At its heart EVE is a game made by the people that play it. The content may be created and provided by CCP but the true appeal of EVE is not in the game itself, but in the people that play it.

In EVE relationships matter, they are important. From the level of the individual up to the level of the big alliances and corporations and their diplomatic shenanigans. I’m willing to be that more people stay playing EVE because of the people they play with than the actual content provided by CCP.

This is why long term players are important in EVE. The longer you play the deeper the relationships you build, these relationships stand as an example of what it means to play EVE. You get to know the pilots you fly with/against, you know who to talk to for advice on certain game mechanics, you get to know who you can trust to go in with you on an investment.

Now, a discussion I had on twitter with @rulesaremyenemy and @fivechairs prompted this post. Rules put forward that EVE’s population is still growing. That may well be but player turnover can be quite high and still show growth, all growth indicates is an increase in CCP’s bank account. High player turnover is bad for EVE because it means a lot of players not hanging around to build the relationships essential to the games success. This leads to players not seeing that its worth building those relationships (because they don’t see the advantage of them) and then the whole thing falls apart. This leads to an EVE where there are no interpersonal relationships between the players, and the churn replaces the population completely in quite a short period of time, then EVE dies.

EVE dies because the new players have nothing to aspire to. They don’t see anyone else flying the big ships because no-one has been around long enough to train for them. They don’t see the characters who have made a name for themselves over a period of years and are respected or reviled by their friends and enemies repectively.

In a game which is based largely on your character’s reputation, which takes time to build, short termers have no opportunity to become as famous or notorious as some of the game’s well known figures (Sir Molle, The Mittani, Darius Johnson, Chribba, and Mynxee, to name but a few.

There are not only ephemeral reasons for why the long term player is someone CCP should be looking to cultivate, there are fairly solid business and gameplay reasons as well:

Long term players attract new players, and players attracted and ‘mentored’ by long term players are more likely to stay and become long term players themselves. This builds a guaranteed income stream for CCP, and gives them free word of mouth marketing to boot. Long term players also generally have more than one account.

Long term players keep the game’s economy running, they fly and manufacture the capital ships which take a long time to train for and need alot of resources to build.

Without long term players building relationships and social networks things like the BoB takedown, Guiding Hand Social Club heist and the recent U’K dissolution could not happen, and New Eden would be a much less interesting place to play.

Without long term players we wouldn’t have institutions such as EVE Uni, the CSM and a (currently sem-stalled) PvP/political/espionage game in 0.0.

EVE needs its long term players, and it needs to increase their numbers, in order to remain EVE. The public quitting of long term subscribers in the Zulu and ‘Vote for Me’ threadnaughts (who’s bright idea was that?) may hide a considerable number of long termers who simply quit in silent disgust, without announcing it to the world (though we can’t be certain, and CCP are hardly going to publish those numbers).

With the upcoming release of a variety of SF MMOs (SWTOR being the biggest) people will move elsewhere for their spacships and lasers fix. SWTOR may even be enough to tempt alot of older EVE players away as most of us got our start in science fiction from that franchise. There have been many tempting games which have lured us away over the years, but we have always returned to EVE. This time it could be different.

Speaking for myself as a fairly long term player, my main is from January 2004, I’m increasingly finding myself dissillusioned and losing faith in CCP. I’m thinking of cutting my losses and moving to another game. DDO and EQ2 have gone free to play, LOTRO is soon to follow, and World of Tanks looks promising. None of them are EVE though and I would like to see EVE continue to be the best SF MMO out there, the question is does CCP want the same thing?

If the answer is yes then they need to keep their long term players happy, they need to give them reasons to stay. If they don’t the churn will get worse and EVE will lose the thing that makes it great; a community that has developed and emerged over 7 years as being the driving force behind much of the game’s evolution and development. A community that has won awards (which should be a credit to the community, not to CCP). We are what make EVE what it is, we are what make EVE successful.

At the moment we feel ignored and marginalised. CCP value new blood over loyal customers, but that new blood will not stay if the general impression they get from us long termers is that EVE is broken and the massive fleet fights that it is marketed on are not possible. New players may be brought by word of mouth, but they can also be driven away.

CCP have a resource available to them that they are misusing. The marketing power of a loyal and passionate customer base is not to be sneezed at, and what’s more its free. CCP need to remember that.

