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Eve Online Hits 100K Subscribers
CCP Games' Massive Title, Eve Online, now boasts 100,000 subscribers. Though there are many games with more users Eve Online is a very different title, set inside ships in the depths of space. They currently hold the record for most concurrent users, set at 23,178 simultaneous users on a single server. From the article: "To help accommodate its growing population, CCP will complete a hardware overhaul, allowing the game to handle more users, expand its universe, and run smoother." Ethic, over at Kill Ten Rats, has been writing about Eve a lot lately. His posts cover intergalactic war and courier missions, and might give you a sense of what gameplay is like. If you're interested in that sort of thing.
Hopefully this wonderful community does not succumb to the disease known as 'Poplaritis'
I remember the days before Counter Strike was sold on store shelves... way more mature.
signatures are for fools with hands
Read an article in a gaming magazine a few months ago about a massive coordinated effort to assasinate and rob blind a large guild in the game. That a game could have a universe that allowed such treachery quite frankly shocked me. Most MMOs these days are all about babying the player through the game. No lasting consequences for mistakes, etc. I'll have to see if I can find a link to it.
Did that hurt ?
i miss final fantasy VII...
Do they mean 23000+ people on one server? I know there were more people than that on at one time during the height of Diablo II, for example. I'm not sure how that game or others are faring now, but I guess it's gotta be ignoring multiple servered games.
What else can happen when an unstoppable force collides with an immovable object?
www.thegreatscam.com if your an eve online fan, or just interested in weird stuff on the internet check that out, i bought the domain and host it cause its such a good story.
Will this game satisfy my nearly life-long urge to play a game like Starflight (and Starflight 2) again?
The only downside to it was the proliferation of griefers on the system, who would attack when you were at your most vulnerable state, often exploiting the flaws in the software leaving you feeling freshly fucked, but not in a good way. I left it when PvP was too big an obstacle to play the game the way I wanted to.
That being said, if I ever find a game of the same scale and ambition again, I could easily part with $15-$20 a month to join in, as long as the griefing was under control.
Height: 38U, Weight: 0 Newtons, Eyes: #0000FF, OS: Gray Matter 1.0 (Alpha)
"To help accommodate its growing population, CCP will complete a hardware overhaul, allowing the game to handle more users, expand its universe, and run smoother."
Think you could spare some staff for Blizzard? They seem to have problems implementing this idea.
Maybe one day I'll be able to play a space sim where you can actually walk around on your ship, do EVAs in zero G, hijack other ships, etc.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I subscribed last month, played it for a couple of days, didn't like it, and unsubscribed, but the unsubscription only occurs at the end of the month that you paid for upfront.
So they only have 99,999 users!
The previous comments are only true, if no-one says they're wrong.
"They currently hold the record for most concurrent users, set at 23,178 simultaneous users."
I think they meant to say that the CURRENT record for concurrent users is 23,178 for EVE Online - not a record for All MMOs. I'm sure that Lineage has had a higher concurrency and WoW's concurrency is reported to exceed the population of Chicago.
There is a Twilight Zone episode where this guy ends up dying and finds himself in the afterlife. He was a big gambler in life, so his after life has him in a Casino. In his afterlife, he always winds. Every single hand, every roll of the dice, every spin of the wheel is a win. After a while he asks his after life guide what kind of heaven this is. He complains that winning is meaningless if you never lose. The guide responds with, "What makes you think you are in heaven?"
For all the WoW fans having trouble understanding what is so special about this, the EVE Universe is one big single realm (hosted on a cluster of servers).
So where as a single WoW realm (hosted on a cluster of servers?) can accommodate about 2000 concurrent online players the EVE Universe(realm) has now supported over 23000 concurrent online players.
Now that is something special.
"Things that you own end up owning you" - Tyler Durden (via Diogenes of Sinope).
