Largely speaking all games, by their very nature, are about setting yourself objectives or understanding the objectives that have been set for you, and achieving these objectives. This is doubly true for MMOs, and many completely evolve around the advancement of your character by achieving a multitude of goals. World of Warcraft's levelling system, for example, is refined to near perfection, but it is Eve's all encompassing and infinitely scaleable target setting which causes me to love this game and keep coming back to it time after time.

What I mean by "all encompassing" is that the target setting and achievement of goals is so involved and heavily integrated into the gameplay that you are constantly reassessing your situation on both a micro and macro level, which gives your goals and the decisions that arise from them a real sense of meaning. I care more about what I do in Eve then in any other game, because the system is so complex it seems to be more then 'just a game', and the goals I set myself aren't just arbitrary level caps or generic pre-defined game objectives. When I played WoW and Warhammer Online my goals were always 'get the top tier armour' or 'complete the sequence of story missions/public quests', which wasnt really a goal I set myself at all, but a goal that the designers said I should probably work towards. In Eve, though, the goals are my own, and so are special to me.

When I say "infinitely scalable" I'm referring to Eve's endgame content, or rather the fact that the entire game is the endgame content! In Eve, there is no level cap or conventional player ranking system, so the minute you begin the game you are both working toward something bigger and also participating in something bigger at the same time. Whether it be 0.0 alliance warfare or high-sec PvE, there is no real end of the road, just a continuous engagement that can become more complex or not, depending on your tastes and playstyle. This means that when you set yourself targets, you have no real overarching end point to anchor your targets around, and so are encouraged to treat the game as more of a hub of possibilities than a linear progression.  

One of the most important factors in Eve's target setting, though, is down to the game's persistent, single shard nature. Due to the whole of Eve being on one server, you really feel that what you are doing is contributing to something bigger, and that your achievements are appreciable in a way no other game can manage. I can basically become a demigod in Warhammer Online, and control an entire galaxy in Sins of a Solar Empire, but these achievements mean very little to me as they have been achieved in small, irrelevant contexts which are in no way affect the overall game, and have absolutely no bearing or relevance to anyone other than myself. In Eve, though, even the most insignificant achievements can affect the world and the way I perceive it, and in some cases be very meaningful, even if most of the meaning is only apparent me.

All in all, Eve gives me a unique sense of achievement. It may well be a response to a lack of control over my place in life, I don't know, but for what ever reason, I keep coming back to Eve because setting myself goals and realising them is immensely gratifying in this game, and makes me so glad I started playing.

Oh, and my character in Eve is 'ac0lite', if you want to know.