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EVE Evolved: A game of cat and mouse
Outside of the annual Alliance Tournament, it's rare to find a fair fight in EVE Online with both sides being evenly matched in numbers or odds of success. On the actual battlefields of EVE, lone pilots and fleets alike hunt for fights they can win and tend to shy away from fights that aren't stacked in their favour. A bold few will intentionally engage when they're outmatched or outgunned in the hopes of getting a lucky and impressive-looking kill, but most of the time, that kind of fight is the result of a poor judgment call or misreading the situation. Something new EVE players tend to have trouble accepting is that the outcome of a fight is often decided before the guns even start firing. EVE PvP is a massive game of tactics in which the goal is to catch weaker enemies at a disadvantage, so the fight could already be lost the moment you're caught by a superior foe. A lot of PvP is psychological; you trick enemies into thinking they have the upper hand, and you hide your true intentions and abilities until it's too late. Fleets of all sizes roam around EVE appraising the smaller fish while avoiding the sharks, and I wouldn't trade that cat-and-mouse gameplay for any level of pre-arranged fairness. But what motivates people to fight or flee, and how can we win the psychological battle to gain an upper hand? In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at three tricks you can use to catch targets off-guard.
EVE Online Fanfest 2011 roundup: Day 1
Once per year, EVE Online developer CCP Games throws a colossal party in its home country of Iceland. EVE players from around the world fly to Iceland to meet up with other players, talk about internet spaceships and usually get completely drunk. CCP hosts a series of events, round-table discussions and presentations all about EVE, showing what the team has been up to over the past year and revealing plans for the game's ongoing development. Fanfest has typically catered to EVE's most dedicated fans, or at least those motivated enough at the prospect of an EVE convention to brace the Icelandic weather. This year, the focus is much wider, with over 3,000 players in attendance and a huge contingent of press. Day one of the EVE Fanfest has come to a close, and the event is now in full swing. Read on for a roundup of what happened today, along with detailed explanations of a few personal highlights from today's festivities.
