The last MMORPG you'll ever play

Valin Halcyon · Post by **Valin Halcyon** » Wed Sep 21, 2005 9:49 pm

..and quite possibly the last game as well.

EVE Online

Trailer - Low Bandwidth, 30mb

Trailer - High Bandwidth, 118mb

If it looks like something you want to try, send me an email at ticondrius@gmail.com and I'll send you a 14 day trial code.

In short, EVE online is....god....Descent + Freespace + steroids. Descent IV is no longer necessary, this has far surpassed it. Enjoy the videos, and hope to hear from you all.

--Ticondrius
Coreli Corporation, Gallente Federation
http://crii.t-designs.net

AceCombat · Post by **AceCombat** » Wed Sep 21, 2005 10:09 pm

HOLY SH!T !!

thats freaking insane!

Top Gun · Post by **Top Gun** » Wed Sep 21, 2005 10:18 pm

Damn...Valin! Been a long time since you've been around here!

A group at Sectorgame has been playing this for a while, and it looks pretty cool. I've never played an MMORPG (or any RPG, for that matter

), and I don't really like the idea of paying a monthly fee for a game, but I was thinking about at least giving it a shot at some point.

Valin Halcyon · Post by **Valin Halcyon** » Wed Sep 21, 2005 10:52 pm

If you give any MMORPG a shot...this is the only one worth trying. The devs have repeatedly stated that there will be no EVE 2, and that EVE's development will continute indefinately.

EVE costs more than any other MMORPG too...and it's worth every bloody cent. I've been playing for almost 2 years.

Hit me up for a buddy code and you can get in to play for 14 days.

SilverFJ · Post by **SilverFJ** » Wed Sep 21, 2005 11:11 pm

sweet good mother of christ

bitches.

Vertigo 99 · Post by **Vertigo 99** » Wed Sep 21, 2005 11:46 pm

i dunnnoooooo, WoW's kinda fun.

Valin Halcyon · Post by **Valin Halcyon** » Thu Sep 22, 2005 12:36 am

WoW sure is fun....for the first 4 weeks!

Then it turns into sheer boredom.

Grendel · Post by **Grendel** » Thu Sep 22, 2005 1:07 am

Sure looks nice. Too time consuming for me tho, I'll stick w/ what I got

Edit: third person game -- definately not for me..

Valin Halcyon · Post by **Valin Halcyon** » Thu Sep 22, 2005 1:19 am

Ah..forgot to mention. It's not exactly clear in the Trailers, but the fields of colored dots is actually the game's starmap. Each dot represents a single star system. EVE contains over 5 thousand star systems...many of which even I've not yet visited.

[]V[]essenjah · Post by **[]V[]essenjah** » Thu Sep 22, 2005 1:43 am

Looks cool if you have nothing but time and money and are willing to burn both. I'll be awaiting Oblivion and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. myself.

Jon the Great · Post by **Jon the Great** » Thu Sep 22, 2005 2:04 am

Hey! Valin long time no see. Never liked this type of game. Too addicting. It's games like these that tie you down and keep you in the house on a perfectly good day. 5,000 systems and you've seen most of them? It's your life, but my advice is not to waste it.

What happened to you? Last I heard, you were a game developer with a company that seemed to be going places.

scottris · Post by **scottris** » Thu Sep 22, 2005 3:44 am

eve-online.com wrote:Combat in EVE does not follow the standard "keep in sight, calculate lead" style of fighting commonly associated with most space simulators.

So how is this even remotely like Descent? Or Freespace for that matter? "long-range weapons" and "a variety of defensive strategies"? Sounds to me like:

Click on a ship to select your target.
Click here to fire your Blasters.
You scored a hit! Very good!
Warning: Inbound missiles!
Click here to initiate evasive maneuvers.

No thank you. If it doesn't involve in-your-face dogfighting action, where I have direct control over my thrusters and have to actually (*gasp*) aim my weapons, then it's of no use to me. I don't care how pretty the eye candy is.

Furthermore, I will never pay a monthly fee to play a game. Any game. I don't care if it really is Descent4. If I can't pay for it once and then play it whenever I please, then I'm not interested.

I apologize for all the complaining. I'm sure it really is a great game... for someone else.

