I moved into null, joined up with some friends, and we were allied to NC. Then my wife took my main character and I bought a specialized character to pew things (I later regretted having a full-on Amarr character, but hey Amarr nerfs killed Eve, right?)EVE Is Dead
Chances are if you have played this game longer than a week you have heard some salty old vet uttering those very words laden with the utmost contempt to all things CCP and EVE. Chances are, you have probably uttered them yourselves. The doomsayers of EVE Online have been blowing the funeral bagpipes since 2006, sure that with each new update the likelihood of utter collapse lies just beyond the horizon. Well here’s the thing about horizons; they aren’t a fixed point in space. The closer you move to the landmark on the horizon, the horizon moves further away.
Even then, with the introduction of the Titan, the salty vets of five years were complaining about imbalance in the game. How could new pilots, or people not training to Titans, hope to ever compete with them? They were behind the curve. Due to the training mechanics of early EVE, once you had your learning skills trained and implants maxed, there was no way to close the gap. Maxed players progressed at a set pace.
Before I left the game for a respite I was in nullsec with a few different corps participating in the great EVE wars of the ultimate rivalry: Band of Brothers (BoB) versus Goons. Yeah we could count up all the allies on both sides, but let’s face it, the war was always the “evil” CCP-backed BoB versus the “evil” Goonswarm alliance.
I remember my dealings with Goons in the early days. Never angry, never too serious. In fact they broke all the rules of cordiality common to nullsec warfare. Back then they didn’t “gf” in local after a fight. They’d smack talk, and that hasn’t changed, but compared to BoB where it was a mortal sin to utter anything in alliance chat if you were “just a soldier” let alone the revered “Local”.
Who were these Goons? Who were these dregs of space. How dare they not take this space war game seriously! Sarcasm. To save some time, I took an eight- year reprieve from late 2011 until late 2019 due to real life (the bane of every gamer).
The Path Back
So back to me… About July 2019, the mobile game, Second Galaxy came out. It looks just like EVE. Seeing the preview of the game gave me the itch. After eight years did I still long for EVE?
I load up the game and, sure enough, it played a lot like EVE. Now I was just scratching the itch. In Second Galaxy I notice the Goons had set up a corp. This was as close to EVE as I had been in almost a decade. I remembered my EVE days and the fun and carefree attitude the Goons had, and I wanted that. I join up with the Second Galaxy Goons and we begin griefing and harassing all who dared share a border with us, but the longer I played Second Galaxy the more it was NOT EVE Online.
At this point nothing would suffice but hopping back on my computer and chasing down my old accounts to satisfy my desire to play Eve Online. My new found corp mates from Goons, former EVE Online players, pointed me to Amok, in Goonswarm Alliance. Amok took me in and gave me access to an awesome network of friends, riches in Delve, and ships to make sure I could enjoy being out in null. As mentioned before, they helped me cope with the demise of Amarr ships as well.
I was back.
Long Live EVE!
This game is still the most beautiful game, with limitless potential. It is complicated and everything has a consequence. The jitters of PvP, and the anxiety of your tank breaking still hits me every time. Much to my surprise, the Goons were just as I remembered them when I left. Maybe a little more salty, with a couple more Titans, but underneath it all there was this community that always overcame anything and everything CCP or the citizens of New Eden threw at them.
In Amok alone I found a group of old Goons who were salty smartasses and knew more about the game than I could ever hope to know. Pumping out capital ships at will, and near endless supply of Titans and super caps (an extreme rarity when I had stepped away).
The allure of EVE is still there. The content is still there. The drive for wealth is still there, motivating pilots to hop in their ships to risk it all for a piece of that fortune that lies just beyond the next gate. The old vets are still old vets, now of course complaining about how it’s unfair they had to grind out for years to skill up and people can now just inject. How a player can spend real money and catch up to the old guys. You know the type, the ones who believe something was always so much better back in their time when everything was … better.
Well, bitter old vet, you are not the future of EVE. You may be the stalwart of your era, but eras change. The new blood (or returning blood in my case) is what will propel EVE further and further into the future.
The new guys? Strap in your pods and grab a ship. Find the thing you love and go do it. The possibilities of a pilot in New Eden are limitless. Keep your head high and learn from your first mistake through your 108th mistake.
EVE is still not for the faint of heart and pilot-skill still trumps pilot skill points. So, no, EVE is not dead. Not as long as the biggest commodity in New Eden continues to go un-nerfed – its people. They are what makes this game great.
