I read somewhere in this thread that EvE would in one category if that category was customer service. I know a lot of us EvE players complaint about the customer service, but I'm yet to see a game customer service that what EvE provides.
Another great video with some nice PvP action with teamspeak sound included. IMHO best player made video ever.
A few things about EVE that made me try it out(and stay with it) But, first a bit of background. I;ve been playing online games since, well, since 1992. BAck when the online games were either over school-to-school mega-lan clusters or text-only via BBSs and the internet.
My goal for a space game is to recreate the best parts of Elite and make it modern. To date, only a few games, mostly single-player, have come close. the Homeworld series was very good - great management of resources and tactics. But again and again - no MMORPG until three came along:
1: Astronest. Hands-down, this was the best online MMOG. No PVP, but the rest was superb. It felt clean, and had an alliance server, which was fantastic. 20 of your friends working together to rule the universe. Then it died.
2:Stars! - Fantastic game because it had *math*. No - really - it had tactics and number-crunching and so on - and it all made sense. It allowed you to figure out things if you wanted to outsmart your enemy - and the game didn't nerf you, either. Then it died.
3: Earth and Beyond. Superb game - in fact, almost equal to EVE, but no PvP. Smooth, beautiful, and had great stories and missions. Then it died.
So I looked around and found EVE. It has the corporation/economics/skills aspect of Astronest, the beauty and fluidity of E&B, and the hard science to back it up if you really want to work out a better strategy like Stars! did. But it has a few other good features:
- All players, all the time, 24/7. If I want to just chat with a friend, if they are on anywhere, anytime, I know it. WYSIWYG. This is critical. "Sandbox" type games require this to work properly, as well.
http://www.eve-files.com/media/corp/CRII/Latest.jpg - the latest map of who owns and is fighting over what. You matter. There's no sharding, and no "other server" nonsense - everyone is in the same pot, for good or bad.
- 5000 systems. Big. Plenty of space to get lost if you want. Plenty of opportunity to start your own little empire as well. All you need is a few friends - ho wlong you've been playing makes no difference.
- I could care less about the economy. Lol. I presonally think it's a bit busted myself. OTOH, it's possible, like in E&B, to squeek your way in quietly to a low-sec system and mine some outrageous stuff by yourself. A hold of the best stuff will net you enough to build a battleship and then some. Or you could do whatever - it's like the feeling you get when you get your license. You. Car. Millions of miles of roads. Your choice what to do or not to do.
- Small ships and low-tech aren't useless. Ever played a game like oh, Master of Orion, where the big ships - the whole goal is to get uber-tech and then well, you never ever build another small ship again? Not so in EVE. Small ships are useful because, like in RL, there is no perfect ship for any task - far from it, it's hard to make any ship do exactly more than one thing even somewhat well, so while some ships are good for mining, others are good for hauling, and others are good for long-range combat..
Yet the small ship still gets built and used. In a corp war, for instance, small ships are cheap and useful - and 4-5 can dish out some serious damage because in the end, the guy on the other end isn't a NPC - its a human you can talk to, trick, or simply befuddle with too many things to do at once. Plus, small ships go like stink. There are places you can't go in or out of easily in a slow tank of a ship.
-new players are welcomed. Corporations always need new players to fly smaller ships and help out. A small player in the right place can turn the tide of an entire battle. No, really - seen it happen almost every week. Just having a new player in a small fast ship scouting is often a lifesaver in itself. The newbie/school systems are floowed with player-made billboards(cargo containers with big titles - puirely another player invention) with offers to join up. You can't go a week as a new player without someone asking you to join them.
- And, it takes a long time to get good at something, which is also a big plus. You'll never see any person who is good at more than a few things - so you might actually have a chance in a fight or be useful to each other or who knows? Not everyone is good at combat. Many games have the elvelling process and skills as too easy to obtain. In EVE, not so - but also, most of the high-end skills are only small increases or bonuses or used to train another skill. A 3 month old character can pummel a 2 year old one about 70% as hard, so all you need is a friend or to get the drop on them to even it out.
-what happens in-game is recognized by the company. Not just a news blurb, but it affects the actual world you play in. CCP has a remarkably hands-off policy here.
- lastly, anything goes other than selling money/items in game of money in RL. That means if you can scam someone, beat the system, break something, claim something, or whatever your devious mind can come up with, CCP is all too happy to have created the framework to let it happen. So, like in RL, you have to know your friends and know who you are dealing with. Sometimes you get burned, sometimes you make out like a bandit. Most other games have so many in-game rules and nerfs that you can't do illegal or immoral things. EVE allows this and also the reverse. There are entire player groups that do nothing but hunt people who break the established rules. But there's never the whining you get with most game about them breaking the game. The players know that it's entirely up to them what kind of rules and ethics they want in their game. People also are free to spy on, infiltrate, and do real espionage against others as well.
I have played EQ2 , WoW, Guild wars and I just got excepted into phase one of RF online beta test. But what ever game I play I allways do one thing after I am bored of it is go back to eve online. Im not a old man eve player ( I know who you are!! no offences intended ) Im 18 and played games for a long long time online. Since the days of doom, yes I was only 5 but I could do it and loved it.
But there is no game in my expierence that is anything near how far ahead of its time as eve is. Not even close.
I accept why younger gamers might not like it and I think the reason I like it is because I have grew up playing with older gamers so I fit in were as the 15 year old who just got his new dell pc for christmas might not think its cool etc. And by no way am I having a pop at wow players as it is a entertaining game. I liked it for about 3 months but liek some one has said it leads no were and will eventually lead the way for a sequel to bring in yet more money. Eve, as long as there are subscribers will allways keep growing.
It simply is the best mmorpg ever been made BUT I do understand why new players do hate it and think its sh*t because If I hadn't of started playing it two years ago. If I started playing it now I most likly would. Unless I found a good corperation and some helpful people.
But alot of new players never get past the massive learning curve what eve has and never fully understand it. If you do understand it and start playing it in a good corp you will love it. Just takes about 3 months before you can do anything worth while.
Atm in our corp we use new players as bait while sitting having 4/5 stealth bomber ships sat cloaked. Not really a good incentive I know but if they can see past the your the bait thing and see what we are doing they will stick at it.
I know this post is random but I just have to say some more things. When I started playing eve and when alot of the eve players who truely love it started playing it having a cruiser was a good ship you could do stuff with it and be fairly powerful. Now they are still very usefull ships but only in a gang of people. The gulf between a brand new play on his own and me for example is MASSIVE in everything from skills to knowledge and maybe that is why people do not like it BUT they do not relise how useful new plays can be if put to the right use. Like I said before we use them as bait. Its a use not a nice one but a use. If a new player plays the game for about 2 weeks he can with some other news players take down a player like me if I am not fitted right for the encounter and they are fitted to jam me, Scramble me. They would slowly but surely kill me. Unless I had a very expensive shield on but apart from that they would.
Perhaps the results show some hope for the future of MMORPGs. Sometimes it seems these cookie-cutter clones are the only thing that ever get made. I guess eventually something has to break outside of the box. Maybe we should look at some of the things that EVE is doing right.
An actually massively multiplayer game universe that can at least develop dynamically in many ways. This is in opposition to the current trend to instance everything.
What about the actual dynamic economy? Most games are based on level items and uber loot.
PvP is being ousted in a lot of games (mainly because of poor implementation) but EVE seems to do it right.
Although all the categories are separate, everything in a game works together to make the whole experience. It seems that many of these basic things that EVE implements are desireable. This would be something for future developers to keep in mind. Head on over to the developers corner discussion threads. There is MUCH to be said about such things there.
I am a part of the EvE community, but completely missed this whole vote! Quite frankly, I am surprised to see it up here, let alone seeing all the votes its received. Why? Mostly b/c this game is considered old. I remember beta testing it, and it really did have a lot of bugs that made it mostly unplayable with my machine at the time. However, it was the feel of the game and the commitment of the player base that intrigued me the most. The first time I really felt immersed in a game was EQ1. Amazing! I played on a lot of BBS' (note my forum handle, who ever knows where that came from gets a cookie), but running around in a 3d world was crazy! I know there were others that came before, but this was the first one I played, and the first online rpg I got hooked on.
Since my EQ1 days/nights/weekends/comas, I have played (beta tested at the very least) every big title to hit the market. EQ1 was pushed out of position by the new pretty 2nd gen rpgs, and I wanted the nice graphics AND the feeling I got from playing EQ1. Well, for many of us, that never happened. Lots of promising titles by big developers and I hated every single one of them. Lots of hype, no follow-through and a bone dry immersion factor. I know beta testing is working with a highly unpolished product, but I have done it enough to get the "gist." This leads me back to EvE. EvE had the opposite affect on me, it had the feel I was looking for (even though it was entirely a different game/genre/style), but I couldn't really play it due to system constraints. Seriously, just go and read the short stories the EvE devs put up. It builds a feel - a dark suspense - something lurking around the corner sort of feel. Erie. I was hooked on the game before I could really play it. This leads to my next point.
Many of the mmorpgs we see now, and coming soon are following the "whats made money and how much more can we make from it." I work in the music industry with record execs, producers, artists, the whole 9yards. I know from experience in my own workings with sound processing and video game production. The politics behind the money of a game dictates the content of that game. The Tolkien framework is fool proof - if you time it right (and how many games arrive on schedule?) Anyway, they will keep pumping out Tolkien as long as people are spending money on it.
IMHO, we will never see an end to the Tolkien universe. Which is fine by me, its fun! But, ill bet just about anyone who has read my post this far could create a Tolkien based mmorpg in their heads in about 5mins - brand new - Elves? check - Dwarves with axes? check - character growth via xp and lvls? - check - (spend at least 2 min figuring out the death penalty system, and if you have an extra minute you can also decide the economy is "dynamic"). - check - oh yeah, side note: crafters - uh, well ... give them pelts! - check, Story - eh... will put one together as it goes, does it really need one? Apparently not. Congratz! You just made a successful mmorpg!
