In my recent ship giveaway I have asked players of EVE why do they keep playing our Favourite Game. MMOs are special in that regard, because players get bored with games eventually, and developers need to find a way to keep existing players entertained, so they won’t churn. One of the ways is introducing new content and giving existing feature more polish. But is it the only one?

Let’s find out by reviewing all the answers I got to our initial question: “What keeps you attached to EVE?” Answers varied, but the first two (three?)  have dominated the rest:

• the EVE Online Community (8)

• in game friends, corp mates (7)

• diversity, ability to do something else entirely if you wish (5)
• open world game, any path through the game (3)
• single server, one game world (3)
• unapologetic PVP, rush of combat (2)
• a working economy (2)
• offline training (2)
• great visuals (1)
• live events (1)
• out of game content: twitter, blogs (1)

There were also individual answers, for example Bucky O’Hair is happy when he can kill some Amarr (“If you’re happy and you know it, kill Amarr”). Alstevar Eastern, who won Dominix Navy Issue, has a “Star Trek feeling which can’t be found in other games”. Man, if people play EVE and not ST:O for that “Star Trek” feeling, this means that New Eden must offer a better sci-fi experience than an iconic franchise of movies and TV series does. Good job, CCP! Now let’s move away from the game itself for a moment, and have a look at the social side of things. I have met several of my corpmates in real life, so I fully understand what Whistlerbean meant by saying: “As one of the co-hosts of a RL meet up group, it made me see the people who share the same hobby as I do. Whether you are a humanitarian or a tyrant in game, we all share the same universe (both the real one and the virtual one)”. Like everyone else playing EVE I had my ups and downs too, but every time I felt like leaving, the same thing that brough Druur Monakh pulled me back in: “At the same time, it is this challenge, which keeps me coming back. And the people which I managed to meet despite my mostly-covert lifestyle”. There was one last answer, that I would like to mention: did you know, that Zakee met his current wife in New Eden? I know of at least two more couples who met the same way or in similar circumstances. Good for you! (I should say here that I really admire my wife for the level of acceptance she offers towards my EVE Online addiction hobby. Thank you, honey!)

And what keeps me playing?

Man, it’s been 7 years already. What keeps me playing? I enjoy watching EVE grow: see it change from expansion to expansion.  It’s as if you were really exploring an evolving world. Even if it’s as simple as building a new ship, which was just introduced in the last expansion, or flying around an unfamiliar pocket of low sec space, without any blues who would be able to help. And of course the community: people whom I met in (and then out of) game over all these years. EVE Online is a continuous gaming and social experience: just like its persistent world of New Eden.