Yes, as the title implies, I am about a week behind for this “games of the week.” Last week I finally finished Persona 4, and dear god that was satisfying, but more pertinent to this class is that I started playing EVE Online. This was actually a bit of a landmark moment for me, because this was the first ever MMORPG that I’ve ever played. In hindsight, it might not have been best to pop this particular cherry with a game that is notorious for having a massive learning curve, because it has been a very, very, very slow going.
I’m going to honestly say that I’ve looked down on MMO gamers, placing them near the bottom of a personal “gamer hierarchy.” From a fiscal perspective, I’ve always felt that paying for a game and then being forced to pay extra monthly to enjoy it is kinda sleezy. Other than that, the gameplay in these games has just looked slow, unwieldy, cumbersome and redundant to the point where I actually wonder if the player is playing anything at all; The UI’s look very confusing and all-over-the-place; character progression demands far too much of a grind (and this is coming from a JRPG fan, also not high on the hierarchy…) and, I don’t know, they just seem so weird.
Anyways, with all of these prejudices in mind I sought to enter the universe of EVE Online. I made some kind of Gallente guy that I decided to name Gordon Locke (Gordon after Gordon Freeman for some reason, and Locke after John Locke who I was reading minutes before booting up the game). I did the first couple of tutorial missions, and, as I expected, I didn’t really have that great of a time. It took well over an hour just to accustom myself to the UI and the method of skill progression in the game. In EVE, skills level up over a set amount of time, not through use of said skill or experience grinding. I’m still not quite sure how I feel about this. I can see the good and the bad behind a system like this, but right now have no clue what to think.
Last I played I was actually really upset. For one, I got an EVE Mail from a tutorial agent to get some more missions, but once I got to the station she told me to meet her at, she’s telling me she’s got no missions for me…wtf. So then I decided to start mining and earned enough money to buy a drone, and even took the time to level up the skill to pilot it. So when I get out to an asteroid field and start mining, I instinctively push to warp to the station, unsure of whether or not the drone would warp with me, and sure enough, it did not. I certainly wouldn’t have minded some kinda warning or mention of something specifically telling me to put the drone back in the ship when I first bought it. The story ends, however, when I went back to an asteroid field to mine some more when some low-life prick decides to blow up my ship because I had mistakenly taken the one of dozens of asteroids that he wanted to mine. I lost my ship, my payload and my patience, rage quitting shortly after this moment.
Moral of this little vignette is that I didn’t have the best time of my life starting my adventure into the world of MMO’s. I’m going to keep at it and try to keep open-minded. I can certainly see the fun of a game like this, making a name of oneself in the wild frontiers of space, but, at least for me, it’s gonna depend on how much the mechanics allow me to fulfill that all too appealing fantasy.
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