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Eve Online is a player-driven persistent-world massively multiplayer online game set in a science fiction space setting. Players pilot a wide array of customizable ships through a universe comprising over five thousand solar systems. Most solar systems are connected to one or more other solar systems by means of jump gates. The solar systems can contain several entities including but not limited to: moons, planets, stations, asteroid belts and complexes.

Players of Eve Online are able to participate in any number of in-game professions and activities, including mining, manufacturing, trade and combat (both player versus environment and player versus player). The range of activities available to the player is facilitated by a character advancement system based upon training skills in real time, even while not logged in to the game.

It is developed and maintained by the Icelandic company CCP Games. First released in North America and Europe in May 2003, it was published from May to December 2003 by Simon & Schuster Interactive, after which CCP purchased the rights back and began to self-publish via a digital distribution scheme. On January 22, 2008 it was announced that Eve will be distributed via Steam. The current version of Eve Online is dubbed Trinity.

Background

The fictional background story of Eve Online explains that long ago, humankind, having used up most of Earth's resources, began colonizing the rest of the Milky Way. Eventually, humans expanded to most of the galaxy. Resources became contested and war broke out. One day, a natural wormhole was discovered, providing a link to another galaxy. Because the wormhole was known to be unstable, construction began on the Eve Gate, an artificial wormhole generator that would link the galaxies after the natural one closed. Dozens of colonies were seeded in the unexplored galaxy - dubbed 'New Eden' - at the other end of the wormhole. Unfortunately, when the natural wormhole eventually collapsed, it destroyed both itself and the Eve Gate. Cut off from Earth and its much-needed supplies, New Eden's colonists starved in the millions. Only five known colonies managed to return to prominence, eventually rebuilding society together. These colonies make up the five major empires in Eve: the Amarr Empire, the Gallente Federation, the Minmatar Republic, the Caldari State and the Jove Empire. Players may choose from four of these races (Amarr, Gallente, Caldari, Minmatar) when creating a new character. The fifth race (Jove) is currently not playable, though CCP have said they intend to use the race within the Eve storyline.

Races

Gameplay

Eve Online runs on a large supercomputing cluster known as "Tranquility", claimed to be the most powerful supercomputer in the gaming industry. Several smaller clusters are used for public and in-house testing including the public test servers "Singularity" and "Multiplicity". The servers require a daily downtime for maintenance and updates. Tranquility's downtime (DT) is scheduled between 11:00 and 12:00 GMT.

Universe

The playing environment in Eve Online consists of over five thousand star systems, almost all of which can be visited by the player. Each solar system is connected to other systems by one or more stargates, and in this way neighboring systems are organized into constellations and constellations are in turn organized into regions. In total there are 64 regions. The central regions make up most of the so-called high-security space with some low-security systems in between. Surrounding these are regions with no security, or 0.0 (zero-zero). (See section Security index system for more information). In some solar systems a player might be alone. In others more than 600 players might gather, e.g. for a fleet battle or to use a trading hub. Different systems contain different types of celestial objects, making them more or less suitable for different kinds of operations. In a typical solar system the player will find asteroid fields, stations, and moons, the latter two most often orbiting planets. Planets themselves are currently not explorable; however, players can use moons to anchor their parent corporation's structures for production and research or for moon mining. Asteroid fields can be mined for minerals. Other objects that can be found in systems are the aforementioned stargates, complexes or static dungeons for exploration. Occasionally a player may even stumble across a historic site, e.g. one where another player's Titan-class ship was destroyed and the wreck now floats in space.

In addition, an area of the galaxy is occupied by the Jovian Empire, and is currently not accessible by players.

