Background

Set more than 21,000 years in the future, the background story of Eve Online explains that humanity, having used up most of Earth’s resources through centuries of explosive population growth, began colonizing the rest of the Milky Way.

As on Earth, this expansion also led to competition and fighting over available resources, but everything changed with the discovery of a natural wormhole leading to an unexplored galaxy subsequently dubbed “New Eden.” Dozens of colonies were founded, and a structure, a gate of sorts (which bears the inscription “EVE” on the New Eden side), was built to stabilize the wormhole that linked the colonies of New Eden with the rest of human civilization.

However, when the wormhole unexpectedly collapsed, it destroyed the gate as well as the connection between the colonies of New Eden and the Milky Way. Cut off from the rest of humanity and supplies from Earth, the colonies of New Eden were left starving and disconnected from one another; many died out entirely.

Over the millennia the descendants of the surviving colonists managed to rebuild their own societies, but by this time the memories and knowledge of humanity’s origins, of Earth and the Milky Way galaxy, as well as the history of the settling of New Eden, were lost; what little information that survived transmission over the generations was misunderstood, lost in translation, or consigned to mythology.

Five major distinct societies rose to prominence from the surviving colonies, all growing into interstellar spaceflight-capable civilizations. The states based around these societies make up the four major empires in Eve Online: the Amarr Empire, the Caldari State, the Gallente Federation, the Minmatar Republic, and the Jove Empire.

 

Races

The Amarr, a militantly theocratic empire, was the first of the playable races to rediscover faster-than-light travel. In terms of physical proximity, the space occupied by this society is physically nearest to the demolished EVE gate. Armed with this new technology and the strength of their faith in their god, the Amarr expanded their empire by conquering and enslaving several races, including the Minmatar race, who had only just begun colonizing other planets.

Generations later, after the intense culture shock of encountering the Gallente Federation, and in the wake of a disastrous attempted invasion of Jovian space, many Minmatar took the opportunity to rebel and successfully overthrew their enslavers, forming their own government. However, much of their population remain enslaved by the Amarr, and some, having adopted the Amarrian religion and sided with their masters during the revolution, were released from bondage and incorporated into the Empire as commoners in the Ammatar Mandate.

The free Minmatar Republic, taking as inspiration the ideals and practices of the Gallente Federation, is presently a strong military and economic power actively seeking the emancipation of their brethren and all other slaves.

The Gallente and the Caldari homeworlds are situated in the same star system. The Gallente homeworld was originally settled by descendants of the French colonists of Tau Ceti; Caldari Prime on the other hand was purchased by a multinational megacorporation that began to terraform it. The terraforming of Caldari Prime was incomplete at the time of the EVE wormhole’s collapse, however, and the planet remained environmentally inhospitable for millennia.

The Gallente restored themselves to a high-functioning technological society some hundred years before the Caldari, building the first lastingly democratic republic of New Eden in the form of the Gallente Federation. Originally the Caldari composed a member race within the Federation, but cultural animosity between the two peoples spiralled into a war during which the Caldari seceded from the Federation to found their own Caldari State. The war lasted 93 years, with neither nation able to overwhelm the other.

The planet Caldari Prime was initially retained by the Gallente Federation during the war, and did not become part of the new Caldari State. Much more recently, however, a Caldari offensive managed to recapture their lost homeworld, a fact which is viewed with abhorrence by the Gallente, who see the presence of a significant Caldari fleet about the planet as a mass hostage taking.

Both the Gallente Federation and Caldari State are economy- and trade-oriented nations. However, the Gallente favour liberal economic policies, encourage individual entrepreneurship and social democracy, and maintain a progressive approach to social welfare, whereas the Caldari State is organised as a form of statist corporatocracy; the Caldari State itself is owned by and operated on behalf of a few trust-like megaconglomerates.

The Gallente Federation’s official policies regarding multiculturalism and encouragement of diversity attract many immigrants to Gallente space; a third of all ethnic Minmatars reside as citizens there. As the Caldari did not share this enthusiasm for diversity with the Gallente, the Caldari State at the time of its formation found itself at a relative population deficit compared to its Gallente adversary;

rather than encourage massive immigration to and diversity within the State, this population shortage was rectified by a Statewide programme of artificial reproduction, producing a generation of so-called ‘Tube Children’ raised by the Caldari State apparatus to enlarge the labour pools available to the megacorporations that ruled the State.

