We originally reviewed EVE Online in 2003. It has grown and changed so much since then, we decided to review it again. Read more about why we've decided to re-review certain games here. Reviewer Brendan Drain is a long-time EVE player, and also heads indie studio Brain And Nerd, which is currently developing a sci-fi strategy game. 

“It’s not for everyone,” I say as I introduce a friend to EVE Online, hedging my bets on the off-chance that he actually tries the space sandbox MMO. I know that the reality of the day-to-day goings-on in EVE are unlikely to live up to the amazing stories I’ve told him of political intrigue, colossal wars, and record-breaking betrayals. EVE Online is a deeply compelling virtual galaxy in which incredible stories can take place, but only as infrequent punctuation to a more sedate space simulation. Those epic tales you read are EVE's highlight reel, and each memorable moment you might be a part of will be separated by long periods of patient preparation.

When it was first released back in 2003, EVE was a largely empty universe with a smattering of players all trying to grab power and smash each other’s heads in with it. PC Gamer’s original review at the time aptly described it as “a desolate wilderness of constellations,” but for some the challenge of taming that wilderness and carving out a chunk of it for themselves was irresistible. The empty world of New Eden was a newly opened book, and those early players were writing the first chapter in each other’s blood.

I was first introduced to EVE in early 2004 and have watched it grow over the years into a complex sandbox with a wide variety of roles and activities to suit different people. Players who enjoy PvP can become pirates or fight for one of the empire faction's militias, spending their days playing games of cat and mouse with other players through the low-security areas of the galaxy. They could join one of the warring alliances out in the lawless null-security regions and become part of massive fleet battles, or join a ruthless war corporation looking for weak groups to gank in high-security space.

Putting in the hours

PvE-focused players can grind missions to help the NPC-run corporations of EVE fight off pirates and rival organisations and collect bounties in the process, or farm endless streams of NPCs in asteroid belts or cosmic anomalies. Explorers can use scan probes to search space for hidden pirate sites in the hopes of making a big find, or even venture through unstable wormholes into one of the thousands of hidden star systems. Industrialists spend their days hoovering up asteroids all throughout New Eden, manufacturing most of the ships and modules players use, and making profit trading on the fully player-run market. 

The one thing all of these activities have in common is that they're slow and deliberate, with a lot of downtime between moments of action or surprise. Players will spend hours hunting for that elusive kill for an adrenaline high (combat in EVE is so high-stakes that new players frequently experience physical shaking). Or they'll spend that time farming ISK (the in-game currency) to replace lost ships, analysing markets for opportunities, and designing the perfect ship setups for particular tasks. You could look at this as busywork or grindy gameplay, but it's all in preparation for those moments of action that matter most.

Every player you talk to will have small emergent stories of battles they were part of or other interesting things they've done in the sandbox, but underneath each story is painstaking prep. Grinding up ISK to buy PvP ships is what ultimately enables that chance moment where you bag an amazing kill, or lets you join a fleet battle that makes history. Investing the time to forge social relationships and figure out how the game works is what turns you into the expert people rely on, even into a leader of thousands.

Are the infrequent highs of EVE worth the slow plod of progression and preparation in between? I definitely think so, and I'll gladly take hours of mining and fiddling with ship setups if it means that one day I'll have a story to tell.

Starting your space life

EVE may be 15 years old at this point, but the new player experience is practically brand new and starting a character is now quite a polished process. You’ll get plenty of information on each of the four playable races before making your choice, and design the character with EVE’s in-depth body and head sculpting character creator—but keep in mind that this is all largely cosmetic. Any race can train the skills to fly any ship, and your character will only be visible as a small head-shot photo in-game since CCP disappointingly abandoned its ‘walking in stations’ feature.

The tutorial itself gives simple step-by-step instructions and is fully voice acted to keep players engaged throughout, which is a damn sight better than the start I had in 2004. You'll also get to take part in a simulated fleet fight with NPCs, which is a nice touch as it gives a good sense of the scale that EVE reaches if you eventually join a player alliance.

The one thing the tutorial can't guarantee is that you'll have intrinsic motivation to keep playing when the scripted story ends and the reality of EVE’s slow progression sinks in. Many new players report having an "OK, now what?" moment when they aren't being told what to do anymore, and some just decide to stop playing. Why is that?