Advancement

Eve Online is different from MMOGs such as World of Warcraft, Guild Wars and EverQuest II because the player characters do not gain experience points through actions or by completing tasks. Instead, the player learns skills by training a specific skill over time, a passive process that occurs in real world time so that the learning process will continue even if the player is not logged in. As a result, new players are generally unable to gain more skillpoints than existing players who continue to train but this is reduced somewhat by a diminishing returns policy for training higher skill levels. Each skill has 5 steps, or levels and the time required to train a skill to a particular level is determined by the player's attributes and how many skill points a certain skill requires, determined by a skills rank. The skill training system is connected with five attributes: Intelligence, Perception, Charisma, Willpower and Memory. Each skill has a primary and secondary attribute, thus the higher these attributes, the faster skills that use them are trained. There are also skills and implants that can increase attributes.

Training time

Training within the game occurs in real time whether the user is logged in or not. The time it takes to train a skill varies depending upon an attribute known as its "rank". Low-rank skills trained to a low level may represent a few minutes of training whereas high levels of high-rank skills may represent several months of training.

Since training time is directly related to a character's attributes, a player can lower the training time of skills by training "Learning" skills, as well as by using Implants to boost attributes.

Due to the sheer number of skills available to characters, it is not realistic for a character to acquire perfect skills with all ships and weapons systems. As each skill level takes over five times longer than the previous (a geometric progression) while the bonus it provides almost always scales linearly, a new player has the option to either acquire acceptable skills in many fields, or perfect skills in a relative few.

Economy

There is a single currency unit in Eve Online, the Inter Stellar Kredit (ISK), which takes its name from the Icelandic króna, whose ISO code is ISK. Players can barter between themselves for items, use the in-game market system for ISK-based transactions, place and accept contracts between players for assets and services or use a Loyalty Points store.

The Loyalty Points systems allows one to use non-transferable Loyalty Points in combination with other assets to purchase standard items at a reduced rate or to acquire otherwise unattainable items.

A large proportion of the in-game economy is player driven; Non-player character merchants supply some basic blueprints, items and trade goods. Players, through the use of blueprints and in-game skills, can gain the ability to build items ranging from basic ammunition to cutting-edge capital ship hulls, and manufacture them for personal use or for sale. Pricing and availability of goods varies from region to region within the Eve universe. These aspects contribute to an economic environment influenced by factors like scarcity of resources, specialization of labor and supply/demand dynamics. The economy is closely tied with the (also player driven) political aspect of the game. Player corporations (the Eve equivalent of guilds) rise and fall as they struggle for market dominance as well as territorial control.

From a technical point of view, the economy in Eve is known as an open economy, that is there is no fixed amount of money or materials in the universe. CCP did attempt to implement a closed economy (that is an economy where there is a fixed amount of currency and therefore materials) early on in the game's existence; however, it proved too difficult to balance the effects of new players entering the game with the capabilities of older players able to earn more ISK or obtain more materials. The current Open economy is automatically balanced by introducing extra materials in underpopulated areas to encourage an even spread of players.

Eve's End User Licence Agreement forbids the exchange of ISK for real currency; however there is a secure in-game system for trading "Game Time Codes" (GTC) in exchange for in game currency. In a similar way selling and buying characters for in game currency is allowed.

On 27 June 2007 CCP announced that an economist had been employed to assist in the development of the economic side of the game. Dr. Guðmundsson has stated that he will be responsible for compiling quarterly economic reports for the community and providing ongoing analysis of the economic facets of Eve, along with coordinating research with other interested parties.

Combat

Combat in Eve is a mixture of both tactical intelligence and spontaneous decision-making using a point-and-click interface. While every race has certain tendencies for different battle tactics, a character's combat capabilities are determined by skill levels, the ship being piloted and various hardware modules fitted into it. Outside of decisions involving targeting and selection of weaponry, combat is almost entirely hands-off. Every aspect of combat like maintaining a certain range to targets and firing weaponry is usually controlled by the computer. The player can choose to fly the ship directly rather than use the computer controls. However, distances between ships tend to range in kilometers thus reacting to a target's speed, direction and maneuvers manually is difficult.

