Eve Online

Overview

Eve Online (stylized EVE Online) is a space-based, persistent-world massively-multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) developed and published by Fenris Creations. Players of Eve Online can participate in a number of in-game professions and activities, including mining, piracy, manufacturing, trading, exploration, and combat (both player versus environment [PVE] and player versus player [PVP]). The game contains a total of 7,805 star systems that can be visited by players. The game is renowned for its scale and complexity in regard to player interactions. In its single, shared game world, players engage in unscripted economic competition, warfare, and political schemes with other players. The Bloodbath of B-R5RB, a battle involving thousands of players in a single star system, took 21 hours and was recognized as one of the largest and most expensive battles in gaming history. Eve Online was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art with a video including the historical events and accomplishments of the playerbase. Eve Online was released in North America and Europe in May 2003. It was published from May to December 2003 by Simon & Schuster Interactive in North America and by Crucial Entertainment in the United Kingdom, after which CCP purchased the rights and began to self-publish via a digital distribution scheme. On January 22, 2008, it was announced that Eve Online would be distributed via Steam. On March 10, 2009, the game was again made available in boxed form in stores, released by Atari. In February 2013, Eve Online reached over 500,000 subscribers. On November 11, 2016, Eve Online added a limited free-to-play version.

Background

Set more than 21,000 years in the future, the background story of Eve Online explains that humanity, having used up most of Earth's resources through centuries of explosive population growth, began colonizing the rest of the Milky Way. As on Earth, this expansion also led to competition and fighting over available resources, but everything changed with the discovery of a natural wormhole leading to an unexplored galaxy subsequently dubbed "New Eden". Dozens of colonies were founded, and a structure, a gate of sorts (which bears the inscription "EVE" on the New Eden side), was built to stabilize the wormhole that linked the colonies of New Eden with the rest of human civilization. However, when the wormhole unexpectedly collapsed, it destroyed the gate as well as the connection between the colonies of New Eden and the Milky Way. Cut off from the rest of humanity and supplies from Earth, the colonies of New Eden were left starving and disconnected from one another; many died out entirely. Over the millennia the descendants of the surviving colonists managed to rebuild their own societies, but by this time the memories and knowledge of humanity's origins, of Earth and the Milky Way galaxy, as well as the history of the settling of New Eden, were lost; what little information that survived transmission over the generations was misunderstood, lost in translation, or consigned to mythology. Five major distinct societies rose to prominence from the surviving colonies, all growing into interstellar spaceflight-capable civilizations. The states based around these societies make up the five major empires in Eve Online: the Amarr Empire, the Caldari State, the Gallente Federation, the Minmatar Republic, and the Jove Empire.