In the recording biz we call this "fixing it in the mix" (foundation optional, content = cut and paste)
Put a fancy name on a new graphics generation system, slap a sticker with a big name distributor and charge 15.00$ a month. It will pay itself off in less than 3months (box + hype), and if it makes X amount of money after 6months via subscriptions, its all profit and the game gets an expansion at regular intervals until it dies. But thats ok, another is already in the works with updated graphics, a new box, and a the latest buzz-wordy feature the fanbois are raving about.
This is what I call "Pop Gaming." It is like "Pop Music." Its what pays the bills - like the Back Street Boys, and NKOTB, and In Synch? Whatever, they are doing the same thing to your games. There isn't enough dead horse to beat in this industry. Which makes it very difficult to find anything with substance or originality.
We all saw EQ2 coming, we saw Horizons ... die, we saw SWG, we saw DAoC, AC2, SB, D&D (this is like 5years late? wtf), etc...
We see the faint lights at the end of a dark murky swamp with large bats and diseased rats - its the space race, and sci-fi genre to the rescue! Untapped online gold. E&B out of the gates - ouch - that must have hurt, there was another I tested that I cant recall, so obviously wasn't worth the bandwidth I wasted to test it (edit: it was JumpGate *enters fetal position* we shall never speak of this again)... And then we hit AO. A fantastic game - original, content driven - and overall, sloppy. But it hit a market that required a Mack truck to satisfy. To borrow part of a quote - "... its like pizza, even if its bad its still pretty good." It should get an award for still having players after the first 2 weeks. However, bugs must be crushed (after being properly exploited of course), and players must play....something.
Then came EvE, out of left field, (where no one is safe!) It had been in development for some time, but with E&B and AO hype, it was definitely drowned out in its category - as far as i was concerned. Bug crushing in AO was like that scene in that Indiana Jones movie... you know the part, the fortune cookie part. *shudder EvE was not like the others! even though it was in space, and it was in the mmorpg category, we found completely original content and concept. Like, having all the players on the same field. Its like finding your pencil behind your ear, "you can do that?" No giant rodents? "How can any online ecosystem survive without the lowest part of the food chain? Where will I get my xp with no rats or beetles? How will I survive the cold of space with a death penalty?" (Answer: you don't! You are now a frozen corpse - biomass that can and will be harvested, most likely by the person that just podded you and then laughed as you bounced of his windscreen.) Hope that ship was insured and you didn't buy those expensive implants you had your eye on. Lesson learned, bounty increased, war declared.
Ahh yes, pure merciless carnage. A deep unforgiving story that goes back further than most of you will read with your short attention spans. A game in which the developers chat with its community for feedback, then updates them daily as to the changes that are being made. (wtf? devs can post without using a sticky?) I even chatted over emails with the guy who did all the sound. How does that happen? Oh right, you create a game in which players spend more time playing the game than abusing the game designers. Something must be wrong... oh yeah! its a space based game with a steep learning curve, so steep infact, that you actually need to work through the tutorial - yes, there was a time when tutorials were needed to understand wtf was going on. If you don't know what RTFM means, or people have asked you to do that - don't worry, the voice thing will eventually go away, and girls really don't have "cooties" anymore - promise. you're going to smell bad though, showers are not optional - and if you don't know how to work it, I would suggest that you RTFM.
Back on track. I have since played EQ2, which I waited for anxiously. Great title, they still have yet to build a PC that can run it at full detail, so just wait for a year or two and you will be able to afford a new one.. until then, enjoy the slideshow and zero AA. Also, after lvl 20 - its helpful to group if you want to make good xp. (solo = not an option). I like to solo myself, and with the wrong class (which you build and then will create several alts to bridge the solo gap as the "kinks" are ironed out.) you spend most of your time looking for people to play with, and running, and running, and running to find them once you do get a bite. Then running and running around with them to find something to kill. I thought the first was bad, can anyone spare a Sow? Offering PP for SoW?
I bought WoW before it came out, with the hope that it would live up to half its hype (which is a good thing). I was happy with it for a couple of days... Made quite a few toon's (and they are toons). Ran around trying to find stuff.... ran some more.... ran into a bear, a lion, and other savage woodland creatures that preferred that I didn't get to where I was desperately trying to go. Only to find that I had to go back to where I started. Did this routine for a couple of weeks, logged over 100 hours and realized that the gameplay didn't change from day 1. Get a few new spells or whatever, but - the grind sets in... just another lvl... one more......one more.......if I fall off that thing one more....delete. The graphics are great, there isn't anything to them. Makes everything look good. But everyone looks the same, plays the same, does the same. Really boring in my opinion. Simple. Boring. But original. The genre is stale, but this is the peanut-butter! So, WoW tastes pretty good when all you've had is burnt toast everyday for the last few years.
Then I bought Guild Wars - also preorder - highly anticipated, good development team, some intriguing gameplay ideas. Best of all - NO MONTHLY FEE! This game should get an award just for that alone. This game imho, had much better graphics than WoW and EQ2. They just fit the game, not trying to make it something it isn't - i.e. polishing a turd (EQ2) - which to many peoples disbelief is not possible, I don't care how many video cards you packed in your box or which type of coolant you got in your cascading phase-change setup, or how many LED's are strapped to the fan of your power supply - if a game sux, the graphics wont make it better - ever. Watching paint dry in super HD is still watching paint dry. get me?
Guild wars is great for quite a few other reasons - the first that comes to mind, outside of good customization and some fun PvP ideas was the "tutorial level." I honestly thought I was playing the heart of the game, until the fit hit the shan and the game dropped you into the real game world. Cool stuff. Takes quite a bit to surprise me, and this did a good job. But after grinding for so long, it got old. Mostly b/c of CoH and the upcoming now released CoV! This series btw, is great. Could be a lot better and am looking forward to see what happens next. VERY original in style, being a super villain is fun! Not evil, there is no content for being evil... Im still looking to set fire to the citizens of paragon city, but it wont let me. Its like playing SIM's, after a while (1 week) you find yourself trying to find the most messed up way to kill and torture them. CoV feels very similar sometimes, but I like making alts. This is the series crowning feature (after the lvl grinding gets old).
I played CoH as a serious power gamer, as some RL friends liked to play this style. Got up in the upper lvls of the game and the realized I had more fun making alts and designing super-heros than grinding with my fire/fire blaster and my buddies fire/fire tank. lol (pre-nerfs) You have to play to understand. Again, it got old, you can only create so many alts before you get bored, and your friends quit to play WoW.
Meanwhile - im in and out of EvE all the time. Its skill based training, and when you're not playing, you're still advancing. Higher skills could take a month to learn. So what do you do if you want to try a new game but don't want to give up EvE? You put a high level skill in training that takes a month to learn, cancel your subscription, play your new game till you've "played it out," then the next month, renew your subscription to EvE to find that your skill training is done, and your back to where you were. You were advancing the whole time. No time lost, no grind, no extra money needed to try out a new title. And FFS, its 2006 and im still playing EvE - and im about to drop CoV. What does this tell you? No, im not ADHD - OC maybe, but not ADD We have a game that has stood the test of time, graphics, gameplay, updates, free expansions, grindless (unless you make it that way, old habits are hard to break since every other mmorpg requires it of you), and more people oriented.
I don't like being forced to group, or forced to make a lvl just so I can get to see some other content. When you get bored of grinding out the xp and you stop and take a good look around, this is the heart of the game. If you see endless dungeons, thats what it is. If you see progress based on what you couldn't kill 2 days ago, thats what its all about. Not just what its all about, but how you've spent your time and money to escape to a place where people can forget about their RL daily grind. Im tired of coming home from work and feeling like im behind in my gaming... back to the grind, back to the grind. Its a compulsion. isn't this supposed to be fun and relaxing? Or interesting and entertaining? What you are sacrificing a good book for? Reading a good book doesn't require you to grind chapters, b/c thats not what makes it enjoyable. This my friends, is why a content driven game in my world is more important than how the sun reflects off the water in a murky pond filled with 20 frogs that I have to kill. Perhaps this is the difference between gaming generations... the lvl of your main is for show, the path that got you to that lvl is the game. its the content that makes the lvl/vet status mean something, otherwise its just an empty numbers game. Anyone can crunch numbers and build macros, I want to play a good game. I dont have to compensate for anything by hitting lvl 50 before everyone else. If wanted that feeling, id just by a giant 4WD with a winch and KC lights.
Thus far, EvE hits on more of these lvls than the other games have. I have yet to run into a player who thinks they are higher than thou. In EvE you don't have rock paper scissors, a noob thats been playing 2 weeks could suicide a battleship of a 3 year hardened vet (this doesnt happen twice . I don't have to wait for content. With the skill timer ticking by, everyone is moving forward at the same pace. Perhaps thats what pisses off the power-lvlers - you cant. You cant be the first to reach X lvl, b/c it doesn't exist. Most important to me, the players run the game, the game never runs them. I cant think off the top of my head any others that do that, or at least, ones that aren't run by macro-farmers. I was sort of hoping that CCP would come out with an EvE 2... But they keep adding content and I honestly couldn't keep up with what they already had. Also, it spoils you when you don't have to worry about which shard/server you play on, everyone is on the same field. I think its amazing. Having played all of these games at the highest playable graphics settings, EvE and GW are far superior to the others. Just in look and feel. Its all of course subjective, but thats what different genres are for. You cant expect a die-hard tolkien fan to enjoy playing a space based game, even if its voted game of the year every year for the rest of its life, no matter how awesome it is. Its nice to have options though, and im very happy for CCP for being able to make a game that can stand the test of time with the strength of a small niche genre.
It also makes me happy to see Atriarch listed on the menu here, still one of the most original game concepts that I have ever run across. Lets hope the smaller developers can finish their games and get their funding. The innovation in content and originality is with the little guys. WoW proved that to me once again. All Blizzard needed to do was make a starcraft 2. Nothing special. How hard would that be? But no, they jumped on the wagon with everyone else.
