| Developer(s) | CCP Games |
| Publisher(s) | SSI (expired) CCP Games |
| Distributor(s) | Atari (Retail Version, from March 2009) Valve Corporation Mobius Games |
| Platform(s) | Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X |
| Release date(s) | May 6, 2003 May 6, 2003 May 23, 2003 |
| Genre(s) | MMORPG Space simulation |
| Mode(s) | Multiplayer |
| Rating(s) | ESRB: T |
Players of Eve Online are able to participate in a number of in-game professions and activities, including mining, manufacturing, trade, exploration 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 into 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 Apocrypha. On March 10, 2009 the game was made available in boxed form in stores, released by Atari.
story
Taking place 21,000 years in the future, the fictional background story of Eve Online explains that humanity, having used up most of Earth's resources, began colonizing the rest of the Milky Way. This expansion led to competition and fighting over available resources. Everything changed with the discovery of a natural wormhole leading to an unexplored galaxy dubbed 'New Eden'. Dozens of colonies were founded and a structure was built to stabilise the wormhole, a giant gateway bearing the name "EVE". However, when the natural wormhole collapsed it destroyed the gate. Cut off from Earth and its much-needed supplies, the colonists of New Eden starved. Five colonies managed to return to prominence, each eventually rebuilding their own society. These colonies make up the five major empires in Eve: the Amarr Empire, the Caldari State, the Gallente Federation, the Jove Empire and the Minmatar Republic.
Races
The Amarr, a monotheistic theocratic empire, were the first of the playable races to rediscover faster-than-light travel. Armed with this new technology and the strength of their faith in their god, the Amarr expanded their empire by conquering and enslaving several races, including the primitive tribal Minmatar race, who had only just invented space flight for themselves.Generations later during the battle between the Amarr Empire and the Jove Empire, many Minmatar took the opportunity to escape and successfully rebelled against their enslavers, and formed their own government in the Eve universe. However, much of their populace remains enslaved by the Amarr.
The Gallente and the Caldari homeworlds are situated in the same star system.The Gallente homeworld was originally settled by descendants of French colonists; Caldari Prime was purchased by a mega-corporation that began to terraform it. The terraforming of Caldari Prime was incomplete at the time of the wormhole's collapse, however, and the planet remained environmentally inhospitable for millennia. The Gallente restored a working civilization some hundred years before the Caldari, building the first democratic republic of the new era. Animosity between the two races broke into war during which the Caldari seceded from the Gallente Federation to found their own Caldari State. The war lasted 93 years, with neither party able to overwhelm the other. The planet Caldari Prime was retained by the Gallente Federation during the war, and did not become part of the new Caldari State. Much more recently, a new Caldari offensive managed to recapture their lost homeworld. Both the Gallente and Caldari are business oriented peoples, however, the Gallente value free markets and entrepreneurship whereas the Caldari practice a form of corporatism or state capitalism.
The Jovians (currently a non-playable race) were colonists, too. Unlike the other races of EVE, they maintained use of their technology after the collapse of the wormhole and did not need to spend millennia rediscovering it, and while the other four major races were still grounded, Jovian history saw two periods of empire.They expanded outward and eventually turned to genetic engineering in order to mold themselves into a people more suited for deep-space life and long-range interstellar exploration. Genetic experimentation, however, eventually led to the deadly "Jovian Disease", which, despite their extremely advanced technology, crippled their civilization. They now inhabit a region of space supposedly inaccessible to outsiders.
In addition to different backgrounds and histories, each of the races have characteristic philosophies of starship design. Minmatar ships tend to be fast and use crude projectile weapons; Amarr ships are usually slow, heavily armored, and use powerful lasers; Gallente ships are often well-armored and use short-ranged particle blasters and drones; and Caldari ships are typically poorly armored but very well-shielded, and use missiles and railguns.
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. While Eve Online introduces the players to the idea of avatars, 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 your preferred style of play, you 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.
Each spaceship within the EVE 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, capacitor size and recharge rate, shields, armor, maximum velocity, agility, locking range and maximum number of lockable targets. Ships 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.
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 game map.[23] 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"). It should be noted, however, that 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.[24] 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.
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