Races

The Amarr, a militantly theocratic empire, was the first of the playable races to rediscover faster-than-light travel. In terms of physical proximity, the space occupied by this society is physically nearest to the demolished EVE gate. Armed with this new technology and the strength of their faith in their god, the Amarr expanded their empire by conquering and enslaving several races, including the Minmatar race, who had only just begun colonizing other planets. Generations later, after the intense culture shock of encountering the Gallente Federation, and in the wake of a disastrous attempted invasion of Jovian space, many Minmatar took the opportunity to rebel and successfully overthrew their enslavers, forming their own government. However, much of their population remain enslaved by the Amarr, and some, having adopted the Amarrian religion and sided with their masters during the revolution, were released from bondage and incorporated into the Empire as commoners in the Ammatar Mandate. The free Minmatar Republic, taking as inspiration the ideals and practices of the Gallente Federation, is presently a strong military and economic power actively seeking the emancipation of their brethren and all other slaves. The Gallente and the Caldari homeworlds are situated in the same star system. The Gallente homeworld was originally settled by descendants of the French colonists of Tau Ceti; Caldari Prime on the other hand was purchased by a multinational megacorporation that began to terraform it. The terraforming of Caldari Prime was incomplete at the time of the EVE wormhole's collapse, hence the planet remained environmentally inhospitable for millennia. The Gallente restored themselves to a high-functioning technological society some hundred years before the Caldari, building the first lastingly democratic republic of New Eden in the form of the Gallente Federation. Originally the Caldari composed a member race within the Federation, but cultural animosity between the two peoples spiralled into a war during which the Caldari seceded from the Federation to found their own Caldari State. The war lasted 93 years, with neither nation able to overwhelm the other. The planet Caldari Prime was initially retained by the Gallente Federation during the war, and did not become part of the new Caldari State. A Caldari offensive later managed to recapture their lost homeworld, a fact which was viewed with abhorrence by the Gallente, who saw the presence of a significant Caldari fleet about the planet as a mass hostage taking. After 5 years of Caldari control over Caldari Prime, the Gallente launched their own offensive to retake the planet through the destruction of the Caldari Leviathan-Class Titan Shiigeru. They successfully destroyed Shiigeru, although the planet is now demilitarized and separated into districts split between Caldari and Gallente control. Both the Gallente Federation and Caldari State are economy- and trade-oriented nations. However, the Gallente favor liberal economic policies, encourage individual entrepreneurship and social democracy, and maintain a progressive approach to social welfare, whereas the Caldari State is organized as a form of statist corporatocracy; the Caldari State itself is owned by and operated on behalf of a few trust-like megaconglomerates. The Gallente Federation's official policies regarding multiculturalism and encouragement of diversity attract many immigrants to Gallente space; a third of all ethnic Minmatars reside as citizens there. As the Caldari did not share this enthusiasm for diversity with the Gallente, the Caldari State at the time of its formation found itself at a relative population deficit compared to its Gallente adversary; rather than encourage massive immigration to and diversity within the State, this population shortage was rectified by a Statewide programme of artificial reproduction, producing a generation of so-called 'Tube Children' raised by the Caldari State apparatus to enlarge the labour pools available to the megacorporations that ruled the State. The Jovians (a non-playable race) were also descended from colonists. Unlike the other races of Eve Online, they maintained a relatively high-functioning technological society after the collapse of the EVE wormhole and did not need to spend millennia rediscovering ancient societal developments as the others did, and while the other four major races were still grounded, Jovian history saw two major periods of spacefaring imperialism. They expanded outward and eventually turned to genetic engineering in order to mold themselves into a species more suited for deep-space life and long-range interstellar exploration. Genetic experimentation and manipulation were not without their drawbacks, however: by the time period in which players enter the Eve Online universe, millennia of human genetic manipulation have rendered the Jovians barely recognizable as human; more critically, the Jovian manipulation of their genome has resulted in the eventually fatal "Jovian Disease", an inherited psychological disorder which, despite the best efforts of the Jovians to reverse it, has affected every individual of the Jovian race and thus crippled their civilization. Having experienced a catastrophic population decline (the Jovian societal structure is believed to be barely maintained by their immensely-advanced technological systems), the Jovians have effectively retreated to inhabit a region of space inaccessible to outsiders. In addition to different backgrounds and histories, the races have characteristic philosophies of starship design. Minmatar ships tend to be quite fast but fragile, and rely on their high speed and maneuverability to evade the tracking systems of heavier weapons, while using combinations of missile launchers and projectile weapons (such as artillery or autocannons – the more sophisticated kin of today's munitions technology) to output high amounts of damage. Amarr ships are ponderous, densely armored, and pack batteries of powerful laser-based energy weapons and energy neutralizers, which drain the power of enemy ships. Gallente ships are sleek and designed to favor armor plating; they specialize in deploying fleets of robotic drones while mounting hybrid weapons that operate using superconducting magnets to accelerate mass toward targets at great speed (see railgun). Finally, Caldari ships are typically poorly armored and not particularly fast but utilize powerful energy shields, and make extensive use of torpedo and/or missile launchers and hybrid weapons, favoring engagement at extreme ranges. However, there are exceptions to these general rules in each race.

Gameplay

Players start the game by either selecting a previously created character or by creating a new one. Each Eve Online account allows for up to three characters. When a player creates a new character, they start by choosing one of the four playable races – Amarr, Gallente, Minmatar, or Caldari. Each race is further divided into three bloodlines that give characters different pre-defined appearances, which can be finely tuned by the player. Unlike many other MMOs, where there are numerous copies of the game universe intended to run at once (i.e., servers), Eve Online is functionally a single-universe game. There are at least four copies of the universe running: the main server "Tranquility", the Chinese-based "Serenity", the test server "Singularity" (also "Sisi") which is a general, public test server, and an event server, "Thunderdome", which is used for tournaments. A new test server was announced called "Buckingham" to replace "Singularity" as the main EVE Online test server while "Singularity" was used for Dust 514/EVE Online joint testing. As Dust 514 is no longer active, "Singularity" is now the main test server again and "Buckingham" is a closed test server for the CCP developers.

