Agent missions are one of EVE Online's most popular pastimes. While EVE is most often lauded for its open-ended gameplay, player-determined markets and PvP action, a significant portion of the game's players use missions as their primary income source. There is something comforting about missions that seems to draw players in. For many, running missions and upgrading their ship with the ISK becomes the focus of their achievements and their primary measure of progress. The ability of mission-running to provide a direct translation of effort into a stable ISK income offers us a reassuringly linear work-to-reward scheme in a relatively risk-free environment. Missions and exploration are EVE's primary PvE experiences and new missions are released with each major expansion to help keep the game fresh for casual players. There are even several epic mission arcs planned for the future, long sequences of storyboarded missions much like the quest chains you might find in other MMOs.

In this multi-part guide, I will thoroughly examine the profession of mission-running, from the basics to ship fittings and finally some tips and tricks for maximising your performance. In this first part of the guide, I look at the basics of mission-running from mission types and rewards to agent standings and how to find the best agent for you.

Many of EVE Online's most prolific marketeers use courier contracts to collect together items from their region-wide buy orders but that's not all they can be used for. Courier contracts were originally intended as a way to pay another player to haul items for you securely using a standard collateral deal but if you know how, they can also be used for theft. Over the years, players have found ways to use courier contracts for profiteering, gambling, and even corporate theft. In EVE's Machiavellian universe, anything you can get away with is fair game. This includes twisting an innocuous game mechanic like courier contracts into a tool for theft and piracy.

In this short article, I examine some of the more creative ways pilots have used courier contracts to steal and plunder their way to the top.

EVE Online's in-game economy has been the subject of intense study over the years. The markets of EVE react very effectively to accomplish goals with the same economic laws that apply to many real-life marketplaces. The game's developers CCP even hired a professional economist to analyse the in-game economy, advise them on problem issues and deliver interesting quarterly reports. The driving force behind EVE's markets is often assumed to be basic supply and demand but this isn't always the most potent component. In the hyper-capitalistic universe of New Eden, all bets are off and the only rules are those players enforce themselves with an iron fist. Cartels, market manipulation and theft run rife in EVE, with far-reaching consequences.

In this succinct article, I examine the hidden forces pushing and pulling EVE's markets and show that EVE's economic sandbox comes complete with quicksand and land mines.

In the early years of the MMO genre, developers and game masters routinely ran special once-only events to immerse the playerbase in a game's storyline. Storytelling has always been one of EVE Online's strongest features and in the early days of EVE developers showed a significant commitment to immersive events. These events unfortunately became plagued with difficulties and inadequacies, leading to the eventual shut-down of events altogether. Of course EVE isn't the only game hit by these issues, it forms part of what I consider to be a very disappointing trend. In recent years, many MMOs have opted to replace authored events with predictable seasonal festivals or have even eliminated events altogether. EVE's storyline is now simply a collection of stories and the news items tell tales of in-game events which never actually happened. In my opinion, this was one of the biggest mistakes the game's developers CCP Games have ever made.

In this article, I grapple with the problems EVE's events have had and find potential solutions in some unlikely places.

The aggression mechanics are something that every pilot in EVE Online should learn about. This is a set of rules that determines who you can attack in high security space, who can attack you and whether you can dock or use a stargate. Knowing them inside and out can mean the difference between losing your ship and keeping it in one piece, even if you have no intent of getting into a PvP situation. Nevertheless, it's a part of the game that a lot of players don't take the time to properly acquaint themselves with.

In this technical article, I give some important tips that will improve your survival. Can you afford not to learn about EVE's aggression mechanics?

Although the most popular MMOs of today are in the fantasy genre, a niche within the MMO market has always existed for sci-fi games. For quite some time, EVE Online has dominated this niche with a steadily growing playerbase that has now exceeded 300,000 paying subscribers. It's been noted that releases in the fantasy market tend not to affect EVE Online, showing that it's not directly competing with games in the fantasy market. Perhaps the target markets of sci-fi and fantasy MMOs have very little overlap or perhaps the gameplay in EVE is unique enough that no real alternatives exist. Whatever the reason, EVE has been blessed with a relative lack of competition since its release in 2003. But with four major sci-fi MMOs on the horizon, could the game's creators CCP be in for a rough ride?

In this speculative opinion piece, I examine how EVE reacted to competition in the past and suggest how it may react to the next wave of sci-fi MMOs to hit the market.

EVE Online's Faction Warfare system was released almost one year ago with the Empyrean Age expansion and was initially a complete success. It provided a stage on which thousands of players waged war. From fleets of over a hundred players to gangs as small as two or three pilots, everyone found their own place in the conflict. After the initial wave of success, questions began to arise on the lack of rewards to offset the cost of losing ships in PvP. In addition, while the point of faction warfare initially revolved around capturing systems, holding an enemy system provided no benefits beyond bragging rights. Almost a year on from its initial release, faction warfare has barely changed, prompting very real concerns from players that EVE's developers CCP have entirely abandoned it. These issues have even made it as far as the Council of Stellar Management.

In this article, I take a retrospective look at how faction warfare has (or hasn't) progressed in this past year and ask the question "Has Faction Warfare been abandoned?".

