Once we all got in game, and settled into our CCP granted press characters, Magnus whisked us all to the same station for some much needed outfitting. Magnus quickly used his GM powers to get us into a couple of well-fitted Raven class battleships. Considering that my character's best ship so far was a Celestis Cruiser, I was feeling quite posh - sort of like getting to ride in a rented limo to go to dinner. This assumes, of course, that the limo comes equipped with half a dozen torpedo tubes, blasters, advanced shielding and sensor equipment. Of course, these ships are very, very slow, so you'd better be fast at killing anything that decides to be unfriendly-like. After turning all of our guns on, getting them locked and loaded with ammo, and flipping every switch like an 8-year old in a space shuttle, we undocked and met up in space outside of the station.

After a quick in-space tutorial about how various weapons and shields works, along with a lesson in theoretical power management - also known as "Knowing when to run!" - Magnus "ganged" the group together. A gang is basically like a party in a fantasy MMOG, a group of players working together to run missions, beat up players, etc. The leader of the gang has the ability to "gang warp" the group all to the same location, allowing players to follow the gang leader into battle, on missions, etc. Once we were all ready, Magnus ganged us to a small NPC pirate combatant for us to get our space legs, and trigger fingers, ready. Fifty seconds later, two dust clouds appeared where the rats used to be. Oh, the awesome power of a fully operational cadre of battleships...

While Magnus was finding another combat for us to enter, we spent some time really looking in detail at the ice asteroids in the game. These asteroids, unlike your traditional ore 'roids, help provide a lot of the raw materials needed to operate a Player Owned Station (POS), one of the new features in Exodus - the latest expansion pack to Eve. While I haven't been to it yet, the corporation I belong to has a POS, and I know it takes a lot of time, money, and resources to own your own little slice of heaven. Naturally, these ice asteroid fields are starting to become very critical to those players maintaining the stations.

We warped again. This time very close to the largest ship I've fought yet, a Dominix rat - worth a Million Isk in bounty. Keep in mind, I usually fight ships in the 10,000 to 50,000 bounty range, so, it was a little intimidating. But, three minutes later, it too was so many kinetically charged particles and we didn't have a scratch on us. This goes to show just why Eve is a MMOG, playing in a party is a lot more fun (and profitable) than just flying solo missions. Because of my schedule, I haven't been able to do a lot of ganging with other players - and my moth eaten wallet is a pretty good indicator of this. While you can get by, and have a lot of fun just flying solo, it's a lot more fun and lot more impressive what you can do in groups. Something I am taking to heart now...

At this point, Magnus gave us a quick tutorial in effective gang warping. The real trick is to get everyone all lined up, so that no one has to turn to go into warp. Doing this, and spacing your ships out properly, can make you much more effective and deadly when you jump, as all of the ships will arrive at nearly the same time, and will all arrive in the same location and heading. Magnus taught us to point all of our ships in the same direction, say, toward a "landmark" like a nearby planet. Then, when everyone was ready he'd punch the button. It was quite impressive looking around while warping to see this small phalanx of ships in perfect formation. Now, I have dreams of organizing a hundred other folks up into a vast squadron, just so I can get the screen capture of all of us at once.

After warping, it quickly became apparent that we had stumbled into a system with some company. Not knowing whether they were hostile or not, our group became a little more alert. Basic rule in Eve - assume everyone is out to pod you. When flying in low security space (where you have a really good chance of getting whacked) Magnus gave us the tip of pulling our "local" chat window out of the rest of the chat windows (chat windows are normally stacked, with tabs to switch between them) and keep it where we could always see it. Doing this, when you warp into a system, you can quickly make sure there aren't any hostiles nearby.

While we didn't go deep into politics or how alliances and corporations work, Magnus said that most people in alliances won't chat in local anymore, because the alliances don't go for trash talk in space. Rather than risk expulsion (and immediate retribution by many, many, many former mates) everyone just keeps to their local chat channels, or TeamSpeak. This made for some one-sided fun as we poked at them a bit in chat, after taking out (again, quite easily) another pack of rats. Magnus then pointed out some of the newer graphic content in the Exodus expansion, such as very realistic and just plain beautiful nebulae and gas clouds. I've said it before, but Eve is a beautiful game and it takes something that is usually black, stark and cold and manages to add vibrant colors and splendor to the experience.

