Gameplay

Players start the game by either selecting a previously-created character or by creating a new one. Each Eve Online account allows for up to three characters to be made.[21] When players create a new character they start by choosing one of the four playable races of Amarr, Gallente, Minmatar and Caldari. Each race is further divided into three bloodlines that give characters different pre-defined appearances, which can be finely tuned by the player.

Unlike many other MMOs, where there are numerous copies of the game universe (called "shards" or "realms")[22] intended to run at once, Eve Online is functionally a single-universe game. There are technically three copies of the universe running (the main server "Tranquility", the Chinese-based "Serenity", and the test server "Singularity" which is subject to periodic wipes when new content is being tested[23]) but rather than starting a new "realm" when in-game population increases, CCP simply adds new features to the existing game environment, sometimes going so far as to close an entire system when necessary.
Universe

The playing environment in Eve Online consists of more than 5000 interconnected star systems,[1] as well as 2500 randomly accessible wormhole systems, taking place in 23341 AD.[2] Systems are classified by their Security Status, on a decimal scale from 0.0 to 1.0. These systems are roughly categorized into three groups, each determining the response from CONCORD (Consolidated Co-operation and Relations Command) NPC law enforcement units.[24] Star systems classed as 0.5–1.0 security are considered "high sec" and any unauthorized/unprovoked attack by a player, on another player, anywhere in the system will result in the appearance of law enforcement. These units will attack and destroy the aggressor, and are designed to reinforce in such numbers that they will always eventually win. Systems classified as 0.1–0.4 are considered "low sec", and unprovoked attacks will result in a criminal countdown of 15 minutes, during which gate and station guns will fire at them, and other players may attack them without penalty. 0.0 systems are called "zero space" or "null sec", and feature no law enforcement. Star systems contain different types of celestial objects, making them more or less suitable for different kinds of operations. Typically, players find asteroid fields, planets, stations and moons in a system. Many of the game's most profitable income sources are found in dangerous nullsec or lowsec systems, giving players incentive to engage in high-risk, high-reward activities in which they must survive the possible harassment of other players who may also enter the system.
Advancement

Unlike other massively multiplayer online games, player characters in Eve Online advance continuously over time by training skills, a passive process that occurs in real world time so that the learning process continues even if the player is not logged in.[25] Skills vary in their Rank, an indicator of how many skill points players have to acquire in order to train the skill. For example, a Rank 2 skill takes at least twice as long to train as a Rank 1 skill. Skills can take anywhere from a few minutes to several months to train. Though each account can have up to three characters created, only one of these can train at a time. Each skill that a character trains in Eve Online has a skill training multiplier. The base is ×1, and it increases by how advanced the skill is. For example, the Frigate skill (which allows players to pilot the smallest class of ship in the game) has a smaller multiplier than the Cruiser skill, a more advanced skillbook. A player's base multiplier (×1) can differ as the game's five base attributes can modify it. The base is different for every category of skills, as each category has specific modified attributes.
Economy

The in-game economy in Eve Online is an open economy that is largely player-driven. Non-player character (NPC) merchants sell skill books used by players to learn new skills and blueprints to manufacture ships and modules. The players themselves gather the necessary raw materials to manufacture almost all of the ships and ship modules in the game. NPC ships can be looted or salvaged for items and materials, Non-player created ships and equipment may be purchased from various NPC factions as a player gains status with them, and can be resold in the in-game economy. The in-game currency is called ISK, an abbreviation for Interstellar Kredits. In-game ISK should not be confused with the identically abbreviated real life Icelandic currency ISK (Icelandic króna).

The amount of money or materials in the universe is not fixed and, as such, the economy operates under supply and demand. Market manipulation is possible on a large scale, particular examples being ramping and bear raids. CCP does not issue refunds on in-game purchases. This causes scamming to become an ever present risk. The economy is balanced by automatically introducing extra materials in underpopulated areas. This encourages an even spread of players.[26]

The game provides support for the trading of in-game resources, including graphs of item price history, with Donchian Channel and daily average price. Some players operate primarily as traders, buying, selling and transporting goods to earn profits. Others operate primarily as producers, purchasing compoments or raw materials and transforming them, sometimes on massive scales, into useful items such as weapons, ships, ammunition, or various technologies wanted by players. Others still operate as miners or salvagers, collecting and sometimes processing the raw materials used in manufacturing to sell on to others in bulk. Finally, some players operate as mercenaries or pirates, earning money or being paid primarily to be battle-ready and to either attack or defend from attack profitable enterprises such as mining, salvaging or transportation of goods.

