Hi, I'v been an eve player for a long time now. Over a year I think.
Non boring level advancement, that depends on how you do it. Training skills only take time and it doesnt matter how much you play, training is real time. For example, I'm currently trainining Rapid Firing to levl5 which is the maximum level for all skills, It takes 8 days 3 hours 44minutes and 15 seconds for me to finish training that skill. Usualy you only have one main character and if you want to switch profession then you just have to train for the skills.
Each skill has one primary and one secondary attribute that are used to calculate the training time to level up. Also each skill has a rank value from 1 to I think 6 is the highest at the moment which basicly doubles the skill points required for each level. The character attributes are assigned in character creation. You can then train learning skills where each level boosts an attribute by one point and then you can get implants which boost at the moment from 1 to 4 attribute points.
Money is more as an actual level advancement in eve because everything costs money. A frigate costs 300.000 while a battleships costs 110.000.000. And the rule is, only fly what you can afford to loose
Eve Online is all about PVP in my book though you can do agient missions, mine, trade and so on. If you produce items you can either mine the minerals for yourself or buy them off the market. For producing you need blueprints, and once you got blueprints you want to put them into research for a while to increase their miniral effiancy. Bluprints usualy cost 10x the item amount, so a battleship blueprint costs 1.000.000.000 on average.
Politics is also a huge factor. There are player run alliances all over none empire space which have thousands of members. These alliances go to war alot and the biggest battle (lagfest as some call it it
) involved 170-180 players. The biggest I have taken part of was around 100 players. The alliances have none aggression pacts and other treates between them but best of all with Shiva, which is a free update for eve, will make the player run alliances part of the Eve storyline. Already have alliances taken part in events which is a start to involve the alliances in the storyline.
The first event involved the Jovians, a uber race which no players can play at the moment. One delegate came to visit each alliance and talked to reprisentatives from the alliances. In the end each alliance was offered to be offered a full empire status to the Jovians. What this means that hopefully when shiva comes we will be able to see the terratory the alliances hold in the ingame map. My alliance, The Stain Alliance held a huge welcoming show when the Jove came. We alligned 60-100 ships in a U around a station in one of our border systems. Then we had each of those in the U to fire off smartbombs which set of an explosion wave emmiting from the ships, very impressive. Then we had missile ships behind the station shooting torpedos up to create a fireworks show. Was very impressive
The last event involving the alliances involved the Fountain Alliance where npc factions who live in the area the FA holds were rebelling and attacked FA ships. FA quickly gatherd a fleet of 100 ships to counter the threat.
Another example on how players effect the storylines is the Amarr Championship where each house wanting to rule the Amarr Emprie recruited pilots to fight for them in a championship. Each house had a certain agenda, one wanted to expell all non amarrians from the empire, one wanted to welcome them and so on.
http://ansalon.cz/eve/map/latest.jpg
this is a map of the latest alliance status
And last point. The developers play the game, they are not there to only make money. 4-5 devs have been recruited from the ISD which is a group of volunteers who helps moderate the forums, help new players, help in bugfinding, holding events and so on. The devs are also very active on the forums. Whenever the devs propose a change to the game they usualy post a thread on the forums about it and request feedback from the players. And also they are funny
One dev, Tomb, who manages ship balancing or nerfing as some call it has this signature on the forums
"2004.07.06 19:30:45 combat TomB strikes you critically with his Nerf Bat, pwning you for -100% everything."
I think this covers it
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