During my time in academia, there was an astronomical rise in massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs); the king of them being World of Warcraft (WoW). It was always tempting to play, but there was no way I could maintain my grades if I got sucked into one of these games, because they're massive time sinks. Part of it was also that everyone I knew was playing WoW, and I hate jumping onto bandwagons as I like going against the mainstream.
Even though I had a self-imposed embargo on not playing MMOGs, I actually did a lot of research into them. I was fascinated by the economies that developed in the games, and how sophisticatedly groups could organize complex strategies, etc. One game that stood out for me was
Eve Online; a space game where you fly a ship. It was refreshing to find this game because it wasn't yet another World of Warcraft clone.
There were a few intriguing features in this game.
- One Server - The game has about 200,000 players, and everyone plays in the same universe. Games like WoW has about ~5,000 players per server. In WoW, if your friends played on a different server, you couldn't play with them.
- Death Has A Price - When you destroy an enemy's ship, they lose that ship, for good. In terms of PvP, that's quite something because you can cause serious economic damage to your enemy. In other MMOGs, death doesn't really have huge consequences.
- Player Driven Economy - Everything in the game has to be manufactured by players. This gives rise to a very interesting economic system. Goods don't magically appear in space stations, they have to be transported there and supplied. So, in a war for example, you could squeeze your enemy by cutting off their supplies, by depriving them of resupply ships. Yes, waging economic war is interesting to me.
- Level In Real-time - Normally in games like WoW, if you kill x number of bunnies, you'll level up. Eve takes a different approach. Your character advances by training different skills. Training takes place in real-time, even if you're not logged into the game. So for example, if a skill takes 2 hours to train, then 2 hours later, you'll have that skill.
Fast-forward to now. With a rapidly crumbling social circle, I decided to take the dive and try out Eve Online because I had some time and they offer a 14-day free trial.
The learning curve is a bit high, but a complex game is bound to take some time to learn. I managed to get through the tutorial in a couple of hours. My first impression was that this was very much like Independence War 2, which is one of my favourite space games. I think anyone who enjoyed games like Wing Commander and the like, will enjoy this game. I will say that this is not a game for everyone. It is definitely slower paced, and it's definitely a thinking man's game.
I think I especially like Eve Online because after Independence War 2, there weren't any space simulation games that were published after that were really good. The space sim game market is a dying niche in today's market.
In Eve, I really liked how open ended the game was, and how your character could take on any profession. Some of the major roles in the game include: pirate, trader, cargo hauler, miner, researcher, explorer, anti-pirate, etc. It's also interesting that there are vast parts of space with no security, which means anyone could destroy you. This naturally forces people to band together and co-operate. It's a lot like operating in the wild west, where there's little law and order. For example, if you're a cargo hauler, you might find a very profitable trade route, but you have to pass through some dangerous parts of space. You'll need to get a few fighter escorts to protect you from pirates who may be after your cargo. Yar!
I also appreciate how the game allows for user generated missions. For example, if some pirate killed you, and you want to get revenge, you could put a bounty on their head, and other players will go after them. Say you're trading goods, and you managed to buy a ton of goods for a very cheap price; however, it'll take you a long time to move those goods somewhere else to sell for a higher price. No problem, you can create a contract to hire other players to move the goods for you.
So far, I've been staying in high security space (yes, I'm a carebear) and doing missions just to get a feel for the game. I'm still undecided because it is $15/month to play, and I don't have the most time in the world.
One thing that I do appreciate though is that even people who are poor in time can do well in this game simply because skills improve in real-time. This means everyone progresses at about the same rate, which gives me a bit of an edge over time rich 13 year old kids. Strategy can be more important than having abundant time.
In either case, I'm enjoying the game thus far. It'll get much better when I join a corporation, and group up with other players.
