It sounds really cool, but I've done some reading and it sounds like the most amazing moments of emergent gameplay (like the hostile takeover of a monster in-game corporation a few years back) are brief and rare, and the rest of the time I'm told it winds up feeling like a second job.
I played for about two and a half years fighting in the big war leading up to that event. I'd say it was about 10% having really exciting and fun things happen, 60% plotting how to have future fun things with other people, and 30% feeling like a second job.
Thing is that the 60% is actually pretty fun too if you find people you like to hang around with and if you like thinking about how to optimize stuff and achieve goals. So all-in-all I enjoyed it a lot. But I don't recommend it unless you figure out who those people will be before you start.
I think obsession with EVE is yet another example of the kind of Stockholm Syndrome like devotion intentionally tedious MMOs engender in players (I speak as a recovering victim, although not of EVE which is unbelievably tedious and boring even by the pretty vaunted standards set by earlier MMOs).
As an EVE player I don't usually make a habit of defending it so sorry if this comes across as "fanboyish". I'm in one of the largest alliances in the game and general consensus is that it can be "a terrible game", but there is so many things that are wrong or is just misunderstood in that post that it would take me all day to go through them individually.
Setting aside all the inaccuracies and misunderstandings of basic game mechanics in it (which is in part due to the steep learning curve of the game I admit, so it's somewhat understandable) EVE Online at it's core is ultimately a geek social hierarchy with a thin veil of "science fiction video game" masked over it.
Nowhere in the post did it mention ever interacting with other players, let alone leaving the safety of high security space to join one of the established social powerhouses in player controlled space. This is where the real "game" takes place and which is why the retention rate of new players is so extremely low, they don't get to see it.
If you are wondering why people keep playing this game, it isn't because they are stuck in some kind of "WoW-like" grind trance and just want to see a progress bar inch forward. It's ultimately the chance to ruin another social groups day and proclaim that your social group or culture "is better then theirs". You can visibly view a generated map of player controlled space[1] and say "we own this, we took it from you". The large super capital ships used in these battles are also worth upwards of $1,000 USD. A battle not long ago[2] resulted in the destruction of somewhere around 13 to 15 thousand dollars worth of capital ships.
Ultimately, EVE Online is a social experiment first, a war simulator for privileged first world geeks second, and a science fiction video game somewhere down at the bottom of the list.
I am sure there are good things about EVE that keep players engaged, but the initial experience with the "game" is so terrible as to boggle the mind. It isn't sold as a "social experiment". (Its qualities as a "war simulator" I won't go into -- it's a simulator of its own assumptions, which aren't terribly interesting.)
As an aside:
Way back in the early 80s, I was acquainted with a fellow who ran a worldwide play-by-mail game called "Cluster II", and a number of my friends were players. There had been an earlier game whose title I leave as an exercise to the reader. The game was run using Australian Tax Office mainframes in downtime. It was conceptually kind of a gigantic interstellar conquest run using Traveller's "High Guard" combat rules, and it allowed players to operate as corporations, spies, or straight out interstellar empires.
Disclaimer: I haven't played Eve in about 5 years.
The learning curve at the start of Eve is pretty steep and just keeps getting steeper as it goes along. The first time you get your brand new cruiser that you mined rocks for 5 hours to afford destroyed by a pirate you might want to cry (Stuff that is destroyed in the game generally stays destroyed).
I'm not sure about "social experiment" but I do remember thinking Eve looked a lot like what I imagine an anarcho-capitalist society would look like. There is literally a price tag on anything.
I do think that Eve is something best played with others, even towards the beginning, if you want to survive it is best to hang around with a few "mentor" types who can help you get through the jump gates to low sec where all the interesting stuff is (the gates are usually camped by some alliance or other who tend to be trigger happy).
I quit playing the game because the time investment was not worth what I felt I was getting out of it but I don't think it's really fair to write it off as just another MMO.
