EVE Online

Players of Eve Online are able to participate in any number of in-game professions and activities, including mining, manufacturing, trade and combat (both player versus environment and player versus player). The range of activities available to the player is facilitated by a character advancement system based upon training skills in real time, even while not logged in to the game.^[2]

Background

The fictional background story of Eve Online explains that long ago humankind, having used up most of Earth's resources, began colonizing the rest of the Milky Way.^[6] Eventually, humans expanded to most of the galaxy. Resources became contested and war broke out. When a natural wormhole was discovered, dozens of colonies were seeded at its other end, in an unexplored galaxy dubbed 'New Eden'. An artificial wormhole generator was built to support the collapsing wormhole. When the natural wormhole collapsed, however, it destroyed the generator with it. Cut off from Earth and its much-needed supplies, New Eden's colonists starved in the millions. Five known colonies managed to return to prominence, eventually rebuilding society together. These colonies make up the five major empires in Eve: the Amarr Empire, the Gallente Federation, the Minmatar Republic, the Caldari State and the Jove Empire. While all but the Jove Empire are playable CCP have said they intend to use the race within the Eve storyline.^[7]

Races

The Amarr were the first of the playable races to rediscover interstellar and faster-than-light travel.^[8]^[9] Armed with this new technology, the Amarr expanded their empire and enslaved several races in the process, focusing on the primitive Minmatar race who had only just invented space flight for themselves.^[10]^[11] While the Minmatar have rebelled against their oppressors and broken off to form their own faction in the Eve universe, much of their populace are still enslaved.

The Gallente and the Caldari homeworlds were situated in the same star system.^[12]^[13] The Gallente homeworld was originally settled by French colonists while the planet that would later become Caldari Prime was purchased by a mega-corporation which began to terraform it.^[14]^[15] However, the process was incomplete at the time of the gate collapse and Caldari Prime remained environmentally inhospitable for millennia. The Gallente restored a working civilization some hundred years before the Caldari, building the first democratic republic of the new era. Animosity between the two races drove the Caldari to found their own empire, a decision that led to a 93-year war that was eventually settled when neither party could win over the other.^[14]^[15] One result of this war was that the original Caldari homeworld was conquered and occupied by the Gallente and only recently reclaimed by an invasion.

The Jovians were colonists, too. Unlike the other races, after the collapse of the gate they were able to revive their civilization almost immediately.^[16] They expanded outward and eventually turned to genetic engineering in order to mold themselves into a people more suited for deep-space life and long-range interstellar exploration. Through their history there have been two previous Jove Empires. After genetic experiments resulted in the deadly "Jovian Disease", the Jove set off to find a new home. They now inhabit a region of space supposedly inaccessible to outsiders.^[17]

Gameplay

Eve Online runs on a large supercomputing cluster known as "Tranquility", claimed to be the most powerful supercomputer in the gaming industry.^[18] Several smaller clusters are used for public and in-house testing including the public test servers "Singularity" and "Multiplicity". The servers require a daily downtime for maintenance and updates. Tranquility's downtime (DT) is scheduled between 11:00 and 12:00 GMT.^[19]

Universe

The playing environment in Eve Online consists of over five thousand star systems, almost all of which can be visited by the player.^[1] Each solar system is connected to other systems by one or more stargates, and in this way neighboring systems are organized into constellations and constellations are in turn organized into regions. In total there are 64 regions.^[1] The central regions make up most of the so-called high-security space with some low-security systems in between. Surrounding these are regions with no security, or 0.0 (zero-zero).^[20] (See section Security index system for more information). In some solar systems a player might be alone. In others more than 600 players might gather, e.g. for a fleet battle or to use a trading hub. Different systems contain different types of celestial objects, making them more or less suitable for different kinds of operations. In a typical solar system the player will find asteroid fields, stations, and moons, the latter two most often orbiting planets. Planets themselves are currently not explorable; however, players can use moons to anchor their parent corporation's structures for production and research or for moon mining. Asteroid fields can be mined for minerals. Other objects that can be found in systems are the aforementioned stargates, complexes or static dungeons for exploration. Occasionally a player may even stumble across a historic site, e.g. one where another player's Titan-class ship was destroyed and the wreck now floats in space.

