It's notoriously un-newby friendly. Having said that, they have done some things with beginning tutorials and missions to try and make that adjustment easier. Never-the-less, it is a deep game and can be overwhelming for somebody trying to figure it all out for themselves. I haven't played in a while but I believe there is a GWJ chat channel in-game with people who will happily help you along.

I would encourage you to try the trial. Its a game that isn't for everyone but, for those it appeals to, it is a fantastic game.

You know, WoW and EVE never sucked me in. As a matter of fact, both are very very boring games to me. But, if I have a good guild (or corp), I will play as much as I can day and night. But on their own, just the game itself, both are boring, repetitive and pretty blah, IMO.

EVE is incredibly massive, and completely free form. When you first start playing the game, it's impossible to take it all in - or even to imagine the scope of the game or the possibllities you have down the line.

On the up side, if you stick with it, those possibilities ARE there. You'd also have a handful of GWJ EVE players to walk you through the hurdles of learning the game. It may be overwhelming for awhile, but everything does gradually sink in and become almost second nature.

FStarta is a very experienced player, and is in the GWJ channel most of the time. I'm moderately experienced, although focused almost entirely on combat, and available nearly as often.

I highly recommend giving it a shot. It certainly can't hurt to download the free trial and give it a run.

EVE is an awesome game. The ONLY reason I gave it up was to join a RL friend's EQ2 outfit. The depth of the game is only increasing with their "free" expansions. A key differentiator is the non-sharded server. Everyone eventually knows you by your or your corp/alliance's reputation which sticks. It basically creates a sense of context and history.

Some fun things I did:

1. mined with a corp for monthly/weekly goals like building 10 battleships
2. worked the market/trade routes making literally millions of ISK a day
3. participated in some small scale wars (pvp)
4. got pirated up the wazoo -- fun and to be expected in certain areas of space

Make sure you hook up with someone you know in EVE to start. They can really smooth out that learning curve. Join a corp asap.

TOOOO TEH GLORRRRRY OFFFF GOOOODDDDJJ!

The main thing to remember in EVE is to fly a ship you can afford to lose. I played EVE for a while, and enjoyed it, till I got to the parts that required a) large groups and b) too much time. There are places that are definitely not newbie friendly, but overall I didn't find it very hard to get started. Deep into the game there is a LOT of grinding - mining, running missions, or doing trade runs to make cash. The missions are fun but get repetitive after a while. PvP involves a lot of waiting, or a lot of dying.

There is an ingame GWJ corp called GWJ Enterprises but there's only 3 people in it atm and it's not seeing much activity. If the only thing keeping GWJ members from joining into EVE is the lack of prebuilt GWJ support (and of course, the requisite peer pressure) I'm willing to devote an alt to keeping GWJ Enterprises alive and populated. I'm always willing to help new people out.

I do have a very good idea on how to establish a corp with good economic efficiency. It is working well for my current corp but it's a very communistic approach.

Alrighty.. join the GWJ channel. Be sure to evemail me or message me when I'm on. Char name on Eve is Gaulth

Ulairi

Give me a shout if you see me on - my char name is in my sig.

Get hold of a program called EVE-Mon as well, it helps you track what skills you need for different items and ships.

I have the demo as well, although I haven't started it yet. I'd like to peek on the GWJ channel as well, if it's around.

So, I am thinking of trying to play a little every week again. I need a second game to keep me from getting burned on Guild Wars (which I still enjoy). I got removed from my old corp (with good reason) for being inactive. I have 8mil in the bank and a caracal. Mostly geared towards combat. I'm not sure what to even do other than run missions.

Disregard other post. I play WoW a LOT! But I love it.. This is a great post. I'm going to check it out also.

If you concentrate on the learning skills first, and maybe get hold of some cheap implants (for your head, I mean) from the market or from agents, then you may find that the time is greatly reduced.

It also helps if you are part of a corp, as larger craft will be available to protect you.

Lester, you can get out of the "newbie" zones within a few weeks if you get ahold of the right corp. Getting into a good corp gives you many advantages, and they don't even have to be old established one's. Just ones that are willing to work together. And davet is right about getting implants/initial learning skills. Hopefully they will actually introduce boosters with this next expansion pack.

Pirating? Is this ratting? Or taking on other players? Why do this instead of missions? What's the advantage?

I are full of questions today?

What Zaque said about pirating. Also, ransoming targets is quite lucrative when pirating because you can give them 2 chances to pay you: one is right before you blow their ship up. If they refuse that, blow their ship up and hold their pod hostage.

As for ratting, once you find yourself a good belt with a good set of spawns (or chained them,) you can easily make 1mil or more for each NPC you kill. It is a bit more efficient than running missions. Of course, you only make that kind of isk in 0.0