Welcome to EVE Online.
You are a capsuleer, able to fly everything from the lowliest shuttle to the most massive capital ship.
When the ship you are piloting explodes, it is destroyed; some of the contents can be looted or salvaged, but the rest is lost forever.
Every mineral can be mined by players, every item and ship can be built by players, and everything can be bought and sold on a market controlled by players.
You can be a bounty hunter, searching high security space for players who have committed offenses, buying their kill rights, and executing them on the spot.
You can be a member of a militia, fighting over low security space between the four major empires of New Eden.
You can be a member of an alliance, joining an empire that spans hundreds of null security systems and taking part in battles that involved thousands of players.
Or you can be a merchant, miner, trader, scam artist, thief, mercenary, moon baron, teacher, space trucker, spy, pirate, or maybe even something no one has thought of yet.
Eve Online is a political, sandbox, spaceship, economic, military MMO in which you can do whatever you want. It takes a departure from other MMOs in that it all occurs on a single server and skills are trained 24/7 in a time-based queue as opposed to a physical grind. While the game has a notorious learning curve (lessened by many recent improvements to the game), if you hang around for long enough you'll be hooked for life. EVE has a free expansion every six months, leading to an interesting, growing game universe.
It is never too late to start playing!
Getting Started in EVE
Check out the recruitment thread for Merch Industrial, the Penny Arcade forum corporation: http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/171557/eve-online-a-space-empire-of-tyranny-and-dick-jokes/p1
EVE University is a new player training corporation: http://www.eveuniversity.org/
Red versus Blue is ideal if you like the idea of cheap ships exploding nonstop in a forever-war: http://rvbeve.com/forums/index.php?/portal/
Feel free to suggest other links for me to put here.
Current Events in New Eden
The latest free expansion, Rubicon (http://www.eveonline.com/rubicon/), was released in December. The next free expansion will be sometime this summer.
Fanfest is later this month, so a lot of new information will probably be released soon. This also means that CSM Elections are coming up, and Burn Jita is just around the corner!
EVE’s nullsec regions are currently settling down after the Halloween War (October 2013-February 2014), which was between the CFC/RUS and N3/PL. The CFC, in the west, is purging their regions of hostiles that accumulated during the war. In the east, a group of predominately Russian alliances are still battling PL and N3. The new HERO Coalition has recently deployed to Sendaya to attempt to seize space in Cache, and in response several CFC squads and alliances have deployed to Doril, Hemin, and the surrounding systems. Cancel that, we're heading back to VFK to clean house.
If anyone else has alliance updates from a different point of view, I'll post them here.
EVE Videos
The best expansion trailer:
The most recent expansion trailer:
The most ironically quotable trailer:
Clear Skies: An EVE machinima series, Parts One, Two, and Three.
Fleet PvP: Clarion Call parts One, Two, and Three,mostly featuring smaller fleets engaging larger ones using expensive ships and interesting tactics, with fantastic commentary.
Fleet PvP: The CFC's Freedom Squad jumps in on a capital and supercapital fight.
Fleet PvP: The CFC's European Goonion engages a TEST/Brave Newbies fleet.
Solo PvP: I have no idea and I'm terrible at this, someone suggest videos to go here.
EVE in the Media
There is an actual EVE comic book! EVE: True Stories is currently being released. You may be able to see some of the issues for free at this link: https://digital.darkhorse.com/profile/4386.eve-true-stories-hc/
The Battle of B-R5RB: January 2014, the largest and most expensive battle in the history of gaming.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloodbath_of_B-R5RB
http://themittani.com/features/largest-virtual-battle-ever
The Battle of 6VDT-H: July 2013, broke the record for greatest number of players in a single system (~4200).
http://themittani.com/features/6vdt-cfc-battle-report
The Battle of Asakai: January 2013, a huge fight involving capital ships and basically all of EVE trying to get in on the action
http://themittani.com/news/breaking-massive-super-fight-asakai-lowsec
http://themittani.com/news/asakai-aftermath-all-over-cobalt-moon
Sins of a Solar Spymaster: Largely out of date, but a very interesting look at many different aspects of EVE by The Mittani, who rules as glorious (alliance) leader for many of us:
http://www.tentonhammer.com/features/mittani?page=8
The EVE Universe
Dust 514 (dust514.com) is a free to play first person shooter for the Playstation 3. It is linked to EVE Online in various ways, the coolest of which (for EVE players, anyway) are the orbital bombardments.
EVE:Valkyrie (evevalkyrie.com) is an upcoming space combat simulator designed for use with the Oculus Rift.
