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2005 MMORPG.com Reader Awards

Posted by Zonk on from the so-many-worlds-should-have-sent-a-poet dept.

MMORPG.com has announced the winners of its 2005 Readers Choice Awards. Interesting to mention, because the MMORPG.com users have a unique outlook on the genre. Eve Online leads the 'Favorite Game' category, and Saga of Ryzom nets the 'Best Story' prize. From the site: "Ryzom is set in a science-fiction universe and in addition to its story, it also boasts crisp graphics and a loyal and supportive community. The game also boasts PvP and is on the verge of a revolutionary expansion called 'The Ryzom Ring'. In this expansion, players will be able to take story-telling to the next level as they introduce player-created content tools. The original category included Horizons instead of Asheron's Call and managed to produced a dead split between the top four games (22% each). Oddly enough, this didn't carry over into the finals, where The Saga of Ryzom emerged on top with 31% of the votes. City of Heroes / Villains grabbed 19% for second place. They were followed by Anarchy Online at 18%, Asheron's Call at 15% and Star Wars Galaxies at 14%."

54 comments

  1. Ryzom only won once... by Shimdaddy · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Eve Online cleaned up these awards, and all it gets is a "Oh yeah, it won best game?" I mean, no offense to Saga of Ryzom, but why does winning best story determine who gets the full paragraph on the /. summary? I mean, Eve online won some of it's four or five awards on write in's for pete's sake! It beat out WoW for PvP! It won best MMORPG! And all it gets is one of it's awards mentioned once?!?

    1. Re:Ryzom only won once... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No kidding. Can someone say Bias?

    2. Re:Ryzom only won once... by Negatyfus · · Score: 1

      Cry more, noob. :)

    3. Re:Ryzom only won once... by Araxen · · Score: 0

      Well if you played WOW you know the PVP sucks in it since you have to wait in line sometimes for an hour at a time. EVE and DAOC are the best in the genre atm for anybody needing a pvp fix.

    4. Re:Ryzom only won once... by daveruiz · · Score: 1

      Or you can just type /pvp on a pve server and put up your flag. Either that or join a pvp server. The one hour line is just for battlegorunds. It is really enjoyable on pve servers to run with your pvp flag up in contested areas, you never know when someone is going to come get you, its not like in a pvp server when you are always looking behind you for someone. But both have their advantages

      Also, I do like BG as well, always fun, except the alliance can never organize on my server

    5. Re:Ryzom only won once... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Simple fact: The contenders were arbitrarily chosen by the mmorpg.com staff without much of a clue on how to properly make these choices. To check this, read the list of the "story"-contenders and the descriptions there, they are listing games for completely different reasons and most of them don't even have any shred of ingame story at all.
      If this had been an open poll with the "reader's choices" then the results would have been quite different. As it is now it was merely a "check our choices and help us decide what you like better".

    6. Re:Ryzom only won once... by KDR_11k · · Score: 1

      That's probably because there's more /. readers familiar with EVE than Ryzom.

      --
      Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
  2. Two Questions by Eightyford · · Score: 1

    1. Does anybody know of a MMORPG that isn't addictive in the sense that it requires hour upon hour of repetitive tasks before the best parts of the game are available? Or maybe that's the whole point of these games?

    2. Does anybody know of a Space trading game like Eve, that is free to play? Even a well done single player game would be cool. I've tried a lot, and Starknights and a 1 year old shareware game are the best I've found.

    --
    Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
    1. Re:Two Questions by ntropi · · Score: 1

      1. In my experience? City of Heroes. There's no rat-killing, and you begin with super powers. 2. I only know of a well-done singleplayer game, but it's soooo fucking good. Escape Velocity: Nova

    2. Re:Two Questions by NBarnes · · Score: 1

      Guild Wars is pretty quick to get started in, compared to other multiplayer games. You have the ability to create a max-level PvP character immediately at account creation. At first, you can only make the pre-designed characters, and none of them are amazingly well set-up, but you can unlock new skills through the course of normal PvP play. I've sometimes been surprised at the amount of faction (the coin you buy access to new skills and items with) I've earned just by PvPing for an hour or so.

    3. Re:Two Questions by Eightyford · · Score: 1

      Looks perfect. Thanks!

