to tell you you screwed the pooch with this review.

You didn't join a player corporation.

The entire point of the game is to join a player corporation.

The tutorial tells you to join a player corporation.

Everyone who is having fun in Eve is in a player corporation. Everyone else quits inside a month because they haven't actually played the game.

I'm not an Eve fanboi. I'll play it until its subscribers disappear and it is laid into the grave, but I'm still critical of its grueling new player experience, troublesome UI and extremely bland single-player objectives.

But all of that is water under the bridge for the player corporation experience.

If you ever get your senses about you and feel like actually playing this game, make a character and join EVE UNIVERSITY. It is a massive alliance of teachers and students designed to introduce people to the game. Why does Eve need a player corporation to teach people how to play it? Because that's how Eve is my friend- by the players, for the players.

Funny review though, I guess.

Veloxi:

JG is much more of a niche title due to the space-simmy elements, so it doesn't have as wide an appeal as more sedate, easier-to-play games such as EVE, in my opinion. This means it has less players as well, sadly, and while it doesn't have corporations, it does have squadrons which is somewhat similar.

Jumpgate Evolution -- the sequel to JG Classic -- is on its way and will hopefully have more of the elements you discussed, but I'm unsure if it will at the moment.

oh... oh. You've got fanboy bile aimed at you now. I shall resist, but please don't say "this game is more .... than this game" when you really don't understand the latter one.

Easy to play? Sedate? EvE? You've never actually been in proper combat in EvE have you?

I'm miffed that while most people are moaning that it's far too complex to proceed to accuse it of being easy to play. It isn't.

Yahtzee, you just gave me my 1000th reason not to play any MMORPGs.
I hope your happy because I know I am until some . . . guy tells me I have to play one, which would probably end in me having one less friend.
Any way, good review.

filthgrinder:
Although the review was funny, the points he made to pick on were only due to lack of knowledge of the game.
Complaining of not knowing what a skill is is just wrong. If you read the info on the skill it tells you...that simple.

The games attraction is not the missions (altho they are GREAT in higher level agents) its the hardcore PvP and the community.

The whole video just stunk of "not really understanding the game, so I will trash it".

That said, I am glad EVE puts people off. The people that dont enjoy the game are usually hyper FPS twats.

I actually spent most of this summer playing wow, but i got bored of it eventually.
I also play counter-strike: source, pretty much daily. If not that then TF2.

I don't care what you're reason is for EVE being good, because frankly, if a game bores the hell out of me in the first few hours, it doesn't bode well for the rest.
Hell i enjoyed starting new characters on WoW.

just about right, and that's coming from an eve player for more years than I want to admit.

However, you dont need to run a corporation to be in one - leave that to the ubernerds - and to be honest, reviewing eve as a single player in the game is a bit like reviewing sex after only ever having had one off the wrist...

the UI *is* dire, the menu system is akin to an amateur trepanning in action, the game can drag like tim curry in fishnets...

but it's also the only computer game I've ever played where I've got into a pvp fight and actually had the shakes from the fear of losing stuff I've fought so hard to get. and that's worth it.

Let me be the first to say (probably not, but I cant really be assed to read down through all 4 pages) that EVEs PVE content sucks, to quote you, a big fat cocksickle. I'm an EVE player and the only time I will touch a mission is to recoup the ISK i've lost in PVP. The reason I play is the PVP, which unlike your impression (which is understandable seeing that you've only played the free trial), is more than just target, roll your forehead over F1-8 and wait for the enemy to pop, though admittedly this is a viable PVP style, there is a large selection of other things you can do PVPwise. Anytime i see a target my heart rate spikes and i start to shake, a direct consequence of the great risk involved. In most PVP your flying something expensive, and there's great risk involved, but the other party also has that risk. If it weren't for the PVP, EVE would have no appeal to me, just as world of vanillacraft has no appeal to me. IMO to get why EVE is good you have to join a player corp (lowsec or empire based, joining a big 0.0 alliance mean 200 v 200 fleet fights and that = LAG. BIGTIME)and start shooting people.

then again EVEs not for everyone. (BTW sig analysis decreases targeting time and sig focusing improves the effectiveness of ECM (at least I'm pretty sure that's that focusing does, i dont use ECM))

Yahtzee, you stud.
You summarize all my feelings for Eve Online in a perfect package of four-something minutes and I applaud you in all your glory.