Right on! You hit the nail on the head (yes I actually read the whole thing yikes) and you made some very good points. These big grinding titles are like lame movies that get all the hype, make a TON on opening weekend and then hit the $9.99 rack at the grocery store a couple months later because they had NOTHING original or captivating. Other movies have appeal even long after their special effects are old school. They had substance, CONTENT. That is what is needed and I think developers should take a look at what provides that. Sure you make a ton on a game that is on the way out as soon as it launches, but you could also make money on something that LASTS! In the end I think perhaps MORE.
As for difference of opinion between sci-fi/fantasy, etc that is completely true. Just imagine if someone just came up with a great basic game concept/engine that they could apply to different titles in a wide variety of setting genres. Sure they might be roughly the same game with little tweaked differences but if is is a GOOD game and you can just play the setting that appeals most to YOU then you become part of a potentialy much wider fanbase.
Where is the fast-forward button, I would SO like to get to what comes after this dark-age of MMORPG history.
Originally posted by ironore As for difference of opinion between sci-fi/fantasy, etc that is completely true. Just imagine if someone just came up with a great basic game concept/engine that they could apply to different titles in a wide variety of setting genres. Sure they might be roughly the same game with little tweaked differences but if is is a GOOD game and you can just play the setting that appeals most to YOU then you become part of a potentialy much wider fanbase.
Heh, instead of an EvE 2, CCP should make a fantasy mmorpg with the same vision. I would pay yet another monthly fee to play that! They obviously have the right recipe - now for a different genre. CCP 4tw!
Originally posted by ironore As for difference of opinion between sci-fi/fantasy, etc that is completely true. Just imagine if someone just came up with a great basic game concept/engine that they could apply to different titles in a wide variety of setting genres. Sure they might be roughly the same game with little tweaked differences but if is is a GOOD game and you can just play the setting that appeals most to YOU then you become part of a potentialy much wider fanbase.
Heh, instead of an EvE 2, CCP should make a fantasy mmorpg with the same vision. I would pay yet another monthly fee to play that! They obviously have the right recipe - now for a different genre. CCP 4tw!
That'll be a fantasy mmorpg i'd consider paying for
Originally posted by strikein Wow, good read. I feel the same way. I'm tired of the grind, I want to have some fun already. I guess that's why I play eve, hehe.
Judging at your avatar, Kingdom of Loathing as well
Originally posted by _Overkill_ Originally posted by ironore As for difference of opinion between sci-fi/fantasy, etc that is completely true. Just imagine if someone just came up with a great basic game concept/engine that they could apply to different titles in a wide variety of setting genres. Sure they might be roughly the same game with little tweaked differences but if is is a GOOD game and you can just play the setting that appeals most to YOU then you become part of a potentialy much wider fanbase.
Heh, instead of an EvE 2, CCP should make a fantasy mmorpg with the same vision. I would pay yet another monthly fee to play that! They obviously have the right recipe - now for a different genre. CCP 4tw!
CCP keep saying they are not interested in making cookie cutter games, and anyway they are scary smart and have so many ideas (seriouly if you are ever lucky enough to meet Lekjart you know what I mean) that they will make somthing totally awsome based and filled with orginality. If they do go for a fanstay game I don't see them ever considering making "EVE with Elves".
If you go back in time far enough, there were good multiplayer games that broke the rules and didn't fall into the eye-candy routine. Everything from ancient titles like Bolo and Spectre on Mac networks at universities to Astronest, Dopewars, and Planetarion online, and even a few old classic PC games like Stars and many others.
The real problem is lack of willpower to do something different. Create a GAME and then market it instead of slapping concepts into graphic engines. The game should play fine without ANY 3-d graphics or it is seriously broken. EVE? Eve could manage without the graphics if it had to - it would be still a good game with crude 2.5D polygons(Elite comes to mind as an example), because it has substance behind all of the eyecandy.
As for it being perfect? Oh lord no - the economy has serious problems, there is no way to reverse-engineer items, and lag at gates can be crippling at times(among dozens of other minor play-balance problems). But... It does try and gets more right that it does wrong, that's for sure.
Hahaha EvE online wins all..., what a joke... Flying through a static collection of screenshots is what it takes to be a winner in the graphics department??? They cant even keep their website on air... and yes game stability is about the same, worst online record of any of the mmorpgs out there, and .... wait a sec....
Here are DrAtomic his troll awards:
Worst lag of any mmorpg in 2006: winner EvE Online Worst graphics of any mmorpg except for UO in 2006: winner EvE Online Longest grind of any mmorpg in 2006: winner EvE Online Best hidden grind of any mmorpg in 2006: winner EvE Online Worst uptime record of any mmorpg in 2006: winner EvE Online Amazing community 'monkey training' management: winner EvE Online Game that needs a radio station to enjoy: winner EvE Online One fight per month is the definition of PvP: winner EvE Online etc.... : winner EvE Online
Next years vote should simply be a strongest community award, because that is what the EvE community has proven time and time again. Other then that, the current rewards are a big joke.
Here are DrAtomic his troll awards: Worst lag of any mmorpg in 2006: winner EvE OnlineWorst graphics of any mmorpg except for UO in 2006: winner EvE OnlineLongest grind of any mmorpg in 2006: winner EvE OnlineBest hidden grind of any mmorpg in 2006: winner EvE OnlineWorst uptime record of any mmorpg in 2006: winner EvE OnlineAmazing community 'monkey training' management: winner EvE OnlineGame that needs a radio station to enjoy: winner EvE OnlineOne fight per month is the definition of PvP: winner EvE Online
Um - worst lag? Oh - right. You only went to one of the 20 or so newbie systems I bet. Out of 5000 systems, there are less than a couple of dozen with more than 20 players in them.
As for graphics, it's not a static screenshot, though it looks simmilar. You can actually fly around or to objects if you took the time to. There are places where you can do that, in fact.
Worst uptime? If you know anything about SQL, then that it stays up as well as it odes is amazing. Worst definately has to go to Planetside, though. Worst lag, too.
Longest hidden grind: Eve isn't hidden. You know what's required if you read the manual. Hidden would be something like DAOC. Dear lord it takes forever to do anything/train, despite appearing to be "quick" at first. Takes forever to move around, too. Takes forever to FIND anything.(hello - arrow or direction indicator anyone?)
Longest grind goes to Ragnarok Online. Largest time-sink also goes to Ragnarok Online. Second place? Planetside. EVE isn't a long grind unless you want to try to powergame, which you can't. Limiting powergaming by giving you too much to do and too many choices isn't a "grind". A real grind is when it takes months and months to level or they throw out new weapons that require you to be online for a year to use,(Planetside) or the "Avatar/God" mode reincarnation trick. Got to level 50? Start over again - 50 more levels! Woo Hoo!
Radio station? Gheez - turn off the music in-game, turn on windowed mode, and play whatever you want in the background. Lack of a media player or MP3s of your own isnt an excuse.
PvP? Heh. Carebear! Try once or twice a day if you actually venture out into deep space. And that's not counting the dozens of NPC spawns an hour you can run into. Or not. Your choice. That you can make a living in EVE without fighting is something you just can't do in most of the other games.
EVE can be most anything you want it to be - or not. Such are "sandbox" environments. With sometihng like WoW, well, you are stuck in their cookie-cutter missions and classes.
Um - worst lag? Oh - right. You only went to one of the 20 or so newbie systems I bet. Out of 5000 systems, there are less than a couple of dozen with more than 20 players in them.
So an emtpy zone without lag is an indication about lag, and a zone with 30 people in it isnt? 10/10 for CCP on brainwashing their cleintele.
As for graphics, it's not a static screenshot, though it looks simmilar. You can actually fly around or to objects if you took the time to. There are places where you can do that, in fact.
Ships of the same type all are exactly identical (cept for their weapon outfit), the objects you refer to are all the same as well. Have a good and honest look at it, it really is nothing special. Ow and your pilot... A whopping static JPG... But 10/10 to CCP again for managing to fool their clientele.
Worst uptime? If you know anything about SQL, then that it stays up as well as it odes is amazing. Worst definately has to go to Planetside, though. Worst lag, too.
Sure blame it on Microsoft, it sure isnt CCP's fault. What a joke.
Longest hidden grind: Eve isn't hidden. You know what's required if you read the manual. Hidden would be something like DAOC. Dear lord it takes forever to do anything/train, despite appearing to be "quick" at first. Takes forever to move around, too. Takes forever to FIND anything.(hello - arrow or direction indicator anyone?)
Errr EvE grind isnt hidden? Agent grinds, skill system grind (which deceptively looks like it is a none grind but in fact is exactly the opposite), money grind (trade), mining grind, blueprint grind, etc, etc.
Lol DAOC is 1000x faster paced then EvE. /where <npcname> and viola he points you in the right direction. /map to see where you are and need to go, other then that reading your journal and following through will get you where you need to be. But then again I fully understand you struggling with it since there are only a handfull of quests in EvE (sure you can do them 1000-s of times again with a very slight modification to it and bookmark the location/hit autopilot/go watch TV for 20 minutes till you arrive/do the same stuff you allready did a million of times... etc...).
Longest grind goes to Ragnarok Online. Largest time-sink also goes to Ragnarok Online. Second place? Planetside. EVE isn't a long grind unless you want to try to powergame, which you can't. Limiting powergaming by giving you too much to do and too many choices isn't a "grind". A real grind is when it takes months and months to level or they throw out new weapons that require you to be online for a year to use,(Planetside) or the "Avatar/God" mode reincarnation trick. Got to level 50? Start over again - 50 more levels! Woo Hoo!
Hahahaha, EvE isnt a long grind? How long does it take to match old time players their skill tree? 2 Years? 3 Years? Ow wait you can never catch up to them.... EvE has an impossible grind even...
Radio station? Gheez - turn off the music in-game, turn on windowed mode, and play whatever you want in the background. Lack of a media player or MP3s of your own isnt an excuse.
.... Are you past your trial in EvE yet.... I'm talking Eve-radio offcourse... The best thing about EvE.