In addition, an area of the galaxy is occupied by the Jovian Empire, and is currently not accessible by players.

Advancement

Eve Online is different from MMOGs such as World of Warcraft, Guild Wars and EverQuest II because the player characters do not gain experience points through actions or by completing tasks. Instead, the player learns skills by training a specific skill over time, a passive process that occurs in real world time so that the learning process will continue even if the player is not logged in. As a result, new players are generally unable to gain more skillpoints than existing players who continue to train^[21] but this is reduced somewhat by a diminishing returns policy for training higher skill levels. Each skill has 5 steps, or levels and the time required to train a skill to a particular level is determined by the player's attributes and how many skill points a certain skill requires, determined by a skills rank. The skill training system is connected with five attributes: Intelligence, Perception, Charisma, Willpower and Memory. Each skill has a primary and secondary attribute, thus the higher these attributes, the faster skills that use them are trained. There are also skills and implants that can increase attributes.

Training within the game occurs in real time whether the user is logged in or not. The time it takes to train a skill varies depending upon an attribute known as its "rank". Low-rank skills trained to a low level may represent a few minutes of training whereas high levels of high-rank skills may represent several months of training.

Since training time is directly related to a character's attributes, a player can lower the training time of skills by training "Learning" skills, as well as by using Implants to boost attributes.

Due to the sheer number of skills available to characters, it is not realistic for a character to acquire perfect skills with all ships and weapons systems. As each skill level takes over five times longer than the previous (a geometric progression) while the bonus it provides almost always scales linearly, a new player has the option to either acquire acceptable skills in many fields, or perfect skills in a relative few.^[22]

Economy

There is a single currency unit in Eve Online, the Interstellar Kredit (ISK), which takes its name from the Icelandic króna, whose ISO code is ISK.^[23] Players can barter between themselves for items, use the in-game market system for ISK-based transactions, place and accept contracts between players for assets and services or use a Loyalty Points store.^[24]

The Loyalty Points systems allows one to use non-transferable Loyalty Points in combination with other assets to purchase standard items at a reduced rate or to acquire otherwise unattainable items.

A large proportion of the in-game economy is player driven; Non-player character merchants supply some basic blueprints, items and trade goods. Players, through the use of blueprints and in-game skills, can gain the ability to build items ranging from basic ammunition to cutting-edge capital ship hulls, and manufacture them for personal use or for sale. Pricing and availability of goods varies from region to region within the Eve universe. These aspects contribute to an economic environment influenced by factors like scarcity of resources, specialization of labor and supply/demand dynamics.^[25] The economy is closely tied with the (also player driven) political aspect of the game. Player corporations (the Eve equivalent of guilds) rise and fall as they struggle for market dominance as well as territorial control.

From a technical point of view, the economy in Eve is known as an open economy, that is there is no fixed amount of money or materials in the universe. CCP did attempt to implement a closed economy (that is an economy where there is a fixed amount of currency and therefore materials) early on in the game's existence; however, it proved too difficult to balance the effects of new players entering the game with the capabilities of older players able to earn more ISK or obtain more materials. The current Open economy is automatically balanced by introducing extra materials in underpopulated areas to encourage an even spread of players.^[26]

Eve's End User Licence Agreement forbids the exchange of ISK for real currency; however there is a secure in-game system for trading "Game Time Codes" (GTC) in exchange for in game currency. In a similar way selling and buying characters for in game currency is allowed.

On 27 June 2007 CCP announced that an economist had been employed^[27] to assist in the development of the economic side of the game. Dr. Guðmundsson has stated that he will be responsible for compiling quarterly economic reports for the community and providing ongoing analysis of the economic facets of Eve, along with coordinating research with other interested parties.^[28]^[29]

Combat

Combat in Eve is a mixture of both tactical intelligence and spontaneous decision-making using a point-and-click interface. While every race has certain tendencies for different battle tactics, a character's combat capabilities are determined by skill levels, the ship being piloted and various hardware modules fitted into it. Outside of decisions involving targeting and selection of weaponry, combat is almost entirely hands-off. Every aspect of combat like maintaining a certain range to targets and firing weaponry is usually controlled by the computer. The player can choose to fly the ship directly rather than use the computer controls. However, distances between ships tend to range in kilometers thus reacting to a target's speed, direction and maneuvers manually is difficult.