M out

Here’s how I see it:

Being a pirate in EVE is an economic decision (as are most decisions in EVE). Pirates don’t do it for the lulz, the honour or the fame. They do it for the money.

They are not PvP’rs except as a side effect of their occupation. As a result any conception of e-honour that does not translate directly into money in their pocket is dismissed as superfluous. Ransoms will be honoured (generally) because, again, thats money in the bank and the promise of future money if it becomes known that ransoms will be honoured.

1v1s are a different matter. Personally I will never accept a 1v1 unless I am certain (and it is so hard to be certain) that I can win, bring in backup if necessary, and most importantly that it will be a 1v1.

I will admit to being a fairly mediocre pirate, I generally feel that I’m only there to make up the numbers in roams, but I enjoy it. I have yet to make much headway running solo (plans are afoot to make that slightly easier at least). but what I get out of it are a few laughs, some excitement and a modest payout at the end of the month. However I do understand what lies at the root of what it is to be a pirate.

1. Piracy is all about the money.
2. You can’t spend killmails or e-honour.
3. Ransoms are your bread and butter, honour them
4. 1v1s are not economically viable.
5. Piracy can be fun, but mostly it is a lot of work.

Calderus Rex, however, does not, and yet claims to be a pirate.

Firstly he went into a 1v1 with a pirate.  A PIRATE!.

The main issue I have with the whinefest he unleashed in the EVE-bloggers channel is this: Why would a pirate go into a fair fight with no guarantee of making money out of it? Simple answer: They wouldn’t. Ransoms and loot are what pirates fight for, because its all about the money.

There is no economic or financial reason for a 1v1 to be honoured by a pirate. From the pirate’s perspective as long as they come away with the loot or a ransom every tactic is fair play (within the accepted mechanics of the game of course). If this means bringing friends to a 1v1 so be it.

The other mistakes that were made were, and this is according to his own chatlogs, that Rex made the offer of the 1v1 in the first place and did not take steps to ensure that it would be fair. These could have included (but not been limited to):

• Fleeting with his opponent and holding the fight at a safespot of his choosing instead of at 0 on a planet.
• Using his d-scanner and local to check for known compatriots of his opponent in the same system and vicinity of the fight.

The other issue I have is that he claimed to be a ‘real’ pirate whilst labelling the Tuskers (and for some reason The Bastards as well) as, and I quote:

“…COWARDS, LIARS, AND FAILURES. YOU CANNOT BE TRUSTED IN ANY REGARD.”

This brings me neatly to point 2 in my list of things that matter to a pirate: You can’t spend e-honour, it has no value on the market. That and the fact that the only thing a pirate can be trusted to be is… a pirate.

So suck it up Cal, you lost a fight which you shouldn’t have started, got owned in a fight which you should have known wouldn’t be fair, and then whined about it in public. Thats not what ‘real’ pirates do, go cry your tears elsewhere, I don’t need them, they’re not going to pay my bills.

Jmarr out

Update: It would seem that Calderus Rex has removed his blog from the internet as Flashfresh informs me below. I don’t know the reasoning behind this decision (if indeed it is not ar error on blogspot’s part) but I can assure you that it was not my intention to make Calderus feel that he could not express himself freely. A blog is not a publication like a book that exists in isolation. A blog is a form of discussion, an argument, and a way of putting your views to the rest of the world. If this post in any way caused the removal of Calderus’ blog or was part of the reasoning behind him removing it then I apologise. The EVE blogosphere thrives on its diversity and the loss of any of its participants is a loss which we should all feel.

This apology does not negate the points I have made above however, I still hold the opinions above, and it should be considered a mark of respect that I decided to respond to Calderus’ post on my own blog. I hope you’re still playing EVE at least Calderus, New Eden would be a lot less interesting if we all had the same feelings about it.

A paragraph stating blogger’s current in game activities in order to demonstrate wide experience of game mechanics

Another paragraph restating original forum poster’s point and stating that each assertion will be dissected below.

A list of each of the original forum posters points including agreement/refutaion and reasoning for response to each

Conclusion that original forums poster was right/wrong and reassertion of reasons in brief.

Assertion that EVE is the greatest MMO in the world and that changing it in the manner put forward by the original forum poster will only make it greater/break it completely.

M out

H/T to @Rettic and @Thorvik_EVE for this, made me grin

7 Years of EVE Patches – Pt 1, 7 Years of EVE Patches – Pt 2, 7 Years of EVE patches – Pt 3.

Keep your eyes peeled for the rest of the series.