Above: An example of what a major battle looks like in EVE.

The truth is that EVE Online is a fundamentally slow game that requires a considerable time investment to make progress in, and that can make it very boring for new players. Simple tasks such as travelling to a space station and picking up an item require just clicking a few buttons, but can take several minutes to complete, as you watch your ship slowly warp to the station and dock. Long journeys from one corner of the galaxy to another can take so long that doing them manually would melt your brain, though there's an autopilot feature which will do it all for you (albeit at a reduced speed). Mining is similarly boring in that you only need to interact with the game once every 15 minutes or so to empty your cargo hold, and it takes several hours of mining for a new player to get enough ore to build a new ship.

While these everyday tasks take a lot of time and are thoroughly unengaging, they play an important role in allowing people to play at a relaxed pace or even run EVE in the background and still make progress. I'm not ashamed to admit that I often spend evenings quietly mining or hauling on one screen while playing Overwatch or watching Netflix on the other, and there's something compelling about knowing that I'm still being productive in my downtime.

Making these activities more actively engaging might improve the minute-to-minute experience of new players, but EVE would lose something fundamental—the contrast that makes the exciting bits so exciting and the pain of loss so devastating, the slow progress that makes joining a corporation so important and encourages socialization and specialization. 

When you do have the time to actively engage with EVE, a faster pace of action can be found in other activities such as combat missions and exploration sites. On the extreme end of the activity scale are PvP and the new Abyssal Deadspace PvE dungeons, both of which require your complete attention as you have to rapidly respond to changing and emergent circumstances.

The user interface is another major sticking point for many new players. My housemate once described it as an “unfriendly, scary, complicated calculator,” and he’s really not wrong. EVE’s age is partly to blame for that, as there are now over 15 years of features built on top of each other and it all has to be crammed in somewhere. The UI is now a hodgepodge of windows and other elements designed at different stages of EVE’s lifetime and following different visual styles. Unifying features such as tooltips, the taskbar, and notifications help add some much-needed cohesion and explorability to the interface, but the rookie help chat channel is still always packed with players asking for help finding the options they want. 

New players also often find the realtime skill progression system unfamiliar and limiting, and some of the higher level skills require several months of just waiting to acquire. Skills essentially act as roadblocks between you and the ships and modules you want to use, and there’s no way to actively train them up through normal gameplay as you would in a typical MMO. Rich players can also buy skill injectors from other players to add skill points directly to their characters and skip those realtime roadblocks, a feature that is regarded by some to be a form of pay-to-win gameplay.

Ruthlessly social

The real appeal of EVE Online isn’t in the minute-to-minute play but the things that groups of players can accomplish over time if they work together. Most people who play EVE in the long term aren’t masochists who love the clunky controls and the user interface that looks like it’s straight out of Microsoft Office. They continue play because they’ve become part of a community and feel like they belong to something. MMOs are at their best when played with a tight-knit group of good friends, and EVE does a great job of empowering groups and rewarding cooperation.

A new player will start the game able to fly only his chosen faction's tech 1 frigates, small and fast ships with limited firepower and defences. Alone, they can realistically only accomplish basic PvE and mining tasks. But they can quickly upgrade to larger ships such as high-damage destroyers designed to kill frigates or tanky cruisers that can take a lot more of a beating, and this isn't just a linear upgrade path. Every ship has a purpose in the context of a group, and the lowly tech 1 frigate can play the vital role of PvP tackler after just a few days of skill training and mentoring.

As part of a small gang, the tackler's role is to get close to enemy ships and hold them in place while the big guns do the killing, using a Warp Disruptor or Warp Scrambler to keep the enemy from warping away and Stasis Webs to physically slow their ship down. Further training allows players to specialise into other PvP fleet roles, flying heavy damage-dealing cruisers, logistics ships that repair friendly ships on the battlefield, or electronic warfare ships that can target-jam enemy ships.