Eve's combat system allows ships of all sizes to be useful in combat. Large ships such as battleships are typically outfitted with heavy weapons allowing them to battle other ships of their size. Such weapons however do not have the accuracy to effectively damage smaller, faster ships like frigates. While a large ship can equip smaller weapons designed for attacking smaller targets, this leaves them at a disadvantage versus other large ships. Drones can also be used against smaller ships, or in a support role such as providing extra shield for a gang mate or in a utility role such as electronic warfare. Small ships such as frigates may be unable to do significant damage to larger ships on their own, but can greatly affect the outcome of small group battles by employing tactics such as disrupting the engines of enemies (reducing mobility or chance to escape) and jamming enemy sensors or by attacking a larger ship as a pack.

The open player versus player combat system, and the tendency for ships to drop some of their cargo and equipment when destroyed, provides incentive for player piracy. Pirates risk being branded criminals by CONCORD and thus becoming open targets to all other players, as well as being unable to access high security systems. Players may even place a bounty on another player's head, providing work for bounty hunters.

At the strategic level, the rich resources available in low security space reward large co-operative groups. Usually formed when several player-owned-and-operated corporations (similar to guilds, in other MMORPGs) band together, these "alliances" can vary widely in size and strength. The network of jumpgates, which allows travel between star systems, includes a multitude of choke points, which careful alliances can garrison to restrict access to claimed 0.0 systems. Moreover, corporations and alliances have the ability to manufacture Player-Operated Starbases (POS) that mine resources from moons in a system. Each POS requires substantial logistical support to remain in operation, but once an alliance mounts and maintains such facilities at the majority of moons in a system, it achieves the status of sovereignty and remains so until an enemy destroys enough POSs and replaces them with its own.

Agents

Agents in Eve are NPC characters from which the player receives a variety of assignments, depending on the type of NPC (Internal Security gives more pirate hunting missions, and Personnel Agents give more "delivery" and trade route missions) which pay in ISK and various material goods. Agents also give various personal "gifts" for completing missions within certain bonus criteria, and award Loyalty Points from the Agent, which can be redeemed for other goods. Completing Agent missions also raises the players standing in the corporation or group the Agent represents, while lowering their standing among the Agents competitors. Raising standing in a corporation allows the player to access more valuable, and dangerous, missions through higher level Agents (Level 1-5, with 5 being the most difficult, and nearly impossible to be completed by a solo player if the mission requires combat).

Agents are also available for manufacturing and research, though these services require payment, rather the reward the player for completing such tasks.

Security index system

Eve features an open PvP system where combat between players can occur anywhere within the Eve Universe. To balance this "free aggression", Eve has implemented a "security index system". Every solar system in the Eve universe has a public security status which ranges from 0.0 to 1.0. The lowest end of the scale is lawless space, and rules are set and enforced by player-run alliances. The highest end of the scale provides protection to players in the form of sentry guns and CONCORD, the NPC 'police'.

Players committing illegal actions within "empire" systems (security status between 0.1 and 1.0) lose personal security standings with CONCORD. Loss of Security status varies depending on the crime. Showing aggression will only result in a minor loss of standings, while the act of killing a ship that has not defended itself will result in a further drop in standings, and the largest loss of standings occurs with the intentional destruction of a player's 'pod'. As players lose security status, their ability to enter certain levels of secured space becomes more and more limited.

While breaking the law in high-security systems (that is, those with a security of 0.5 to 1.0) means certain death (surviving a CONCORD attack is considered an exploit) for the offender, this does not guarantee the absolute safety of the victim: a well-planned suicide attack can still successfully destroy a ship before CONCORD and sentry guns can neutralize the aggressor.

In lawless space (0.0), CONCORD has no influence and the dynamics for player interactions change. Corporations band together into alliances in order to defend a region of space which they claim. These alliances often fight wars for contested systems and send gangs to raid each other. Although lawless space is dangerous and difficult to defend the rewards are much higher. Asteroids contain far more valuable ore and NPC pirates in lawless space carry far higher bounties.