      --
      Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
    4. Re:Two Questions by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ive only recently started playing Eve, from my experience so far it has been fun from the get-go. Stats increase by training over realtime so you dont have to do anything to aquire skills. ISK can be earned by mining, trading and doing missions for NPC chars. At the outset you play for small stakes because you lack the skills to pilot a cruiser, even if you can afford it but even then the sense of progression and upgrade of your ship is satisfying. I have spent time doing everything but mining (which I find boring) and have made the ISK and aquired the skills to buy that cruiser in about a week of evenings. Best fun so far is pairing up with another player and going NPC hunting in low security worlds and making a decent killing on the loot by looking carefully at the market to buy and sell as we move about. I havnt had any sense of Grinding.
        For a great, free trading game try X2 but make sure you patch it before you play.

    5. Re:Two Questions by grimwell · · Score: 1

      2. Does anybody know of a Space trading game like Eve, that is free to play? Even a well done single player game would be cool. I've tried a lot, and Starknights and a 1 year old shareware game are the best I've found.

      You could try out Starport: Galactic Empires.

      --
      If the govt becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law, it invites man to become his own law, it invites anarchy
    6. Re:Two Questions by forgotten_my_nick · · Score: 1

      > In my experience? City of Heroes. There's no rat-killing,

      Yea but all the baddies are more or less the same until you hit level 20. No rats but plently of Trolls, Skulls, Clockworks.

    7. Re:Two Questions by smbarbour · · Score: 1

      1. Any RPG (Single player or MMO) generally requires repetitive tasks before the best parts are available. The main difference with MMORPGs is that you could be doing those repetitive tasks with friends as well.
      2. Actually, you are in luck (mostly). There is a great game called VegaStrike that is free to play and available for Windows, Linux, and Mac. The game is still in development, but is in working condition. They are currently working on moving the 3D engine to Ogre from the custom designed engine that they have been using. The entire dataset is made up of CSV and XML files, so it is completely customizeable. They have an active community and many mods have been made for the engine (including a remake of an old DOS game from a certain game studio that was part of a certain game publishing conglomerate, where one of the enemy races is a certain cat-like race).

      I hope I wasn't too vague on that, I don't want to draw unwanted attention from a certain company's legal department.

      On a side note, I've tried EVE-Online, and while I absoulutely loved it, I couldn't bring myself to pay to play it. I've played 3 MMOs: EVE-Online, Anarchy Online, and MapleStory. My trial to EVE expired, and Anarchy doesn't seem to be polished enough (even though it is one of the oldest MMOs, is very robust, and is consistently updated) and progresses too slowly for my tastes. That leaves me with MapleStory which has cartoonish graphics and is side-scrolling 2D with no PvP. I enjoy playing it, but have little time to play (resulting in my online acquaintances far surpassing my level so that I need to find new people or play it alone almost every time I get online). On the plus side though, MapleStory is free to download and play, and Anarchy is free for new subscribers until at least 2007.

    8. Re:Two Questions by Trinsic · · Score: 1

      Have you tried looking into http://www.puzzlepirates.com/? Of all the mmorpgs i've played so far, it has been the only one lacking that deadly boring grind. There are no levels and so no artifical level barriers; new players can party with old players without problems.

      Although it is not a space setting, the game also features a trade-driven, player-run economy.

      It doesn't cost anything to give it a spin, the client is a free download and there is a free trial account. Even better, it runs natively on linux and mac, as well as windows.
      If you do drop by the Midnight Ocean, feel free to give me a shout.

      ~Trinsic, Fleet Officer of the Pink Panthers

    9. Re:Two Questions by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 1

      City of Heroes has done a lot of things correctly.

      - Travel powers at level 14 -- very early. Compare vs. level 40 (unless you're a mage, in which case 20) in World of Warcraft -- AND WoW's "travel power", i.e. a horse or something, is very slow compared to an actual horse, to say nothing of CoH's travel speeds.

      - Magnificent character customization. Yes, this is needed since there is no item loot per se, but I found it refreshing to have this many options.

      - No items to loot = no camping to get the best stuff

      - No crafting - I agree with their designers it's the root of evil in these games, in spite of its fun. (There is now limited crafting of superbase items, now that superbases are available, constructing things that can be destroyed by invading PvP supervillain groups and vice versa. That's a different issue than "powering up" your body with crafted items.)

