Eve Online hits 500,000 subscriptions thanks to Retribution, Dust 514, China and the Battle of Asaka

[BrainDeath]

[QUOTE=Big Dumb American;39750383]EVE is as much of or as little as a grind as you want it to be. Generally the grindy aspects of the game provide moderate, but steady rewards in the form of raw money income, standings (for access to better missions), loyalty points (redeemable for equipment that can be sold or used), and various other rewards. A lot of people use these grindy elements, like missions, NPC hunting, and exploration for safe and steady income.

Course, the alternative is high risk high reward gameplay. Scamming, pirating, fighting, stealing, deep-space industry, wars, and contract. This is what EVE is really about, and it's where all the fun stories come from. You never need to run a mission, ever, if you don't want to. Missions can make it a bit easier to fund this kind of stuff, and to recover from big losses, but they're in no way mandatory to enjoy the real soul of EVE. You can join a corporation day 1, get the basic equipment and skill books you need, and be joining deep-space fleet roams within the week, where you could potentially earn enough money to buy a nearly infinite supply of the little scrappers you'll be flying. Even if you get toasted on the roams, the fleets will usually divvy up rewards.

EVE has two games: Low risk, low reward, heavy grind. High risk, high reward, little to no grind. Most people take a bit of both, but it's not like grinding is an inherent and necessary aspect of the game!

[editline]28th February 2013[/editline]
Scamming doesn't need a grind either, and while the money you make from it can vary, it can net you a satisfying and easy income. The payoffs you can get from it are pretty dope, considering that the only thing on the line is your in-game reputation. My biggest haul from a single scam was nearly 100,000,000 ISK, which is enough to easily buy a few dozen simple scrapper frigates for group PVP. That took me all of fifteen minutes, just to find somebody dumb enough to believe that I would really return his investment. It wasn't even a [I]smart[/I] scam. [I]Smart[/I] scams can earn billions. I remember there was a guy a while back who started a fake investment corporation for a Titan (largest ship class) production facility. [B]He made off with, like, 50+ billion of in-game currency[/B], which in real money terms (compared to game time cards) was equal to over $30,000.[/QUOTE]

Titans4U took in over [I]850 billion[/I] ISK, worth about $45K.

That's a significant portion of even a big alliance's monthly income and more money than [I]God[/I] for any one player assuming you only use it for material wealth. You would never run out of ships as long as you weren't a complete idiot, you'd never need another positive change in your wallet ever again, you could have any ship with any fittings hundreds of times over (as long as it isn't officer fit Vindi's' but really anyone smart enough to pull in 850b won't do that)(or supers but no one looses those anymore anyway).

[Timebomb575]

[QUOTE=Big Dumb American;39748105]
The days and weeks of logging in just to run an NPC mission or two and cycle your skill training qeue are worth the payoff for those rare "hell yeah" moments, though, and it's mostly [B]because[/B] you spent weeks sitting around without doing much. [/QUOTE]

100% agree. Ive played EVE on and off for about 5 years and the stories I have from playing it are just amazing. No other MMO even comes close when it comes to immersion and scale.

My advice is to find someone who knows what they are doing IRL and play with them, it helps tremendously in getting you started. If you cant do that there are some great in game Corporations that will help you get on your feet and that (mostly) arent scams, like EVE University.