This MarketWatch story about games that teach "crucial life lessons" percolated up on my Facebook feed. It highlights Eve's robust, player-driven economy, quoting CCP's economist, Doctor Eyjólfur Guðmundsson. (Also remarkable: CCP
has a full-time economist. His reason for leaving? Becoming rector of the
University of Akureyri.)
The article particularly caught my attention because I've increasingly turned my eye toward making money from the Eve economy. I started buying a bunch of widgets at a low price at station X, then hauled them a few jumps over to station Y where they're selling at a higher rate. Dealing with hauling stuff between stations was a pain, though, so I created another alternate character, have started training him up on trade and commerce, and parked him at a relatively busy hub. He is
station trading: that is, looking for items that sell at a low price and then turning around to sell at a higher price. Station trading requires some patience, waiting for bulk buy orders to come through and then for the sell orders to trickle out. Also attentiveness: there's a lot of one- and two-cent elbowing to set the lowest and highest sell and buy prices, respectively. But, hey, it seems to be going okay. I'll let you know when I break a billion ISK.
Oh, and I stole.
Again. 1.4 million worth of minerals. A miner ejected his haul into space, emptying his ore hold so he could continue to mine without having to deal with dropping his stuff off at home base. The notion, then, is to return later in a ship with a big hold (like the Iteron Mark V, several of which
I've had blown up) or ask another player to get. Oh, well. I remember the game's tutorial warning against letting that happen to me.
What vexes me now is: what next? I generally still enjoy running missions, and those yield money. So, too, does mining with my mining character, and I'm seeing that happening with the trader. But, what to spend the money on? I've gone back to invest some skill training in smaller ships and weapons with a notion of getting into
Incursions or
Factional Warfare. Alas, my first foolishly solo stab at Incursions cost me a nice Brutix I'd named
Ola T. Miza; its ending did not befit
its namesake. There is some appeal in Factional Warfare as a chance to take a stab at player-vs-player combat; that may be something I take a swing at very soon.