Eve's combat system allows ships of all sizes to be useful in combat. Large ships such as battleships are typically outfitted with heavy weapons allowing them to battle other ships of their size. Such weapons however do not have the accuracy to effectively damage smaller, faster ships like frigates.^[30] While a large ship can equip smaller weapons designed for attacking smaller targets, this leaves them at a disadvantage versus other large ships. Drones can also be used against smaller ships, or in a support role such as providing extra shield for a gang mate or in a utility role such as electronic warfare. Small ships such as frigates may be unable to do significant damage to larger ships on their own, but can greatly affect the outcome of small group battles by employing tactics such as disrupting the engines of enemies (reducing mobility or chance to escape) and jamming enemy sensors or by attacking a larger ship as a pack.

The open player versus player combat system, and the tendency for ships to drop some of their cargo and equipment when destroyed, provides incentive for player piracy. Pirates risk being branded criminals by CONCORD and thus becoming open targets to all other players, as well as being unable to access high security systems. Players may even place a bounty on another player's head, providing work for bounty hunters.^[31]

At the strategic level, the rich resources available in low security space reward large co-operative groups. Usually formed when several player-owned-and-operated corporations (similar to guilds, in other MMORPGs) band together, these "alliances" can vary widely in size and strength. The network of jumpgates, which allows travel between star systems, includes a multitude of choke points, which careful alliances can garrison to restrict access to claimed 0.0 systems. Moreover, corporations and alliances have the ability to manufacture Player-Operated Starbases (POS) that mine resources from moons in a system. Each POS requires substantial logistical support to remain in operation, but once an alliance mounts and maintains such facilities at the majority of moons in a system, it achieves the status of sovereignty and remains so until an enemy destroys enough POSs and replaces them with its own.^[32]

Agents

Agents in Eve are NPCs from which the player receives a variety of assignments, depending on the type of NPC: Internal Security gives more pirate hunting missions, and Personnel Agents give more "delivery" and trade route missions. Completion awards the player with ISK and various material goods. Agents also give various personal "gifts" for completing missions within certain bonus criteria, and award Loyalty Points from the Agent, which can be redeemed for other goods. Completing Agent missions also raises the player's standing in the corporation or group the Agent represents, while lowering his standing among the Agent's competitors. Raising standing in a corporation allows the player to access more valuable and dangerous missions through higher level Agents, up to Level 5, the most difficult, which are nearly impossible to be completed by a solo player if the mission requires combat. The player can also pay Agents to provide manufacturing and research services.

Security index system

Eve features an open PvP system where combat between players can occur anywhere within the Eve Universe. To balance this "free aggression", Eve has implemented a "security index system". Every solar system in the Eve universe has a public security status which ranges from 0.0 to 1.0. The lowest end of the scale is lawless space, and rules are set and enforced by player-run alliances. The highest end of the scale provides protection to players in the form of sentry guns and CONCORD, the NPC 'police'.^[20]

Players committing illegal actions within "empire" systems (security status between 0.1 and 1.0) lose personal security standings with CONCORD. Loss of Security status varies depending on the crime. Showing aggression will only result in a minor loss of standings, while the act of killing a ship that has not defended itself will result in a further drop in standings, and the largest loss of standings occurs with the intentional destruction of a player's 'pod'.^[20] As players lose security status, their ability to enter certain levels of secured space becomes more and more limited.^[33]

While breaking the law in high-security systems (that is, those with a security of 0.5 to 1.0) means certain death (surviving a CONCORD attack is considered an exploit) for the offender, this does not guarantee the absolute safety of the victim: a well-planned suicide attack can still successfully destroy a ship before CONCORD and sentry guns can neutralize the aggressor.

In lawless space (0.0), CONCORD has no influence and the dynamics for player interactions change. Corporations band together into alliances in order to defend a region of space which they claim. These alliances often fight wars for contested systems and send gangs to raid each other. Although lawless space is dangerous and difficult to defend the rewards are much higher. Asteroids contain far more valuable ore and NPC pirates in lawless space carry far higher bounties.