M out

Only I will have access to the results and will retain participant’s anonymity if I publish them. Whether you disclose you blog address/twitter name is totally optional and they will not be published in relation to the results if you do. I will probably add blog addresses to my link library (if I don’t already have them) and follow you on twitter, but I will not publish people’s individual responses to the survey.

Click here to take the Survey

M out

Hats off to CK for reading through all 31 entries to this contest, which ranged from the analytical to the fictional. All the entrants are listed below, and you can see that CK had quite a job laid before him.

1. One Shot Blog: Tyrannis, by Iamien
2. Tastes Like Chicken: Tyrannis: A Planetary Interaction Contest, by Kaarbaak
3. Starfleet Comms: Can I Have a VAT Receipt Please?, by Max Torps
4. Aggressive Logistics: Tyrannis, by Khan
5. A Barrel Roll: Planetary Infraction, by Alathus Christensen
6. Loaded Barrels: Five Thousand Stars, Devil Knows How Many Planets, by Brutus Septimius
7. CrazyKinux’s Guest Blog: My thoughts on Tyrannis, Contest Entry, by Cyric Kilbright
8. Pocket Pairs & Pod Pilots: Planetary Interactive Possibilities, by Diametrix
9. Garhead: “The Fall”, by Garhead
10. Guns Ablaze: I’m a Lumberjack and I’m OK, by Jager
11. EVE Tyranus: A grind blend, by Ed
12. Vissios Altacras Presents: Tyrannis, Planetary Interaction and what (I hope) it means for EVE, by Vissios
13. Void Burn: Tyrannis Impact Prognosis, by Miroven
14. Unstable Terrain: Eve Online Planetary Interation Predictions, by Trent
15. Mike Azariah: Land Rush, by Mike Azariah
16. Pod On The Run: About Tyrannis, Expectations of an underskilled Jack of all Trades, by LoRDa
17. Musings of a Casual Industrialist: Planetary Interaction: What does it mean offworld?, by Igor Epocci
18. Ashireka’s Adventures In EVE: Tyrannis Impact, by Ashireka
19. No War Too Small…: Planetary Interaction, by Video Game
20. A Merry Life and A Short One: Sic Semper Tyrannis, by Hallen Turrek
21. Khopa Ascetic: Delusions of Tyranny, by Mathew Melnon
22. A Sebiestor Scholar: Zargyl’s Tyrannis, by Zargyl
23. A Mule in EVE: Ripples of Tyrannis, by Manasi
24. EnerlaNet: EVE Online Tyrannis, by Enerla
25. Nestor the Chronicled: Here A World, The A World, by Nestor
26. CrazyKinux’s Guest Blog: Tyrannis: a Planetary Interaction Contest, by Trimutius III

The competition was pretty fierce from my point of view, and a lot of good ideas were put forward. I would have been hard pressed to choose just 5 from all the entrants and feel humbled to be included in the winners. They are as follows:

• Eve Illectrocuted: It’s Not Just About Planets You Know
• .5 or Higher!: Abyssus in Terra
• The hydrostatic capsule: Let the Gods be Gods!’
• No War Too Small…: Planetary Interaction: Nothing Personal, It’s Just Business
• I am Keith Neilson: Thus Always to Tyrants

Each of these winners gets a PLEX, which is awesome enough, but one winner out of them gets to interview a Dev! That winner is Cailais from The Hydrostatic Capsule. The interview will be aired during an unspecified Drone Bay Podcast in the future, so be sure and give it a listen.

Congratulations to all the winners, better luck next time to the rest of the participants.

M out

P.S. CK: You can contact me at the email address you already have, or use jmarr(at)keithneilson(dot)co(dot)uk, looking forward to hearing from you.

I read a short post over on Enoshima Beach today wherein the author refers to hi-sec ninja salvagers as pirates. I would like to correct this error here.

In the post I’m referring to, one of the author’s corpmates spotted the ninja in his mission and started popping wrecks, a perfectly legitimate response (Rokkit tells me she just abandons them), and the ninja starts crying in local.

Well done, you extracted tears from a ninja, not a pirate.

Here are the differences.

