Wednesday, November 26, 2008

EVE Blog Banter #2: Space, the Final Frontier...


Welcome to the second installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. 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 Brinelan over at The Shard. He asks: What drew us into EVE, what keeps us playing the game and what brought us back if we've ever left?

I was born in 1971, at the end of the Apollo Space Program. By my second Christmas, man had stopped walking on the moon. As I grew up over the next few year, I felt out of touch with the era I was living in. As a child I dreamed of being an explorer, discovering new lands, new frontiers.

But it seemed I was in between two such great periods in the history of man. The Chinese sailed the oceans and explored the world during the 14th century with their great imperial fleet. The European did the same over the next 2 centuries in their smaller sailing ships. By the end of the 18th century, every major land mass had been discovered and less and less new territories were up for grabs. As for the next phase of exploration on this scale, the manned-space exploration, it will not happen for at least a few decades, if not a century or two.


At this point, you may be asking yourself, where's he going with this? And you'd be right in asking that question.

So lets get back to it.

Here I am, a young lad living in the 70s, stuck between dreaming of sailing with Cristoforo Colombo or Amerigo Vespucci on their exploration of the Americas, of discovering the great Aztec civilization (see here), of seeing the greatness of feudal Japan (see here), and between dreaming of being a colonist on Mars (see here, here, here and here), of establishing a settlement on Europa, or of being first to set foot on a planet in a new solar system.

Today, I'm still torn between these two dreams, but I've got a place where I can catch a glimpse of what it must be like to explore new worlds, new systems, to conquer new regions of space, to build an Empire. This place is New Eden, the universe is EVE Online.

The Americas of the 1400s will never exist again, and the chance of moving my family to Mars in the next few years is pretty much null. But in New Eden, I can claim sovereignty over a whole region of space with the help of my Alliance. I can setup a space station and establish trade with others as a member of Phoenix Labs. I can dream of being an immortal, a capsuleer.

That's what brought me to EVE and part of what keeps me playing.

What also keeps me playing and pulls me back in every time I stray away, is the EVE Community. Over the last 4 years of experiencing the virtual universe that is New Eden, I've become friends with countless people, who were but strangers before and now now friends with whom I engage with daily. And though this may also be true to other MMOs out there, is even more so with EVE's one-server-one-universe design.


I'd be lying if I also did not consider the visual aspect of EVE Online. Let's be honest, EVE is gorgeous! It was when it first came out in 2003, and it still is today! The artists and developers at CCP Games have done an amazing job of continually improving the graphics (and features) of EVE. We often take it for granted as were playing, until we hop into another MMO, and are are struck by the sheer beauty that is EVE in comparison. I've got over 2000 screenshots to prove my point! (see Trinity I screenshots) (see Trinity II screenshots).

Now if you'll excuse me I've a universe to conquer!

So, what lures you to New Eden?


Participants:

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dude, great piece of history there.

When I as a younger lad, being born in 1973, I had wanted to fly in space. I wanted so much to be on the first Space Shuttle flight. We used to built mock ups with all the junk wood we could find in the neighborhood. We would pretend we would blast away into the stars.

For me, EVE is the second best thing.

Bahamut said...

Great post. It seems you're like me. Someone born into the wrong era.

I bet that's pretty common with EVEers. EVE is almost a support group for people like us.

Anonymous said...

Lets be honest, who doesn't want to fly spaceships in RL! :D
Great sentiments, CK, and as good a reason as any to keep coming back to Eve.

Carole Pivarnik said...

Great write up CK. One of these days, EVE will have evolved into a virtual reality experience that will be *just like* flying a real spaceship. Or at least, one can hope!

orphenshadow said...

Hey,
We just put up our corp/blog website up. We will be blooging mostly covering faction warfare from the perspective of a caldari FW corp.

http://www.flyezco.com