Death

In the event that a player's ship is destroyed, a wreck is left behind. Any cargo hold contents, ship modules, drones and ammunition that were not destroyed in the explosion can be recovered by any player, and additional components of the structure of the ship can be retrieved by a player with the correct "salvaging" modules and skills. These components can be used to build ship enhancement modules known as 'rigs'. To (partially or fully) mitigate the loss of an expensive vessel, ships can be insured against destruction. Insurance payouts are based strictly on material build costs; the market value of the ship is not taken into account. Some ships have a market value that is dozens, if not hundreds of times as much as the ship's build cost - as a result, a player who loses such a ship may lose a large investment, with no possibility of indemnification. Modules, installed upgrades and cargo cannot be insured; these items may have a market value much higher than the ship itself.

When a ship is destroyed, the player is ejected in a pod. This pod may be destroyed as well, if another player chooses to open fire on it. This player death is known as "pod killing" or "podding". In this case, the "podded" player character will die and be revived as a clone at a pre-determined cloning facility. Non-player characters will not attack a pod. Any implants installed on a player will be irrevocably lost when he or she is pod-killed. Implants cannot be insured.

Players may purchase an upgraded clone which is used in the event of pod death. The cost of a clone depends on how many skill points it can hold - the more skill points, the more expensive the clone becomes. When the player dies and is revived in his or her clone, if this clone holds a number of skill points lower than the number the player had at the time of death, then the player will lose a varying amount of skill points. In some cases, this represents more than a month's worth of training time. Therefore, players who value their skill points purchase upgraded clones sufficient to hold all their skill points. This is known as "keeping your clone up-to-date". Clones are single-use items; when a character dies and is resurrected via a clone, they are also awarded the basic, 900,000-point "Alpha" clone. Therefore, it is imperative that players purchase as soon as possible after death a replacement clone of a level appropriate to their character's skill points.

Expanding the cloning system further, Jump Clones were added in Red Moon Rising, and enhanced in Revelations to allow advanced players to mitigate risking their cybernetic implants by using the Infomorph Psychology skill to jump into a cloned body in another station, without requiring their existing body to die to achieve this. The original body (complete with its cybernetic implants) remains stored in the original station and may be returned to via another clone jump (after a 24-hour waiting period). This method offers a way for developed characters to use expensive implants for skill training or economic pursuits, while still having the option to engage in dangerous combat operations without the risk of losing them or by creating jump clones with different groups of implants that control other aspects of the game such as shield support, enhanced damage capabilities or better targeting abilities.

In-game items

Implants, boosters and skill books

Implants and boosters are enhancements for a character. Implants are plug in modules that increase a character's attributes or provide combat, mining, or other bonuses. Once implanted, implants cannot be removed without destroying them. They are also destroyed when a character's pod is destroyed. Boosters are one time use, temporary "drugs" that provide combat, defensive, and navigation bonuses.

All players start with a small number of core skills depending on choices made during the character creation process and need to buy skill books in order to acquire new skills. Each skill has a different multiplier, or "rank", that determines how long each subsequent level takes to train. For example the basic skills with low ranks may take the player 10 minutes to train to the first level while high-ranking skills like Capital Ships take months to train to the highest level. Each skill may have pre-requisites - a requirement that other skills must be trained to a specific level before it can be trained.

Ships

Ships in the Eve universe are organized into classes, varying from frigates to titans thousands of times larger. Each of these ship classes has its own advantages and disadvantages. One should not assume that the bigger a ship is the better it is. For instance a frigate is small compared to a battleship, but players may outfit smaller ships with equipment that impairs the abilities of the battleship. This leaves the battleship vulnerable to attack from other ships. However, some of the weapons available to the battleship can potentially destroy the frigate with a few shots. Ships are also balanced with the so-called signature radius. The smaller an object is the harder it is to target or damage, especially with the larger cruiser and battleship-sized weaponry.

Ship equipment and ship modifications

Ship equipment fits in specially designated slots on each ship. There are three types of slots: high, medium, and low. The amount and type of equipment that can be fitted onto a particular ship is limited by the number of slots available as well as the ship's Power Grid and CPU output.

