At 66 yrs old, I don’t think I’m the oldest player.
QuakeGod is older in game than I am but probably not in rl. But both of us remember why we played the game back then. And remember again, there were plenty of bitter old vets by 08 when I joined.
The game is still hard to learn even 20 yrs later. You had to make a real effort to not become some wolf’s dinner. I loved the challenge! Pit human against human! No npc is as sleazy as another human. We always abuse the sys and find a workaround. Every attempt by CCP to dumb down the game for new CC players works in their favor. Lazy players pay $$$ to get ahead without at least a yr of experience, 6 mo if their smart? But never get that far to learn enough to stay. Meh…
Oh noooooo. Wh’s were the biggest boogeymen for me back then. Certain death even though I could scan them down. What a myth. By the time I was brave enough/had a ship I was sure I was going to lose in one and started to chk them out, nothing in them for the most part.
I made all my billions in a C2 wh doing high tier PI. Hardly any risk. Only lost 2 ships. Had the station attacked many times but the reward in a C2 was not worth them sticking around to finish it off. Not once!
Edit; @Geo_Eclipse_Oksaras Just after downtime was also the perfect time to move PI!
DT does have a certain strategic advantage for some activities. However for me, it’s in the middle of my sleep cycle. Not in the beginning of my sleep, not at the end of it – both of which would make it easier to use the advantage when needed. More difficult to use it if you have to cut your sleep short by 5-6 hours or delay it by the same amount. So, I rarely see the DT with my own eyes at all.
You Sir are the reason why many of the pilots look forward to do ie flying into a C2 and finding a life inside that years long adventure I see as my future and to know that I could be stepping into other footsteps and knowing that they are not as scary as the myth claims them to be.
I know the Sleepers are tough and unforgiving and reading about them still scares me. Like how they should.
Don’t feel bad and its easily worked around. Only players in EST have that advantage. That said, it is convenient. And if I can only move important ships one hop at a time without risk, I’ll take it.
Would have played back then, but my son and work came first. Would look it up every now and again. Promised myself I would play this crazy game one day. Forced retirement and now have the time to play.
It was the struggle for survival and sense of accomplishment that drew in players.
Dreads were something you had to work together with other ppl to build, and then a single trusted person who had forgone training subcap skills in favor of dread skills had to be found to pilot them and keep them safe.
Eve used to be a game where you were forced to rely on others in order to get anything done, communities were the basis of the playerbase.
Since these days, skill injectors have been introduced; removing the pride older players felt over having survived so long and having something to show for all those years of waiting.
Alt use has increased; allowing 1 person to achieve what it took a corp of people to achieve previously, this dilutes the sense of accomplishment and allows players to interact less with others.
There has been a period of at least a decade where the devs (I’ll call them FC when they are at the head of a fleet) saw the income increase from making multibox activities more accessible and got tunnel vision over it.
This game has become a place where ppl dont want to work together because they can’t trust anyone.
How do you know the person you text to in corp chat isn’t blue eyes for a ganking group waiting to blops onto you?
The new players see the cost of having to sub 3-4 accounts and get turned off the game.
The established players are not communicating while watching youtube or twitch, while they mine in their own fleet, controlled entirely by themselves.
The vets have seen their sources of pride over their accomplishments, be made available to new players with daddies credit card.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the vast majority of new accounts that resub after their free trial, are actually just established players spinning up an alt.
Eve isn’t obviously dying on the outside, it’s being consumed from within by unseen cancers.
One day to become a sea of alts and bots, run by a few people desperately holding on because they have nothing else in life to feel pride over.
By the time I was brave enough/had a ship I was sure I was going to lose in one and started to chk them out, nothing in them for the most part. 
