An introduction to EVE Online

EVE Online is one of those games that has no tolerance for people who don't understand it. The playerbase, as a whole, are bastards, scammers and unpleasant people. The corporation mechanics are seemingly designed to allow people to pilfer and steal from, and generally wreak havoc amongst, their own corporation.

Flying the ships is easy enough.

Understanding the game is an artform.

Most other games, especially in the MMORPG market, set out to try and snare you in with short-term rewards, gratuitious play, and grind-fest tactics to get you to spend the maximum possible time on their servers.

EVE tells you, on day 1, that you have a training queue and, thoughtfully, provides you with a list of skills that you might consider training. About 200 of them. The shortest ones take about 7 days to max out, using base stats, and the longest ones take several months. That's several months REAL TIME. EVE Online doesn't do the short-term planning idea.

Those times are set in stone, you can't change them. It's not that you have to spend time in the game to train. Quite the opposite. Your character trains 24/7 whether your online or offline, whether the servers are working or completely and utterly fucked up. So long as a skill is in the queue, it's training. And you can only queue skills to start within 24 hours, meaning that you have to log on every so often to set new skills in the queue.

If all that isn't confusing enough, then it's worth noting that no one in the game has maxed out all the skills in the game yet. It's just not possible.

It would take several decades of 24/7 training to accomplish this, by which point CCP would have brought out some new skills. The idea of 'level' doesn't really apply (the closest you get is your SP total, which goes up at the rate of about 1m/month if you're training).

Everyone in EVE eventually specialises, which brings me onto the second peculiarity of EVE.

In other MMORPG's, multi-boxing (logging in multiple accounts) is frowned upon. That's great. In EVE, I estimate that there's about 2 accounts per player. On average. I have between 2 and 4, depending on whether or not I can afford the subscription fees (which are high) for all of them each month. Everyone in my corporation has at least two accounts, some have three, a few have four and one guy has nine.

Why?

EVE is addictive. You discover, as fast as you play it, that it wants you to carry on playing, and it's only another 2 weeks till you can fly that new ship, and only another 2 weeks after that till you can fit it with the right equipment, and only another 2 weeks after that until you are able to...

You get the general gist.

I'm nearly a year into this game and I'm still playing it. For someone who got tired of WoW within a month and bored of Runescape after a pitiful 12 months - remembering that I was of the generation where everyone had an account, even the 'cool' kids - this is quite remarkable. Especially when you consider that it's £11/month/account. I try not to think too hard about the amount of my money that's landing in some else's pocket.



This post has gone on too long without pictures.

Here's one of my new shiny, an Interdictor, which is essentially a ship designed to piss off people by stopping them from warping (hyper-speed drive!) off.

If you can't see it, it's that tiny speck in the middle of the screen. It's quite small...

And here's one of my corporation POS, essentially a giant floating structure in space where we can store items, ships and hide from enemy fleets (unless they blow it up, which has happened to our things before)

More pictures and less text will be winging it's way onto this blog whenever I actually get around to logging into my EVE accounts (I have some VERY long skills training at the moment, so I barely log in)

Stupid Samanya

Turning back to Red Faction, I load up and immediately start up the next faction mission.

Samanya has gone to meet-up with an apparent defecter. The name of the mission - 'Ambush' - says it all. The leader of the Red Faction tells me to go and support her 'just in case.'

Jumping into my jeep, I floor it

I arrive just in time to fight off the guys trying to kill her

And set some explosives under a bridge where the next wave is going to come from, and sit there to watch the show

Sure enough, they roll up just at the right time for me to blow them to kingdom come. Mission complete, the radar starts warning me of incoming reinforcements, but it's okay. I've fought off their big bad boss. I've killed their boss. So I start pissing around, throwing explosives at random bits of scenery. This is great, until I accidentally shoot something that explodes another something, that leads to a building collapsing, just as I'm running underneath it.

Whoops.

With the morale drop in hand, I decide to call it a day before dying becomes (another) habit of mine...

Still. One step closer to the omgwtf nano rifle!

A confession

I thought I should clarify that my team fortress 2 skills aren't particularly uber.

Once again, a picture says it all

Reasonable number of assists and a reasonable amount of Healing though.. I'd only been playing for a couple of rounds.

Still got to get the achievements for 7000 and 10000 healed in one life. If I ever work out how to stop dying, I'm sorted.

