Character Log Off Comes to EVE Online at Long Last

Players can now log out to the Character Selection screen instead of exiting the game when changing characters.

–June 23 Patch Notes Update

Hallelujah the day has finally come!   If you have two characters on your account you can now swap between them without exiting the game and logging back in.  Now when you hit escape to get the settings and options window, there is a new choice down in the lower right, “Log Off.”

The middle one

When you click that for the first time you get a dialog asking if you want to return to the character select screen.

Why yes, please!

It is like a new day has dawned.  People have been asking for this for years.

Okay, I have to admit that logging out and exiting and logging back in are probably not that far apart when you look at the time it takes.  But it feels better at some level to just be able to log out.

And I am not sure how much of the EVE Online audience this will really affect.  The way skill training works, with one character training at a time (unless you buy multi-character training), there was a long stretch where this feature would have meant nothing to me.  I had the most basic of alts and never used them for anything.  Everything  was focused on my main, so swapping characters wasn’t something I did ever.

I had a second account… and a third… long before this would have ever been all that meaningful to me.

But nearly 14 years into playing this game, my two main accounts have alts with 50-70 million skill points on them that I often use for side tasks or high sec things.  I contract them things, or swap the training over to them now and then, and those actions always felt burdensome due to having to log out then click the launcher to log back in.

So now we have it.  I honestly didn’t think the day would come.