Stealth bombers were originally advanced frigates aimed at an ambush predator role. They launched cruise missiles at foes from a distance and dealt very high damage to small ships like cruisers and other frigates. With the changes in the recent EVE Online expansion, they've been re-focused into an anti-battleship role. They now fling massive torpedoes that deal impressive damage to large targets but poor damage to smaller ships. In addition, they were switched from an ambush predator role intended to use normal cloaking devices to a pack hunter role able to warp while cloaked using a covert ops cloaking device.

It's all very well to speculate, but how well do the new stealth bombers actually perform? I took a gang of stealth bomber pilots out on the town for a tense PvP test drive. In this gallery article, I show a visual record of our adventure and go on to give my opinion on the new stealth bombers after a night of EVE PvP.

The drug trade has been a part of EVE since the very beginning. Originally, drugs were nothing more than a trading commodity occasionally demanded by agents in low security space. The old drug trade goods still exist in EVE, a non-functional relic of years gone past. A new drug trade has taken its place - the black market for performance-enhancing combat boosters. If you want to push your ship to the absolute limit of its abilities, whether it's for PvE or PvP, you're definitely going to want to get your hands on some combat boosters.

In this article, I take a look at the drug trade in EVE and the different kinds of performance-enhancing combat boosters that are available.

Happy birthday to the EVE Evolved column! The column is one year old today. Last week, I launched a competition for one lucky reader to win a fully fitted battleship of their choice. All they had to do was leave a comment and say which previous article in the column was their favourite. 44 people entered the competition before the April 25th deadline and a winner was selected via random number generator. Congratulations to regular Massively reader Vundal! As he's a relatively new player, Vundal opted to receive a fully fitted, rigged Drake battlecruiser and a set of implants rather than a battleship of the same value.

In today's column, I celebrate this anniversary occasion with a little self-indulgence as I take a look at a few of my personal favourite column posts.

Next week marks the one year anniversary of my weekly EVE Evolved column on EVE Online. I can hardly believe it's been a year since I was the newbie here at Massively, learning the ropes. To celebrate the one year anniversary of the EVE Evolved column, Massively is giving you the chance to win a free battleship of your choice, pre-fitted and ready to undock.

To be in with a chance to win, all you have to do is leave a comment here before April 25th saying which previous EVE Evolved article was your favourite and why. To enter, you must have an active EVE Online account but there's no need to leave your EVE character name, the winner's email address will be looked up and they will be contacted. And remember, it doesn't have to be one of the posts linked in this article, just whichever EVE Evolved article you've liked the most. The winner will be chosen at random and announced in next week's article.

In this retrospective article, I look at how far the EVE Evolved column has come and introduce the top five most popular articles by number of hits.

When it was released back in 2003, EVE Online was one of the most visually impressive games on the market. Over the coming years, the graphics aged gracefully next to competitors on the market and all seemed well. Nonetheless, CCP were not content to let their flagship game's graphics eventually go out of date. In true CCP style, they developed a long-term staged delivery plan for the complete overhaul of the game's graphics. The first stage of delivery came with the Trinity expansion, in which a premium client was launched with incredible high resolution ship models. This was just the first stage in a plan to keep EVE graphically ahead of any competitors.

In this technical article, I look at the science of making EVE beautiful and examine CCP's plans for the future.

Storytelling is a major part of most MMOs, with each game having its own unique back-story and fiction. Fantasy settings like Everquest's world of Norrath have even been made into novels and some original fantasy literature like Lord of the Rings has conversely made its way into the MMO scene. Quests and expansions in an MMO usually lead the character through an interactive story where the player assumes the role of a hero. Although space-borne MMO EVE Online doesn't share that pattern and the the game's storyline doesn't develop during play, storytelling may actually be more important to EVE than it is to its fantasy counterparts. In the same way that EVE lends itself spectacularly to making videos, the EVE community has created some awesome fiction and there are some incredible real stories of in-game events. Combined with the wealth of prime fiction and the regular release of official chronicles, it's clear that storytelling is a big deal in EVE.

Read on as I delve into the EVE storyline and the various forms of storytelling that players can expect to take part in. If being part of epic events and telling the story sounds like your cup of tea, perhaps EVE is for you.

It's been a while since I've done a full-blown opinion piece but this week I figured it would make a nice change from yet more coverage of the recent Apocrypha expansion. No matter where you go in-game, everyone has their own opinion on what features EVE Online needs. For some people, being able to put mining rigs on planets would sound interesting. Others might prefer a new exploration-specialist science vessel or a module that gives resistance to energy neutralisers. There are a lot of ideas out there and some of us spend long nights chatting to friends in-game about the ones they'd like to see implemented. A few pilots have gone as far as to write up full scale proposals to present to CCP on the forum and some of those have even been implemented. This got me thinking – what features would I most like to see implemented in EVE?

In this concise opinion piece, I take a look at the top four features I'd like to see make it into EVE Online. What's your top four?

It's been just over a week since the Apocrypha expansion went live and EVE Online is already starting to see the impact of the new content on gameplay. Wormholes in particular have revitalised gameplay for so many individuals that Apocrypha may just be the best EVE expansion to date. Everything from piracy to low security space, system ownership and exploration have been affected by the advent of unstable wormholes. But how could something as simple as unstable wormholes revitalise other areas of gameplay?

In this article, I examine the far-reaching effects of EVE's newest gameplay addition – wormholes.