My first feeling when playing Eve Online = Hey. Spaceships! Woo-hoo!
My second feeling = What the fuck? I can't exit my spaceship? Well, at least I can buy an awesome spac... no I can't. WHAT THE...!
My third feeling = Leaving the stupid game to play World of Warcraft.

Also, I didn't even get to control how I wanted my spaceship to fly! I want at least SOME action where I can control how and where to fly (and shoot, and acquire space chicks).
Click, fly there. Click, circle rock. Boooooooring.

Did I mention that Yahtzee is a genius? I'll mention it again.

KiiWii:

I don't care what you're reason is for EVE being good, because frankly, if a game bores the hell out of me in the first few hours, it doesn't bode well for the rest.
Hell i enjoyed starting new characters on WoW.

Well yeah, games really all boil down to personal taste.

As for starting new characters players in EVE don't really do that, since you can only train one character pr account at a time.

Yatzee did have a good point about the poeple that dont have time to play a "real" game. Thing is I dont want to HAVE to play X amount of hours just to level up. Hell, I have a life outside gaming...its nice to know that you can be away for a few days and still be able to play with your friends without the fear of them out leveling you...(granted they will have more cash, and cash is what its all about).

As an eve online player I must say you are entirely correct.

The game has a huge learning curve that I have yet to master and my account has been active for 5 years.

Thought to be honest the whole level while you leave thing is what draws me because this allows me to do home work and socialize and go to a decent job and still be good at the game, unlike wow which has a requirement of active grinding this game grinds for you acknowledging that grinding sucks.

You know whats really interesting? The majority of EVE online players posting here are actually really articulate. Correct grammar, correct punctuation, and well spoken. Not to mention that pretty much all of them have said they completely agree with Ben (yes, i shall call him Ben). These are reasonable people, not like the fucking crazy ass console fanboys who would kill a whole generation of babies to prove a point about their console.

Hats off to you guys. seriously. =]

TimMc:
You see, the only way to make people actually cry when you kill them, is to make you have to work to get there. When you kill someone, they get SO angry (ranging from bitching at you for an hour to quitting the game) because it can take them hours, days, weeks or months to earn it back. Drinking the tears of my enemies is one of the features of Eve Online.

Awesomesauce. Like, totally, awesome. Grieving the people who play for "hours, days, weeks or months" or spending more time (because, in Eve, skill equals time) than them to be able to grieve them. Vicious circle.
Oh well, whatever floats your boat.

Meshakhad:
My only disagreement is your statement that "If you think EVE is fun than you are provably wrong." The thing is, many of the features that attract people to EVE are ones you disliked - the skill system helps people who don't play every day keep up.

On the other hand, if you don't mine every day, you can't get anywhere. Unless you resort to selling GCs for credit.
Isn't the "skill system" counterintuitive to begin with? No matter how good a gamer you are, you will always be subject to the realtime skill progression of your character. Sure, you can min-max your character, because, in the end, it's not about the skills you have as a person or character, but how it translates into your ship. Spend in-game time to "levelup"? No, sorry. You can always mine though.
Or die? Which brings up a whole 'nother bag of fun. Buy insurance in case your ship's gets into a fight and blows up? Buy another ship, kit it out then buy some more insurance? No wonder hi-sec space mining is so prevalent. Unless your pod gets blown up, of course...
Well, you can always sell GTCs though.
In short: If normal MMOs were defined by the EXP grind to the level cap, ie time spent playing, Eve is defined by money, ie money spent, real money or in-game credits.
You can sell GTCs, log in every so often to change skills then start flying a Raven? Meh.

