EVE General Discussion

WoW is very shallow compared to EvE, too much npc control in the game, it has a worse community and the way the guilds ( called corps in our game) work there is terrible. Vanilla and TBC was very nice though

The "levelling" system in EVE is time-based rather than action based. You train skills, your character grows. In WoW the levelling system is action based: you log in and do stuff, your character gains levels, your character grows. The levelling system in WoW is a little redundant though since the game has changed significantly during the last few expansions to the point where Blizzard actively encourages people to level up as quickly as possible, skip the actual content of the PvE-content-based-game, to get to the "endgame" (a term which raises a chuckle from me, since "end game" in every other game is the few moves before the winner is determined). The "endgame" in WoW is racing through all the levelling content to get to a few instances which you run over and over again to acquire new shiny things. The purpose of acquiring new shiny things is to gain access to the next piece of PvE content access to all of which is gradated on a scale based on what gear you have.

So when you start playing WoW with "friends" the typical thing to do is say hello, join their guild, then spend several tens of hours levelling your character without any interaction with your friends. Just keep hitting that "find random dungeon group" button, running random dungeons, levelling your character until you hit the level cap. Then you set about acquiring the gear you need to gain access to the PvE content that your friends no longer engage in.

As a trial character in WoW you will max out at about level 20, which is in the order of two or three hours of play time. The maximum level is 90. You will be spending a significant portion of your trial time alone.



I'm under the impression that EVE is a smaller game than WoW because everything that isn't WoW is much smaller than WoW. In addition, EVE is a spaceship based game in a world full of fantasy games, with always-on PvP and a very harsh penalty for losing PvP engagements. It's not the kind of game that is going to appeal to many people.

I played WOW for about..a year or so i think. Ended up trying it because of a similar discussion, except this was a bet.
An EVE player is not able to play a game as complicated as WOW. (Yes, i did laugh, and i still tease the person who proposed the bet once in a while )

As someone mentioned, WOW is "safe". Makes it a very easy game to play since you dont have to really pay attention to what your doing, and if you die you really dont care that much.

The market is..awful to say the least, but as an EVE player it was very easy to manipulate it and make more gold then i would ever need.

Dont even need to say anything about the community.

However, WOW is not all bad. Its great if you need that mental break, or if you just want some mindless fun for a few hours. Maybe because it feels good to see your character advance, knowing that you just need to finish X amount of quests and then you can use *whatever". This is something i have never felt in EVE (and trust me, i dont want EVE to change), and EVE having been my first and only online game until then it caught me by surprise because it seemed so..different (the level system that is).

But its scary addictive. Its been a couple of years since i played and i still catch my self thinking about it once in a while.
Honestly if it hadent been for the bad community it would still have been my "EVE break" game.

Edit. And i also became addicted to achievements! I have no idea how many hours i spent trying to grind enough reputation (think thats what its called) to get groups to like me, or hunting down rare spawns. And no, i never managed to get The Time Lost mount, but i did waste many hours hunting for it

Pretty much this.

A long long time ago, I had heard vaguely of Eve Online, as it was an MMO version of Elite. This sounded pretty cool, but I never really checked more on it, as friends had showed me this awesome MMO called World of Warcraft.
When I started playing Eve, I kicked myself hard for not having checked it out much sooner.

I played WoW for several years, from Vanilla, Burning crusade, Lich king and even Cataclysm for a short bit when some people got me to return.

As theme park MMO's go, it's pretty nice, but has suffered greatly from the 'lowest common denomiter' problem. The game has been dumbed down so much that anyone can play it, no matter how big of a dumb idiot they are.

In vanilla and BTC, raids were HARD. Not all of them, but the endgame ones were. But since sooo many idiots were whining about how they would never be able to see all the leet content because they lacked the skill/progression/hardcore mentality needed to get there and do these raids successfully, Blizzard made the game easier and easier so everyone would be able to enjoy their shiny new content. Also the new loot mechanics were set up so nobody would feel left out anymore when something refused to drop for a specific group, and everyone just gets their stuff from a store with marks they farm with raiding.

Sadly, this is the way most themepark MMO's have gone, making the game simple and easy so everyone can play. Thus totally devoid of skill, meaning or challenge. This is the very reason I play Eve Online. Eve pits your wits, intellect and skill against both it's environment, and it's other players in every aspect of the game. It's very complexity and myriad of possibilities and choices is what make this game truly 'hard' and wonderful.

If you like being entertained and kept busy in a safe environment where nothing nasty is going to happen to you, games like WoW are your cup of tea, though a better challenge would be nicer I suppose. If you want stuff you do to mean something, you need to come into the sandbox to play and build your sandcastle, or knock other people's castles down.

