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EVE Online's Next Frontier
If you look at the graphs over at MMOGChart.com, most of the lines that aren't WoW seem to be heading downwards. The little engine that could, though, is personified by the Icelandic dynamo EVE Online. FiringSquad has an interview with CCP Senior Producer Nathan Richardsson. He discusses the popularity of EVE right now, and goes into some of the company's plans for making sure the game stays that way in the future. From the article: "This iterative process is based largely on our crazy future views of how EVE should be and a lot on player feedback. We then want to do some revolutionary stuff to the EVE universe and then evolution comes and bites us in the ass, reminding us that it's not cool to always throw new stuff in, the current game needs to be constantly maintained and evolved. In the end, we're never happy and I guess this is part of what is fuelling our continued passion for EVE."
When the MMO chart was posted, I downloaded the demo for EVE online for the very same reason...
I havn't installed or set up a trial account yet because
A: I can't afford WoW and EVE
B: I don't have time to properly "abuse" a trial account right now.
But their website is very informative, and the game seems interesting. I wouldn't be surprised if this game continues to gather new players.
Hit the EVE site and go to their movies section. All of the videos show actual gameplay, though frequently the interface is removed (key combo in the game). There are segments in most videos that show everything.
Alternately, this forum on the site, which is freely accessible without requiring an account, has links to a ton of player created videos.
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
Heh... that *is* the actual gameplay. ^_^
It's all very pretty.
As someone who's played a bunch of MMOs, I find EVE to be an anomaly. The ridiculous attention to detail and depth hooked me more than any other game I've played, and has been the only game which has inspired me to create an online comic for the community. In fact the community of players in EVE is unlike anything I've seen before, willing to create streating audio and video sites to cover events (EVE Radio), create special sites for hosting pictures and videos for other players (EVE Files), and planning large scale gatherings on other continents for folks who can't make the yearly fanfest in Iceland (EVE Gathering). It's really quite something. For the curious, my comic is called Warp Drive Active. The humor is fairly contextual, but I try to make it general enough that folks not having played the game might still be able to get the jokes.
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
You can also check out http://www.eve-files.com/, which has a ton more pictures and some movies and such.
Or, youtube, of course. http://www.youtube.com/results?search=eve+online
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
I wish more games would get the 'you actually put something you value on the line' idea right. Eve does, and that's what makes it brilliant. I never cared a whit about dying in WoW, but every battle in Eve practically flips me out. CCP missed a bunch of polish, but they got this one detail right and I love it.
is competition good, or is duplication of effort bad?
Too many games out there rely on these cherry-picked screenshots as selling points.
:-/
After hearing random people ranting on about how good EVE Online was, and how it most definitely wasn't World of Warcraft (which most of my friends are addicted to right now), I thought I'd give it a try. So, downloaded the client, started the free 14-day trial thing...
First impressions: it looks and sounds amazing. For instance, the in-system hyperspace effect is brilliant - screenshots simply couldn't do it justice. It really does feel like tearing across a planetary system at many AUs per second.
Second impressions: it's a multiplayer Elite (a game I seriously enjoyed, along with Frontier) - except designed by a sodding accountant. The tutorial is *hours* long. Rather boring. And utterly vital to playing the game. I tried figuring some stuff out without it, but managed to arse things up - and couldn't easily return to where I was.
I got a really strong sense of the game being a thin, glossy 3D veneer to a very, very dull database. I could almost feel the SQL queries chugging away underneath, and the performance enhancements and caching systems were a bit obvious. The real-time systems too - compared with, say, Elite 2: Frontier, the flight system is incredibly basic. It's less flying a spacecraft, more clicking on where you'd want to go. Combat seems to involve automatically setting your ship to orbit another, then enabling your weapons. Which then shoot away at regular intervals, all aiming done automatically. Oh, and it has that arse-standard MMORPG 'foo landed a glancing blow on bar, doing 3.5 units of damage' thing. No tactics, only strategy.
Exploring places seems to involve finding your destination in a 3D map, enabling autopilot and then waiting as your ship flies (fully automatically) through a series of lovely-looking (but increasingly repetitive) stellar systems. There's no nice visual effect when travelling between systems, by the way. I suspect there's no chance of the autopilot failing (memories of having to manually fly a stricken spacecraft into dock with a fast-orbiting space-station in Elite 2 come to mind...)
Other players seemed friendly enough, although admittedly I didn't interact with - or see - that many. No Counter-Strike style griefers that I saw, anyhow.
