Originally posted by Meridion

Another "We as a company see to it that you get the most comical, color-laden, ridiculous, deteriorated star wars experience ever to be developed".

You know, the whole "clone-wars"-lookalike already had me rolleyeing 18 months ago.

If you "Phantom menace is teh best thing evar"-people can overlook the fact that LA has been a**r**ing the franchise for a decade now culminating in the comical cataclysm that is TOR, good for you. But in my book, even the star trek flaying over at Cryptic pales compared to what they do to Star Wars.

And no, I'm not talking about "serious bizniz", I love Warhammer for example, I love not-so-serious approaches, but Star Wars was never meant to be a comic book lookalike for kids. I know LA decides what is SW and what isn't. I don't give a damn; SW is what the movies of the 70s conveyed, anything else is bullshit.

M

+1

Originally posted by rygar218

We  need Cyberpunk already!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberpunk

Amen! Some bright spark really should develop William Gibson styled MMO :D

from Play.com:

"
# 60-days Game Time - Useable by both new and current players.

# Instant War Access - Retail box buyers will receive an in-game certificate that will give them instant access to Factional Warfare, while other users have to spend considerable time earning the right to fight for the factions.

# Career Guide - For the first in the history of EVE, CCP will offer players goals in the form of what career they want to pursue and the inside advice on how to get there.

# VIP Pass - Players are told how they can invite their friends and give them VIP Access to EVE Online in the form an extended trial and if the friend becomes a subscriber the player will get 30-days of free game time added to their account.

# Special Edition Ship - Players will get an exclusive ship in-game. It is special type of a shuttle that is ideal to move things around due to much increased cargo space.

# EVE Online coming to retail: The boxed version includes all nine previously released EVE Online expansions.

"

Since it costs about the same as 2 months sub, it's not a bad deal at all...plus it saves you downloading an arseload of data if you have capped internets like myself :(

Originally posted by Taram

Well most of the newest ships added to the game have catered to 'non capital' pilots.  A empire 'carrier' that can ferry assembled ships (not many... a BC and a couple cruisers max) about helps the empire denizens a lot with moves etc.  ...A lot of Mobile merc corps in empire love them too (talking about the orca by the way) as it allows us to move our smaller personal ships from contract to contract much more quickly and efficiently.  Flying 4 cruisers in an orca 20 jumps is a LOT more time efficient than flying each ship then flying back, then getting another shpi, then flying back... etc.

Sounds good...I hated going back and forth for bloody ages, carting ships around whenever we periodically moved into a new area.

Also the MOST recent ships and changes have been to BS and lower ships.  Improvements to blackops... changes to stealth bombers (won't say improvements as I'm not fond of the new ones) and a whole new class of cruiser hulls (which are currently woefully overpriced but hopefully will come down) which will make life VERY interesting in EVE.  We have already deployed a few of the Strategic Cruisers within Noir. but they're pretty much only toys for the obscenely wealthy right now as they run about 2bil to buy and fit.

Nicely, I'm more into nimble cruiser  or smaller sized ship combat...I know I have Amarr and Minnie HAC's so shouldn't be too much hassle to train the skills for these either :)

As to my comment about getting 1 guy through a camp and then getting your whole fleet in without caring about the camp lets just say we make creative use of several new game mechanics ;)  I would rather not go into TOO much detail because not too many people appear to have picked up on it yet.

Roger that

...All ECM ships (except the Kitsune) lost their bonus to ECM range, which means all ECM ships are now under 100km away from the fight. ...

A load of new EW skills had only recently come into play when I left. I'm not sure if the system is the same now, but yep...sounds good. Jamming people from your own little safety pocket was a giant load of balls in the first place...glad they changed it :)

 

 Thanks for your inputs guys, it's very helpful

Hey all. I played EVE for a couple years after launch..mainly in a 0.0 merc corp based out in delve.

For bittersweet reasons, I unsubbed my accounts in 2006 just before Revelations came out, but have recently been getting a craving to check the game out again. So, help me out

Of course, I'm not looking for 3 years of patch notes, I'll check those out myself...but I'd like to hear some viewpoints on any and all aspects, from market prices to pvp dynamics to politics, from players who have seen the game evolve over the past couple of years and might be able to draw a comparison between how it currently is and how it once was :)

Thanks!

Aye, I had some real good times gaming with Planetside...I've played many traditional FPS over the years before and since and there really isn't anything like PS was when it was in it's prime. 

