Eve Online. The one MMO to rule them all. Death has meaning here. It's tough, uncompromising, with few rules (beyond gaming the game and actively stealing accounts) and is designed to be flexible and player-owned and run to some extent, with them making the laws. Or not. More often not, come to think of it.
Much has been written about Eve. Not least this gloriously full colour early history of the game, 'Empires of Eve'. Funny story about that actually... heard about the book from /r/eve. It wasn't sold in the UK, although the author did state that if there was enough demand, then he would do something over here. I couldn't wait for this, of course. Oh no. So me, thinking I was clever, found a friendly American to send it to, who would then send it on. I didn't specify the way he would send it, but him being kind, assumed that I would want it as soon as possible. Doom! He fed-ex'd it. Postage cost, £109, with a receipt to prove it. My book had now cost me over £130.
Of course, as you are no doubt aware if you bothered to follow the link above, it is now available in the UK. Go me.
So anyway. The first time I tried Eve, I think I lasted approximately 5 minutes, as I undocked and looked at the UI. I couldn't really be arsed. On reflection it might have been better to leave it there.
Second time around, I had become more and more interested in it - because space and general stories of skulduggery - and a colleague at my work (same company, different team) played it, had been talking about it for a while. It sounded great - but not wishing to repeat the WoW experience, I deliberately kept away.
I eventually caved, and was in 'highsec' (the so-called safe area of the game) and joined a corporation (equivalent to WoW's guilds). Didn't really get on with them so tapped up my friend. His corp lived in 'nullsec' (the really no-holds-barred deadly area of the game) so I made preparations to move down there a mere 3 weeks after starting the game. He was guiding me through, except, at the crucial point I misunderstood his instruction to not enter the stargate as to enter it. There was, sadly, a 'gatecamp', set up by a gang of space pirates to separate people from their internet spaceships with as little fuss as possible. Duly separated from all my worldly goods, my toon came back to life where I'd started. The second try was a lot more successful, and the corp replaced my losses (as in the scheme of things it cost nothing to them).
And so began another glorious chapter of computer game addiction and time wasting. (There has been some writing that takes umbrage with using the word 'addiction'. I've used it for years, but appreciate why not. Addiction destroys lives, for me it's mere compulsion. I digress.)
Eve really hit my gaming time hard. The concept of 'death' within the game was dealt with by the Eve pilots being clones, you die, you wake up where you've set your home station (minus any brain implants). That said, the ship you were in, and all it's hold contents, are lost. They can get quite expensive, and seeing how time spent in the game is how you generally earn money, losing your craft and possessions actually means something.
In a fight, there were only 3 ways it could generally end: either party could escape, you win or you lose. The fights also generally only last a few seconds, but in that time and in the pursuit or flight if you're trying to catch/evade someone, your heart is pumping like it wants to jump out of your chest, your hands are going clammy, youforgetwhichbuttontopressandohmygod...
Post fight, you have all the marks of adrenaline fade, the shakes, the pale face; if nothing else, it's that intense feeling of excitement that kept me coming back again and again (and again) to Eve. Not many games do that to me - one other that springs to mind is Company of Heroes (vCoH) - a hard fought 40 minute online 2v2 on 'Rails & Metal' when I emerged at the end of the game drenched in sweat, hurting to blink because my eyes have dried out and mild exhaustion from concentration; a nice sit down with a cup of tea is in order. Perhaps even a slice of cake. Not even sure if I won that CoH game or not, it's the memory of the match itself that sticks. That is also my abiding memory of Eve.
One fight that I will always remember... I was flying around in my Wolf (a moderately expensive frigate) trying alternately to find/not be found by a Succubus (a very expensive frigate). He found me and caught me. I was shitting it, locked him (a necessary game mechanic to ensure your guns can target a ship), opened fire, turned armour repairers on when needed and prepared to die. Something was wrong. I wasn't dying. I began to slowly break his tank. This is it! I'm winning! Here we go! Payday! At which point he left the field with 'gf' ('Good Fight') in local (local space chat channel). What the-- I was winning! My first 1v1 and I was winning! And he left! Well of course he did. I had forgotten to turn on my warp disrupter (Eve's method for preventing escape), as I'd been concentrating on staying alive and killing him. Shucks. Chalk it up to experience, and go for a lie down.
Eve is also so much more than fighting. CCP (the developers) designed the game as a 'sandbox', where they set up the rules of the universe, and left the players to it. There have been mercenary outfits, banks, lottery syndicates, alliances, year long wars, trading and territory empires and scams. Mostly scams and alliance fights if I'm honest.
The beauty of Eve is that the economy was run for the players by the players - and as such proved to be somewhat of a microcosm of real-world economics - CCP employed an economics professor for a good few years to oversee the economy. The base of the economy, the 'money drip' if you like, that CCP set up was mostly driven by mining, specifically moon mining. Some moons in nullsec held the rarest of minerals that naturally commanded the highest price - if you control that space, then you gain the resources. So it comes down to territorial battles driving the economy - you lose ships, you need to build more, you need to build more, you need minerals... and so on.
Internet spaceships is srsbsns. o7.
