Friday, January 30, 2009

EVE Blog Banter #4: The Game with the Thousand Faces


Welcome to the fourth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by yours truly. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed here. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

This month's EVE Blog Banter comes to us from Manasi of A Mule in EvE. Manasi asks "How do we, EVE bloggers, adapt to changes as they are thrust upon us (speed changes, no more ghost training, all the Dev blogs, etc), or as our lives make playing the game different (more time, less time)?"

Here's my attempt to answer question.



Life, ever changing, always in evolution. And so it is with gaming. Even more so with EVE.

I've been playing EVE Online for almost 5 years now, and over the years so many changes were incorporated into the game that it would most likely feel completely alien if we were to jump back into the game as it was in 2003-2004. And I'm not talking about the content like new ships, new modules, new missions and what not. No, even the way we play the game has changed. Any of you old timers remember the dozens of bookmarks we had per system in order to jump at 0 km near a gate or station.

The list could go on and on and on.

What's truly amazing is to see how much the game has changed and how many of us have stuck with it. We've evolved our gameplay, our interests have shifted from one profession to another. You have to give to CCP the credit they deserve in providing us with close to 2 FREE expansion every year since launch. This has aloud the game, or should I say, the world of New Eden, to evolve graciously over time. In doing so, it's allowed its player base to evolve with the game as well. As I recall, 20% of the players who were there at launch, are still playing the game. And anyone who's been playing for over 2 years will probably be playing it in 10. That's dedication, that's change management. That's EVE Online.

But there's another level to this. The personal one. The Real Life side to this equation.

When I started playing the game, I was living in an apartment, in downtown Montreal, with no children. Now, I own a house (well a small part as the rest will be the bank's for a number of years still), live in the suburbs, and am a proud father. You can imagine that this change in my lifestyle had a big impact on my gameplay. And it has! Three years ago I played between 20 to 30 hours a week, easily! Today, I'm lucky if I get 10! But my style of play, as well as where and how I get my satisfaction playing EVE has changed as well.

Today, the EVE Blogging Community and my involvement as a writer and podcaster makes up for a good part of what I get out of EVE. Now, I can already here some of you say that that's not really playing the game. I'll give you that. But I'm still getting an amazing experience out of it, and whenever I log in, do some trading, get a few missions done, or help out the corp with a mining operation, I feel as though I'm part of different world.

Believe me, you don't have to go pew pew and blow up a ship to get that thrill!

Participants:

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

so, how exactly do you get in on this blog banter thing?

oz

Anonymous said...

Yes! OZ has a good question there...

How do you get on the official roll?

Quintrala said...

Well... you could sort of invite yourself and then ask nicely to be on the roll.

Please, may I? ;)

CrazyKinux said...

Guys, just do as @Quintrala has done, but send me an email as well so that I can include you in the Banter group!

OZ and Gabe, I've added you already!

Anonymous said...

CK thanks as always mate. I knew there was a reason I liked Canadians :) You are very right when you talk about how both the game play and the game have evolved together to allow people to change their play style and still play EvE.

Anonymous said...

No need to invite yourself, CK sees all !!!

Bahamut said...

Great topic as usual, though I think I took it differently than others.

It's amazing how many years this game can be a part of your life and not feel like a waste.

Myrhial Arkenath said...

No more to come? I wrote my piece and submitted my link yesterday, would have thought that was still within the deadline :\