Insanity on Mars

I picked up (and completed) Red Faction: Guerrilla in the Summer Steam Sale. It's one of those fun lovin' games that you find, where the game spends under 5 minutes explaining itself to you, before letting you run free.

Having completed it once on easy, I immediately then decided that it was too easy... so have just started again on Insane difficulty, in the hopes that this might prove slightly more challenging.

For those who haven't played before, it starts off quite promisingly, with this shot of a ship heading towards mars

There's a couple more establishing shots during this opening run, including one of the EDF's (that's the bad guys) checkpoint at the port

Our first view of the main character, Alex Mason, a mining engineer with a penchant for blowing stuff up

And our first viewing of Samanya, technician, main member of the Red Faction (the good guys) and eventually one of the more important plot points and potential love interest for Mason. I think.

After all this, we meet what may be the quickest named character to die in any game I've played. Mason's brother, called Jason Mason.

I'd like to say that he's a likeable guy, but given the (admittedly brief) dialogue between him and his brother, he seems like a fairly nasty character, with pent up anger towards Earth, the EDF and anyone that supports them. He's already trying to recruit his brother.

Then again, you drive past a few moments (that remind me a little of CoD4, should anyone still play that) with EDF troops breaking into a house

And a few more EDF troops executing some civilians who may or may not be insurgents. It isn't clarified. It's not really even important, it's just more of the same 'EDF is evil' propaganda which is throughout this opening sequence.

I'll be honest here, it's nothing we haven't seen before, except that the ground is red, it's all very dusty, and it's quite atsmospheric, and lacks the gunshots, as we're in a soundproofed vehicle. That's always nice. The screams of the dying grate on your nerves after a bit. Finally we get to 'home', a place who's name is never given, and which gets destroyed in only slightly more time than Jason dies.

Your brother tries to recruit you into the Red Faction

And then HIS boss shows up (who looks familiar, for some reason)

That done, we're into the tutorial. And when I say that this tutorial is short, I'm not lying. Literally, we get given a pop-up window saying WASD to move, another one explaining that to swing our sledgehammer we press such and such a button, and another one explaining how our remote charges work. It's all fairly simple, albeit not the friendliest of tutorials to a new player, but to someone who has been playing computer games for some time, it's refreshing. The lack of a tutorial means more time for blowing shit up.

It's worth noting that my brother stands around doing nothing

And that the police are already here

I was kind of expecting, the first time I played this game, it all to be a lie. It'd turn out that this apparently 'abandoned' facility would be armed to the teeth with guards, scientists, tanks, airships and generally provide a nice bit of fun. As it turns out, you literally just have to blow up a couple of buildings, which doesn't take long, before the inevitable happens.

The gunship arrives, complains that we're blowing stuff up, and then proceeds to attempt to arrest us. Jason refuses to be arrested, so he dies.

And the tutorial is over. Short, sweet, to the point, and most importantly, is followed by another cut scene.

Like backgrounds? Here's a nice one

We follow Mason back 'home' where we discover the EDF have already moved in on it

Thankfully for anyone that has played video games, we all know that killing your main character BEFORE the first mission is generally a no. So when Mason dramatically escapes from situation thanks to some friends, and is promptly recruited into the Red Faction proper, it's no great surprise.

We meet Samanya again (with mysteriously differently coloured hair)

And she tells us to keep our head down.

Being me, this means that I restrict myself to one massacre, and blowing up one of the low importance targets in the area

This done, it's back to the base and time for a break.

I didn't even die, which given my luck with Gareth in Oblivion is somewhat nice. Dying in video games tends to get depressing eventually.


Red Faction is one of those games which, whilst you're playing, you kinda get a lil bit addicted to. The storyline presses forward, the explosions get bigger (and better), there's a new gadget every so often that you have to play to unlock, and failing that, there's a seemingly unlimited number of upgrades for the amount of remote charges you can detonate at once. Not that I'm complaining, 2 was a bit small. The 4 or 5 that I immediately pushed it up to is better, but I'm aiming for about 15, so that I can blow up the larger buildings in one go, without having to explode a set and wander around a collapsing building to place the remaining charges.

The graphics tend to be quite slick, the gameplay is relatively intuitive, and given that nearly all the weapons either are explosion based, or punch holes through walls, or are simply things designed to rip through the enemy soldiers as fast as possible as to allow you to explode their barracks before the next wave spawns, there isn't much to complain about.

I'm just pushing forward as fast as possible so that I can grab the nano rifle. There's nothing quite like watching an enemy army dissolve in it's tracks.

