The idea of a skill queue in EVE has been a top player ask since beta, or at least so it seems. The concept has been the spawn of innumerable forum whines along with some excellent and practical suggestions, with most accepting that a long and complex queue might not be in the best interest of the game or CCP (it *is* a game they want you to log in and play, not just skill, after all). Despite all the noise, many, including myself, thought CCP would never see fit to include a queue system for skilling in EVE.
So with the news that the latest EVE expansion, Apocrypha, would include a limited queue, I started to get all nervous and excited. How long would it be? Would it offer EVEMon-like training plans (pick a target ship, skill, or weapon and just queue up all the skills you need to use it)? How would they balance the player-base asks with the best needs of the ingame community?
Well, I’m liking what the dev spit out on this one – it’s just a nice compromise, being able to queue up skills so long as they start within the next 24 hours. Perhaps it’s greatest immediate benefit is that it alleviates “Skill Panic” – that sense of concern when you realize your skill is set to finish while you’re at work, or sleeping (I would *never* set my alarm to wake up and change a skill…I loves my sleep a bit to much, thanks).
But for me, the best part of the new skill queue is it allows me to “clean house.” I’m a bit of a skill whore and an unfocused wanderer to boot, which translates into an accumulation of loads of level 0 or 1 skills that struck my interest at some point or another. Both my main and alt have a hanger and skillsheet full of the damn things. So when my alt finished up a long train (Advanced Weapon Upgrades 5, one of those “oh Lord, I know I should but do I REALLY have to??” skills) this past week, I set my plan in motion to wipe out those 0 and 1 skills using the queue.
I set the filter to only find skills that could be completed within the 24 hour period, and just started loading up. Mining 1-3? Check. Shield/Armor compensation skills? Check. Random industry, research, and drone skills I may never use but nevertheless bought? All to level 2 or 3, check. I even opened up that ISK-trap in my hanger, the “SKILLZ” station container, and started “injecting” (got to love that new term…) away. You should see my skills history tab, it looks like a mad n00b with too much ISK just went to town on any skill he could find laying around. Which isn’t that far from the truth, except my alt has about 40 million skillpoints so she’s at least an advanced n00b by now.
The SKILLZ container is near on empty, and my alt can now do any number of marginally useful new things in EVE. I can’t wait for my main to finish a 25+ day long train this weekend, so he can start cleaning house as well.
UPDATE: Just ran across this handy video which outlines the queue:
Thanks for coming back for another visit!
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