MMO trials: EVE Online day 1/21
What strikes me on beginning my 21 day trial in EVE Online, is the revamped character creation segment to the game. It takes you through 9 areas of character creation, covering the semi-cosmetic(Gender) to the attribute boosting(Race & Ancestry).
You can move back through the 9 creation areas at any of the points & you are allowed to clear the options you have chosen on each individual area.
creating your ‘avatar’ in EVE Online, a more user friendly experience
If you are thoughtful with your selections, you can boost any low level attributes with choices that suit the character. Keep a close eye on the details in the background information, located to the right of each selection.
attributes & skills easily tracked via tabs
use every opportunity to buff those attributes
After 20 minutes of playing around with the character creation, I settled on my character. What was pleasing to see in these early stages of the game, were the references to game lore. It gave meaning to the choices I was making, even beyond the buffs to the character.
The process gives you obvious guides in what directions to take via the descriptions that come with each selection. So after choosing Race, the Bloodline & Ancestry are worth concentrating on to flush out a good feel to the character you are creating.
Career & Specialization need to thought over carefully too & it probably is best to decide on the style of your play first, be it Military, Industry or business before making firm choices over Race, Bloodline & Ancestry. Like I mentioned earlier it is easy to go back a few steps & change your selections to suit before completing the character creation.
Say hello to Yufu
I’ll be looking at depth at the in game tutorial that’s presented to a new player, in my next post in this series.
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§Related Posts ¦ EVE Online
Tags: EVE Online character creation
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April 15, 2008 at 1:32 pm
Man this was the game that almost sucked me back in to MMOs. It’s a great, great game.
April 15, 2008 at 2:14 pm
You should check out The Ancient Gaming Noob. He plays, and blogs, a lot about Eve. There’s a lot of good stuff on his site.
And for some fun, go to the official forums and search for INNOMINATE NIGHTMARE. I think I spelled that correctly. The forum post was over 50 or 60 pages last I checked. This guy was forum blogging his adventures in Eve in the most humorous manner. It’s a good read.
April 15, 2008 at 2:34 pm
Hi DM you asked earlier if I felt that Eve was too complicated. I didn’t survive the free trial so I amn’t exactly qualified to answer but I will give an opinion for what it is worth. Eve has two kinds of complexity: Firstly the game mechanics are complex and many layered. I have seen the game described as “Excel in Space” because of the overload of data involve. Personally I am OK with that. I like a rich complex game world to explore. The second layer of complexity comes from the social interaction of players, corporations and alliances. The social layer of Eve is much more complex than any other game I have seen and I found it all a bit intimidating. I believe there are corporations that specifically help new players (Eve University comes to mind) but I never got that far.
April 16, 2008 at 12:56 am
@robustyoungsoul did you ever play EVE Online?
@Stropp have Ancient’ in my google reader & have been reading his posts on EO. Will have to check the forum, thanks.
@mbp think your right there about the corps for new players, good pointer! I’ll add it to my things to look at on the trial. Hmm complexity…some have levelled at EO that it’s complex for complex sake & would be a bigger hit if it weren’t so. I don’t agree to that chain of thought though, just hope the trial shows me enough to make judgement.
April 16, 2008 at 2:29 am
how do u get access to this trial period? do u purchase the game at retail and then have a set number of days available to you b4 having to opt for monthly payments? if this is the case, do u have to sign up via credit (or some other method) in order to create an account for the trial, as a proof of age etc.?
April 16, 2008 at 5:25 am
welcome to the madness
April 16, 2008 at 8:44 am
@ Eight Way Movement you can download client free from the official site & then you are given an access key after you register for 14 days but I went with the 21 day offer on Steam. Again client free + 21 days of gaming time. No credit card needed or proof of age, I also think you can buy game cards for game time in EO, very much like WoW.
@ xyliana Welcome to Sweet Flag! I see you have alot to do with EVE Online in your time, what’s your character summary so far? Anything that I should watch out for on the trial?
April 16, 2008 at 9:48 am
Have fun.
I believed they added quite a lot to the New Player Experience the last year, I think there’s a whole introductionary questline when you start out playing now, which was different when I started playing a bit more than a year ago. And I think that questline is quite good for newbies, so I guess you should follow it. After that, remember it’s a sandbox, it doesn’t really put you on a rail like LOTRO/WoW, you really need to find your own fun. Looking for a (pro-)active corporation quickly is a smart thing to do, Eve University is probably a safe-choice for that.
A little note about the Steam trial. I’m not 100% sure on this, but it does give you 7 more days than the normal trial. Thing is that you’re paying Valve instead of CCP when you start playing, or at least partly or for a short while I assume. Personally I like Steam a lot, but always try to buy games directly from the developers if it’s possible, at least when they deserve it.
April 16, 2008 at 11:06 am
Here’s Innominate Nightmare’s blog: http://00experiment.blogspot.com/
April 16, 2008 at 2:55 pm
I gotta say, Eve has always looked good to me, but I’ve never had the extra time to try itout. I’m looking forward to reading your blog’s eve trial info. Thanks for the info, keep up the great blog!
~Uncle Sy
April 17, 2008 at 12:30 am
@ nuyan thanks for the tips, I’ll be reporting on the new quest line in future posts…interesting point about Steam, will have to look deeper into how the full subs work.
@ Mallika seems that the blogging stopped in 2006 but looks a decent read, thank you.
@ sylus welcome aboard! I’ll do my best to give as good an insight as I can to EO, not sure if I’ll be lead into full subs for the game yet will have to see. Look for a full round up & scoring for the trial in a few weeks time.
April 17, 2008 at 6:51 am
I finished up my 14 day eve trial about three weeks ago. The first three or four days I was more or less lost. By day 8 I was having a lot of fun. By day 12 I was already starting to wonder about the longevity of my gaming experience — missions were already getting tiring, mining had gotten boring, and salvaging just takes too damn long to fly around to all the shipwrecks. I love exploring, but there didn’t really seem to be any reason to fly around to various star systems outside of grinding faction with specific agents. In short, I didn’t see that this game had enough to offer someone like me, who doesn’t live and die on PvP.
April 17, 2008 at 9:02 am
Welcome tarindel
Did you not get involved with any corp during your trial? There are some interesting facets to be had that are not PvP based in EO which you may not be able to reach in a few weeks of play ie Player Owned Structures.