The Jovians (a non-playable race) were also descended from colonists. Unlike the other races of Eve Online, they maintained a relatively high-functioning technological society after the collapse of the EVE wormhole and did not need to spend millennia recapitulating ancient societal developments as the others did, and while the other four major races were still grounded, Jovian history saw two major periods of spacefaring imperialism.

They expanded outward and eventually turned to genetic engineering in order to mold themselves into a species more suited for deep-space life and long-range interstellar exploration.

Genetic experimentation and manipulation were not without their drawbacks, however: by the time period in which players enter the Eve Online universe, millennia of human genetic manipulation have rendered the Jovians barely recognizable as human; more critically, the Jovian manipulation of their genome has resulted in the eventually fatal “Jovian Disease,” an inherited psychological disorder which, despite the best efforts of the Jovians to reverse it, has affected every individual of the Jovian race and thus crippled their civilization.

Having experienced a catastrophic population decline (the Jovian societal structure is believed to be barely maintained by their immensely-advanced technological systems), the Jovians have effectively retreated to inhabit a region of space inaccessible to outsiders.

In addition to different backgrounds and histories, the races have characteristic philosophies of starship design. Minmatar ships tend to be quite fast but fragile, and rely on their high speed and maneuverability to evade the tracking systems of heavier weapons, while using projectile weapons such as artillery or autocannons, more sophisticated kin to today’s munitions technology.

Amarr ships are ponderous, densely armored, and pack batteries of powerful laser-based energy weaponry. Gallente ships are sleek and designed to favor armor plating; they specialize in deploying fleets of robotic drones while mounting hybrid weapons that operate using superconducting magnets to accelerate mass toward targets at great speed (see Railgun).

Finally, Caldari ships are typically poorly armored and not particularly fast but utilize powerful energy shields, and make extensive use of torpedo/missile launchers and hybrid guns, favoring engagement at extreme ranges. However, there are exceptions to these general rules in each race.

Gameplay

Players start the game by either selecting a previously created character or by creating a new one. Each Eve Online account allows for up to three characters. When a player creates a new character, they start by choosing one of the four playable races – Amarr, Gallente, Minmatar, or Caldari. Each race is further divided into three bloodlines that give characters different pre-defined appearances, which can be finely tuned by the player.

Unlike many other MMOs, where there are numerous copies of the game universe intended to run at once (i.e., servers), Eve Online is functionally a single-universe game. There are technically four copies of the universe running: the main server “Tranquility”, the Chinese-based “Serenity”, the event test server “Duality” that is a semi-public test server, and the test server “Singularity” (also “Sisi”) which is a general, public test server.

A new test server was announced called “Buckingham” to replace “Singularity” as the main EVE Online test server while “Singularity” was used for Dust 514/EVE Online joint testing. As Dust 514 is no longer active, “Singularity” is now the main test server again and “Buckingham” is a closed test server for the CCP developers.

 

Universe

The playing environment in Eve Online consists of more than 5000 star systems, as well as 2500 randomly accessible wormhole systems, taking place in 23341 C.E. Systems are classified by their Security Status, on a decimal scale from −1.0 to 1.0. These systems are categorized into three groups, each determining the response from CONCORD (Consolidated Co-operation and Relations Command) NPC law enforcement units.

Star systems classed as 0.5–1.0 security are considered “high security” and any unauthorized/unprovoked attack by a character on another character anywhere in the system will result in the appearance of law enforcement. These units will attack and destroy the aggressor, and are designed to reinforce in such strength that they will always win an engagement. However, CONCORD is not preventive, but punitive, meaning there is a short window between beginning an attack and getting destroyed where a player (or group of) can destroy another player’s ship.

Systems classified as 0.1–0.4 are considered “low security”, where CONCORD law enforcement units will not destroy aggressors, but do monitor unprovoked acts of aggression and have automated sentry guns in some locations. Unprovoked attacks will flag the aggressor as a free target for other players, and attacks within sight of sentry guns will cause them to fire on the aggressor. Systems classified 0.0 to −1.0 are called “zero space” or “null sec”, and feature no law enforcement; individual systems, or groups of systems, may be controlled by player alliances, up to the creation of player-owned empires reaching across entire “regions” (an aggregate group of star systems).