Its much easier to host 23,000 people when you dont have to render terrain. I know that Anarchy Online initially had hopes that they'd be able to support up to 50,000 people on a single server; their opening day showed them how fruitless that idea was. Had their servers been able to allow everyone who was trying to login and play together, they could have surpassed this. Not to take away from the technical achievement of concurrently serving 23,000 clients in a mmporg, this is simply a measurement which will constantly be increased as technology allows. Way to go Eve Online, for being #1!
Wow, reading about the game makes it seem a lot like my favorite BBS door game of all time, TradeWars 2002. That was another slow-paced, space-based game. Every day you only had a limited number of turns. The primarily way of making money was via trading from one port to another (buy low, sell high). Only after a long period of time, could you truly amass a fortune (buying planets, bigger ships, etc.). There was also the notion of corporations with shared assets that could be plundered, if left unguarded (or the defense vaporized).
I wonder how many of EVE-Online's designers played that game. I'd be willing to play EVE, if I weren't already sucked into WoW.
-- jchenx
Happens all the time. Don't worry about it. :)
Pretty Pictures!
If you don't believe me, just trail the EVE online forums. You will see many people casualy talking about how they read a book or watch television while their ship travels/mines-ore.
In the end, even though I was quite wealthy for EVE standards (i stumbled early upon a mixed trading/manufacturing market arbitrage possibility introduced when a new type of ship components was made available in the game), i eventually left when i came to the conclusion that after all the time i had invested in it, most of the time playing EVE was composed of boring tasks, NOT fun.
I played EVE for the first 6 months of release.
- It was possible to get up from your computer, clean the house, take a shower, go to the supermarket, walk the dog and make dinner AND return to the game without missing anything at all. I used to leave the game running 24/7 to maximize my playtime. Before bedtime I would start mining for ore, when I woke up in the morning I would be finished mining. This AFK ability made for the most boring gaming experiences I have ever played.
- Horribly boring missions like "Deliver a load of garbage to space station X", "Transport 10 slaves to space station Y", "Deliver garbage to space station Z".
- A system of advancement that was based on how much real world time your character existed for. To "level up" you would just start a background process that might take a few hours or a few months of real world time and required NO INTERACTION FROM THE PLAYER. E.g. I remember learning a skill that took me 2 months of real world AFK time complete. Not only was this system extremely boring, it also meant that new players would have ABSOLUTELY ZERO chance of ever catching up to someone who started playing the game a few months before them, even if they played the game 24 hours a day.
- Constant nerfs by the developers to the free nature of the game (e.g. pirating) killed much of what little enjoyment and risk was left in the world
- Downtime EVERY SINGLE DAY for hours at a time. They called this "maintenance". I called it "stupid"
- Very small development team did not have resources to produce new content at an acceptable rate
Unless you liked EVE's PvP, it was BORING AS HELL.
b at PvP system. (I didn't.)
And many people didn't like EVE's 3-hours-of-boredom/jumping-for-ten-seconds-of-com
I had my account for a year starting at release, so in terms of skill points I wasn't far behind most other people. (I was deficient in combat skill points, given that I intentionally planned to be a commerce/production/science guy and my main character was Gallente because of that.)
For those not familiar with EVE, your character's stats affected how rapidly you gained skills. Each skill category (combat, science, etc) had a primary and secondary stat. Gallente characters had GREAT stats for the science/production/commerce stuff, but were AWFUL and took as much as twice the time to learn combat and ship navigation skills.
Pretty much, unless you only did combat and intentionally planned your character around combat and nothing else from the beginning, EVE got boring as hell once you obtained your first battleship.
By the time I quit, the only thing exciting about EVE for me was the fact that 90% of the client code was byte compiled Python, which one could convert back to human readable source code with a Python decompiler, and then *have the game recompile the source*. Yay for autopilot code that automagically hit afterburners and chose appropriate instajump bookmarks (if you had them) for you. That excitement lasted only a month before I outright quit.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I don't think that's very likely, given that the game is set in deep space.
