The Eve of a New Dawn

Eve Online reached half a million subscribers recently. Nearly a decade since it launched, Eve has survived many a controversy. From developer shenanigans both in and out of the game, to player revolt, to the normal everyday backstabbing that has made Eve Online the sandbox of choice for many gamers world wide; Eve has withstood them all and remained as strong as ever. While critics can and will point to the inevitable jump post China launch, it’s hard to point to a game that has done so well for so long besides the behemoth in the room. Certainly though other games have run longer and other games have done better; Eve Online has kept its basic values of letting the player decide the game even while the sandbox genre has neared extinction a time or two. A new wave of sandbox titles are on the horizon and with them come the hopes of a new generation of gamers who love to lie in wait for the inattentive, its hard to imagine that the new crop would be as impressive without the trailblazing that Eve has done. Love it or hate it, there is no denying that Eve Online has impacted the MMO world; here’s to the new decade.