Sunday, June 20, 2010

Downloading Eve Online.. Again

I’m going to give Eve Online another chance. I just created my 14 day MMO free trial account and I’m downloading the game right now. I’m downloading at a cool 3MB/s so my client should be done in 13 minutes. Eve Online is a gave I’ve always wanted to get into, but for some reason never could. Twice I quit the game before finishing its tutorial. Yeah, the game is that intimidating. I’ve read a lot about it on MMORPG review sites and aside from Ultima Onlineback in 1999 it is by far the most ‘open” and PvP heavy pay to play MMORPG ever. Players can kill each other just about anywhere in the universe. Neat huh? Unfortunately even though Eve Online sounds really cool it has one of the steepest learning curves ever.

One aspect of the game I dislike is that older accounts are ALWAYS more powerful than newer one. The skill progression system is pretty random. Players gain skill all the time, even when they’re logged off with no max skill cap. With the amount of skills in the game, it’s impossible for anyone to master them all, so players tend to specialize. I mean, you could master them all, but it would take like 20+ years. Older accounts have ultimately more learned skills than newer ones – no matter what. Most MMORPGs including free to play ones like Gates of Andaron from GameForge,Neo Steam from Atlus Online and even Magic World Online from EnjoyMMO are built so no player late game is more powerful than others. The whole older accounts have more skills thing is pretty silly in my opinion. Luckily though, there are so many skill trees, it doesn’t make sense for anyone to even TRY learning everything. EVERYONE specializes, so a 1 month old player could have more skill in one type of skill than a player who has been playing for years.

Eve Online has so many interesting aspects that I really want to dive into. The game supposedly has one of the coolest in game economies ever. Even more so than Luminary: Rise of the Goonzufrom ijji, which had a stellar in game economy. Heck, I remember reading a big Eve Online bank scandal in The New York Times. How many other big in game scams get published in such a reputable paper? None. Eve Online also has a massive Corporation vs Corporation PvP system. Players can band together and form Corps which are guilds in game. These Corps can band together to form alliances, and alliances can control various outposts and territory in space. It’s not uncommon for thousands of ships to be in one area at once to battle it out. Yeah, Thousands of players. The only other game with that kind of massive PvP is Aika Online from gPotato, which boasts 1000 vs 1000 PvP.

Anyway folks. I’m almost done with my free trial download. I’ll make sure to let you know if I get passed the free trial this time!

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