I'm pretty sure the tutorial mentions those space agents, but it was about a year since I had a look at it.

The potential of Eve Online is quite grand (see this amazing feat as an example http://computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=180867&site=pcg), however the problem for me was I got bored with it very quickly.. I didn't want to have to invest alot of time mining or fetch questing, or indeed training skills (although I think that also happens while you aren't playing).

The worst part for me though is you're never really in "control" of the space ships. I know some people love that Cpt. Picard-esque commanding, however I think if you could manually pilot each ship, and maybe attack with forward lasers or something while still having lock on ones, EO would probably have alot more players then it already does.

In the end it's down to taste, but I'd prefer not to spend a monthly fee only to spend weeks/months earning money for a ship, buying that ship, then having someone destroy it and either suffering a penalty or comlpetely losing the ship altogether (I can't remember which, I think it's the latter though).

Thanks for launching into this series, Tom! I've tried Eve a few times and never made it much farther than you have in this second post. I'm fully expecting you'll get me hooked again -- as you already did with your Nuts and Bolts and Fall from Heaven diaries!

One tidbit re what to do in Eve: when I was playing, one "newb" activity I enjoyed was transporting goods to fulfill Buy orders in the marketplace ("auction house"). Ultimately it's a lot of the same buy-low-sell-high stuff you'd do in any space sim, but knowing that the buy and sell orders are all created by players who need goods moved around gives it an extra thrill.

I feel like a troll coming on just to post this, but for the sake of people who might be interested in starting EVE...

The tutorial does introduce agents. I played through the trial game about a month ago and was forwarded to these people very early.

It introduces your tutorial agent and then the 10-mission arc agent, but it doesn't explain the wider agent system. It doesn't tell you how to find additional agents who will offer you missions. And it certainly doesn't explain how you can call up a list of agents for various factions to see which ones will offer the best rewards, and which ones work for which factions, and which ones offer which kinds of missions. Unless I missed something, the agents that provide the PvE flow of the game and an ideal hook for new players are left buried once you've done your ten missions.

I eagerly anticipate the next instalment, Tom, heaven knows what you'll be up to... maybe scamming in Jita local chat with the traditional "I'm leaving EVE, send me your isk and I will repay you with 3x as much" .

I recently cancelled my EVE subscription after giving it a shot for a month over summer.

Probably the most enjoyment I had was messing about with the market - something I hadn't tried in my 2 trial-account forays into the game previously.

After gaining a bit of initial capital from grinding missions and salvage, I invested in an industrial ship. Hauling trade goods such as silicate glass and electronics parts filled the wallet at a modest rate, until I had enough isk laying about to begin buying and selling the more expensive goods with better profit margins.

There's good profit to be had for the patient player who dances their ships between regional markets looking for choice items to trade.

For example, my pet trade goods toward the end included:

'Gleam' tech ii medium beam laser crystals : purchase for ~ 150k isk each from tash murkon prime, sell at 100% markup at ammar prime - that's only two jumps away.

'ecm - ion field projector i' : the regional price these things go for in domain is horrifying. its so ridiculous that i bought a blueprint and ran off manufacturing runs of hundreds of the things. sure, they dont sell that often, but when they do, its for 17x times the cost of the minerals you used to make them, and that's with poor manufacturing skills and no blueprint research...

as a parting suggestion, when you're a bit more ISKed up I heartily endorse spending a few million to buy half a dozen frigates, fit them with cheap pvp gear, and fly into low security whenever things get boring. as a new character the cost of renewing your clone is so low that it's almost a crime not to die violently every few days in hilariously ill conceived piracy attempts.

For PvE, you can also clear out the NPC pirates infesting the asteroid belts or use your onboard scanner to find cosmic anomalies.
Really, though, solo is so /boring/. ;)

If you insist on being solo, you should do like Tortoise suggests. Head to Amamake, asteroid belt III-1 and challenge local to a 1v1. Stuff an industrial ship with four or five frigates, bring it to the Amamake station and fittings and go crazy.

Tom, you do not realize the difference between multiplayer mode of a single-player game, and MMO game. The point of MMO offers much richer opportunities for interactions with other people than killing twice as fast or healing or buffing. The goal of interaction in MMO is to express oneself. One can choose to join a group of friends helping each other grow, or become a mentor to new players, or take sides in conflicts, or take twisted pleasure in tricking others.

