
Being the editor of a newspaper in Eve Online - danso
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/08/20/whats-it-like-being-the-editor-of-a-newspaper-in-eve-online/
======
portroyal
15 years after its birth, Eve is still making headlines and conducting large
scale pvp on a mind boggling level. I tried it and it wasn't for me (too slow)
but a part of me wishes it was. Nearly every other MMO loses its essence over
time (and wanes/dies trying to cater to the lowest common), but Eve seems to,
after 15 years, still be the same ruthless political madness that it was on
day 1. I admire that immensely after being orphaned by numerous MMOs that
couldn't hold on to their essence.

~~~
thg
> Nearly every other MMO loses its essence over time (and wanes/dies trying to
> cater to the lowest common), but Eve seems to, after 15 years, still be the
> same ruthless political madness that it was on day 1.

Speaking as someone that's been there from day 1 (before actually. I've been
playing since closed beta back in 2002), EVE is absolutely not the same
ruthless universe anymore that it once was. It's increasingly become a fancy
pile of garbage, where complexity is removed and the game streamlined to "make
it more accessible".

In other words: It's on the best way of becoming yet another World of Warcraft
clone and that's mightily showing in the community these days. EVE lives and
dies by its community and frankly the community has pretty much degraded to a
bunch of screaming children crying for instant gratification and the removal
of the last essence of what made EVE be EVE.

So yeah, the only reason EVE is still around is because it's a niche game and
it's literally the only available choice in that niche. If CCP had even the
slightest sliver of competition, EVE would have already gone the same way as
so many other MMOs that lost their aim, spirit and essence before it.

But well, people have given me the title "Epitome of Bittervetism", so maybe
take this with a grain of salt. But in all honesty, you're not missing out on
much anymore.

Edit: No, you can't have my stuff.

~~~
ryandrake
I played briefly, for about a year back in the 2009-2010 era. Played quite a
bit, joined a corp, even had multiple accounts/characters. Left for 2 reasons:

1\. The massive time/money suck and complexity. Playing Eve started feeling
like its own career. Having to log in constantly to skill, having to be
available at all hours for missions (getting texts at work that we were
jumping into WH space where are you???), having to maintain vast excel
spreadsheets to optimize ISK income. It was too much, stopped being fun.

2\. At its heart Eve was(is?) a PvP game. Sure, you can stay safely in hisec,
mining and trading, and getting called a carebear, but if you did, you were
experiencing at most 25% of the game. I always found PvP unpleasant and
wasteful, and wished the devs made hisec-only play better. But if you wanted
to get your money’s worth that meant living in nullsec or WH space, and having
to deal with the griefers. Also, if you wanted to make enough ISK needed to
fund your accounts through PLEX you had to be in WH space and live with the
slugfest. So much was geared towards PvP, and if you didn’t like PvP, the game
was ultimately not for you.

~~~
cbm-vic-20
The game has evolved somewhat from that era.

1) In the past, you couldn't enqueue skills beyond 24h, basically forcing you
to log in frequently. Now, paid accounts ("Omega") can load up their skill
queue indefinitely. There are a lot more casual corps in the game these days,
and the player base has finally figured out that newbies are really valuable,
rather than seeing them as easy marks for scamming. I only have time to play a
few hours per week, and being in one of the big corps makes it okay for me to
not show up at 3am for a stratop. Optimizing ISK income is something you can
do if you enjoy that sort of thing- and a lot of people do. For the rest of
us, we convert cash into PLEX, and sell those in the market for ISK. My time
is worth too much to spent it trying to figure out how to set up an optimal
production system or to mine rocks all day.

2) This is pretty much true. The "heart and soul" of Eve is in its player-run
corporations, particularly ones that engage in PVP. Funding accounts by making
enough ISK to buy game time (PLEX) is a bad decision for anyone who has a
real-life job. A month of game time is roughly $15. It takes lots and lots of
hours of grinding or market trading to generate enough ISK to buy a PLEX in
game. Unless you enjoy the grind, and if you make more than minimum wage, it's
cheaper to buy PLEX with cash and sell them for ISK than it is to buy PLEX
with ISK.

