First Day

Eryk Towen is a young Achura pilot in the Caldari empire. He graduated from School of Applied Knowledge, and gained his capsuleer license soon thereafter learning the basics of combat, manufacturing and mining.

The good news is that I am now playing Eve and I have a lot of first thoughts, but first I want to shout out to my benefactor who shared with me a 60 day trial. Thank you! You made this possible and made my next two months a little brighter. Though much may happen between now and the end of the trial the probability of subscription is very strong and I hope that you get a kick back from it.

For anyone reading this during the winter holidays of 2011 who is looking for a trial, keep trying! There are lots of forums where people are sharing and while the 60 day trials might be getting scarce the 21 day trials are plentiful. If you a reading this after Feb 2012 jump ahead to see if I registered. If I did then drop me a line and I will share a 21 day trial (if the buddy program is still in effect and I have some left). Otherwise I found the sub Reddit Eve to be a particularly effective venue as well as the Steam Eve Forum. A warning about Steam: Registration requires moderator review. It took them a day before I could post.

But on to the game!

Once the 4gb Eve client had downloaded and installed I was off to the races. The process was relatively simple but I did note that there were three different ways to do so. The main way, found on their website, involved a quick installer download followed by a connection through that program to their server for the bulk. But were that to cause trouble there was also a fall back offline installer allowing you to download the full 7zip package through your personal download manager. Lastly there was the Eve delivered through steam, though associating that with my trial account was a little bit funky.

Finally I was playing Eve. The first few choices I made, as expected, were: Race, Bloodline, sex, and education. Those choices had minor effects on my status (so I have read) but major effects on the ascetics of my character, his starting ships, and starting location.

Those ascetics were customizable but due to a high latency in refreshing it became very hard to customize my profile exactly as I wanted. In the end I settled for what I had made and moved forward. I don't mean to underplay the importance of this step though, because post initially any changes I want to make cost real money. Having a face you might like better vs a $10 fee... I'll stick with it for now.

Before I knew it I was playing Eve. More accurately I was trying to figure out what the screen filled with buttons do while a tutorial attempted to point out the most immediately important controls.  The Eve interface is complex and I still am not using it effectively but when you break it down it's only a mire and not a bog. So far here is what I understand:

There is a group of menu buttons for the most common functions, this tends to launch in separate windows with a navigation depth of about 3. There are a couple of displays, live and stylized maps, and the game will never pause while inside them. Most actions are preformed through right click sub menus and almost everything will float in it's own window with group-able tabbing. It is not unusual for me to suddenly realize that my screen is so cluttered with layered windows that I can no longer see the stunning Eve graphics!

This may not be a good a game for people with troubled vision because it will utilize ever pixel of screen real-estate you can give it. Then again there does seem to be a well developed system of hotkeys I am studying to save me from these digital forests. A nicely made collection of these can be found here and the pdf here.

The tutorials are passable but not particularly engaging and only the first few had audio components. Eve tries to walk the thin line between too many options too quickly and too little control and the err on the quick route to complete freedom. I have a high aptitude for user interface, a gaming mindset, and a strong perseverance to make this work for me but I can easily see how this can overwhelm. But maybe that is self selecting, weeding the less dedicated out... If you are just getting started keep with it! Many guides, better then this one, can be found and the community has been very supportive in my experience, so long as you are looking for help and not just a vent for complaining.

Anyways I have wrote enough for today. I have better things to do and further content requires further research.