EVE Online’s single most defining feature is its shared single-shard and instanceless universe, which allows groups of practically any size to form. This encourages players to band together for mutual benefit, forming corporations and alliances with shared identities, motivations, and long-term goals. Large training organisations such as Signal Cartel, EVE University, Pandemic Horde, and Karmafleet regularly recruit new players and offer everything from free ships and advice to structured activities. Even a small independent corporation can build and maintain its own space stations, see success with roaming PvP gangs, and tackle high-end PvE content such as dangerous wormhole anomalies and combat sites.

The bad news here is that EVE Online doesn’t offer much of a compelling hook for the solo player who isn’t interested in joining a corporation and isn’t out to make friends. Lone wolves will typically only be able to engage in repetitive solo PvE play such as combat missions, mining, and trading, can struggle to stay alive outside of high-security space, and will be extremely hard pressed to find PvP fights they can win. EVE Online is a ruthlessly social game that can be difficult to succeed in on your own, which is both its greatest strength and one of its most cited failings.

Making history

EVE Online is to this day one of the most fascinating virtual worlds to observe and to read about. On the largest scales, huge alliances gather thousands of players together into massive fleets and carve up lucrative areas of the galaxy between them, giving rise to politics and warfare that often mirrors the real world in startling detail. There are areas of space controlled by coalitions of American and European alliances, regions annexed by the Russian power blocs, and countless neutral states and vassals paying tithe to far-off lords.

Most new players will give EVE a try after reading some incredible story of a record-breaking war or political betrayal in the sandbox, only to be confronted by a terminally slow game with so much depth you could drown in it. Many do. A combination of more than 15 years of new features and niche gameplay that remains distinct in the MMO genre conspire to make EVE a difficult game for the average person to get into and enjoy. EVE's big saving grace is its unparalleled scale and welcoming community, from the training corps that will show new players the ropes to the alliances that will eventually bring them into those history-making battles we’ve all read about.

If you’re in the market for a sci-fi MMO that’s more of a long-term hobby than a passing interest, something that you can become deeply engaged with and find a place to belong in, I highly recommend EVE Online. If you manage to scale the learning cliff and aren’t put off by the indirect controls and disharmonious user interface, you’ll be joining one of the most compelling virtual societies in gaming history and a world in which your actions can have real consequences. Just don’t try to go it alone.

EVE Online's Into the Abyss PvE expansion, which adds a new hostile human race that inhabits uncharted Abyssal Deadspace, is out today, and the video above will take you through all the new features.

CCP Games promises that the Triglavian Collective will be "the most intelligent enemies seen yet in New Eden". Beat them and you can harvest "mutaplasmids", which you can use on your existing modules. The plasmids might boost performance and increase the value of your hardware, but they might also wreck your gear completely, so you'll always be taking a risk. 

The free expansion also adds three new ships, which players on a subscription will be able to craft from blueprints. You can watch them flying around from 0:25 in the video. Those ships can also use a new weapon type, Entropic Disintegrators, which you can see at 0:36.

The idea is that you travel to Deadspace, avoid environmental obstacles such as caustic clouds, grab loot, and get out. It should be accessible to new and old players alike, but the deeper you travel, the better the rewards.

You can reach Abyssal Deadspace from almost anywhere in New Eden by activating an Abyssal Filament, which you'll be able to trade for with other players. When activated, it'll leave behind a beacon that you'll come back to when you leave Deadspace. That's dangerous, of course—other players might find your beacon and catch you on the way out, stealing your loot.

One you're done with the video, check out some exclusive screens below. That second image looks like one of the Abyssal Conduits that links pockets of Deadspace together. 

The full trailer for Into the Abyss can be found beneath the screens. 

What's your favorite non-violent PC game? That's what we've asked the writers of the global PC Gamer team today. As with every edition of our regular PC Gamer Q&A, which is published on Saturdays, we love to read your responses to the same question in the comments thread below too. 

When it comes to our choices, expect a cool mix of trucking, underwater exploration, floating through space, a space station, puzzle games, old-fashioned physical comedy and even a quiz series. You'll also find a couple of responses below from members of the PC Gamer Club.

Samuel Roberts: Jazzpunk

I don't think Jazzpunk is strictly non-violent, since it features a joke deathmatch mode called Wedding Qake where you fire cake at each other, but the main game is pretty tame. It's basically a Naked Gun-style comedy adventure, where you prod different parts of the environment or characters to make jokes happen, and it's extremely enjoyable. 

