It would take some time for me to sit and count how many new games I have tried out in my gaming life. Especially as I am older than most of my fellow players, so my experience in gaming goes further back than a lot of them. All of those past experiences had many things in common: the starting area. The starting area in a game such as EverQuest, my drug of choice for many years, is filled with quests that don’t take you very far out until you get your legs under you. You receive your first quest to go out and kill some mob a certain amount of times in an area that really equates to your backyard and ever so slowly you move further and further out in an ever widening radius from your home area.
Soon you find that the only times you go back to the starting area that you once called home is to help noobs or laugh at them. Or both.
It’s at this point that you confidently call yourself a veteran and begin your journey into the world in earnest, forever shaking of your noob shell as you spread your majestic wings and fly off. The noobs see this spectacle and use you as an example of where they want to be.
Enter Eve Online. One of the most unforgiving new player experiences most gamers will ever experience. I know, it used to be much worse, and most of the powerful players in the game made it despite the learning curve. That doesn’t excuse it though.
I for one had no trouble learning the basic mechanics of Eve, especially with the new system. I did the opportunities and the career agents like a good noob should before adventuring out past where they took me.
However, the moment I arrived outside of the starting area I began getting mails about noob friendly Corps. Naturally, I got excited! I knew the basics and here I had a mailbox full of people ready to teach me the advanced mechanics of this mysterious game!
Little did I know how little I knew. I joined one of those “noob friendly” corps.
It didn’t take long before I learned how the tax system worked – the corporation I joined had a 5% tax which may not be much unless you consider I was already making very little isk, how the method of learning was that of anchored target, and how zkillboard was the lifeblood of the Corporation. No one was helpful, likely because 300 of us were all new, and every time I was online the CEO was screaming to join the fleet or be kicked from Corp.
We would go out in Thrashers, that the Corp SRPed, and roam for hours. What roam meant was warp in, anchor on the FC, and shoot the primary. The FC would then get all loot. At the end of the roam was the command to self destruct. This seemed wrong to me. I was losing isk on every roam because the SRP only covered the ship cost minus insurance and worst of all the only thing I had learned was how to buy a Thrasher on Corp Contract, how to watch fleet warps, and how to anchor on the FC.
My skill level and my isk level never grew but my frustration sure did. Finally I bought a few PLEX, sold them in Jita, and came soaring proudly into Low Sec flying the dreaded Daredevil that represented everything I owned and had accumulated in two months of Eve plus the three PLEX.
No one had taught me about station guns or gate guns so when I saw a Corp mate fighting another ship I zoomed in guns blazing. Then the station guns hit me and I freaked out! My fingers wouldn’t work to warp me out fast enough. Before I could react, I was sitting in a pod.
I didn’t expect sympathy, I made a mistake, even if one born from knowledge I did not have, but I did not expect the vitriol. The attacks from the veterans in the Corp about how I was an idiot and had hurt the killboard.
I lost my temper and used some strong language. Then the CEO joined and I figured he would calm everyone down, but no, he had come on only to join in on the attack because he had seen the killboard.
I was close to leaving Eve right then and there but I sucked it up and I thought about how it must feel to others not as versed in being trolled or used to being torn apart like that. Many would not have given a second thought to quitting.
The bigger point though was that had I known what the killboard was or how important it was to this Corp I wouldn’t have joined them at the time. I was, and still am, a noob. I want to go out and learn lessons the hard way and beat myself up, pick myself up, and keep moving forward and learning.
It is my opinion that you can’t learn if you don’t break it and have to fix it.
So now I tell people not to rush into joining a Corp because of my experience. Learn some of the mechanics of the game, talk to others on Reddit, watch youtube videos, or whatever you have to do. Eve is notorious for not hand holding, but is also pretty notorious for players smacking the hands of noobs.
Unless you join a Corp/Alliance you know is actually noob friendly, such as Eve Uni, I say wait until you can make an informed decision about who you want to join and where you want to be so that you can actually learn and not just become an FC’s drone with no understanding of why you’re doing what you’re doing.
