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Project Entropia's Universe Solidifies
Psyiode writes "Swedish interactive entertainment developer MindArk today announced the virtual universe Project Entropia is going gold on January 30th 2003. If you'll recall, Project Entropia is a MMORPG where everything is purchased with real money and slowly degrades during use. Could this be the way most online games will be played (and paid for) in the future?"
I would hope that they would make realistic walking models. Every recent game has had them, so why wouldn't this game.
And as a beta tester, you should expect some stuff to not work correctly/ or be finished yet. They just need to make sure most of it works and work on the bugs.
ok, so the way the game works is that if you kill and steal from someone, you become an outlaw, and then people can kill/steal from you without becoming an outlaw, so you're going to be a target. What is going to happen is a gang will form of the top 10-20 players who will just go around killing, stealing from and dividing up the goods of every other player in the game. As far as I know, there is no reason this wouldn't happen. Its like living in a world with no police, it would just be large gangs.
I beta tested this game when it was initially released to the public, I downloaded the installer and could _not_ get it to run. I emailed tech support a bunch of times, and they could not help me - finally I found out the .cab files had not even been extracted by the installer. I'm not trusting a company who has spent "15" million dollars and can't even get the installer to work correctly.
Yep.
"Should you make money in the virtual world, you can also withdraw it to your real world account and thus actually make money in a virtual world."
Pretty cool, actually.
I live in Sweden, work in the "Internet industry" and have been hearing about this company for... oh, say the last couple of years or so. Perhaps you'd like to check Fragzone a bit more frequently. =)
I mean, they've even had job openings listed on Arbetsförmedlingen. =)
Not EQ - Legacy, not Japanese - Korean and I haven't heard of any driveby's. Though one guy did get beaten up in a bathroom but I think that's a healthy example way to exercise muscles that have been atrophied by hours of virtual crack. Or not.
3D worlds are getting more and more common.
Here is an alternative, you can even create and share your own objects and scripts: Second Life
"Project Entropia Goes Gold!
Gothenburg, Sweden - December 10, 2002 - Swedish interactive entertainment developer MindArk today announced the virtual universe Project Entropia is going gold on January 30th 2003. Project Entropia is Sweden's largest software project ever, and has been in development since 1997.
Project Entropia is a three-dimensional virtual universe on the Internet accessible from any computer with an Internet connection, anywhere in the world.
Project Entropia is an entertainment product aimed for global usage across culture, age and sex barriers. The main focus in the development has been to cater to the features desired by online gamers as well as for users engaged in society and community building - those with an interest in meeting other people for social interaction and adventure. Millions of users will be able to interact in the Project Entropia universe.
Project Entropia introduces unique features like a real economy where its currency, PED, is exchangeable with any major currency in the world. The software needed to enjoy Project Entropia is free to download, and this virtual universe is free to enter and spend time in.
"It is even possible to make a living in Project Entropia," says Chairman Benny Iggland. "This is being demonstrated by several of our commercial trial users. A market economy is rapidly evolving, with our users defining prices on various commodities and items available in the virtual universe. Project Entropia will also incorporate real world commodity trading in a three dimensional environment."
"Some 15 million USD have been invested in the development of Project Entropia to date and we expect to continue developing Project Entropia in the years to come for a sum of at least 5 million USD annually," says Managing Director Jan Welter Timkrans.
Even though the release date has been set for January 30th, 2003, it is possible for anyone who wants a head start to immediately enter the Project Entropia universe after downloading the software at www.project-entropia.com."
-Psyiode
I gave it a try 3 nights ago.
unless you pay or beg something off of someone else all you can do is chat to all the other people that dont want to pay. Oh and run around for about an hour before you find a creature that can pretty much kill you instantly becuase you havnt paid for a bunch of equipment.
I currently play the game, which is kind of obvious that you don't with your mentioning that you cannot hoard stuff. The equipment only degrades with use, and some of it degrades much slower than others. It is possible to hoard things, they are currently working on apartments that you could use to store objects in, and you already have a huge inventory, bigger than the inventory I've seen in any MMORPG.
They fixed that, there is currently animation for just about everything your avatar can do. That includes different postures for standing around, running, jumping, walking, swimming, and so on.
Exempting those who may be good enough to profit from the purchases/sales options, this might be a good thing for addicts. If you can't *afford* to play the game 24/7, then at least we could see them going out and getting a job.
Of course, they could also end up like heroin addicts, breaking into cars and selling stolen stereos to pay for their "Entropia" addiction. (don't think it could happen, you underestimate how some of these people get sucked in).
I still see hackers/cheaters being a big problem though. EG is constantly modifying things to lock out cheaters. Having a game with real money (and by a lot of what I've heard, lacking good programming in areas as the installer/character-anis suck) would be asking for trouble unless it has a very good method of
a) Securing transactions
b) Preventing cheating
c) Still making the game fun/playable.
In the screenshot below there is an insurance company in the background.
Screenshot
Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast.
Up to date backups are created basically every second; If something is done in the game, it's backed up while it's being done. If the servers crash, your inventory won't be screwed up.