Unlike some games such as Second Life, in-game currency is not freely interconvertible with real world currency. Players may only pay real world currency to CCP for in-game items (specifically the Player's License Extension, a token for renewing one's game subscription that can be traded in-game for virtual currency). The reverse, turning in-game currency or items into real-world money, is prohibited.[27] A reason for this, related by a CCP representative at Fanfest 2010, is that free interchange of currency causes in-game banking to fall under the same regulatory domain as real-world banking. CCP would rather not place this restriction on in-game behavior, due both to the difficulty of regulatory enforcement, and the desire to allow players to create illegitimate in-game banks or Ponzi schemes if they wish to do so.
Griefing

Due to the game's focus on freedom, consequence, and autonomy, many behaviours that are considered griefing in most MMO's are allowed in Eve, such as stealing from other players, extorting, and causing other players to be killed by large groups of NPCs.

Only malicious, prolonged and concentrated harassment where no material gain is involved and a few other actions are considered to be illicit griefing by the game's developer

Ships

Ships in Eve Online are organized into classes, varying from tiny frigates to gigantic capital ships. Ships fill different roles and vary in characteristics such as size, speed, hull strength and their potential firepower. Roles and characteristics aside, the concept of ships in Eve Online is different from other massively multiplayer online games in that ships represent players in-game, whereas in most massively multiplayer online games the player is represented by an avatar. While Eve Online introduces the players to the idea of an avatar, a player's avatar remains a two-dimensional portrait. Players move in-game within their ships and as such are represented by the ship type they choose. CCP is currently developing a feature that will allow players to move freely outside of their ships in space stations, represented by three-dimensional avatars. See the Planned future developments section.

Each of the four races has their own unique ship design preferences and varied strengths and weaknesses, although all races have ships that are meant for the same basic roles and are balanced for play against each other. This means that there is no "best ship" in Eve Online. According to their preferred style of play, the player might want to fly a ship with a huge cargo hold, one that is suited for mining, one that has a powerful array of weapons or a ship that moves quickly through space (among other capabilities); but the fluid, ever-changing nature of Eve Online means that no ship will be perfect at all of these tasks, nor is there any guarantee that the "best ship for a job" today will continue to be the best tomorrow.

Furthermore, unlike many online games, Eve does not feature racial bonuses, that is, players of different races do not gain advantages for flying ships designed by their own race. So, for instance, Gallentean pilots are just as capable of flying Amarrian starships as Amarrian pilots and vice versa, so long as they both train to fly the ship in question. Thus, players are encouraged to fly starships which meet their preferred style of play, and the game does not incentivize playing as one race over another in order to fly ships designed by that race.

In general, ships in Eve Online come in four size classes: Small starships include frigates (small, mobile gunboats) and destroyers (dedicated turret platforms and frigate-killers). Medium starships include cruisers (reliable multipurpose vehicles) and battlecruisers (heavier, more combat-oriented cruisers). Battleships (heavily armed and armoured dedicated combat-systems vehicles) make up the large size class. Extra large (or capital-class) starships include carriers (extremely large mobile bases and fleet command points), dreadnoughts (very large dedicated siege vehicles for attacking immobile starbases), supercarriers (larger versions of carriers focussed more on damage to capital class ships) and titans (supermassive all-purpose mobile battle stations).

Each spaceship within the Eve Online universe has a different set of characteristics and can be fitted with different combinations of modules subject to their fitting requirements. Ships have a wide variety of characteristics, including (but not limited to) power grid, CPU (ship's computer), capacitor size and recharge rate (functionally, a battery for activating high powered systems), energy shields, armor, maximum velocity and inertial modifier, agility, locking range and maximum number of lockable targets. Ship's systems also receive bonuses to performance depending on the level of various appropriate skills that have been trained by the ship's pilot. These bonuses usually correspond closely to the particular role that the ship has been designed for, and thus vary as widely as the roles of the ships.

One of the most important characteristics of a ship is the slots it has available for fitting modules. Each ship has a number of slots available, ranging from a handful to twenty or more. Slots and modules come in three variants: high, mid, and low power slots, with high power modules fitting in a corresponding high power slot and so on. Examples of high slot modules include weapons such as turrets and missile launchers, as well as cloaking devices, tractor beams, and other tools for mining and salvaging. Mid slot items include modules to improve shields or propulsion, repair hull damage, engage in electronic warfare, "tackle" other ships to slow or stop movement, and the like. Low slot items include armor enhancements and repair, increased cargo space, improved speed, agility, computers, or power supply, and similar utilitarian functions. Different-sized ships have different numbers of module slots, with the larger ships generally having more slots than the smaller ones.

