Guess what happens to part-time gamers when real life hits? Yep. They wind up not gaming for a while, particularly when the game at hand is as massive as EVE Online. I dont know how long it will be, but real life demands my attention, so I need to take a break from. This provides a good opportunity to look back at the last few months of EVE Online and evaluate how things went. After all, I wanted to see if a game this large could even be fun for a part-time gamer.
The progression of my early EVE days was interesting, tracked mostly by the ships I flew. I started with a tiny frigate thats very delicate when faced with anything tougher than sparrow. Then I moved up to one with a much bigger cargo hold for mining. Then a destroyer for salvaging. Then another frigate with more armor and guns for fighting. Getting them repeatedly blown out from under me was, well...what it was. I never did quite get the hang of that. A cruiser was a nice thing to play with -- until it got blown up, too. Then back to frigates, some fast ones for courier work and the old standby destroyer for that good old money-making venture: picking up the trash, aka "salvaging."
Professionally, I went from complete and utter noob to a very amateur miner, journeyman salvager, a brief stint as a dead PVPer, and then back to salvaging for the money. I went to space for glory and wound up essentially being a garbage man. Hows that for high tech?
I will say the virtual life in EVE Online is a good one. Theres a lot do in EVE that is supported directly by the software mechanics: mining, salvaging, missions, contracting, manufacturing -- something I only very briefly touched on -- and many other things that were beyond my reach due to time restrictions. The activities that are essentially a by-product of the environment were the ones that intrigued me, particularly pirating. The fact that the entire game is PVP lends a particular atmosphere and edge to EVE that other games Ive played lack. The only intrinsic downside to EVE is the non-personal user interface comprised of your character being more ship than person. I think it somewhat dampened the appeal of the game for me after the novelty wore off. I am a person, after all, not a ship.