Universe

The playing environment in Eve Online consists of more than 5,000 star systems, as well as 2,500 randomly accessible wormhole systems, taking place in the year 23,341. Systems are classified by their Security Status, on a decimal scale from −1.0 to 1.0. These systems are categorized into three groups, each determining the response from CONCORD (Consolidated Co-operation and Relations Command) NPC law enforcement units. Star systems classed as 0.5–1.0 security are considered "high security" and any unauthorized/unprovoked attack by a character on another character anywhere in the system will result in the appearance of law enforcement. These units will attack and destroy the aggressor, and are designed to reinforce in such strength that they will always win an engagement. However, CONCORD is not preventive, but punitive, meaning there is a short window between beginning an attack and getting destroyed where a player (or group of) can destroy another player's ship. Systems classified as 0.1–0.4 are considered "low security", where CONCORD law enforcement units will not destroy aggressors, but do monitor unprovoked acts of aggression and have automated sentry guns in some locations. Unprovoked attacks will flag the aggressor as a free target for other players, and attacks within sight of sentry guns will cause them to fire on the aggressor. Systems classified 0.0 to −1.0 are called "zero space" or "null sec", and feature no law enforcement; individual systems, or groups of systems, may be controlled by player alliances, up to the creation of player-owned empires reaching across entire "regions" (an aggregate group of star systems). Wormhole systems are accessible only by wormholes that randomly appear and disappear, and are also lawless space, showing as −1.0. However, player-run corporations cannot claim sovereignty in wormhole systems. Star systems contain different types of celestial objects, making them more or less suitable for different kinds of operations. Typically, players find asteroid fields, planets, stations, stargates, and moons in a system. Many of the game's most profitable income sources are found in dangerous null or low security systems, giving players incentive to engage in high-risk, high-reward activities in which they must survive the possible harassment of other players who may also enter the system.

Combat and travel

The game's primary mode of play is flying space ships. Players can dock at stations, where they are safe and can use station services such as repairing, refitting, and the regional market. All space combat takes place in real time at sub-light speeds from around 100 m/s to in excess of 8000 m/s, depending on ship size and setup. While players can manually control their ships as in space combat simulators such as Wing Commander or X-Wing following the release of the Rhea expansion on December 9, 2014, most opt instead to give commands such as Orbit, Approach or Align to their flight computer, which does its best to comply. Weapon aiming, however, cannot be done manually; instead, the player locks on to an opponent and orders their weapons to fire, and the result is determined through calculations based on factors such as range, velocity, weapon tracking, and a degree of randomness. Travel across distances longer than hundreds of kilometers is mostly done with the ship's Warp Drive, which every ship and escape pod has. Alternatively a player may also choose to "slow boat" across these kind of distances, that is, traveling without warp drive. To warp, the player issues a command to warp to an object greater than 150 km away and in the same star system; after an alignment maneuver, their ship will enter warp. Warp speeds are measured in astronomical units per second (AU/s) and vary by ship class and fittings. A ship's warp drive can be temporarily disabled by warp disruption weapons, which is an essential part of combat to prevent a target from escaping. For most ships, travel between star systems is only possible by using structures called "Stargates". Each stargate is linked to a partner stargate in another system; most star systems have more than two stargates, forming a network through which players travel. While players can travel to any number of destinations in individual systems, the need to use stargates to travel between systems makes them focal points for combat. Besides using Stargates, capital ships can also utilize jump drives, which require another ship to create a "Cynosural Field" which the capital ship can then jump to. While this allows the capital ship to travel instantaneously, it requires a trusted second party (or an alternate account) to create the beacon. Jump drives also consume fuel (in contrast to stargates, which require nothing), drain the ship of its capacitor, leaving it nearly defenseless until it is recharged, and incur "jump fatigue", which prevents the pilot from jumping for progressively longer periods of time after each consecutive jump. Titans are also capable of allowing other ships to instantaneously travel by creating temporary bridges to cynosural fields. Black Ops battleships can create similar, but undetectable, bridges capable of transporting only specific types of stealth ships such as Stealth Bombers. Player-run corporations that claim sovereignty over two null sec systems within range of each other can also set up a jump bridge at a player owned starbase (POS) that is in orbit of a moon. Jump bridges allow instantaneous travel to the other system's jump bridge, at the cost of using fuel (requiring supply by the owning corporation) scaled to the mass of ships that use them. This also leads to the accumulation of jump fatigue. As the aging POS systems & code have been phased out of the game, a deployable structure has effectively replaced the old jump bridge. However, unlike the old POS jump bridges, it allows players to customize who may use the gate based on settings such as standings or corporation / alliance affiliation. It also does not need to be deployed in a POS, and as such is often deployed near player owned Citadel structures.