--
Sig nell
Exactly how I feel. I have other things to say, too. Like the blatant astroturfing - I've seen more than one account posting the exact same plug for this game off-topic in every MMOG related thread on this site in the last couple weeks. I mean identical down to the spelling error. I got a spam a while ago telling me that if I cultivated established accounts on at least 50 sites, with an "on topic" post rate of 10 posts per hour distributed (That's 24/7 - so somewhat higher during the time I'd actually bother), and then also had a sufficient rate of plugs for their MMOG about how great it is and how it's better in everyconcievable way than any other MMOG, I could get free game time as well as getting paid. I have a sneaking suspicion that I know what game that was without having to fill in personal information on the marketer's website.
They would have 100,001 players if they had a Mac OSX client :(
_______
2B1ASK1
I played the trial, and loved it and the concept at first. I've read the stories posted here and elsewhere about the billion isk scandals, awesome I thought.
My problem with the game was that my accomplishments did not translate into a stronger character, only more resources. Even were I to do something really savvy and make a billion isk during the 14 day trial, I realised there was no way I could possibly reach a high enough skill level to fly something cool, because of the way skills are acquired in the game (you acquire skills by training them, which occurs constantly, even in or out of the game, but it takes several real life days, even over a month, to train some of the higher skills). So basically the game rewards longevity over skillful play. As I observe having to spend several real months doing nothing before I can play the game, and the reality that I have to pay per month to do nothing, the trial was promptly uninstalled.
I hear a lot of players quote that the game gets more fun as you invest more time into it. But to me, enjoying a game should not be a chore I have to work towards. It should be a part of the game.
You can get 15 minutes of fame, but you can go down in history for infamy.
Ok, I have no idea what the heck are you complaining about.
You say everything revolves around MINING ?
You meant, most of anything in EVE revolves around MONEY and time spent learning since char-creation.
Mining is one of the lowest income-generating professions, in "secure space".
I have went through 7 (yes, seven) pieces of 14-day-trial accounts before finally deciding what it is I want to do in EVE.
And that, after playing for a couple of hours on an almost one year old account of a friend, who makes his living mining.
In 0.5 space (considered "pretty secure", at least no player-controlled pirates around), he was making *at best* 3 mil ISK per hour with a Covetor and 3 strip miners fitted. I was making 2 mil per hour with a 9-days old account in a less than 2 mil total worth frigate (including equipment).
Don't complain about the lack of options. Just step aside your "normal" account, cancel the learning, create a 2nd character focused on combat (high perception, willpower, average mem/int, low charisma), "gift" yourself a full set of +3 implants and some cash, start up with frigate L4 and command L2, train science 3 and cybernetics 1, plug the implants, learn "learning-related" skills up to L3, then focus another 2-3 weeks on gunnery and related skills... and see the difference.
By reading this signature you agree to not disagree with the post you just read.
I am dam proud to be a part of EvE.
Viva! Viva la EvE-o-lution!
One Cluster = One Universe, no sharding.
Threat Level: Outstanding
-Fiend-
didnt this used to be called Freelancer?
More fun. All fighting. More risk of course. Missions have the least risk, pirating the most risk (basically PVP), but the rewards can be much higher. And mining in Empire space is of course going to be boring. Mine in 0.0 instead and I dare you to go AFK during your job. Also, mining by yourself is inefficient (and naturally boring). That's why corps have mining operations. Miners, haulers, and escorts.
I know, its not worth much to most of you, but I would like to set something straight. The EVE population, while more dynamic, is certainly not more mature than your average CS player. Griefing is a Big part of the game, just not the most advertised.
http://bbs.memphistw.org/poison
:)
Click on BBS, which will connect you to an old skool BBS.
There, you can play a bunch of doors including TW
Fact of the matter is that EVE is not for most people as it require you to have a longer attention span than most games. EVE has more depth than all other MMO's combined and that the company behind the game and/or GMs doesnt hold you hand every step you take is what makes this game so special. This way there's also a natural age limitation as people past their teens tend to have a longer attention span thus making this game much more enjoyable in the social aspect.
