General Discussion

Last Week while attending the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, staff writer Carolyn Koh had the opportunity to sit down with David Simmonds and John K. Bates of Mindark to discuss what's new with Entropia Universe.

How many of our readers are familiar with Entropia Universe?  This is an MMOG that had hovered on the edge of my consciousness for a while.  When asked by their PR people to make an appointment, I had to do a bit of research.  Then it all came back.  It was formerly known as Project Entropia.  A virtual Sci-Fi world, with a micropayment economic model and in-game currency exchange to US dollars pegged at 10 PEDs (Project Entropia Dollars) to 1 US dollar.

In the Entropia Universe, players are colonists trying to tame the planet Calypso.  The wilderness is filled with dangerous creatures and is rich in ore and minerals.  There are also two space stations and the Neverdie Asteroid that orbit the planet.  The game is free to download and play, but paying for items such as better tools, weaponry and clothing can be a quick boost to faster means of earning PEDs.  Non-paying players can gather fruit and dung, and collect sweat from certain animals to sell for PEDs, or “hire out” to other players by doing jobs such as selling for them. 

Because of the difficulties involved, it is a point of pride for some players to never have paid any money into the game and still made it.  There are also those that have made a modest investment, and then turned a tidy profit; like the high school senior who managed to send his older siblings to college on his earnings in the Universe.

Read the full article here.

Nice to see how they continue develop the game, it must generate tons of money for the owners.

I've tried this game half a dozen times now, there's something interesting there (skillbased, sci-fi) but the "mob sweating" just feel so awkward that I quit after just an hour or so. I would like to have fun before investing in weapons and ammo.

And the "real money transfer"-thing, how does that affect the playerbase. I'd expect a VERY greedy world where everybody try to trick you. Is it so?

Last time I played they changed all the UGLY avatars to something more appealing. Well done, I really couldn't stand the old ones.

I played this game in early beta and stayed with it for quite a while. All these stories you hear that people can play this game for free are full of sh!t.

Playing for free means running around exploring but not being able to do anything. Begging for money most of the time like I've seen the annoying people do or standing around socializing. That's about it, if you think you're gonna jump in this game and load up on weapons and gear then start playing guess again.

it gets very expensive to maintain playing this game if you're really going to play and not F off all the time. You want to mine? pay, you want to hunt and get loot? pay, you want to repair your items? pay it's all BS.

Plus they are years behind in what they were suppose to release in content just like this article on space. They were talking about this back in 1999-2000.

Let me sum up Project Entropia for those that never played it or those that are but are fooling themselves.

1. Big money investment to be able to REALLY play the game.

2. Some of the most annoying people out of any other game.

3. Any new MAJOR content takes them many years to roll out

Good luck and have fun if you try this title

Hopfully the Cryengine can provide us and the devs with more options for the development.

And when it's came to EU discussions; You can make proffit on it, but it will take time. And knowing the market is A-O.

In the beginning I trowed in 100-200PEDs/month. Now I go slightly plus. But planing your trip and a good soc (guild) helps alot!

I made an account on this game a few years back. I play it every now and then. Sometimes i play for hours sometimes minutes. I've paid in maybe $200 over the course of those 3 years and found the game to be enjoyable all in all. It's definately not an easy game. Right now it has a problem with my Vista (crashes to desktop when i die) so i don't play so much.

I'm very much looking forward to the new engine but with the speed in which they develop things and looking at the daunting task of rebuilding a game on a new engine i don't see that happening for a couple years. I'd expect it to go through the same stages as if it were a totally new game. Alpha testing, beta testing and such. I think they're overhyping the cryengine2 move to entice players to start now knowing full well it's going to be 2 or 3 years before the game is using it.

I play it once in awhile also. But just like copeland i have the crash on dien issue to. PE said they wont fix it til more people use vista(got to love it).
I did find out that the crash is related to the sound that plays when you die, but I refuse to play a game with no sound.

The Vista sound crash bug was fixed in a patch a while back.

Was it in the last two months? Because I put the ticket in on dec12 it took them almost a week to respond but they said they were aware and to disable sound. If its fixed Ill be jumping back in.

I am like the OP, I've heard of the game but never really looked into it. I basically attributed it to being a Second Life 2. But after reading this, I apparently was totally wrong. The inclusion of space definitely sounds like fun and something new and refreshing. I may have to check this out when it comes online.