Advancement

Unlike other massively multiplayer online games, player characters in Eve Online advance continuously over time by training skills, a passive process that occurs in real world time so that the learning process continues even if the player is not logged in. The skill training queue allows up to 50 skills to be scheduled, with up to a 10-year total training schedule. Before the November 4, 2014 "Phoebe" release, the skill training queue allowed skills to be scheduled to start training only up to 24 hours in the future. Some skills require other prerequisite skills to be trained to a certain level to be trained, and some skills require more time to train than others; for example, the skill to fly a Titan-class spaceship takes 8 times as long to train as the skill to fly a frigate ship, with a significant number of prerequisite skills. Until the Odyssey expansion, it was not possible to train more than one character per account at the same time. Odyssey introduced "Dual Character Training", which allows players to expend PLEX (see accounts and subscriptions) in order to allow that account to train a second character for 30 days, equivalent to paying for a 30-day subscription on another account to train a single character. Odyssey 1.2 introduced the more generalized "Multiple Character Training" which allows players to expend more PLEX to activate this feature for a third character on the account.

Economy

The in-game economy in Eve Online is an open economy that is largely player-driven. Non-player character (NPC) merchants sell skill books used by players to learn new skills and blueprints to manufacture ships and modules. NPC merchants also buy and sell Trade Goods. Some Trade Goods are only for trade between NPC merchants while others have a functional use and are not good for trade with NPCs. The characters themselves gather the necessary raw materials to manufacture almost all of the ships and ship modules in the game. NPC ships can be looted and salvaged for items and materials. Non-player created ships and equipment may be purchased from various NPC factions as a character gains status with them, and can be resold in the in-game economy. The in-game currency is ISK (Interstellar Kredits), which is also the currency code of the Icelandic króna, the real-world currency of Iceland, where the Eve Online development studio is located. The amount of money or materials in the universe is not fixed and, as such, the economy operates under supply and demand. Market manipulation is possible on a large scale, particular examples being ramping and bear raids. CCP does not issue refunds on in-game purchases. Hence, there is always the risk of certain types of confidence tricks or other scams. The economy is balanced by the automatic introduction of extra materials in underpopulated areas. This encourages a more even spread of players. The game provides support for the trading of in-game resources, including graphs of item price history, with Donchian Channel and daily average price. Some player characters operate primarily as traders, generating profits through buying, selling, and transporting goods. Others operate primarily as producers, obtaining components or raw materials and transforming them, sometimes on massive scales, into useful items such as weapons, ships, ammunition, items, or various technologies in demand by other players. Some less combat-oriented players operate as miners or salvagers, collecting and processing ores used in manufacturing or collecting salvage materials to make into items, respectively. Finally, some characters operate as mercenaries or pirates, being paid primarily to be battle-ready and either to attack or defend other profitable enterprises. Unlike some games such as Second Life, in-game currency is not freely convertible with real world currency. Players may only buy specific in-game items (such as Pilot License Extension (PLEX) tokens, 500 being redeemable for 30 days of Omega time) from CCP with real-world currency. The player can then sell the items on the in-game market for ISK (game currency). The reverse process, selling in-game currency or items for real-world money, is prohibited. Commentators have attempted to estimate the value of Eve Online entities in real-world currency based on the current value of PLEX. One such conversion valued a fleet-ready titan (the most powerful ship in the game) at US$7,600, though estimates vary. Generally, no player expends such amounts of real-world currency to acquire such sums of in-game wealth, opting instead to do activities in-game that net high amounts of profit. In 2007, CCP was the first game developer to hire an economist, Eyjólfur Guðmundsson, to oversee Eve's in-game economy. Guðmundsson was previously dean of the faculty of business and science at the University of Akureyri. Eyjólfur Guðmundsson left CCP in 2014 to the position of Rector at the University of Akureyri in July 2014.

