EVE New Citizens Q&A

I'm beginning to notice alot from new pilots that it is their hope and wish to be able to play eve for free buying plex's with ISK. While, its certainly possible to do so, and I know many people who do just that, perhaps it may be important to think about it a little more critically.

First off, the phrase 'time is money' is important to keep in mind. Experienced players with excess of multiple tens of millions of skillpoints can crank out many ten or hundread millions of isk a day with little or no effort. However for a rookie pilot whom knows nothing about the game, and has no connections, making a few million with hours of hard work is a good day's haul.

Lets put some numbers to this. Obviously these numbers are not representative to every player, but should be fairly reasonable for most new players.

Lets say you make a good 5 million an hour playing eve online as a rookie pilot... which is quite a bit really, so we are assuming a very tallented player with some luck. A plex on a sale goes for roughly 400m (often more, but going to be generous with this one). So at 5m an hour to earn 400m will take in excess of 80 hours to obtain! If plexs cost 15 USD to purchase, then your basically going to be getting paid 19 cents an hour.

At 19 cents an hour which grants you absolutely no progression in the game. I go for a daily walk for about an hour and make more than that picking up spare change. many rookies burn themselves out very fast, treating the game like a job which pays very little, rather than a game to have fun with.

Even if your a smoking rookie making 10m an hour out the gate, still takes 40 hours, and is like getting paid only 40 cents an hour to do so. At 20m an hour its still almost an entire day of playing just for that plex.

So, have some fun for once and don't worry about paying for the game with plexes to get started with. Your hard earned isk can be better invested into your character and your ability to make money.

Eventually, when your sitting on piles and piles of isk which you seem to be able to magically create with no effort... you'll start to buy plexs and be much happier for it.

Thank you for your time, and I hope this truth will help you, rather than discourage. This game has alot to offer, just don't make it into a job.

OP has some good info.

I know players with lot's of time invested into this game that still worry about next months subscription being paid and spend a lot of time in-game working to get PLEX.

Personally I don't even bother with PLEX. I've been playing this game for well over 3 years. I pay for a 1 yr subscription at a time which is the best deal. That way my time in-game is spent having fun and doing what I want instead of worrying about making enough ISK to cover next months sub with a PLEX.

I sign up 3 months at a time so it's only $12.95 a month