And as long as there are new generations that want to spend their free time with such an experiment, history will repeat itself. Not to mention experiencing it in a new medium (heh, play-by-mail) and taking it to another scale. Hell, our alliance has it's own custom authentication application that strings together dozens of various applications that serve our coalition. We have a small team of system admins that run our services. A single jabber broadcast for a fleet reaches thousands of members instantly, followed by a flurry on logins to the game server.
As far as the "initial experience" being terrible, I completely agree with you on that one. CCP have put a lot of effort into improving the new player experience but it's still extremely lacking and I honestly don't think this will ever change.
I also admit choosing "war simulator" may not of been the best phrase. You're right, it's a simulator of something, but when you are in a science fiction setting where spaceship pilots are immortal, it's never going to represent any war we are familiar with. You're wrong about it not being interesting though, if it wasn't interesting, thousands of us wouldn't log in at one time to take part in a battle over a bunch of pixels.
In regard to your comment about it not being sold as a "social experiment", you'd be surprised. CCP went in that direction with their marketing material for a few years:
I appreciate the insights. I'm hardly immune to the alleged charms of EVE (I'm an old school tabletop/board wargamer and game designer), I just think the price (in terms of poor gameplay) outweighs those charms.
It didn't have 20k players, but beyond a certain point "scale" doesn't change much (most of the kinds of phenomena referred to in EVE occurred in Cluster II -- I know of no cases of real world crimes being perpetrated for in-game advantage though).
Who said anything about email? This was play by mail. Each turn comprised getting a combination state-of-your-holdings/order-form on computer fanfold, filling in and tearing off the order section, and sending it back. Some aspects needed to be handle out-of-band (e.g. if you designed new warships I believe they were verified legal manually -- one of my friends was given free play in exchange for verifying ship designs -- and then entered into the system).
I had a similar experience with WoW, except that mine was pre-launch. After following it for some time, it was announced that cities could not be captured and I realized it was just not going to be a deep enough game to be worth paying attention to anymore.
I did finally run a trial of it earlier this year, after I had tired of Rift and SWTOR, and it was about as vapid as I expected; I got to level 20 and stopped.
How did you find it in relation to Rift and SW:TOR? I tried the free version of Rift and found it cool but not worth a monthly fee. I got a few WoW characters up past level 50 a long time ago, but the only other MMO style game I've played since then would probably be Hellgate: London.
Unremarkable. Of the three, I'd rate SWTOR the highest because (1) crew skills are an interesting mechanic and (2) the sheer overwhelming quantity of effort they put into the story was palpable and very impressive for an MMO. I'd like to see a new MMO borrow the crew skill concept and take it to the next level; it was under-exploited in SWTOR. The story made it enjoyable as a single-player experience, but it was otherwise meh. (I didn't finish any storyline, though I did make progress on all 8. My consular nearly finished, but I quit.)
With Rift, the invasion mechanics feel like something I'd enjoy, but that's probably it. I find myself feeling a bit lost about the mix-n-match class structure, but that is more a lack of research on my part than Trion's fault. The invasion mechanic is probably just like EVE's incursion mechanic. Neither was novel to me, though I had never seen it done in formal phases before. (I have experienced masses of suddenly-spawned enemies in GM-directed waves.)
And in WoW... all I experienced was the 1-20 grind of quest lines and vague storyish backdrop. I didn't have a build worth remarking on or any hint of the endgame, so I'm sure my experience is easily dismissed by people who believe you need to be level 80 before you're fit to judge the game. /shrug
I've never tried Hellgate. I did try out The Secret World for a little, but horror as a genre bores me (existential terror doesn't really do anything for me), and I found it hard to figure out what to do in a lot of cases. I didn't put a lot of effort in it.
I actually made it a point not to focus on the brief and rare aspects. Exceptional events that make headlines are, by their nature, exceptional and often glossing over a lot of the necessary and boring foundation that makes it possible.
My chief advice for playing is to find a good group of people with whom to try to achieve something specific and ambitious. You're probably not going to make any headlines, but you're a lot more likely to have fun despite the grind.
But I wish you hadn't responded! I suddenly want to be 14 again so bad it's hard to get back to work on the app I'm building ;-(
EVE will be around for a few years, I hope. And by then I should be able to play it.