Ebaon

@b3n I only have one account and I do very well for myself as a mercenary. I won't ever buy another account, in fact.

@Pasha Yes.

@rgolch You can run missions to use your loyalty points to buy implants which can thereby decrease the total amount of time required to train skills. You can buy implants with ISK as well, giving the same result. Your actions DO cause your learning abilities to move faster. I've never understood why this wasn't constantly addressed by players.

@Space Cobra

In response to number four: Yes, you are currently confined to a station. At fanfest, they detailed plans to allow you to dock in abandoned stations and the like and get out of your ship and explore these areas. CCP has apparently scrapped the idea of using human avatars walking around in stations as a purely social thing, however, which I think is good.

@xenothaulus

If you're interested in storylines and 'big bad's to fight, check out the Incursion expansion.

I created my first Eve character back in 2005, I think, and was like a fish out of water. I didn't know what to do or how to do it and I didn't touch it again until 2009, where I experienced a similar fate. I came back to the game every now and again but could never find the game that I heard about.

It wasn't until I joined Noir. Academy, a corporation that trains you to become a mercenary and, upon graduation, gives you the option to join the big brother corporation Noir. EVE is a game that's very, very hard to play alone. But I've never found any game that can compete (although Pathfinders Online looks interesting, but we'll see).

Reading the comments, I see a lot of misconceptions, but the fact is that there is no game for everyone, and that's ok. I would love to help anyone give it another try, but I'm not going to say that if you don't enjoy it, you're a moron.

So, if you're interested in why I finally found the game really, really enjoyable after years of frustration, I'd love to speak with you (Barlat is my in-game name), but if the game just doesn't appeal to you, I understand that too.

@HokieKC

If you've ever playd MAG, you know that 256 players sounds cool, but when you're constantly dying in a handful of seconds from some stray bullet or one of the dozens of people you don't/can't see, you realize that it's not actually as fun as you hoped.

@Dunraven

We do? I must have accidentally been left off of the newsletter.

I find that the trailers do a very good job of representing the feeling of playing EVE to a very large degree.

@avidlurker

Only dreadnought class ships can bombard and they must use a special module. He uses the special module during the fanfest demo, and once the youtube videos are up, you'll be able to see it in action yourself, I'm sure.

I would imagine that the differences in damage will be handled just like it is in Eve - that is to say that the resistances of your target will determine the final damage done, and some defensives automatically have lower resistances to certain types of weapons.

As far as missiles, I don't believe there are any dreadnought-size missiles, but I play a mercenary and my character is Amarrian, so we don't fly dreadnoughts, and I don't know much about missiles. Someone else might know more.

@Unshra

That's a good point. I hadn't thought of that before. I was trying to spitball a few ideas out and the only one I can really latch on to this early in the morning is seeing the battle lines being draw, so to speak. If you've taken a planet last week and you're hired to take that planet again, you could get a pretty good glimpse into the inner workings of the political sphere, but otherwise, I guess that's about it.

I guess the market is sort of an indicator, but even in EVE, the things that really show you how the world is changing is generally territorial. In EVE, that works because you can fly anywhere and notice the difference, but in Dust, you're not able to notice that kind of thing. I guess we'll have to see. I'm looking forward to it, either way.

@Alex Oglitchkin

I think that Sony is getting something else rather than money from this, something that is, potentially, better: respect.

The PS3 has no real difference when it comes to their rival, the Xbox. There are hardware differences, sure, but largely speaking, there isn't anything that really makes a huge difference. I think many people would choose a console based on their friends more than anything.

But what the Playstation does have is that, for some reason, is the capability for larger population matches and their Playstation Network is free while Xbox Live costs money every month or year. MAG got a lot of media play about having such huge matches - only possible on the Playstation - and it was a good idea, but failed to truly win a big battle for Playstation. If DUST 514 does well, as a Playstation exclusive, it earns Sony bragging rights and gives them a leg up.

I think that's the real prize for DUST 514 to be on their side and be free to play and download.