Hello experienced pod pilots of New Eden! Do you remember when you were a rookie faced with the vast sophistication that is EVE Online? Did you finish up the tutorials and then found yourself stumped what to do next? Were you confused about the difference between a Warp Disruptor and a Warp Scrambler? Did you know that you wanted to be the best EWAR pilot in the cluster, but just didn't know which skills to train to make that a reality?

I know I was that way. Back when I started, I didn't know that putting an afterburner on my Crusader wasn't the smartest choice. These situations, and hundreds others like them, hit rookie players every day. Some of them are lucky enough to have friends, or find a good corporation to teach them, or even just suck it up and pour through Google searches to find what they're after. But out there on the internet there is a lot of information and misinformation to wade through, especially for a 10 year old universe.

While the New Player Experience and tutorial missions have come a long way since I came into the game, there is still a lot that can benefit from a hands on experience. Not every tutorial can be built for everyone, after all. That's why, starting October 10th, the EVE Community Team will be holding regular seminars in an effort to help get our rookies through those rough few days where there is so much to learn that it can be overwhelming.

New Player Training Sessions

We are calling these seminars the New Player Training Sessions and they aim to teach rookies the basics of EVE without overwhelming them with too much information at once. We will build on what the Tutorial Missions teach and take it to a level where they will be able to advance on their own without someone needing to help them along too much. Each Session will cover a specific topic related to a greater theme that will generally last an entire month. We will also record these sessions and post them later for those who are unable to attend, along with creating EVElopedia pages to support the content.

For example, our first theme, running from October 10th to November 19th, is going to be “Player vs Player Combat”. There will be 10 sessions in total, starting with a breakdown of the different modules in EVE, moving on to how to fit a ship, and eventually progressing to a full on CCP-led player fleet where we will hopefully get a few kills, get killed, have some laughs, and learn a few valuable life lessons.

Each session is currently aimed at lasting roughly 1 hour, with organized fleets and social activities lasting 2-3 hours depending on the activity. This is presently being approached on a trial purpose, so to begin with this will mostly be focused on the afternoon/evening EU and afternoon US timezones. We will also be holding sessions on the weekends, particularly our fleet activities. If the sessions prove to be popular, we have plans to expand them to be more frequent and cover more timezones.

Educated Players are Good Players

But why are we doing this? The simple fact is a lot of players come into the game and are overwhelmed by what they find. Teaching them in a structured fashion like this can help them get into New Eden more quickly and get them out there interacting with other players. Your corporations and alliances will benefit, either by having better-trained recruits, more informed customers, or even targets more willing to come out and fight you.

Of course, we want to remind people that harassment of rookies is against our rules. You can see an example of these rules in our Rookie Systems article on the EVElopedia here. We understand people in this game can and will get ganked and blown up, but we want players to be able to fight on an even footing. So we please ask that people do not come and harass these events. Any harassment of rookies in these sessions may be dealt with by GM intervention.

If you feel like contributing to the sessions, we gladly invite you along! We plan to work with respected player training organizations for some elements of our sessions and appreciate any players who want to help out. Rookies are our future and we hope you'll work with us to make that so!

Schedule

Here is the initial schedule of sessions we are planning to run. New players can participate by joining the "New Player Training Sessions" channel in game at the listed times. We will also be advertising the sessions in the rookie corporations and Rookie Help Chat channel during the event times.

Track: Player vs Player Combat

October 15, 17:00 UTC – Modules

October 17, 17:00 UTC – Fitting Your Ship

October 22, 17:00 UTC – Earning ISK

October 24, 17:00 UTC – The Overview and UI

October 29, 17:00 UTC – Piloting Your Ship

October 31, 17:00 UTC – Skills

November 5, 17:00 UTC – Crimewatch (Featuring live demonstrations)

November 7, 17:00 UTC – Combat Basics

November 13, 17:00 UTC – Teamwork

November 16, 17:00 UTC – PVP Fleet

November 18, 17:00 UTC – Progression: What’s Next?

And then we’ll launch Rubicon on November 19th and get started on our next track of sessions!

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