Slashdot Mirror
EVE Online - MMO Space Sim Talks Budget, Space Stations
An anonymous reader writes "MMORPGDot's new game status report details the latest advances in the space-based MMOG EVE Online, discussing the highs and the lows of being the reigning champion of MMO space sims with Hellmar, EVE's lead programmer." The interview shows that the game's 30,000 subscribers, although tiny compared to other MMOGs, is "...more than enough to keep the game running, [as] we are a small company with considerably less overhead than many other MMO operations." It's also revealed that the equivalent of a housing expansion for space is planned: "We have also been working on player owned structures in space for quite some time now and will release them into the game early next year. The structures allow players to build small towns in space, comprised of control towers, sentry guns, power generators, mobile refineries, field assembly arrays, ship hangars, and more." HomeLanFed also has a recent interview with the EVE Online developers.
I tried Eve last month. Put a good 25 hours worth of time into playing it. And after that I canceled my subscription. The game had tons of problems but the biggest was the experience system.
THERE IS NO MOTOVATION TO PLAY. You get XP just by having a subscription. You don't have to be online or even playing. Basically they just want you to pay your $$$ and they give you XP for it. You can't get XP any other way and the times needed to upgraded skills can take days or WEEKS.
The entire game economy is based on mining. Yep, you PAY real money to work. Go out and find asteroids to haul back and sell for money. Of course you can do anything with your money you get until the XP system gives you enough points to BUY a skill.
Then to top it all off, they have one devel guy working for new content. Half the "planned" things are "coming soon (tm)" as of six months ago...
Sorry, but real life is boring and slow enough for me. I'm sure not going to pay someone to put rocks into cans for fun.
EVE is just point&click and requires no skill to play, on top of being extremely boring. There is a small game out there called Jumpgate. It doesn't have the eyecandy that EVE has, but its flight and physics engine is superbly done and the game requires decent hand-eye coordination to be able to fly around. Community is small but very friendly. The emphasis is on PvP, but there are players of every type. Most of the RP is player driven, and money can be made in various ways. Communication between players and devs is constant and open. The download of the game itself is not very large (121MB w/music 53MB without) and 10 day free trials are available. Sorry if this sounds like an advertisement, but the game is really great, and the people who play are very passionate about it.