~~~
dmix
> and the player base has finally figured out that newbies are really
> valuable, rather than seeing them as easy marks for scamming

What are they valuable for? (Honest question)

Is it even worth it to join Eve now as a newbie? Or is this one of those games
like CS where it's impossible to play because everyone's been at it for a
decade and has 100x more experience at that game than you.

~~~
w0de0
In the context of PVP, they are good as eager bodies. It takes only a couple
trains of training to begin flying the simplest ships in an alliance's
doctrine, and only a month or so to fly a slightly better ship. Get a couple
hundred low-sp but highly-motived players, and success can be yours...

------
cbm-vic-20
For those intrigued: Eve Online has "free to play" Alpha tier, if you want a
taste. There are certain limitations (ie, a skill point limit (think "levels"
in other games)), but even an Alpha character can join player-run corporations
and take part in the economy, join these thousand player battles, etc.

There are also newbie-friendly corporations (Brave Newbies, Brand Newbros,
Karmafleet, Pandemic Horde) that are part of the major power-blocs, if you
want to get into the politics.

[https://www.eveonline.com/](https://www.eveonline.com/)

These corporations have IT infrastructures that put most real-world businesses
to shame; web sites with custom applications that tie into the game's API
(swagger: [https://esi.tech.ccp.is/latest/](https://esi.tech.ccp.is/latest/)
), authorization services, voice chat services, Slack integrations, custom ERP
systems for in-game industrial management, HR systems etc.

~~~
mihaifm
Thanks, this is interesting stuff.

I've been interested in Eve for years but only last week realized that it has
a free tier.

However progression in the game seems a bit slow to me and tutorial a bit
boring. After how many hours in can I expect some more interesting action?

~~~
CelestialTeapot
You can step into the "fun" aspects of the game pretty quickly if you don't
mind being cannon fodder for one of the larger corporations that will even pay
for your ships.

Eve's progression is entirely based on feed-the-meter, where you skill up by
scheduling your skills to be learned over time. My knowledge is out of date,
but it took me hundreds of hours of paid time to get into higher tiered ships
to reach what I would consider the "fun" aspects of the game. YMMV.

------
hrnnnnnn
It's amazing sometimes how much EVE mimics real life. I used to know a guy
that ran a bank there.

My little brother used to be really into it, eventually leading fleets during
fights, and he credits that experience with giving him the skills he needed to
manage teams at an IT company.

~~~
jarboot
I had the same leadership training with minecraft, leading factions in RP
servers and trading with other cities, complete with alliances, trade deals,
and wars. Eventually I became an OP and eventually an admin, with all the
responsibilities that entails at the age of 13. But obviously EVE is another
level of complexity.

An interesting article related to minecraft economics can be read here:
[https://www.alicemaz.com/writing/minecraft.html](https://www.alicemaz.com/writing/minecraft.html)

~~~
Kagerjay
Haven't played minecraft much, but isn't minecraft just server-based in one
instance? With servers upwards of up to 100 players?

Nothing from one server translates to another though to my knowledge

Trade deals come from just NPC's and whatever player interactions had with
those NPCs, depending on the plugins installed to the server?

~~~
rtkwe
It's been a while for me but there were definitely some server mods starting
to pop up that would allow that kind of cross server play/material transfer.
With mods the sky is kind of the limit for what you can do in MC even on
servers.

------
technimad
Nice read into a world I've never visited and know very little about. I am
really interested in how the economics of the newspaper work. How are they
able to obtain the ships they report from? Do people have a subscription,
donate? A pity this wasn't addressed in the article.

~~~
JokerDan
A good little ship that supports cloaking is maybe... a 2-3 weeks of training
in terms of skills and relatively cheap at 30-40m for a basic fit with bonuses
to warping and agility.

Could easily source that yourself over a few hours but no doubt, they more
than likely take donations to their corporate wallet in game.

~~~
Ntrails
You could probably beg for a covops/stealth bomber/etc in about 20 minutes of
casual jita spam. There's usually someone feeling kind (it's even been me on
occasion)

------
n4r9
This type of in-game realism is fascinating. It's a kind of immersion you
can't get through graphics alone. The Discworld MUD has also been running
player-led in-game newspapers for a long time:
[https://dwwiki.mooo.com/wiki/Newspapers](https://dwwiki.mooo.com/wiki/Newspapers)

~~~
GiuseppaAcciaio
No way, the Discworld MUD is still alive? I used to wake up at 6am to play it
before school in 1998-ish because that was the only time I could get 1-2 hours
of uninterrupted dial-up uptime. I wonder if the LAG is still around to kick,
and if someone has ever managed to kill Carrot :)

------
Sinidir
I absolutely love reading about Eve. Its like a cross between good scifi and
reality tv :)

~~~
SN76477
If they made an eveonline reality tv show I would watch it.

