EVE General Discussion

I was discussing this with some mates on TS while playing last night, and we got into an interesting topic about player proportions.

I've been playing since 2003, and I used to notice a disproportionate number of older players, vs relatively fewer new players.

In the past year, or maybe couple years, I've noticed greatly increased numbers of new characters/players, and fewer older players. I just wanted to get your guys perspective on player populations and changing demographics of characters/players.

I feel personally that lots of new people is a good thing, it means a healthy game, but I've noticed that a lot of my fellow old timers are going into semi-retirement, moved on, or maybe I notice fewer outside of hardcore null PVP alliances because of higher populations...or maybe I'm just being an idiot and way off base.

What are your thoughts?

Bring back the old, Alot of my Friends have quit

I welcome whippersnappers as long as they check their WoW attitude at the door ;) and a lot of them do seem to pick up the idea of EVE pretty quick.

I feel that a lot of new players are put off because they feel like that they will never be able to catch up to older chars from a SP perspective. I've always tried to tell them that once you hit around 12-15m SP, if you focused training to a few ships/fits the rest of the SP rarely matter, anything above that brings flexibility and variety.

Sometimes I sit and talk about the T2 BPO lottery, mining in cruisers, corps having to pool isk for 1 battleship, the introduction of mining barges, nano nerf, etc, and people listen to me like I'm some kind of sorcerer making stories up.

Oh yeah, I had new players listen to me the same way in WoW before I repented of my ways and started playing EVE. I kept most of the experience in running guilds and group management. Apparently those are usefull skills regardless of the game.

I also realize that you can't start at the top of a mountain and expect to conquer it. You have to work your way up, fighting off the competition along the way to truly conquer.

Haha, don't worry, it never changes. It will keep sucking .

Problem is he's so old, he probably doesn't even remember anymore. We old farts tend to repeat ourselves a lot. And we also tend to repeat ourselves.

I think one think that has persevered in the community as a whole, and something that I am happy about, is that EVE enjoys a much higher level of maturity than most other MMOs, partially because the complicated nature of the game scares off the stupid, but also because older players that mentor younger players instil a certain set of values and etiquette.

Of course there are exceptions to every rule, but over all I'm happy to see the "old ways" being carried on by many new players.

The fact that after nine years we still drop a "gf" in local after most fights as a universal sign that one side has conceded, or acknowledges a good opponent, is testament to this.

Its hard for new players to enjoy the game b/c soloing is boring. Unlike most MMOs you can go around and never talk to a soul if you don't need too.

which defeats the whole purpose of an mmo.