PvP? Heh. Carebear! Try once or twice a day if you actually venture out into deep space. And that's not counting the dozens of NPC spawns an hour you can run into. Or not. Your choice. That you can make a living in EVE without fighting is something you just can't do in most of the other games.
Wahahahaaha, twice a day and you are calling me the carebear.... OMFG im dieing from laughter here. PvP in my book is action whenever I want it, plenty of it, from solo to zerg, it certainly isnt hanging for 3 hours near a gateway screaming from boredom and frustration before you can actually engage someone. Who is often unprepared and thus a skilless handfull of seconds kill... Then it's off to your next 3 hours wait or 4 or 5 or 6 or 7.
EVE can be most anything you want it to be - or not. Such are "sandbox" environments. With sometihng like WoW, well, you are stuck in their cookie-cutter missions and classes.
This is where you have a point on which I fully agree, the true EvE game is RP-ing the world alive and the game itself is nothing more then a huge empty sandbox the size of which makes the Sahara jealous. Bottomline is EvE is a Space Opera RPG, that REQUIRES you to trully RP to get enjoyment out of it. If it should have won any price it should have been MMORPG readers choice, because of the RP element, nothing more, nothing less. All other awards it grabbed are a big joke and a sign of the community strength in EvE and the indoctrination CCP succeeded in. Hell EvE players defend CCP over downtime instead of screaming for the uptime they deserve and pay for, that alone says enough. Period.
I hope they will not let their players down this year. And to the guy above me, it seems to me that you played the game for a while, which is a good thing. But why did you played it for that long if you didn't like it? (at least it makes your comments more beliaveable then " I played for two days and it suxx0rs!!)
I play this game for like 4 months and im not considering to gatecamp or anything like that, because i don't have the skill/money to survive, this is also the point that lured me into EvE, I was planning on giving up on this MMO, did one last run to give my stuff to a friend and got blown up, which pissed me so frigging off (got all my stuff in 1 ship) and my friend was counting on it.
So I subscribed immediate, and got a new goal, to get my revenge! now i have two accounts, give up on WoW and A.O. And am totally addictive to EvE. Now i really feel involved, joined a big and nice corp, and got my revenge, i totally blew him several times, waiting for him, chasing him down. I didn't see him for a month or so, i bet he quited the game:D ghihi
(see all this is possible in EvE, read PC gamer), beside the so called wallpapers are very real, even an ring around a planet is not just a ring aroung a planet but you can actually extract ore for it. And I prefer a JPG which i desiged then to look like everybody else! In WoW i have seen to many Elves wearing exactly the same epics, hair clolor and what not as me. Even the superb graphics of EQ2 had it, i still got to meet a guy in EvE which looks are the same as me.
I hope it will last for a long time.
but im still waiting/hoping for a new "classic" MMO, but I know deep in my heart: I will never leave EvE.
Originally posted by GoeWie And to the guy above me, it seems to me that you played the game for a while, which is a good thing. But why did you play it for that long if you didn't like it?
Because I wanted to like it so bad, I didnt want to give up and kept thinking it has to be better then this I prolly just need to grind through this little bit... But also because of EvE Radio, I so totally loved that radio station. I am and always have been ever since the c64 a huge sci-fi gamer/lover. But disappointment upon disappointment and the enormous repetitve agent missions, poor graphic diversity, i decided during after staring at my screen for 45 minutes on a long jump that this was it and it wasnt going to get better. I also found myself playing other games whilst playing EvE to kill the wait time in EvE (especially when trading, something i prefered over mining).
Congrats to CCP and the legions of vote happy Eve fans me-thinks are in order.
Seriously though Eve is a game with bucket loads of potential. But then again, it's been that way for years now.
This kind of adulation would be understandable a couple years ago but this gamer would have to agree with quite a few other posters, Eve winning this many awards is pretty indicative of how weak the MMO genre is atm. But that looks to hopefully be changing in the near and not-to-distant future.
Strange the religious wars between proponents of games like WoW and games like Eve. They are reasonably difficult to compare. That said, I do find the my own tastes run toward very deep, very complex games where you can get a sense of meaningful play. Eve does that for me. I spend most of my time in the game doing things - building cottage industries - that the devs never conceived of. Reasonably impossible in other games where the player can not permanently change the environment. But that is not for everyone. In any event, the fact that a three year old game should have such a passionate following to win four MMORPG categories (two for which the game was not originally nominated) is something remarkable. The critics who say that Eve players mobbed the voting may be right - which is exactly the point.
I have been playing WOW, EQ 2 and mmorpg's like thoose and damm they get borring in the end. Allways trying to lvl up by killing the same beasts over and over again to gain XP, so u can fight even BIGGER monsters over and over again
Yea i know it says totaly player freedom on the back on every mmorpg game - to do whatever u wanna etc, but let me tell u all this.. You WILL find it in EVE(!) - totally freedom.! Eve just set the stage, and the players in it gives the show, and the outcome is unknown for everyone incl CCP. They call it a space opera and it is .
Everything is player controled. So many ways of living in EVE. In other games, its allmost just the race u pick that desides how u wanna play the game and so on. In EVE your actions in-game will do the trick. YOUR actions. The freedom in EVE kidda stund me when i started to play. My way of thinking of player freedom in-game took a hole new meening after a while and still does!
And thats why u with ease will be able to find players in-game whos been there for way over 2 years(!). Its just the king of mmorpgs. And in the same time, u dont have to fear and think a 2 year old veteran can waste u any moment. In a indrustrial ship, everyone is weak...
And the PvP part of it stunded me. Big alliances fighting over territory, corporrations in war, pirates (player ones offcause) with bad reputations (like i said - your action in-game will make u who u are and not by some race picking etc), the big political activity going on in game and on web forums where alliances and friends are made, and where foes and wars comes to live etc etc etc etc. Its BIG!
And so many ways to do a fight! Its not just 2 ships fighting - u puch the buttom and activate your wepons and sit back and wait. No no no. You have to install the wepons and modules of all kinds to the ship, means the combinations for a ship setup is huge and makes it even more heart pumping when engageing a fight. U never really know whats gonna happen And when it comes to fights between full fleets in a all out war, u cant help yourself for hitting the "print screen" screentake button I even heard they wanna have a brand new graphic engine up and running this year(!) Right now its amazing and a eyeballer sometimes. With a new one i cant even imagine
Been playing for 6 mounths now and still(!) learning new aspects of the game. What more can I more say....
PS: The fact that its the only game out there, running on only ONE server, just makes it even more intense. Luckly EVE's map is gigantic. Because afterall.. Its space.
Originally posted by DrAtomic (mindless drivel quoted later)
You can say whatever you want to about EVE I guess, go ahead, poke fun at the graphics (Which will be completely redone after E3), say some dumbass comment like "LOL EVE SUX just autopilot WEEE" OK now I am going to address the autopilot/skill issue here. First of all the galaxy is BIG. On the plus side there are lots of places to make bases, set up shop, find deals, fight wars, etc. There are serious player-driven alliances that control large parts of the galaxy that fight real wars with real economic losses. So it actually MEANS SOMETHING when you decide to kick someone's ass. Once again, the operative word here is MEANING. When you are playing with actual stakes of hard-earned time and money on the line, that win feeling is Priceless. Personally, that alone is enough of a sacrifice worth making, to me at least. I'll take 6 minutes to get where I'm going if it means that I actually play a game in a truly epic setting. Once again, just me. Plus it's nice to have time to make tea and a sandwich before you get there and start shooting people. And as for the skills, bitch all you want, but it's elegant for these reasons:
1. Casual players can still be competitive. If you actually have Real Life engagements, you can train a skill that takes 5 or 6 days while you spend time with your family for Thanksgiving or Christmas and you can still improve the whole time you are gone. Besides the real competitive edge is in HOW you play your skills and ship, not how many skill points you have.
2. NO one is all powerful in EVE. No artificial classes, no artificial level structure. Power in EVE is about money and friends, not just skills. So if you have money and friends I guess you are powerful, but you can't powerlevel money and friends, you have to earn it. And like many people said, even if you have the uber ship with the uber skills, you can still lose it all, there are always forces in EVE that can and will destroy you if you bite off more than you can chew. Hell the largest ship currently in the game, the Titan class, one of those just got blown up a while back. Most people who bitch about the ship fitting system or the skill system are looking for a PWNMOBILE that doesn't exist in Eve. GOD BLESS. Since you can Easily make a viable PvP/pirate character in about a month (which is about average for most 'regular' MMO's), the only advantage people have who have years of skills trained is that they have more options for making money. I.E. after about 6 months of combat training, you can probably start specializing in another profession. If you really want to gank people in Eve it's not that hard to overcome the skill system. People who criticize it have never really tried to be successful in game with it, and again, say what you like, but you haven't.
3. Here's the best part: Eve does a fantastic job of weeding out people who don't belong there in the first place. If you are the kind of person who is so shallow as to be turned off by the "lame" graphics, or the kind of person who just has to be better than everyone so they can cause havoc and be a dick, or the kind of person with no patience or appreciation for the greater and subtler currents of the game, great. We probably don't want you there anyhow. Talk all the smack you want to about the game, the more smack you talk, the less you should be there. In the end, griefers and annoying assholes get weeded out, quitting, unappreciative of the beauty of the system. Now autopilot isn't so bad anyhow, because when you are bored, you have great people to chat with, and no spam. Really 40 minutes goes by pretty fast when you have good conversation. Reason 3 alone in my opinion pretty much makes up for having to wait to travel long distances.
OK there are pretty much all of my main points as to why I love Eve, and why many fans probably do as well. It's not a game for every one, GOD BLESS. The people that it is for truly appreciate it, and I applaud CCP for at least having the balls to even try a project like this, which teeters on the edge of mass appeal as it is. Now let's see if this guy here really needs to play the game.
Ships of the same type all are exactly identical (cept for their weapon outfit), the objects you refer to are all the same as well. Have a good and honest look at it, it really is nothing special. Ow and your pilot... A whopping static JPG
Shallow.
