Warning: The content below is a last minute stream of consciousness level of effort. Your mileage may vary.
Crazy Kinux is trying to revive the old EVE Online Blog Banter thing under the flag of New Eden Banter, which does raise the usual question as to whether EVE Online blogging is still even a thing. I mean, sure, there are a few of us who still pound out posts about the game… but that is not a big number.
Guns Blazing! Missile on the way! Combat idealized in 2007
At least when you compare today’s situation to the past, the prime of EVE Online blogging that was at its peak 15-20 years ago. I gave a presentation about EVE blogging at EVE Vegas 2018, a presentation that maybe 10 people saw… five feeling obligated because they knew me and the others there waiting for the next presenter… because CCP ran an event for streamers at the same time, and if that isn’t a metaphor for what happened to blogging… or what CCP really cares about… then I do not know what is.
But I digress.
The question at hand is:
EVE’s Longevity
EVE Online is now more than two decades old—older than some of its players. In a genre where most MMORPGs fade or shut down, EVE has kept evolving. What do you think is the secret behind its longevity? Why is EVE still here—and still feeling alive—when so many of its contemporaries have declined or disappeared?
This question feels like a fool’s errand… not to mention assuming facts not in evidence.
I mean, who are these contemporaries who have declined or disappeared?
Sure, lots of online games fold up shop, and often very quickly. But if an MMO gets to… three years… or maybe five years… without a complete financial meltdown, then it is likely up for good unless the company just doesn’t want it anymore. Star Wars Galaxies, Club Penguin, or Toontown Online would still be chugging along profitably had the companies controlling them… all Disney now… hadn’t been keen to change horses mid-stream.
So, if anything, there is a host of online games in the 15-25 year old bracket that just won’t die.
Then there is the implication that EVE Online is not in decline itself. We’re all very happy that user numbers are up… but they’re up from 2021-2022 when CCP did its best to kill the game because nobody in charge there appears to understand economics or what motivates players… roll the link to the year of disappointment.
Even then, the current up trend is still way down from 2011-2013, the peak of the game when CCP had half a million subscribers. And half a million subscribers… and I am pretty sure they were scraping in every last person who logging into DUST 514 to get that number… isn’t a peak to really brag about in a world where WoW gains and loses more players than that with every expansion cycle.
So if you came here for breathless fan boy cheer leading, you have clearly come to the wrong place.
Still, the game has lasted for coming up on 23 years, often despite what CCP does to kill it. It is sticky, successful, and perhaps the most popular Western developed PvP MMORPG in the genre. So what is keeping it going?
10 – Sunk Cost Fallacy
Might as well start with the classics.
The primary retention tool of any progression based online game, and especially of the MMORPG sub-genre, is that you have to keep playing because look at all of the crap and skills and stats you have amassed. It took you so long to get that capital ship and to train up to however many skill points you have. Are you just going to walk away from all that work?!?! Are you crazy?
Works like voodoo magic.
9 – Looks Great
When you undock, warp past a moon or planet, land on a gate, jump into a new region that has a nebula you haven’t seen recently… well, it does feel pretty good. The backdrop of the universe is awe inspiring and can give you a sense of scale.
Yes, the ships and stations and explosions are good too, but you can also get a real sense of insignificance when warping to a station in orbit around a gas giant and that planet barely changes scale as the station grows suddenly as you approach. You and your player toys are tiny compared to the majesty of New Eden.
[Also, few things are as disheartening as having a beautiful game and having people ignore that and churn out AI slop images to represent it. GTFO.]
8 – Dense yet Unobtrusive Game Lore
There is a lot of goofy lore out there for the game. I, for one, refuse to go along with the idea that ships have crews, a tidbit that appeared because some unimaginative player made a little table twenty years ago with crew size estimates for various ship classes. There is no crew, save for me and my pod. I didn’t become an immortal capsuleer, modified physically to interface with these ships that represent the pinnacle of space faring automated technology, to believe that I need some rube from a mining colony on Uosusuokko IV to reload my missile launchers or whatever. It is ludicrous and makes the Bond villain henchman recruiting problem seem trivial by comparison.
I could pour out another two thousand words easy about why ships having crews is a dumb idea and you should reject it. Don’t get me started!
But I can engage with or ignore that and whatever else I care to about the lore. In part that is because the lore, the stories that CCP builds up around the game… from the impeachment of the president of the Gallente Federation to the The Deathless to why that security agent wants you to go kill a disgruntled employee for the 19th time… is all just a backdrop to your own story. The primary lore of the game for any player in New Eden is their own story, and the rest is just there to help frame it.
7 – All The MMORPG Play Styles
If you look at WoW or GW2 or any other successful fantasy MMORPG and grab some play style from them and ask, “Does EVE Online have this?” the answer is almost always “Yes!”