"High" slots typically fit weapons, Probe Launchers, Tractor Beams and Salvagers. Weapons in Eve are divided into four types: turrets, launchers, drones and smartbombs. Each type requires a different set of skills in order to use effectively, and has distinctive behaviors and uses. Each of the four playable races favors a different subcategory of these weapon types, e.g. Missile Launchers (Caldari, Minmatar and Amarr), Energy Turrets (Amarr), Hybrid Turrets (Gallente and Caldari), Projectile Turrets (Minmatar) and drones (Gallente). Additionally, certain modules have an effect on tactics used in combat including Warp Scramblers and Warp Disruptors (and their counterparts, Warp Core Stabilizers), Webifiers, Energy Vampires and Energy Destabilizers.

Every weapon has its advantages and disadvantages. Missiles are available that do different types of damage, and many launchers can use more than one type of missile. Slower missiles, such as torpedos, tend to do more damage to large targets. Drones follow the target, and shoot at it, causing different types of damage based on drone type. Smartbombs are area of effect weapons that deal damage to any target within a certain radius of the ship and are available in three sizes to reflect Powergrid and CPU use as well as net damage. Also, there are different types available that deal specific kinds of damage.

"Mid" and "low" slots typically fit support modules, including hull, armor, shield, electronics, engineering, and engine upgrades as well as electronic warfare modules. Electronic warfare is an important part of Eve; electronic countermeasures modules keep an opponent from "locking" onto a target or interfere with weapon systems, and can be countered using various electronic counter-countermeasures modules.

Ship modifications or 'rigs' are one-time use items designed to permanently increase one of a ship's attributes, usually at the cost of another. Like implants and boosters they cannot be removed without being destroyed.

Ammunition, charges and drones

Each of the 4 weapon subtypes (energy, missile, projectile, and hybrid) and each of the 4 weapon sizes (small, medium, large and capital) utilize a different group of ammunition. Each group of ammunition is further broken down into types, each of which has a different effect on weapon performance. Generally this involves improving one area of weapon performance while sacrificing another, for example increased damage with reduced range.

Charges also include Mining Laser Crystals (for improved yield of specific ore types), capacitor booster charges, (for a quick boost of energy), bombs, Repair Nanites and scripts (used to improve module performance in one area while sacrificing another).

Drones are unmanned modules that can be deployed and controlled by the player. Ships' drone bays are limited in size thus only a certain number of drones can be carried. Furthermore each drone requires "bandwidth" to be controlled. Since ships have a bandwidth limit in addition to their drone bay size limit a player can only actively use a part of the drones in his ship's drone bay. Drones can be deployed for example for mining, fighting, electronic warfare or ship maintenance.

Blueprints, manufacturing and research

The majority of in-game items are created by players through the use of blueprints. Original blueprints (BPOs) may be used an unlimited number of times, researched to improve manufacture time or cost, and copied. Blueprint copies (BPCs) have a limited number of runs and cannot be researched. "Tech I" blueprints can be purchased from NPCs. More advanced items (Tech II) can be invented from their Tech I counterpart BPCs. This results in a Tech II BPC that can be manufactured. Manufacturing and inventing from blueprints requires items including minerals mined and refined from asteroids and moons, construction components (themselves created from other blueprints), and items either dropped by or salvaged from NPCs.

Additional items

Starbase structures are needed to build Player-owned Stations (POS). Player-owned Stations consist of a number of modules and one control tower that's available in different sizes. As with ships and ship equipment the number of modules that can be attached to a control tower is limited by the modules' Power Grid and CPU requirements. Modules are availible for storage, moon mining, defense, weapons, laboratory operations, manufacturing and ship maintenance.

Trade Goods include various goods for different purposes. Some are used as mission objectives from NPC agents. Trade goods also include POS fuel and supplies, certain research, manufacturing, and copying components and political paraphernalia

Players and communities

Players have several options when playing Eve 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 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 game map. Alliances based in lawless space often group into political powerblocks, such as "The Greater BoB Community" and "Providence Holders", for the purpose of joint operations and logistics. Currently, the largest of these political blocks is "The Southern Coalition", consisting of alliances such as "Goonswarm" and "Red Alliance".

