EVE Online Information

When launched 5 years ago, CCP's EVE Online broke the mould of what gamers expected from massively multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPGs). Avoiding the swords and sorcery cliche, CCP launched into space, with a massive single shared universe, and a trading and combat simulation inspired by the classic BBC Micro game Elite.

The founders of CCP were originally graphics artists, and their background shone through with the breathtaking scenery and attention to detail within the game.

From the start, CCP were aiming for a player driven experience. Although there is a rich and deep back-story to EVE, the economy is modelled on real life economic systems and is driven by player production and demand. Indeed, CCP were the first game company in the world to hire an economist, expressly to make sure their economic model could grow and evolve.

Corporations replace the usual Guilds, with players able to buy and sell shares and gain dividends. Beyond that, player owned structures (POS) allow corporations and alliances to build their own space stations, laying claim to vast tracks of space.

Politics form a core part of the game experience. With 4 major Empires constantly scheming and jostling for supremacy, player Alliances can also join in, with long running wars and fragile treaties making space a dangerous - and exciting - place to be. An expansion coming this summer will allow player corporations and alliances to directly take part in the struggles of the existing Empires, adding even more depth and intrigue to an already complex game.

Apart from the shared universe, EVE's approach to gaining 'experience' and 'levels' for your character resulted in the game's unique skills.

One of the interesting aspects of EVE is that, unlike other online games like World of Warcraft, players don't have to repeat the same quests to gain experience points and advance levels. A characters ability to do everything in EVE - from trading on the market to using a specific type of weapon on their ship - is controlled by skills.

Skills can be bought on the market, or earned as rewards in missions. They can sometimes even be collected as loot from blowing up pirates. Each skill has a level, from 1 to 5. As your character trains up a level in each skill, the bonus or ability that the skill grants will increase.

So for your character to become more efficient at flying Frigates, they could train the relevant Frigate skill up to level 5, achieving the largest possible bonus from the skill. You'll see that when it comes to a specific EVE Online skill, it will be connected with one of the five attributes, whether that is Intelligence, Perception, Charisma, Willpower or Memory. The better the attribute that is associated with the skill you are trying to learn, the faster you will learn the skill.

The most refreshing part about EVE skills, though, is that you don't need to be logged in or doing anything to train them up. Simply choose the skill, then right click and select 'Train'. A status bar will show how long it will take to train the skill to the next level - and that's that. If you do something else in game, or even log off, the skill will continue to train.

This means that your character can advance in EVE without having to be logged in all the time, which is great news to players who are tired of the constant grind, or who can't spare that much time to play the game.

Character creation in EVE will be your first introduction to the game, and it's pretty much the most important. The career paths you choose for your character will define what skills they initially gain, which in turn defines how quickly they can move on to other skills along their chosen specialisation path.

CCP have put a lot of effort in to making the skills given match up to the career chosen - from trading and social skills to refining and gunnery - but it can't be denied that some initial skills are more useful, and therefore worth more to the player, than others.

The most important skills to initially gain, and then quickly train up, are those from the Learning group. These can boost your attributes, which in turn can dramatically decrease the training time of all skills. Spend your initial gameplay time training up these Learning skills, and you will find you can quickly reduce the training time of other skills by a quarter, or even a half.

The next most useful skillset to choose is Drones. Initially, due to your characters low skill levels, activities like combat and mining will prove pretty tough. A few levels in the Drones skill will mean you can launch combat or mining Drones. At the beginning of your EVE career, Drones can greatly boost your combat effectiveness or mining efficiency, and will provid much needed help while you're training up your Learning skills.

Even later on in the game, Drones can become very powerful and very effective, so initially gaining levels in this skill group is a clever ploy whose benefits will only increase over time.

Beyond these initial skills, focus on gaining and training skills in your chosen career path. If you're a miner, you'll be looking at the Mining and Industrial skill groups to boost your efficiency at mining and refining ore. If you're wanting to dominate the market, then the Trade and Social skill groups are where you should focus your efforts.