Skip to main content

EVE again, if only briefly

I am very much not in an mmo mood at the moment but when EVE sent me an invitation for a free welcome back week plus offered me the free gift of a very special ship it was hard to say no.

Kudos to CCP on their installation process. No marathon patching session was involved. Just download a 2Gb client, install it and you are in the game. The graphics (especially planets) are now prettier than I remembered but I experienced quite a deal of lag. Some of this happened in relatively unpopulated systems so I wonder if my four  year old gaming computer is struggling with the new finery. Lag during a space battle  can mean death unfortunately so I will experiment with options to try and make it go away.

Ah ... the agony and the ecstasy that is EVE. How quickly it all comes back. This game really is a nerd nirvana. Although I have forgotten what I was up to before I quit I logged in to Marb Pelico find that he has stuff stored all over the place. Hundreds and hundreds of pieces of stuff much of which he can't use so I can only assume he bought it in the hope of making a profit. I have no idea whether prices have risen or fallen but I set about trying to collect it all and sell it. Marb has zero trading skill so every transaction requires that he physically travel to the location of the goods many of which are in rather dodgy parts of low security space.  Fun times. I have another character parked in Jita, a trading alt as I recall and then I have my wild child, an un-trained alt in a cheap frigate who is wandering around lawless 0.0 space. I will try and fix the lag issue before resuming her adventure though because lag + gate camp is a quick route to a resurrection couch.

Do I really want to go back to an mmo again, even if it is the magnificence of EVE? Probably not, I am in a single player place at the moment, very content with my own company. Still it is nice to get a free gift although I am in agreement with Tipa on this: mine is staying in a hangar for a year or so until I can sell it for a small fortune.

Comments

Stabs said…
It sounds like they are using a streaming client. That downloads a bit of the game then downloads more in the background as you play.

It makes the initial install much more palatable but lags you when you first go to a new area (as it has to download). That's going to make life hard for your 0,0 explorer if that is indeed what is going on.

Regarding prices I never worry about what I paid for it. Yesterday's prices are irrelevant what matters is what I can get for it now. On the other hand you can check Price History in the Market interface. There's a tab in the Sellers/Buyers window.

I do a lot of trading in Eve and I (almost) never check it. If I have 1000 foozles and I can get 30 isk each I'd rather have the 30k than worry that I could have got 60K had I sold them last month. I didn't and liquidating assets is more effective than speculating in my opinion. Waiting is no guarantee that the price will go back up.
Jayedub said…
I would definitly give EVE another try if it wasn't so overwhelming for me. The tutorial is fine, it's whats after that I have no idea what to do.
mbp said…
Hi foks.

@Stabs - it turned out to be a graphics issue. Reducing the graphics sliders from high to medium solved my lag completely. I even flew in to Jita today and experienced no lag on zoning in or undocking from Jita IV 4, the busiest station in EVE.

I am just selling stuff for whatever I can get but the problem is it is scattered all over New Eden - major pain flying around to collect it all.

@Jayedub the sandbox nature of EVE means that you kind of have to set you own goals. A good starting goal is to try and do a few level 1 missions. That will teach you a bit about equiping a ship and flying it. Be prepared to lose a few ships though.

Popular posts from this blog

Android Tip 3: Sharing a Folder between multiple users of an Android device

Android has allowed multiple user logins for quite a while now. This is can be very useful for tablets which are shared by family members. Normally Android erects strict Chinese walls between users preventing them from using each others apps and viewing each others files. This is a useful security feature and ensures your kids don't mess up your work spreadsheets when screwing around on the tablet and should also prevent them from buying €1,000 worth of Clash of Candy coins on your account. Sometimes however you really do want to share stuff with other users and this can prove surprisingly difficult. For example on a recent holiday I realised that I wanted to share a folder full of travel documents with my wife. Here are some ways to achieve this. 1. If you have guaranteed internet access  then you can create a shared folder on either Dropbox or Google drive. Either of these has the great advantage of being able to access the files on any device and the great disadvantage of bein

Portal 2 two screen coop on one PC.

I mentioned before that I intended to try Portal 2 in "unofficial split screen co-op mode. Well split screen on a small computer monitor is a recipe for a headache especially when the game defies gravity as much as portal. However a minor bit of extra fiddling allowed us to drive two seperate screens from one PC. The Steam forums describes a complicated method of doing this that I couldn't get working so this simpler method which worked for me might be of use to someone. 1. First I followed the instructions in this post to get split screen multi-player working: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1847904 A minor issue not mentioned is that you need to enable the console from the keyboard/mouse options menu I am using keyboard and one wired Xbox360 controller as suggested. Getting the controller to switch to channel 2 was tricky at first but as Chameleon8 mentions plugging it out and in again during loading works. The trick for me was to do the plug / p

Lotro: The Forgotten Treasury

Throg joined a Kinship group for the Forgotten Treasury instance last night. It was an enjoyable change from the solo questing that the now level 55 dwarf champion has been mostly doing so far in Moria. Some members of the group had tried and failed to clear the Treasury before so we knew it would be challenging but we were lucky enough to have a well balanced group with Guardian, Minstrel, Lore Master, Hunter, Burglar and Champion (Throg). Throg (level 55) and the minstrel (53) were both below the 56ish level of the instance but the others were all higher so it more or less balanced out. [SPOILERs ahead] It is a well designed enjoyable instance set in a circular chamber with balcony around. As you enter, a boss absconds to a locked side chamber with his treasure leaving the fellowship to clear trash ringed around the balcony. Once the trash are cleared you have access to a puzzle which must be solved in order to open the locked door. Clearing the (including six mini bosses) also get