Corporations take up numerous business models such as mining, producing ships or "ratting" (raiding NPC pirate bases, as NPC pirates have bounties depending on their class of ship). Normally members contribute a portion of all business proceeds to a pool and receive help in the form of cash and equipment. This is by no means the only model though many operate in this fashion as it helps to build loyalty amongst corporation members.

Players also form corporations for the exclusive task of pirating other players - these corporations are normally referred to as pirate clans. They for example stake out jump points and jump gates waiting for other players to arrive, then destroy and loot their ships. Few groups "pod-kill" players in this way, except accidentally, as it's considered needless. Such pirate groups are hunted viciously, even by other pirate groups. Pirate clans almost never prey on beginning characters as operating after passing a certain bounty level means they're fired upon by CONCORD security ships (which guard areas where new players usually are found). See the Combat section for more information about bounties.

While attacking another player in secure space will result in a loss of security standing and the risk of the attacker losing his ship to CONCORD, there is a way to conduct warfare in high security space. A corporation or alliance can declare war on another corporation/alliance at the cost of a weekly fee, thus allowing for combat in all regions of space without the fear of standing loss or the intervention of CONCORD. However, if the target of a corporate war elects to make the war mutual, there are no fees involved for either party.

Demographics

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

On 9 December 2007, Eve Online achieved a new record for the maximum number of simultaneous pilots online with 41,690 concurrent accounts logged on to the same server.

As of 31 December 2007, Eve Online has 220,000 active subscriptions and 45,000 active trial accounts.

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. 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.

The code base between Serenity (China) and Tranquility (Iceland) is strictly in sync, so that software development is distributed to both server clusters, but 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 UI.

Player tournaments

During two weekends in July 2006, a live streaming video production called Eve TV covered the events of the 2nd Caldari Alliance Tournament. The tournament pitted five-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 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 alliance emerging the winner on the final day.

The first two weekends in December 2006 saw the 3rd Alliance tournament. This was once again broadcast via live streaming video by Eve TV The tournament saw 40 Alliances pitting five-man teams against each other. Once again, the Band of Brothers 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.

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.

The two weekends starting February 29, 2008 and March 7, 2008 saw the fifth Alliance Tournament. EveTV provided coverage via live streaming video. 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 were it lost to Ev0ke alliance who later became tournament champion after having won all of its eight matches.

Development

History

According to the developers Eve Online evolved from a classic computer game called Elite combined with the multi player chat and player versus player aspects of Ultima Online. Elite had four single player aspects of missions, mining, trade routes and combat with random hostile NPC's all which are aspects of the first incarnations of Eve Online. One of the original developers of Elite, David Braben, believes Eve Online is a reimplementation of the 1980s game, not its true successor.

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. Revelations patch 1.4 had patch notes quoted as saying that the current Eve client should work in Vista "as well as it does in XP."

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

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.

Third-party applications and the Eve API Project

A large number of third-party applications have arisen to supplement a player's 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, but many 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.

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 API.

Major content patches

From the release of Eve Online until today CCP has added eight expansions to the game. The ninth expansion, The Empyrean Age, is in development and scheduled for release in summer 2008. CCP provides expansions free of charge to its subscribers. 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.

Planned future developments

CCP have recently begun work on implementing 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. CCP have 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 GDC 2007 with the approval of CCP's CMO, Magnus Bergsson.

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. In Eve Fanfest 2005, a working prototype was demonstrated in which a Caldari "Crow" 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.

Public perception

Virtual crime

CCP's approach of managing the in-game economy has come under fire for allowing in-game "criminal" activity. Piracy (in the ship-to-ship sense) is part of the game, as is protection racketeering and theft.

One example is the corporate heist perpetrated by the in-game assassin's guild Guiding Hand Social Club (GHSC). GHSC infiltrated a target corporation over the course of nearly a year before performing a virtual assassination on the target's CEO and stealing or destroying billions of credits' worth of property which the CEO had entrusted them with.

