For the love of EVE. . .

Right so this is totally and clearly OOC as this is an entry for CrazyKinux's 'Why we love EVE-Online' Contest.

Why do I love EVE-Online is a question that's been asked of me and has personally plagued the background thoughts of my mind for the last six odd years that I've been playing the game.

I suppose to start near the beginning would be the best way to approach the question. A miner. Plain and simple and at the time one of the more adventurous professions of early EVE-Online as I went about in an Ibis then shortly thereafter a Bantam loaned to me by a friend. I scoured the high-sec and low-sec systems looking for those few belts of amazing ore that would make me super rich, super fast; never did happen but not for lack of trying.

And that exploring and adventurous feeling is what kept me going and got me hooked in my early stages of the game. While trying to train and get my hands on anything that could help me mine better, I was exploring the then expansive world inhabited by less than 10,000 other people. This exploration took me from Lonetrek to Placid to Heimatar to Pureblind and beyond in my search for mining glory.

Shortly after realizing that hunting and eventually 'chaining' the pirate faction NPC's in the asteroid belts was more profitable, I switched professions to something that gave me the adrenaline rush of combat; back in the day killing cruiser NPCs was a big deal and was harder than hard... it was like hard multiplied by core... hardcore.

This new adventure in roaming the belts playing the good guy of EVE-Online keeping nasty NPC pirates at bay kept the wallet somewhat full as I had to replace ships quite often, but the fun never left. A bit later the trip back into 0.0 space and my first taste of harsh PvP. While exploring the sparsely populated 0.0 regions of space in search of the small NPC spawns I could take out, I got myself killed countless times in the proclaimed 'non-consensual PvP' of EVE.

I shirked from it at first as I had no idea how to go about PvP or where to start, so I went back to low-sec and continued my hermit ways of exploring low-sec for good mining spots and npc areas.

This eventually lead me into PvP as I hooked up with people along the way in some of my first corporations. The cruise missile kestrels and rifters zooming around the screen, spewing contrails of death, and larger cruisers, and the occasional battleship at the time throwing lasers, missiles, and other such nasty stuff had me hooked.

I went out and trained for the most basic of combat skills and went out. PvP in low-sec and eventually 0.0 (pureblind and venal) consumed me for a good few years as I then learned about fleet warfare in Venal, Tenal, and Branch during the GNW as part of the meatshield for Phoenix Alliance... I was killed within the first two minutes of my first fleet fight by LordZap who was in an Apocalpyse which torched my then sorry scrap of a Moa.

My next love came during the same time. Missioning. Oh boy did missions get my rocks off as I could then start flying the amazing battleships that were seen so often in 0.0 space. Huge hulking ships with awesome ability take on virtually anything. Missions also then payed extremely well with a L4 Guristas Extravaganza paying out 60-80 million isk in bounties alone; CCP then gave bounties a kick in the balls and now it's not quite so lucrative on just bounties alone.

Doing missions in high-sec and 0.0 pureblind filled my wallet to levels I'd only dreamed of as a rookie pilot in a bantam mining in low-sec. My dreams were coming true! This game is truly epic! I had a battleship or two, a couple cruisers, and a few frigates for doing just about anything I could think of at the time, what more could I need?!

This round-robin of PvP, which eventually starts to include Piracy, Low-Sec PVP, 0.0 PVP, and the occasional POS bash , and that of missioning to keep in ships kept me going for a few years and still does today.

The grandeur of low-sec and 0.0 space has been diminished now, however the fact that when undocking and going on a roam and not knowing what is lying ahead in wait still gets the blood rushing and adrenaline pumping. Warfare and fleet fights are large and more agressive, mining and exploration more dangerous, missions less profitable but now boosted with LP Stores.

All those things and more have been introduced over the past six years and each time CCP dredges up another free expansion, can't go wrong there and another high point of the game, keeps EVE-Online exciting and fresh; possibly the biggest reason I love EVE-Online.

Every time I think EVE is getting stale CCP changes some quirk in the system which makes it interesting again and keeps me hooked. Now that I can fly 80% of the known ships in-game also helps make the game more fun as I try out new things with different ships to either great success or horrendous results. Either way I've loved EVE from the day I got it roughly 1 month after official release, to now 6 six years later.