Even though I brought this up about a month go I will once again repeat what I said before. Yes, Eve is different, but it isn't something that is appetizing for people who dash in headlong without any knowledge of the game (That being almost everyone.) It is a very unique game for better or worse, but I do not think it is something you should have to pay for. Aesthetically it is one of the prettiest games I've seen on an MMORPG, but if I wanted to see pretty things I'd go to an art gallery. The game mechanics are not friendly and that is the fatal flaw that will always hinder Eve. Oh just to comment on the people who say the fun is destroying other ships to which people put hours upon months into it, you are a bunch of sick sick little puppies who would probably be described in other MMORPGS as "Gankers," to which I say ...No I won't.

Oh another thing. Does this game remind you of like, a really complex version of Space4k?
I can imagine about a billion people yelling at me now.

This was pretty fun to watch.

KiiWii:
You know whats really interesting? The majority of EVE online players posting here are actually really articulate. Correct grammar, correct punctuation, and well spoken. Not to mention that pretty much all of them have said they completely agree with Ben (yes, i shall call him Ben). These are reasonable people, not like the fucking crazy ass console fanboys who would kill a whole generation of babies to prove a point about their console.

Hats off to you guys. seriously. =]

Of course we're articulate. Ploughing through Jade Constantine's forum posts will leave you either highly literate or dead of a word overdose.

Although I completely agree with the "boring" review, let me just point out that 14 days (my opinion) isn't really enough time to get a good view of the game. I've been a member for a little over a year now and I love it. Fleet combat actually does require some skill, especially in huge wars.

Another point is that there is much more to eve than fighting. I have an alt with economic based skills that I just use to play around with the game's market. Different prices, different regions, supply and demand. Its kinda fun sometimes.

If it helps, they have been adding to the game every year or so. They say it will be possible to leave your ship in stations soon and they can only expand on that from there.

vitrael:
Yahtzee, I'm a fan of yours. I'm critical of games and that's why I like you. But I am also a fan of Eve. Having played, hated, and sickeningly come crawling back to virtually every MMO ever released, and being a 3 year veteran of Eve, I feel qualified to tell you you screwed the pooch with this review.

You didn't join a player corporation. Because its boring

The entire point of the game is to join a player corporation. Above: Read that

The tutorial tells you to join a player corporation. It does? Because i sure love having a job i pay for :P

Everyone who is having fun in Eve is in a player corporation. Everyone else quits inside a month because they haven't actually played the game. I joined one, and it wasn't fun nor interesting.

I'm not an Eve fanboi. I'll play it until its subscribers disappear and it is laid into the grave, but I'm still critical of its grueling new player experience, troublesome UI and extremely bland single-player objectives.

But all of that is water under the bridge for the player corporation experience.

If you ever get your senses about you and feel like actually playing this game, make a character and join EVE UNIVERSITY. It is a massive alliance of teachers and students designed to introduce people to the game. Why does Eve need a player corporation to teach people how to play it? Because that's how Eve is my friend- by the players, for the players.

Funny review though, I guess.

Yea i answered inside the Quote :D

Always a good video from Yahtzee, but he basically missed out on a huge chunk of the game just to nitpick a very small slice of it to death. I'm a two and a half year Eve veteran and it's safe to say, that by not getting into the player interaction, you're really screwing yourself out of a good time.

No matter, this game is certainly not for everyone. It is a slower paced game, and most gamers these days don't like that sort of thing.

From what i can tell, yahtzee doesn't like interacting with other players much.

KiiWii:
You know whats really interesting? The majority of EVE online players posting here are actually really articulate. Correct grammar, correct punctuation, and well spoken. Not to mention that pretty much all of them have said they completely agree with Ben (yes, i shall call him Ben). These are reasonable people, not like the fucking crazy ass console fanboys who would kill a whole generation of babies to prove a point about their console.

