Depending on who you ask, EVE Online’s NPE either stands for ‘New Player Experience’ or ‘No. Please. Enough!’. While CCP has made great strides in making the game more accessible for newbros and newsisses, EVE’s depth, complexity, and ruthlessness ensure that it will always be somewhat formidable. Stardew Valley, New Eden is not.

All that said, the final meme in this list goes to show that New Eden’s reputation should be taken with a pinch of salt. Even in the darkest regions of space, there’s light.

We received these memes after putting out a NPE meme bounty; for active EVE Online bounties, check out our bounties page.

El Clásico

We’ll start with EVE’s most famous meme, which was not only the first submitted to our bounty but also the second (sorry KAZO+AR but FUN INC pipped you to the post by 15 minutes). It’s old but gold, and as funinc says “You can’t talk about the EVE learning curve without this”; this being a hilarious representation of said curve complete with all the fallen souls who couldn’t quite make it to the summit. RIP.

It’s not known who created the meme, but they’ve gone down in EVE history. For evidence of its age, just check out the games it takes as EVE’s comparison. ‘POTBS’ is Pirates of the Burning Sea, a 16-year-old MMO with a current player count that doesn’t even register for MMOStats.com.

Behind the curve

After EveOnlineTutorials popped by to say that the last meme was “still the best”, funinc shared a follow-up which extends its x axis. We suspect this one was made by a bittervet rather than a chipper one, because it’s all very doom and gloom. But is it still funny? You tell us.

That’s a little graphic

Given EVE’s nickname of Spreadsheets in Space, it’s no surprise that the first three memes were all graphs. But hey, at least this one has helicopters. The y axis expresses level of enjoyment, from EVE Hell to EVE Bliss, while the x axis follows the journey that players will take over time, including such fun pit stops as Confusion Valley and The Pit of Broken Dreams. Thanks to EveOnlineTutorials for submitting this one:

EVE is what now?

The next meme, submitted by Sturmer, isn’t an image like the others. In Sturmer’s words, it’s “a concept, a mindset, a cult”. And that cult’s motto? ‘EVE is dying.’ It’s been said so many times for so long that it’s evolved into a meme. Sturmer even included this photo from Fanfest 2023, where a link to the first recorded instance of the motto (from 2003!) was shared on the big screen.

Fortunately, the team at CCP seem to take it all in their stride. A few years ago, I spoke to CCP Burger about this fact, and he said that he only hoped whoever wrote it back in 2003 rediscovers the game, maybe through their children who now play, and thinks to themselves “huh, good for EVE.”

Choose your poison

Sturmer also shared an old-but-gold meme showing off the sorts of characters that new players will encounter as they explore New Eden. From what can only be assumed denotes a nanny state - a policeman holding a baby carrier - for Highsec to a Mad Max still for the wildness of wormhole space. Sturmer says “This is just absurdly brilliant, it’s old but so precise!”

Winnies and losers

While the rest of these memes, to varying extents, have pooh-poohed the new player experience, EVEIL’s meme doesn’t. Well, at least not in the traditional sense. In fact, it highlights the under-reported kindness of the EVE community. For while they will kill and plunder with one hand, they’ll be sure to pick you back up with the other. And as Eveil says, that’s “one of the best things about the EVE community”.

Do you think that these memes are justified or is the learning curve not all it’s cracked up to be? Got another meme about EVE’s learning curve or NPE? Share it below. For more memege, check out this list of EVE stereotype memes.

Some text has been amended for brevity. You can find the original wording at the bounty post.