Wormhole systems are accessible only by wormholes that randomly appear and disappear, and are also lawless space, showing as −1.0. However, player-run corporations cannot claim sovereignty in wormhole systems. Star systems contain different types of celestial objects, making them more or less suitable for different kinds of operations. Typically, players find asteroid fields, planets, stations, stargates, and moons in a system.

Many of the game’s most profitable income sources are found in dangerous null or low security systems, giving players incentive to engage in high-risk, high-reward activities in which they must survive the possible harassment of other players who may also enter the system.

 

Combat and travel

The game’s primary mode of play is flying space ships. Players can dock at stations, where they are safe and can use station services such as repairing, refitting, and the regional market. All space combat takes place in real time at sub-light speeds from around 100 m/s to in excess of 8000 m/s, depending on ship size and setup.

While players can manually control their ships as in space combat simulators such as Wing Commander or X-Wing following the release of the Rhea expansion on December 9, 2014, most opt instead to give commands such as Orbit, Approach or Align to their flight computer, which does its best to comply.

Weapon aiming, however, cannot be done manually; instead, the player locks on to an opponent and orders their weapons to fire, and the result is determined through calculations based on factors such as range, velocity, weapon tracking, and a degree of randomness.

Travel across distances longer than hundreds of kilometers is done primarily with the ship’s Warp Drive, which every ship and escape pod has. The player may also “slow boat” across distances, traveling without warp drive. To warp, the player issues a command to warp to an object greater than 150 km away and in the same star system; after an alignment maneuver, their ship will enter warp.

Warp speeds are measured in astronomical units per second and vary by ship class and fittings. A ship’s warp drive can be temporarily disabled by warp disruption weapons, which is an essential part of combat to prevent a target from escaping.

For most ships, travel between star systems is only possible by using structures called “Stargates”. Each stargate is linked to a partner stargate in another system; most star systems have more than two stargates, forming a network through which players travel. While players can travel to any number of destinations in individual systems, the need to use stargates to travel between systems makes them focal points for combat.

Capital ships may travel either by stargate or by using jump drives, which require another ship to create a “Cynosural Field” which the capital ship can then jump to. While this allows the capital ship to travel instantaneously, it requires a trusted second party (or an alternate account) to create the beacon.

Jump drives also consume fuel (in contrast to stargates, which require nothing), drain the ship of its capacitor, leaving it nearly defenseless until it is recharged, and incur “jump fatigue”, which prevents the pilot from jumping for progressively longer periods of time after each consecutive jump. Titans are also capable of allowing other ships to instantaneously travel by creating temporary bridges to cynosural fields. Black Ops battleships can create similar, but undetectable, bridges capable of transporting only specific types of stealth ships such as Stealth Bombers.

Player-run corporations that claim sovereignty over two null sec systems within range of each other can also set up a jump bridge at a player owned starbase (POS) that is in orbit of a moon. Jump bridges allow instantaneous travel to the other system’s jump bridge, at the cost of using fuel (requiring supply by the owning corporation) scaled to the mass of ships that use them. This also leads to the accumulation of jump fatigue.

As the aging POS systems & code have been phased out of the game, a deployable structure has effectively replaced the old jump bridge. However, unlike the old POS jump bridges, it allows players to customize who may use the gate based on settings such as standings or corporation / alliance affiliation. It also does not need to be deployed in a POS, and as such is often deployed near player owned Citadel structures.

 

Advancement

Unlike other massively multiplayer online games, player characters in Eve Online advance continuously over time by training skills, a passive process that occurs in real world time so that the learning process continues even if the player is not logged in. The skill training queue allows up to 50 skills to be scheduled, with up to a 10-year total training schedule. Before the November 4, 2014 “Phoebe” release, the skill training queue allowed skills to be scheduled to start training only up to 24 hours in the future.

Some skills require other prerequisite skills to be trained to a certain level to be trained, and some skills require more time to train than others; for example, the skill to fly a Titan-class spaceship takes 8 times as long to train as the skill to fly a frigate ship, with a significant number of prerequisite skills.