:)
99% of the people who say they've played EVE and it was boring never ventured out, never took the time to understand anything outside of the secure Empire space. Common among the 'EVE is boring' people are that all they talk about is mission running, mining and griefers when there's so much more to this game.
This game is built upon PVP, there's simply no where I cant kill someone, there's a portion of space (where people begin) where the police (CONCORD) will respond and kill you. The whole premise of this game is as few rules as possible. I'm sorry for your moneyloss if you have only tried the starting points of this fine game, if I had only tried mission running and mining I'd felt cheated too, but I set out and encountered pirates (griefers) and fought back - eventually I won and adapted to the ways of 0.0 (insecure space) living. Today I'm a high ranking member of one of the top alliances in the game and I've tried most this game has to offer, still the political landscape and the thrill of PVP keeps me going yet after almost 3 years.
EVE is not for everybody, but besides air and water nothing really is
* good judgement comes from experience - experience comes from bad judgement *
eve is boring.
that simple.
mine, fight, lose ship, mine fight, lose ship...
it gets mighty boring.
EVE is pure capitalism.
Pirates make the most. Period.
If you want to be a criminal and RICH and unstoppable...EVE is for YOU.
No Jail in EVE. Ever.
"Eve is a "game" unlike any other. It does not lead you around by the nose going from pointless quest to pointless quest, endlessly chasing virtual items to move you higher on a pointless scoreboard. In fact, the software oncluded in the client & resident on the server is not really a "game" at all. It has no arbitrary goals, no league tables, no real boundaries of acheivment you can cross to turn around and say "I won".
There are two types of MMO - "Narrative" and "Sandbox". Narritive games (like Planescape: Torment, NeverWinter Nights, EverQuest et al, and to a lesser extent WoW) dictate the social interactions of the players very tightly. Strict rules of conduct are enforced on gameplay by the content of the game. You are herded along certain paths & made to feel acheivement by reaching arbitrary and clearly delineated goals.
Eve is not a narritive game. The only time you can say "I win" is in an individual duel with clearly stipulated win criteria. The core concept of Eve is sandbox. The game is a playground filled with sand and tools for us, the players, to make whatever game of it we will, limited only by the uses our imaginations can put those tools to. Some of us choose to use some tools to throw the sand at each other, some of us use other tools to make obsticles for our opponents and enable our playmates to throw more sand. The NPCs, the roids, the Cstations, the outposts, the ships - everything on the map is part of that toolset.
Whatever way you play, indy or fighter, researcher or scientist, big corp, small corp or freelancer, empire or 0.0, you're in that sandbox playing with the other kids. No amount of stubborness or ignorance of this fact will change it. Like it or not, you're leading a virtual life and affecting the virtual lives of others in possibly the most extensively realised virtual realities.
But the most fascinating, compelling & rewarding facet of Eve is not provided by the sandbox. It's not the graphics, or the cool ships, or the backstory. It's what has got many psychology, sociology and economics majors using Eve as a science lab for a paper or the subject of a dissertation. It's what keeps a Ph.D of Mathematical Physics (with particular emphasis on chaos theiry) utterly fascinated with and devoted to the "game". The thing about people is their chaotic nature. Throw 'em into a melting pot like Eve, and chaos ensues. However, over time, patterns start to emerge from a chaotic system. And in Eve, that chaotic system is a big-ass crowd of people.
The patterns that have emerged and continue to emerge from the chaotic sandox of Eve Online are relationships. These relationships manifest themselves as communities. Real, tangible, familial communities. Underneath all the smack and flames on the forums and the 2-day battles of old lie these real human relationships. Military, commercial and socio-political systems emerge from the interactions between these communities and, unfettered by real world constraints, they continue to evolve, adapting to new tools and resources, but more importantly to new relationships and communities. "
-Quote from Zzazzt