Eve Online is a bold sci-fi online role-playing game that challenges players to survive in a hostile universe of traders, pirates, corporations, and police. It's a gigantic game: the huge playable universe contains some 5,000 star systems to explore. Your options are almost unlimited. You can play a pirate, sticking to the fringes and raiding player-character ships, you can mine for a corporation or play a privateer and help guard against pirates, you can manufacture ammo, weapons, or equipment, you can be a trader, and more. Unlike most MMORPGs Eve doesn't force you to play canned missions and quests. The developers have taken the risk of depending, mostly, on players to form the economy, social structure, etc. Things are raw and unformed at the start, but very interesting. Eve encourages players to form corporations for self-protection and to control sectors of space so they can mine the resources there. Competition between corporations is a perfect excuse for player vs. player (PVP) combat, and Eve provides plenty of room for players to slug it out. In most online games the bulk of the world is safe except for a small zone that is open to PVP combat; in Eve there's a small core patrolled by brutal AI police and vast areas where anything goes. Of course, the most valuable resources can only be found in the dangerous, wild frontier. The graphics are gorgeous and the game is played in full 3-D. Stellar and spectral space effects, nebulae, and massive space stations dominate most sectors, and when lots of players are together, the game is a maze of drifting metal. Asteroid fields, meteors, and a few surprises are in store as well. If anything Eve suffers from a steep learning curve, an excess of clicking (many menus could be simplified) and the aforementioned dependence on the players to form the society. Eve is unlike most MMORPGs, but worth a look if you feel the lure of open space lanes and the promise a truly unexplored social frontier. --Andrew S. Bub Pros: Players determine economy, social structure Gorgeous graphics Seamless server structure makes it easy to find friends online Cons: Cumbersome interface The game's reliance on player-generated missions and political structure might not work