A ship may also have one or more Rig slots which are designed to hold rigs, modules that require no power grid or CPU, instead requiring a ship resource called calibration. Installing a rig is a semi-permanent action, as unlike other ship modules a rig cannot be removed from the ship without being destroyed. Rigs come in three sizes, small, medium, and large which roughly correspond to the size of the ship, and are used to affect other aspects of the ship such as maximum speed or cargo capacity, or to augment the capabilities of other modules installed in the ship.

All ships in the game, as with other forms of equipment and technology in use, are also classed according to Tech level, from Tech I to Tech III. Tech I (or T1) ships are general purpose, relatively easily manufacturable models which perform a simple, straightforward function in a more-or-less obvious way. Tech II (T2) ships are based on T1 designs that have been modified or reinvented and which perform unique, specific roles using specialised technology which they are capable of fitting. T2 ships are considerably harder to manufacture and are only produced by certain corporations, and as such are priced well-above their basic T1 variants.

The Apocrypha patch introduced into Eve Online a new type of ship: the Tech III (T3) strategic cruiser. These highly advanced starships gain their unique qualities by being manufactured from material recovered from beyond wormholes, another new feature introduced by Apocrypha. Strategic cruisers are quite rare and expensive, and require unique skillsets on the part of manufacturers which allow the reverse engineering and integration of highly advanced technologies recovered from dead or dormant ancient civilizations. They differ from other ships in that the actual hull is modular. Players customize a hull to the specifications they want, and then add the modules separately as they would to any other ship. Only the strategic cruiser hulls can be modified in this way; other ships' hulls are set. Strategic Cruiser hulls are not by default equipped with low, medium and high slots but possess five subsystem slots which can be populated with subsystem modules that affect ship characteristics more dramatically than normal modules or rigs, such as altering the number of standard module slots that are available

Players and communities

Players have several options when playing Eve Online in regards to how they interact with the community. Every activity is possible for solo players but larger and more complicated tasks become more feasible for groups, for example pirate clans or corporations.
Corporations and alliances

Players can organize themselves into corporations (similar to guilds or clans in other MMOs). Corporations are run by one chief executive officer (CEO) who controls the corporation's assets. The CEO assigns roles to corporation members such as director, accountant and personnel manager. Corporations may also band together to form alliances. Corporations and alliances come in different shapes and sizes. Some player groups write press releases about new business openings and send out IPO information to potential in-game venture capital investors. Alliances can control enough star systems that their territory can be plotted on the Eve Online game map.[28] Alliances based in lawless space often form unofficial political power blocs with other alliances. These power blocs are typically referred to as "coalitions".

Corporations take up numerous business models such as mining, manufacturing or "ratting" (hunting NPC pirates for their bounties and loot). Corporations can levy income taxes on their members, which skim off a percentage of every member's earnings. Many corporations offer a variety of benefits to their members, such as free or discounted ships, equipment, formal training, and organized corporate group operations.

Among the many activities that corporations can organize is piracy. Actions considered piracy generally involve breaking the in-game law, and can come in a variety of forms. Pirates may camp stargates waiting for other players to arrive, attack players operating in asteroid belts or hunt for players carrying out an NPC agent-assigned mission. Because these activities are considered to be "illegal" within the game mechanics, pirate players often will have low security status and may even be branded as outlaws by CONCORD. Likewise, victims of overt piracy may retaliate without intervention from CONCORD, often via an expressed right to destroy the pirate ship (i.e. "kill right"). Although these activities are "illegal" they are not against the rules of the game, i.e. there will only be in-game retaliation and punishment for them.

Illegally attacking another player in secure space will result in a loss of security standing; CONCORD, the interstellar NPC police, will arrive shortly to destroy the aggressor's ship. There are, however, legal ways to attack other players in high-security space.