1. Ninjas operate primarily in hi-sec, where the retribution of Concord will fall on anyone who shoots at them as long as they only salvage.
   Pirates operate primarily in lo-sec where there is no Concord and they can be shot at with impunity, often under the watchful eyes of gate and station guns
2. The self confessed motive of many ninjas is to extract tears from those whose missions they invade. Making them cry in local or a convo, making people angry and upset. In short; greifing.
   The motivation of the pirate is ISK, purely ISK and nothing else (unless you count getting on a sweet CNR kill). Many pirates are polite courteous and even sympathetic, in their conversations with their victims and will never, ever smack in local as it demeans both the pirate and the victim.
3. A ninja will quite happily come into your mission and salvage your wrecks. If he loots he will run away if you shoot at him.
   A pirate will come into your mission with the sole purpose of shooting at you untill you pop or pay him to go away.
4. A ninja risks next to nothing doing what he does.
   A pirate risks his ship and possibly his pod, because in lo-sec (and hi-sec, come to think of it) you can defend yourself without having to worry about aggro timers and concord.
5. Hi-sec mission runners rarely go fitted for PvP, so the ninja can safely go and get their PvP boat if shot at and come back to pop the carebear who shoots at them.
   Lo-sec mission runners know the risks and often go fitted for PvP and can lay some serious hurt on a Pirate if fitted properly. They may even be bait for other pirates or anti-pirates. there’s a whole ecosystem of stuff like that in lo-sec.

So those are the main differences between Pirates and Ninjas, apart from the last one which IMO is by far the most important:

That is all

J Out

In honour of this upcoming expansion CrazyKinux has challenged the EVE blogosphere to write a peice about how we see the new opportunities impacting our lives as capsuleers. This is my entry.

There has already been a fair bit of writing done on what will be in Tyrannis, including the Dev Blogs. Additionally, the basic gameplay and interface has been available for playing about with on SiSi, CCP’s public test server, for a couple of weeks. So I’m not going to rehash that here. What I do hope to do is take a glimpse into where PI will take the spacebound denizens of New Eden and the developments that may come of it.

The Landrush

We have had it from CCP T0rfifrans that the amount of resources each planet produces will be a finite pie; the more people taking a slice, the smaller that slice will be. So hi-sec planets, whilst safe and easy to get resources from for newer players, will not offer as good a return on the time investment involved as those in less populated regions of space.

I predict that there will be a land rush into lo-sec as industrialists, corporations and alliances make a grab for the more valuable planets in lo-sec. There will be the inevitable spike in interest in lo-sec planets in the period immediately after the release of Tyrannis, but the natural predation from pirates and competition from other players will soon weed out those who don’t have the stomach for the dangers of lo-sec living.

I don’t count 0.0 in this thinking as most of it is tied up under the control of the various power blocs that exist beyond the mandate of the faction empires. Granted NPC nul-sec will see a fair bit of interest but the weeding out in 0.0 will be even more vicious as the nul-sec alliances send their tenrdils out into the neighbouring NPC space.

Larcenous Opportunities.

I discovered whilst playing around on SiSi, that the cargo drop off point where deliveries to, and pickups from the planet’s surface are made will be a fixed point in the planet’s orbit. Originally cargo cans with resources extracted from the surface were placed in space randomly when launched from the surface, this has changed with the lates build deployed to the test server. Whether it will stay that way is yet to be seen though so what follows is speculation.

A new kind of piracy will become available to those that practice it; interception of haulers as they pick up and drop off goods. This could be quite the moneyspinner in a variety of ways:

1. Simple piracy: Blow up incoming or outgoing ships and steal their cargo.
2. Protection rackets: Get the industrialists of a particular planet or planets to pay a periodic fee to be left alone. This fee could be payable in goods or ISK.
3. Security services: PvP pilots could offer to run security at the orbital cargo depot to protect the haulers coming and going from the predation of pirates.

The opportunities presented by Tyrannis will not be solely for the industrialists, but anyone who can find a way to make money from said industrialists.

Its the Economy, Stupid.

The  sheer number of products producable with planetary infrastructure is pretty mind boggling. Most of the end products of each chain are the odd little items you see listed under ‘Consumer Goods’ in the market, whilst some are components in tech 2 research and manufacture (Robotics) and others are constituents of POS fuel (Coolant). Speculation is rife about what all these things could be for, the logic being that everything has to have an eventual use for the inhabitants of New Eden (us) and not just be fluffy filler in a commodities market. What use could Biotech Research Reports be put to? Manufacturing implants?