Magnus began searching for a complex that was the right difficulty for our party, while we chatted, floating in space. He had taken us to a point between two warp points, so called "safe space" because there aren't any direct objects near you that enemies could warp to. This insulates you from a direct warp and attack, as they can't lock your coordinates down. However, these Player vs Player (PvP) types aren't easily dissuaded. We watched in fascination as they warped past us, time and again, trying to lay down a bookmark near our position in space. (A bookmark is a coordinate in space you can feed into ship's navigation and warp directly to.) This is something like trying to fire a bow and arrow into a 2x4 piece of wood, while driving back and forth at 60 miles per hour. Magnus decided to go have a "talk" with them, and they quickly ganked him. There's diplomacy for you. (Of course, he says he "let" them kill him, explaining he was CCP, but we were several hundred kilometers away at the time... hmmm.)

After another few minutes, Magnus warped us all to a Level 6 (out of 10) complex. A complex is the EVE equivalent of a single instance dungeon, found in other MMOGs. You enter the dungeon via an acceleration gate, that lets your party go through and creates your own version of the complex for you. This allows you to have the full benefit of the dungeon, and keeps there from being "spawn lines" that were notorious in other MMOs. The complexes are actually a series of "rooms". Each room basically has a group of enemies and structures in it. Each room also has an acceleration gate in it to get to the next room - but to be able to activate the gate, you must get the "key". The key is usually held by one of the baddies in the room with you. So basically, warp in, kill everything, find the key amongst the loot and then warp to the next room. Most complexes are a couple of rooms long - with the particular one we were in being three rooms. We also learned that each complex type is hand-built by the designers and modelers to be unique from the rest, and the one we went into was pretty interesting. We had gone into a particular gang's territory and had to fight through three rooms to get to the "brothel" where we took out the boss.

Now, the hardest complex I've ever flown was a level 3, and apparently they get exponentially harder with each level. (Word is that to run a level 10 complex, you need a good 10-15 other ships with you to handle the combat. Something to aspire to!) The first two rooms weren't too bad at all, as Magnus made us let him start his warp jump first, making sure that he'd enter the room first. We'd enter, pick out the nearest target, and blast the hell out of it. The battles would last a few minutes, culminating in awe inspiring light shows as these large enemy ships exploded from our torps and lasers.

All went well until the last room, where, by my mistake, I happened to warp in first. Magnus had told us that when we target a ship, we should all lay into it, and take care of it quickly so that there was one less attacker eating away at us. Apparently, the pirates know this trick too, and before I knew it I was being pummeled from all sides by lasers, missiles, torps, and guns. As the others warped in behind me and started taking out the enemy, I stared in horror as my shields and armor steadily dropped. I was also impressed at seeing the amount of damage I was taking - knowing that with my normal ship any ONE of the attacks would have obliterated me. I felt a deep kinship with my soon to be former ship, as I was sure we were both doomed. Then, the blasting stopped and I looked up to see that the enemy had been cleared. I had been knocked down to a miserable 11% hull strength, where one or two more shots would have consumed my ship. Even Magnus was astounded that I had survived. And I realized then that whenever you go into a complex, be sure to wait until at least one other player has gone in first. Better them than you!

After about four hours of play, with this new ship, fighting against some pretty deadly enemies I had earned well over four million ISK. With my main character, I had earned that same amount in just under a month of play time. That gives you the sense of scale between lower level players and higher level players who have the equipment and skills to run the harder missions. As I learned that night, Eve is a VERY deep game, with many, many layers and as many different ways to play as there are people. To the uninitiated, this may look hopeless, confusing or even boring, as you wander around in your newbie frigate, running cargo missions for a few thousand ISK an hour. But I've said it once, and I'll say it again, stick with the game as it will grow on you. As you dig deeper into the culture that is Eve, you'll learn that the universe really IS that big, and that anyone can take any place in it they want.

Be sure to read our interview with Magnus here on GamersInfo to learn even more about Eve, and what's coming up in the future for the game. There are only good things to come from Eve in the next few months and years, and I highly recommend the experience to anyone even remotely interested in space genre games or general science fiction.