I was always willing to put up with client side hit detection and the aging graphics, as long as the playerbase was strong. Unfortunately, despite fond memories, without the players it wasn't an MMO anymore in anything but name and became a lacklustre and tedious FPS. With a strong playerbase the MMO aspects and variety of playstyles were amazing...200 vs. 200 outdoor battles, while a combination of crack and zerg troops simultaneously sieged inside a base were hours spent in front of a PC screen I do not regret one bit.

It was those experiences that have meant I do not settle for less nowadays when it comes to MMO's, hence I have been playing standard online FPS and single player games for a couple of years now in my free time. Game developers and publishers really should wake up to the potential that a game geared and marketed toward the FPS playerbase (yes, I appreciate that there is crossover) and based upon the fundamental premise of Planetside holds. Integrating true MMO gaming, hundreds and thousands of gamers simultaneously playing together, into the FPS genre is something that has real potential to explode.

Despite the technology existing and the target playerbase obvious...I've not seen or heard about anything that appears like it will deliver the goods yet and to be honest I doubt anything will, until a certain misconception that the MMO prefix is only relevant to the RPG genre is shattered and buried.

Best of luck to the Jumpgate team  Looks like it could be pretty cool.

Originally posted by maboroshi

Originally posted by rpgmachine

Originally posted by maboroshi

Originally posted by Jelanen 
And please don't complain that you won't get to see the high end content.  ...  No, you want to go there because its tough to get there.  Welcome to real life, take a number and wait your turn.

I don't ever post from work but this just left me gobsmacked.

I want to see the all the areas of the game because I PAY for it.  ALL of it....

You have the right to do anything within the given boundaries and rules of the game, but you do NOT have the right for it to be given to you on a plate.

I don't ask for it "on a plate".  (see 'Scaleable Instances' above).   But even if I did, you don't have jurisdiction over what 'rights' I have to access game content, how much and under what conditions.  Geez.  What is this 'tougher than thou' stuff.  (oh wait... this is a GUY thing isn't it?! )

 I never said I had jurisdiction over anything, I don't even play WoW...I'm simply stating a hard fact.

 As a consumer you have certain rights given to you by the game owners, none of which include the right to experience all game content if you are not able or willing to invest the time set by inherent game mechanics to experience said content. As far as the "Scaleable Instancing", Instancing by it's very nature takes away a lot of the traditional PvP, conflict, competition and immersion qualities of MMORPG's. Filling a virtual world with instances, scaled or otherwise is a sure way to ruin the MMO aspect almost entirely....it's a pretty clear method for handing things to people on a plate, in my opinion.

 Not sure what or why you are talking about any kind of "tougher than thou...GUY thing" doesn't seem at all relevant to be honest.

 Some casual players play for social reasons, others just like to play in small chunks at their own pace and of course a lot of people cannot dedicate the amount of time required to reach the higher level content of most MMO's. 

Exactly!  I want  WoW lite.  You can pay for access to special areas for bashing Onxyia and getting your sword of uber-peen.  I just want to be able to access to what's on my game disks..  I'm not playing the WoWRaid game.  I'm playing the core game that I wish developers would spend more time on instead of catering to raiders.  EQ had special servers I believe - Blizz should look into it. 

 Have you ever considered trying out another game, because it's highly unlikely Blizzard will ever introduce the kind of WoW lite servers you'd like to play, anymore than they would introduce 5x XP servers or reduced subs for people who don't want to raid . It sounds like you are basically disatisfied with WoW because the devs have decided to give it a strong raid bias (basically because this is an easy way to bulk out an item based game with no real substance), and yet you feel like you should be able to experience and access everything you want to, when you want to in game... because you pay a monthly fee and bought the CD's.

 I certainly do not mean to patronise you, but that just isn't the way MMO's work...ever. You put in a certain amount of time or manpower,  and you get rewarded with items, content, skills or sometimes nothing at all. I'm not saying I like this, but in a material sense that is undoubtedly the way it is. Of course, in a social sense MMO's can be evaluated in an entirely different way.

 I'm not disagreeing with your sentiment that players should be able to do as they wish, when they wish...because I agree with you to an extent. It's just not the way 99% of MMO's are designed. The vast majority of MMO's are loaded with invisible barriers, restrictions and unbalancing factors to the point where after a while they become a point of contention and eventually a joke. Players end up resenting the game they play and wait hopefully for the next game to come along and offer what they wanted in the first place. When games come along that offer substance over grinding to unsatisfying long term goals then perhaps this wish will become reality. Hopefully that will happen sooner rather than later, but I fear the success of WoW will deter big investors from anything groundbreaking for some time to come.

