I have recently begun playing EVE Online. This is because I am a nerd, and I like shooting things with spaceships. Explosions are fun. Everyone knows that.
But more than that, EVE represents a unique object in a world of so few unique objects. The MMORPG world consists more or less of tiny insects scurrying surreptitiously between the feet of a hulking colossus, hoping fervently that World of Warcraft will not deem them a threat and crush them beneath his gargantuan feet. EVE Online, however, isn’t a part of this picture.
As one of the longest running MMORPGs in existence, EVE is unique because it operates in a completely different way than World of Warcraft and most of the others in the genre. Missions, questing and stories do exist, but for the most part, the world is run and operated by players. All of the market sales are player driven and the economy is purely run by people mining, crafting and PvPing. It is a surprisingly well crafted economy in a well crafted game.
What is important about this is that EVE has a devoted playerbase – less, by far than World of Warcraft – but not at all insignificant – of about three hundred thousand people. These people have been running this world, crafting, exploring and building, expanding known space and pushing boundaries further and further. Like Second Life, it is a persistent, player run world, but exists in a completely unique setting.
I think that we will see this come to be the model for a new type of human interaction in the near future – one based around immersive, virtual worlds – while people may denigrate MMOs for being escapist and time-wasting, they are a social interaction in and of themselves, and EVE Online may come to be the mold for future models of this phenomenon.
(And because I’m not too proud to shamelessly self-plug, here are a couple of guides I wrote: 1 and 2)