Frontiering The Shit Out Of You

So I've picked up a new game recently called EVE Online and while it isn't technically new at three years old, it is new to me. At this juncture I'm finding it to be one of the most satisfying MMO's I've played in a long time because of what it allows me to do, namely piracy. Unlike wow all of your skills are learned in real time which means that before you go to bed or to lunch or to work or to whatever it is you go to you can start training a skill, log out and then come back (depending on the time required to learn the skill) with an upgraded or new ability. So much better than grinding hours and hours on worthless mobs and it allows me to get on, start training something and then log and do something else with my life.

AS far as the piracy thing goes what really sold me was the ability to engage in fleet wars and, the best part, ultimatums. One of the pirate strategies that I found online suggested that I create a long range fighter, use it to attack expensive but weaker vessels until their health is down to 10% and then open a communication channel with that player. So long as they accept I can demand that they pay me 50% of their ship and cargo's value lest I unload my twin missile pods and my twin rail cannons on their crippled vessel. Oh, and I can also board them. Fucking cool.

Aside from these things my other great joy is that the game is centered around money instead of experience. If you have the money to buy an "end game" vessel then you can do so regardless of experience points. You only need a few required skills that take a couple days to learn in order to secure one of the big rigs and (I'm almost 100% on this) you could have a ship completely trained in a month or two. Much shorter grind I think.

I'll leave this here then. I've got to get back to preping my Merlin class frigate for bounty hunting.