OT: What other games are people playing??

[Aikamun]

Since the subject changed to Eve Online (my Last MMOG ever), I will tell you why I quit:

1. Bugs. I played a little over a month and encountered a huge quantity of bugs personally. Also, monitored the help channel and heard of tons of other bugs. I do not believe Eve has enough paid Subscribers to adequately support the game.

2. Lag. Like all these games, lag kills. Eve has it in over-abundance.

3. Experience System. You gain skill points per each unit of time. At the end of one month playing you will have a little under one million skillpoints. Some players already have 20 million skillpoints. You can NEVER catch up, no matter how long you play each day. This puts you at a severe disadvantage in any player vs player fights. I estimate you are at a 5% to 25% handicap at the minimum.

5. Mining. Mining is the key to Eve's economy. If you have the minerals, you can make most of the gear and ships in Eve. Mining became the most boring grind I have experienced in an MMOG, which made running missions my only source of income. Some people don't get bored from mining and power to them.

6. Uber Guilds. Like all MMOs, Eve has its uber guilds. These are the largest and most established corporations. They do not recruit newbies. Personally, I am not interested in leaving friends and the corporation behind who had helped me to that point.

7. War can be declared by one corp against any other corp to avoid retaliation by the police. This mechanism is used by larger corporations and player killers to take you out wherever and whenever they please. Another advantage of being in an uber corporation.

8. Etc., etc. The list could continue indefinitely.

One of my characters had developed a persistent display bug at the end. CCP was telling me my screen should be showing various things which was not the case. This was the final nail in the coffin for Eve.

But, this is just my opinion. You might love Eve.

Aikamun

[Lex]

Hmmm.. I've been reading alot of reviews on Eve, as well as their site, and the more I read, the more I'm interested. The "problem" with Corps is also the main attraction of Eve. It means there's alot of activity that's player driven. As for the Skills system, I was under the impression that they did it that way to level the playing field for people who couldn't spend every minute of the day killing monsters. This way, reguardless of how much time you can commit to being Online, you'll still level up at the same pace as everyone else. Sure it means if you joined the game a year after others, you'll be pretty far behind, but since the real power is with Guilds, it's seems less important to have an insanely high level character, and more practical to be friends with the right people (kinda reminding me of real life a bit). On their site, they say there's over 2000 player Guilds/Corporations (compared to 140 NPC Corps). Sure it might be lonely at first, but the community is definitly there! (their site posted that Last monday they had 11,200 people Online.. that might not be the 100,000+ Ultima Online would get, but isn't that pretty good anyways?)

But then, that's my impression from the basic reading I've done. I still haven't played the game yet.

[Aku]

Anyone know anything about Guild Wars? This game may be interesting.

http://www.guildwars.com/

There is the link. Tell me what you think.

[KroolDeath]

Hmmm.. I've been reading alot of reviews on Eve, as well as their site, and the more I read, the more I'm interested. The "problem" with Corps is also the main attraction of Eve. It means there's alot of activity that's player driven.

Lex, thats the same line of thinking that interested me, its not story-driven but driven by the players, up to and including the economic model.

I am still looking into this game of course. I'm going to cruise around their website some more. Looking at the interstellar map, it appears there is plenty of room for growth without having to join one of the existing corporations.

Krool

[Cainehill]

Arryn said:

That's one of my big gripes against them. Do any of them have any sort of real persistent universe in which a player's (or guild's) actions actually matter? Where there's a real, threaded storyline whose flow you can actually affect, instead of the typical scripted "events" developers occasionally throw in, which the game companies have confused with the concept of "content"?

Well, there was one called Legends of Future Past - it was text only, similar to a MUD or to Gemstone III, but it was _awesome_. Wonderful game world, with critters that worshipped evil gods (they'd say nasty things to you, their grunts would guard their shamans), different kinds of magic, psionics, crafting long before it became popular, different realms and dimensions....

And guilds that mattered - one was the wardens / lawkeepers, there was a rangers guild, there was several evil orders whose members were exiled from the main towns, players could work and become vampires / werewolves (who were anathema to the wolfling race).

Great ongoing and short term quests; the world felt like it had an ongoing history, and the quest / story related battles and events you were in did in fact matter.

*sigh* It went down sometime between 95 and 99, a damn shame. I spent half a year trying to track down at least the source code / databases, thinking maybe I could purchase and run the game, but no joy.

[Schmoe]

I'm currently playing DOM2 on the computer and D&D3.5 with friends about once every month or so. That's about all I have time for, really. I have Neverwinter Nights on my harddrive, but I'm waiting to get a better graphics card so that it's not so mind-numbingly slow.

I used to play a *lot* of computer games. Old Favorites included ADOM, NetHack, HOMM3, Wizardy 7, Age of Wonders, Civ and Alpha Centauri, Quake II, and on and on ...

[Gandalf Parker]

Arryn said:

That's one of my big gripes against them. Do any of them have any sort of real persistent universe in which a player's (or guild's) actions actually matter? Where there's a real, threaded storyline whose flow you can actually affect, instead of the typical scripted "events" developers occasionally throw in, which the game companies have confused with the concept of "content"?

I think that SWG (Star Wars Galaxies) is the closest Ive seen to making that work. Im definetly interested in seeing what the next effort along those lines brings up.

[Aku]

SWG is horribly bad because the whole game is about level grinding. The expansion though may be interesting but they will probably mess it up.

[Stormbinder]

Aikamun said:
Like these threads every once in a while. Have decided to leave MMORPG's behind. They have a community but minimal gameplay. Returning to strategy games. My Favorites are:

Dominions 2
Space Empires 4

Downloaded Titans of Steel, Anacreon 2, and the Chaos League Demo. Believe it or not, I am an old Blood Bowl fan. Threw out complete sets of Advanced Squad Leader, Starfleet Battles, and Car Wars but kept all of my Blood Bowl stuff. Shocked to see this game returning to computer.

I will weed these five games down to three so as to receive more enjoyment from the best.

Thanks again for the thread and info,
Aikamun

I think you can only download old "Titans of Steel" the freeware Version, wich lacks tons of new pathes/improvements/weapons and most of all lacks compaigns. You need to get "Titans of Steel: Warring Suns " (which is commercial sequel) to get the full enjoyment of this game. (unless of course you meant that you got the comercial Version from the warez site )