Such dangers are an intricate part of Eve Online's virtual economy and thus are purposely not dealt with by the developers. Players are expected to make financial decisions based (among other factors) on the possibility of other players' financial malpractice, much like in real-life economics.

Developer misconduct

Since the release of Eve Online there has been proven developer as well as player-corporation misconduct, leading to debates and controversy within the Eve community. On February 9, 2007, a player known as Kugutsumen revealed that an Eve Online developer nicknamed 't20' had provided his in-game alliance, Band of Brothers, with ten valuable blueprints, giving them an advantage over competing corporations. Despite calls for t20's dismissal he is still an Eve Online developer while Kugutsumen was permanently banned from the Eve universe for violating the game's Terms of Service and End-user License Agreement.

In response to public concerns, CCP decided to set up an Internal Affairs division headed by Ari Eldon, better known in-game as Arkanon, whose responsibility is to monitor the activities of both privileged and player accounts operated by CCP staff in-game. The impartiality of this division remains disputed. Modeled on this division, CCP plans to nominate a Council of Stellar Management (CSM). According to a white paper published on November 11, 2007, the CSM will consist of nine player-elected representatives of the community. Members of the Council are to meet regularly with CCP staff in Iceland to relay the most pressing matters from the community and to take CCP's decisions back to the player base.

Cost

Eve currently costs €14,95 / $14.95 / £7.75 a month (however the first monthly payment is a one time fee of €19,95 / $19.95 / £14.90) (the European cost includes VAT). Like other MMOGs, the cost can be reduced by paying for larger subscription intervals. Players can pay via online payment services or by mail order. The mail order costs more than online payment, though the large subscription discount still applies.

It is also possible to pay for a subscription through the purchase of GTCs (Game Time Codes) through independent retailers for real money or in-game using ISK (in-game currency). The latter method allows relatively advanced players to play the game without paying real money - a player may buy a GTC for real money and then sell it to another player in-game for ISK. The system is officially and securely supported by CCP and is monitored through the Timecode Bazaar forum.

GTCs come in 30 day, 50 day, 90 day and 100 day increments, and are treated like normal subscriptions in every way. 30 and 90 day time codes are most often issued in electronic format for resale, 50 and 100 day codes are purchased directly from the Official Eve Online Store. Cards purchased through online resellers are usually delivered through email for immediate use, while codes issued through the Eve Online store are issued via postal mail. There are no distinguishing differences in functionality between digital and hard-copy codes, both provide a specified amount of game time, are entered into the same account section, and can be exchanged for ISK.

Buddy program and trial account

The Eve Online Buddy Program was created so that full-subscription players of Eve Online could distribute 14-day free trial accounts to their friends. If the buddy account is converted to a full account the referrer is rewarded with entrance into a monthly prize raffle. The 14-day trial account is free and allows the trial player to access most of the Eve Online game, with exceptions. Trial accounts cannot train skills for some advanced ship types, for example industrial ships, they cannot create contracts and cannot directly transfer ISK to other players. Once the 14 day period ends, the trial account is locked and must be converted to a full account before the character can be accessed again. Skills that the character was training at the end of the trial period continue to train even though the account is locked. Apart from the buddy program there is another way to receive a trial account for Eve Online. All players can sign up to create a free trial account from the Eve Online Website's Trial Section.

Eve Online Trial Accounts can be upgraded to full paid accounts in two simple ways. The first way is through the Eve Online website; they offer immediate activation and 30 days game time for $19.95. This subscription method requires a credit card. The alternative way is to subscribe using an Eve Game Time Card (ETC or GTC), these can be purchased in digital format online. Eve Game Cards upgrade a trial account and add 100% of the game time on the card. The 30 day game time card retails for under $15 online; players save $5 using a Game Time Card to activate a trial account. Game Time Cards are readily available through third party online merchants.

Awards

EVE Online

[vidéo] Eve Online : Empyrean Age

Welcome to the Empyrean Age… again

EvE Online und Linux…. (update)

EVE Online: Faction Warfare and You

Twenty Million Skill Points