In a level-less society, there are few milestone indications proving you've advanced. EVE Online's chat channels aren't caked with "Ding!" messages slathering over what level someone's popping champagne corks over. Yet the "Gratz!" that follow a triumphant message stating the new ship you've purchased can often fall surprisingly limp as well.

That's because in EVE, being able to fly a certain hull type doesn't mean you can fit that certain hull type with appropriate equipment.  You could pilot a cruiser -- a popular, high-powered ship class -- in short order:  the license is yours, have at it.  But you won't necessarily have the acumen and certainly not the experience to put it to good use yet.  The technicalities are beyond the scope of this blog, but suffice it to say that any player can prematurely get themselves into the cockpit of a large boat long before the rest of their gangly-youth body has caught up to the size of their paws.

There is one method for accurately measuring a character's growth and advancement, but it surprisingly lacks ceremony...

I swung over to the always-trafficked Brutor Tribe Treasury, Rens solar system. The Six Kin Development Warehouse -- my usual haunt where I pick up a solid stream of missions from my security agent -- lacks cloning facilities. I deftly slapped down the sixty-five thousand ISK purchase at the Treasury and ding'd in corp chat that I'd upgraded to a Clone Grade Gamma.  Solemnly, as expected:

Crickets. Nothing...

They're a quiet lot by default, so I can't fault them overly much. But that clone will retain two million, fifty thousand skill points in the event of my demise.  (Think of it as a 'save point' for my character Billy Blame's advancement.  I currently have just over one million, three-hundred thousand skill points, and my then-current clone was steadily approaching the lip of what it could muster. I have to imagine that that's solid progression, since I've focused almost exclusively on Learning skills; skills that do nothing except increase the number of skill points I acquire per hour. From go, I earned seven-hundred twenty skill points per hour, according to my iPhone's Capsuleer app.  I now earn one-thousand two-hundred eighty-seven per hour.  I've nearly halved the rate at which I acquire skills.  (There is a major discrepancy between EVEMon (EVE Monitor) and Capsuleer in reporting how many skill points I earn per hour, but I'm neither inclined enough nor numbers-savvy enough to prove who's correct.)  When a single skill takes several days to top out at level five -- even at my low levels -- the patience to train Learning skills pays rich dividends over the course of a tenured career.

Regardless, my purchase of a Clone Grade Gamma was a silent and uneventful ding, likely because there's nothing outward to disclose, nothing showing off me piloting a new Bellicose, Rupture, Scythe, or Stabber-class Minmatar cruiser. But it was a solid indication that my patient training is paying off. Just as it does for absolutely everyone in these space lanes. Which is why it's never a call for celebration.

Feels stunningly appropriate that I finish the eighty-eight page New Player Guide from BattleClinic within minutes of completing Instant Recall 5 in game. Queue up Analytical Mind 5 before turning in for the night.

Decidedly, trading and mining are not personally viable career paths. Fell asleep three times slogging through admittedly short tutorial write-ups. I appreciate the power of EVE's economy, but don't feel the Alan Greenspan route is my foot in the door.

Slasher isn't cutting it. Rifter curing that. Averse to piloting the magazine ad poster child for the Minmatar Republic. Get over it as Angel Cartel pilots drop like flies. Broke my heart to dispatch a Thrasher class destroyer. Beautiful boat. Want one presently, but will diligently hold the line in Rifter until frigate skills -- and then destroyer skills -- are up to par.  Need to download the EVEmon character skill-path planner and monitor.  Integrate it into regimen.  Need a ballpark on how long patience will be tried waiting for Destroyer certification. 

Training Learning skills is mentally taxing. But being in this for the long haul implicitely calls for early-game patience. Have to eat my vegetables.

Mynxee, CEO of all-female pirate corporation Hellcats, blogs about Capsuleer 2.0 in "Big Hits, Near Misses and Windfalls." The iPhone app, which I'd downloaded on my reinauguration-into-EVE day about one week ago, is personally invaluable, not to mention sensually faithful in positing the EVE Online aesthetic into your palm. "Long story short," Mynxee says,"me likes!" And I would echo her sentiments completely.

Developed by the prolific Roc Wieler and partner in crime PyjamaSam, it's entirely possible that these two individuals have been ordained from on high to preemptively save my marriage and my day job. Familiar to anyone with an EVE account, keeping a frighteningly close eye on the tick-tock of your character's skills is an exercise (and revelation) in obsessive behavior. As we speak I'm sliding my iPhone open, thumbing the Capsuleer icon, tapping the refresh button in the lower right-hand corner, and noting that -- taking BattleClinic's New Player Guide to heart -- I'm currently training Learning 4, with fifteen hours, two minutes, and twenty-two seconds to go.