      - Scrapper class is the closest thing to FPS-style high speed action I've ever seen in a MMORPG. The idea of a non-squishie who can actually do damage is foreign to the design of most MMORPGs to prevent de facto tank mages who can stand there and not die. Scrappers are in a league by themselves, doing far more than the pathetic "high damage melee" rogues and ranger types in most MMORPGs. They're actually fun to play.

      - You are the badass, killing many bad guys, rather than the other way around, where, especially at higher levels, it takes a team of people to take down one random, average orc. You still die, you just do it with five or 20 people beating on you.

      The first makes the game much more fun -- it doesn't need to "slow you down" to make your progression slower. This shoots one convention in the foot.

      The last two completely flip convention on its head. EQ may have been the worst of these, with its fear that people needed a hyper-challenge everywhere they went, with insta-death, and groups needed to kill singles of even level things, and its outrageous downtime to regenerate mana and health.

      Sadly, CoH isn't perfect. The mega-nerf last fall reducing your power to roughly 40% of what it used to be in preparation for the PvP of City of Villains was too much for me to handle, and I bailed after a year in the game.

      Still, I hope some other games come along that have something similar to a scrapper and early-getting of travel powers.

      --
      (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
    10. Re:Two Questions by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 1

      What single-player RPGs require repetitive tasks?

      Oh, you may fight similar types of monsters through the game, but the environment is constantly changing. The games are designed for you to "clear the world", and hence the experience is tied to doing just that.

      Indeed, in Knights of the Old Republic (I), it was to your benefit to refuse to level up until after you trained to be a Jedi. Normal progression would have you complete the first half of your career at level 10. However, you never actually had to train. I think I got to be a Jedi at level 3 or so (some encounters were too hard and I just had to level a little to get past them), giving a good 17 levels of Jedi.

      But the worlds were always changing as you were constantly exploring.

      --
      (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
    11. Re:Two Questions by smbarbour · · Score: 1

      I've never played the KOTOR games, so I can't speak from experience there, but nearly every Final Fantasy game (which some may debate are not true RPGs) required at some point, some devotion of time to increasing the level of your character and the collection of whatever money or item is required. A well-designed RPG would arguably ensure that you cannot progress faster than you should be levelling, but on the other hand being open-ended is a great experience as well. The main difference between single-player and MMOs is that with multiple people doing their own thing, there is no central storyline to complete. You have to set your own goals, and see them through.

      As another example, take Y's Book 1 & 2. When you get to the end boss, you had better be the highest level you possibly can. At the highest level, you have a snowballs chance in hell of defeating him, you'd have no chance otherwise. To make it to the highest level, you must spend time levelling up.

  3. Re:EVE? Yeah, right. by Spiffae · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm not really sure what your quarrel with EVE is. It really is worlds better and more interesting than Everquest, WoW, or all their sword and sorcery derivations. There have been countless stories about EVE in the game media, a great piece in PC Gamer last year, any number of great pieces on The Escapist, and assorted gaming websites over the last couple years. Sure, it may not be as newbie friendly as WoW or City of Heroes, but it's a living breathing world, and the only unsharded MMOG around. Yesterday I was playing with 20,000 simultaneous players, and looking at the map and watching the stats glow, seeing alliances clash on that enormous galaxy map was just another reason to love the game.

    It's full of trickery and scams, people who would kill you for just coming into their asteroid belt, PC characters more evil than any of the NPCs, spying, scheming, infiltration, betrayal, and distrust, and that's the beauty of it. Combat, trading, and anything that involves two player parties is much more reliant on your wits and intelligence, rather than your level 60 mage and his staff of smiting. Not that there's anything wrong with a staff of smiting, but in EVE, you can out think a much more heavily armed ship, a newbie can con a con man, and that's ok.

    The best part about the world of EVE is that the devs know it's just that - a virtual world. They don't step in to regulate the market, they don't shut down corporations whose goal is to disrupt someone's legit space-business, they just set it in motion, provide timely updates, and make sure the servers are running. The rest is up to the players.

    So in short, I say "yeah, right" back at you in all seriousness. In every way I can think of, EVE: Online is the MMORPG of the year.

  4. All and yet none by Moraelin · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Actually, it's the exact opposite of what you seem to assume. Most games start with the "best" part, and gradually, slowly move you to the worst parts.

