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Project Entropia's Universe Solidifies

Posted by timothy on from the sweden's-largest-software-project dept.

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?"

6 of 333 comments (clear)

  1. I'll tell you how this is going to turn out... by danny256 · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  2. Beta Testing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  3. Re:Hyperbole? by tigress · · Score: 3, Informative

    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. =)

  4. Re:Real money theft by Dusabre · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  5. Re:The other audience by kirisu · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  6. Addicts by phorm · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.