How Much Data Does Eve Online Use?

This is how much data Eve Online uses.

On average, it’s as little as 0.2 MB per hour, but it depends on what you do in Eve Online.

So if you want to know how much data Eve Online uses in your case, this article is for you.

Keep reading!

How Much Data Does Eve Online Use?

Eve Online and Its Data Usage

An online game is always fun because we get to play it with people from all over the globe. We meet new people, cooperate, try to beat the game together, explore, and just have fun. EVE Online is just such an experience.

It’s an amazing online game where we can have a ton of fun, and not only fun, we can actually help scientific research in the real world. An online space adventure in the virtual world that helps the real world.

We have the motivation to play the mini-games in EVE Online and the game itself. This way, we have the excuse to play even longer than we usually do, and the opportunity to explore the Universe is at our grasp.

One interesting question is, how much data do you consume when you play for a longer period of time? Let’s see what EVE Online is and how much data you need to play it.

What Is Eve Online?

Unlike any other online game, EVE is very popular because of how large and complex the world and the gameplay are. The reason why people love playing it is that it’s unscripted. This means that the whole gameplay depends on players’ actions only.

The game was released in 2003, and it has been evolving ever since. Its success is measured by the number of EVE players. In only 10 years since its release, the game has acquired more than 500,000 subscribers.

EVE Universe

Like any other MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online Game), EVE has a lot of players logged into the game simultaneously, working together and against each other. Unlike other games, EVE has a single universe.

So, instead of numerous players playing on many servers at the same time, there are actually four copies of the whole Universe. The Tranquility is the main server, Serenity is the Chinese copy, Duality, the event test server, and Singularity.

The last two are test servers. Duality was retired because there was no need for it. Singularity is still available for testing out several new features. There’s another one that got added recently, the Thunderdome. It’s sometimes used for tournaments.

The gameplay is quite interesting. You start the game in New Eden, a virtual star-based universe where you can travel to about 7,000 different locations. Numerous stargates are like doorways to all these places.

You pick your character at the beginning, selecting a race before you can modify the character. There are four races: 

  • Amarr
  • Gallente
  • Minmatar
  • Caldari

Each of them has its advantages and disadvantages.

After you go through the start process of the game, you have to customize your ship. You can go through wormholes, or you can use stargates. Then you can roam the Universe a little, just to see what’s going on.

EVE Gameplay

In EVE, your characters don’t level up like in most MMOs. There are no quests that give you experience upon completion. You have to train to learn skills as you would in the real world. It’s fairly easy to gain a skill.

However, it takes a lot of time to master it. That’s why most Eve players have multiple accounts. They can’t specialize in multiple skills simultaneously, and there are many things to gain from having multiple spaceships.

Players can use them to scout, do mining, trade, manufacture, and so forth. All of these add up to great economic power within the game.

The game uses ISK (InterStellar Kredit), and there’s a ton you can do with it. You can buy productsservices, trade, and you can do all these things as well. That’s why the game has drawn so much attention to it.

The whole economy in the game is actually created by players. NPCs (non-player characters) only sell basic stuff like blueprints and such to start you off. After that, everything is in your hands. You can really feel the supply and demand in the game.

EVE is also a rare online game that doesn’t allow players to trade real-world money for ISKs (the in-game money). This surely is very fair, but there’s always a way around things like these.

Player versus player combat in EVE requires a lot of strategic thinking. All types of ships can be used, and all have their advantages and disadvantages. It’s more like a real-time strategy than a first-person shooter.

For example, you don’t sit in the spaceship’s cockpit looking at your enemy and firing torpedoes. You actually use different commands for the ship to maneuver, attack, defend, and eventually win.

When a ship is destroyed, the remaining players with different salvaging modules can salvage items from the wreck. The gamer whose ship was destroyed is ejected with a pod and needs to start rebuilding their ship.

If any other players choose to destroy the ejected player while in the pod, the player loses all the modules and implants, which can be very frustrating. A player that is an advanced gamer might know how to properly handle this.

Citizen Science Challenges

EVE online actually involves citizen science projects. This means that you can make a scientific contribution by playing the game. It’s called Project Discovery. This project is integrated into the game through various mini-games.

Three such projects exist, and they are quite exciting because the data gathered from gamers playing the game actually helps the real world in so many ways. Gamers collaborate with universities this way.

Human Protein Atlas

This was the first Project Discovery phase. It was a collaboration between CCP Games and Reykjavik University, and the purpose was to better understand human cell structure.

This particular project helped real-world scientists understand the build of human cells and the proteins within them.

By contributing to the real-world scientific research, the gamers would also receive ISK, experience points, EVE analysis kredits, and the quantity is dependent on the accuracy of the results.

If you are a gamer, then you’ve contributed to your gameplay and to resolving real-world issues.

Exoplanets

Phase two of the project was the collaboration between Reykjavik University and the University of Geneva. The players analyzed the stars’ emission of light.

Basically, if you can spot the difference in brightness somewhere, it might indicate there’s an exoplanet in transit. The professor supervising the project even had his own avatar in the game, Michel Mayor.

So, the project has EVE players analyze the data collected by the telescope launched in 2006 to explore exoplanets. Instead of creating a quantum computer or supercomputer that would process everything on its own, scientists thought that EVE online players can probably do it faster and at a lower cost. 

So, EVE online players had the task of analyzing vast amounts of data to gather information on exoplanets.

Flow Cytometry

Phase three of Project Discovery is called Flow Cytometry, which lets EVE online players analyze COVID-19 data. This means that developers and universities are using citizen science to better understand the coronavirus.

It’s amazing how much power one online game can have. The players gather data that shows scientists how our immune systems work against the virus.

These projects save a lot of time, and this particular one saved about 330 years of research. This alone makes people want to play this type of game.

EVE Online Data Usage

Why even worry about how much data the game consumes when you’re actually helping the world by playing it?

Of course, you have to worry. While you may want to help the world become a better place or develop fields like biology, astronomy, cytology, and others fields, you also don’t want to end up spending too much money on your online gaming pleasures.

Luckily, EVE doesn’t use that much data. It uses a very tiny amount, approximately 0.2 MB an hour. This means that it uses 200 KB an hour, which is very little in comparison to your data plans.

Of course, if there are updates available, these will consume significantly more data. The update size can reach GBs

The fact is that if EVE online uses about 200 KB an hour, playing it for one month an hour/day, the game consumes about 6 MB.

It will consume 30 MB a month if you play it for 5 hours every day. It’s not that much when you look at it.

However, the best and most reliable way to know how much data the game consumes on your device is to open up Task Manager and measure the data while playing or get some kind of tool that’s specifically designed for measuring bandwidth use.

Author

  • Theresa McDonough

    Tech entrepreneur and founder of Tech Medic, who has become a prominent advocate for the Right to Repair movement. She has testified before the US Federal Trade Commission and been featured on CBS Sunday Morning, helping influence change within the tech industry.