I stare at Capsuleer's silent, soothing countdown. Untouched, the iPhone gradually fades to black. Without second thought, I'll check again in ten minutes.

My previous stint in EVE, during Exodus (circa 2004), was short-lived by many standards, but it was the longest I'd ever handcuffed myself to any one MMO. I believe I stayed aboard for merely three months. You don't know me, but if you did, you'd know that's too long a time in any one game for my tastes. And you still don't know me (I'm of course working to remedy that), but if you did, you'd know that constitutes a minor addiction by my own set of demarcations and parameters.

During my time in Exodus, I'd diligently set buzzing alarms on my phone, waking me up at the witching hour, to queue up my character's next skill. My lovely wife was duly unimpressed with my dedication. I also began packing my home laptop to work in order to have EVE at hand for the same purpose. My diligent manager was likewise unimpressed with my divided attention. One man's multitasking is another man's lack of focus.

But now, with Capsuleer, I have an even more discreet solution for monitoring Billy Blame's skill progression -- aside from the option of having EVEMon sit studiously on my Start bar. But, more importantly, the Apocrypha expansion has introduced the Skill Training Queue. This is truly the life-saving device I required. CCP has gained insurmountable respect from this returning player for making this singular concession to their otherwise brilliant skill training mechanic. With it, I may indeed go out on a limb and keep Billy Blame active for longer than my previous earth-shattering three-month record.

You don't know me, but if you did, you'd know that those unlikely words make for an ironically strong promise, coming from me.

Ryddinjorn VI – Meinigefur Constellation – Metropolis Region

Billy Blame, greenhorn pod pilot for the Pator Tech School located in the Ryddingjorn VI station, is learning a lesson in patient origins.  One hour previous, back on Earth, I open up an EVE Online account (this is my second in approximately three years, executed with a nonplussed expression on my lovely wife’s face as she’s seated next to me), just hours before the in-laws pull into the driveway for Easter Weekend.

Only enough time for blasting halfway through the tutorial, which has changed its voice since my prior visit.  Rather, it’s lost its voice, and began my training out in the ether, as opposed to docked in a station, with me reading the tutorial text rather than listening to the vocal-distorted audio monologue.  I’d feared that developer CCP was denying me an intimately familiar voice from my bygone subscription, but – two NPC pirate kills later – I see that the voice is here, comforting, just dismissed from the tutorial process.

My Reaper-class Minmatar frigate warps to my first duty station, the Pator Tech School, at a healthy 3.0 AU per second.  Not bad for a ship that looks held together by duct tape and a prayer.  To be fair, the architectural aesthetic of the entire Minmatar Empire doesn’t fare much better.  Picture the Slumdog Millionaire trappings of an in-the-cracks India, and give them just enough technological advancements to be a force to be reckoned with in a quarter-spliced universe, and their build-style materializes.

The focus of EVE has shifted from mankind’s exodus from the Milky Way to his gospel as an immortalized force in the New Eden galaxy.  As evidenced by the intro, there’s less pontificating on the harrowed histories of man’s spinoff races (Amarr, Caldari, Gallente, Minmatar), and more bolstering statements of each individual’s inherent potential in this scary-huge galaxy collective.

In-laws are five minutes away and the Missus is committing herself to a frantic run with the vacuum cleaner.  I surprisingly pull up the Training Queue, a long-awaited device that allows me to stack Billy Blame’s skill training for the next 24 hours.  Building a character’s skills in EVE is a non-organic (but intriguing nonetheless) process of, essentially, plugging a skill training ‘book’ into a brain receptor and, over the course of minutes, hours, or days, depending on the level of information being taken in, absorbing the skill through an osmosis-like process.

I queue up the allotted 24 hours’ worth, all Piloting 101 stuff, and shutdown.  Tomorrow evening, the soonest I’ll log back in, one to two levels of advancement will be realized within a spectrum of topics covering electronics and engineering to gunnery and science.  Even though I haven’t accepted a single agent-given mission yet I’m already growing in ability.  This entirely unique system seems to be trademarked by CCP, since no other MMO wants to even touch its complexities, but it’s a system that never ceases to amaze, no matter how long you see it in action.

As you were.