EVE Online at Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMOG Gamers to the Next Level!

Several years ago there was a revolution of sorts at CCP wherein the developers realized that having more newbies in the game might result in both more profits and less stagnant gameplay. CCP merged with White Wolf, forcing the company to grow up. The developer responsible for the T2 blueprint system was caught in a corruption scandal and thrown under a bus. The T2 lottery was replaced with the invention system, which immediately meritocraticized the economy by allowing anyone who felt like it to produce T2 items. CCP even undertook strenuous and continued efforts to improve both the game documentation and the newbie experience. The formerly terrible tutorial and character creation system is now passingly entertaining, rather than a nightmare. Perhaps more importantly, it is no longer possible to completely ruin a newbie character with poor attribute selections before the game even begins.

Yet, even though the Bad Old Days are dead and gone, it is still difficult to be a newbie in EVE. The biggest risk to a newbie is sheer ignorance. EVE is horribly complex, and only recently did CCP begin addressing this through improvements to the in-game tutorial and documentation. You can expect to spend hours simply reading and learning the basics of the game. Once the learning curve is ascended, a newbie needs to begin to grasp the unwritten rules of EVE. As a sandbox game, those who cannot cope with the dangers of human interaction or navigate the inevitable hypocrisies of society will face greater difficulty, as there are no forces of law and order to keep the naive protected from the cunning and malicious, and all the deterrents against criminality in real life - imprisonment, death, pain, bankruptcy - are absent.

One of the first tests of a newbie's adaptability to the sandbox comes from how they surmount the crippling poverty which afflicts anyone new to the game. Without isk, you can't get far.

The vast majority of newbies join the game and begin trying to make money in Empire, usually through mining veldspar or running level one missions. I did this myself when I switched from playing WoW to EVE; I was given an Osprey cruiser and mined Kernite in Empire for a couple of weeks, and then I was finally able to afford a battlecruiser - which I promptly fit mining lasers on and began the tedious process all over again. I was bored silly after a month or so and quit.

By contrast, the streetwise newbie realizes that there are no rules in EVE, and as soon as he feels comfortable he sets about scamming anyone he comes across - or otherwise thinks a way out of the mining/ratting/missioning grind. Personally, I advocate scamming for all newbies. A single accomplished scam equates to hundreds of hours of mining veldspar. With an injection of capital, market manipulation or production becomes a possibility. Better still, the process of scamming teaches players about the underside of EVE; it's easier to defend yourself against deception if you yourself specialize in it.

Another challenge for the newbie in EVE is finding something he enjoys to do. EVE doesn't spoon-feed content or quests; to succeed, a newbie needs to have self-direction. Part of that involves seeking out things that one actively enjoys doing in the game, and that inevitably involves people. One of the worst mistakes a newbie could make is to play only by himself; as Yahtzee found out the hard way, going solo in EVE is a frighteningly boring experience. If you have no social contacts, I'd suggest joining a training corporation, such as EVE University, which specializes in teaching newbies the ropes and gives an initial social network to grow with.

Most newbies think that a terrible grind is required in EVE because newbies are 'powerless', or because other MMOs insist that you hit wolves with a sword for hours on end before you can level up. The greatest thing about EVE is that you are able to think yourself out of almost any situation; your best weapon is your mind, and you're pitting your wits against other humans, rather than pixelated monsters. While in the Bad Old Days, the deck was stacked against the newbie, in this day and age the only thing holding back a newbie is a lack of imagination, daring, or cunning.