Entire cities dead on some World of Warcraft realms

[1] http://www.duosecurity.com/

I don't play the game though, so I might be wrong :)

Eve is an single "shard" MMO with a starship piloting theme. Similar in ways to Elite http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_(video_game) The economy (and related such as production, resource ownership, politics, warfare) are, to an extent not found in most MMOS, player driven. That is what sets Eve apart.

People are a varied lot and thus like it for varied reasons. There are several ways to enjoy game.

Unlike WoW, there are no raids and bosss. There are NPC spaceships that you can kill for loot, but that sort of thing is small potatoes--there's no equivalent to a 40 man raid grouping up for a boss fight to get good loot. EVE has no stated goal, there's no endgame, except for what you make of it. Also, the mechanics of EVE let player created alliances control territory, in the form of star systems. Right now, I understand that Reddit and SomethingAwful are the two giants in the galaxy (Test Alliance Please Ignore, and Goonswarm Federation in the map I linked above). There's also a bit of the galaxy set aside for NPC space, where people are somewhat safe from other players, which is the bit in the middle of the map I linked.

Another interesting aspect of EVE is the economy, which is quite a bit more in-depth than other MMOs. Since I don't play EVE myself, I can't say much about it, but I do know that people can become fairly wealthy in-game, just by playing the market, even to the point of paying for their subscription. I'll just say that EVE is noted for it's economy, and leave it at that.

But the most notable thing about EVE is the politics. Because everyone is in the same game world (again, unlike WoW, where there are hundreds of identical Azeroths on different servers), the stage is set for conflicts on a huge scale. Also, the developers are notoriously hands-off. A spy infiltrated your alliance and stole your entire treasury? It's happened before, and it will happen again.

If you have the time, I think you should consider reading a little bit of this: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=881..., which is a snapshot of an interesting event in EVE, that I put together from various sources a few years back.

You're a capsuleer. A capsuleer is someone who can pilot certain specially designed ships. As someone who has ascended into virtual godhood by the benefit of effective immortality, you have entered a new plane of power dynamics. And because you're a gamer, the galaxy is an oyster to exploit for your amusement.

The simplest play is to fly around and shoot things. There are pirates, other players, other factions. They all shoot back, probably. Some of them do it better than others. Eventually, you run out of ammo, or your ship is destroyed, or you want something bigger and badder. That gets you to start thinking about how you shoot things and how to do it efficiently and effectively. That gets you thinking about which ship to fly, which guns to put on it, and so on... and how to get all those things cheaply, or at least for a smaller cost than it takes to make money with it.

The ships, the guns, the ammo: these all come from somewhere. Other players make it. They do it by stripping asteroid belts of resources, holding territory where they can conduct R&D, and build every bullet you expend, every ship you pilot. Some of those resources are more elusive: they come from gas clouds which are hard to detect, or components found in uncharted systems. There are ways to get there and exploit those resources, too.

And naturally, with so many moving pieces, so many different agents, you get hierarchical organizations, larger infrastructure, traders conducting arbitrage and moving freight, bigger and badder ships and bigger and badder groups to hold vaster tracts of territory. And with that comes opportunities to scam and con others, opportunities to be a leader or a spy, and so on.

And all of that is supported by the game. You're constantly going to have to deal with the social repercussions of whichever path you take: a lone pilot won't have support infrastructure from their corporation; an alliance leader has to maintain the interest of his members; time spent shooting things is time not spent mining asteroids; and so on.

What sounds cool? What do you want to do? Can you stomach what it'll take to be in that role? Can you understand mechanics and people well enough to make it happen? Then you can probably do it. That's EVE.

I am going to wrote allmy papers like this, "Either some ridiculously unlikely scenario will never be reached, or some other unfalsifiable scenario is true."

Until someone gets a case of cirrhosis of the liver from someone else's drinking, there is no such thing as "second-hand drinking", just as there is no such thing as "second-hand carpal tunnel syndrome" from someone else playing too much WoW. I'll be the last to say that addiction doesn't affect others, and yes, I will agree that people can spend too much time playing video games (or getting drunk). But much like the alcoholic telling someone else they should never drink because it's "Evil", I won't take my advice from someone who obviously thinks that WoW is inherently evil.