Hats off to you guys. seriously. =]

As the CEO of CCP games is always trying to point out ... the average age of the Eve player is 27. Not 15. That means that we 'can' be more articulate, more patient, more likely to use spreadsheets to plot our future within the game. Many of my corp mates have incredibly serious real life jobs with, quite scary, responsibilities. Many even own their own real life companies. Eve is for the more, usually, serious minded player. It ISNT an instant gratification game. It soes take time. If you want instant gratification, go play wow or COD4 or whatever. Dont play Eve.

However, if you REALLY want to see how pathetically childish we can be, come visit our forums, especially C.O.A.D. We really scrape the bottom of the barrels in there for trolling, childish behaviour, whines and tears. Even if the average age is 27 :)

Now now, don't knock player corporations...although EVE isn't really my flavor of gaming (I don't go in much for sci-fi space settings), I had a blast running a crew called the Hanseatic League on Puzzle Pirates with a bunch of like-minded friends who, tired of getting their cities blighted and their average wage scales lowered by Wal-Mart, decided to live in a pirate-themed fantasyland and BE Wal-Mart.

If they put an EVE-like game on Earth (Trevor Chan's Capitalism Online?) I'd sub in a heartbeat. Probably try and get in on the beta so I could be one of those people.

Wewt:

vitrael:
Yahtzee, I'm a fan of yours. I'm critical of games and that's why I like you. But I am also a fan of Eve. Having played, hated, and sickeningly come crawling back to virtually every MMO ever released, and being a 3 year veteran of Eve, I feel qualified to tell you you screwed the pooch with this review.

You didn't join a player corporation. Because its boring

The entire point of the game is to join a player corporation. Above: Read that

The tutorial tells you to join a player corporation. It does? Because i sure love having a job i pay for :P

Everyone who is having fun in Eve is in a player corporation. Everyone else quits inside a month because they haven't actually played the game. I joined one, and it wasn't fun nor interesting.

I'm not an Eve fanboi. I'll play it until its subscribers disappear and it is laid into the grave, but I'm still critical of its grueling new player experience, troublesome UI and extremely bland single-player objectives.

But all of that is water under the bridge for the player corporation experience.

If you ever get your senses about you and feel like actually playing this game, make a character and join EVE UNIVERSITY. It is a massive alliance of teachers and students designed to introduce people to the game. Why does Eve need a player corporation to teach people how to play it? Because that's how Eve is my friend- by the players, for the players.

Funny review though, I guess.

Yea i answered inside the Quote :D

bitter much?

Eve Online in .. some lines.

- There´s Goons
- There´s Goons Pets
- There´s Bob
- There´s Bob´s pets
- There´s AAA
- There´s goons?
pause to change skill training .. "Advanced Boring RL Level 3 Completed"
- There´s Empire (scratch that, Empire sucks)
- There´s POS warfare (that sucks too)
- There´s a "ESC" button.. go ahead and press that
- There´s a "Quit boring game" button.. go ahead and press that too
- There´s Life, go ahead and get one

cocodaclown:

KiiWii:
You know whats really interesting? The majority of EVE online players posting here are actually really articulate. Correct grammar, correct punctuation, and well spoken. Not to mention that pretty much all of them have said they completely agree with Ben (yes, i shall call him Ben). These are reasonable people, not like the fucking crazy ass console fanboys who would kill a whole generation of babies to prove a point about their console.

Hats off to you guys. seriously. =]

As the CEO of CCP games is always trying to point out ... the average age of the Eve player is 27. Not 15. That means that we 'can' be more articulate, more patient, more likely to use spreadsheets to plot our future within the game. Many of my corp mates have incredibly serious real life jobs with, quite scary, responsibilities. Many even own their own real life companies. Eve is for the more, usually, serious minded player. It ISNT an instant gratification game. It soes take time. If you want instant gratification, go play wow or COD4 or whatever. Dont play Eve.