 In the time I spent in Guild Wars back when it was a very young game, I would have agreed with the reviewer that the community was pretty bad.

 However, although I couldn't state what the GW community is like currently, I can't imagine it being worse than the nest of leet kiddies and retards that can be found upon logging into any WoW server.

 The fact that WoW has received a 9 and an 8 in community scores is quite literally hilarious.

Originally posted by maboroshi

Originally posted by Jelanen 
And please don't complain that you won't get to see the high end content.  You can't excel in anything without putting the time and energy into it.  Would you really want to visit this high end content if it was so easy to get to that a jury-rigged, slapped-together bunch of strangers could waltz in?  No, you want to go there because its tough to get there.  Welcome to real life, take a number and wait your turn.

I don't ever post from work but this just left me gobsmacked.

I want to see the all the areas of the game because I PAY for it.  ALL of it....

 No you don't...you pay a token fee for access to a game server. You pay for the fair use of a game, but you don't own it's content. You have the right to do anything within the given boundaries and rules of the game, but you do NOT have the right for it to be given to you on a plate. I'd like to think that a vast majority would agree that achievement without some kind of challenge is shallow, totally meaningless and at the end of the day...pointless.

 I barely play any MMO's anymore, to be honest I am sick to death of the current state of the genre, but I have been both a casual (few hrs a week) and a hardcore gamer (18 hrs a day) across a vast array of MMO's. In my opinion, a true casual gamer is not concerned about whether a hardcore gamer wants to spend ridiculous hours inside the game world or whether the hardcore gamer is level 200 while the casual gamer hasn't left newbie village yet. As long as both players can achieve goals and gain new experiences in game, I've never understood why there is any kind of problem for casual players as long as the game ensures this is possible with the bare minimum of grinding.

 Some casual players play for social reasons, others just like to play in small chunks at their own pace and of course a lot of people cannot dedicate the amount of time required to reach the higher level content of most MMO's. It's all cool, I'm certainly not knocking anyone's playstyle or situation. However, in my experience a good deal of "casual" gamers have always had a chip on their shoulder that they cannot achieve the same in-game results as someone who is glued to their computer chair, playing ridiculous hours. My opinion is that if you are bothered by hardcore gamers having more in-game assets or levels than you, you are NOT a casual gamer...you have the attitude and mindset of a hardcore gamer with not enough time or motivation on his hands.

 Being spoon fed rewards with little to no time or mental investment is never going to appeal to the hardcore players and those who choose not to/are not able to devote the same amount of time as their hardcore peers, dislike the fact that they are not achieving at the same pace relative to the hardcore crowd. The concept that these two groups of people want the same grand rewards but with totally different levels of commitment and challenge is completely incompatible with any kind of game design that I know of. Thus, in recent years game designers have diluted many of the concepts that made the old school MMO's good games and introduced "casual" MMO's.

 Most "casual" MMO's now simply give people what they want, with little to no time or skill investment, a great way to create a successful MMO that appeals to the masses, but a completely shite way to make a game with substance and longevity. On the other hand most "hardcore" MMO's offer a similar level of content and substance as the "casual" MMO's just with vastly increased grindfests. Therein lies the problem, grinding and lootbased MMO's, of which both sides are guilty and 99% of the genre is populated.

 When MMO's are developed which implement a higher level of  thought and human skill into in-game actions it won't matter whether you play 18 hours a day or 3 hours a week, your avatar will be as good as you are and the retarded debate over whether "casual" is better than "hardcore" will finally end.

 As for guilds...well there's nearly always a guild for everyone's playstyle, and if you can't find one that's right for you...play solo and build an extensive friends list  

Originally posted by Brainy 

... in UO its the same thing 1 in 20 servers and its still dead?  Doesnt seem so in demand from that perspective huh, otherwise maybe there would be more FFA PVP servers and they would be full and not dead?

Just have to run the math, its really not that difficult.

I could log into several old school UO EMU servers that have literally thousands of online players right now...FFA PvP is alive and kicking and always will be.

The problem with PvP in MMO's currently is that games are trying to combine a concept rooted in player skill and tactics with the traditional PvE concept of loot based gaming. When decent MMO's that revolve around player skill are developed, the genre will become far more appealing to the FPS crowd as well as the existing MMO PvP communities.