Hahahaha, EvE isnt a long grind? How long does it take to match old time players their skill tree? 2 Years? 3 Years? Ow wait you can never catch up to them.... EvE has an impossible grind even...
It's not the size of the boat, or the number of skill points, it's the skill of the skipper, friend.
But then again I fully understand you struggling with it since there are only a handfull of quests in EvE (sure you can do them 1000-s of times again with a very slight modification to it and bookmark the location/hit autopilot/go watch TV for 20 minutes till you arrive/do the same stuff you allready did a million of times... etc...).
Autopilot aside, do the same stuff you already did a million times makes Eve worse than other standard MMO's because...? I don't get it, I've played plenty of other MMO's, and you still have to do the same thing a million times, that's pretty much a standard trait of online RPG's. Wahahahaaha, twice a day and you are calling me the carebear.... OMFG im dieing from laughter here. PvP in my book is action whenever I want it, plenty of it, from solo to zerg, it certainly isnt hanging for 3 hours near a gateway screaming from boredom and frustration before you can actually engage someone.
Attention span is too short. Face it, there are a lot of people to kill in Eve, and more ways to do it than gate camp. Just fly out into the low-sec red systems and see how far you get before you find a fight. And PvP in your book sounds like "playing Counterstrike", which, you are more than welcome to do.
Hell EvE players defend CCP over downtime instead of screaming for the uptime they deserve and pay for, that alone says enough. Period.
CCP honestly works hard to make Eve as good as they can make it. They aren't just out to get your money. They care about their fanbase. Their project is of unprecedented size and scope, and they actually pull it off. On the whole their downtime is no worse than any other game I've played, where the servers have to go down regularly for maintenance. If you really have to play 24/7 then you have a Problem friend.
If I wanted to play a game with 6 million of you I'd be playin WoW. And I will NEVER be playing WoW.
Comments
Congrats to CCP.
I read somewhere in this thread that EvE would in one category if that category was customer service. I know a lot of us EvE players complaint about the customer service, but I'm yet to see a game customer service that what EvE provides.
Another great video with some nice PvP action with teamspeak sound included. IMHO best player made video ever.
EvE Video Download
A few things about EVE that made me try it out(and stay with it) But, first a bit of background. I;ve been playing online games since, well, since 1992. BAck when the online games were either over school-to-school mega-lan clusters or text-only via BBSs and the internet.
My goal for a space game is to recreate the best parts of Elite and make it modern. To date, only a few games, mostly single-player, have come close. the Homeworld series was very good - great management of resources and tactics. But again and again - no MMORPG until three came along:
1: Astronest. Hands-down, this was the best online MMOG. No PVP, but the rest was superb. It felt clean, and had an alliance server, which was fantastic. 20 of your friends working together to rule the universe. Then it died.
2:Stars! - Fantastic game because it had *math*. No - really - it had tactics and number-crunching and so on - and it all made sense. It allowed you to figure out things if you wanted to outsmart your enemy - and the game didn't nerf you, either. Then it died.
3: Earth and Beyond. Superb game - in fact, almost equal to EVE, but no PvP. Smooth, beautiful, and had great stories and missions. Then it died.
So I looked around and found EVE. It has the corporation/economics/skills aspect of Astronest, the beauty and fluidity of E&B, and the hard science to back it up if you really want to work out a better strategy like Stars! did. But it has a few other good features:
- All players, all the time, 24/7. If I want to just chat with a friend, if they are on anywhere, anytime, I know it. WYSIWYG. This is critical. "Sandbox" type games require this to work properly, as well.
http://www.eve-files.com/media/corp/CRII/Latest.jpg - the latest map of who owns and is fighting over what. You matter. There's no sharding, and no "other server" nonsense - everyone is in the same pot, for good or bad.
- 5000 systems. Big. Plenty of space to get lost if you want. Plenty of opportunity to start your own little empire as well. All you need is a few friends - ho wlong you've been playing makes no difference.
- I could care less about the economy. Lol. I presonally think it's a bit busted myself. OTOH, it's possible, like in E&B, to squeek your way in quietly to a low-sec system and mine some outrageous stuff by yourself. A hold of the best stuff will net you enough to build a battleship and then some. Or you could do whatever - it's like the feeling you get when you get your license. You. Car. Millions of miles of roads. Your choice what to do or not to do.
- Small ships and low-tech aren't useless. Ever played a game like oh, Master of Orion, where the big ships - the whole goal is to get uber-tech and then well, you never ever build another small ship again? Not so in EVE. Small ships are useful because, like in RL, there is no perfect ship for any task - far from it, it's hard to make any ship do exactly more than one thing even somewhat well, so while some ships are good for mining, others are good for hauling, and others are good for long-range combat..
Yet the small ship still gets built and used. In a corp war, for instance, small ships are cheap and useful - and 4-5 can dish out some serious damage because in the end, the guy on the other end isn't a NPC - its a human you can talk to, trick, or simply befuddle with too many things to do at once. Plus, small ships go like stink.
There are places you can't go in or out of easily in a slow tank of a ship.
-new players are welcomed. Corporations always need new players to fly smaller ships and help out. A small player in the right place can turn the tide of an entire battle. No, really - seen it happen almost every week. Just having a new player in a small fast ship scouting is often a lifesaver in itself. The newbie/school systems are floowed with player-made billboards(cargo containers with big titles - puirely another player invention) with offers to join up. You can't go a week as a new player without someone asking you to join them.
- And, it takes a long time to get good at something, which is also a big plus. You'll never see any person who is good at more than a few things - so you might actually have a chance in a fight or be useful to each other or who knows? Not everyone is good at combat. Many games have the elvelling process and skills as too easy to obtain. In EVE, not so - but also, most of the high-end skills are only small increases or bonuses or used to train another skill. A 3 month old character can pummel a 2 year old one about 70% as hard, so all you need is a friend or to get the drop on them to even it out.
-what happens in-game is recognized by the company. Not just a news blurb, but it affects the actual world you play in. CCP has a remarkably hands-off policy here.
- lastly, anything goes other than selling money/items in game of money in RL. That means if you can scam someone, beat the system, break something, claim something, or whatever your devious mind can come up with, CCP is all too happy to have created the framework to let it happen. So, like in RL, you have to know your friends and know who you are dealing with. Sometimes you get burned, sometimes you make out like a bandit. Most other games have so many in-game rules and nerfs that you can't do illegal or immoral things. EVE allows this and also the reverse. There are entire player groups that do nothing but hunt people who break the established rules. But there's never the whining you get with most game about them breaking the game. The players know that it's entirely up to them what kind of rules and ethics they want in their game. People also are free to spy on, infiltrate, and do real espionage against others as well.
So far, it's been a lot of fun.
Hes right you know.
I have played EQ2 , WoW, Guild wars and I just got excepted into phase one of RF online beta test.
But what ever game I play I allways do one thing after I am bored of it is go back to eve online. Im not a old man eve player ( I know who you are!! no offences intended ) Im 18 and played games for a long long time online. Since the days of doom, yes I was only 5 but I could do it and loved it.
But there is no game in my expierence that is anything near how far ahead of its time as eve is. Not even close.
I accept why younger gamers might not like it and I think the reason I like it is because I have grew up playing with older gamers so I fit in were as the 15 year old who just got his new dell pc for christmas might not think its cool etc. And by no way am I having a pop at wow players as it is a entertaining game. I liked it for about 3 months but liek some one has said it leads no were and will eventually lead the way for a sequel to bring in yet more money.
Eve, as long as there are subscribers will allways keep growing.
It simply is the best mmorpg ever been made BUT I do understand why new players do hate it and think its sh*t because If I hadn't of started playing it two years ago. If I started playing it now I most likly would. Unless I found a good corperation and some helpful people.
But alot of new players never get past the massive learning curve what eve has and never fully understand it. If you do understand it and start playing it in a good corp you will love it. Just takes about 3 months before you can do anything worth while.
Atm in our corp we use new players as bait while sitting having 4/5 stealth bomber ships sat cloaked. Not really a good incentive I know but if they can see past the your the bait thing and see what we are doing they will stick at it.
I know this post is random but I just have to say some more things. When I started playing eve and when alot of the eve players who truely love it started playing it having a cruiser was a good ship you could do stuff with it and be fairly powerful. Now they are still very usefull ships but only in a gang of people. The gulf between a brand new play on his own and me for example is MASSIVE in everything from skills to knowledge and maybe that is why people do not like it BUT they do not relise how useful new plays can be if put to the right use. Like I said before we use them as bait. Its a use not a nice one but a use. If a new player plays the game for about 2 weeks he can with some other news players take down a player like me if I am not fitted right for the encounter and they are fitted to jam me, Scramble me. They would slowly but surely kill me. Unless I had a very expensive shield on but apart from that they would.
You can't explain it.
Perhaps the results show some hope for the future of MMORPGs. Sometimes it seems these cookie-cutter clones are the only thing that ever get made. I guess eventually something has to break outside of the box.
Maybe we should look at some of the things that EVE is doing right.
An actually massively multiplayer game universe that can at least develop dynamically in many ways.
This is in opposition to the current trend to instance everything.
What about the actual dynamic economy? Most games are based on level items and uber loot.
PvP is being ousted in a lot of games (mainly because of poor implementation) but EVE seems to do it right.
Although all the categories are separate, everything in a game works together to make the whole experience. It seems that many of these basic things that EVE implements are desireable. This would be something for future developers to keep in mind. Head on over to the developers corner discussion threads. There is MUCH to be said about such things there.
IronOre - Forging the Future
I am a part of the EvE community, but completely missed this whole vote! Quite frankly, I am surprised to see it up here, let alone seeing all the votes its received. Why? Mostly b/c this game is considered old. I remember beta testing it, and it really did have a lot of bugs that made it mostly unplayable with my machine at the time. However, it was the feel of the game and the commitment of the player base that intrigued me the most. The first time I really felt immersed in a game was EQ1. Amazing! I played on a lot of BBS' (note my forum handle, who ever knows where that came from gets a cookie), but running around in a 3d world was crazy! I know there were others that came before, but this was the first one I played, and the first online rpg I got hooked on.
