MMORPGs are a very divisive brand of gaming, those on the inside swear by them, those on the outside often malign them as wallet siphoning time sinks that reduce people to depraved shut-ins with catheters taped to their legs. Heavyweights like WoW at least manage to look reasonably exciting in trailers and gameplay videos (and South Park episodes) but when you reach even more specialist fare like the number-crunching, asteroid mining flow-chart bonanza that is EVE Online the MMO community begins to warp from a subset of dedicated gamers to an entirely different species with a kind of ingrained agoraphobia. Speaking as someone with some distant, but still significant experience in the game, EVE is very complicated, very uninviting to newcomers and very commitment-dependent. It’s not something you can play casually. It’s a space exploration sim that allows you to fly around mining, making money or just blowing other people up.
Beneath that though there are staggering levels of depth, with internally run corporations, factions, shysters, pirates and all out wars. Back when I was playing it about 6 or 7 years ago I was part of a very large, very unfriendly pirate fleet and I remember getting an immense satisfaction out of simply flying through a heavily populated area, flanked by dozens of other heavily armed troublemakers and watching everyone else immediately warp away in a mad panic. It was like being in a pride of lions. Space lions. With lasers. That’s the appeal, any number of crazy, amazing things can happen at any given time and the developers have reflected that better than ever before in the trailer below. It shows various in-game events being voiced-over by player intercom chatter. You hear players issue fleet commands, express their excitement about a new quarry or upgrade and shriek with surprise as a gigantic titan warship warps into the middle of a heated battle.
It’s the kind of thing that draws on the appeal of gaming as an entity, rather than just EVE Online. Creating living, breathing worlds. EVE has only gotten steadily more popular in the past few years and with the increasing graphical touch-ups, world expansions and patches it’s received, it’s better than ever. This trailer expertly demonstrates how players in EVE create their own drama, whether they’re piloting a mining ship trying to make an honest living, protecting the interests of a corporation or preying on unsuspecting victims, it’s all unscripted, unpredictable and unrelenting. I stopped playing EVE because I couldn’t keep up with the PC gaming race anymore, but if you’ve got a half-decent rig and a thirst for adventure, watch the trailer and you mind find yourself frantically signing up.
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