This from the game's Wikipedia page also confirms it's not completely non-violent, but damn, I'd download any game that includes this: "a version of Duck Hunt in which the player pelts cardboard ducks with slices of bread from a toaster, [features] prominently in the game's storyline." I don't remember that bit, to be honest, but play Jazzpunk. It'll make you laugh. 

Andy Kelly: Euro Truck Simulator 2

Regular readers will know that I'm forever banging on about this game, but it really is one of the best on PC—and notable for its complete lack of violence. I mean, sometimes I'll get frustrated and ram my HGV into a slow-moving motorist, but mostly I just trundle peacefully along the motorway listening to German rock radio stations.

American Truck Simulator is a nice alternative. Although I prefer the European scenery, particularly the Scandinavia expansion, the deserts of the western United States make for some atmospheric driving too. Both games are some of the most relaxing experiences you can have on PC, like a lovely screensaver for your brain, and I can't recommend them enough.

Tom Senior: EVE Online

EVE Online isn't a non-violent game exactly, but if you keep your head down you can coast around in high-sec space admiring nebulae and bathing in the sweeping synth soundtrack. EVE's asteroid fields have given me the most peaceful moments in games. I don't have time to join a corp and get the full EVE experience, but I drop in occasionally and stretch the game across two monitors to make the cosmos feel as huge as possible. Then I just sit back and watch the little mining lasers suck ore out of unsuspecting rocks.

Speaking about non-violent spaces in games, I recently started following The Safe Room on Twitter. It highlights areas designed to give players respite in tense games. The pictures remind me of the sense of relief you get when a game puts the brakes on. Even violent games can deliver moments of reflection.

James Davenport: Proteus

I play Proteus a few times a year now. Something about a pixelated rabbit that makes plinking sounds with each hop gets to me. But it's not just the rabbits—everything emote and dances and boops and beeps when you walk by on whatever procedurally generated landscape you washed up on this time. Everything from flowers to bees to gravestones has something to say, and they sing it in accordance with the tune of each season. You'll rotate through them all in Proteus, while the song and its natural instruments change mood with the little deaths of autumn and the vibrant renewal of spring. Proteus only takes an hour or so to finish, and its lack of a clear goal will bother some, but it's a complete emotional circuit. If you're looking to contemplate life, death, transcendence, and plinky rabbits without ever pulling a trigger or bashing dragur over the head with an axe, it's a must play.  

Jody Macgregor: Bernbrand

Bernband is an entire alien city right out of a Star Wars movie compacted down to an 11 MB download. Bug-eyed aliens bobble around the streets, flying cars vroom past the walkways, and banging music comes out of every third building. It's a game about walking around and finding cool spots—the dudes listening to hip-hop in the car park, the aquarium where you can get inside the glass—and that's enough for me. Your alien feet clip-clop as you walk past glowing buildings, passing from noisy spaces like bars and thoroughfares to quiet alleys and back again, and the contrast makes it feels just like being lost in a real city.

Bernband is free on Gamejolt, and is all the work of Tom van den Boogaart. He's currently working on an expanded, paid version, and has been posting gifs of the work-in-progress on Twitter.

Chris Livingston: You Don't Know Jack

I still play You Don't Know Jack every now and then. It's still a fun, fast, and silly trivia series after all these years (the first YDKJ game was way the hell back in 1995). It's one of the few games I stream to the TV using the Steam Link, and party play lets you use your phone as a controller, perfect since my phone is almost always in my hand anyway.

I just looked it up and apparently there's yet another volume coming out later this year, which makes me happy—though in terms of non-violence I should say some of Cookie's jokes and puns can be almost physically painful.

Tim Clark: Dear Esther and Lumines

I suppose the expected answer is some sort of elegiac stroll-'em-up, of which my favourite would be the none-more-poetic Dear Esther, which is the right sort of pretentious. But really there's a ton of stuff I could choose. Pro Evolution Soccer during its glory days, though my last ditch tackling might disqualify it. And how about puzzle games? A remastered version of Lumines is coming out later this month, and the original is on Steam already. It's super peaceful in a trancey, high energy sort of way. You know what I'm saying. 