Until the Odyssey expansion, it was not possible to train more than one character per account at the same time. Odyssey introduced “Dual Character Training”, which allows players to expend a PLEX (see accounts and subscriptions) in order to allow that account to train a second character for 30 days, equivalent to paying for a 30-day subscription on another account to train a single character. Odyssey 1.2 introduced the more generalized “Multiple Character Training” which allows players to expend yet another PLEX to activate this feature for a third character on the account.

 

Economy

The in-game economy in Eve Online is an open economy that is largely player-driven. Non-player character (NPC) merchants sell skill books used by players to learn new skills and blueprints to manufacture ships and modules. NPC merchants also buy and sell Trade Goods. Some Trade Goods are only for trade between NPC merchants while others have a functional use and are not good for trade with NPCs.

The characters themselves gather the necessary raw materials to manufacture almost all of the ships and ship modules in the game. NPC ships can be looted and salvaged for items and materials. Non-player created ships and equipment may be purchased from various NPC factions as a character gains status with them, and can be resold in the in-game economy. The in-game currency is ISK (Interstellar Kredits), which is also the currency code of the Icelandic króna, the real-world currency of Iceland, where the Eve Online development studio is located.

The amount of money or materials in the universe is not fixed and, as such, the economy operates under supply and demand. Market manipulation is possible on a large scale, particular examples being ramping and bear raids. CCP does not issue refunds on in-game purchases. Hence, there is always the risk of certain types of confidence tricks or other scams. The economy is balanced by the automatic introduction of extra materials in underpopulated areas. This encourages a more even spread of players.

The game provides support for the trading of in-game resources, including graphs of item price history, with Donchian Channel and daily average price. Some player characters operate primarily as traders, generating profits through buying, selling, and transporting goods. Others operate primarily as producers, obtaining components or raw materials and transforming them, sometimes on massive scales, into useful items such as weapons, ships, ammunition, items, or various technologies in demand by other players.

Some less combat-oriented players operate as miners or salvagers, collecting and processing ores used in manufacturing or collecting salvage materials to make into items, respectively. Finally, some characters operate as mercenaries or pirates, being paid primarily to be battle-ready and either to attack or defend other profitable enterprises.

Unlike some games such as Second Life, in-game currency is not freely convertible with real world currency. Players may only buy specific in-game items (such as the Pilot License Extension (PLEX), a token worth 30 days of game time) from CCP with real-world currency. The player can then sell the items on the in-game market for ISK (game currency). The reverse process, selling in-game currency or items for real-world money, is prohibited.

The developers’ reasoning for this policy, as related by a CCP representative at Fanfest 2010, is that free interchange of currency causes in-game banking to fall under the same regulatory domain as real-world banking. CCP would rather not place this restriction on in-game behavior, due both to the difficulty of regulatory enforcement and the desire to allow players to create illegitimate in-game banks or Ponzi schemes if they wish to do so.

Commentators have attempted to estimate the value of Eve Online entities in real-world currency based on the current value of PLEX. One such conversion valued a fleet-ready titan (the most powerful ship in the game) at US$7,600,though estimates vary. Generally, no player expends such amounts of real-world currency to acquire such sums of in-game wealth, opting instead to do activities in-game that net high amounts of profit.

In 2007, CCP was the first game developer to hire an economist, Eyjólfur Guðmundsson, to oversee Eve‘s in-game economy. Guðmundsson was previously dean of the faculty of business and science at the University of Akureyri. Eyjólfur Guðmundsson would leave CCP in 2014 to the position of Rector at the University of Akureyri in July 2014.

 

Griefing

Owing to the game’s focus on freedom, consequence, and autonomy, many behaviours that are considered griefing in most MMOs are allowed in Eve. This includes stealing from other players, extortion, and causing other players to be killed by large groups of NPCs.

Only malicious, prolonged and concentrated harassment where no material gain is involved and a few other actions are considered to be illicit griefing by the game’s developers. Escaping retribution by CONCORD, the NPC space police force that punishes criminal activity in higher security solar systems, for criminal actions is also forbidden, as CONCORD is intentionally designed by game mechanics to be unstoppable.