Soulstorm Picture

Me and a friend tried playing a Eldar/Tau rush tactic against some Chaos/Necron dudes.

This picture sums up the endgame.

Yeah. We lost.

Gareth died

Well.. Er.. He lasted a long time.

I jumped into the Oblivion world, finished off my shopping and decided to head out into the big wide world.

Soon after starting my run towards Cheydinal to pick up the next Dark Brotherhood mission, I discovered this wonderful place called Vilverin

It was occupied. At first, but I soon put rest to the many inhabitants, all of which were bandits and set about looking for the Varla Stone that I knew must be somewhere in the ruins.

I didn't find it. What I did find, however, courtesy of accidentally tripping over a pressure plate was a secret passageway. Then some more undead. Another 20 minute or so later, I got to the end of this section of the area and found a room which obviously had a leak.

Presuming that I had to jump into the water, I did so, and came back round in full circle. I ran round in circles for a minute or so, before finally discovering that there was a lever at the bottom of the pond that I had to pull that opened up into the next section, where - after killing a small horde of skeletons, surviving three traps and annihilating a skeleton warrior that I came across, barely losing health - I discovered the prize.

That's great.

The image fails to convey the giant steel ball with spikes that came down on my head the moment I picked up the Varla Stone.

Gareth the Dark Elf Warrior-mage achieved nothing in his lifetime. Cyrodil burned in flames shortly after his death and, frankly, I doubt he cared, as he was a murderous sonofabitch and hence doomed to an eternity in hell.

Lesson learnt: When not save-scumming, don't stop moving, because otherwise, as you pose for a picture, something is going to come up behind you and whack you, very hard. And when you're playing on moderate difficulty, with all traps insta-killing, that's a bad thing. A VERY bad thing.

Gareth the Dark Elf Adventurer

Everyone has played, at some point in their miserable lives, a Bethseda game. Fallout, Elder Scrolls. Some other, less known, but equally good game. It's part of the essentials of being able to geek out. Where else do all the good stories come from?

One of the ones that I always tell is about the time when one of my friends whilst he was backseat gaming his way through Oblivion. As my character ventured down a darkened corridor at the bottom of a mine my friend suddenly told me that I had to turn back and look at a ledge on the wall that I hadn't even noticed. There was two gold pieces on it that I obviously needed.

He has that kind of eagle eye vision, attention to detail, etcetera. The kind of attention to detail that allows him to concentrate on the tiny things, like the rat jumping up and down in his face, whilst ignoring the big things. Like the horde of Skeleton Heroes about to smash his face in.


One of my favourite things about the series is that it can be modded. To hell and back. And probably again. Want your characters to resemble smurfs? There's a mod. Want your smurfs to have violent sex with a horse? I've not checked, but I'd lay money on there being, somewhere, some sadist who spent a couple of hours of his life getting round to making it. I wouldn't want that kind of thing, but, presumably, there is someone somewhere who can jerk off to video games doing violently wrong things.

This is the world of gaming where if it isn't possible, you're doing it wrong.

I run quite a fair few mods myself.

The unofficial Oblivion patch is up there, along with all Max Tael's natural environment mods. Oscuro Oblivions Overhaul is on there, BT-Oblivion optimisation is up there on the list for the inventory stuff. Spawn rates are ramped up using the SpawnElement AdrenalineOblivion. There's a couple of new factions to join, and the Dark Brotherhood has been revamped to have all kinds of cool gear, better shops, new spells, that kind of thing.

Oh, and there's another 300-400 spells, about another 2000 items, at least another 9 sets of armour, and a very large number of things that, whilst they sounded cool on the mod description, I'll never get to see because I'll distracted by something shiny.

Given I have all these mods, and that I've played with these mods for sometime, I thought I would do something fun for Summer.

First thing to go was all my saved games.

Gone is the level 55 Imperial Heavy Armour/Blunt master, whose armour gives him 100% resists to magic. Gone is the level 48 Wood Elf thief, with the 100% chameleon armour and weight 1 boots, as a master of Sneak, rendering him completely invisible to anything and anyone (with the exception of vampires, which detect life, but who cares about the undead?). Gone is that level 32 account I used for jumping off of tall buildings and seeing how long it took me to suicide myself against guards.

Instead I have a brand new character. He's called Gareth. He's a Dark Elf. He's brand new to Cyrodil, and he arrived at night.

As you probably can't tell, the skies have been retextured. And I arrive in Anvil, not the Imperial City. And I immediately remove all my map markers. I'm a new arrival, here for an adventure.