Solo questing? Yes, missions. Resource gathering? “I’m going to make you mine!” is a meme every February! Crafting? Oh, industry is a big thing! Auction house games? A marketplace like no other! Dungeons? Level V missions, higher skill anoms! Raiding? Let me tell you about incursions! Ganking noobs and singletons to make you feel like a big man? Every gate in low and null sec is an opportunity! Realm versus realm? Faction warfare my friend! Conquering space and making my own empire? Null sec awaits! Arena PvP? We had that around here for a bit until the dev got pulled onto blockchain. Are there esports? The Alliance Tournament is you destination! Customization? So many ship SKINs, and SKINR so you can make your own! Dress up? There are clothing options, but no cat ears yet. Housing? Get back in your ship capsuleer, that is your home. Go make another pattern in SKINR.
Basically, there is a lot going on. It isn’t all exactly as you probably want it. There are no perfect fits for everybody. But if your complaint is that EVE Online is lacking some feature, you’re probably wrong. Except ambulation. Your empire didn’t spend all that ISK to turn you into an immortal space god so you could play house. If you need that, you go play something else.
6 – Beyond the Scope of Competitors
If there are even competitors.
Above was all the things that other MMORPGs do that EVE also does. But the game also goes well beyond what you can do in WoW. Want to run a space empire covering hundreds of star systems with thousands of players at you command? Want to be an explorer who slips into defended space to cherry pick resources and piss off the locals? Want to run a space trucking service where players will pay you good money to haul their stuff? Want to validate your need to pad your kill board by declaring that you are a space pirate? Want to break out the spreadsheets to run a starship manufacturing concern? Want to become a billionaire… or even a trillionaire… through arbitrage, day trading, and even market manipulation? Want to declare yourself a defender of your empire and adopt a system to protect, role playing as the local space law enforcement? Want to join a corporation dedicated to helping players who are lost in wormhole space? Want to engage in violence? Want to pursue wealth? Want to practice non-violence?
These paths and many more are open to you.
That doesn’t mean you are going to manage it. If, for example, you want to run that space empire, but also only want to play solo an hour a week, you probably are not going to get there. But the fact that many of these things are not easy doesn’t mean they are not an option.
5 – Shared Suffering
Maybe not the best enticement, but there is something to be said for how CCP can do things that bring huge swathes of the community together in anger at some feature they have thrown into the game without thinking it through. Key example: The hated red dot. All they had to do was let us opt out of that and it would have all been cool. Instead, the pinnacle of Brisc Rubals political career in space is having led a months long campaign to get CCP to let us turn off that damn red dot.
In null sec, my primary domain for the last fifteen years, adapting to some whim of the company, to persist and survive despite the game fighting us as hard as any foe, does as much to unite us and keep us together as any fun aspect of the game.
4 – Crafting Means Something
If you commit to industry and choose the right things to build and upgrade your blueprints and optimize your supply chain so that you can compete in Jita, the core of the New Eden economy, the “if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere” locus of the game, players will sustain your business by virtue of the fact that ships blow up all the time, every day.
I say this because in 2025 more than six million ships and pods were destroyed. That is something like 16,756 ships and pods a day. And all of those need to be replaced. Sure, pods are free, but even they need implants to install and drugs to enhance performance.
4 – Can Raise Your Pulse
I kicked off a whole series about immersion at one point, which is one of those things gamers like to argue about. The contra view around immersion is always either built around defining immersion in such a way as to prove it can never exist (the “you never akshully truly believe you are a spaceship pilot, so immersion is bullshit” thesis) or saying, “Nuh uh!” with very little in between.
I am convinced that immersion does exist, because I have experience physiological reactions to things in game, things I have seen on screen. That is being in the moment, being “in” the game and reacting to what is going on in a way that isn’t simply detached observation.
I am not saying it is an easy state to achieve, that immersion is constant. It is elusive in that “if you’re thinking about it then it isn’t there” sort of way. I left off on that series writing about Minecraft and how simple things like heights could, in the right moment, set off the physiological reaction, accelerate my heart, get that feeling in my gut that I get when up very high… all in a video game that doesn’t even pretend to anything like a realistic representation of the world.
EVE Online manages to cross that barrier. I wrote a whole post about that if you want gritty detail. but for an example, even 19 years into the game, being out in a hauler on a quiet night thinking you’ll just slip through with a delivery and jumping through a gate to find a bubble and a few flashing red hostiles on your overview… that boost my heart rate every damn time.
3 – The Thrill of Victory, the Agony of Defeat
EVE Online is a PvP game. You just have to accept that. The devs say it. The players act on it. The in-game economy depends on it. PvP is both intrinsic and essential to EVE Online and one of the key items that limits its popularity. People can wipe to a dungeon boss a dozen times and come back for another run at that scripted encounter, but will get surprised and blown up by another player and will rage quite and run to Reddit to declare the game is awful and filled with sociopaths.
Fun times.
A lot of people hate PvP. It is a rare month when there isn’t a screen on r/eve about how the game needs to be made safer. And I will be the first to declare that the game being PvP is absolutely a limiting factor as to its popularity. Hell, I don’t like PvP as a general rule. Match based things like battlegrounds tend to be dull farming assignments while open world PvP is gank or be ganked.