Griefing

Owing to the game's focus on freedom, consequence, and autonomy, many behaviours that are considered griefing in most MMOs are allowed in Eve. This includes stealing from other players, extortion, and causing other players to be killed by large groups of NPCs. Only malicious, prolonged and concentrated harassment where no material gain is involved and a few other actions are considered to be illicit griefing by the game's developers. Escaping retribution by CONCORD, the NPC space police force that punishes criminal activity in higher security solar systems, for criminal actions is also forbidden, as CONCORD is intentionally designed by game mechanics to be unstoppable.

Ships

Ships in Eve Online are organized into classes, from tiny frigates only a few dozen meters in length to gigantic capital ships up to 17 kilometers long. Ships fill different roles and vary in size, speed, hull strength, and firepower; smaller ships are generally faster and capable of disabling their targets, but lack the damage output necessary to destroy larger ships, while capital ships do very high amounts of damage but have difficulty striking smaller, mobile targets. Each of the four races has its own unique ship design preferences and strengths and weaknesses, although all races have ships that are meant for the same basic roles and are balanced for play against each other. This means that there is no "best ship" in Eve Online.

Classes

Ships in Eve Online come in four size classes:

Small starships include: Shuttles – cheap, fast ships used for travel between systems, including null sec bubbles, and moving between ships. They have minimal cargo space and cannot fit modules Corvettes – free, basic starter ships with minimal combat and mining capabilities, mainly useful for new pilots and short-distance travel Frigates – small, mobile ships good for disruption and harassment Destroyers – slightly larger and more offense-oriented than frigates Medium starships include: Haulers – industrial ships designed to transport cargo, ranging from fast, agile transports for valuable goods to high-capacity and specialized transports for bulk or specific items Cruisers – multipurpose ships with many possible roles Battlecruisers – heavier, more combat-oriented cruisers The large class is made up of Battleships – heavily armed and armored dedicated combat ships Extra-large, or capital class, starships include: Freighters – massive cargo ships designed to transport huge volumes of goods across high-security space, with specialized variants for carrying assembled ships or planetary industry products Carriers – offense-oriented ships that can launch wings of fighters to attack targets at extreme range Dreadnoughts – dedicated siege ships for attacking structures and other capitals Force auxiliary ships – dedicated support ships exceptional at repairing other ships Supercarriers – larger versions of carriers, focused more on damage to capital class ships and powerful fleet disruption capabilities Titans – supermassive mobile battle stations, capable of equipping doomsday devices which do massive amounts of damage to other capital ships, or have other powerful battle-affecting capabilities

Characteristics

Each spaceship within the Eve Online universe has a different set of characteristics, and can be fitted with different combinations of modules, subject to their fitting requirements. Ships have a wide variety of characteristics, including power grid, CPU, capacitor size and recharge rate, energy shields, armor, maximum velocity, agility, locking range, and maximum number of lockable targets. A ship's systems also receive bonuses depending on the ship's pilot's levels of various skills. These bonuses usually correspond to the role the ship has been designed for, and thus vary widely. For instance, the Caldari "Caracal" cruiser has a bonus to the rate of fire of certain missile launcher types, while the Gallente "Vexor" cruiser has a bonus to the damage and hitpoints of certain types of combat drones. One important characteristic of a ship is the slots it has available for modules. Slots and modules come in three variants—high-, mid-, and low-power. Ships of different sizes have different numbers and ratios of module slots. A ship may also have two to three slots for rigs, which are modules that require no power grid or CPU, but instead require a ship resource called calibration. Installing a rig is a semi-permanent action, as a rig cannot be removed from the ship without being destroyed. Rigs come in four sizes, small, medium, large, and capital, which roughly correspond to the size of the ship, and are used to affect other aspects of the ship such as maximum speed or cargo capacity, or to augment the capabilities of other modules installed in the ship. Most rigs also incur a penalty to a certain aspect of the ship; for example, armor rigs reduce the maximum velocity of the ship.