Lobber · Post by **Lobber** » Thu Sep 22, 2005 4:19 am

It isn't like descent at all. Instead, think of it as a tactics based freespace game, the size of a small globular cluster. To navigate, you travel thru each system on a warp drive to a distant jump gate, then jump into the next system and warp to the next gate and so on. To maneuver in space, you double click on the spot you want to travel to. It doesn't feel anything at all like Descent, and all ships autolevel 100%.

On the plus side, it is the only true PvP game there is. If you lose something in PvP, like your ship, its gone for good. If you're escape pod is destroyed, you die, but a clone is activated and you wake up in a home station. You have to update your clone every time you reach a new plateau of skill points, or after your podkilled.

Another thing, skills auto train over time. You don't have to be in game for skills to train up. Every skill has a set amount of time before its finished, from short 20 minute skills to 30 day skills, and everything in between, depending on the level and difficulty of the skill, and how advanced you want to be in it.

There are vast player politics and social structures in the game as well. Multinational groups, containing thousands of in game players, make up some of the largest Alliances in game, and they control some of the most remote and difficult to reach ends of the Galaxy. Smaller corporations (which are Eve's version of Guilds, or Clans) roam space looking for people to gank, calling themselves "Pirates." Others hunt these pirates, and still others tread the fine line in between calling themselves "Mercenaries." Still other corporations have little to do with PvP and do alot of mining, or production. Production is huge in this game. People actually sell in game items and money for real money on Ebay, even though its not permitted under the EULA.

This game is big, another difference is that it is all one shard. One giant single world. No seperate servers. No vast multitude of parallel universes. If you join the game, you will be in the same world as every other player in the whole game. At one point it nearly reached 15,000 players online at the same time. No other game could boast that. Not all those players on the same server. But in reality it does use multiple nodes to seperate out different regions of space to handle the load, but the point is still made that everyone is in the same Galaxy without any parallel worlds. The only exception would be the test server, but then thats splitting hairs.

Basically, your "avatar" is your ship. And there are Four playable races, and many kinds of ships, including the start out ship, or Rookie ship. Then there are Frigates, Elite Frigates, Cruisers, Elite Cruisers (Known as Heavy Assault Craft), Destroyers, Battleships, Dreadnoughts, Industrial Ships, Transport Ships, Freighters, Mining Barges, and soon, in some upcoming patches: Capitol Class Titans and Carriers.

All of these ships have three types of slots. High (Weapons and Externally mounted devices), Medium (Electronics and Activated Propulsion and Shield systems), and Low (Passive Propulsion modules, Passive electronics, Armor plating, Armor repair, etc). Every ship has a different number of High Medium and Low slots except the shuttles, which have no slots and only transport your character rapidly for very little cost from one place to another. How you load up those slots makes a big difference in how the ship you have performs, as well as a huge investment in the time you trained up skills to use those very same modules.

It isn't all mining, production, and killing either. There is an NPC side to the game, but its the weakest part of Eve. You can do agent missions, like doing quests in other games. Mostly you go out, blow up some NPC targets, hunt something, or transport goods from one station to another. You get security and money rewards, and sometimes you get special offers that allow you to trade in loyalty points for unique items, including special ships that can't be acquired elsewhere.

I could go on, but then you'd have to play the game to experience it for yourself. It is one of the deepest and most involving games I've ever seen. My name in game is Zezman, and I'm second in command of the Murder of Crows, a mercenary corporation loitering about on the edge of civilized society. May you never be a target of one of our contracts.

JMEaT · Post by **JMEaT** » Thu Sep 22, 2005 7:37 am

It looks kinda like freespace. Impressive visuals, but I'll stick to WoW and its non habit forming ways

Valin Halcyon · Post by **Valin Halcyon** » Thu Sep 22, 2005 9:44 am

Actually...EVE broke the 15,000 concurrent players record (That is..a WORLD record...) a little bit ago. We almost went over 16K last Sunday. Growth rate is easily 1000 new pilots online on average every 2 week at the moment.

No, I've not seen most of the star systems. Looking at the map, I've probably only visited some 20% of them...and yet I am well traveled. There are just SO MANY star systems.

EVE is addicting, yes, but at the same time you're not pressured to log in everyday or risk falling behind others. Skills train over time, and there are ways to earn isk (the game's money) while not logged in or AFK. I know a couple people that haven't logged in for weeks and have made billions of isk in the meantime thanks to tech 2 manufacturing.

