Coming back to Eve has been a good decision. The game has evolved to the point where it is now a pleasure to play. Gone are all of the old gripes I had about the game and there have been a host of developments that really just make this such a nice game to play for new people.

The first thing I noticed when logging in was this mad busy ‘The Agency’ Screen listing a whole range of things to do from Agents and Missions, Encounters (New!), Exploration, Resource harvesting, Fleet up and a help section (this virtually did not exist before). Its got stuff I knew about and a load of new stuff I knew absolutely nothing about. Immediately it was just a sense that things were so much better than before.

This is the image of the Agency showing each of the features including Agents and Missions, Encounters (New!), Exploration, Resource harvesting, Fleet up and a help section.

You click on the encounters section and ping there is sitting in front of you a whole range of things to do. The Encounters tab opens to Show the various kinds of agents and encounters you might want to do. Click on Mission agents and you are taken to a really straight forward screen where all of the types of mission are sitting waiting to be completed (Security, Distribution, Mining, R&D and Locator Agents).

This image summarises the various missions one can do from Agents through to Epic Arcs, Storyline agents and Career Agents.

Encounters Opens up a new window that includes the Stargate Trailblazers, Incursions, Faction Warfare, Pirate Strongholds and Abyssal Deadspace. I had no idea what half of these were. Mori was sitting in Rens in a Thrasher along with his negative sec status. I couldn’t remember what that meant. I could not locate how to fit the ship and I had no idea what stuff was worth anymore! But it felt good to be back. The last nine years I have tinkered with a few MMO’s but mostly just played solo offline games. All of which has been great – but I have really missed the interaction that comes with a great MMO and Eve Online is a truly great MMO.

Sure I have kept up with the history. I knew there had been a few great wars along with the game hitting global news from time to time over the last nine years. I had missed it and it was good to be back – even if I had no idea how anything worked anymore. The first thing I did was undock to have a look around. Rens was how I had remembered it. Busy with ships coming and going. The usual local spam but for stuff that made no sense to me anymore. My “Susan Black’s Thrasher” drifted along for a bit. I got excited but stuck “How do I fly this thing?”

I double clicked. OK good the ship responded. Flew around the station and then OK how to I go to a gate? I docked up, looked on YouTube and before I knew it I was able to hit the gate jump through and poof I was gone. Back into New Eden.