EVE online carries a certain reputation among the general gaming populace for having a notoriously unfriendly learning curve and being frankly quite boring. I can’t dispute that EVE has it’s boring points as I have been guilty of playing in windowed mode so that I could surf the internet or do other unrelated activities while waiting for my character to finish mining an asteroid or jumping half way across the galaxy.

What I would like to do with this post is to provide an alternative viewpoint and a few key things that anyone interested in checking out EVE online should be aware of before jumping right in.

The biggest hurdle to overcome for new players is the way the skill system works. In EVE online, skill training is done strictly based on time the character has been alive. Even when you are not playing the game, your character is still training skills, which means that you’ll have to set up a training queue every time you log off for the first few days until you burn through the low level skills you want to train which can take anywhere from 10 minutes to 2 hours.

As a consequence of this system, you cannot of course increase the speed with which you gain skill points by spending more time in the game. Additionally, new players are now given so many skill points that before you even start playing you have to make some serious decisions about just what kind of activities you want your character to engage in without being given the opportunity to experiment and see what things do. This more than anything is likely a major cause of the feeling that EVE is supremely unfriendly to new players. EVE demands a lot from players and that starts before you even disembark on your first space flight.

A good first stop when looking for information on the skills and ships in EVE online would be the wiki located at the EVE Online Wiki. Beyond that, both the in game “Rookie Help” and normal help channels are usually filled with people that are more than willing to give pointers to people who ask for help.

For people simply looking for help with the controls, the in game tutorial, while lengthy and boring, is probably one of the best resources for describing how to deal with the controls.

If you are willing to put in the effort that is required to get over that initial learning curve, the game becomes much easier to understand and can be very rewarding. And if that’s too much work, you can always start up an in game bank and then run away with everyones money like this guy did while listening to the player run internet radio station.

I used this in WotlK for speed leveling and now since the World has entirely changed the Leveling Guides aren’t up to date.

The guides i have been using are for free and everyone can download them. Just follow the steps shown on the link below.

WoWPro – Leveling Guide and Add-On for In-game LvLn

some of the guides are not yet ready.

Currently avaliable are Alliance 1-83
Horde 1-83

The 1-80 Guides are not yet all uploaded, but the Page is beeing updated daily and the Full guide should be avaliable until the 7th Dec! So no worries you rushers, you will get it soon enough!!

Race leveling guides (for the ones starting a new Character)

Alliance: Night Elf
Human
Draenai
Worgen

Horde: Troll
Blood Elf
Goblin

And again!! The 1-80 Guides are not yet all uploaded, but the Page is being updated daily and the Full guide should be available by the 7th Dec! So no worries you rushers, you will get it soon enough!!

Hope this will help you guys. – Source

!! YouTube Video Explaning the Guide !!

Proceed according to protocol.  Use the Participant-Observation consent form link.

Protocols for participant-observation for online ethnography project

1.       Protection of privacy.  First and foremost, the identities of the other players must be protected.  Since the other players will be using avatar embodiment, they will be using online names and bodies that will protect the privacy of their offline persona (see Pearce Communities of Play, page 200).  (1) However, the researchers should under no conditions ask any questions about offline identity and if any personal information is offered, the first imperative is to render that persona completely anonymous by substituting pseudonyms. (2) The avatar itself must be treated as a person and the identity of the avatar must be protected by substituting pseudonyms for the avatar in all data that is collected (chatlogs, notes, etc).  Researchers should decide on a single pseudonym for each avatar and this information must be protected in a password protected account and destroyed after the course is completed.

2.       Informed consent.  Signed consent forms ordinarily required by research boards present special problems.  First, in general, as Pearce (ibid.) notes, signed consent forms significantly are logically at odds with the requirement to protect anonymity.  No one has provided a rational explanation as to how this impasse can be resolved.  Also, in an online environment collecting of signed consent forms is basically impossible.  Best practice as used by existing ethnographies of online environments indicates that using a chatlog of the player giving permission is the best way to secure permission of this kind.   The researcher should inform the other players they are grouped with or talking to (if you join a team, or if you are talking in local chat to others) of the nature of the study, what it involves, and that it will involve participant observation.  The researcher should cut and past the following text after a brief informal explanation and they should assent or not in logged chat.  Importantly all players in the team chat or in local chat must assent and this assent must be logged in chatlog. If the players choose to communicate using voice chat you must still secure permission in logged chat.  You should not record the voices of the informants, if they choose to use voice chat you should simply take notes once you have secured permission. Similarly, if you want to take screenshots of individual avatars or avatars you are teamed with, you must chatlog their consent, and remind them that you will delete their avatar name from the screen shot using a simple graphic editing program (if, however, you can reset the graphics display so that their names do not appear in the first place, then the same rules apply as any public photo, which is that persons in public spaces have no expectation of privacy—thus, you can take photos of crowd scenes as might any player, but you must delete their names either by resetting or by using a simple painting/editing program like Phierha).  The text is as follows, you should either cut and paste this or refer the participant to the URL of the blog page where this information is posted in full.  Upon having read this, they may assent or refuse in chatlog:

Study information for the Trent University Class ‘Virtual Worlds’

Professor Paul Manning (paulmanning@trentu.ca, virtualmanning@gmail.com)

You are being asked to participate in a class research project on the ethnography of virtual worlds.