I am certainly not much of a practitioner of the art in EVE. I have exactly one solo kill mail for all my time in New Eden, and that person just got skunked because his partner didn’t bring enough DPS. But that kill was quite sweet. And I don’t even need a kill to feel a win. Just avoiding hostiles, escaping a trap, knowing when to hold your cloak, or being able to play with the many elements of survival… including just logging off and coming back later… to thwart hostiles feels like a win.
2 – Developer Drama
I swear that if I had… say… 100 million ISK for every rage quit threat posted on Reddit or the forums I would have a couple of titans docked up in the Keepstar in C-J6MT. There have been so many departures announced that you would think New Eden was an airport.
And this is largely centered around things that CCP does. If you’re not mad at CCP about something once in a while are you even playing EVE Online?
The bright side is that the company is clearly willing to take risks.
The downside is that they do things that really make you think they don’t play their own game, or under stand it, or understand economics, or a host of other problems.
This seems like a bad thing. But there is a dark corner of my brain that admires this bit of chaos, that wonders if it is a tactic, if it is deliberate. I mean, there have been times when CCP being dumb has united the player base in unexpected ways. And even if it is not on purposes, he keeps us on edge and paying attention.
1 – Has a History, But the Next Chapter is Still Unwritten
One of the things about EVE Online and its sandbox, PvP nature is that what happens is mostly up to the players.
That means you cannot plan on there being a huge, fun battle on an evening when you happen to have all the time in the world to invest in the game. Every gate camp, every roam, every hot drop on some krab in a navy dread, every structure timer, every move op, every thing you set out to do can end up being boring… or can end up being one of those things you talk about for years going forward.
You can’t make the other side undock and do what you want. There are no scripted encounters for fleet battles. You cannot count on people to cater to your needs.
Somebody once described the game as long intervals of not much happening, waiting for that occasional adrenaline high that makes it all worth while.
All of which makes the truly epic battles and wars all the more interesting. CCP didn’t plan B-R5RB or Asakai or M2-XFE. These all came about due to player actions… or player miscalculations. What makes them worth writing about is that they are all unique events born of the situation at that moment, unlikely to ever be repeated in the same way again.
And that makes the game interesting and worth writing about in a way that even a world first mythic raid win is not. A million other people will eventually do that raid, and it will be a story of the same mechanics over and over. Being first is the only interesting bit.
The unpredictability of EVE Online, some might even say the chaos of it, where who shows up, when they show up, what doctrine each side brings, how they deploy, who decides to third-party, and how the server is performing can all change the outcome of what might seem like an ordinary fight over a timer. And sometimes the fight just doesn’t happen. One side decides to call it off and stay home and then we all go home.
From top to bottom the game is driven by the whims of the players. And that is awful if you have limited time and you want “content” for your free time. Content on demand requires a theme park where you can just show up and get on the ride whenever.
To have content that affects the shape of the game you have to put up with a huge amount of just randomness and luck. But it can be so good when it pays off.
Summing Up
Well, that was a lot of words. Some of them even formed a coherent sentence along the way.
Those were the ten entries that made the cut, and they stand once again as proof that only serious professional writers should attempt anything beyond a list of five.
I cut out a few, mostly because they overlapped with other entries more so than the set I ended up with… which also clearly have some overlap.
I did take a run at role playing and how EVE Online makes us all role players at some level. Its very nature makes act in a way that is close to role play. Undocking commits you to the bit, requires you to behave in a way that might as well be role playing. And that gets all the more so when you get to player organizations all the way up to null sec empires. If you don’t take the role of space tyrant seriously, if you don’t staff your empire well, create rules and structures that can abide, and generally behave like it is a real thing, the empire falls apart. See the end of Pandemic Horde for what happens when you don’t take internet spaceships seriously!
I also ended up at a dead end trying to explain how the game has room for personalities, that individuals can influence the meta, sway the tides of the game, both as heroes and villains. But space fame is an ephemeral concept. Did this person or that really cause some event? Or did they just run out in front of the parade and claim to be leading it? You can find examples of both in the long history of New Eden.
After all that I am sure I missed a few things too. I didn’t even dive into actual game play… though there are times when that is not the game’s strong suit.
In the end, the chaos and unpredictability of other people is the double edged blade that both drives away players and holds those for whom a unique story is important. When you undock you are mostly likely not going to end up doing anything that interesting. But sometimes the planets align and crazy things do happen.
And then people write books about it. There are multiple books, and not just Andrew Groen’s Empires of EVE duo, exploring the game and its players. There are all sorts of videos about it on YouTube, including a six hour Down the Rabbit Hole episode that dives deep on the game and its history. And it all comes back to the game being shaped by the players.
Which, honestly, is only one reason. So maybe I should have stuck with that.
Too late now. I am not wasting all those words.
TL;DR – EVE Online clearly isn’t for everybody, but if it does scratch a gaming itch for you, then there is nothing else that will do.
Related:
- Crazy Kinux – New Eden Banter Prompt (NEB #1): EVE Online’s longevity
- Crazy Kinux – New Eden Banter #1: The MMO that keeps rewriting its own history—EVE Online at 23
- West Karana – New Eden Prompt #1: EVE Online’s Longevity
- The Greybill – Hardened to the Core
The Ancient Gaming Noob 