Note: The following is based off of about two hours of game play.

Having setup my trail account on EVE Online, I logged in and got started. As expected, character creation was up first. Unlike the games of today however, the number of choices, and their direct impact, was a bit overwhelming. Figuring I would most likely have to re-roll anyway, I just picked what caught my eye first and did not really attempt to fine-tune anything. Once that was done, I found myself looking at a ship in space, with a tutorial window taking me through the first few actions. Two things immediately struck me; space looks REALLY good in EVE, and the interface is very overwhelming at first glance. You easily have 10+ different menu buttons on the left side of the screen, a radar in the top right, a character sheet in the top left, a multi-tab chat window near the bottom left, and the tutorial window near the middle. It’s funny how accustomed you get to hitting ‘c’ for your character window, ‘i’ for inventory, etc. Not the case in EVE. The entire setup is unlike what you see in most games today, down to how you move about in space. You have the option to double click to a location, or you select spots to travel towards off different menus. No WASD here.

To be honest, I thought about just logging off and forgetting EVE about 30 minutes into it. So much gets thrown at you so quickly, and you get so little feedback on any of your actions. It makes, IMO, a very poor first impression, and I could easily see many potential players simply giving up and forgetting it. However, I do want to give EVE a fair shot, especially since I’ve read some very interesting stories about its PvP and political aspects, plus I’m looking to experience something different than WoW, so I figure the steep learning curve is to be somewhat expected.

I have a 14 day trial, and I plan to stick with EVE until that runs out. My hope is that by the end, I’ll be comfortable enough with the game to evaluate whether or not it’s something I want to continue, based not on the interface but on the depth of the game play.