BB #5 – Me, Myself and I

This month’s topic comes to us from Mynxee of Life in Low Sec. She asks "Alts and Metagaming: Is playing two accounts who are logged in at the same time and work together (hauler/miner, explorer/combat associate, trade alts in trade hubs) a form of metagaming that is ‘ruining the game’?"

This might be true in other games, though I cannot think of a good example at the moment. But in Eve it’s just very handy to have a sidekick ! Also the game lends itself much better than other mmorpg’s. The client is not too heavy on the computer’s resources and you can easily run 2 or even 3 windows at the same time. Windowed mode works fine, so you can easily switch between them. Furthermore, a lot of activities where you can use an alternative character, aren’t too stressful that you have to keep your eyes and hands on the keyboard all the time, like in some other games where you need to press keys all the time and have to resort to technical utilities and tools in order to sync your movements.

So for what purposes do you use another account ? Quite a few possibilities come to mind. From my own experience, the idea behind my alt was to pursue another career in Eve and have her go another direction. A combat alt who would do pirating and maybe even go to 0.0, while Morph was missioning and doing industrial stuff in Empire.

But somehow that plan never worked out. The combat part did though, she can fly Gallente, Caldari and Amarr ships very well (Minmatar are next on the list). But she now aids me in missions, and hauls in mining or does some other transports for me.

Another good usage is Factional Warfare. A fw alt to get the grips on pvp, who is financially supported by the main is a nice way to go and enjoy other areas of the game. I did this for a while and it works out fine.

In Eve it seems a lot of people use more than one account. It’s almost as if the game was intended that way (Power of two comes to mind). The thing is, that you can only have one character in training at any time. In wow you can level up a druid, a hunter, a pally etc, but in Eve you can only train one. The other two character slots can be used for research, or a market checker in Jita, but nothing that can be used very well. So if you want to do something else, like doing industrial and combat etc, it takes a very long time for your main to become proficient in both areas, and that’s where the multiple accounts come in.

To answer the question is this “ruining the game”: no I don’t think so at all. It actually enhances it quite a bit. Especially mining is much easier, and running missions gets a lot more convenient as well. And it’s not like you don’t need other people, the game is much nicer while in a good corp and participate in group activities, but if you have an extra account, it makes it more enjoyable as you’re not dependant on other people to do things you otherwise would have a hard time doing !

Blog Banter #5 participants:

• A mule in Eve
• One man and his spaceship
• Inner Sanctum of Ninveah
• Wandering Druid of Tranquility (props for best title!)
• Epic Misadventures
• Ombeve [OOC]
• Ecliptic Rift
• Everybody needs somebody (also props for a nice title !)
• Dense Veldspar
• Mad Rant
• Eve Chick
• Diary of a pod pilot
• New Eden Diaries
• Eve Chick
• Omberzombie’s Blog
• RalphaDogs (title sounds familiar :))
• CrazyKinux’s Musing
• Roc Whieler (most original entry !)
• Everyday Eve
• Keith Nelson
• A merry life and a short one

More to come as they are posted !