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EVE Online Empyrean Age: Not like the trailer but still really good
Bremen
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mCKe9MCy_w
The Empyrean Age
The latest free expansion pack to EVE features the launch of factional warfare, with the four factions of EVE (Amarr, Caldari, Gallente, and Minmatar) now at open war with each other. Players may join a milita for their chosen faction and conquer star systems in their name, opposed by NPCs and players of the other factions.
However, the Penny Arcade Corporation, Merch Industrial, has choosen not to side with any of the major factions, and instead have sided with the player alliance Goonswarm. After all, why conquer solar systems for a government when you can conquer them for yourself? Look, we already have one:
Our beautiful home in the distant fringes of the galaxy
EVE Online
EVE Online isn't a particularly well known MMO, but it's actually one of the larger ones, with approximated 250,000 active subscriptions and an average peak of 35,000 users during North American primetime.
It's also a primarily PvP focused game, but not exclusively; I spend most of my time on PvE or industry (crafting), and only take my carrier on the occasional fleet op to do my part for the war effort. As a matter of fact, I'm such a stranger to PvP I've asked a fellow corp member to write the PvP section of this thread. So just because you've heard EVE is a PvP game doesn't mean that's all there is to do.
Above all, what keeps me playing EVE is its sheer complexity. Other MMOs have crafting, EVE online has an industry system whose complexity boggles the mind of even the full time economist the developers hired to track it. Other MMOs have classes and levels, EVE has a real time skill system with over three hundred unique skills:
And where MMOs like WoW have arenas and battlegrounds, EVE has alliances consisting of thousands of players fighting for control of the galaxy itself, with tools ranging from small gangs, to major fleets, to squadrons of massive capital ships capable of going toe to toe with an enemy's heavily armed starbases and supported by fleets of lesser ships lest they be swarmed by the enemy defenders.
Territory controlled by EVE Alliances. We're a member of the Goonswarm Alliance, but have our own station as well. Click for a current, full size map
Have you ever found yourself playing an MMO and wishing you could be a part of something larger? Wished you could make a real mark on the enviornment rather than just doing the same things as everyone else? Or have you ever gotten tired of crafting that involves pushing a button and wished there was a way for hundreds of crafters to work together to make something truely epic? Then sign up for the 14 day trial (Link is extracted from the Penny Arcade banner add, I get no referal bonus).
Merch Industrial - The Penny Arcade Corp
Merch Industrial has quite a history. It was founded in April 2006 by TheKoolEagle to provide a more peaceful place for Penny Arcade forumgoers who didn't want to join the original Merch corporation and become pirates, but it quickly outstripped the Merch in terms of size and eventually prosperity. After a number of successes and failures (mentioning the word "Daran" will still make many vets shudder) on our own, we joined up with the Something Awful forums alliance Goonswarm just as they were beginning their rapid rise to power. But that's its own story, and if you want to hear more you'll have to ask the vets about it.
As of the time of this writing, MerchI has 378 members, over a dozen starbases, and a factory station located in the system of e-pr0s. We have a corporation run business that produces massive capital ships and returns the profit back to corp members who invested in it. Many lesser industries are run by individual members, one produces modules and fighters for capital ships, another specializes in battleships, and a third produces special rigs used to modify a ship's base hull.
E-PR0S, our home
Territory in EVE is divided into three types. High security space is patrolled by the NPC police Concord, and any attack on another player or friendly NPC will result in your inescapable demise (not necessarily soon enough to save your target, though). As a price for this safety, though, the ores and hostiles NPCs in high sec are scarce and of little value.
Low security space, with security ratings between .1 and .4, is a dangerous place. Concord is nowhere to be found, though the empire factions have automated guns protecting the stargates and stations, and these will fire on anyone who starts a fight inside their range. But unlike concord, these guns are of limited power and only a minor deterrant. And outside their range, anything goes. Low sec is a haven of small pirate corps who run around looking for easy kills, and small law-abiding corps willing to accept the risks for the increased rewards.
Last of the three is nullsec, or 0.0. These areas are completely lawless, and either owned by pirate factions who care less what goes on, or contested between player alliances. The only protection in 0.0 is the firepower you and your friends possess. While nominally the most dangerous spots in EVE, alliances in 0.0 have to protect their space or they'll quickly lose it, and for the biggest risk you'll face in friendly controlled space is hostiles in fast ships trying to get a few kills before a fleet can muster to chase them out. Mining and ratting(NPC-killing) in 0.0 is extremely lucrative, and are some of the best ways to make money in the game.
