This may be a bit broad of a question to answer, but exactly what the title says.
I haven’t played EVE for at least 5 years (around the retribution/odyssey expasions) and I’m getting bored with the monotonous repetitive games today. Last time I played EVE it was full subscription based and I have months worth of skills on my account.
What I’d like to know (if possible) is if anybody who played back then can give me a quick overview of how the game has progressed or significantly changed, and if it’s worth coming back as a full Omega account. I honestly don’t know what the difference the paid account gives over the free account.
Also, if you have any thoughts on how it tough it would be to skillwise get back on the horse after not playing mid-high level gameplay after such a long absence. The main thing I’d like to get back into is PVP and WH space.
Well,
It’s free to play now.
Start a new character, and re-learn the ropes, then switch to your main if you decide to stay.
Be mindful that the free-to-play version (Alpha) has SP limits in time and amount and not all the skills can be used (such as cloaking), but it can get you spun back up enough to decide if you wish to stay or pass.
Nothing says his existing pod can’t go in as alpha. I’d say use that… no reason not to, save for obscurity which doesn’t sound like an objective the OP has in mind.
To answer questions, yes, it’s pretty easy to catch up.
These days, we have skill injectors. The market’s great for them right now (to buy at least… RIP my SP farm). Those will catch you up in a real hurry.
As for the isk… you should easily be able to finance them in a WH.
IMO, sub for a month (it’s like one trip to a fast food joint, depending on your locale). Grind in your WH and do your PVP. If you like it, sub for 3 more months, and then use the time to farm the isk you need to plex your account. Then you get omega for free.
The great thing about the skills is that once you’ve got the core skills, the rest are pretty much optional. Don’t really need them for pvp.
You didn’t need an overview when you started. What makes you think you need one now? It’s like riding a bike. You simply get in and get going and get on top of what you do.
Most notable changes are probably the player-owned stations. For PvP will the most notable changes be the new Triglavian ships with their new and unique weapon system. Not to mention countless of balancing changes.
For WHs the most notable change is probably that Combat Recons are invisible to d-scan, that it has mobile d-scan inhibitors, and people now often use combat probes over d-scan for scanning in WHs (because these do show Combat Recons).
When someone in Jita tries to sell you one PLEX for a month, know that the number of PLEX has been inflated by CCP and it needs 500 PLEX for a month of game time now. PLEX can be used for a lot of other stuff, too. So can one buy skill extractors with PLEX or ISKs, use them to extract skill points and sell them for ISKs, which also means you can buy skill points and help yourself to a new skill or two in no time when you have the ISKs for it.
I think what I was really trying to get to is, I’ve seen/heard about UI changes. So I was wondering if additional changes to the UI since I played has made it tougher/easier/or the same.
No stay away, if you come back some of us will have to give up space. Otherwise you will not fit, and i for one will not give up my share. EVE is not big enough for you to return, so keep away…
And more to that: I heard a nice story from a ingame friend about a recent structure attack. On the first timer they welped a few ships into them because they weren’t prepared and just wanted to see how it goes. That should have enticed the war dec attackers for more later on. On the last timer, however, the defenders were a bit more prepared and you can guess what happened. The attackers didn’t show up, all the preparation for a fight went to waste and all they did was sitting around 30 minutes watching the timer tick down.