Battles, chat conversations, player reactions... maybe dip into top players
personal lives a bit.

------
User23
I hear the entire game is controlled by goons from an unfunny comedy website.

~~~
rkangel
The goons are currently on a power upswing, having been without any influence
for a while.

~~~
starshadowx2
Weren't the goons the ones betrayed and stolen from when there was a large
ship released? I remember reading an article about this big backroom-deal
betrayal but I forget who the actors were.

------
sshagent
I miss EVE, the game has all over MMOs pointless :/ Its been so long since i
played for real too. Still got a fair amount of assets, although i suspect 50
bil is probably pocket change nowadays.

~~~
chii
> 50 bil is probably pocket change

barely enough to afford a supercap!

------
chimen
Good game, VERY complex. I play it on and off since 2004 but I can't do it for
more than a few days/year. It's incredibly slow paced and full of politics.

~~~
Kagerjay
There's a joke that its considered a 2nd job if you take the game seriously
enough

~~~
LeftTurnSignal
I've seen this twice in my journeys in IT as a consultant.

Two separate IT Directors had a second PC in their office that just had Eve on
it. While working with them, they didn't pay attention to it, but when we
would take a break or I was setting stuff up they would hop on for a few
minutes here and there. Both said it was their part time job, and they did
make some ISK out of doing it. I don't know anymore details though.

It was kind of distracting in the same sense as people who hop on their phones
for a minute between pages or whatever.

I'll give them this, they did pay attention to the training or whatever and I
had no issues with working with them.

~~~
Kagerjay
EvE doesnt really require micromanagement its all macro based mostly(possibly,
alot of it), so multitasking is realistic with EvE.

Alot of real money goes through EvE, sometimes in the hundred thousand dollar
range

[https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:/...](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.technobuffalo.com/2014/01/30/largest-
eve-online-battle-in-history-causes-330k-in-real-world-
damage/&ved=2ahUKEwiIgd2G4IHdAhXOMd8KHecGAN8QFjAAegQIAxAB&usg=AOvVaw3KOuvrTT43gojErBviT1lI)

------
tantalor
Does this newspaper exist in the game? Or only on the web?

How much of "doing EVE" is not actually in EVE?

~~~
mawburn
The newspaper is not in game.

>How much of "doing EVE" is not actually in EVE?

If you're talking about the total game, politics, and all the other stuff that
influences the game as a whole, a whole lot.

As an individual player who's not involved in politics or things like that,
more than half your time is spent in game. It's a thinking game with a ton of
complexity so the thing about it being "spreadsheets in space" is kind of
true.

------
lifeisstillgood
Curious how the fundamentals of (good) journalism (impartiality, being seen to
be impartial, sourcing facts reliably) all transfer to a galaxy far far away

~~~
jeppz
EVE reporting have a long history of being very biased, some of the largest
organizations in the game usually run their own news sites.

I think it's very difficult to make people see you as unbiased in a world
where everyone is an enemy, even your "friends" are probably spies waiting to
stab you in the back and steal all your stuff.

~~~
forgingahead
So basically it mirrors journalism and reporting in real life?

~~~
zdkl
I've seen long time friends F each other for all they own or to gain favours
in the greater political hierarchies. It's _savage_ once you get to a certain
point in terms of resources or logistics.

~~~
arethuza
So really just like real life then?

~~~
zdkl
If you live in a developing or cartel/mafia driven land.

~~~
matwood
Wait. You don't think 'friends' backstab each every day to get ahead at work?
Or that 'friends' hold each other back out of jealousy? The crabs in a bucket
analogy has been around long before Eve.

~~~
bjelkeman-again
Not where I work now, no.

------
iamthirsty
Man, now I kinda want to start playing Eve — I enjoy (fake) politics like
this.