    They're built upon studies saying that the average account is cancelled after 6 months (some sooner, some later, but that's the peak of the Gauss curve), by which point all that keeps you there is some mis-guided "but I'll lose my uber-character and all my online friends if I quit!" illusion. I.e., the fun is long gone by that point anyway.

    The hard part is getting you hooked in the first place, which is why they start with the best parts. The end-game grind isn't the grand cake at the end, it's one last-ditch repetitive grind you're thrown. Its only role and purpose is to give you something to do at all while you're still in denial about quitting the game.

    So, to give you a metaphor, they're built on the boiling a frog alive model. They say that if you drop a frog in hot water, it will hop out of the pot. But if you put it in cool water and very slowly warm it up, it will stay there and get cooked. (Mind you, I haven't actually tried it.) That's the model MMOs take. The have to make sure you don't hop out from the start, and from there it's just a matter of going downhill slowly enough so you don't mind just a little more grind, just a little more travel time, just a little more farming for your next weapon, and generally just a little more time-sink and less game.

    Let me use WoW as an example: in the beginning you're seriously more powerful than the opponents (the newbie wolves in Northshire do 1hp per hit), you level up fast, quests are plentiful, and they don't require you to move travel more than one or two hundred ft. And you see new content all the time. It's all game and no time-sink, and you're happy as a frog in a nice (if cooking pot shaped) pool of cool water. And that's what gets people addicted.

    And it gradually changes into something that's more and more time-sink and less game. At the end-game you pretty much pay the monthly fee just to sit there for hours getting enough people for a raid you've done a thousand times before, and then riding for half an hour to it. Not only it's a lot of time-sink, you're not even seeing any new content. You're doing the same repetitive crap, pulling the same NPCs, in the same order, using less spells/skills/whatever than you used at level 10... in the vain hope than you'll hit the 1% chance that this time the boss will drop the armour piece you need. And that someone else won't roll higher for it.

    Or take the reputation quests, say, the Thorium Brotherhood. You need, what? To farm some 1000 pieces of medium leather just to get them to talk to you? And that's just the ante. Then you get to farm dark iron residue for the next stage.

    Again, the hard part is getting you hooked at level 1. After that, chances are you'll take care of deluding yourself, and keep yourself coming back anyway.

    The illusion that there's some massive reward at the end is all psychological, all a self-made illusion, once you got hooked in the first place. You just have to keep with the virtual Joneses. You just have to believe that anyone actually gives a damn about your having a bigger player house (in games that support that) than the Joneses and an epic horse (the virtual equivalent of a car with a big wing at mid-life crisis) before the Joneses got one. You just have to believe that having reached level 60 will make you _someone_. There's an unspoken illusion that once you've reached that apex, newbies will speak in admiration of you, TV shows will be dedicated to your self-made-man success, and random (elven) women will beg to have your child, etc.

    --
    A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
    1. Re:All and yet none by ehmdjii · · Score: 1

      if the game gets repetitive at the level cap, then why do so many people pay for power leveling services to start with a maxed out character already?

    2. Re:All and yet none by Negatyfus · · Score: 1

      While I guess this goes for the majority of an MMORPG's playerbase (which will be the reason they complain so much-- they both hate and love the game at the same time), there are people playing for other purposes: challenges. Specifically, challenges in large groups. Progression through the game becomes the goal, not progression of your character's strength per se; of course that will be one of the necessities of achieving your goals. The people that are the loudest, most obnoxious players in any online game are those that play just for themselves, because they need to upgrade their online representation all the time. They are driven by jealousy, greed and addiction. People like me want to avoid these players. This is not to say MMORPG's are all fun and games all the time, but surely there are redeeming qualities that make it worth playing (even at end-game) for some part of the community.

    3. Re:All and yet none by chrismcdirty · · Score: 1

      Because they're probably the same people who play a game on God mode then complain about how easy it was. They're not looking for a challenge, they just want to "beat" the game.

      OTOH, there are some people who PL just to reach their friends' levels, since they didn't start at the same time.

      --
      It's like sex, except I'm having it!
    4. Re:All and yet none by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      sit there for hours getting enough people for a raid

      Hours? Yikes, consider joining a better guild.

      farm some 1000 pieces of medium leather just to get them to talk to you?

      Completely optional.