The research procedures involve standard anthropological methods of participant-observation.  The researcher will therefore first and foremost be a fellow gamer, sharing the same goals, difficulties and tasks as you do yourselves, which will allow them to achieve an empathetic perspective, while they also make observations about the activities of others who are engaged in the same or similar tasks.   Unlike ordinary science, anthropologists are expected to live the life they observe.  Thus, this method is called ‘participant-observation’.  As part of this procedure, the student ethnographer will keep chat logs, notes, and take screen shots.  They may ask questions for clarification or information just as a normal ‘newbie’ player would.  The chatlogs and other data will be screened for information about offline identity, which will be rendered anonymous, and your avatar’s identity will also be protected by the use of pseudonyms.  All data collected will be rendered anonymous using a password protected database, and subsequently destroyed after the term is over.

All students who engage in this project have taken and passed a human subjects review which can be consulted at (URL).

The only foreseeable discomfort associated with the study is the invasion of your privacy.  There are no direct benefits from participation in the study.  However, this study may help contribute to understandings of this qualitatively new form of sociality.  All research from this project will be published on a course blog located at (insert URL) which you are welcome to consult and comment upon subsequently.

Participation in this study is voluntary.  You may refuse to participate or discontinue participation at any time. No information that personally identifies you or your online identity will ever be used, your screen name or avatar name will never be used nor will any information about your offline persona ever be solicited.

If you have any further questions or concerns about this project, please contact the professor at the email above.

You indicate consent by telling the researcher in in-game chat ‘I have read the project description and I agree to participate’.  In order to consent you must be 18 years of age, which you also indicate by your agreement to participate.

3.       Public chat.  All games include a chatlog function which is sometimes engaged obligatorily.  You must determine how to log chat as your first mission.  Unlike normal offline interaction, chatlogging is an accepted practice and all players are aware that their chat is logged as a condition of playing, so you do not specifically need permission to log chat, very much unlike in real life.  You may treat utterances made in ‘public’ chat as being public speech that requires no special permissions.  Team chat and local chat in which you are directly engaged can be defined as private and requires permissions as outlined in (2) above.  Anything posted on a public blog or forum on the internet is considered to be published and may be cited at will but must be cited as a publication using the standard AAA style for internet publications.

4.       Participant-Observation.  Most of the research you will do will involve participant-observation as the main way of gathering data. This is defined by most of the authors we are reading but is quite intuitive: you must behave like a normal player, and do the things normal players do, put yourself in their position and make their life and goals into your own.  You must participate in their activities alongside them.  You also, at the same time, observe.  This should be made clear in your explanations of your presence, that this is not observational science in which we stand aside and watch, we participate first, observe second.   Therefore, the researcher must be a player first: you must obey the End User License Agreement (EULA) at all times, you must be polite, you must not engage in ‘griefing’, you must play the game.  If you are invited on a team, you should be forthcoming as possible about your role as participant observer and answer any questions they might have (but especially you should address the concern that you are watching them like rats in a maze, this is a common concern), but mostly you should allay their concerns by showing an earnest desire to play well, and help them achieve their goals if you are teamed with them, for example, finishing a dungeon, a raid,  gain experience points and level up, whatever the team’s goals happen to be.

5.       Interviews.  Set formal interviews will need to be separately approved.  As part of your normal observation and participation you can ask questions about the game in normal conversation, however, if we reach the stage where actual interviewing is needed, the interview protocol will need to be approved.  We may, however, make a standard protocol of questions that all groups can use.  This will still require a separate clearance and separate permissions.  Your data will be screened to ensure that the questions you ask fall into these two groups: (1) ordinary questions about the game that any ordinary player might ask, including ‘meta-game’ questions like ‘what do you like about this game?’  or ‘how do I train up to the next level?’ or ‘where is the nearest market?’, and (2) preapproved interview questions from a list we will compile and get approved as a class.

6.       Students, to participate in this exercise, must provide evidence that they have passed the online research tutorial at http://apps.research.uci.edu/tutorial/, in the form of a printed out signed ‘congratulations’ form that one receives upon completion.

Study information for the Trent University Class ‘Virtual Worlds’

Professor Paul Manning (paulmanning@trentu.ca, virtualmanning@gmail.com)

You are being asked to participate in a class research project on the ethnography of virtual worlds.

The research procedures involve standard anthropological methods of participant-observation.  The researcher will therefore first and foremost be a fellow gamer, sharing the same goals, difficulties and tasks as you do yourselves, which will allow them to achieve an empathetic perspective, while they also make observations about the activities of others who are engaged in the same or similar tasks.   Unlike ordinary science, anthropologists are expected to live the life they observe.  Thus, this method is called ‘participant-observation’.  As part of this procedure, the student ethnographer will keep chat logs, notes, and take screen shots.  They may ask questions for clarification or information just as a normal ‘newbie’ player would.  The chatlogs and other data will be screened for information about offline identity, which will be rendered anonymous, and your avatar’s identity will also be protected by the use of pseudonyms.  All data collected will be rendered anonymous using a password protected database, and subsequently destroyed after the term is over.

All students who engage in this project have taken and passed a human subjects review which can be consulted at (URL).

The only foreseeable discomfort associated with the study is the invasion of your privacy.  There are no direct benefits from participation in the study.  However, this study may help contribute to understandings of this qualitatively new form of sociality.  All research from this project will be published on a course blog located at (insert URL) which you are welcome to consult and comment upon subsequently.

Participation in this study is voluntary.  You may refuse to participate or discontinue participation at any time. No information that personally identifies you or your online identity will ever be used, your screen name or avatar name will never be used nor will any information about your offline persona ever be solicited.

If you have any further questions or concerns about this project, please contact the professor at the email above.

You indicate consent by telling the researcher in in-game chat ‘I have read the project description and I agree to participate’.  In order to consent you must be 18 years of age, which you also indicate by your agreement to participate.