EVE Online

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The MMO that World of Warcraft couldn't kill.

EVE Online is what you'd get if you combine Traveller with Microsoft Excel, Euro Truck Simulator, and a cliff notes version of Machiavelli's The Prince. Developed by CCP Games (no, not that CCP), an Icelandic studio, the company that briefly bought White Wolf with delusions of making a World of Darkness MMO before realizing that building an actual mmo is much harder than making spreadsheets fly in space.

EVE is set in the distant future after humans left Earth through a giant wormhole which subsequently closed, stranding them and causing a dark age for the newly formed colonies until they were able to develop back to the level they'd been at, whereupon they immediately set to fighting each other. Technology wise it's somewhere around the level of Star*Drive or Babylon 5 where big ships are able to jump around unassisted but smaller ships need some help to cover interstellar distances.

There are four main NPC factions in the game, who's role is generally to represent different combinations of technology.

Amarr

Theocratic empire, loves heavily armored ships covered in gold filigree with lasers. Amarr ships are regarded as somewhat one-dimensional with very tough armor resists but limited damage choices. Their capital ships are the preferred meta because armor tanking offers a much deeper buffer than shields and in capship slugfests it's more important to survive long enough to receive healing.

From the tiny Punisher frigate to the giant flying assplug that is the Avatar titan, Amarr ships basically fly the same. They have lasers, they have tough armor, and they're gold. However, if there's one ship of note it's their freighters, which look like the rebel transports from Empire Strikes Back.

Caldari

Capitalist plutarchy, their ships are unpainted metal boxes with missiles and railguns. Caldari are shield tankers, which makes them a very solid choice for subcapital combat (armor plates have a significant impact on ship mass, shield upgrades don't), but highly situational for capital ships. Their one "good" capship is the Phoenix, the lone dread that can actually hit anything while moving on account of it being a giant metal box of missiles.

The archetypal Caldari ship is the Drake battlecruiser: a lumbering brick encrusted with missile launchers and capable of being shield-modded to rival a battleship. A new pilot can amass the skills to sit in one in a matter of weeks, and competently use one in less than a year. The combination of missiles, low-ish skill requirements, and tough defenses makes the Drake a go-to design for fleets using low-skill player swarm tactics.

Gallente

Noblebright democracy, flies curvy ships with drones and blasters. Gallente kinda suck; blasters are short ranged and power hungry, while drones work slower and can be destroyed. They're armor tanked, but with an emphasis on active self-repair (which is shit) as opposed to having a really beefy buffer (which increases the chance you'll survive a single alpha strike and be healed). Generally regarded as a PvE choice on account of having the best drone/fighter carriers.

Gallente ships have a bipolar tendency, which can be illustrated by looking at two of their cruisers, the Vexor and the Thorax. The Vexor is a slow, tough, amorphous blob that can carry a lot of drones, but will mostly sit around watching things very gradually die. The Thorax resembles a flying phallus that wants nothing more than to get to point blank range and violate the enemy with neutron blasters. Most Gallente ships fall into one of these two camps.

Minmatar

Tribal republic of dirt poor ex-slaves, fleet made out of rust and duct tape and armed with guns. Minmatar ships benefit from not needing to use capacitor power to shoot, allowing them to focus on engine boosting. They also can apply all damage types by switching ammo. Being fast and flexible, Minmatar ships are often the meta for their role, at least in the subcapital categories where costs are low enough that survivability isn't a serious consideration. Their capital ships however are garbage and nobody pretends otherwise even ironically; they just don't have the toughness to slog it out.

While the Minmatar have many ships of note, none are more iconic than the tiny, unassuming Rifter. More rifters have been flown and lost in EVE than any other class of ship. Small, fast, and cheap, they are built in the thousands and thrown onto the field to pin down other bigger ships and keep them from escaping. Fly a rifter, die gloriously, and then grab another rifter.

Player Factions

The real action is between player organizations. The basic building block of organization in EVE is the Corporation. The corp is equivalent to the guild or clan of most MMO's, with a member list, some super users, guild bank and assets, etc. However, corps can have more assets, such as deployable space equipment that remains on the server indefinitely (as long as the bills are paid, resources are supplied, and nobody blows it away). The typical corporation has a few dozen to a few hundred members, although holding corps tend to be very small and actively recruiting player corps can range into the thousands of members.

