I’ve spent quite a bit of time in Azeroth recently. It’s utterly, utterly different from EVE, devoid of the hopelessness that can sometimes engulf you as a new player. There’s always someone there to guide you on your path, always someone randomly buffing you as they pass, always something obvious to do and see and be part of. WoW is the light at the end of EVE’s tunnel, a primary-coloured world where you don’t have to obsessively check your surroundings to see which neutral ship is about to open fire.
I can see why it’s so popular, and since I started playing people who have never discussed games with me before have opened up about their own travails in Blizzardland. The lighthearted, easy going world of Azeroth is, well, worlds away from the dark paranoia of existence in EVE, something that was brought crashing back to my attention when I re-subbed this month. Like a sledgehammer in the face.
Previously in EVE Online…
StateCorp had been one of a number of corporations operating under the umbrella of the Foundation Alliance, a not-actually-an-alliance-officially group of corps who where fighting against (then with) the Kieretsu for control of the Great Wildlands region, a hugely lucrative area of deep space. Unmined, uncharted and very, very unprotected.
The Foundation lost. The group broke up, and many member corps moved north (figuratively speaking) to join the newly formed Forsaken Empire, who had laid claim to a number of systems in the Tribute region. StateCorp joined this alliance along with some old friends and began fighting for a new cause. Again, they found themselves at war, though this was different. This was official.
You can have as many unnofficial wars in EVE as you like, just bear in mind the rules: non-Empire space is safe for fighting in; empire space is fine except at gates; and unless you like being Concordokkened (blatted by super-heavy police battleships), don’t fire upon another ship in Empire. In the war for GW, you could run up the pipe anytime, and as soon as you found a 0.5 security level at the top of your screen, you were perfectly safe. No-one could touch you in those regions.
This war is official. Nowhere is safe.
…and now, the story continues.
Coming in to dock in the Caldari Home Guard station in Sotrentaira, far from Oimmo and the outskirts of the war, my outlook is bleak. I had run from StateCorp, ran away from a war I couldn’t fight. Briefly, the sun faded behind one of the station’s arms, and things became dark…was I really going to leave the Corp? Leave it all behind, along with the horrors of the war? My fellow corp members had been through the same in-game struggles as I had, we’d most of us came to EVE from the same wee part of Internetworld, and the very name of the corp had personal resonance for me, going back to the start of my electronic existance as MPK.
Wind back time, to two weeks earlier. Finally, the internet had come back into my life, and finally I had re-subbed to EVE. “Watch out,” I was told, “this war is for real. Nowhere is safe.”
Well, words are words, and some words have no meaning without experience to back it up. The first day I lost a ship, and a clone, to the enemy, I was chased from a stargate directly back to StateCorp’s home station. Sure, I panicked, and as always my PvP inexperience got me killed as much as anything else, but I was followed home! Out there, in Oimmo, there’s more alliance members than enemy - far, far more - but these three had went on a raiding run and succeeded in killing M Piquet, and putting The Fear into Jamie McEwan.
The Fear: that soul-crushing paranoia that accompanies approaching any stargate you don’t have bookmarks for. Does that flash signal an enemy coming into the system? Or are they already warping in from another point in space? Am I going to die again?
In WoW, I’ve discovered that death merely changes the colour-scheme. Nothing is lost, apart from time. In EVE…well, in EVE time is the most valuable of currencies. It takes time to build the finances to fund a war. Buying, fitting, insuring a Ferox would cost me upwards of 32m ISK, for a measly 24m back. The law of diminishing returns runs up and kicks you in the face like Tony Jaa.
Even worse is the training time. You buy your skill, you set it to train. Rank 1 skills take 15 minutes to level 1, then an hour, then six hours, then a day, then nine days to master, depending on attributes. However, each incremental rank has a multiplier, so training for the a Rank 2 skill will take twice as long etc. etc.
In WoW, time is a worthless currency. In EVE, it is more important than ISK, than skills, than ships. It is this, The Fear of losing everything I’ve built over time - my skills, my ships, my meagre fortune - that has driven me away from the warzone and onto safer climes. In WoW, the greater world doesn’t notice your actions. There are no consequences that aren’t personal. EVE is so much different, because it’s not static. It is an evolving universe, growing through the developers dreams and the players desires. The ISS Outpost couldn’t exist in any other “traditional” MMO; the Horde can’t destroy Goldshire and lay siege to Stormwind, but HPA sure is a hot spot for [5] gank squads.
In three and a half hours time, the Assault Ships skill will reach level 2. I’ll be asleep, and until I wake up, I can’t set my character training anything else. That’s valuable training time lost forever. While Piquet the Paladin waits in WoW limbo, doing nothing, gaining nothing, M Piquet the Pod Pilot stagnates, learning nothing…