First Day (night, really) in EVE

I say “Night” because I have to play on my daughter’s computer since she has the only Intel Mac in the house - so in order to not take away her things while she’s conscious, I’m in the 9pm-bedtime timeframe for exploration ;) So, I was up till 4 . ..

I've played about 7 hours thus far:

My initial thoughts are cautiously positive - the basic game play is still boiling down to "go do the same thing a bunch, then profit", but the community is radically different, and there are a tremendous amount of variables to worry about. Nevertheless, in some ways the game has already been "solved", at least presently, due to the existence of skill planning applications and suggested training paths to maximize your character potential - or at least minimize the time it takes you to reach that maximum.

On the other hand, there is no 'class role'. Everyone can learn everything - but doing so takes a tremendously long amount of time (which, even though you can still learn your skills while not logged in, we're looking at years worth of real time to learn it all) so you still end up picking a set of things that interest you, broken down into the axes of corporate control (setting up trades, alliances, contracts, etc), business (playing the auction house equivalent with the added complexity of moving between place to place without getting your ass shot off from under you), or industry (either harvesting raw materials and refining them, or producing blue prints and/or the products made thereby).

Combat is not twitch based, but does require you to swap targets as you fight and adjust your orbit radius to increase weapon efficiency. Thus, there at least initially appears some set of real time tactics that will need to be employed, although likely it will end up being pretty bare bones. There are various minmaxing paths ahead of me with respect to ship energy management, damage control, and damage output, as well as mining and refining efficiency.

The look and feel of the game is fantastic - highly detailed, gorgeous graphics, and a vast wealth of information available via an ingame web browser that links to all the help files online.

From what I understand, you can reach the point of creating your own space station, which satisfies the Brian "gee, what can I DO that will last forever (or at least until someone blows it up)" question - but doing so apparently takes a crapton of time and friends.

Things are not as immediately obvious as they are in Wow - I was confused quite a bit off and on while trying to figure out how to find asteroids that can be mined for a specific mineral, for example, and I still don't know how to set up a custom filter list for the map - so that delta is still a little daunting. There's just so much I don't know how to do as yet, but I expect things will clear up as I keep fiddling. There is also built in voice chat, which I haven't actually bothered to look at yet. In game chat is a windowed IM-client like affair, similar to what Wow provides, but with much greater control on private channel access. Overall seems a very polished product with an appropriately sci-fi look and feel.

I'm currently about 3/4 of the way done with a "storyline" quest sequence that has featured a combination of running around, mining, shooting, refining, and building - basically a raw summary of the sorts of things you can do in the game. For my first character I went "less aggressive", choosing the path of a scientist/engineer type, because the thought of researching blueprints and making things appealed to me.

On that note - and this is based off of very high level understanding at this point - while you can make things like ships and weapons and ship upgrades, there are two limitations: 1) the blueprints you make them from can only be used a set number of times before you have to create a new blueprint, and 2) you cannot "create" anything new - the list of possible blueprints you can research or find is deterministic. So I see that as a negative.

I haven't delved into the forums much yet, nor explored the reaches of the online community built up around the game. I am immediately impressed however with some technology they've incorporated - there's a published API protocol for application developers to write programs that directly access your characters. For example I have a widget on my dashboard now that provides a running clock of when my currently training skill will be done. Authentication is handled by a pseudorandom user id/API key pair (I do not have the details as yet on what level of security their algorithm provides) and the player has a choice of just choosing a "limited access" key that allows access to the wallet and currently training skills, or a "full access" key that lets you see everything. You can regenerate a new UID/Key pair whenever you like, for the paranoid.

One nice enhancement I'd like to see added is the ability to train skills without having to even log in - but I suppose that would sort of defeat the purpose of it being a MMORPG at that point.