I have a confession: I have been covering EVE FanFest and EVE Online for years, but I had never played the game beyond the first small section. Something about twenty years of history and the repeated mention of Excel spreadsheets made the game seem so wildly inaccessible, even to a girl who has been gaming and playing MMOs most of her life. This can be true of a lot of long-running games, but something about EVE Online seems especially intimidating, even now.
Even Fenris Creations knows this, having said that many new players “will often have read stories about how ruthless and cutthroat New Eden can be, or even specific stories of new players being destroyed in highsec space.” Yet, when I load up the EVE launcher, I am met with nearly 30,000 players logged in at any given moment. And that got me thinking about how many amazing games players have been missing out on because they were too intimidating at first glance.
Once upon a time, we only had a quick commercial on TV to sway us into playing a game or maybe word of mouth. Now we have forums, trailers, dev diaries, full gameplay trailers and even streamers, but it is all at a disadvantage. Now we have TOO much information, and it isn’t always coming from the right people.
What do we do when we need help getting started? We do a quick Google search and click on the first beginner’s guide that pops up, or some opinion piece on a game (maybe even like this one). Maybe it tells you what quests to start with, or what items to horde because you’ll need them later. Once upon a time, we couldn’t do that. Long before piles of online game guides were at our fingertips, we had to rely on other players. For me, that was originally an older brother, and eventually guild members.
“EVE Online players are a close-knit community, and whether you have been playing since launch or today is day one, they will welcome other Capsuleers with open arms.”
As I said before, I’ve been to several EVE FanFests now, and if I have learned anything, it is that the EVE Online players are a close-knit community, and whether you have been playing since launch or today is day one, they will welcome other Capsuleers with open arms—even me, a journalist from Canada. Trust me, I learned it at the Pub Crawl.
With that in mind, I decided that I would take EVE FanFest 2026 to get information from the die-hard players of EVE Online. No forum. No answers from 20 years ago. No butthurt players who couldn’t find a guild. Just real players who know what EVE Online brings to the table, long after those first few hours, some who are years into their journey as a Capsuleer.
I did offer one challenge: I asked most of them NOT to say “find friends.” Even with that caveat, it seemed impossible for the players and Fenris Creations devs to speak up without making sure I knew the importance of friends in EVE Online. The community around the game is something I have touched on before, as I witnessed it firsthand with three EVE FanFests under my belt. So make sure you heed that advice, and then move on to the rest.
So here it is, advice for EVE Online beginners from players who are die-hard enough to spend a weekend in Iceland talking to people like me.
What advice would you give someone who is just starting EVE Online?
FC Fozzie, Senior Game Designer on EVE Online, and long-time player.
“So you’re going to get this answer, I think, for a lot of people, but it’s find a group of friends…It is a game that really benefits strongly from playing with other people. It is designed to be social, and so that’s the best advice I can give is find your people there. They’re out there somewhere.”
FC Okami, Game Design Director on EVE Online.
“I think my advice is don’t be afraid to die and lose things. Be brave, experiment. And I think that a lot of players have a mentality, like myself as well, that I’ve got to get into the next bigger ship. It’s more expensive, it’s beefier, but you’re going to lose that, and you’re going to lose expensive things. So stay small, stay lean, stay in those small ships and just go try stuff and lose things, and you’ll learn this universe, and it’s sort of dynamics that way.”
Machiavelian, player of EVE Online on and off since 2006 and a previous Council of Stellar Management Member.
“I can almost promise you that we have completely different experiences playing EVE just based on where we live in space. I think if you go into it with the understanding that this is probably more complicated than what most people do at work in their real lives, if you go into it with that knowledge and just understand, you’re not going to get it, you’re not going to understand it first. It takes years…
Going into it with that understanding and knowing that you’re going to—I still learn things. I mean, I’ve been playing off and on, my aggregate time is probably close to seven years now out of the last 20 years, and there are still things I learn about every day, like mechanics I had no idea that have actually been in the game for 20 years, and I just never encountered them.”
Kshal Aideron, six years playing EVE Online, CEO of EVE Rookies & Wormlife, and previous CSM Member.
