I am back after another 4 year break. Been playing since 2007ish on and off.
Eve is one of the few MMOs that are still successful after multiple decades, and rightfully so.
In all these years, there have been countless Wow-Clones that have come and gone, fallen by the way side
But there has never been a true Eve clone. Albion is arguably a “clone” in the sense of certain gameplay mechanics such as: open world, full loot pvp, a high-low-null-sec system and portals connecting the different parts of the world together, but it’s a 2D fantasy game that simply doesn’t have the depth, the atmosphere, or the freedom that an Eve Online server does. It’s a great game, but it’s no Eve.
Perpetuum, same deal, plus that game is effectively dead.
No Man’s Sky is the first game in all this time that made me feel almost the same sense of freedom in a massive universe that Eve did when I first started playing. It’s a game that does a lot of things right. However, the game is nowhere near as deep as Eve, and there are basically no other players that you can actually interact with in the game, and no pvp. For that reason, the game does not compare. Elite Dangerous has similar issues and plays more like a single player flight sim.
In some ways Minecraft is one of the few games that in my mind comes close to being as open-ended and free-form gameplay as Eve, with multiplayer and pvp servers, but again despite being an amazing game, it just doesn’t compare.
Echoes is a dumbed down phone version of Eve. It is not a true spiritual successor.
I have absolutely zero faith in Eve Frontier. I could be proven wrong and perhaps it could turn out to be a fun, “light” version of Eve, or perhaps it could even surprise me and be a fun game of its own. But its a survival game. I highly doubt that whatever they’re cooking up with that game will truly compare to Eve.
Star Citizen. Lol. It does actually look pretty good. But it is yet again another first person “realistic” space sim where combat seems to involve spinning around in circles because you have to literally face directly at enemy ships to shoot at them - as an Eve player, I can’t be the only one who finds this kind of gameplay rather uncivilized. If they can make combat work in that game to a degree where dogfighting doesn’t simply involve spinning around in circles so you can shoot at the enemy - if they can do that and make it good - then Star Citizen may have a chance.
Eve is still the king. It’s been going strong all these years. It’s unrecognizable in a lot of ways. There are plenty of criticisms we all have with this game, yet it is still the only Eve.
I imagine there are some Eve players out there who have the ambition to possibly create their own spiritual successor to the game - and tbh I feel like an Eve player is the kind of person who could understand how to do that better than anyone. Even I think I could do it, but learning how to code and make games is not an easy task, and I haven’t even got started on that front.
There are so many possibilities that could be explored with a game inspired by Eve. There are things that no one has ever tried to do in the MMO genre and space sim genre. Fantasy games like Albion and Smite have been done to death - but space combat games like Eve is one in a million and has so much more left for us to explore. I even had an idea of a “submarine” version of Eve - taking place underwater on an alien planet! With alien submarine vessels and aquatic exploration instead of spaceships. There is literally so much that could be done with this type of game.
A man can dream.
The possibilities are endless, and yet here we are in 2025. Still with only ONE game to play that can scratch that itch we all crave.
Please, give me some hope in this empty world - give me a true spiritual successor to Eve online
