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EVE Evolved: Emergence in the sandbox
We often hear about the amazing things players get up to in EVE Online, from full-scale political wars and massive heists to collaborative business ventures and high-profile kills. While we can all enjoy these tales of high-powered exploits from afar, they can be difficult to relate to the actual game experience. Most of us will never be the puppet master pulling the strings of alliance warfare or the mastermind of some great theft, but we don't have to be. Smaller examples of emergent and opportunistic gameplay exist all over EVE in the daily play of thousands of individuals. I've always thought of EVE less as a game and more as a giant social sandbox with spaceships -- a story about what people do when left alone in each other's company. Players naturally take on roles for which they have a strong aptitude, crafting completely new gameplay styles for themselves in the process. The entrepreneurs among us spy opportunities never imagined by the game's developers, tech-savvy individuals sell web-services, and artists craft propaganda for recruitment or a war on their enemy's morale. Countless players carve their own game out of the EVE universe, and there's no reason you can't be one of them. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at some of the unique gameplay experiences players have engineered for themselves over the years and the community that makes EVE what it is.
EVE Evolved: A community guide to EVE Online
Some time ago, Massively started up a whole slew of new weekly columns, each covering a specific MMO. Each week, they bring guides, editorials, interviews and community news in a similar way to what I've been doing with EVE Evolved over the past two years. Each of the new columns started with a definitive community guide showcasing handy links to useful websites, blogs and tools. This week it's my turn to give EVE Online the community guide treatment. This article will be updated periodically with new links as they make themselves known. If you have a useful EVE link you think would belong in the community guide, leave a comment with it. Skip past the cut for a breakdown of some of EVE's most important community links.
EVE Evolved: A sneak peak at EVE Gate
Some time ago, CCP announced their unusual plans to develop their own EVE Online social networking website. Their plan was to tie it into the game, giving players a site they could visit to stay in touch with their EVE contacts and corporation while not logged in. It was expected to be ready by Winter 2009 but never materialised when the Dominion expansion was released. Now named EVE Gate, the website has been rescheduled for the upcoming Tyrannis expansion on May 18th. Recently, CCP released an early alpha version of the EVE Gate website and have begun the slow process of adding features and working out bugs. Some of the features are not active and the site is not yet tied into the active EVE server. Nevertheless, the current alpha build shows what we can expect from the site when it launches. In this article, I give a run-down of what features we can expect from EVE Gate at launch and what we can expect from it in future iterations.
EVE Evolved: Money for nothing
In most MMOs, making currency without actually playing usually involves rule-breaking macro-farming which risks getting your account banned. In EVE Online, however, a number of viable options exist for making ISK with absolutely no effort. From hiring research and development agents to public investment schemes and even a player-run bank, there are plenty of ways to make ISK in EVE without even logging in.Investment Schemes:In the market discussion forums, players can sell shares in their company and present a business plan to potential investors. The corporation receives ISK in exchange for its shares and agrees to make regular dividend payments to all shareholders. Buyers have to trust that the company owner won't just run off with their ISK, so only the most trustworthy players have managed to successfully start very large investment schemes.In this article, I look at the different ways you can make ISK with virtually no effort, in some cases even if your account is inactive.