      True, the end-game becomes repetetive. That's hard for a game to avoid. Some people enjoy the teamwork and experience of end-game encounters. It's more for the comraderie and working towards a shared goal.
    5. Re:All and yet none by MegaCore · · Score: 1

      Subscribe! I couldnt have said it better! I play WoW and im still a puny "below 60" player. Im amazed how many lvl 60 players that try to explain me, that the my World of Warcraft gaming wont start before I reach lvl 60. :) Although i must say , there ARE some ppl who really do have genuine fun killing the same uberboss for the 500th time. That isnt me though...

    6. Re:All and yet none by __aailob1448 · · Score: 1

      Wow! That is one fantastic comment. As someone who quit FFXI after 6 months, I couldn't agree more with everything the parent said.

    7. Re:All and yet none by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What's the remedy for this? The thing I would like to see personally is more user created content (especially at the higher levels) beyond "trade skills". If users could effect the landscape (planting forests, creating mines, forts etc) to do such a thing though I think would require a massive world. That and pvp. But making level 60 just as easy as level 1 would make for a rather boring game. However risk/effort/strategy should scale, that doesn't == slowly turning up the heat on the frog/player. Would be nice if the game was playable for months at whatever level you wanted.. months of content for different levels w/o requiring people to grind/levelup to constantly expereience new things.

    8. Re:All and yet none by C0rinthian · · Score: 1

      There is a large contingent of MMO players who feel that the game doesn't start until max level. In WoW, this means everything Pre-Molten Core (40 man raid instance) is just filler before the real game.

      And then they complain about lack of content. :facepalm:

    9. Re:All and yet none by Jackmn · · Score: 1

      In WoW on high-pop PvP servers you get to look forward to getting ganked by characters 20+ levels higher than yourself every fifteen minutes or so. When this happens you have absolutely no chance to defend yourself You are simply going to die without any means of self-defense (let alone retaliation). For a person who is primarily interested in PvP the grind up to level ~40 is simply not enjoyable.

    10. Re:All and yet none by Macgrrl · · Score: 1

      I would say perhaps that at L60 the game changes significantly from a largely solo leveling experience to a team based faction rating/equipment gathering experince.

      Some people enjoy the questing of L1-L60, some people enjoy the teamwork required to effectively raid. Some enjoy both.

      --
      Sara
      Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
  5. Easy to figure out... by heartless_ · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If you've ever played EVE you would know why it would be easy for them to cast votes on an out of game website... because there is a hell of a lot of nothing floating around in space. Hit the go button and a couple hours later you'll arrive. Sure if you are going through low security space you may run into problems, but overall its rare to run into other people. Even the combat is a rather dull affair. Now go to a bunch of people playing WoW. They are banging away at the loots so fast that they don't have time to alt-tab out and vote. EVE has a dedicated internet fan base that will zerg under any site where they can bring in the awards for their beloved underdog. Its like American voting... only with those with something to gain tend to vote. If it doesn't really affect them then they just don't get off their fat asses to vote.

    1. Re:Easy to figure out... by forgotten_my_nick · · Score: 2, Informative
      "Hit the go button and a couple hours later you'll arrive. Sure if you are going through low security space you may run into problems, but overall its rare to run into other people."

      When exactly did you last play the game? The only time I can find systems with no people in them are border systems in 0.0 space. Even playing at 2-3am in the morning there are people around.

      They have one sever that has an average of 18,000 people on it peaking at 22,000. Lowest I have seen while playing is 9,000 people

      As for couple of hours, you only play as a newbie? I can cross the whole galaxy in less then half an hour (barring no one attacking me). Get more skills and a faster ship.

    2. Re:Easy to figure out... by heartless_ · · Score: 1

      Maybe I should of just stated that a lot of the action in EVE takes place outside the game... in spreadsheets, message boards, and web sites.

    3. Re:Easy to figure out... by forgotten_my_nick · · Score: 1

      Which isn't true either.

      If you are new to the game then about the first two weeks you can probably claim this. You can set your craft on auto-pilot and come back later to continue playing. But after you have a fair bit of skills under your belt and a good craft this isn't this case unless you sit in core space for all that time.

      Once you get into a serious corporation and PvP in general being AFK means you are most likely dead when you come back to your machine.

      I take it from your comments that you either never really got into the game. Having a 300-400 ship battle is something to be seen.