Players and communities

Players have several interaction options when playing Eve Online. Every activity is possible for solo players but larger and more complicated tasks become more feasible for groups, such as pirate clans or corporations.

 

Corporations and alliances

Players can organize themselves into corporations (similar to guilds or clans in other MMOs). Corporations are run by one chief executive officer (CEO) who controls the corporation’s assets. The CEO assigns roles to corporation members such as director, accountant and personnel manager.

Corporations may also band together to form alliances. Corporations and alliances come in different shapes and sizes. Some player groups write press releases about new business openings and send out IPO information to potential in-game venture capital investors. Alliances can control enough star systems that their territory can be plotted on the Eve Online game map.

Alliances based in lawless space often form unofficial political power blocs with other alliances. These power blocs are typically referred to as “coalitions”. Unlike formally established alliances, coalitions are similar in nature to Japanese keiretsu – an informal ‘business arrangement’ in which several corporations band together to provide mutual financial, military and/or industrial support.

Corporations take up numerous business models such as mining, manufacturing or “ratting” (hunting NPC pirates for their bounties and loot). Corporations can levy income taxes on their members, which skim off a percentage of every member’s earnings. Many corporations offer a variety of benefits to their members, such as free or discounted ships, equipment, formal training, and organized corporate group operations.

Among the many activities that corporations can organize is piracy. Actions considered piracy generally involve breaking the in-game law, and can come in a variety of forms. Pirates may camp stargates waiting for other players to arrive, attack players operating in asteroid belts or hunt for players carrying out an NPC agent-assigned mission. Because these activities are considered to be “illegal” within the game mechanics, pirate characters often will have low security status and may even be branded as outlaws by CONCORD.

Likewise, victims of overt piracy may retaliate without intervention from CONCORD, often via an expressed right to destroy the pirate ship (i.e., “kill right”). Although piracy activities are “illegal” within the game universe, they are not against the rules of the game, i.e., there will only be in-game retaliation and punishment for them.

Illegally attacking another player in secure space will result in a loss of security standing; CONCORD, the interstellar NPC police, will arrive shortly to destroy the aggressor’s ship. There are, however, legal ways to attack other players in high-security space.

Whole corporations and whole alliances can officially declare war on (or “war-dec”) other corporations or alliances for a weekly fee, permitting all members of the involved corporations or alliances to attack each other without loss of security status or the intervention of CONCORD. The weekly fee can be eliminated if the war declaration is reciprocated. War declarations will clearly flag a player’s enemies, so the player can determine who can legally attack and be attacked.

 

Demographics

N.B.: Demographic data for this game has not been collected uniformly or regularly.

In March 2006, CCP made a deal with Optic Communications to start working on bringing Eve Online to the Chinese gaming audience. Closed alpha testing was held on a small cluster for some time, with about 3,000 players chosen from an initial pool of 50,000. The Chinese open beta test began on June 13, 2006, and proved to be very popular, gaining numbers comparable to Eve Online’s main server cluster.

In order to avoid the shock of quickly adding thousands of new players to the current server (Tranquility), CCP Games decided to launch Eve in China on its own server (Serenity). In 2011, CCP allowed its licensing agreement with CDC Games, which had acquired Optic in July 2007, to expire. CCP created a new partnership with TianCity to relaunch Serenity on December 11, 2012.

The code base between Serenity (serving China) and Tranquility (serving the rest of the world) is synchronised, so that feature development is distributed to both server clusters, although the game worlds are not connected. Eve Online fully supports Unicode and has a back-end system to enable localization of each and every aspect of the game’s content and UI.

In October 2006, the average age of an Eve Online player was 27, and 95% of players were male. The average weekly playtime was 17 hours, or just under 2.5 hours per day. By May 6, 2009, Eve Online claimed to have more than 300,000 active subscriptions and 45,000 active trial accounts. The total active subscription count at end of 2010 was 357,000 accounts.

On July 7, 2011, CCP announced that it planned to partner with Nexon Co. Ltd. to bring a “fully localized game client and product services for CCP’s award winning… EVE Online” to Japan in the fall. Localized services for Japanese players would enable them to access the game in their native language through the Tranquility server, which currently hosts over 350,000 subscribers from around the world in three languages: English, German and Russian.

