I have been playing Eve since 2006. Since I started out I've watched a few trade hubs develop but Jita has always been the busy hive of scammers and traders that it is today -albeit things are much busier now than they used to be!
I am curious to hear from older players on how Jita was in the early days and how it grew into the monster that it has become? Is it true that Jita used to have mission agents? Is that why it first developed into a trade hub or is it more to do with it's location?
medwards
[ Editor ]
Prior to Jita there was Yulai whose popularity was due to it occupying a central position in the jumpgate network. Eventually the jumpgates were rearranged, and many players switched over to Jita. Many players comment that this was due to many stations with research/manufacturing slots, recently introduced L4 agents, frequency of appearance in autopilot routes and ice fields. Eventually more and more non-essential services were removed from Jita to accommodate the increasing load.
Some reference links:
Paul Brown
[ Editor ]
Jita was a major hub with so many stations and so many agents that it quickly became a major hub. Everyone running missions then had loot to sell, others looking to buy loot. So it did not take long for it to develop into what it is today. Even though CCP relocated some stations and agents, it has continued to grow to this day.
Tony Moore
[ Editor ]
I am also from 2006 but never went to Jita for the first two years so can't comment on how it was "back in the day".
One factor for it's dominance is that for whatever reason Caldari are the most common race in EVE by far so it stands to reason that more people started up in that area and made it home. Once a trade hub begins to develop then it attracts more players and it grows.
I saw Dodixie grow from 20 people in local to how it is today, mostly from the pretty good level 4 agent that is based here so yeah can understand that. I am sure there used to be agents in Jita to start with, maybe they were good ones too. And yes good point on the Caldari race being popular, I think the whole “cool explosions!” of the Caldari missiles appeal to lots of new players, perhaps!
rabble
Jita is system what border huge number of nearby regions. Thats all.
wormmus
When blood lines actually made a difference in EVE, prior to one of the expansions, many people made Caldari Achura characters (Attributes made a bigger difference then than they do today). This being said, that’s why there are a lot of Caldari players, and it just seemed to be a good place to settle in, due to the location. It could have easily been any other system in any other region, but like I said, attributes made a difference back then.
hi i still play eve my in game char is hellboy666 i started in may 2005 and what i can remember Jita had good asteroid and ice fields too, however powers that be removed them due to Jita having very bad lag indeed, Ive also heard that they put Jita on its own blade due to the amount of people that entered in to the system, there use to be a delay counter of how long you were in cue for the Jita jump, i use to run lvl 3 missions from the Jita until they relocated that agent somewhere else, i moved to Kakakela 2 jumps from Jita to start my lvl 4 missions, those were the days
I also remember some missions you could actually watch people doing them , 300km away from the jump gates i was in awe at what ships that were available, and watching back then seasoned pilots doing these missions on view to all and everybody that came around the star gates, and also i remember NPC rats 60 to 70km off the jump gates too ccp removed these.