Death

In the event that a player's ship is destroyed, a wreck is left behind. Any cargo hold contents, ship modules, drones and ammunition that were not destroyed in the explosion can be recovered by any player, and additional components of the structure of the ship can be retrieved by a player with the correct "salvaging" modules and skills. These components can be used to build ship enhancement modules known as 'rigs'. To (partially or fully) mitigate the loss of an expensive vessel, ships can be insured against destruction. Insurance payouts are based strictly on material build costs;^[34] the market value of the ship is not taken into account. Some ships have a market value that is dozens, if not hundreds of times as much as the ship's build cost - as a result, a player who loses such a ship may lose a large investment, with no possibility of indemnification. Modules, installed upgrades and cargo cannot be insured; these items may have a market value much higher than the ship itself.

When a ship is destroyed, the player is ejected in a pod. This pod may be destroyed as well, if another player chooses to open fire on it. This player death is known as "pod killing" or "podding". In this case, the "podded" player character will die and be revived as a clone at a pre-determined cloning facility. Non-player characters will not attack a pod. Any implants installed on a player will be irrevocably lost when he or she is pod-killed. Implants cannot be insured.^[21]

Players may purchase an upgraded clone which is used in the event of pod death. The cost of a clone depends on how many skill points it can hold - the more skill points, the more expensive the clone becomes. When the player dies and is revived in his or her clone, if this clone holds a number of skill points lower than the number the player had at the time of death, then the player will lose a varying amount of skill points.^[21] In some cases, this represents more than a month's worth of training time. Therefore, players who value their skill points purchase upgraded clones sufficient to hold all their skill points. This is known as "keeping your clone up-to-date". Clones are single-use items; when a character dies and is resurrected via a clone, they are also awarded the basic, 900,000-point "Alpha" clone. Therefore, it is imperative that players purchase as soon as possible after death a replacement clone of a level appropriate to their character's skill points.

Expanding the cloning system further, Jump Clones were added in Red Moon Rising, and enhanced in Revelations to allow advanced players to mitigate risking their cybernetic implants by using the Infomorph Psychology skill to jump into a cloned body in another station, without requiring their existing body to die to achieve this. The original body (complete with its cybernetic implants) remains stored in the original station and may be returned to via another clone jump (after a 24-hour waiting period).^[35] This method offers a way for developed characters to use expensive implants for skill training or economic pursuits, while still having the option to engage in dangerous combat operations without the risk of losing them or by creating jump clones with different groups of implants that control other aspects of the game such as shield support, enhanced damage capabilities or better targeting abilities.

Ships

Ships in Eve Online are organized into classes, varying from frigates to titans. Ships fill different roles and vary in characteristics such as size, speed, hull strength and their potential firepower. Roles and characteristics aside, the concept of ships in Eve Online is different from other massively multiplayer online games in that ships represent players in-game. While Eve Online introduces the players to the idea of avatars, a player's avatar remains a two-dimensional portrait. Players move in-game within their ships and as such are represented by the ship type they choose. CCP is currently developing a feature that will allow players to move freely outside of their ships, represented by three-dimensional avatars. See the Planned future developments section.

Players and communities

Players have several options when playing Eve in regards to how they interact with the community. Every activity is possible for solo players but larger and more complicated tasks become more feasible for groups, for example pirate clans or corporations.

Corporations and alliances

Players can organize themselves into corporations (similar to guilds or clans in other MMOs). Corporations are run by one CEO who controls the corporation's assets. The CEO assigns roles to corporation members such as director, accountant and personnel manager. Corporations may also band together to form alliances. Corporations and alliances come in different shapes and sizes. Some player groups write press releases about new business openings and send out IPO information to potential in-game venture capital investors. Alliances can control enough star systems that their territory can be plotted on the Eve game map.^[36] Alliances based in lawless space often group into political powerblocks, such as "The Greater BoB Community" and "Providence Holders", for the purpose of joint operations and logistics. Currently, the largest of these political blocks is "The Southern Coalition", consisting of alliances such as "Goonswarm" and "Red Alliance".^[36]

Corporations take up numerous business models such as mining, producing ships or "ratting" (raiding NPC pirate bases, as NPC pirates have bounties depending on their class of ship). Normally members contribute a portion of all business proceeds to a pool and receive help in the form of cash and equipment. This is by no means the only model though many operate in this fashion as it helps to build loyalty amongst corporation members.