Corporations can band together formally into alliances. Corporations in an alliance can make sovereignty claims over systems by deploying and maintaining a thing in space that says they have sovereignty. Having sovereignty over a system allows deployment of system upgrades that can make the system more ideal for the owner's intended use. The typical alliance has thousands of members, with the largest breaking into tens of thousands.

Alliances often informally band together into coalitions, usually consisting of a central power with satellite allies. Coalitions aren't precisely modeled in the game, they're more of a meta feature, although alliances can set standings towards each other so their pilots see other pilots as friendly or hostile. The major hallmarks of a coalition are having a unified command and communications so that all coalition members can cooperate both at the battle and campaign level of operations. From a practical standpoint this usually means a shared discord or mumble with single sign on (CCP Games helpfully provides a gigantic api that includes an auth token system), and private web site (forum, wiki) for coalition coordination.

An actual list of player coalitions in the game would be impossible to maintain as they change frequently and often without warning. However, as a general rule of thumb there are always multiple predominately American coalitions that hate each other, and one Russian coalition that hates everyone who isn't Russian.

CCP has a very interesting approach to PvP, in the sense that they are relatively hands-off apart from actually cheating through the use of in-game hacks. Defrauding other players? Totally allowed. Betraying your allies? Happens all the time. Embezzling funds from your alliance? Played a key role in one of EVE's biggest wars to date. This shifts the meta where out-of-game interactions, intelligence & counter-intelligence operations, propaganda campaigns, and backroom deals have a huge effect of how the game is played. And the best part is that CCP actively canonizes it. Major player battles are commemorated through wreckages and monuments, and adaptations like EVE: True Stories recount them more or less exactly as they played out, with all the major players portrayed as their in-game characters. As players often like to say, "EVE is real."

Character Archetypes

EVE is a completely classless, skills based RPG. However, because of the enormous training time to become completely proficient at a task, and the significant real skills and traits needed to fill a role, there are several discernable character archetypes in EVE.

• Alliance Leaders: Leadership in EVE is essentially about cult of personality. It's not actually necessary to have much competency at the game to be a leader in EVE, what really matters is having the personality for it. Alliance leaders inspire their members, set a goal, and oversee the middle management layer that makes an alliance actually tick. In most alliances, the leader has some competency as an FC or logistician, although in the largest alliances management, propaganda, and diplomacy becomes their primary job.

• Fleet Commanders (FCs): FCs lead the alliance members on the field. To be a successful FC requires several key traits. First, personality; a fleet commander has to have an entertaining persona that can keep a group of dozens or hundreds of players engaged and wanting to participate. Second, extensive knowledge of EVE's combat mechanics and a stable of alts with the necessary skills to fill the roles needed to support a fleet on the field. This typically means a titan or black ops alt and several fast or cloaky recon and cyno-beacon alts, possibly with spy alts as well. These give the FC the tools to find a fight and make the fight happen. Lastly, they need to be self-motivating; FCs spend as much of their time doing solo recon and basic spy work as they do leading fleets.

• Logisticians: The money-makers. The HOW of making money in EVE has varied over time, but the role has changed little. Logisticians are the trusted few with the keys. They build and fuel outposts, manage capital ship production, and coordinate the movement of assets. The key qualities of a logistician are trustworthiness and long term ambition. Logistics work in EVE tends to be agonizingly boring but is absolutely vital for the largest alliances, many of which pay logisticians a stipend for their efforts (usually paying for their account subscription via plex).

• IT: A 100% meta skill. The largest alliances in EVE have genuine IT departments running web servers, forums, and streaming apps. Like logisticians, these players are often compensated with plex.

• Spies: Another completely meta activity. Spies in EVE function much like spies in real life, infiltrating a target to monitor their activities, rob them of assets, or even dismantle them from the inside. And just like in real life, the principal skill is meticulous attention to detail in covering their tracks and telling convincing lies that never disagree with observable facts. The largest alliances have counterintelligence operations, and lazy spies who don't do enough to obfuscate their digital identity can and do get identified. Most spy players maintain a conveyor belt of alts in development, with no attachment to any single identity.

• Line Members: The rank and file boyz. Active line members are what every alliance wants to attract, players who will log in and team up to do things for the alliance. Player attention is an abstract form of wealth in EVE, one which alliances go to great lengths to acquire.