Bo Moore: Stardew Valley

I've put more than 200 hours into Stardew Valley now. It's the game I've gone back to the most in the last few years. I don't do so in short little bursts, though. Every time I return it sucks me in for a good long while. At this point it almost feels like I'm speedrunning it as I try to min/max my first few seasons, rapidly upgrade my tools, and get my winery operation up and running as quick as possible. I get burned out quicker each subsequent return, and yet I keep going back. 

The PC Gamer Club: Subnautica, Abzu and The Talos Principle

We asked the members of the PC Gamer Club to suggest an entry this week through our Discord channel, and we got a couple of great responses. User Mildoze picked both Subnautica and Abzu, noting the former has a little bit of violence. "Subnautica is an amazing story game that forces the player to think for themselves and does it without ever turning you into a powerhouse. You're always vulnerable (even 40 hrs in), never given offensive tools, and forced to go ever deeper into more dangerous waters. The best choice in every confrontation is to flee, but you can't always do that when you're panicking in a cavern 1000m below the ocean without any weapons or enough oxygen to make it to safety."

And on Abzu: "It's like playing a living aquarium. So peaceful and beautiful under the sea. It's a game where there is no threat of dying, no enemies or hostility of any kind. It's easy to relax and reach a Zen-like state of mind playing Abzu  I've never fallen asleep playing a game until Abzu. Yet for a couple weeks every night I would turn it on, fighting off the sandman as I made my way to the end of this amazing exploration game." 

Fellow Discord member Ronder opts for The Talos Principle. "For me it would have to be The Talos Principle. Aside from the excellent puzzle setups, the main conflict in the game is generated by the questioning terminals you meet. As they gently prod you and question your sense self-identity as well as your responses to that, the AI unit you pilot vicariously comes to self-awareness through you. This form of intellectual combat is stimulating, especially given the scope of the game, and gifts you subtle questions to ponder long after the closing credits. It's hard to see how potentially erasing your sense of personhood could be non-violent, but the game achieves that masterfully."

But what about you, reader? Let us know your choices in the comments. 

Fifteen years ago, on May 6, 2003, EVE Online was released. Back then, it was little more than a bizarre spaceship sandbox that appealed only to the most hardcore by promising them a life of their own making. In its first year, only 25,000 brave pilots set out to colonize the barbarous frontier of New Eden. Since then, that number has grown exponentially—and so has EVE Online. With 14 kilometer long Titan-class supercapital ships, enormous player-built death stars called Citadels, and player-driven empires fielding armies of thousands of individual players, the EVE Online of today is a vastly different game.

But that promise at the heart of EVE Online—that you can be who you want and have influence over others—has never changed. And in the 15 years since, EVE Online's players have become characters in some incredible stories. I've had the honor of documenting many of these tales over the past few years and am proud to be able to share them with you today in one easy to find place.

Here are PC Gamer's greatest stories about EVE Online.

How a scam in EVE Online turned into its greatest rescue missionScooter McCabe is EVE Online's most prolific scammer. If you name it, chances are he's conned some poor sap out of it. But even his reputation for cruel con artistry has its limits, and when Scooter discovered a pilot was exploiting naive new players for personal gain, his mission to bring him down turned into EVE Online's first humanitarian aid mission.

Inside the biggest heist in EVE Online historyYou should always be careful of those you spurn—especially in EVE Online. That's a lesson that the leader of one of EVE's biggest and oldest alliances, Gigx, learned when he logged on one morning to find that, overnight, his second-in-command had stolen everything. It was, to date, the biggest theft in EVE Online history. But, even worse, all of it was an intricate revenge plot from Gigx's former allies whom he betrayed a year earlier. What goes around comes around.

Meet the biggest scammer in EVE OnlineThe first time I met Scooter McCabe was in a Las Vegas casino, a fitting place for EVE's most renowned scammer to kick back. Amid the chirps and clangs of slot machines, Scooter opened up about his favorite cons and his surprisingly personal reasons for why he never feels bad for those he scams. Years later, I spoke with Scooter again to hear about his favorite tricks of the trade.