  6. Re:SUMMARIZE THE CUNTING ARTICLE PROPERLY! by a5y · · Score: 2, Funny
    "Why do I read? Well... hmmm... I dunno... I guess I read for a lot of reasons, and the main one is so I don't end up being a fucking waffle waitress."

    Thought you died in 1994. Glad to see Wikipedia was wrong.

    Nice one man. It's always a pleasure to see the facts. [Even if I have to scroll down to the bottom of the page to get to them.]

  7. Re:EVE? Yeah, right. by aapold · · Score: 1

    There are other "unsharded" MMORPGs. Generally that is a sign that the demand doesn't exceed the server capacity (which you can view in any way you want). A Tale in the Desert has only one server AFAIK. Granted, it has less people on it. As far as being MMORPG of the year in every way you can think of, I guess # of subcriptions isn't one of those ways.

    --
    "Waste not one watt!" - CZ
  8. Re:EVE? Yeah, right. by DarkGreenNight · · Score: 1
    As far as being MMORPG of the year in every way you can think of, I guess # of subcriptions isn't one of those ways.

    The oscars are not given to the films that get more money (not allways at least).

    EVE really is a great game, but perhaps it's also true that has a very active fan base. Graphic wise I found WoW, CoH and Guildwars somewhat better and more varied. But at least in EvE the only grind that affects us is the Isk (gold) grind, and social grind if you pretend to do anything worthwile, of course. For the casual player it's great to connect for five minutes a day to change the skill being trained and then once or twice a week play with your friends, who will be allways able to play with you, no matter what the SP (skill points) differences you have.

    The MMORPG of the year? I don't know, I only play one, but decidedly one of the best games out there.
  9. Best PvP Poll on my site by Mantees+de+Tara · · Score: 1

    During last week I run a poll on my MMORPG related Website. The poll question was "Which MMORPG currently offer the best PvP?" EVE Online won this one also. If you want to see the results more in detail here is a link: http://www.ogrank.com/content/view/141/33/

  10. Re:EVE? Yeah, right. by forgotten_my_nick · · Score: 1

    I'm an addict to their forums. Never once saw a call to ballot stuff. TBH this is the first time I even heard of the poll.

    Personal opinion the only award they shouldn't of got was best Graphics. Sure the graphics are great in Eve but they get repetitive. City of Heroes on the other hand the graphics are the best I've seen (bar AC2, but that game sucked).

    The reason I like eve is because a lot of the MMORPG are watered down when it comes to player interaction. You can quite easily be stabbed in the back and left as a floating corpse and your corportation raided in Eve if you don't pay attention to people and what is going on. In other MMORPG where I have seen something similar happen the guild/clan/whatever normally whine to a GM to ban the person who showed up how stupid they are.

    The only other MMORPG I've played that has come close is Neocron.

  11. /. doesn't seem to like Eve by GoNINzo · · Score: 1, Insightful
    Everytime WoW gets a patch upgrade, even a minor one, Blizzard get a story. Eve does a content service pack, for free, and CCP gets a small mention during the holiday patches with 6 other games. We just seem to get the shaft in the major media.

    No mention of the 22k people on at the same time, concurrently, without different servers. No mention that in Eve PVP you lose basically everything to the other person, giving a real incentive to the other party. Just bothers me that it gets marginalized because everyone was busy playing WoW. heh

    Hopefully, this poll opens some people's eyes.

    --
    Gonzo Granzeau
    "Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
  12. Re:EVE? Yeah, right. by Xugumad · · Score: 1

    > It's full of trickery and scams, people who would kill you for just coming into their asteroid belt, PC characters more evil than any of the NPCs, spying, scheming, infiltration, betrayal, and distrust...

    Thing is, I see that as different, not necessarily better. Certainly, it's not something I want out of a MMORPG - I play these things to relax, I want to not spend my entire time watching my back, y'know? I tend to avoid PvP for the same reason - it's good on occaision, but not what I want out of most of my game time...