PvP is very real, and harsh in EVE. You can spend a week mining up the minerals for your shiny new battleship and get the isk to fit it and get insurance for it...and it only takes 30 seconds to lose it. Insurance might cover 70% of all you put into the ship..but that ship is gone along with everything uber you had on it and it's not coming back.

The greatest thing of all is the player built and managed nations in the more lawless areas of space. They are called alliances and lay claim to entire regions of space. Alliances are capable of building their own stations starbases, and have access to some of the best mineral resources in the game. The wars that ocurr between them are nothing short of amazing. When the lag is manageable...you can have fleet engagements between fleets that would make the GTVA look like a joke. I've participated in battles with as many as 400 starships taking part. It's a true thrill.

woodchip · Post by **woodchip** » Thu Sep 22, 2005 10:20 am

Valin, are there still uncharted areas of space one could hide in while one builds up a ship (or fleet of ships)?

Also as an aside I didn't know the map "Halcyon" was either designed by you or named after you. One of my favorite maps.

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Thu Sep 22, 2005 10:49 am

woodchip wrote:Also as an aside I didn't know the map "Halcyon" was either designed by you or named after you. One of my favorite maps.

/me sends PM to Kyouryuu...

Valin Halcyon · Post by **Valin Halcyon** » Thu Sep 22, 2005 11:20 am

Woodchip: Yes.

And for the LOVE OF GOD..I did NOT build Halcyon.

For the record...23 requests for trial codes have been recieved and all have been sent out. If you didn't get one, let me know.

BTW, there's a pirate corp in EVE called kr0m.

Relatives?

Iceman · Post by **Iceman** » Thu Sep 22, 2005 12:22 pm

I dloaded the heavy trailer, man that is awesome. I might want to get this one ...

DCrazy · Post by **DCrazy** » Thu Sep 22, 2005 1:13 pm

It looks like everything Freespace and nTrap ever wanted to be.

Iceman · Post by **Iceman** » Thu Sep 22, 2005 1:17 pm

Man I agree ... I can't wait to get home and download the trial.

woodchip · Post by **woodchip** » Thu Sep 22, 2005 1:24 pm

Is there a single player or something to learn how to play without using the 14 day trial up?

Iceman · Post by **Iceman** » Thu Sep 22, 2005 1:27 pm

Nope, don't look like it.

But it looks like you can recharge your account for $30 for 50 day increments.

http://store.eve-online.com/store/comer ... Category=7

woodchip · Post by **woodchip** » Thu Sep 22, 2005 2:41 pm

So this is die as you learn huh?

Flatlander · Post by **Flatlander** » Thu Sep 22, 2005 2:48 pm

It looks very, very tempting, so I'm staying far, far away

Valin Halcyon · Post by **Valin Halcyon** » Thu Sep 22, 2005 2:49 pm

In this game..you never stop learning. There is ALWAYS something new to do...something new to try...somewhere new to go.

Also..you can issue your own trial codes once you have a paid subscription. To be honest though..When I started, the demo was only 3 days..and I was hooked. You will love this game before a week is up.

woodchip · Post by **woodchip** » Thu Sep 22, 2005 3:12 pm

Another question, as you build up assets do you need other online players to manage them or are there bots of some sort that aid you?

Valin Halcyon · Post by **Valin Halcyon** » Thu Sep 22, 2005 3:24 pm

What do you mean? Ships and property are stored in stations. You can store them in space if you want, but someone else could board the ship and run off with it.

There are secured cans that you can anchor in space for use as a remote storage depot..they have password locks.

Corporations are like guilds or clans, but they function a lot more like a real world businesses. Corporations can have common assets and the corporation hangar has access controls that the corp's CEO and directors can manage.

Corp theft and scams are considered fairplay by CCP, In fact, the most famous and largest (in terms of game value) corp theft in the game's history warrented a PC Gamer interview.

TheCope · Post by **TheCope** » Thu Sep 22, 2005 6:07 pm

Iâ??m no role-playing guy. In fact, I havenâ??t played anything but MS solitaire for over a year. But I have to admit that demo video flipped my pancakes. Some clips looked like it had a home world type of navigation going.