The first chain that I discovered was the one that finishes with Nanite Repair Paste (NRP) as a final product. Players cannot manufacture this at the moment, every unit of it ultimately comes from an NPC source. This effectively enforces a price floor resulting in an overinflated value for NRP. Once players start making this stuff in sufficient quantities and are able to undercut the NPC prices the NPC source will be removed (driven out of business by fierce competition) and the price will behave more naturally and fluctuate according to the rules of supply and demand.

Its difficult to predict with any certainty how PI will impact the wider economy until we know exactly what will be produced and exactly what use it will be put to.

Beyond PI

All the attention seems to be being directed at the big shiny part of Tyrannis, namely PI, but there has been little said about the fundamental changes to the insurance and loot systems. Missioning will become slightly less profitable, mining slightly more as the loot tables of the various NPC rats are balanced and meta 0 loot removed. The frequency of suicide ganking will drop as the costs begin to be felt with the tying of the insurance payout to the actual value of the ship destroyed.

Some don’t believe that the suicide ganking issue has been addressed at all  by the changes to insurance but I think that it has. It should not be possible to pop a freighter/hauler/hulk with any ship in hi-sec and get over 100% of the value of the ship back. The changes proposed mean that now there is no guarantee that the cost of your ship and fittings will be covered by insurance, suicide gankers will be more selective when choosing their targets.

The removal of meta 0 loot from rat loot tables is very likely to revitalise the market for meta 0 tech 1 modules, which is where most new players start out on their industrial careers. As things stand the market is not only flooded with these modules from rat droppings but the mineral prices are affected by their reprocessing (and marginally by the fact that less people actually buy minerals to make them as it just isn’t as easily profitable as other activities). This move has the double effect of decreasing supply of the minerals whilst simultaneously increasing demand, resulting in higher prices all round.

Conclusion

Whilst predictions regarding the economic and industrial impact of PI is somewhat out of my experience and there are porbably players out there who can make better guesse than me, that is all they are, guesses. Without more information we can’t really tell what the future will hold with regard to PI products. Other things we can take pretyy educated guesses at: There will be a landrush and there will be business opportunities beyond the surface of the planets that directly benefit from PI. Beyond PI the prices of minerals will be a bit volatile for a while but will generally rise, and suicide ganks will decline.

Further in the distance we can see the clouds forming, a pall across the horizon as an army marches inexorably towards us. Some look upon it with trepidation and fear, an incursion of terrors unknown and unwanted into our New Eden. Personally I look forward to greeting the army with open arms and garlands of flowers, they will need to be fed, equipped and armed. Who better to do that than those of us who have lived here for years.

The cloud on the horizon is the Dust thrown up by marching feet, and I welcome it.

After all, if it all goes tits up, we can always nuke them from orbit

M out

I found out yesterday that the standings requirements for the L4 Epic Arcs were not as stringent as I thought they were (thanks Casiella XD). Apparently I only needs standings of 6.8 or higher with the corporation that the starting agent belongs to, and not the faction.

Its a n00b error, and not one I’m proud of. My whole reason for being is to run the Epic Arcs in order to produce guides for this website, and I’ve spent the last 10 months running missions to get my Caldari faction standings up high enough.

All in all though this has been a year (ish) well spent. I can now fly a fully T2 fitted Drake which can tank pretty much all of the standard L4 combat missions. From what I’ve been hearing the L4 arcs are tough, and I will need to be skilled up as much as possible to complete them.

That being said I am not averse to helping hand, if you’re interested in helping out (if I need you) then drop me an EVE-mail (Rokkit Kween) and I’ll add you to a list of potential volunteers. I’ll take all the help I can get, but I’m thinking that shield logistics may be useful later in the chain.

Rest assured she’ll be moving on to the Caldari L4 Arc fairly soon as she is now in the process of blitzing level 3′s to get her standings up with Expert Distribution. You can look forward to the start of the Caldari L4 Epic Arc Guide soon(tm)

Rokkit Out

Dear #tweetfleet i propose a question of the day “does allowing alts add more to #eveonline or does it take something away?”