Players also form corporations for the exclusive task of pirating other players - these corporations are normally referred to as pirate clans. They for example stake out jump points and jump gates waiting for other players to arrive, then destroy and loot their ships. Few groups "pod-kill" players in this way, except accidentally, as it's considered needless. Such pirate groups are hunted viciously, even by other pirate groups. Pirate clans almost never prey on beginning characters as operating after passing a certain bounty level means they're fired upon by CONCORD security ships (which guard areas where new players usually are found). See the Combat section for more information about bounties.

While attacking another player in secure space will result in a loss of security standing and the risk of the attacker losing his ship to CONCORD, there is a way to conduct warfare in high security space. A corporation or alliance can declare war on another corporation/alliance at the cost of a weekly fee, thus allowing for combat in all regions of space without the fear of standing loss or the intervention of CONCORD.^[37] However, if the target of a corporate war elects to make the war mutual, there are no fees involved for either party.

Demographics

As of October 2006 the average age of an Eve Player was 27 of which 95% male, and 5% female. The average weekly playtime is 17 hours, or just under 2.5 hours per day.^[26]

On 9 December 2007, Eve Online achieved a new record for the maximum number of simultaneous pilots online with 41,690 concurrent accounts logged on to the same server.^[38]

As of 31 December 2007, Eve Online has 220,000 active subscriptions and 45,000 active trial accounts.^[39]^[40]^[41]

Beginning in March 2006, CCP and its partner Optic Communications started working to bring Eve Online to the Chinese gaming audience. Closed alpha testing was held on a small cluster for some time, with about 3,000 players chosen from an initial pool of 50,000.^[42] The Chinese open beta test began on June 13, 2006, and proved to be very popular, gaining numbers comparable to Eve Online's main server cluster.^[43]

The code base between Serenity (China) and Tranquility (Iceland) is strictly in sync, so that software development is distributed to both server clusters, but the game worlds are not connected. Eve Online fully supports Unicode and has a back-end system to enable localization of each and every aspect of the game's content and UI.^[44]

Player tournaments

During two weekends in July 2006, a live streaming video production called Eve TV^[45]^[46] covered the events of the 2nd Caldari Alliance Tournament. The tournament pitted five-man teams from the top alliances against each other. Eve TV provided live in-game footage of the battles along with expert commentary. Analysis of the teams and strategies, interviews with CCP staff and behind-the-scenes specials were also aired between battles. Eve TV was produced and hosted primarily by DJs^[45] from Eve-Radio (a player-run streaming radio station) with resources provided by CCP. A total of 95 matches were scheduled, with the Band of Brothers^[47] alliance emerging the winner on the final day.^[48]

The first two weekends in December 2006 saw the 3rd Alliance tournament. This was once again broadcast via live streaming video by Eve TV^[46] The tournament saw 40 Alliances^[49] pitting five-man teams against each other. Once again, the Band of Brothers^[47] alliance emerged as the winner. Of particular note in this tournament, was the fielding of an Imperial Apocalypse by the Interstellar Alcohol Conglomerate. The ship was destroyed in the semi-finals of the tournament.

The fourth Alliance tournament in September 2007 brought several exciting upsets, with Star Fraction defeating Band of Brothers in the second round, using only tech 1 cruisers, and a relative unknown, Hun Reloaded, sweeping both the semifinals and finals to win.^[50]

The two weekends starting February 29, 2008 and March 7, 2008 saw the fifth Alliance Tournament.^[51] EveTV provided coverage via live streaming video.^[52] During the six days a total of 40 teams competed in 95 matches. The last tournament's winner, HUN Reloaded, made its way into the quarter-finals were it lost to Ev0ke alliance who later became tournament champion after having won all of its eight matches.^[51]