Awesome graphics.

woodchip · Post by **woodchip** » Fri Sep 23, 2005 10:29 am

Right now I am suffering from info overload...I plod on! Just love being a noob in public.

Iceman · Post by **Iceman** » Fri Sep 23, 2005 10:34 am

I guess I am confused with all the RPG talk ...

Can I climb in a ship, fly around in 6DOF, and blow chit up?

If so I am in, if not then how does this replace the need for D4?

woodchip · Post by **woodchip** » Fri Sep 23, 2005 10:58 am

Ice, my very initial impression is a game similar to Homeworld. Then again I am only in the training phase.

Unix · Post by **Unix** » Fri Sep 23, 2005 11:07 am

It does have 6 DOF I guess, but it's not like D3. It's point and click...I guess if like building up characters and stuff. Then you might like it. I haven't been in any big battles or anything, but the combat so far has been fairly boring... There doesn't seem to be many tactics involved.

It's basically, select target>Lock on>fire

then you just set the ship autopilot to keep a certain distance relative to the best operating distance of your gun.

It does seem enormous, but so far no so interesting. I'll play it for the next 13 days, but if by then I'm not loving it, I won't be paying for it.

Lobber · Post by **Lobber** » Fri Sep 23, 2005 11:58 am

No, it does not have six degrees of freedom. It has three. X, Y, and Z, axis of vector control, but not attitude control like in Descent. And you don't aim at any one's ship, you "target" them, then press the weapon "module" and if the roll of the virtual dice comes up correctly, you "hit" them.

Turret Tracking Guide Explains the mechanics how turrets and ship guns calculate whether they hit the target or not.

Valin Halcyon · Post by **Valin Halcyon** » Fri Sep 23, 2005 12:30 pm

Combat isn't like dice rolling, it's based on a very real set of physics. All guns are turrets, thus they have tracking speed, rate of fire, and optimal and falloff ranges.

If you have the head knowledge of how the game works...the skills you train in the game don't mean as much for actual combat.

Yeah, combat is a little slower paced...so go try a deadspace complex. Nothing like being attacked by 20-30 targets at once to set your blood on fire.

If you have a Microwarp Drive, you can warp around in various areas without having to warp to a specific destination. Also, judicious use of bookmarks, or saved spots in space, and you can warp to just about anywhere in a system.

Combat is not rock, paper, scissors. It requires game knowledge and skills, as well as good ship fitting for weapons and modules. I still lose ships after 2 years of playing..I still blow others up. Beating up the NPCs IS boring..it's fighting other players where this game shines.

Also, as some of you have already discovered, EVE has a very high elarning curve..actually..more like a bump. There's a LOT to learn, but after 1-2 weeks, you've learned it, and are moving along really quick. It can be daunting for new players. Just embrace the difficulty and go for it. You'll be better off for it.

kurupt · Post by **kurupt** » Fri Sep 23, 2005 6:26 pm

looks really cool, but i dont really have the time to play more than 1 game. i'll probably check it out at least though, would be foolish not to at least try it.

Grendel · Post by **Grendel** » Fri Sep 23, 2005 9:05 pm

Valin Halcyon wrote:In short, EVE online is....god....Descent + Freespace + steroids. Descent IV is no longer necessary, this has far surpassed it.

That's very far fetched then

Iceman · Post by **Iceman** » Fri Sep 23, 2005 10:02 pm

Lobber wrote:No, it does not have six degrees of freedom. It has three. X, Y, and Z, axis of vector control, but not attitude control like in Descent. And you don't aim at any one's ship, you "target" them, then press the weapon "module" and if the roll of the virtual dice comes up correctly, you "hit" them.

Turret Tracking Guide Explains the mechanics how turrets and ship guns calculate whether they hit the target or not.

I'm out, you guys have fun.

Battlebot · Post by **Battlebot** » Fri Sep 23, 2005 10:56 pm

lol....hence why ill never play a RPG ever.

Jeff250 · Post by **Jeff250** » Sat Sep 24, 2005 12:02 am

Battlebot wrote:lol....hence why ill never play a RPG ever.

The last MMORPG you'll ever play

The last MMORPG you'll ever play

Another MMORPG I'll never play

Re: The last MMORPG you'll ever play