So I start killing people. 20 minute later, I've been asked to kill a certain Rufio, and my aim to set out on my quest of despair, darkness and destruction (before saving Cyrodil as an all-conquering hero) is started. It's nothing new, it's nothing special. Neither is my idea for making it more fun, but I've not tried it before.

Amongst those people who are used to somewhat older RPG games (the ASCII ones especially) there sits one of my friends who bitches, non-stop, about the fact that you can save your game in Oblivion. He refers to it as save-scumming. So, just to rub it in his face that I'm better than him, I've ramped difficulty up (to about midway, I'm not TOTALLY insane, as there are level 50 monsters running round thanks to the AdrenalineOblivion mod) and will refuse to 'save-scum.'

One save, which gets deleted when I load it, and in which, if I die, I die. No reloading. No second chances. No going 'oh, but...' or anything. Just like in the old games.

Needless to say, it makes me a little nervous. Which is why I'm doing the Dark Brotherhood first. Shiny magical items, very few dangerous quests, ridiculous pay-outs and more besides.

I steal a horse from Anvil Stables and start riding (yes, riding, because I removed all my map markers remember?) across the world.

Suddenly, my horse collapse underneath me and one of the new factions ambushes me on the road. Those mods that seemed like a great idea, suddenly don't seem like quite so much fun. I accept my steed's noble death with equanimity, apologise to the real owner, who is undoubtedly stumbling out of the pub and wondering where he left it, and run like hell. Pissed off woman with big spells, big swords and pointy sticks that glow-in-the-dark doesn't sound like my idea of fun.

Unfortunately, a Level 1 Dark Elf is right up their street.

Thinking 'screw it, this could be the shortest save on Oblivion yet' I turn round and start firing my pitiful fireball at them. When it turns out that it only takes me about 10 minutes to kill each one, I spend 40 minutes wiping them out. Looting them, I see just why it might be an idea to come back here in the future.

For those of you who can't do the math, I've just loooted about 5000 gold worth of armour and jewellery, and I'm not even halfway near completing my first quest. For a level 1, this works out as being able to afford to buy just about any of the low-level items in the shops. I start running towards Skingrad (the closest town) with no magicka, a slow rate of recharge and some more 'Sylvan Warmasters' chasing after me, and finally get to the gates, where the guards prove their worth by promptly dying as I run into the city. The Sylvan Warmasters obviously don't consider declaring war on the city to be in their plans, because they don't follow.

So far, all going according to plan. Ish.

About 30 minutes real time later, I finally get to remeet the guy who told me to kill an absolute stranger with some weird magical weapon that I can't get rid of. It's probably cursed.

He doesn't expect me to say much, so I don't. He tells me to head to Cheydinal. Another long trek later, I meet some more guys. They aren't very friendly, so I stab them too, and carry on walking. I wander past this place. It looks vaguely familiar.

It looks like it's say... a good place for the end of the world to kick off. Wonder why.

Cheydinal goes without incident. I meet my new boss

And her friends

With their shiny new armour and weapons! I don't have one of Marie Estemaire with her Shadowmail armour (which is chainmail stats, +0.5 or so, same weight, slightly harder to bust and in black, which makes it awesome. If it's in black, it's awesome. That goes withotu saying), but I figure that she's probably out running down some deer. Having accidentally killed her once whilst training destruction magic in the forest near Cheydinal in a previous character, I'm not too fussed about hunting her down. Knowing my luck, she'd get her own back and kill me.

So, It's back to the imperial city to deal with another stranger, with the cursed blade again. It's getting to be a trend.

Gareth has been in the country less than 48 hours, and is already a mass murderer. I think that's pretty damn good.

So I let him have a tea break.

Do you remember that 5000 gold I had earlier? I spend it all here:

5000 gold of potions, alchemical ingredients and various bits of potion-making kit. Like the stuff for kids, but massively more expensive.

It doesn't up my Alchemy skill by much, but the potions I get from it will hopefully let me survive another ambush by crazy level 40 rangers with high-value armour. I need the gold.

I think I'll finsh up the Dark Brotherhood tomorrow and try and get to the Dead Drops. I want to be kitted out in Marie's Shadowmail. I want a bloodleather Cuirass. Where's my ridiculously big sword that I can call Rebellion? And a red cape! And the ability to recolour my guys hair to white, so that he can kill demons and look like the real Dante.

I think I need some more modpacks...