Eve does not "guide" you like WoW because developers believe that discovering things through chat, forums or player websites is part of the fun. For example, if you like agents, check out http://eve-agents.com/ . Can you imagine how much gratitude the maker of this resource enjoys?

Besides, there are several things one can do, and agent missions are just one of them.
There is hunting for NPC pirates in asteroid belts (loot, bounties, salvage).
There is PvP.
There is mining, an ideal thing to do while sorting mail, folding laundry, watching TV, etc.
Then there is production and trade for more business-minded among us.

PS "NPCs with question marks over their head in other MMOs". What MMOs aside from WoW have question marks over NPC's heads?

Intelknight, what the developers like is cash. So we'll see what changes they make to the new player experience come march. I'm probably going to wait until then to go the game another go. I was going to wait until ambulation, but I don't think it's coming anytime soon. :(

Never forget the dark side of eve.

Scamming, backstabbing friends of old, market manipuation.

The best things in eve are those that makes someone else suffer :P

Tom if you make it past the first 2 months you will be hooked for life. But you can't really "get" this game if you don't read up on the forums or join a player corp, which can help you. One of the strongest points of this game is the relations between people and their interaction. Also the pvp is epic when you get the rush of the real chance of loosing all your stuff in one fight you will never go back to anything with a less of a death penalty

Somedude, they've confirmed a bunch of changes to the NPE. There's a single screen character creation now. You only get ~50k skill points to start. You can allocate your attributes as you see fit several times for free, and afterwards with a time delay and isk fee. The re-re-designed tutorial gives you skill books as you complete missions. You get a 100% boost to training speed until you hit 1.6M skill points.

The biggest deals for me will be the respec and new combat effects, so I can tell what is going on in combat. The new scanning system may have an effect on targets we can find... we'll see.

Hey Silly man....

Thanks so much for the plug. AND....the correct speeling was already used....lol....but you still understood what and who I was trying to bring to mind, right?....

Hope you have fun.
Tale

How has this thread gone on this long without talking about the recent Goonsquad/Band of Brothers drama.

They're having massive battles of 1000+ ships every night right now, and Kenzuku (formerly BoB) are fighting for their lives right now.

To me, that's what's appealing about Eve. I could care less about the PvE stuff, except as a way to get into the PvP part of the game.

Tortoise, thanks for the pointer. That totally sound cool, being an MMO space trucker! You got me to look over the contracts screen for courier contacts. Looks like easy money, particularly the ones that route through secure space. I wonder what the catch is.

Intelknight, the question mark (or explanation point) over the head is a pretty common idiom in games. As for the difference b/w PvE and PvP, I'm certainly aware they're distinct. But I'm coming to Eve as essentially a new (and willing!) player. As far as I can tell, there's no easy way to get into the bigger PvP picture (which I guess comes down to joining a corp, something I plan to do before long).

And while I agree with you that discovering the game through interaction with others is part of the fun, I can't help but be disappointed that CCP didn't create a more accessible point of entry for the mildly curious, who are just going to get discouraged and play something else.

Mr. Pearce, those changes with the March 10 expansion make me worry that I'm simply wasting my time by starting to play now. It's like buying a new car a week before the price gets marked way down. :(

Finally, Mr. T (snicker...), I think the reason no one's brought up the BoB/Goons thing is because I'm writing from the perspective of a base-level newbie who has no way to see that stuff in the bigger picture. As cool as all that sounds, it unfortunately means nothing to me when I log in and run my agent missions.

Just to help you with your missioning - here is a player-made website which tells you what to expect in which mission and which damage type to use (I hope you know there are 4 missile types that deal 4 different types of damage):

http://eve-survival.org/wikka.php?wakka=MissionReports

I started playing eve about 3 weeks before you, and I got all that info from reading chat. I also suggest you read Corp chat channel rather than Help. It is not as fast paced, and has more high-level players that can provide advice and even provide some background on BoB/Goons thing.

As an aside, hopefully you are not still using auto-pilot. Especially never use it if you are crossing low-sec. It drops you off too far away from your stargate target so that you have to putt-putt the rest of the way in on regular drives. This makes you much more easier prey as it gives more time for pirates to webify and kill you. Instead you should always manually warp to zero distance. If you start hauling cargo on a regular basis, then you can save your route under your favorites. Makes life easier. This is also really handy for mining.

i met talemacus as well within my first 2 days. he helped out a ton. his corp was the most helpful corp i had met and still is. they are very nice to complete noobs (i hadn't gotten into MMO's by then). TLDS is a must for you if you are new.