By Jim Rossignol on May 6th, 2009 at 6:08 pm.
And I cannot imagine the sum of the hours I have poured into that game. Nor do I imagine that I’ll ever play anything else on a regular basis for that length of time. Still, it inspired me to write the final chapter of a pretty good book. CCP say:
“In the past couple days we surpassed the impressive milestone of 300,000 active subscribers. That doesn’t include trial accounts. We’ve broken our peak concurrent user record 3 times this year alone, standing now at an impressive 53,850 in the same universe. That is exponential growth. We couldn’t think of a better birthday present than having more people playing EVE Online than ever before.”
Happy Birthday, you great big virtual galaxy. Here’s to a few more.
WOOHOO! For it’s a jolly good mmo, for it’s a jolly good mmo, for it’s a jolly good mmooooooooooooo, and so say all 300,000 of us!
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The phrase exponential is so abused. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 is exponential growth with an exponent of 0. Anything higher than 1 is genuinely faster than geometric, but that includes 1.000… …0001. So yeah, meaningless abuse of maths. Happy birthday eve, may the next 6 provide just as many interesting stories.
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Happy bday, EVE!
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Wow, 300k????
Too bad it’s impossible for a casual solo player. I am SO sick of the “elf and fairy” MMOs, and disgusted again with the devs at City of Heroes after resubbing for a month, else I’d give this a shot.
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Happy Birthday, EVE!
What better way to celebrate this occasion than to buy a Covert Ops Cloaking Device II? Fellow pod pilots, buy a Covert Ops Cloaking Device II *today*!
/hides ‘orders’ window
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i long for an elite style eve
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Torgen:
I generally play Eve for an hour or two at a time, perhaps 3 nights a week. At other times, I play it once a week at the very most.
Skill training requires zero effort, and with the right mind-set, reasonable isk-making can be done with very limited time as well.
For me, Eve is the perfect casual MMO. I didn’t hit much past level 55 in Warcraft, because I simply could not be arsed. Beyond the first few months of getting your skills and finances off the ground, it’s better suited to casual play more than anything else I’ve dabbled with – don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. It does, however, take a little bit of experience (and patience) to get to that stage, but it can be as simple as reading a decent guide or two, and sticking to a plan of action.
I guess the ‘solo’ bit is the only real sticking point. It can be a lonely old road. As with everything in Eve, the real key to getting some satisfaction out of the game, is to find a Corp (or even just a couple of mates) that match your own preferences. I dropped lucky in finding a good bunch of similarly uber-casual oldies, who can happily (and just as importantly) put up with me talking my preferred brand of nonsense.
Q.
(self-confessed gaming slacker)
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Fairly new RPS reader here.
As someone looking to get back into EVE after a long break (2yrs), do any of you have any suggestions for a fun Corp to join that’s friendly to casual players such as myself?
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Hey DrChi, funny you say that, I just rejoined today, and have been out of it for exactly 2 years too. My player name is Marias Irreal if that helps. I’ll be as lost as you will :D
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@Heliocentric: Nevertheless, it’s been a couple of years since they reached 200k. A 50% growth rate over a couple of years means that the exponent is quite a bit higher than 1.00000001 ;)
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Depends how long the period of measurement is. If they are defining the unit was seconds the actual exponent would be exceptionally low.
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@cliffski Crazy small world. I’ll be reactivating my account this weekend. I hear they totally revamped the tutorial stuff, which I’d like to see but I’ve invested too much time into the skills of my other character. I’m also looking forward to using the capsuleer iphone app with it.
What’s funny is it was an RPS article here on Pirate Galaxy that got me back into EVE. I was trying it out, and suddenly I missed EVE.
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Well thanks to that pretty good book and the numerous posts on RPS I decided to try EVE a couple of weeks ago.
Long story short, I love it and am now a subscriber, so thanks for making me interested
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@Heliocentric: Fair point. :)
Assuming that the unit is months or longer, the exponent is quite a bit higher than 1.00000001
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Funnily enough I have just resubbed for this.
