EVE New Citizens Q&A

Yes patches and expansions.
Yes they are all free (in the sense they dont cost extra on top of the subscription)

All races can do anything, the ONLY things are character's race pertain to are how you look and what your backstory is (if your a roleplayer) aside form a few starter skills you're just a capable as anyone else to do anything.

A few things about this game that is VERY different form WoW...
-Skills train in real time and even when you arent logged on but they can also take a long amount of time so never let your skill queue run dry. Activities in game have no effect on training time, there is no grind for character progression, just grind for money or standings
-When you die you lose everything, the wreck does have a chance of having some of your modules and cargo still in it but mostly likely the NPCs that killed you are still there or the players that killed you took it
-It's all ONE big server, you never pick a realm or node or anything, everyone plays on Tranquility (except the Chinese but that's cause communistic gov't s a ***** about the internet)
-Scamming is very much allowed, there are only a few things that involve RL money that you can't do scams with (like trading GTCs or characters) but otherwise everything else in EVE is scammable. It's up to you to recognize it and avoid it.
-There is no single storyline to follow. The extent of the handholding in EVE ends at the Sisters of EVE epic arc, after that the universe is yours to do as you please.
-Do not mention the word "guild" or "quest" or someone will stab you... (we call'em corporations(corps) and missions(mishes) here)
-The market is almost all entirely player driven, for the most part you can expect just blueprint, skill book and a few other items to be sold by NPCs, EVERYTHING else is bought and sold by players one way or another. And a lot of that is manufactured by players too

The biggest things i can recommend are to read the tutorials VERY carefully as to not miss anything. If you need help don't be afraid to ask local, most EVE players are pretty helpful in that regard.

Make sure to get the latest version of EVEMon too

EVEMon stands for "EVE Monitor" and is a third party app that uses your API key to access the server and gain info about your character. It cant switch skills for you but it can notify you when skills finish or when you extra room in your skill queue when you aren't logged in. Additionally it has a full database of ships, modules, and certificates so that you can make easy skill plans. The benefit in the skill plan maker is that EVEMon can give you a total time to train the skills and recommend implants to use to make it go faster and stuff like that.

Above all, don't get discouraged by the long skill training times. Enjoy the game for what you can do already and the skills will fly by. ^^ Take the skill training times as an opportunity to learn new things about the game, meeting new people, and making ISK :P

Nope no addons, client mods can get you banned

and well, everything as in everything on that ship, you can have other ships of course (you just cant use them at the same time....unless you have two accounts but that's something else..)

when most people say "I died :3" it means they just lost their ship. If you lose your pod (to be podded) then you get a new clone. But if your clone wasnt up to date to your skill points then you might lose a faction of that SP on a skill.

The best overall resources you can find are
http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Main_Page
http://www.isktheguide.com/
and of course other players like me =P

An excellent place to start is the New Player Experience collection of EVElopedia articles.

I'm one of the many active maintainers of the EVElopedia, feel free to EVE-mail me in game if you have any questions about EVElopedia content. I'll be watching this thread too, so it would be awesome if you could take the time to narrate your experiences during the first couple of weeks of playing — doing this will help more experienced pilots provide meaningful advice, it will help the EVElopedia maintainers update old entries, add missing ones, and link the content together more usefully.

As for "lose everything": when your ship gets blown up you are ejected in your capsule, the ship is replaced with a wreck, and that wreck will usually contain some of the modules that you had fitted to your ship. Your capsule can be blown up too, so make sure you run away as quickly as possible. To draw an analogy to WoW, your corpse is on the ground and lootable, and your ghost spawns above your corpse, but your ghost can be killed too. When your ghost gets killed (which we call "being podded"), you'll spawn back at the "graveyard" which is actually your medical clone. It's a bad analogy, but hopefully it will help you understand the death mechanics in this game.

Sadly enough, you don't lose your shirt when you get podded. Now that might seem a little harsh, but EVE is a cold, harsh world of piracy and capitalism. Everything in the game is about creating and destroying, but then CCP introduced the Noble Exchange which gives us monocles and fancy shirts to wear: these items are "indestructible", so if you're wearing a cool shirt when you get podded, you'll wake up in your medical clone wearing that cool shirt. Many of us who are used to the idea of dealing with loss are very sad that CCP has taken this route, but it's their game and their choice, and my opinions on the matter aren't really going to help you learn to play the game better.

How do you know a good corporation from a bad one? Well, you trust them enough to give them a chance. Hang with them a while, and you'll find that either you get along with them really well, or it's time to find a new corp. Some corps will try to gain your trust, then get you to invest time and money in their activities, then turf you out like yesterdays dinner. The only way to find out for sure whether a corp is worth being with is to spend time with them.

We look forward to seeing you in-game!

Like mentioned above, the ISK guide is one of several helpfull tools to get you going in EVE.

On seperating a good Corp from a bad Corp:

This is a hard part. As good and bad are defined in different ways by each pilot. But if you make a wrong decision and it turns out that Corp 'A' isn't actually what you are searching for you can just leave them and search for another / better corp.

My advice is to talk to the recruiter / director / CEO of the corp (if possible with voice comms, spoken interview give a way better view of eachother then text based interviews). Also ask the Rec / Dir / CEO if the corp has a pubic channel, in there you usually find some other members of the corp and sometimes some other pilots who left the corp on good terms (which is a good sign).
Best is to not jump into a corp on minute notice, take your time to research a corp, get to know some people in it and most of all, don't look at the first corp you encounter, there are a lot (thousands) of corps in EVE.