Development

According to the developers Eve Online evolved from the classic computer game Elite, combined with the multi player chat and player versus player aspects of Ultima Online.^[53] Elite had four single player aspects of missions,^[54] mining, trade routes and combat with random hostile NPC's^[55] all which are aspects of the first incarnations of Eve Online.^[56]

One of the original developers of Elite, David Braben, believes Eve Online is a reimplementation of the 1980s game, not its true successor.^[57]

Both the server and the client software for Eve Online are developed in Stackless Python, a variant of the Python programming language. Stackless Python allows a relatively large number of players to perform tasks without the overhead of using the call stack used in the standard Python distribution. This frees the game developers from performing some routine work and allows them to apply changes to the game universe without resetting the server.^[58]

Compatibility

On March 14, 2006, the Eve Online development team announced that they would be upgrading the graphics engine of Eve Online to a DirectX 10 / Windows Vista graphics platform.^[59] Revelations patch 1.4 had patch notes quoted as saying that the current Eve client should work in Vista "as well as it does in XP."^[60]

Third-party applications and the Eve API Project

A large number of third-party applications have arisen to supplement a player's Eve Online experience. Some of these, such as automated applications designed to claim publicly-available contracts accidentally put up without an associated cost, will result in a ban if discovered, but many others are endorsed, tacitly or explicitly, by CCP. EVEMon - a .NET application that monitors and forecasts skill training times—is one example of an explicitly authorized external application.^[65]^[66]

In May, 2005, CCP announced the Eve API Project; third-party utilities such as EveMon now interface with character data, market, and other data through an API.^[67]

Major content patches

From the release of Eve Online until today CCP has added nine expansions to the game. The ninth expansion, Empyrean Age, was released on June 10, 2008^[68] and introduced Factional Warfare, a feature that incorporates a ranking system and allows players to assist NPC-controlled militias. CCP provides expansions free of charge to its subscribers.^[69] Over time expansions have added features such as conquerable stations, ship classes like Freighter and Dreadnought capital ships and advanced missions for players to master.

Planned future developments

CCP have recently begun work on implementing a game feature that will allow players to exit pods and interact with other player avatars in the communal setting of the interior of a station.^[70] CCP have not yet formally speculated on a release date for this feature. In March 2007 tentonhammer.com released in-development game footage of this feature, videotaped at GDC 2007 with the approval of CCP's CMO, Magnus Bergsson.^[71]

The ability to enter a planet's atmosphere (planetary flight) and to interact with the surface is also mentioned as one of the future development plans. In Eve Fanfest 2005, a working prototype was demonstrated in which a Caldari "Crow" interceptor could be seen flying around over a planet surface. However CCP stated that full-scale integration of such features to the game requires an enormous effort and is only planned for post-Revelations production phases.^[72]

Public perception

Virtual crime

Piracy (in the ship-to-ship sense) is part of the game, as is protection racketeering and theft. One example is the corporate heist perpetrated by the in-game assassin's guild Guiding Hand Social Club (GHSC). GHSC infiltrated a target corporation over the course of nearly a year before performing a virtual assassination on the target's CEO and stealing or destroying billions of credits' worth of property which the CEO had entrusted them with.^[73] Events of this nature are debated both inside the game world and in the media.^[74]

Such dangers are an intricate part of Eve Online's virtual economy and thus are purposely not dealt with by the developers.^[75] Players are expected to make financial decisions based (among other factors) on the possibility of other players' financial malpractice, much like in real-life economics.

Developer misconduct

Since the release of Eve Online there has been proven developer as well as player-corporation misconduct, leading to debates and controversy within the Eve community. On February 9, 2007, a player known as Kugutsumen revealed that an Eve Online developer nicknamed 't20' had provided his in-game alliance, Band of Brothers, with ten valuable blueprints, giving them an advantage over competing corporations.^[76] Despite calls for t20's dismissal he is still an Eve Online developer while Kugutsumen was permanently banned from the Eve universe for violating the game's Terms of Service and End-user License Agreement.^[76]

In response to public concerns, CCP decided to set up an Internal Affairs division headed by Ari Eldon, better known in-game as Arkanon, whose responsibility is to monitor the activities of both privileged and player accounts operated by CCP staff in-game. The impartiality of this division remains disputed.^[77]^[78] Modeled on this division, CCP has instated the Council of Stellar Management (CSM).

