RebellionXXI said:
EVE Online is REALLY tedious. Perhaps no more so than any other MMO, but there IS a reason why EVE Online has under 100K subscribers while WoW has millions.
First off, you really hit the nail on the head : at its most tedious, EVE is not really more tedious than just about any other MMO.
However, if you're smart about it, you can side-step most of the tediousness and do whatever floats your boat. You can easily get by with either tedium (easiest for people with loads of time to kill), cunning (especially rewarding if you can manage it, because you CAN make a fortune with not much effort but loads of brain cycles) or brute force (in this case, a rich real-life wallet - selling GTCs or PLEX for in-game funding via the approved methodology is perfectly fine with the developers, and buying high-SP-count characters with in-game money is also perfectly ok).
The beauty of it all however is that it doesn't really matter how you make your in-game money, and that while important, no amount of in-game money will ever be a substitute for actual player (as in, you, the human controlling the character) experience. In-game money can very easily be gained (if you know what you're doing) or extremely easily lost (if you're careless and put all your virtual eggs in a single virtual basket).
Second, the subscriber count is almost 350,000 not just 100,000 as you seem to think. True, the concurrent user count is under 100k, but that's just accounts online at that particular moment (it's quite unusual to get more than 20% of subscribing accounts online at the same time). And the huge draw over games like WoW is that everything happens in a single universe, where EVERYTHING is connected. Well, for me it's a huge advantage, bit it might not really appeal to some others. Eh, to each his own, I guess.
Finally, the reason WoW will always have many more subscribers is quite simple : WoW is both *easy* and *simple*, while EVE is designed from the ground up to be both rather brutal and extremely complex.
WoW is the poster child of what EVE players call a "theme park" MMO (with its rollercoaster rides, guided tours and very gentle handholding all along to the top), while EVE is a self-proclaimed "sandbox" MMO... but most players agree it's actually a huge sandbox with a tiny relatively safe area, beyond which lie quicksand traps, landmines, razor blades and a zillion little bitey stabby things just waiting to obliterate you.
...
Yes, EVE can be long stretches of boredom punctuated by insanely hectic "fight for your life" all-guns-ablazing moments, but after you experience a few of those in which you're not completely obliterated, you don't really mind all the boredom in between anymore.
You will NEVER experience adrenaline rushes in any other game like you will in EVE, because everything you do matters and the death penalty can be HARSH for the unprepared. It can still be harsh even for the prepared, because YOU choose how much of what you own you want to risk. Some very rich players intentionally fly ships fitted with expensive gear that a newbie could only dream of just because otherwise they don't feel "the rush" anymore... and if a gang of newbies manages to catch such a person on the wrong foot (because, unlike in WoW, that can actually happen in EVE), the newbies will have surely be hit a big jackpot when they turn all the loot into in-game funds.
Me, I've been playing for nearly 5 years and not thinking about quitting any time soon (even if I surely had quite a few "what the hell, developers" moments every now and then).
I've tried quite a few other MMOs and got easily bored with each, always back to EVE (which was only on the back burner, never left for good).
EVE, you either intensely love it or kind of hate it, there's not much middle ground.
Unless you're a jaded veteran of it
In that case, it's just ok, but all other MMOs seem... inadequate in comparison.
