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 tattered copy of Machiavelli's The Prince: a game where you fight interstellar wars by flying spreadsheets in space. Developed by Icelandic Studio CCP Games, 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 Homeworld 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 capital ships are generally regarded as the best due to armor tanking generally being better than shield tanking.
• Caldari - Capitalist plutarchy, their ships are unpainted metal boxes with missiles and railguns. Caldari are shield tankers, which makes them a solid choice for subcapital combat but highly situational at capital ship scales.
• 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. Generally regarded as a PvE choice, although their carriers are regarded as the best carriers since they combine drone bonuses with armor tanking almost as good as the Amarr.
• 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; a lot of Minmatar ships are the meta for their role, at least in the subcapital categories. Their capital ships however are generally regarded as garbage.