Mining is cataclysmically dull. It's very similar to combat, except the asteroid doesn't fight back. Purchasing stuff is like using Froogle or some other price-comparison service - with potentially better prices available at increasing numbers of stargate jumps away. Which don't seem to cost anything except time. Speaking of time, things are often very slow. Yes, you might get many hours of gameplay out of it, but much of it won't exactly be gripping.
I managed nearly 24 hours before giving up. I got the impression of it being a terribly crude Elite 2 (WHICH RAN ON MY SODDING ATARI ST!) but with fancy economics, lovely graphics and multiplayer. I'd definitely recommend the free trial if you're interested - it seems a couple of friends actually paid for it, and gave up within twenty minutes or so. I persevered, and got a bit more of an opinion - although I'm sure I'll get a million satisfied EVE Online players saying I should have played for longer. Sorry, but I wasn't that enamoured with it...
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
Guild Wars isn't on the list because 1. It's not a MMOG, according to its own developers, and 2. It doesn't charge a monthly fee, so it's impossible to compare it to subscription MMOGs. Counting the 2 million registered accounts is irrelevant, because only a fraction of those are actually playing the game regularly. By that standard, EQ and RuneScape would have millions of players, since everyone who ever played would get counted.
Now, you could, conceivable, count only the number of Guild Wars players who log in every month. Even though it's a free game, it would give you an idea of how many are actively playing. But NCSoft doesn't give out that data, and you'd have to get it for all the other games as well to make a fair comparison.
Bruce
I played EVE for a long time. One of the biggest things to me was how Open ended it was. You could kill the police, be the police, raid your home station, or go make your own. There was SO MUCH you could do it was amazing.
Allot of players do say the game is slow to move. As in you have to work for a long time in order to get anywhere. For instance skills are based on a Real Time clock. When you want to train a skill it has a timer for how long it takes before it is complete. You can log off and the timer is still going. The downside to this is skills take a long time to level. Some taking months. This is what I think draws allot of players away. With simple games that you can be uber in less than a month such as WoW, most of the younger folks and less patient will migrate there. But for a hardcore, work your arse off, do whatever you want gaming experience, EVE is the winner hands down.
You will also hear that players who have been in the game longer will always be ahead of you. To an extent this is true. There player skills will be higher but that does not mean they will have advanced as much. You can be much lower in skill and still outwit another player. Where as WoW if you are down by 3 levels just start running now. The battle system in EVE allows the player to use his natural playing skills and strategy to overcome the odds. Other games it's a simple click...special here....mega bomb there....and it's over. There is so much strategy involved with EVE it is insane.
To put it short, EVE is the only game I know that is player Driven. What you do affects the world as a whole. You can do what you want be who you want, and really put your skills to the test. It's great to see games like these with such a mature community prevailing against the odds.
The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
It's not a flight(space) sim in any sense that'd be familiar to someone who's played Descent. You can't play the game with a joystick. Your mouse does not directly control your space craft. There's never a cockpit view. You don't aim your weapons, you just tell which ones which opponent to fire on.
Think of it sort of like Star Trek, where you're a guy sitting at a control panel telling the ship's computer what you want it to do. Except that the control panel is your computer screen, and you push the buttons using the mouse cursor. And your view is outside of your spaceship, not from inside it.
The really interesting parts of the game, in my opinion, are the social aspects of it. The organization involved in running a succesful alliance or corporation, the logistics of big wars and holding territory, the strategy and tactics used in big fleet battles. It all requires a lot of coordination, and it's a lot of fun if you get yourself into a big group.
Then there's a lot of technical depth that you can get involved in. There are hundreds, probably thousands, of different fittings that can be piled onto dozens of different ships. The economy is player driven, very deep, and very active. There are people who really enjoy producing, collecting and trading minerals, creating stuff, and selling it. There are some people who can't get enough of the mining, while other people find mining to be boring as all hell.
There really are enough options in EVE that just about anyone should be able to find a niche that they enjoy. The biggest problem with the game is that that complexity can be overwhelming at first, so it's not surprising when people give up before they can find a niche they want to fill. Unless you're lucky enough to fall into a corporation that actively trains its newbies, you'll have to stick out a rough beginning.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
Um, Mythic has basically ALWAYS been on board - It was a Mythic project long before the EA acquisition.
EA, on the other hand, has a long track record of killing MMOGs and running previously excellent studios into the ground.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?