“Being what I do, I’m the CEO of EVE Rookies. It’s a humongous open group that puts on fleets for EVE. So anyone who wants to come, it’s find a community, not just find friends, but find a community. You have to find something that you’re interested in, people who are interested in the same thing. Because if you try to go out alone, if you try to read websites, watch YouTube videos where people drone on with their own interests for the next hour, where you’re going to fall asleep, you’re going to hate yourself, and you’re not going to make it.
Eventually, you will run into a community that is right for you and start that, you know, do the tutorial, do all the career missions, find out what you like. Don’t say no to an opportunity that arises, even if you think it’s something you don’t like, try it and then find that community.”
Shutupandshave, playing EVE Online on and off since 2004.
“I got told when I started, ‘Go and do some missions, go and do a little bit of singleplayer stuff,’ and that will teach you how the basic game operates, or how you think the basic game operates. Right? Because, as has been said, this is immensely complicated, and people can play for 20 years in ways that nobody else plays in at all. But I can’t get away from it. Essentially, you need to find friends. This is a game that is only made better by doing it with other people.
I’ve met one person in my life who just does their own thing in Empire in Highsec, and has been playing for years and years and years. And he doesn’t enjoy it much. He’s just got a load of stuff, and so he just keeps playing it. The community in EVE is what hooked me. And it’s the community that keeps dragging me back year after year after year.”
Crowthrm Kaundur, Clinical Hematologist assisting on The Capsuleer Edda, EVE Online player with over 15,000 hours in-game.
“I think the company has put tons of time into the new player experience and the first week of the player experience, and I would strongly suggest that new players actually don’t skip that. The mechanics are very important, and a lot of the critical mechanics are covered in the first week. A lot of players just want to get into the game, but that’s not good.
You said, ‘Don’t say find friends.’ You have to find friends. There are highsec—so safer spaces that have corporations in them, which help people learn. I’ve been associated with the biggest one, called EVE University, for a very long time. It’s basically dedicated to trying to get new players to stay in the game by introducing them to the game…basically, we do in the game exactly what a university does in the real world, which is to take players who are inexperienced and get them experience. So join one of those corporations. We’re not the only ones.”
Of course, if all of that isn’t quite enough advice, there is always Exordium. Where many MMO communities loathe new players for clogging up dungeon runs and being complete noobs, EVE Online players know that they need new players. “It means more recruits for your corporations and alliances, more customers for your market orders, more good fights in the warzones, and more new friends to meet at the Fanfest pub crawl.”
It took over 20 years, but with the newest expansion, Fenris Creations is finally adding a “starter zone” to EVE Online. Players can start the game with a friend and not be thousands of miles apart, and if you don’t start with a friend, you’re likely to make one around the same skill level as you. Exordium will launch this summer and offer new starter and career agent systems within a 53-system region.
I spoke to Senior Game Designer, Josh Bayer, about what Exordium will mean for new players and what it brings to the table. “We’ve created one place where all the new players will start together. It’s a place where you can more easily get in touch with other new players and meet people that are at the same stage of the journey that you are, and ask questions that you know won’t seem stupid because there’s other people around who are going to be asking the same questions.”
He went on to discuss how players can feel safe in Exordium, “It’s also a place where PvP is disabled within that specific area so that you can learn the game, understand the systems before moving on to the rest of the sandbox. And it’s a place where all of the content, all of the NPCs you can find, all of the sites to discover and hack are all designed for new players at their level of experience, so you won’t end up stumbling into something that’s too difficult for you.”
With PVP being a major portion of the game, new players should be thankful that Exordium will offer them a safe haven within their starter space where player-versus-player combat is not possible. This will offer the newest Capsuleers time to gain their space-legs (is that a thing?) without constant anxiety about being ganked—I’m looking at you, World of Warcraft. This also offers time to learn the lore of New Eden, mining, combat and more.
Yes, it took over two decades, but EVE Online is taking strides to become more accessible to new players. Soon, not only will new Capsuleers have the wealth of knowledge players and devs have shared with us here, but they will have Exordium, a condensed, safer space to learn the ropes of New Eden.
2026 is the year we become Capsuleers, friends. I can feel it.