Since my EQ1 days/nights/weekends/comas, I have played (beta tested at the very least) every big title to hit the market. EQ1 was pushed out of position by the new pretty 2nd gen rpgs, and I wanted the nice graphics AND the feeling I got from playing EQ1. Well, for many of us, that never happened. Lots of promising titles by big developers and I hated every single one of them. Lots of hype, no follow-through and a bone dry immersion factor. I know beta testing is working with a highly unpolished product, but I have done it enough to get the "gist." This leads me back to EvE. EvE had the opposite affect on me, it had the feel I was looking for (even though it was entirely a different game/genre/style), but I couldn't really play it due to system constraints. Seriously, just go and read the short stories the EvE devs put up. It builds a feel - a dark suspense - something lurking around the corner sort of feel. Erie. I was hooked on the game before I could really play it. This leads to my next point.
Many of the mmorpgs we see now, and coming soon are following the "whats made money and how much more can we make from it." I work in the music industry with record execs, producers, artists, the whole 9yards. I know from experience in my own workings with sound processing and video game production. The politics behind the money of a game dictates the content of that game. The Tolkien framework is fool proof - if you time it right (and how many games arrive on schedule?) Anyway, they will keep pumping out Tolkien as long as people are spending money on it.
IMHO, we will never see an end to the Tolkien universe. Which is fine by me, its fun! But, ill bet just about anyone who has read my post this far could create a Tolkien based mmorpg in their heads in about 5mins - brand new - Elves? check - Dwarves with axes? check - character growth via xp and lvls? - check - (spend at least 2 min figuring out the death penalty system, and if you have an extra minute you can also decide the economy is "dynamic"). - check - oh yeah, side note: crafters - uh, well ... give them pelts! - check, Story - eh... will put one together as it goes, does it really need one? Apparently not. Congratz! You just made a successful mmorpg!
In the recording biz we call this "fixing it in the mix" (foundation optional, content = cut and paste)
Put a fancy name on a new graphics generation system, slap a sticker with a big name distributor and charge 15.00$ a month. It will pay itself off in less than 3months (box + hype), and if it makes X amount of money after 6months via subscriptions, its all profit and the game gets an expansion at regular intervals until it dies. But thats ok, another is already in the works with updated graphics, a new box, and a the latest buzz-wordy feature the fanbois are raving about.
This is what I call "Pop Gaming." It is like "Pop Music." Its what pays the bills - like the Back Street Boys, and NKOTB, and In Synch? Whatever, they are doing the same thing to your games. There isn't enough dead horse to beat in this industry. Which makes it very difficult to find anything with substance or originality.
We all saw EQ2 coming, we saw Horizons ... die, we saw SWG, we saw DAoC, AC2, SB, D&D (this is like 5years late? wtf), etc...
We see the faint lights at the end of a dark murky swamp with large bats and diseased rats - its the space race, and sci-fi genre to the rescue! Untapped online gold. E&B out of the gates - ouch - that must have hurt, there was another I tested that I cant recall, so obviously wasn't worth the bandwidth I wasted to test it (edit: it was JumpGate *enters fetal position* we shall never speak of this again)... And then we hit AO. A fantastic game - original, content driven - and overall, sloppy. But it hit a market that required a Mack truck to satisfy. To borrow part of a quote - "... its like pizza, even if its bad its still pretty good." It should get an award for still having players after the first 2 weeks. However, bugs must be crushed (after being properly exploited of course), and players must play....something.
Then came EvE, out of left field, (where no one is safe!) It had been in development for some time, but with E&B and AO hype, it was definitely drowned out in its category - as far as i was concerned. Bug crushing in AO was like that scene in that Indiana Jones movie... you know the part, the fortune cookie part. *shudder EvE was not like the others! even though it was in space, and it was in the mmorpg category, we found completely original content and concept. Like, having all the players on the same field. Its like finding your pencil behind your ear, "you can do that?" No giant rodents? "How can any online ecosystem survive without the lowest part of the food chain? Where will I get my xp with no rats or beetles? How will I survive the cold of space with a death penalty?" (Answer: you don't! You are now a frozen corpse - biomass that can and will be harvested, most likely by the person that just podded you and then laughed as you bounced of his windscreen.) Hope that ship was insured and you didn't buy those expensive implants you had your eye on. Lesson learned, bounty increased, war declared.
Ahh yes, pure merciless carnage. A deep unforgiving story that goes back further than most of you will read with your short attention spans. A game in which the developers chat with its community for feedback, then updates them daily as to the changes that are being made. (wtf? devs can post without using a sticky?) I even chatted over emails with the guy who did all the sound. How does that happen? Oh right, you create a game in which players spend more time playing the game than abusing the game designers. Something must be wrong... oh yeah! its a space based game with a steep learning curve, so steep infact, that you actually need to work through the tutorial - yes, there was a time when tutorials were needed to understand wtf was going on. If you don't know what RTFM means, or people have asked you to do that - don't worry, the voice thing will eventually go away, and girls really don't have "cooties" anymore - promise. you're going to smell bad though, showers are not optional - and if you don't know how to work it, I would suggest that you RTFM.
Back on track. I have since played EQ2, which I waited for anxiously. Great title, they still have yet to build a PC that can run it at full detail, so just wait for a year or two and you will be able to afford a new one.. until then, enjoy the slideshow and zero AA. Also, after lvl 20 - its helpful to group if you want to make good xp. (solo = not an option). I like to solo myself, and with the wrong class (which you build and then will create several alts to bridge the solo gap as the "kinks" are ironed out.) you spend most of your time looking for people to play with, and running, and running, and running to find them once you do get a bite. Then running and running around with them to find something to kill. I thought the first was bad, can anyone spare a Sow? Offering PP for SoW?
I bought WoW before it came out, with the hope that it would live up to half its hype (which is a good thing). I was happy with it for a couple of days... Made quite a few toon's (and they are toons). Ran around trying to find stuff.... ran some more.... ran into a bear, a lion, and other savage woodland creatures that preferred that I didn't get to where I was desperately trying to go. Only to find that I had to go back to where I started. Did this routine for a couple of weeks, logged over 100 hours and realized that the gameplay didn't change from day 1. Get a few new spells or whatever, but - the grind sets in... just another lvl... one more......one more.......if I fall off that thing one more....delete. The graphics are great, there isn't anything to them. Makes everything look good. But everyone looks the same, plays the same, does the same. Really boring in my opinion. Simple. Boring. But original. The genre is stale, but this is the peanut-butter! So, WoW tastes pretty good when all you've had is burnt toast everyday for the last few years.
Then I bought Guild Wars - also preorder - highly anticipated, good development team, some intriguing gameplay ideas. Best of all - NO MONTHLY FEE! This game should get an award just for that alone. This game imho, had much better graphics than WoW and EQ2. They just fit the game, not trying to make it something it isn't - i.e. polishing a turd (EQ2) - which to many peoples disbelief is not possible, I don't care how many video cards you packed in your box or which type of coolant you got in your cascading phase-change setup, or how many LED's are strapped to the fan of your power supply - if a game sux, the graphics wont make it better - ever. Watching paint dry in super HD is still watching paint dry. get me?
Guild wars is great for quite a few other reasons - the first that comes to mind, outside of good customization and some fun PvP ideas was the "tutorial level." I honestly thought I was playing the heart of the game, until the fit hit the shan and the game dropped you into the real game world. Cool stuff. Takes quite a bit to surprise me, and this did a good job. But after grinding for so long, it got old. Mostly b/c of CoH and the upcoming now released CoV! This series btw, is great. Could be a lot better and am looking forward to see what happens next. VERY original in style, being a super villain is fun! Not evil, there is no content for being evil... Im still looking to set fire to the citizens of paragon city, but it wont let me. Its like playing SIM's, after a while (1 week) you find yourself trying to find the most messed up way to kill and torture them. CoV feels very similar sometimes, but I like making alts. This is the series crowning feature (after the lvl grinding gets old).
I played CoH as a serious power gamer, as some RL friends liked to play this style. Got up in the upper lvls of the game and the realized I had more fun making alts and designing super-heros than grinding with my fire/fire blaster and my buddies fire/fire tank. lol (pre-nerfs) You have to play to understand. Again, it got old, you can only create so many alts before you get bored, and your friends quit to play WoW.
Meanwhile - im in and out of EvE all the time. Its skill based training, and when you're not playing, you're still advancing. Higher skills could take a month to learn. So what do you do if you want to try a new game but don't want to give up EvE? You put a high level skill in training that takes a month to learn, cancel your subscription, play your new game till you've "played it out," then the next month, renew your subscription to EvE to find that your skill training is done, and your back to where you were. You were advancing the whole time. No time lost, no grind, no extra money needed to try out a new title. And FFS, its 2006 and im still playing EvE - and im about to drop CoV. What does this tell you? No, im not ADHD - OC maybe, but not ADD
We have a game that has stood the test of time, graphics, gameplay, updates, free expansions, grindless (unless you make it that way, old habits are hard to break since every other mmorpg requires it of you), and more people oriented.
I don't like being forced to group, or forced to make a lvl just so I can get to see some other content. When you get bored of grinding out the xp and you stop and take a good look around, this is the heart of the game. If you see endless dungeons, thats what it is. If you see progress based on what you couldn't kill 2 days ago, thats what its all about. Not just what its all about, but how you've spent your time and money to escape to a place where people can forget about their RL daily grind. Im tired of coming home from work and feeling like im behind in my gaming... back to the grind, back to the grind. Its a compulsion. isn't this supposed to be fun and relaxing? Or interesting and entertaining? What you are sacrificing a good book for? Reading a good book doesn't require you to grind chapters, b/c thats not what makes it enjoyable. This my friends, is why a content driven game in my world is more important than how the sun reflects off the water in a murky pond filled with 20 frogs that I have to kill. Perhaps this is the difference between gaming generations... the lvl of your main is for show, the path that got you to that lvl is the game. its the content that makes the lvl/vet status mean something, otherwise its just an empty numbers game. Anyone can crunch numbers and build macros, I want to play a good game. I dont have to compensate for anything by hitting lvl 50 before everyone else. If wanted that feeling, id just by a giant 4WD with a winch and KC lights.
