Eeeehhhh…
Ok, so here’s the deal. The ‘story’ of Eve is completely player generated. Oh, sure, there are missions, and faction things going on, but it’s all irrelevant. This spoken as someone who was a solo mission runner. I was in a corp, and did get involved in a few non sovreignity skirmishes, but it was never my game. I was a care bear type, my gig was flying Tier 2 cruisers and being the ultimate wingman. Find some miners being harassed by pirates, and help out. Get a corp ally who is stuck on a mission? Run over and clean out the problem.
But that is never the story of Eve. The story is the things that play out over weeks and months, often outside of the game. The sleeper agents, the betrayals, the mega wars. That’s where the ‘true’ game of Eve is.
And it’s not something you would ever experience 95% of the time. Even for those players deep in PVP, in claiming systems, in player stations and titans, they spend most of that time in low level affairs. Those big world shaking events only happen rarely. It happens in the background over alliance forums, chat services, and email. It happens when people aren’t even logged into the game.
In fact some of the biggest movers, like the Mittani, claim that they rarely actually log in to do their thing. Wheels behind wheels and such. Big alliance battles may take weeks to arrange, and that is all done outside of the game.
but you can read about it, follow it, and enjoy it without ever participating. And if you are a tourist, that’s about the best to hope for. It sounds like, as I was, you aren’t able to commit to the realities of those big events, the hours on demand to arrange and participate in a battle. Lots of work for rare payoffs, you see.
But there is a place in the game for you. There are ways to get in on the deeper aspects. The corp I was in I would often arrange and host ‘friendlies’ between allies. Competitions like cost limited frigate tourneys. ‘here, kit out any frigate you want for $100k isk, single elimination bracket’. Suicide runs into deep space. Guerilla mining in someone else’s territory, looking for the rarer elements, one or two miners, a transport, and a few ‘heavies’ at the gates. I’d fly a stealth bomber and wait.
But if you are expecting to experience some meaningful story for yourself, firsthand, you’ll probably be left cold, sadly.
I loved my time with eve, over 10 years ago. I do miss the experience, but I also would never go back. However I do keep my eyes out for when big things go down, always love hearing about the alliance game.
