EVE-Online

I think I better cancel that Everquest order. EvE is stunning. Well, that is four hours later. The first hour was spent in total confusion, wondering how this game has any subscribers whatsoever. The learning curve is huge, and the windowed interface - well - lots of draggable windows is a bad idea. I with they all automatically docked to something, anything, because mostly, windows all over the place means you get less not more access to the data you need. I spent a good 15 minutes with the tutorial window stuck under some other control bar, wondering how to get it out again. The chat interface especially seems to be the most inefficient use of space possible, with huge icons representing the players faces causing all the text to become quite seperated vertically. Frankly, Jumpgate with its 5 lines of text overlayed on the top of the screen had a more usable chat interface.

But then, I got with some UMEC buddies from Jumpgate, they gave me some tips - like how to get my character training some skills - and some equipment - lasers, and I started marching through the training missions.

Skills deserve a bigger mention. The skill system in EVE works in a devious way. Each skill you have can be trained up to 5 times. To get new skills you buy them. The clincher is, skills take time to train. Real time. The skill says "Train this skill to level 2 in 5 hours 31 minutes". If you start that skill training, well, it starts doing its thing. You can now sit in station, go missioning, or even log right out. In 5 hours 31 the skill completes training. This means that, while playing, you want to be training is skills that train up quickly, so you can train up several skills over the session. When you log out, you want to choose a skill thats going to take a long time to complete - ideally exactly the right number of hours before you will get a chance to log in again and choose a new skill - because you CANNOT queue training! You *must* log in to choose the next skill.

Next, this game DOES have a high coffee factor. That is, the universe is huge - when travelling you pretty much select your destination, lay in a course, and activate the autopilot. The autoppilot then warps you through each sector to the jumpgate that takes you to the next sector along the route. Unless you are flying through hostile space... this is a great time to go grab some coffee, have a bath, or use the ingame browser to download some pr0n.

A huge universe, a lot to learn, a confusing user interface. But a set of tutorial and training missions that get you into the game, each one expanding your knowledge without overloading you with new ideas.

BTW: To navigate somewhere in a system, DON't pan around looking at the radar contents. Right click on an empty area and just choose your destination from the drop down list!