Connecting to EVE Gate

So EVE Gate is out. It looks great, runs surprisingly fast, but in the features department, it’s about as plain as vanilla can be—at least at first glance.

I’ve heard a few complaints that some pilots just don’t see the use in it right now, and that’s a fair assessment considering there are only a few things it offers in terms of web-to-game interaction. But even a handful of features can go a long way if taken advantage of.

EVE Gate brings some real improvements on the social experience of EVE that we might not have realized we wanted, or just may have overlooked. Based on my experience playing with it so far, here’s a few tips on maximizing your use of Spacebook Beta:

• Link to your Profile: Have a blog? Twitter bio? Profile on your corp/alliance website? EVE forums signature? Link directly to your character’s profile (Rettic’s here) so other players can quickly add you to their contacts, send you a message, or read a bit about who you are. There’s never been such a direct connection to your in-game persona from the meta-game world.
• Add a direct EVE-mail contact link: A more direct way to get players in touch—link them directly to a “compose message” page already pre-addressed to your character (like so). Just direct them to:
  
  gate.eveonline.com/Mail/Compose/YourCharacterName
  If your character name is more than one word, replace each space with %20. Add this to your contact info on your blogs and profiles, and cut down on regular old out-of-game email messages. (Shout out to Jager Da for the tip)
• Use the Broadcast Log: Part Twitter, part Facebook status update—the broadcast log is pretty close to an ever-present chat room for you and your contacts. Take advantage of it, especially if you aren’t already part of the Tweet Fleet. Just remember that anyone that has you as a contact can see your posts. Loose lips sink ships.
• Take time to finally organize your contacts and standings: It’s worth it. EVE Gate suddenly gave my contact list more purpose, making me want to follow other bloggers and pilots in order to keep up with their broadcast logs, set appropriate standings, and do general networking. When you ad a contact, you can also notify the player, making them more likely to return the favor. This, in turn, adds to the conversation on your broadcasts log, adding connections, resources…and other warm fuzzies that make space a little less empty.
• And for your enemies: Add them to your contacts, set them to Red, but don’t add them to your ‘watchlist’, which defines whose updates you see on your broadcast log and who you’re notified of when they log in/out of game. Or, do—keep your enemies closer, right?
• Calendar: How can you not love it? Though to be honest, I haven’t used it at all yet aside from seeing the welcome Alliance Tourney VIII notifications from CCP. Being primarily a solo pilot, I don’t get much in the way of scheduled ops.

So, really, not all that useless right? Lets be thankful it works, seems stable, runs fast, and does the few things it does fairly well. The most important part of EVE Gate right now is that it’s a platform for expansion. Take advantage of what it already offers, but lets keep our collective fingers crossed that there’s a lot more to come.

If you have any other EVE Gate Beta tips, leave a comment or feel free to shoot me an EVE-mail. Wink.