E-pr0s, is, of course, a system in the conquerable part of 0.0. While neither the safest nor the richest system around, it's a decent place which we take a lot of pride in. In addition to the level 2 factory station we control, it's also secured by heavily armed starbases like this baby:
You might be noticing a pattern in our choice of names
with functions including defense, moon mining, and research labs. Neighboring it are the systems of AZN-D2, held by fellow Goonswarm corp ARSED and possessing a refinery station, and VNGJ-U, held by Goonfleet itself and possessing a hybrid factory and research station.
The Empyrean Age
The latest free expansion pack to EVE features the launch of factional warfare, with the four factions of EVE (Amarr, Caldari, Gallente, and Minmatar) now at open war with each other. Players may join a milita for their chosen faction and conquer star systems in their name, opposed by NPCs and players of the other factions.
However, the Penny Arcade Corporation, Merch Industrial, has choosen not to side with any of the major factions, and instead have sided with the player alliance Goonswarm. After all, why conquer solar systems for a government when you can conquer them for yourself? Look, we already have one:
Our beautiful home in the distant fringes of the galaxy
EVE Online
EVE Online isn't a particularly well known MMO, but it's actually one of the larger ones, with approximated 250,000 active subscriptions and an average peak of 35,000 users during North American primetime.
It's also a primarily PvP focused game, but not exclusively; I spend most of my time on PvE or industry (crafting), and only take my carrier on the occasional fleet op to do my part for the war effort. As a matter of fact, I'm such a stranger to PvP I've asked a fellow corp member to write the PvP section of this thread. So just because you've heard EVE is a PvP game doesn't mean that's all there is to do.
Above all, what keeps me playing EVE is its sheer complexity. Other MMOs have crafting, EVE online has an industry system whose complexity boggles the mind of even the full time economist the developers hired to track it. Other MMOs have classes and levels, EVE has a real time skill system with over three hundred unique skills:
Spoiler:
And where MMOs like WoW have arenas and battlegrounds, EVE has alliances consisting of thousands of players fighting for control of the galaxy itself, with tools ranging from small gangs, to major fleets, to squadrons of massive capital ships capable of going toe to toe with an enemy's heavily armed starbases and supported by fleets of lesser ships lest they be swarmed by the enemy defenders.
Territory controlled by EVE Alliances. We're a member of the Goonswarm Alliance, but have our own station as well. Click for a current, full size map
Have you ever found yourself playing an MMO and wishing you could be a part of something larger? Wished you could make a real mark on the enviornment rather than just doing the same things as everyone else? Or have you ever gotten tired of crafting that involves pushing a button and wished there was a way for hundreds of crafters to work together to make something truely epic? Then sign up for the 14 day trial (Link is extracted from the Penny Arcade banner add, I get no referal bonus).
Merch Industrial - The Penny Arcade Corp
Merch Industrial has quite a history. It was founded in April 2006 by TheKoolEagle to provide a more peaceful place for Penny Arcade forumgoers who didn't want to join the original Merch corporation and become pirates, but it quickly outstripped the Merch in terms of size and eventually prosperity. After a number of successes and failures (mentioning the word "Daran" will still make many vets shudder) on our own, we joined up with the Something Awful forums alliance Goonswarm just as they were beginning their rapid rise to power. But that's its own story, and if you want to hear more you'll have to ask the vets about it.
As of the time of this writing, MerchI has 378 members, over a dozen starbases, and a factory station located in the system of e-pr0s. We have a corporation run business that produces massive capital ships and returns the profit back to corp members who invested in it. Many lesser industries are run by individual members, one produces modules and fighters for capital ships, another specializes in battleships, and a third produces special rigs used to modify a ship's base hull.
E-PR0S, our home
Territory in EVE is divided into three types. High security space is patrolled by the NPC police Concord, and any attack on another player or friendly NPC will result in your inescapable demise (not necessarily soon enough to save your target, though). As a price for this safety, though, the ores and hostiles NPCs in high sec are scarce and of little value.
Low security space, with security ratings between .1 and .4, is a dangerous place. Concord is nowhere to be found, though the empire factions have automated guns protecting the stargates and stations, and these will fire on anyone who starts a fight inside their range. But unlike concord, these guns are of limited power and only a minor deterrant. And outside their range, anything goes. Low sec is a haven of small pirate corps who run around looking for easy kills, and small law-abiding corps willing to accept the risks for the increased rewards.