  13. Endgame by Pinkoir · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'll tell you why EVE won for favorite game over a title which has about 100 times more subscribers. It's the endgame. All over the net you see people talking about the Lv60 cap and the grinding to get top level gear. I've been playing EVE since a month after launch and I am nowhere near any kind of level cap. That's because there isn't one. Because there aren't any levels. I admit I haven't played WoW but it seems like it has the same failing as in other titles I've played where once you cap-out there really isn't anything to do except engage in some relatively pointless PvP. In EVE the more skilled your character gets the richer your experience becomes because the endgame isn't against some bajillion-person raid instance but against the rest of the playerbase. In EVE it is the players themselves who are developing the storyline through the alliance conflicts and with the addition of even more complex levels of play-controlled structures in the (free) cold-war and red-moon-rising expansions this empire vs empire interaction becomes just that much more meaningful. I think the fact that everybody lives in the same universe is a great aid to this. In addition, PvP has real impact because you can actually lose substantial virtual assets (both "material" and political) on failure as opposed to games like GW where there are no negative consequences for loss at all.

    Anyway, if you like rewarding PvP and haven't played EVE yet you should really try it out. And if you do drop me a line in-game :) AWM is on the move again and we're always looking for new recruits.

    -Pinkoir

    1. Re:Endgame by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      man hate to wake Eve fans up to reality, but Eve is a seriously "hardcore" game
      for the minority.

      you never going to get 5 million people playing Eve. Yes its pretty, yes it has some cool interesting things about it. But generally its a niche game with limited appeal to the mass market.

      doesnt matter how many awards you win because your fanbase(being hardcore) is likely to swamp any voting site to vote for there beloved game.

      People are too busy playing the other games to troll every vote site to vote for there game, they dont need too as the games they are playing are much larger then Eve so no need to spend time looking for ways to promote there game.

      You have a game you enjoy great, getting an award doesnt make it a good game necessarily.

      imho its a tedious boring game thats way overly complicated. requires too much time to learn and way too much time to play before you can get any real enjoyment out of it. But you can play a game like WoW and have fun in the first 5 minutes, go figure.

    2. Re:Endgame by C0rinthian · · Score: 1
      man hate to wake Eve fans up to reality, but Eve is a seriously "hardcore" game for the minority.
      And this is a bad thing? Yeah, Eve will never have 5 million subs. So what? Why is a game considered a failure if it isn't #1 in subscriptions?

      Eve caters to a niche population that is generally ignored by other MMO's. They have steadily growing subscription numbers even after 2+ years, critical acclaim, and are doing well enough financially to keep expanding. That's pretty damn decent for CCP's first attempt at a game. Quite a few games can't claim the same success.
    3. Re:Endgame by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      didnt say Eve was a failure, not at all, its actually quite the success in its own little niche.

      But we get tired of Eve fans trying to pump it up like its the greatest thing since sliced bread. Its not. Its a niche game and will most likely always be a niche game and its not in the same league as the others.

      The point was, winning an award(and say WoW not winning it) doesnt mean its a great game and something that can compete with the likes of the big boys.

      Sure Eve has subs (very slowly growing btw) and Im sure it makes money, but just think how much bigger it could have been had they not gone the super hardcore route.

      Its not how much you have, its how much you didnt get because of the design choices.
      But perhaps that wasnt the goal, and thats fine, just deal with the fact its not going to be a big game and stop pointing to voting sites saying "hey but wait we won an award we are great".

  14. COOKIES?!? by KDR_11k · · Score: 1

    That freaking website tells me I have to enable cookies to use it. I only allow cookies from whitelisted websites.

    How freaking incompetent do you have to be to require cookies for a bunch of text???

    --
    Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
  15. EvE won because it IS the best by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    EvE allows more than any other MMO I have played. Having started day one with UO and playing EQ, EQ II, SWG and WoW for a brief stint I tried EvE and never thought of leaving. The best way to describe the game is that it's alive. Everything you do refelcts on you and if you are in a player corp it reflects on them. Wars, politics, espionage it's all there and there is no correct way of doing anything. You just do and play the game without the need for powerleveling or grinding for starters. The more you progress in the game the more opens up to the player and the possibilities become immense. I am happy to see that EvE got its' just rewards.

  16. For various reasons by Moraelin · · Score: 1

    Before I even start, please realize that you're talking about people who don't know this. If they already had first hand experience with playing that MMO at level 60, they'd already have a level 60 character, hence wouldn't need to pay to have their main character power-levelled to 60.

    The people who, in your words, "pay [...] to start with a maxed out character already" (my emphasis), are the extreme case who doesn't know _anything_ about the game or what they're paying for. Pretty much by the definition of the word "to start". It's not people who've played both the level 1 game and the level 60 game, compared them, and reached an informed conclusion that level 60 is more fun. We're talking about people who _assumed_ that level 60 would be more fun, without _any_ actual first-hand information to base that assumption on.