Its an interesting question that has been asked many times and the likelyhood is that you’ll get a different answer from every EVE player you ask. Personally I’m all for alts (both on the same account and having more than one account) and not because I have two accounts myself. My reasons are as follows:

1. The primary reason I think that alt accounts should be allowed is that each one sends more money CCPs way and allows them to continue to improve the game and develope the technology it runs on. CCP are not going to chop down this money tree for any reason, they’re a business after all and the bottom line is just that.
2. Alt accounts allow players to specialise without restricting them to that career choice. For example I have two accounts with 3 characters on each:
   • Jmarr is my pirate pilot who flies with The Bastards and I occasionally write in this blog under his name if the posts relate to Bastards activities.
   • Rokkit Kween is a PvE pilot whose current goal is to build up enough standings with the Caldari to enable her to do the Level 4 epic mission arc. This is in order to produce another guide, like the one I wrote for the first of the epic arcs just after Apocrypha was released. If anyone knows of a way to build up faction standings fast I’d be grateful if you could let me know. I’ve been slogging away with RK for a long time now and am still nowhere near the required standings to do the arc
   • BlankStare is my accountant/hauler, if you ever buy advertising with ISK on this website, she’s who you’ll be sending the money to. She also holds the majority of my cash and is based in Jita in order to be able to spend it. I’m about to put Rokkit’s training on hold for a couple of weeks so that BlankStare can train up Transport ships and cloaky things, making her more useful for hauling stuff into lo-sec.
   • Scrapyardina is my effort to thwart the ninja’s which plague Rokkit Kween’s mission running activities. She’s only got the skills needed to fit a salvage destroyer and has the dubious honour of having invented a new form of PvP; tractor beam duelling.
   • Secret Alts 1 and 2 are currently a secret to all but a few select people. but they are being groomed in order to support the activities of my other characters. Thats all you’re eve going to know about them ;P

   I have a second account because training two characters simultaneously on one account is not doable. Jmarr’s skills in relation to his activities are sorely lacking in a few key areas so he needs to keep training until he’s up to spec. Taking time out from that to train another character is not something I will do lightly or for an extended period of time. Rokkit kween is just about where she needs to be for the moment as she is able to effortlessly tank L4 missions in her Drake which keeps the standings racking up, so I’ll be switching training on that account to BlankStare for the cloaky haulers, and after that work on Secret Alt 1 begins.

3. Dual Boxing. There I said it. Some people don’t like dual or multi-boxing and consider it a kind of cheating. I can see their point, but would argue that there are some things that simply cannot be done solo and if your corpmates are not around to help out multi-boxing is the only way to go. Take Rokkit and Scrapyardina for example. Running missions in a Drake can be tedious at times, You simply sit there taking all the aggro and tanking all the damage, while you wait for your frankly pitiful DPS to pop the rats. Having Scrapyardina along gives me something to do other than hit F1 every few minutes when my launchers reload. It also has the added bonus of clearing the missions faster so I can go on the the next one in stead of having to come back with Rokkit in a salvager to tidy up. The same applies to scouting a hauler, or hauling for a miner. one person can do both these tasks if they dual-box.
4. Metagaming* would not be possible in any meaningful way without alts and alt accounts and IMO the metagame of EVE is the game. The espionage, intrigue and shenanigans that alts and alt accounts make possible are EVE’s bread and butter. EVE is not a game about numbers, stats and min/max twinking of your character. At its core EVE is a game about people and their interactions. Trust, honour and reputation are the real currency of EVE Online. Your corp/alliance may have a ton of equipment and money in its wallet and hangars, but that is meaningless when a little misplaced trust can take it all away from you. Social dynamics such as these cannot be coded in, they cannot be assigned an arbitrary number as in doing so you make it easier to  playthe system like any other min/max mechanic. Relying on human reactions, hunches, intuition, paranoia, underhandedness and other traits provides a level of immersion that a ‘trust’ statistic can never do. You can never be sure if the person you are interacting with is worthy of your respect, you have to trust your instincts. So the fact that Alts make the wonderful metagaming of EVE Online possible is another reason that I support their use.
5. Finally Alts allow you greater breadth of gameplay and experience of EVE than one character alone. If you want to be a pirate, use one character for that. if you want to mine, use another character for that. More than one character and more than one account allows you to try every aspect of EVE much quicker than one character alone ever could.

So there you have it, my arguments (many of which I think I’ve made before) for the use of alts and alt accounts in EVE Online. I sincerely believe that EVE would not be the game it is without them, and CCP would more than likely have canned it years ago due to lack of money.

So, what are your opinions of Alts and Alt accounts? Are you for or against, and why?

M out