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| Free trials to MMOs and some notes. by jeep 08/23/2004, 11:06am PDT | ||||
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| I registered with MMORPG.com (to get the 14 day EVE trial), and it turns out you get free 14 day trials with just about every MMO. Granted most of them will give you a free trial right off the website, but it's nice to get a list up front of what to play. I haven't even heard of half these games, and you can do a lot with 14 days and some coffee. I got so much free stuff I feel like IGN, I should just give everything a million stars before it's even released.
Started with EVE Online. Kidding aside, this game is actually pretty good. First off, it's similar to but better than Earth and Beyond. I'm not easily impressed with cgi but the graphics in this game are incredible. Everything in it is beautifully rendered and interesting to look at, the spaceships, the stations, stars and planets. The music is also weird: there's an in game jukebox which I left on repeat, a lot of it is derivative of different songs (There was a philip glass bit, one sounded like the music from clockwork orange, I swear one sounded like a slower song off of NIN's Downward Spiral) but they all have an outer space mood to them and are pretty good. So +graphics and +music. It's a resource manager's dream, since that's what you do. The grind is in the economy. You mine for ore to make money, refine it to make money, fly around the galaxy and trade to make money, kill bandits to make money. Money pays for better ships and skills to do tougher things. Money also pays for crafting which is basically impossible when you start out, and money pays for research: Things enter the game at different times depending on what you research. They don't just enter the game for you, they literally are not in the game until someone researches them. It's like a micro-version of Master of Orion, someone researches a new invention and then they get the blueprint - they're the only ones with it. Can trade and sell and manufacture. It's actually kind of cool. The skill system is interesting, you buy skills with the money you earn (you buy everything with money, there is no experience system) but you don't learn them until you assign time to do so. The subscription to the game is basically a clock that gives you skill points, you learn while playing, you learn while not playing, you just assign things constantly. There's no grind to develop the skills. The game is always pk, but there are controls in place - security ratings - where the high security areas no one shoots anyone else because there are so many cops. The player groups are Corporations, you're in business together. Everyone helps everyone else out, usually mining (which is much faster in groups) and combat (take down bigger NPC pirates, more money for bounties). Also trading within the corp. There's a tax system and stuff, but the little corp I'm in isn't much into it. I was wandering around hunting fugitives and some guy asks me to join his corp, I figured wth and it turns out to be a pretty good group, though they are a little heavy on the l33t-speak. I think it's 14 people, half 30+ and half 18-, so you can tell when the kids are on. I'm going to play this longer than the 14 day trial. I would not recommend it for people new to MMOs, it's a very advanced game and if you download it you have no manual and you won't know wtf you're doing. If you have played games where you mine or collect resources and you like that, like crafting, like combat (you actually have to be somewhat good at operating your ship, the higher level NPCs come at you with all kinds of stuff, it's only click-and-kill early on, and once you get into the low security areas there's no rules of conduct) this is definitely a good gme for advance players. One note: it's european. Mostly the issue with it is half the players are in Europe so I get on at 6 and they're getting ready to go to sleep. I don't know if anyone else noticed but european games are starting to develop a character of their own. Good consistent visual art (as opposed to just video drivers by the Amazing Carmack), good music and very, very difficult economics. I guess starting a business over there is tougher than in the US. /jeep/ |
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