Thus far, EvE hits on more of these lvls than the other games have. I have yet to run into a player who thinks they are higher than thou. In EvE you don't have rock paper scissors, a noob thats been playing 2 weeks could suicide a battleship of a 3 year hardened vet (this doesnt happen twice
. I don't have to wait for content. With the skill timer ticking by, everyone is moving forward at the same pace. Perhaps thats what pisses off the power-lvlers - you cant. You cant be the first to reach X lvl, b/c it doesn't exist. Most important to me, the players run the game, the game never runs them. I cant think off the top of my head any others that do that, or at least, ones that aren't run by macro-farmers. I was sort of hoping that CCP would come out with an EvE 2... But they keep adding content and I honestly couldn't keep up with what they already had. Also, it spoils you when you don't have to worry about which shard/server you play on, everyone is on the same field. I think its amazing. Having played all of these games at the highest playable graphics settings, EvE and GW are far superior to the others. Just in look and feel. Its all of course subjective, but thats what different genres are for. You cant expect a die-hard tolkien fan to enjoy playing a space based game, even if its voted game of the year every year for the rest of its life, no matter how awesome it is. Its nice to have options though, and im very happy for CCP for being able to make a game that can stand the test of time with the strength of a small niche genre.
It also makes me happy to see Atriarch listed on the menu here, still one of the most original game concepts that I have ever run across. Lets hope the smaller developers can finish their games and get their funding. The innovation in content and originality is with the little guys. WoW proved that to me once again. All Blizzard needed to do was make a starcraft 2. Nothing special. How hard would that be? But no, they jumped on the wagon with everyone else.
Content before creation.Vulnerant omnia, ultima necat.
Right on! You hit the nail on the head (yes I actually read the whole thing
yikes) and you made some very good points. These big grinding titles are like lame movies that get all the hype, make a TON on opening weekend and then hit the $9.99 rack at the grocery store a couple months later because they had NOTHING original or captivating. Other movies have appeal even long after their special effects are old school. They had substance, CONTENT. That is what is needed and I think developers should take a look at what provides that. Sure you make a ton on a game that is on the way out as soon as it launches, but you could also make money on something that LASTS! In the end I think perhaps MORE.
As for difference of opinion between sci-fi/fantasy, etc that is completely true. Just imagine if someone just came up with a great basic game concept/engine that they could apply to different titles in a wide variety of setting genres. Sure they might be roughly the same game with little tweaked differences but if is is a GOOD game and you can just play the setting that appeals most to YOU then you become part of a potentialy much wider fanbase.
Where is the fast-forward button, I would SO like to get to what comes after this dark-age of MMORPG history.
IronOre - Forging the Future
Heh, instead of an EvE 2, CCP should make a fantasy mmorpg with the same vision. I would pay yet another monthly fee to play that! They obviously have the right recipe - now for a different genre. CCP 4tw!
Vulnerant omnia, ultima necat.
Heh, instead of an EvE 2, CCP should make a fantasy mmorpg with the same vision. I would pay yet another monthly fee to play that! They obviously have the right recipe - now for a different genre. CCP 4tw!
That'll be a fantasy mmorpg i'd consider paying for
CCP keep saying they are not interested in making cookie cutter games, and anyway they are scary smart and have so many ideas (seriouly if you are ever lucky enough to meet Lekjart you know what I mean) that they will make somthing totally awsome based and filled with orginality. If they do go for a fanstay game I don't see them ever considering making "EVE with Elves".
If you go back in time far enough, there were good multiplayer games that broke the rules and didn't fall into the eye-candy routine. Everything from ancient titles like Bolo and Spectre on Mac networks at universities to Astronest, Dopewars, and Planetarion online, and even a few old classic PC games like Stars and many others.
The real problem is lack of willpower to do something different. Create a GAME and then market it instead of slapping concepts into graphic engines. The game should play fine without ANY 3-d graphics or it is seriously broken. EVE? Eve could manage without the graphics if it had to - it would be still a good game with crude 2.5D polygons(Elite comes to mind as an example), because it has substance behind all of the eyecandy.
As for it being perfect? Oh lord no - the economy has serious problems, there is no way to reverse-engineer items, and lag at gates can be crippling at times(among dozens of other minor play-balance problems). But... It does try and gets more right that it does wrong, that's for sure.
Hahaha EvE online wins all..., what a joke... Flying through a static collection of screenshots is what it takes to be a winner in the graphics department??? They cant even keep their website on air... and yes game stability is about the same, worst online record of any of the mmorpgs out there, and .... wait a sec....
Here are DrAtomic his troll awards:
Worst lag of any mmorpg in 2006: winner EvE Online
Worst graphics of any mmorpg except for UO in 2006: winner EvE Online
Longest grind of any mmorpg in 2006: winner EvE Online
Best hidden grind of any mmorpg in 2006: winner EvE Online
Worst uptime record of any mmorpg in 2006: winner EvE Online
Amazing community 'monkey training' management: winner EvE Online
Game that needs a radio station to enjoy: winner EvE Online
One fight per month is the definition of PvP: winner EvE Online
etc.... : winner EvE Online
Next years vote should simply be a strongest community award, because that is what the EvE community has proven time and time again. Other then that, the current rewards are a big joke.
Here are DrAtomic his troll awards:
Worst lag of any mmorpg in 2006: winner EvE
OnlineWorst graphics of any mmorpg except for UO in 2006: winner EvE
OnlineLongest grind of any mmorpg in 2006: winner EvE
OnlineBest hidden grind of any mmorpg in 2006: winner EvE
OnlineWorst uptime record of any mmorpg in 2006: winner EvE
OnlineAmazing community 'monkey training' management: winner EvE
OnlineGame that needs a radio station to enjoy: winner EvE
OnlineOne fight per month is the definition of PvP: winner EvE Online
Um - worst lag? Oh - right. You only went to one of the 20 or so newbie systems I bet. Out of 5000 systems, there are less than a couple of dozen with more than 20 players in them.
As for graphics, it's not a static screenshot, though it looks simmilar. You can actually fly around or to objects if you took the time to. There are places where you can do that, in fact.
Worst uptime? If you know anything about SQL, then that it stays up as well as it odes is amazing. Worst definately has to go to Planetside, though. Worst lag, too.
Longest hidden grind: Eve isn't hidden. You know what's required if you read the manual. Hidden would be something like DAOC. Dear lord it takes forever to do anything/train, despite appearing to be "quick" at first. Takes forever to move around, too. Takes forever to FIND anything.(hello - arrow or direction indicator anyone?)
Longest grind goes to Ragnarok Online. Largest time-sink also goes to Ragnarok Online. Second place? Planetside. EVE isn't a long grind unless you want to try to powergame, which you can't. Limiting powergaming by giving you too much to do and too many choices isn't a "grind". A real grind is when it takes months and months to level or they throw out new weapons that require you to be online for a year to use,(Planetside) or the "Avatar/God" mode reincarnation trick. Got to level 50? Start over again - 50 more levels! Woo Hoo!
Radio station? Gheez - turn off the music in-game, turn on windowed mode, and play whatever you want in the background. Lack of a media player or MP3s of your own isnt an excuse.
PvP? Heh. Carebear! Try once or twice a day if you actually venture out into deep space. And that's not counting the dozens of NPC spawns an hour you can run into. Or not. Your choice. That you can make a living in EVE without fighting is something you just can't do in most of the other games.
EVE can be most anything you want it to be - or not. Such are "sandbox" environments. With sometihng like WoW, well, you are stuck in their cookie-cutter missions and classes.
in my taste to much eve online!
I never thought they could win that many awards. Yes its a nice game...
So an emtpy zone without lag is an indication about lag, and a zone with 30 people in it isnt? 10/10 for CCP on brainwashing their cleintele.
Ships of the same type all are exactly identical (cept for their weapon outfit), the objects you refer to are all the same as well. Have a good and honest look at it, it really is nothing special. Ow and your pilot... A whopping static JPG... But 10/10 to CCP again for managing to fool their clientele.
Sure blame it on Microsoft, it sure isnt CCP's fault. What a joke.
Errr EvE grind isnt hidden? Agent grinds, skill system grind (which deceptively looks like it is a none grind but in fact is exactly the opposite), money grind (trade), mining grind, blueprint grind, etc, etc.
Lol DAOC is 1000x faster paced then EvE. /where <npcname> and viola he points you in the right direction. /map to see where you are and need to go, other then that reading your journal and following through will get you where you need to be. But then again I fully understand you struggling with it since there are only a handfull of quests in EvE (sure you can do them 1000-s of times again with a very slight modification to it and bookmark the location/hit autopilot/go watch TV for 20 minutes till you arrive/do the same stuff you allready did a million of times... etc...).
Hahahaha, EvE isnt a long grind? How long does it take to match old time players their skill tree? 2 Years? 3 Years? Ow wait you can never catch up to them.... EvE has an impossible grind even...
.... Are you past your trial in EvE yet.... I'm talking Eve-radio offcourse... The best thing about EvE.
Wahahahaaha, twice a day and you are calling me the carebear.... OMFG im dieing from laughter here. PvP in my book is action whenever I want it, plenty of it, from solo to zerg, it certainly isnt hanging for 3 hours near a gateway screaming from boredom and frustration before you can actually engage someone. Who is often unprepared and thus a skilless handfull of seconds kill... Then it's off to your next 3 hours wait or 4 or 5 or 6 or 7.
This is where you have a point on which I fully agree, the true EvE game is RP-ing the world alive and the game itself is nothing more then a huge empty sandbox the size of which makes the Sahara jealous. Bottomline is EvE is a Space Opera RPG, that REQUIRES you to trully RP to get enjoyment out of it. If it should have won any price it should have been MMORPG readers choice, because of the RP element, nothing more, nothing less. All other awards it grabbed are a big joke and a sign of the community strength in EvE and the indoctrination CCP succeeded in. Hell EvE players defend CCP over downtime instead of screaming for the uptime they deserve and pay for, that alone says enough. Period.
