Anybody here play EVE-Online ? (in Off-topic)

That's where I personally come from (as in, somebody in my corporation there mentioned playing CB a long time ago, I think he said he quit playing shortly after CB2 appeared or something to that extent).
Just wondering if anybody else plays it over here, since it's quite similar in many ways (that is, strategy being much more important as wealth or time played).

I did play it its an awesome game, but it just took alot of time so i stopped

Well, it takes just as much time as you're willing to put into.

I've been playing it for roughly 2 years now, and for the past year or so, I haven't been doing much other than "organisational" stuff (I'm the CEO of a PvE-oriented corp) and off-line market orders trading.
Heck, my account payment is fully supported by in-game profits (it's "legal" to buy game time cards for in-game money, but "not legal" to buy or sell in-game money for real money directly, unlike in CB), and still have a few billion ISK in the pocket right now.

i mostly just play free online games or non-monthly payment games e.g. i'm fine with paying for CB upgrades, since they're not monthly or w/e

I started EVE about 2 months ago. It's pretty good, and able to scale well for someone who doesn't have a lot of time to dedicate to it (like me).

i played in the past. i especially liked the music and graphics. i would have to say that eve was one of the more relaxing mmorpg's i have played. it is definitely one to try if you have never done so before.

Actually, they've taken the graphics up a notch (or two, or ten) recently, they've been running with a mostly software-rendering client from 2003 until late last year.
New client released in late 2007 has a "premium" version (well, it's still "free", it's just a larger download) that supports and actually uses Shader Moder 3.0, and it looks absolutely stunning.

Heck, they've (almost?) started distribution over Steam, and Steam users supposedly get 21 day trials (as opposed to the "regular" 14-day trials) for the game.
Of course, you can just create endless trials if you so wish, heh. That one doesn't cost a penny.

I played for almost 3 years, quit the day I lost my carrier and 3 bpos in an hour. Great game tho, Even has Linux support, [Admin Edit]:unpg but linux support none the less. The trinity engine rocks pretty hard too.

The only problem with it was in order to progress past a point is you are for all practical purposes forced into joining a major alliance

Carriers got ridiculously cheap, you can get some for almost 900 mil nowadays.
But I guess losing a carrier a longer time ago AND three BPOs (hope not some T2 BPOs, *shudder*) can make somebody want to throw his PC down the toilet and flush it down with a hammer.

Yeah, I decided that I would try the trial when it came to steam. Unfortunately, I just started playing City of Heroes, so the chances of me signing up to EVE are pretty small.

Forgot to mention; I have a friend who played it for a while, but got ... perturbed... because he was finally up and running, had a nice ship and was about to really get into the game, and some player with a fully maxed out ship blew him up in 2 shots as soon as he left the hangar. Is this common? If it is, no way in hell I'm going to bother.

It's a little more complicated than that, but yes, under the "right convergence of circumstances", such a scenario would be possible.

What probably happened is that your friend left the "high security" space (1.0 to 0.5 sec) that's getting patrolled by "infinite supplies" of NPC police and had entered "low security" space (0.4-0.1 sec), that only has a few measly turrets here and there to assist players in case some other player decides he wants to do something funny... or even "no security" space (a.k.a. "zero sec" or "0.0") where it's each man on his own.

"Highsec" areas are the core systems, where more than three quarters of EVE's population usually lives even if it's less than one fifth of the total "available space".
The main reason, of course, this sense of "security" granted by the presence of NPC police.

If this attack would have had happened in "highsec" (0.5 to 1.0 security rating systems), whoever attacked him would have had soon after also lost his ship to the NPC police as punishment (yes, they are that nasty, and yes, you can't escape them... if you can somehow escape them and you fail to reported it's deemed an exploit and you might get banned).

Of course, kills in high security still happen every now and then (called "suicide ganking"), but it's usually when somebody carries around something way too valuable compared to how flimsy his ship doing the carying is.
Whoever participates in such a killing loses a bit of security rating and, of course, soon after, his ship.
How soon ? 30 to 90 seconds usually, depending on ship flown and security rating of system (that's the main factor, actually, since once the police actually arrive at the scene, it's usually over in a couple of seconds).
The ones "doing the suicide gank" have to have some friends around in a ship that didn't engage in hostilities that comes in after the "smoke has cleared" and picks up all remains at the scene (if anything's left at all, most stuff tends to blow up with the ship carying it, probably a 25-30% chance for any item to survive or so).


It's a bit of a cruel world, to be honest, but it's fun.
It's kind of like real-world too, in some way... you don't go to a bad neighbourhood, bad gang territory and such, and expect to be left alone (that would be lowsec), or don't go into the deep jungle and expect civilisation's rules to still apply there (that would be 0.0 sec)... just as much as you DON'T go around with a transparent plastic bag carrying one million dollars in cash in it through the middle of a big city and expect all to be fine (that would be "highsec").

As long as you stick to high security space, and don't do anything to invite trouble (like, I don't know, steal from other people's belongings, for instance... or fly an excessively expensive fited ship that blows up when you sneeze at it), then you should be as safe as possible from other players.