Remember how I told you I am playing EVE-Online ? (in Off-topic)

EVE-Online... some of you probably tried it (and most of those who tried it hated it, of for nothing else, then for the "learning curve", which is more of a "learning brick wall"), others would never bother with this type of MMO because it's too competitive, too complex, too boring or too addictive (it can be all of that, depends on person) and last but not least, because NORMALLY it requires a paid subscription (I say "normally", because about 25% of the userbase doesn't pay a single dime, electing to exchange gametime purchased by less effective or less patient players in exchange for prepaid gametime - but thanks to the learning curve, newbie players seldom manage to pull that amount of in-game money before their trial period runs out, and other players find it either difficult or annoying to give away so much game wealth equivalent to how much the going rate of the moment is).

But enough of that "free advertising" (I love the game, been playing it for well over 4 years myself), and on to the reason I bothered to make this thread.

A group of players decided that the dreaded learning curve was indeed too threacherous, and set forth to alleviate that problem somewhat.
What they did is nothing short of monumental : they compiled a list of the BASIC things you'd probably want to know about just about everything of interest to a new (and not-quite-so-new) player, added in just enough advanced information plus tips and tricks to make even older players keep reading (not all players explore all aspects of the game, it's far too large in scope for all but the most determined players to try everything), and put it all in a huge 400-page PDF (actually, it's just the newest incarnation and by far the largest, the previous versions were noticeably smaller).

THEN THEY PUBLISHED IT FOR FREE, when similar (and much less helpful) guides are sold for prices ranging from 30$ to 75$. Yup, they're just handing it out at NO charge whatsoever to anybody who wants it.

NOTE: "ISK" is the name of the in-game currency (standing for "Inter-Stellar Kredits") and also the international currency symbol for the Icelandic Kronur (the game devs being an Icelandic company).
http://www.isktheguide.com
This is where you can find the newest versions, they keep updating it whenever they can, and the download links.
Small warning : the file is quite large (this version's ZIPed PDF is about 56 MB).

http://go-dl.eve-files.com/media/corp/HUN/ISK_2.01_ENG.zip
This is the direct download link to the current version (to save you a few extra clicks, also the default download is in torrent version, those that can't or don't want to use torrent, the above link is not obvious since it's in slightly smaller font, to save bandwidth on the host).


The guide itself is a work of beauty (in my opinion, anyway), it shows how much effort these guys put into it... not only does it contain massive amounts of helpful information, the "production value" (look//aspect) is on par (or even above) many game manuals I have seen.
If nothing else, even if you ever tried the game before and din't like it, taking a look at the guide might be at least entertaining, if not time well-spent.
ANY PERSON THAT EVEN THINKS ABOUT TRYING OUT EVE-ONLINE SHOULD AT LEAST TAKE A GOOD LOOK AT THIS DOCUMENT.
They can thank me later :P

Did I mention I love the game ?
And how awesome the guide looks ?
I'm proud of those EVE players, even if I don't know them in person :)

A small "in-joke" picture that became infamous shortly after being exposed to the general EVE-Online forumgoers...

*sigh* not even a negative response ?
I get it, 66 MB of data is quite a lot, but still :P

...

Side-note, my brand new machine arrived (parts, of course) two days ago, assembled and test-fired it up yesterday (holy mother of processing power, my old system looks like a snail in comparison), today it's "finish configurations and move all data over" day, before I reinstall the OS on the old PC and make it ready for somebody else.

I recommend nobody plays EVE.

Never played eve simply because I was not able to at that time. This time how ever I will not because ff14 is due out shortly.

Around 350,000 people across the world would disagree :P

I'm a bitter EVE vet, and do not recommend playing. I might consider it if my main account was not banned unfairly. Plus - having 6 accounts really burned me out.

Sounds like a personal problem.

Most definitely. But EVE feels like a job as opposed to a game to play for fun.

Of course it can feel like a job if you let it... especially if you run 6 accounts at the same time !
I seldom even have a second account (and when I do, it mostly idles anyway)... I think I would go completely mental to manage so many accounts actively, no wonder you feel totally burned out.

Then again, I suppose I have an "unfair advantage", in that I am quite darned rich (in-game-wise, to the tune of an estimated 300 billion ISK, give or take a few billions), and pulled it off with minimal "virtual physical" effort (but a lot of planning and calculating), so I don't have to wage-slave over anything grindtastic ever again (unless I do something monumentally stupid and lose more ISK than a lot of players could only hope to earn in a lifetime).
:P

When do you win?

About the same (but slightly looser) rules and roughly the same timeframe as winning at CB :P

...although I suppose the following CAN count as "winning" :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=uGplrpWvz0I&hd=1

The guide is very slick. I've played EVE casually for several years, and there was plenty of info in there I didn't know.

Our alliance is getting hammered with war decs to the point it's starting to break up a bit. I'm safely squirreled away in wormhole space right now though, so it doesn't affect me much.

It's a struggle to make enough ISK to pay for my second account (I just started up). Kudos on having such a huge pile of game money. That's as close to 'winning' the game as anything I've ever seen! I'd love to know how you did it.

The vast majority of the wealth was obtained via slow long-term trading (using ISK gathered in my old mission-running days), but the largest chunk was heavily assisted by a public bond I ran this past winter (borrowed 69 bil ISK, paid back 83.5 bil, was left with a decent amount of liquid ISK and huge stockpiles of not-yet-sold goods which kept increasing in price heavily after the bond was liquidated).
http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1190285
Those are all the details you could possibly want (including date, time and amounts transacted, heh) ;)

In unrelated news (about my new PC), a semi-relevant screenshot:
http://img838.imageshack.us/img838/2032/thenewmachine.jpg
Yeah, the OS is Win7 Ultimate 64-bit, it just looks that way (all "Win95-ish") because I made it look like that intentionally (don't judge me ! :P)
And no, it's not manually overclocked, that's just the Intel TurboBoost kicking in automatically... I just had Unigine Heaven 2.1 running in the background to ramp up the vidcard/CPU and see how much they heat up.