Never the less, within the first 14 days trial I learned a lot of the newbie killer ganker griefer etc. game which should break the nerve of any sensible people there not wanting to kill or pvp at all.
I don't like pvp in the original sense of fighting against another player. Really, I hate it mainly because I'm so darn bad at it. But in honesty's sake, you cannot say that EVE is a PvP game at all. It's a ship versus ship, and the one with a ship that's better fitted for PvP will win. Most likely in the firs few seconds to begin with.
I was lucky (?) enough to be asked to join a rookie (newbie in the game) corporation (guild) within the first few days: I had only a couple of starter missions under me, I had just started to get the hang of the game and I was 'ordered' to fly over to another part of the world. Exciting and adventurous!
Now, to gain the first few million ISK's (gold) in the game aren't too hard to come by: just by completing the rookie missions (quests), you'll be netting some couple of million ISK's and few nice - and later on handy - starter ships. But by joining a carebear corporation you can be netting some 12-25 million ISKs a mission, as they will be most likely running level 4 mission to which you have absolutely no chance of getting before arduous grinding on the lower level missions.
So when the 14 days was over I was sitting on about 25 million ISK's with six reasonably fitted ships and a character with about 700k skillpoints. On the skill side the toon was a real rookie, just barely able to do anything really, but what really helped was the rookie corporation (Rookies Academy) which helped us newcomers to learn the basics, some neat features you won't find on your own (or understand they are even there before someone tells you about them!) and given us a base to run those missions in a team.
I deleted the toon after being scammed in the local market (Auction house): I tried to transfer my money to the 30 days account by putting up a trade of one scrap metal at an obscene high price, and somehow someone posted exactly the same priced item while I was changing toons... Result was, that I bought obscenely expensive piece of scrap metal and lost the money.
Boo-hoo.
Now the 30 days toon is about 9 days old now, and it has been in a war for the last 4-5 days. Here comes my point why Tobold's assertation about the PvP was very much wrong: Rookies Academy consists mostly of rookies whose characters (accounts) are around 2-20 days old, and the oldest couple of characters are about 1-2 years. The aggressor consists of 11 war hardened pilots whose accounts are anything between 2-4 years old. Guess what?
The Rookies kicked their butt for over a day, killing four ships within one day at a local station. The aggressor killed our ships whenever they could reach us, but when there were enough Rookies around the scales were tipped.
Want to know why?
Because the 50 odd rookies work as a team, full of spirit and knowledge that it will hurt the aggressors pride to lose even one ship to the less than month old rookies in their light frigates and missile boats!
What I love in EVE the most is the voice chat. The integrated voice chat beats that of WoW day in day out anytime, and rivals Ventrilo and TS (that I remember of) easily. I would be so bold to say it surpasses them. So the 50 odd pilots are on the same Fleet (raid) channel, giving hints, guidance and information about the war going on, rejoicing over the victories and successes as well as sharing the pain of someone getting podded (killed after their ship is blown to smithereens).
The beginning of the 30 days with the war and concentrated effort of the Rookies Academy has shown to me that the MMO's should be more about the social team work (which is imperative for success in the harsh EVE kind of environment unless you are a veteran pilot knowing the nooks and crannies) and co-operative effort.
I think I might activate this account after the trial is over.
PS. I still do play WoW though. One of my last weekend's highlights was a few hours run with my RP-toon, Rurvi, who finally got that cursed Arra'chea down and got the blessing of High Chief. This run, however, reminded me how WoW is a Massive Single Player game in the core, with the Multi-Player being so much optional now a days. Think about it: you get the quest to Ragefire Chasm in Thunderbluff at level 10, but you can use the dungeon finder from lv15 on?! And Ragefire Chasm is in Orgrimmar, beyond the Barrens, where your toon will almost certainly be beaten to pulp at least once if you are not extremely lucky or careful. Oh, yes, and there were only 1 character in Mulgore during the whole time.
That being my Rurvi. Talk about MMO...