On May 5, 2013, Eve Online claimed a new record for the maximum number of simultaneous pilots online with 65,303 concurrent accounts logged on to the same server at the same time. This record was set on the eve of Eve Online‘s 10 year anniversary, and topped the previous record of 63,170 set January 23, 2011. Eve Online typically experiences the highest number of users on Sundays and the peak player records have almost exclusively been broken on Sundays.

 

Player tournaments

During two weekends in July 2006, a live streaming video production called Eve TV covered the events of the 2nd Caldari Alliance Tournament. The tournament pitted three-man teams from the top alliances against each other. Eve TV provided live in-game footage of the battles along with expert commentary.

Analysis of the teams and strategies, interviews with CCP staff and behind-the-scenes specials were also aired between battles. Eve TV was produced and hosted primarily by DJs from Eve-Radio (a player-run streaming radio station) with resources provided by CCP. A total of 95 matches were scheduled, with the Band of Brothers alliance emerging the winner.

The first two weekends in December 2006 saw the 3rd Alliance tournament. This was once again broadcast via live streaming video by Eve TV The tournament saw 40 Alliances pitting five-man teams against each other. Once again, the Band of Brothers alliance emerged as the winner. Of particular note in this tournament was the fielding of an Imperial Apocalypse by the Interstellar Alcohol Conglomerate. The ship was destroyed in the semi-finals of the tournament by the COW (Cult of War) team. A last-minute attempt to arrange an 8 billion ISK ransom for the ship fell through.

 

The fourth Alliance tournament in September 2007 brought several upsets, with Star Fraction defeating Band of Brothers in the second round, using only tech 1 cruisers, and Hun Reloaded sweeping both the semifinals and finals to win.

The two weekends starting February 29, 2008, and March 7, 2008, saw the fifth Alliance Tournament. Eve TV provided coverage via live streaming video. During the six days a total of 40 teams competed in 95 matches. The last tournament’s winner, HUN Reloaded, made its way into the quarter-finals where it lost to Ev0ke alliance, who later became tournament champion after having won all eight of its matches.

The sixth Alliance Tournament was held during three consecutive weekends starting January 24, 2009, and ending on February 8, 2009. A total of 64 teams took part in the qualifying rounds on opening weekend. While the final weekend was broadcast live via Eve TV, the qualifying rounds were broadcast through various Eve Online radio channels. A number of changes were made to the tournament rules.

This was also the first tournament Factional Militias were able to take part alongside traditional alliance teams. In the final match, R.U.R. went up against Pandemic Legion with Pandemic Legion emerging as the tournament winner.

Alliance Tournament 7 took place in September 2009, with Pandemic Legion winning a second successive tournament, beating Circle of Two in the final. Alliance Tournament 8 took place in June 2010, with Pandemic Legion winning for the third time, beating Hydra Reloaded, while Alliance Tournament 9 took place in June 2011, with Hydra Reloaded as the winner in the uncontested final match against Outbreak.

Alliance Tournament 10 took place over four consecutive weekends in July 2012. 64 Teams took part in the Tournament, with all matches being broadcast live on EVE TV. A number of changes were made to the format of matches, which included increasing the maximum number of pilots from 10 to 12. Verge of Collapse were eventually crowned Champions, defeating Alliance Tournament 4 winners HUN Reloaded in the final. The Alliance stunned everyone beating top teams to claim the title of Champions.

Alliance Tournament 11 took place over the course of three weekends in July and August 2013, with Pandemic Legion beating Exodus. in the loser’s bracket, then coming back from a 2–0 score in a best of five match against Hydra Reloaded to win 3 matches in a row and win their fourth Alliance Tournament, and their first victory since Alliance Tournament 8.

 

Volunteer program

The Interstellar Services Department (ISD) is a group of volunteers, made up of subscribed players, who assist in a variety of tasks like answering questions from players, bug hunting and QA testing, covering player-driven news, and writing game fiction. It includes ECAID (Equipment Certification and Anomaly Investigations Division), STAR (Support, Training and Resources), IC (Interstellar Correspondents), M (Mercury), CCL (Community Communication Liaisons), and YARR (Yulai Archives & Records Repository Team).

 

 

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