Last of the three is nullsec, or 0.0. These areas are completely lawless, and either owned by pirate factions who care less what goes on, or contested between player alliances. The only protection in 0.0 is the firepower you and your friends possess. While nominally the most dangerous spots in EVE, alliances in 0.0 have to protect their space or they'll quickly lose it, and for the biggest risk you'll face in friendly controlled space is hostiles in fast ships trying to get a few kills before a fleet can muster to chase them out. Mining and ratting(NPC-killing) in 0.0 is extremely lucrative, and are some of the best ways to make money in the game.
E-pr0s, is, of course, a system in the conquerable part of 0.0. While neither the safest nor the richest system around, it's a decent place which we take a lot of pride in. In addition to the level 2 factory station we control, it's also secured by heavily armed starbases like this baby:
You might be noticing a pattern in our choice of names
with functions including defense, moon mining, and research labs. Neighboring it are the systems of AZN-D2, held by fellow Goonswarm corp ARSED and possessing a refinery station, and VNGJ-U, held by Goonfleet itself and possessing a hybrid factory and research station.
Bremen on
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I'm kinda missing Eve. I've been on an Everquest stint, but I seem to have lost interest in gaming altogether. I should probably come back and learn how to be a good PvPer, but eh. Someday.
Is BoB dead yet?
Damnit, I'm going to do it again too.
Worth it?
Let AWU 5 run after I left, so nice to get that out of the way
Now nothing but isk stands between me and my rail-sniping megathron
Alliances don't really mess with faction warefare much, that's more a newbie thing. Though Red Alliance has been skirmishing with the Caldari militia over control of some nice Dysprosium moons, I believe.
That's when this game will get good.
The metagame of creating an AI to play another game is actually quite fun from a programming viewpoint.
No, Macroing is against the rules.
And are frequently raped on sight.
that would end in your tears right now
That's my email inbox from the other day.
I don't know. Watching PvP vids is actually what turned me off on the game. Just people scrolled way the fuck back staring at some tables not really seeing any visceral action going on. While the results might be exciting the process of getting there looks detached and boring as fuck.
two questions
(1) Is there a Mac client?
(2) Are Amarr ships still considered to be terribly off? Last time I played, you were stupid for using anything but Missiles in PvE and anything but projectiles in PvP, probably around a year ago. I also seem to remember some kind of energy draining thing (NOS, was it?) being so popular that any player in an Amarr ship went down faster than the Challenger.
put jihadswarm somewhere in the op
(1) There's a Mac client, but it's pretty poop. It's built on Cider, not pure-native (and Intel-only) so your framerate will be crappy almost no matter what (although maybe one of the super-Powermacs could do it. On my ATI x1600/Core 2 Duo iMac it became unplayable in the first 15v15ish sized fight I got into).
(2) Not up on the balance so I can't really answer this one. I know CCP was aware of the Amarr problems last time I was following, but I'm not sure how much has changed.
That's just in really, really huge fleet fights (like 50+ a side) and frankly in nearly any game I can think of with that many combatants you'd want to be that zoomed out so that a) LoS kicks in and your system can handle it and b) you can maintain wide situational awareness. You actually can get that kind of "zoom zoom bang!" feeling from the trailers if you pilot something fast like an interceptor, zoomed in while in a smaller engagement or off doing some random grief work against the Merch's hated foes.
Are MerchI still taking on people? I can say for certain that i am not a spy
As for the game itself, as its been a while (about 5 months) since i last really played it, how is it now? Has the latest patch changed things much? I think i'll go back to flying a smaller ship, as i dont really have the skills to use a BS effectivly. I loved flying my Assault Frigate until it blew up (got blown up), so i might go for that or an interceptor.
Nope, couldn't do it. The first "What the Fuck?" moment was when I realized there was no way to fly with a joystick, followed quickly by the lack of a cockpit/bridge view. I slogged though the point-click thing for about 45 minutes, and the decided to go hang out somewhere and meet people. The inability to land on the surface of planets threw up even more red flags,. When I docked in a space station to discover I couldn't even leave my ship to walk around, I logged out uninstalled it from my hard drive.
I had spent almost a half hour having fun creating my character's looks, only to find out the best part of the game was also the most irrelevant. The ads make it look like whole worlds are at stake. The worlds in this case are just balls of scenery, that you actually *fly through* when you warp from one place to another.
I'll try again when they let you walk around on the space stations.
And they are adding the ability to walk around in stations at some point in the future, but landing on planets wont happen. Its only a cosmetic change anyway. The game itself will still feature point to move combat, and skill based (as in trainable skills) combat.
Granted I never got to get into a player corp though so it might have been better if I had.