    So that doesn't prove anything about the game.

    So why do people do that? For various reasons, including, but not limited to:

    - Because some people take virtual achievements _far_ too seriously. They actually believe that having a level 60 character makes them _someone_, and having a level 10 makes them a loser. That virtual achievement _is_ their life's achievement, not just a level in a game.

    Or to put it a lot less diplomatically, for a lot of people it's like their penis size in inches physically depends on their character level, their castle's size in UO, whatever. I figure the conversion rate must be something like 1 inch for every 5 levels, because they won't admit even having an alt under level 30 or so, except as some dark secret or shameful concession. (Or if they're playing that alt, they'll make sure to mention their level 60 alt every 5 minutes to everyone in the group.)

    So they'll do anything to get that coveted achievement, and join the big boys' club. Grind, farm, even reach for the credit card and pay for gold/PL/housing/whatever on eBay. Anything.

    - Some aren't just PvP-ers, but _insecure_ PvP-ers, who need the deck fully stacked in their favour to finally feel secure enough to attack even a newbie. It's the kind who won't even load Counter-Strike without the newest aim-bot, or in a MMO _needs_ level 60 _and_ a full tier 2 equipment set to join in the "I killed u, so u sukk" willy-waving choir.

    In a sense, this is just a sub-case of the previous category, except these make the PvP score their life's achievement. And in a sense, not. While the guys in the previous category saw just the level 60 or the UO castle as achievement enough, this category can't feel like they "rule", unless they "prove" that someone else "sucks". It's a parasitic category.

    Except the problem with basing a "rule"/"suck" ranking on that is that it's also chalking an "I suck" mark each time _they_ are the ones faceplanting. So to prop their little ego, they _need_ to make sure the odds are as stacked in their favour as it gets. They just _have_ to be level 60 _and_ decked in full tier-2 equipment before they even try. And even then, a lot of them will go hunt newbies in a level 10 areas, just to make sure they really aren't taking any risks. Better make sure that newbie is AFK at that.

    --
    A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
  17. Re:EVE? Yeah, right. by NBarnes · · Score: 3, Insightful

    -1 Troll?

    My fault, I suppose, for being less than thrilled with an under-designed griefer-fest that nevertheless has an amazingly dedicated and active fanbase. EVE certainly inspires a degree of advocacy and identification amongst its playerbase that puts larger and more mainstream games like EQ or WoW to shame.

    That said, it's still an under-designed griefer-fest with hours-long travel between locations. I'm sure that there are some people who find it to be their dream game, but it's a niche product at best. I don't actually have a problem with niche products, and such that fill their niche elegantly and perfectly are excellent case studies. But EVE is not the best MMORPG, and it's mindless fanboyism to assert that it is.

  18. Eve and Ryzom? by garylian · · Score: 1

    Wow, that's just stunning.

    Eve may have some nice graphics, but I thought GW and WoW had better. Otherwise I found it to be boring. Mine, travel. Mine, travel. Join some Corp. and be told what to do. "Harvest more so we can be Uber!" Yeah, whatever. I couldn't get into it. If you enjoyed it, more power to you. But, subscription numbers are what they are for a reason, and Eve's numbers are low because it doesn't appeal to that many.

    Ryzom wasn't all that great. The graphics were not bad, but I've seen better in other games, too. The gameplay wasn't all that great, either. After a few weeks in the beta, I dropped it. A month or so later it went Gold, and I was shocked. I thought they were MONTHS away. I never really felt the immersion into the game.

    CoH/V was pretty good, and I enjoyed both, but they got repetitive pretty fast.

    AO? Please, they were giving accounts away at one point, trying to get folks to come back. (Much like Sony did with EQ recently.)

    AC? Was a bad game from the start. Maybe it got a little better, but not a lot.

    SW:G? The game sucked right out of the box (earning the Coaster Award for 2003 from CGW, among others) and then had the biggest (and reportely worst) game overhall in the history of MMOs that were live. And this got 15% of the vote?

    The SW:G vote is proof enough that the totals are a joke.

  19. Wow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I've never even heard of Eve Online or Saga of whatever, and I game a lot.