Whole corporations and whole alliances can officially declare war on (or "war-dec") other corporations or alliances for a weekly fee, permitting all members of the involved corporations or alliances to attack each other without loss of security status or the intervention of CONCORD.[29] The weekly fee can be eliminated if the war declaration is reciprocated. War declarations will clearly flag a player's enemies, so the player can determine who can legally attack and be attacked.
Demographics

As of October 2006, the average age of an Eve Online player was 27, of which 95% were male and 5% were female. The average weekly playtime is 17 hours, or just under 2.5 hours per day on average.[26]

On January 23, 2011, Eve Online claimed a new record for the maximum number of simultaneous pilots online with 63,170 concurrent accounts logged on to the same server. This record followed closely after the release of the fourteenth major expansion, Incursion which included a new character creation system based on CCP's Carbon Characters technology. Eve Online typically experiences the highest amount of users on Sundays and the peak player records have almost exclusively been broken on Sundays.[30]

As of May 6, 2009, Eve Online claimed to have more than 300,000 active subscriptions and 45,000 active trial accounts.[31][32][33][34][35]

Beginning in March 2006, CCP and its partner Optic Communications started working to bring Eve Online to the Chinese gaming audience. Closed alpha testing was held on a small cluster for some time, with about 3,000 players chosen from an initial pool of 50,000.[36] The Chinese open beta test began on June 13, 2006, and proved to be very popular, gaining numbers comparable to Eve Online's main server cluster.[37]

The code base between Serenity (serving China) and Tranquility (serving the rest of the world) is synchronised, so that software development is distributed to both server clusters, although the game worlds are not connected. Eve Online fully supports Unicode and has a back-end system to enable localization of each and every aspect of the game's content and U

Player tournaments

During two weekends in July 2006, a live streaming video production called Eve TV[39][40] covered the events of the 2nd Caldari Alliance Tournament. The tournament pitted three-man teams from the top alliances against each other. Eve TV provided live in-game footage of the battles along with expert commentary. Analysis of the teams and strategies, interviews with CCP staff and behind-the-scenes specials were also aired between battles. Eve TV was produced and hosted primarily by DJs[39] from Eve-Radio (a player-run streaming radio station) with resources provided by CCP. A total of 95 matches were scheduled, with the Band of Brothers[41] alliance emerging the winner on the final day.[42]

The first two weekends in December 2006 saw the 3rd Alliance tournament. This was once again broadcast via live streaming video by Eve TV[40] The tournament saw 40 Alliances[43] pitting five-man teams against each other. Once again, the Band of Brothers[41] alliance emerged as the winner. Of particular note in this tournament, was the fielding of an Imperial Apocalypse by the Interstellar Alcohol Conglomerate. The ship was destroyed in the semi-finals of the tournament by the COW (Cult of War) team. A last minute attempt to arrange an 8 billion ISK ransom for the ship fell through.

The fourth Alliance tournament in September 2007 brought several exciting upsets, with Star Fraction defeating Band of Brothers in the second round, using only tech 1 cruisers, and a relative unknown, Hun Reloaded, sweeping both the semifinals and finals to win.[44]

The two weekends starting February 29, 2008 and March 7, 2008 saw the fifth Alliance Tournament.[45] Eve TV provided coverage via live streaming video.[46] During the six days a total of 40 teams competed in 95 matches. The last tournament's winner, HUN Reloaded, made its way into the quarter-finals where it lost to Ev0ke alliance who later became tournament champion after having won all of its eight matches.[45]

The sixth Alliance Tournament was held during three consecutive weekends starting January 24, 2009 and ending on February 8, 2009. A total of 64 teams took part in the qualifying rounds on opening weekend. While the final weekend was broadcast live via Eve TV, the qualifying rounds were broadcast through various Eve Online radio channels. A number of changes were made to the tournament rules compared to previous tournaments.[47] This was also the first tournament in which the newly formed Factional Militias were able to take part alongside traditional alliance teams.[48] In the final match R.U.R. went up against Pandemic Legion with Pandemic Legion emerging as the tournament winner.[49]

Alliance Tournament 7 took place in September 2009, with Pandemic Legion winning a second successive tournament, beating Circle of Two in the final.

Alliance Tournament 8 took place in June 2010, once again Pandemic Legion winning for the third time, beating HYDRA RELOADED

Development

According to the developers Eve Online evolved from the classic computer game Elite, which itself was based on concepts from the science-fiction role-playing game Traveller. Eve combined concepts from Elite with the multi player chat and player versus player aspects of Ultima Online.[52] Elite had four single player aspects of missions,[53] mining, trade routes and combat with random hostile NPC's[54] all of which are aspects of the first incarnations of Eve Online.[55]

One of the original developers of Elite, David Braben, believes Eve Online is a reimplementation of the 1980s game, not its true successor.[56] Some of the developers (John Cameron, James Cassidy, Joe Chaney) also believe that this game creates a world where players can become someone else only possible in their imaginations.