Anyways Congrats to CCP
I hope they will not let their players down this year. And to the guy above me, it seems to me that you played the game for a while, which is a good thing. But why did you played it for that long if you didn't like it? (at least it makes your comments more beliaveable then " I played for two days and it suxx0rs!!)
I play this game for like 4 months and im not considering to gatecamp or anything like that, because i don't have the skill/money to survive, this is also the point that lured me into EvE, I was planning on giving up on this MMO, did one last run to give my stuff to a friend and got blown up, which pissed me so frigging off (got all my stuff in 1 ship) and my friend was counting on it.
So I subscribed immediate, and got a new goal, to get my revenge! now i have two accounts, give up on WoW and A.O. And am totally addictive to EvE. Now i really feel involved, joined a big and nice corp, and got my revenge, i totally blew him several times, waiting for him, chasing him down. I didn't see him for a month or so, i bet he quited the game:D ghihi
(see all this is possible in EvE, read PC gamer), beside the so called wallpapers are very real, even an ring around a planet is not just a ring aroung a planet but you can actually extract ore for it. And I prefer a JPG which i desiged then to look like everybody else! In WoW i have seen to many Elves wearing exactly the same epics, hair clolor and what not as me. Even the superb graphics of EQ2 had it, i still got to meet a guy in EvE which looks are the same as me.
I hope it will last for a long time.
but im still waiting/hoping for a new "classic" MMO, but I know deep in my heart: I will never leave EvE.
first of all i want to thank to mmorpg.com for this contest ...
it was fun to vote
also this contest proved us once more that eve-online is really a good game to play
Congrats to CCP and the legions of vote happy Eve fans me-thinks are in order.
Seriously though Eve is a game with bucket loads of potential. But then again, it's been that way for years now.
This kind of adulation would be understandable a couple years ago but this gamer would have to agree with quite a few other posters, Eve winning this many awards is pretty indicative of how weak the MMO genre is atm. But that looks to hopefully be changing in the near and not-to-distant future.
Strange the religious wars between proponents of games like WoW and games like Eve. They are reasonably difficult to compare. That said, I do find the my own tastes run toward very deep, very complex games where you can get a sense of meaningful play. Eve does that for me. I spend most of my time in the game doing things - building cottage industries - that the devs never conceived of. Reasonably impossible in other games where the player can not permanently change the environment. But that is not for everyone. In any event, the fact that a three year old game should have such a passionate following to win four MMORPG categories (two for which the game was not originally nominated) is something remarkable. The critics who say that Eve players mobbed the voting may be right - which is exactly the point.
Gratz EVE!!!! U SO much derserve it!
I have been playing WOW, EQ 2 and mmorpg's like thoose and damm they get borring in the end. Allways trying to lvl up by killing the same beasts over and over again to gain XP, so u can fight even BIGGER monsters over and over again
Yea i know it says totaly player freedom on the back on every mmorpg game - to do whatever u wanna etc, but let me tell u all this.. You WILL find it in EVE(!) - totally freedom.! Eve just set the stage, and the players in it gives the show, and the outcome is unknown for everyone incl CCP. They call it a space opera and it is
.
Everything is player controled. So many ways of living in EVE. In other games, its allmost just the race u pick that desides how u wanna play the game and so on. In EVE your actions in-game will do the trick. YOUR actions. The freedom in EVE kidda stund me when i started to play. My way of thinking of player freedom in-game took a hole new meening after a while and still does!
And thats why u with ease will be able to find players in-game whos been there for way over 2 years(!). Its just the king of mmorpgs
. And in the same time, u dont have to fear and think a 2 year old veteran can waste u any moment. In a indrustrial ship, everyone is weak...
And the PvP part of it stunded me. Big alliances fighting over territory, corporrations in war, pirates (player ones offcause) with bad reputations (like i said - your action in-game will make u who u are and not by some race picking etc), the big political activity going on in game and on web forums where alliances and friends are made, and where foes and wars comes to live etc etc etc etc. Its BIG!
And so many ways to do a fight! Its not just 2 ships fighting - u puch the buttom and activate your wepons and sit back and wait. No no no. You have to install the wepons and modules of all kinds to the ship, means the combinations for a ship setup is huge and makes it even more heart pumping when engageing a fight. U never really know whats gonna happen
And when it comes to fights between full fleets in a all out war, u cant help yourself for hitting the "print screen" screentake button 
I even heard they wanna have a brand new graphic engine up and running this year(!) Right now its amazing and a eyeballer sometimes. With a new one i cant even imagine 
Been playing for 6 mounths now and still(!) learning new aspects of the game. What more can I more say....
PS: The fact that its the only game out there, running on only ONE server, just makes it even more intense. Luckly EVE's map is gigantic. Because afterall.. Its space.
OK now I am going to address the autopilot/skill issue here. First of all the galaxy is BIG. On the plus side there are lots of places to make bases, set up shop, find deals, fight wars, etc. There are serious player-driven alliances that control large parts of the galaxy that fight real wars with real economic losses. So it actually MEANS SOMETHING when you decide to kick someone's ass. Once again, the operative word here is MEANING. When you are playing with actual stakes of hard-earned time and money on the line, that win feeling is Priceless.
Personally, that alone is enough of a sacrifice worth making, to me at least. I'll take 6 minutes to get where I'm going if it means that I actually play a game in a truly epic setting. Once again, just me. Plus it's nice to have time to make tea and a sandwich before you get there and start shooting people.
And as for the skills, bitch all you want, but it's elegant for these reasons:
1. Casual players can still be competitive. If you actually have Real Life engagements, you can train a skill that takes 5 or 6 days while you spend time with your family for Thanksgiving or Christmas and you can still improve the whole time you are gone. Besides the real competitive edge is in HOW you play your skills and ship, not how many skill points you have.
2. NO one is all powerful in EVE. No artificial classes, no artificial level structure. Power in EVE is about money and friends, not just skills. So if you have money and friends I guess you are powerful, but you can't powerlevel money and friends, you have to earn it.
And like many people said, even if you have the uber ship with the uber skills, you can still lose it all, there are always forces in EVE that can and will destroy you if you bite off more than you can chew. Hell the largest ship currently in the game, the Titan class, one of those just got blown up a while back. Most people who bitch about the ship fitting system or the skill system are looking for a PWNMOBILE that doesn't exist in Eve. GOD BLESS.
Since you can Easily make a viable PvP/pirate character in about a month (which is about average for most 'regular' MMO's), the only advantage people have who have years of skills trained is that they have more options for making money. I.E. after about 6 months of combat training, you can probably start specializing in another profession.
If you really want to gank people in Eve it's not that hard to overcome the skill system. People who criticize it have never really tried to be successful in game with it, and again, say what you like, but you haven't.
3. Here's the best part: Eve does a fantastic job of weeding out people who don't belong there in the first place. If you are the kind of person who is so shallow as to be turned off by the "lame" graphics, or the kind of person who just has to be better than everyone so they can cause havoc and be a dick, or the kind of person with no patience or appreciation for the greater and subtler currents of the game, great. We probably don't want you there anyhow. Talk all the smack you want to about the game, the more smack you talk, the less you should be there. In the end, griefers and annoying assholes get weeded out, quitting, unappreciative of the beauty of the system.
Now autopilot isn't so bad anyhow, because when you are bored, you have great people to chat with, and no spam. Really 40 minutes goes by pretty fast when you have good conversation. Reason 3 alone in my opinion pretty much makes up for having to wait to travel long distances.
OK there are pretty much all of my main points as to why I love Eve, and why many fans probably do as well. It's not a game for every one, GOD BLESS. The people that it is for truly appreciate it, and I applaud CCP for at least having the balls to even try a project like this, which teeters on the edge of mass appeal as it is. Now let's see if this guy here really needs to play the game.
Ships of the same type all are
exactly identical (cept for their weapon outfit), the objects you refer
to are all the same as well. Have a good and honest look at it, it
really is nothing special. Ow and your pilot... A whopping static JPG
Shallow.
Hahahaha, EvE isnt a long grind? How
long does it take to match old time players their skill tree? 2 Years?
3 Years? Ow wait you can never catch up to them.... EvE has an
impossible grind even...
It's not the size of the boat, or the number of skill points, it's the skill of the skipper, friend.
But then again I fully understand
you struggling with it since there are only a handfull of quests in EvE
(sure you can do them 1000-s of times again with a very slight
modification to it and bookmark the location/hit autopilot/go watch TV
for 20 minutes till you arrive/do the same stuff you allready did a
million of times... etc...).
Autopilot aside, do the same stuff you already did a million times makes Eve worse than other standard MMO's because...? I don't get it, I've played plenty of other MMO's, and you still have to do the same thing a million times, that's pretty much a standard trait of online RPG's.
Wahahahaaha, twice a day and you are
calling me the carebear.... OMFG im dieing from laughter here. PvP in
my book is action whenever I want it, plenty of it, from solo to zerg,
it certainly isnt hanging for 3 hours near a gateway screaming from
boredom and frustration before you can actually engage someone.
Attention span is too short. Face it, there are a lot of people to kill in Eve, and more ways to do it than gate camp. Just fly out into the low-sec red systems and see how far you get before you find a fight. And PvP in your book sounds like "playing Counterstrike", which, you are more than welcome to do.
Hell EvE players defend CCP over
downtime instead of screaming for the uptime they deserve and pay for,
that alone says enough. Period.
CCP honestly works hard to make Eve as good as they can make it. They aren't just out to get your money. They care about their fanbase. Their project is of unprecedented size and scope, and they actually pull it off. On the whole their downtime is no worse than any other game I've played, where the servers have to go down regularly for maintenance. If you really have to play 24/7 then you have a Problem friend.
If I wanted to play a game with 6 million of you I'd be playin WoW. And I will NEVER be playing WoW.