Eve Online is, in many ways, just the game I have been waiting for for over a decade, in effect a graphical version of the old BBS game TradeWars 2002, or a massively-multiplayer Elite. While the game has its drawbacks, most notably a large number of repetitive, time-cosuming tasks early on, it is still quite addictive and fun, and has a lot of potential if the developer follows through on promised new content. As for the game's technical quality, the graphics are superb, the only better space graphics I have seen being in the E3 demo of Imperium Galactica 3. Sound is somewhat repetitive and standard fare for this setting, but not bad by any means. In general, lag isn't an issue, even though I am in the US and the servers are in Iceland. I do, however, have a cable modem, so I cannot speak for the game's playability on dialup. Bugs are, as is all-too-common in new releases these days, numerous. These include some fairly major ones, such as "black holes," or areas which can cause your client to crash to desktop, a factor which remains even if you try to log that character back in again, requiring one to log into an alternate character and petition a GM (game administrator) for help. This can render a character inaccessible for hours at times, and no hint as to compensation for this loss of playing time has been made. Gameplay is fairly standard fare for an MMORPG: Gain skills to perform activities which make money and increase your skills further and purchase better equipment to make more money, ad infinitum. However, this game deviates from the standard in at least two important ways, each of which gives the game unique potential. One, while active use of some skills (such as mining and certain combat skills) can increase your abilities, skill training can also be done automatically, even while you are offline. Simply select the skill to be trained and it will slowly rise, at a rate based on your attributes (different skills are tied to different attributes), whether or not you are online. Since level 5 (the current maximum) of a skill takes from five days to over a month, depending on the skill and your attributes, to train this way, this allows your character to be improved even if you go on vacation and don't have PC access for some time. The second unique feature is an almost entirely player-based capitalist market system. NPC supply and demand is minimal, and mainly exists to set standards by which PC's can get an idea of how much items SHOULD be worth. Other than this light NPC presense, every item you buy or sell is a transaction with another player. Supply and demand, on micro and macro levels, are prevailent everywhere in the game, and learning how to use the market maps is mandatory for being a success in the Eve universe. Those familiar with stock market trading, with all its bids and asks, will be at right at home brokering and trading minerals and goods in this game. Some drawbacks to the gameplay exist, however. For one, as I mentioned in the opening paragraph, gameplay for new players consists almost solely of asteroid mining, a very mundane and boring task, though once you've earned a small nest egg, other activities begin to show themselves and the game becomes more interesting. There are also two drawbacks related to the skill training mentioned above. Only one of the three characters allowed per account can be training at a time, and there's no way to "queue" skills, so that if a skill level finishes while you are offline, your character isn't training at all for a period until you log in to train something new. The player driven economy is also in its infancy, currently suffering from rampant deflation, with mineral prices plummeting, causing miners, which includes every new player and nearly everyone else, to make even less money per hour mining than they would under "normal" economic conditions. This IS an indication that the player-based economy works properly, since a huge mineral supply and low demand SHOULD cause a decrease in prices, but hopefully as tech research and other features are introduced, and as more people begin to branch out from mining into other pursuits such as manufacturing, this phenomenon will correct itself. All in all, Eve is a great game, which is fun and interesting even in its current state, and which in a few weeks, once its potential begins to be realized, promises to be easily the best MMORPG to date.
I have no idea why they gave this game a fair rating, other than that it's possible they may be catering to a younger, less mature, more impatient, more immediate gratification, less thinking and more spoonfeeding, audie... Read Full Review
I don't blame Gamespot for overlooking this game. I did too, two years ago. But I tried it again 3 months ago and now I beat myself up for not doing so earlier. This is the most in-depth 'game' one will ever find. Ev... Read Full Review
