EVE Online is a psychologically competitive arena dressed up in internet spaceship garb. CCP Games devised a sandbox where you can never be fully safe, pushing people to seek safety in numbers. As those number increase the pack mentality takes hold, causing all sorts of drama, especially in 0.0 security space (null-sec). Here in outlaw space, the players are the judge, the jury, and the executioners. No group is given a pass. Even the perceived weakest alliances can field multiple dreadnaughts, carriers, several supercarriers and potentially a titan or two. The largest and most fearsome alliances are not impossible to beat, as the Hero coalition proved days ago when they humbled Pandemic Legion. This is the home of the player-made Empires that, for years, have generated the only lasting content – the stories of those that experienced it first-hand.
Everyone knows about null-sec drama but some players won’t read about it because it makes no difference to them in their everyday life in EVE. Many avoid null sec for a variety of reasons: intimidation, boredom, politics, commitments, been-there-done-that, etc. Some players don’t like the “meta game” itself and play full screen with sound, using in-game tools only. (Psst, let me know if that sounds like your corp, I’m looking for a quiet home!)
Players working for faction war corporations refer to their own influence map instead of the usual null-sec map. Dust players visit Dotlan to learn about districts, not stations. Lore or role-players listen to the always-excellent Hydrostatic Podcast, or explore with EVE Travel. Wormhole corporations write & read their own blogs, and low sec corporations go about their business without caring what null-sec is doing. There is plenty of room in New Eden. Not everyone has to be a pawn in other players’ political machinations.
On the other hand, there are people that read all about EVE and never log in; the most exciting game you never play, according to Polygon. EVENews24, TheMittani, and the original EVE-Tribune get thousands of visitors daily. A simple fascination with one story can lead to hours of researching into obscure blogs from a decade ago. Thankfully the time-lapse versions of the Verite maps (south & north) give a rough idea of how the tides of influence have ebbed and flowed over the years. At some point, the book “A History of the Great Empires of Eve Online” will become available that will hopefully connect the lineages of player built empires.
Null-sec may have the entities that have influenced the rest of EVE most significantly, but the most fascinating stories in EVE are the small ones. Online, you can still find the “Murder Incorporated” article that got me started and as recently as the Crius expansion, reports on all sorts of underhanded dealings, like racketeering. CCP launched EVE: True Stories competition which led to the graphic novel of the same name. The video masterpiece, that was basically an EVE feature film, called Clarion Call 3 about wormhole warfare can be found on the Rooks and Kings YouTube channel, along with Clarion Call 1,2, and 4. These are essentially propaganda pieces from a very dramatic Lord Maldoror, but the quality is quite good. Finally the Clear Skies series (1, 2, 3) is an epic series of videos that plays like proper evening entertainment. Watch Clear Skies to get a feel for the way EVE used to be.
As the much-loved “This is EVE” trailer demonstrated, players enjoy hearing themselves have fun. That fun is enhanced, with the events seared into the pilots’ memory, when they are involved in a meaningful part of a larger story woven through the universe of EVE Online.