Another thing, if a corp asks you to pay some entry fee, it's usually a scam and in no circumstances pay it. Just turn them down nicely and move on to search for another corp.

I myself found my current corp by talking to them in the local chat channel. Another way is to join the recruitment channel. It is filled with recruiters spamming their corp advert (yes, I'm sometimes guilty on that too). But the guys you should look for are recruiters that only post like every 5 - 15 minutes or the guys that have a normal conversation between the spamming.

Those guys in general are the really nice pilots, and in general the reactions / attitude of a recruiter reflects the entire corp. If you find a recruiter that is a bully, expect the entire corp to be some hardcore EVE players that don't tollerate mistakes etc on the other hand if the recruiter has a sense of humour and is laid back, usually the same count for the corp (exceptions are always in a corp though).

Also, best way to find a corp that suits you is to first do the tutorial and the career agents, those will get you on the way with what you can do in EVE. After you find out what you like, search for a corp that does the same thing. Also there are some corps that have a requirements (usually a minimum of Skillpoints (SP), ships you should be able to fly). If you don't qualify for it but they seem the right corp, hang around in their public channel (if they have one, most respectable corps do) until you can apply.

If you ever have any questions about corps, corp recruiting etc, don't hesitate to EVE-mail me. I'm currently a director in my corp and also an alliance recruiter, so I know the tricks of the trade most people use.

Kind regards, fly safe and enjoy EVE Online.

J'Poll

TL-DR: Seperating a good corp from a bad corp comes with knowledge about corps, don't be afraid to make a wrong decision you can always leave a corp to move to another one. There aren't many pilots where their first corp was their final one.

Totally agree, knowledge in EVE usually comes with eighter a helping hand from vets or due to trial and error.

In my first ever player corp (turned out not my kind of corp) I didn't know what a wardec ment and undocked like 10 times from a camped station until the war targets told me about the game mechanics.

Just make sure your skillqueue doesn't run dry. Skill training is the way you advance in EVE (there is no such thing as leveling up, every character is the same 'level', the only thing that makes characters different is how and what skills they have trained. Every item / ship in EVE has required skills to operate it.

Setting skills if needed can be done in about 5 min if you don't have regular play times. I'm currently a college student with also a parttime job so sometimes have got almost no available game time too. I just log in daily to at least read my mails and check my skillqueue.

Best to have are one of the 3rd party programs like EVEMON or EVEHQ, in there you can make a skillplan on which skill to train next. I usually look up what my next skill is and then implant it in EVE on the skillqueue. After that I will see if I have time to play around or if I have to log off again.

On gear (in EVE: ships and modules) in the beginning it will look like you are stuck to your little frigate/destroyer/cruiser. This is mainly as you need to skill up required skills + their support skills (check recommened certificates on ship info) and need ISK to pay for that nice and shiny new ship.

Don't be surpriced if from time to time EVE can get a bit boring due to being 'stuck' in the same position for some time. Most (if not all) pilots have had that experience. I personally (although being a miner) find mining from time to time very boring, same counts with missioning, they get boring if you run them a lot and do that on daily basis.

On being left behind, although that EVE universe is 1 really (really really) big place most corporations do stick around one spot unless you are in a corp that moves to null-sec (Kind of like the old Wild West, completely lawless space, anything goes) or is already in null-sec and has to move to new staging grounds. And even then, if you have a good friendly corp, they will help you catch up. My corp had to move 2 times, if someone relogged on after long away from EVE period, we do get a fleet together to collect them and guide them back to our new spot.

On being lost after couple of days, not really likely, you will wake up and just can ask in chat what has been going on the last days (or maybe it's in your ingame mailbox). For skills, like I said keep them running, can only take 5 min to set next skills in the skillqueue. And there are even skills, especially the more advance skills that can take a lot of time to skill, I just finished a skill that took about 1 month to train.

EDIT: found some typos, corrected them for more easy reading :P

I do shift work as well, and I'll second what's been said about keeping the skill queue filled up at all times. It's, as stated, fairly simple to log in for a few moments, load up some additional skills to be trained, and log out. Get EVEMon or EVEHq, create a plan, and follow it. If you think you're going to be away from the game completely for a couple days or more, load in a long skill (if you have something you can train to 5, use that.) If you need to preempt that skill to train another, you don't lose the time you've already trained when switching.

As long as you play a bit when you do have a chance, you should be able to keep up with your personal skill at playing quite a bit. EVE is many other MMO's in that regard - The gameplay doesn't change radically most of the time, and when it does, take heart in the fact that everyone else is having to learn as well. Myself, I played a few years ago for a couple months and just came back recently. I still knew the basics, just had to adapt to the new things, which running through the tutorials Aura and the other Career Agents provide helped get me to speed.

As for your age, I'm nearly 50 myself (just a few months away from it). I was rather fortunate to find a corporation of people that are around the same age and have the same general mind-set. We might move a little slower getting to the pod, but once we're in-ship, you can't really tell we're any different. :)

Click on Aura in the neocom (or press F12), and select "Career agents". That will give you a list of agents who will offer you the tutorial series over again. Alternately, you should have the name of the last agent you were working for in your Journal - you can set an autopilot path back to that location to get you back to the tutorials you were doing.

Have fun, and fly it like you stole it :)

What's the name of that mission?

It's not absolutely necessary, of course, but it might help you get a better understanding of some game concepts. Of course, you can just read the guide if you prefer. (recently I went and completed all tutorials on my new player character just for fun).