Yesterday I came across this entertaining tale of deceit and consciencelessness describing a scam a guy pulled off in a space-based MMORPG called EVE Online. I hadn't heard of the game before, but although the general point of his story is that he becomes disillusioned with the game and turns to "crime," his vivid descriptions of the battle scenes actually sounded pretty intriguing. It's sort of like Homeworld only multiplayer. So, despite my usual lack of enthusiasm for online gaming, I figured what the hell and downloaded the EVE client and paid the $20 for 30 days worth. I highly doubt I'll actually keep paying the $15/month even if I do like the game, but it sounded interesting and worth a $20 experiment.

I've only played it a little so far — I've only done the tutorials, haven't interacted with anyone else yet. But it does seem pretty enjoyable. You can pretty much do anything you want — some choose to mine asteroids, some run trade routes to sell goods in areas where they fetch a higher price. The part I like is that some decide to be pirates and lurk in the less patrolled areas of space between star systems and prey on those traders. Sure, the fact that it's an MMORPG means you're stealing from real people, but hey, their job would be boring if you didn't provide some excitement and risk :)

So we'll see if it proves entertaining enough to hold my interest — very few games do — but at first glance it looks pretty fun.