Council of Stellar Management

In part due to the matters above, CCP invited users to stand for the first CSM in March 2008, resulting in 66 candidates seeking election to nine positions.^[79]^[80]^[81] It was a requirement that candidates released their full 'real' names in addition to stating their in-game details.^[82] In May, after a two-week voting period, the first Council was elected, comprising seven men and two women; three each from the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, two from the USA and one from Denmark, their ages ranging from 17 to 52.^[81]

The remit of the Council has been changed since it was first proposed and is now seen by CCP primarily as a route for players to make requests for changes and improvements to the game mechanics, presentation, and game content of Eve Online. Each Council will serve for six months after which a new one will be elected.^[80] Each individual may only serve twice. Each CSM will get the authority to put requests to CCP three times during their term of office which CCP have stated must be answered; once in person in Iceland and twice by e-mail, with most of the costs of their visit to Iceland being borne by CCP.^[80]

The first meeting of the CSM with CCP took place in Reykjavik between June 19 and 23, 2008 and included not only the nine CSM members but a number of developers, designers, GMs and producers from CCP and members of print and video media^[83]. Matters discussed by players on the Eve forums were reviewed in detail and whilst some were rejected for technical reasons many were accepted by CCP as useful improvements to the game which would be introduced either in an early so-called point release or added to the development plans for a future major update.

Cost

Eve currently costs €14,95 / $14.95 per month (however the first monthly payment is a one time fee of €19,95 / $19.95) (the European cost includes VAT).^[84] Like other MMOGs, the cost can be reduced by paying for larger subscription intervals. Players can pay via online payment services or by mail order. The mail order costs more than online payment, though the large subscription discount still applies.

It is also possible to pay for a subscription through the purchase of GTCs (Game Time Codes) through independent retailers for real money^[85] or in-game using ISK (in-game currency).^[86]^[87] The latter method allows relatively advanced players to play the game without paying real money - a player may buy a GTC for real money and then sell it to another player in-game for ISK. The system is officially and securely supported by CCP^[88] and is monitored through the Timecode Bazaar forum.

As of June 2008, timecards are available in one 60-day increment, although GTCs were formerly offered in 30, 50, 90 and 100-day increments. Discontinued cards are still valid but are increasing in value as fewer remain available. Players using GTCs are treated like normal subscribers in every way. Game Time Codes are available through CCP's online store as well as via online resellers. Cards purchased through resellers are usually delivered through email for immediate use while codes issued through the Eve Online store are issued via postal mail. There are no distinguishing differences in functionality between digital and hard-copy codes, both provide the exact amount of specified game time, are entered into the same account section and can be exchanged for ISK through the secure exchange system.

Buddy program and trial account

The Eve Online Buddy Program^[89]^[90] was created so that full-subscription players of Eve Online could distribute 14-day free trial accounts to their friends. If the buddy account is converted to a full account the referrer is rewarded with entrance into a monthly prize raffle. Even so, trial accounts are freely available through the Eve Online website's Trial Section as well as via Steam.^[91]^[92] The Eve Online website offers 14-day trial periods, Steam offers 21-day trial periods. In both cases trial accounts are free and allow players to access most of the Eve Online game, with exceptions. Trial accounts cannot train certain skills for some advanced ship types, for example industrial ships. Trial accounts cannot create contracts and cannot directly transfer ISK to other players. Once the trial period ends the trial account is locked and must be converted to a full account before its characters can be accessed again. Skills that a character is training at the end of the trial period continue to train even though the account is locked.

Eve Online Trial Accounts can be upgraded to full paid accounts in two ways. The first way is through activating an account subscription on the Eve Online website, resulting in immediate activation and 30 days of game time for $19.95.^[93] This subscription method requires a credit card. The alternative way is to subscribe using an Eve Game Time Card (ETC or GTC). These can be purchased in digital format online. GTCs upgrade a trial account to a full account and activate the account for the specified game time. The 60-day GTCs retail for $35 and are readily available online through third party merchants.

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