Both the server and the client software for Eve Online are developed in Stackless Python, a variant of the Python programming language. Stackless Python allows a relatively large number of players to perform tasks without the overhead of using the call stack used in the standard Python distribution. This frees the game developers from performing some routine work and allows them to apply changes to the game universe without resetting the server.[57]
Compatibility

On March 14, 2006, the Eve Online development team announced that they would be upgrading the graphics engine of Eve Online to a DirectX 10 / Windows Vista graphics platform.[58] Revelations patch 1.4 had patch notes quoted as saying that the current Eve Online client should work in Vista "as well as it does in XP."[59]

On September 10, 2007 CCP Games announced that the new 'Trinity 2' graphics engine will be using DirectX 9.0.[60] This was released on December 5, 2007.[61]

Official support for Linux and Mac platforms, using Transgaming Technologies Cedega and Cider for Linux and Mac compatibility respectively, was introduced with the Revelations 2.3 patch released on November 6, 2007.[62][63] At Fanfest 2008 Transgaming announced and demonstrated that the Premium graphics client is now running on Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard and will be released after further testing. In February 2009 CCP announced that the official Linux client will be discontinued with the next major patch,[64] and advised on using third-party programs to run the Windows version of the client under Linux.[65][66]
Third-party applications and the Eve API Project

Third-party applications supplement players' Eve Online experience. Some of these, such as automated applications designed to claim publicly-available contracts accidentally put up without an associated cost, will result in a ban if discovered, while others are endorsed, tacitly or explicitly, by CCP. EVEMon, a .NET application that monitors and forecasts skill training times, is one example of an explicitly authorized external application.[67][68] Another such application, Eve Fitting Tool or EFT, allows players to try different ship setups and see how certain skills and modules will affect that ship.[69]

Third-party applications to monitor character information and skill training exist for both the Android and iPhone mobile platforms.[70][71]

In May 2005, CCP announced the Eve API Project; third-party utilities such as EVEMon now interface with character data, market, and other data through an

Major content patches

Since the initial release of Eve Online CCP has added fourteen expansions to the game. The fourteenth expansion, Incursion was released in stages, the second of which (Incursion 1.1.0 - 18 January 2011) introduced the Sansha Incursions and a complete overhaul of the character creation tool, paving the way for the future release of the Incarna or Walking in Stations expansion. The thirteenth expansion, "Tyrannis", was released on May 26, 2010. The twelfth expansion, Dominion, was released on December 1, 2009. The previous expansion, Apocrypha, was released on March 10, 2009 and introduced features such as further graphics updates as started in the Trinity expansion; the ability for players to group their vessels' weapons for easier interaction;[73] changes to autopilot routes and avoidance of player-defined star systems.[74] CCP provides expansions free of charge to its subscribers.[75] Over time expansions have added features such as conquerable stations, ship classes like Freighter and Dreadnought capital ships and advanced missions for players to master. Apocrypha, included an overhauled probing system, wormholes and customizable Tech 3 ships as its major features.[76] Dominion, which became available for download on December 1, 2009, included an overhaul of the sovereignty system, planet graphics, the Titan Doomsday weapon functionality being changed and the in-game web browser with Chromium's web kit. It also included a redesign of the UI and in-game mailing system. The recently released expansion Tyrannis has added more features which so far include exploitation of planetary resources, a way to contact your friends from any computer so long as it has internet access, as well as new technology for ships, and more graphics upgrades.

Planned future developments

CCP has been working on a game feature that will allow players to exit pods and interact with other player avatars in the communal setting of the interior of a station.[77] CCP has not yet formally speculated on a release date for this feature. In March 2007 tentonhammer.com released in-development game footage of this feature, videotaped at Game Developers Conference 2007 with the approval of CCP's chief marketing officer Magnus Bergsson.[78] At the 2008 Fanfest players were able to play a restricted version of the Walking in Stations functionality, including walking through the Captain's cabin to the promenade and then into a Minmatar bar. Other shops will also be available, with 16 slots available for players or corps to rent in each station. Bars will also have skill-based gaming tables with strategy games. The personal avatar project for the game Eve 'Walking in Stations' (WiS), formerly 'Ambulation' has now been renamed as 'Incarna' (Incarnation being a synonym for Avatar) CCP has yet to publicly ratify a release date for this project.

The ability to enter a planet's atmosphere (planetary flight) and to interact with the surface is also mentioned as one of the future development plans. At Eve Fanfest 2005, a working prototype was demonstrated in which a Caldari Crow-class interceptor could be seen flying around over a planet surface. However CCP stated that full-scale integration of such features to the game requires an enormous effort and is only planned for post-Revelations production phases.[79] Subsequently it has been stated that until a proven in-game reason is found for planetary access further work on this will not have a high priority.