Entries with tag "eve_online"

Frighteningly, I'm actually getting into this EVE Online thing. It's a different experience, because of the whole multiplayer thing. In most games, when you're starting out, you run up to everything and look curiously at it, try shooting at random stuff, etc. In this case though, most ships and stuff you see out there are actual people, and things you do can actually affect other players, so acting like an inquisitive four-year-old ends up drawing attention to yourself :) I was exploring the interface, looking through the list of signed-on users, and double-clicked one to bring up the information on that user. However, instead of doing that it opened up a conversation window, and the person said "Hey, what's up?" I said eek and explained I was just learning my way around.

We'll see if it remains interesting once I get enough into the game where I'm actually interacting with other people regularly — I've never been a super social person, so it's hard to say whether that would be a desirable or distasteful aspect in a game. We shall see. There's tons of potential for interaction in this game if it's desired — players can form corporations to manufacture products that are better than the ones available directly from the game, for example. You can join a corporation and perform some service for them like mining or couriering or whatever. I sort of think that might make it feel too much like work though, because they would probably be pissed if I didn't sign on for a few days because I didn't feel like it or had too much work or whatever, hehe. I don't want to feel obligated to a video game.

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.