Whether you play EVE Online or not, the chances are you've read a lot about the harsh, cut-throat universe of New Eden. Alliances routinely clash over territorial disputes, spies work to destroy organisations from the inside and death is an inevitability. While dying in most MMOs means respawning at some far-away camp and having to repair your gear, death in EVE is a somewhat more vicious affair. When your ship is destroyed, whether it's by NPCs in a particularly tough mission or pirates hunting in a low security system, it's gone for good. While insurance will provide a sum of ISK to help with the loss, you'll need to re-buy a new ship and all the equipment that went on it. This would be like having to buy a new set of armour every time you die in World of Warcraft; a scary notion.
For the denizens of New Eden, losing a ship is a strictly in-game financial loss but for those that don't play EVE the scale of those losses can be hard to grasp. Jump On Contact tackled this issue head-on recently with a handy chart showing the rough value of EVE ships in both ISK (the in-game currency) and US Dollars. The prices show the sheer scale of the losses incurred in large battles and are based on a player buying game time codes for cash to be sold in-game for ISK. A fully geared battleship, one of the most common types of ship for players to own in the game, comes out as being worth approximately $10 US Dollars. Most ships fall somewhere between $1 and $13 but perhaps most shocking is the price of a fleet-ready titan, which is estimated at $7600. The next time you hear about a titan being killed or a fleet of capital ships being wiped out, perhaps this chart can help show the sheer scale of that loss.
Reader Comments (42)
Posted: Feb 10th 2010 12:22AM (Unverified) said
I think Darkwood just won this thread.
I have been playing EVE for years. It is the first game since TradeWars and Diku/ROM that can actually keep my interest. The negative comments here are actually kinda baffling since they do not sound much like EVE at all, at least not after you have played it for more then 2 weeks.
I have been playing EVE for years. It is the first game since TradeWars and Diku/ROM that can actually keep my interest. The negative comments here are actually kinda baffling since they do not sound much like EVE at all, at least not after you have played it for more then 2 weeks.
Posted: Feb 10th 2010 2:04AM (Unverified) said
Yeah, that's a fair suggestion. Maybe that would have been better. But I also felt like it would be misleading, because very few people buy ISK with USD, and what's really relevant is how long you have to work for something, and I wanted to expose that side of things to people. Such is the messy world of EVE.