Murder Incorporated: Ten months of deception for one kill in Eve OnlineThe heist that started it all. Originally published in 2005, this incredible story details the painstaking ten-month process that a group of expert hitmen underwent to gain the trust and loyalty of their target and then, in her most vulnerable moment, burn her entire corporation to the ground. It became the blueprint for deception and betrayal in EVE Online, and it remains one of its greatest stories.

How an EVE Online con artist tricked a ruthless pirate into giving him his priceless shipSpeaking of long cons, this story caught fire not because of the material value of what was stolen, but its personal significance. Infamous pirate Tikktokk flies a one of a kind frigate decorated with over 400 markings for each person he has killed—a one of a kind possession in New Eden. Which is exactly why this scammer decided to spend months befriending Tikktokk and then tricking him into handing it over. 

How one mistake turned EVE Online's deadliest hunters into corpsesTitans are the most majestic things in EVE Online. These colossal spaceships span upwards of 18 kilometres in length and come equipped with devastating 'Doomsday' weapons that can eviscerate entire fleets in one fell swoop. They take almost a year of training to fly, cost nearly 100 billion ISK to build, and are the backbone of any major EVE alliance. And Rocket X kills them for a living.

How EVE Online's greatest military leader once fooled the entire galaxy Over a decade ago, the Titan-class supercapital ships of EVE Online were almost mythologically rare. Space historian Andrew Groen, author of the excellent Empires of EVE Online, writes about how one of EVE's greatest players hoodwinked the entire galaxy and managed to save one from being destroyed by an armada of almost a thousand players.

Meet the most honest man in EVE OnlineDespite what people want you to believe, most people in EVE Online aren't amoral psychos. Some people, like Chribba, have built a legacy on honesty—and made a killing doing it. For years, Chribba was a broker, the middle-man who ensured that the most expensive deals in the galaxy went down without a hitch. Things didn't always go well for Chribba.

The struggle to maintain EVE Online's only graveyardNot everyone in EVE Online is a ruthless murderer. In fact, Azia Burgi is quite the opposite: She cares deeply for what happens to pilots after they die. For almost a decade, Azia has been maintaining a graveyard in EVE Online that has become a holy site for players to memorialize both those who die in game and in real life. Her tireless efforts to protect the graveyard from vandals and the ever-present threat of despawning are a sobering reminder of the transience of life in EVE.

The incredible journey to build EVE Online's first Death StarLike Titans, Citadels were once a rare sight in EVE Online—particularly the gargantuan Keepstars, a Death Star-sized space station that is 800,000 meters squared and sports a doomsday weapon that can obliterate entire fleets with the push of a button. Back in May of 2016, there was only one in existence. This is the story of how a group of merciless brigands banded together to launch a top secret operation to build it without anyone in the galaxy even knowing.

The life and death of EVE Online's first all-woman pirate gangEVE Online is a game that historically appeals only to men, with 96 percent of its players describing themselves as male. So when Mynxee decided to form a kickass band of all-women pirates, it made waves among the community. Hellcats became famous for their raucous attitude and reckless flying, but behind the scenes this is a story of the enormous sacrifice it takes to be a leader.

EVE Online player fakes suicide attempt as part of an elaborate scheme for revenge and moneyMost EVE players understand that the drama unfolding in-game is purely fictional, but once in a while those theatrics can spill over into real life with troubling implications. That's what happened when one player manipulated a mental health support group in EVE, faking a suicide attempt in order to exact revenge on a group of players they hated.

Meet EVE's search and rescue task force who will fly to the edge of space to save your assOf course, for every bad apple in EVE there's a person who will take time out of their day to find you in the deadly maze of wormhole space and save you. This is the story of Signal Cartel, a group of neutral explorers who have built a reputation by selflessly running search and rescue operations to the stranded pilots of New Eden.

EVE Online players have produced some incredible propagandaPropaganda is a huge deal in EVE Online. It gives your soldiers something to fight for and a narrative to identify with. It can soften the blow of a defeat, or salt your enemies' wounds following a rushing victory. Naturally, EVE Online players have made some incredible propaganda over the years, and it is worth celebrating.