Dwarfs in space

For the last few days, I’ve been playing Eve Online. I received a trial invitation from one of my friends (with one extra week of playtime), and started flying around big empty areas with planets, asteroids and other stuff in it.

In short – it’s much more fun when you play it by yourself, compared to looking at pretty videos, screenshots and observing someone else doing the flying. If I had to sum it up in a few words – it’s basically the good old Frontier, only played in an online environment. And yeah, I know that by saying this I’m basically reducing this incredibly complex game to something that could be fitted on a single floppy disk (only with better graphics), but I have only good memories of both Frontier and First Encounters, so it’s absolutely not negative.

So far I’ve been mostly running tutorial missions and finishing the first epic arc. The tutorials are lengthy, but they explain the basic game mechanics quite well – and award ships and skill books. The epic missions on the other hand were a bit disappointing – they provide a nice storyline to drag you around the Empire (and grant a new player something from 10 to 15 million ISK while doing so), but it looks extremely unfinished and ends without any sort of a real ending. I’ve expected maybe a bit more of action, especially for something that long. Still, the cash and experience was nice to get.

Right now I’m mostly playing around, doing random odd jobs to find something interesting. On the weekend I was mostly doing missions versus NPC pirates and then salvaging their wrecks – while not very hard at the starting level, it’s a bit boring when the pirates die in a few missile salvos and don’t have the chance to fight back. Not that I really want them to fight back though, as I’ve already lost a good few frigates by jumping into something that I couldn’t handle. Missions themselves aren’t very profitable (at least the Level 1 ones I’m able to do), but switching ships after the mission and reducing 20 enemy wrecks to sellable parts or raw materials can usually double the income. I’ve already made back more than I’ve spent on a destroyer fitted to salvage things, but most of the time the rewards aren’t that great.

This week will be exploration week – running around systems and scanning for minerals, pirate bases and other stuff that can be found in space. Lets hope that I can find anything at all. ;)