Happy Birthday EVE, your not for everyone but at least you go for that niche well.
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I’m a satisfied regular player of EVE, so this should not be interpreted as criticism, but 300,000 subscriptions does not equal 300,000 active subscribers. Not even close. A great many people run two accounts, and I’ve personally met several who run three or four — sometimes simultaneously. If you see a small mining group stripping a belt, there’s a pretty good chance it’s one guy running alts. A lot of solo miners run a tank alt when lowsec/nullsec mining.
Still, I like the game just fine with my one account; many happy returns, EVE! And you alt puppetmasters keep on truckin’… more money for the devs is better, regardless of the actual number of players.
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we need an RPS eve corp. sign me up guys.
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Yeah, eve corps based around message board membership always go so well.
:)
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@cliffski
I’ll d/l the 14 day trial if this gets off the ground. Alas and alack, my nickname is taken, which stopped me this morning from starting the trial. :(
I just gotta be me!
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‘Exponential’ is used that way because of the way the terms used in classifying graphs, only applying with an exponent greater than 1 – because those graphs curve, unlike linear ones. Even if the exponent is only 1.0001, the difference between that and 1 is clear if you zoom out from the graph enough. It means your rate of growth is itself growing – which does seem to be a reasonable difference to point out, even if it’s a small one.
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@Lunaran
Yeah, sometimes things don’t work out and explode in a huge pile of drama. However, there’s no bigger counterpoint than this.
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Kudos to you sir for publishing with my university :p
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There is no game like Eve and I love it. The solo player can get places in this game, I’m technically a solo player but I’m post very regularily over on scrapheap-challenge.com and so it’s not as lonely as it might be for other solo players. It’s a massive universe, it’s easy to get lonely or burn out.
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Ed Zitron Review of EVE:
I only have played it like one hour, 30 min on teh character creation. I was in some shit 0.0 area and my ship got destroyed. This game is garbage, 2/10.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/darkfall-online-review
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time spent in eve is: (purely a pvp corp btw)
90% fiddling with stuff/chatting
5% apprehension
4% disappointment
1% excitement
the most addictive thing about eve is getting a satisfying ship setup/balance and the devs know this, so they change things (subtle and not so subtle) every so often so you have to start again.
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Oops… wrong thread.
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Bullshit
I’m a casual solo player. I can make several hundred million ISK a week just AFK trading, and that easily pays for any PVP I do.
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I’ve been playing EVE for two weeks or so, but at this stage it seems more rewarding to turn the game off, do something else, then come back tomorrow when the next batch of skills are trained…
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yay 6 years !! so log in and check all my assets and no goodies !! what the hell kinda b-day celebration is this??
cmon swg gives you wookie or ewok crap and wow gives you cake and crap ..
where is the eve crap ?? damnt i play these mmos for virtual crap i want my crap damn it !!!!!!
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6th sense would be happy to take you all in ;)
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I second the nomination for an RPS corp!
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I’ve suffered massive Eve burnout recently, having become a capitol pilot and joined one of the biggest and baddest alliances in the game, FC’d Titan kills and the like i just dont have anywhere to go from here… WH’s? meh its not like i need the ISK and the current great war is so pointless. POS warfare needs a massive kick in the balls! That said it is by far still the best game.
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Do you guys know, why don’t more MMO’s rock the stackless python that EVE uses to run the universe on the same “server”?
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@DrChi
If we find Jims corp we could join it and in our heads call it the RPS corp ;)
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@Xercies
True, and we could follow him whether he’s the CEO or not. And the group could be supported by 3 massive warships each named “Rock”, “Paper”, and “Shotgun”… (too far?)
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i will sell you that information for 1 billion isk.
funds should be transferred to ‘My JitaTradeAlt’
>:)
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happy birthday the good ship eve :) anyone wanting to mix it up corp wise, youd be welcome in DAMT we are recruiting ;)
pirates tho, ;)
http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1033470
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