Quite often these days, when I don't feel like playing something that has me on edge, I don't log into Eve, but log onto Star Trek Online, a nice and friendly theme park mmo. Is it hard? Not at all, but it is quite relaxing to just sit back and do my thing, get myself some more shinies and whatnot, and just basically enjoy myself, without having to look over my shoulder if there's someone there go come and knock my little castle down purely for the fun of it.

warcraft was a great game...once.

truth be told it was bad even before I left it. currently it's in the worst state I have ever seen it. I was just still playing it because I knew fun people and I was hoping it would return to when it was fun. but then there was the MoP expansion and I lost all hope. I was excited for the bit I had heard about the climatic end of the xpac with attacking the horde city to overthrow hellscream. but I couldn't hack it long enough. I got my main toon to 90 and began the grind for the gated gear to do raids and just experienced an in game meltdown. simply couldn't do it anymore. tired of the same old run around.

my guild was doing a fine job of imploding in on itself from a combination of we veteran players burning out and internal politics. I found eve around that time so thankfully I missed a lot of that drama. eve filled the mmo gap nicely.

I've played hundreds of hours of both.

In general, EVE is superior. EVE has more game play options. And those options are more interesting too.

Probably the most defining aspect of EVE that differentiates it from WoW is that you don't have a class in EVE. Indeed, all roles are open to all players all the time - you just have to wait long enough to be able to do it. In WoW, when you create your character, you are limited to that character's role and skills. The advantage is that you fall into that role quickly and easily; it is easy to understand, learn, and follow that role. In EVE however, you have a wide field of skills. Training different skills unlocks different roles.

Another big difference is configuration. People mistake ships for mounts in this thread. Ships are not mounts. Ships are like whole classes. The EVE equivalent of a WoW mount is choosing to fit an afterburner or MWD and activating it - it buffs your speed. Each player in EVE can have many different ships or often change the fit of one ship - in WoW you tend to get a best set of modules ("gear") for your only ship ("class") and you use that all the time until you find something better. Rarely, you have alternate modules for special circumstances; mostly that revolves around if you are doing PVP and PVE, a bit like EVE.

Apart from these big two, EVE blows WoW away in terms of market ("auction house" in WoW) and industry ("crafting" in WoW).

WoW is a friendly, easy, pretty game, a relaxing fun fantasy romp where you never have much at stake and it's easy to play. EVE is unfriendly, hard, rather dull looking game with a very challenging and interesting sandbox play environment.

WoW is like Chess - simple rules, simple play, easily understood, long time hard work to master. EVE is like Poker - configurable, variable rules, complex play (interpersonal + mechanical), difficult to understand, adaptation and self-motivation to master.

I've seen this happen so many times, and it only gets worse with MoP thanks to ilvl restrictions on raid instances. If you're away from the game for a week you'll fall behind the ilvl of the more active members of the guild, they'll move on to the next chapter of gear acquisition and you'll be stuck trying to get into PUG groups (which means it takes three or four times as long to get anything done).

WoW is a terrible game and I kick myself every time I play it. But it's like sugar: you always want a little bit more because you remember the sweetness. Then you feel ill but for some reason you never remember the aftereffects when the next bout of sugar-desire hits you :)

You shouldn't look at it as WOW vs EVE but rather as themepark vs sandbox.

Also more subs counts for very little if you are limited by population caps, you're not able to interact or even impact those other millions of players. Heck I bet you can't really have much of, if any impact on those that play on your own server because of the way a themepark is structured mechanically. You might try argue that the subs generate vast amounts of income but again it is some what an oxymoron as it's spent on creating more rides in an attempt to retain players.

Something of note is the difference in content, 90% plus of a sandbox's content is still relevant to even the most veteran player where as large amounts of themeparks are not. Something to think about.

World of Warcraft was also my first MMO. I started playing, around the release of WoTLK (a bit late in the game). I played, leveling to 70, doing the grind if you will. Then my interest began to wane. A friend of mine approached me;

Friend- "Hey man, you ever play Eve Online?"
Me- "Nope."
Friend- "Dude, you should try it."
Me- "Yup."

So, I subbed, began "Old Tutorial", undocked and immediately shot at Concord- QQ, and as a pubbie would, I logged. Went back to playing WoW at the release of Cata, and that lasted about a week, because it was still the same wash, rinse, repeat. That whole time I could not stop thinking that I missed something in Eve, and also how that Concord dude popped me in one hit. That guy musta been playing Eve forever.

I not only resubbed, I found out that I did miss something. There was more than 2 minutes of the tutorial. What!?! Its way easier if you actually make some friends. What?!? That Concord guy you shot, be the Space Police, and you are def a nub because you did not know he was a NPC.

Moral of the Story: Eve takes time and patience but is a Awesome game. I had become so sheltered by the WoW construct, that I did not even try and learn how to play Eve because I thought that Eve would be similar to Wow. I came to Eve as a naked infant with an extra chromosome because WoW made me that way. WoW is terrible, and even worse now with Oriental Pandas and such. You want training wheels, Airbags, and a crash helmet, go play WoW. You want Uzi's, sharp objects, and to ride a rocket propelled computer chair down a flight of stairs listening to AC/DC, PLAY EVE!!