However, if you REALY want to see how pathetically childish we can be, come visit our forums, especially C.O.A.D. We really scrape the bottom of the barrels in there for trolling, childish behaviour, whines and tears. Even if the average age is 27 :)

I'm pretty sure that when Obi-Wan said: "You'll never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy" he was actually talking about the Eve forums. I know I make a point to avoid them at all costs.

Just for the record, there's a large-ish thread (getting larger) about this on the EVE-O forums too :)

http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=862606

I'm not surprised to see that the majority of people there feel pretty much the same way I did : it's funny (but could have been funnier), it sadly points out a few nasty flaws in early gameplay (for the most part, the review is quite accurate given the circumstances) but also it's an inherently skewed review because of that "don't want to join player corps" attitude.

Surggical_Scar:
Hm, Yahtzee making an effort to find a new and inventive MMO? Is it raining custard? Have my legs suddenly turned into Belgian tourists?

Good God, it's for real.

Oh, wait, he's ripping the shit out of it. Thank goodness, I'll spit out those Asprin and keep typing.

Never even heard of EVE until today (no I didn't look at the ads, what do you take me for, someone with money?), and after today, well, I won't go near it without a flamethrower and a spray gun full of Holy Water. Never being much of an MMO fan myself, you pretty succinctly pointed out eveything that needed to be said:

Tries to be WoW.

Fails miserably.

Still murders your social life with a pickaxe.

Good man. Funny, angry and laced with bile. Not unlike my porn collection.

i like your writing. but you need more arrogance. sort of like cristopher walken needs more cowbell.

i found eve fun and i'm not a nerd so and i can't think of anything to say.

cocodaclown:

Wewt:

Yea i answered inside the Quote :D

bitter much?

I don't see how making a counterpoint makes me bitter.

I have played the 21 day free trial about 5 months ago, and i must say it was very VERY complicated and not user friendly at all. Still i did find that fun because it wasnt holding my hand, it was complicated. Also i noteced you needed like one year of playing to actually get like the huge ships that you see in the trailer, no joke they cost like 100,000,000 credits. And i personally like to be a lone wolf type of person, I would only do shit with like 10 close friends. No matter what MMO WoW, or EvE i was always alone (In the since that i was only in it for myself i would do shit with other people but not to help them.)

Excellent review. Spot on!

I tried EVE online about a year ago, and while some of it was interesting, there was one thing that I absolutely hated about the game: The totally unfair skill training. Sure, you can say that casual players get a chance to compete with the hardcore players, but that's exactly what makes it so unfair. Why the hell would I want to 'play' ( - most of time you're not even playing EVE, because you can go AFK - ) EVE for several hours per day if I can achieve the same by playing it an hour a week?

Sure, the economy is 'realistic', but instead of wasting money on messing around with this 'realistic' simluation, I might aswell make some real money in real life.

The UI is horrible. The font is annoying and there are too many menu's.

The interaction with other players simply involves either clicking on 'attack' and setting an orbit distance and watch what happens, or chatting with them. I've tried the 'oh-so-awesome' PVP, and it hardly involved any skill. It's about who has the biggest guns and the most SP.

The Corporations fight for empty space with minerals. They COULD form an alliance with other corporations, but for some reason everyone wants to have his personal space where (s)he can do absolutely NOTHING.

The only thing I like about EVE is its steep learning curve. It eliminates all the people that can't handle it, leaving the commited ones behind. Kind of like "Survival of the Fittest".

Well done Yahtzee, the review was great, though lacking some information, but great nonetheless.

Totally agree with all Sir Yahtzee's comments about EVE. 'Tis a game for people who find numbers more interesting than other people.

Well actually, imagine WASD controls. Imagine the lag. Imagine it, dammit.

Eve is a game that is about the polar opposite of MMOs like WOW, where instant gratification are the thing that keeps players coming. In EVE, it is the planning, strategy, player to player interactions, and political atmosphere that keep the players involved. If you only play for a few minutes, then you never get a feel for the game (which is true for any MMO out there, even WOW takes a good 30 minutes to get a feel for what the whole game is).