A year in space

It's been a little over a year since I signed up for the 14 day Eve Online trial (which is still available through the banner on the left), and it's a good moment to look back. What have I learned and achieved in the past year?

Eve Online is to me, in the end, more engaging than social worlds like Second Life. There are clear targets: goals to achieve, skills to train, ships to fly, missions to run, asteroids to mine, battles to be fought. There is just so much to do! And whenever you get bored by what you do now (mining, anyone?), just switch careers and become a mission runner, a pirate, an industrialist, a freighter.. Eve Online doesn't force strictly defined career paths down their players' throats. It's your future and your choice.

But it's a complicated universe: getting your character up to par, and getting a real appreciation of what Eve is, requires some time and effort. You can, as a very young player, already affect the course of things if you want to; you can fly big ships with powerful guns in short order, if you focus on that. But, usually it's best to invest a few months of broader skill training in a new character, in order to get the more advanced and useful skills; your in game experience will improve considerably.

As for achievements: I passed the 500 million ISK mark yesterday. Of course I could have been there some time ago, but I chose to invest in skills and ships instead. Still, it's a nice waypoint. I also fought and survived a few pvp engagements, did level 4 missions solo, participated in level 5 ones, been in a wormhole fighting sleepers, found another nice corp - and much more.

Still on my todo list: I have not been to 0.0 space. I live in high sec, empire space; incidentally I travel through 0.4 or 0.3, but that's about it. Lowsec doesn't appeal to me, and even though we have a friendly alliance in 0.0, I haven't made the trip yet, so that's one I'll have to tackle this year. Also still on the list, is training the skills for other races' battleships. I can fly all frigates, but as for cruisers and higher, it's only Gallente. This year I want to be able to fly other races' battleships as well. And: covert ops! Lots of skills to train for that one, but definitely worth it.