The best part of EvE is the character creator? I thought it was the most complex political and economic interactions that there have ever been in a game. Not flying from a bridge/cockpit view does annoy me, but I can't say the joystick thing ever has. The ships in EvE are not fighter jets.
My real complaint with the game is the sheer difficulty of logging in for an hour to have some fun. It seems almost impossible to me.
Soloing is boring as shit. It's not like WoW where you could solo and have fun with interesting quests. EVE quests are bad and highsec/empire space (where you're safe from PvP) is dull as shit, only really good for engaging in trade that is so complex, it makes WoW's auction house look like kindergarden.
Where the fun is is The Great War in 0.0 space; being part of a grand alliance/corp that fights massive, ruthless battles with other corps for the richest worlds in EVE. Even a new player can help with tackling; flying a small frigate that warpjams larger ships that your mates pound on.
My advie is play Highsec just long enough to get, say, 10 million ISK and understand the game, then run to 0.0 as part of MERCH or another big, active corp in lowsec.
If you stay in highsec, you'll hate the game.
Oh yeah....be prepared to sink a lot of time into it if you're going to play/
Margaret Thatcher
I made a character with a free trial, about a year ago or so. I got through the tutorial, but that was about it. Can you redo the tutorial again once its already been done?
Callum - Sniper (Lethality), Brax - Commando (Healing), Xintoch - Assassin (Tank)
I think eve does itself a disservice by not making it more clear that Eve is more like a Diku mud and less like a space simulator. That might sound like a dig but I kind of like diku muds, and a large one without a donation scam running is an attractive proposition.
Your race has no bearing on what corp or alliance you can join (except for some very few RPing corps)
I don't want to bump the old thread, but I saw someone post this and it made me go wtf.
I've been involved in the leadership of Merch almost since it was formed, and we've never used the corporation's money for personal gain. We recieve no pay and get no special treatment, in fact I commonly joke about making people directors as punishment.
I'm curious, though, where did this story start?
Several months back I resubbed and joined Merch and it's been a blast. EVE is a point-and-click RPG, and it's damn fun. But you have to aggressively pursue the fun; it won't come to you. An example:
Early on in my stint in Merch I got pretty bored with just ratting to buy a bigger ship, and completely sick of fighting BoB (admittedly the game has this problem where territorial warfare with player owned structures is one of the most boring soul-destroying things sometimes, but CCP knows this at least) so I rolled an alt skilled for minmatar destroyers, got my roommate to do the trial and roll a similar character, and together we chose a likely-looking region of low-sec, formed a corporation, and war-decced one of the local mining corps (using funds provided by my main).
This provided a ton of hilarity. These guys took us seriously, so every time we showed up in their usual haunts (flying thrashers!) they immediately scrambled all their members and went on a giant hunt while taunting us and even discussing search tactics in local! (The best part of EVE is so many of its players are bad at it.) In the end we scored some cheap kills and lots of laughs, accidentally got killed by concord, ran from horribly fit battlecruisers, and it was some of the most exciting times I've ever had playing a video game.
Also, in response to some issues raised, Amarr ships just got a major buff and now have like the best sniping battleship in the game, and no, combat is not like playing a spreadsheet. It's hard to describe, but it's absolutely heart-pounding if you actually get a good fight.
There is no solo fun in EVE.*
*unless you know what you're doing.
I think that's it, right there.
They make it look like Wing commander/Freespace/Privateer. It's not, it's Homeworld, but with the RTS replaced with MMO. In homeword I wasn't disappointed with not going in the ships because it was a 3D RTS.
MMOs kind of take the assumption there interactivity between players or some kind of social aspect.
It's basically a space version of planetside, which didn't work as an MMO ether.
EVE is really fun though and does work. But as has been said, don't play it solo, and don't stay in high-sec, and you have to put a little effort in, as the game is a sandbox. Having Merch is really a fantastic opportunity.
The EVE universe really comes into its own when you have access to 0.0. Suddenly the drudgery of high-sec has a purpose when you need cheap goods (there is actually good money to be made importing) and the non-NPC-ness of null-sec means that everything - e.g. the local markets and infrastructure - is player-created, which is awesome. With hostile alliances always just the next constellation over and friendly players forming the local security forces, living in EVE can be a uniquely wonderful and exciting experience.
Basically, a lot of the things that I look for in a game in theory turn out to, in practice, be a big ol' pain.
But when you're just traveling? That stuff doesn't matter at all. It's just point-click-wait.
The way I deal with down time is amusing myself by creating ship setups and trying to squeeze that extra bit of DPS out of my ratting rig, or sometimes I only log in for PvP.