 Apparently, there are over 85,000 players simultaneously playing Counter-Strike at any point in time...not to mention the plethora of other successful skill based PVP games out there. Games like the Battlefield series have already combined an RPG progress element of unlocking new weapons and skills to huge success. The math is pretty clear to me...good PvP games are in HUGE demand.

Only time will tell if the MMO developers are willing to break the chain of EQ and upcoming WoW clones and invest the time and resources into producing the next gen of PvP MMO's, but until then I'll guess we'll have to make do with the half arsed shreds of hope that people like the OP provide. Peace.

A Fallout MMO has massive potential...the CRPG's were great :)

However, it would be a great tragedy if they simply reskinned WoW with a Fallout theme.

The concept art on the Stray Bullet Games website looks like a very intriguing combination of sci-fi and fantasy...which sounds very interesting indeed! A great sci-fi / sci-fi fusion PvP-Centred MMO would be a dream come true :)

I'll definitely keep an eye out for updates on this project, best of luck Stray Bullet!

I'd heard a lot of bad and good about this game, so I decided to try the free trial to judge for myself.

It's basically pure item/level based combat, like 99.9% of MMO's, but after taking a few chars into their mid 20's and getting into D-Grade items I am already finding the grind pretty tedious to be honest. I'd love to try out the PvP in this game, it does look pretty decent, but there is no way in hell I am grinding for the best part of a year to do so..

Once you get past the swarms of bots that plague the newbie areas (GG NCSoft), there is a pretty large community that is always present in the main cites. It's certainly worth a try...I'm subbing for the next month to give the game a fair chance.

This game has a great deal of potential, a fantastic skill system and probably the best community I have ever encountered in an MMO. The financial troubles of Nevrax have been going on a long time, so a new company taking over Ryzom could potentially be a very positive thing and take the game to new heights.

The free trial now has no level cap and the starter island is always busy with plenty to do...so why not show support for this great and original sandbox game by playing the UNLIMITED FREE TRIAL now! You have nothing to lose!  

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Originally posted by cochi

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Originally posted by MMO_Man
Is CCP going to send all the Eve players over here to vote again like they did last year? "please go to MMORPG.com and vote for Eve".

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...All those WoW-players who whined about them not winning because Eve guys rushed over... They should seriously consider why a 7.5million mmorpg has less voters than a 150k one.

Draw your conclusions yourself

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I conclude that EVE will most likely be awarded Best Game, PvP, Graphics for two reasons.

a.) EVE harbours an extraordinary amount of forum whores who, if they are not already frequenting this site, will read CCP's "plz vote for us, plz" post and flock here to vote like ducks to a loaf of bread. When you create a game where people can surf the net while their skills train...this is what happens.

b.) I grew increasingly weary of the game and cancelled my 30+m sp PvP spec character a while ago, but nevertheless EVE actually does blow the vast majority of MMO's out of the water. This doesn't actually mean EVE is a great MMO...just that there is an awful lot of pure unadulterated crap in the MMO world. Anyhow, there are only a handful of MMO's that are in the same league as EVE currently, and these games do not fulfil the criteria stated in point a.

Moving on, the mainstream opinion of what is "good" is often ridiculously and horribly borked...and to be honest most people just use awards as a personal e-peen extension, to bolster blind faith in something, rather than using their brain and forming an objective opinion. To be blunt, you have to be a complete fool to take awards too seriously...remember we live in an era where Jessica Simpson wins people's choice awards.

That being said, I voted for Darkfall as most anticipated game because I am very eager to try it out and they are taking *fecking ages* making it.

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Originally posted by Amathe

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Originally posted by rpgmachine

On a final note, it is never a good idea to compare in game ethics to any kind of real life equivalent...it's pretty self explanatory why they are totally different things. 

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You are quite mistaken.

We are never challenged more in our ethical behavior than when we can "get away" with something. For example, look at the crime sprees you see in the wake of a natural disaster, with looting, rape, and murder. Why does that happen? Because people are suddenly in a position where they can get away with doing things they would otherwise be answerable for doing. You don't really know if you are an ethical person or not until you can choose right from wrong without any consequence other than the knowledge of what kind of person your behavior makes you.

If you go online and act like a jerk just because you can get away with it, don't think for a moment that doesn't reflect on your moral character or lack of it. You will not be punished - other than the knowledge that you are in fact an asshole.

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I understand what you are saying, but I don't agree with your reasoning and comparison of the real world to a virtual world.

I'm not saying that arseholes don't flourish on the internet...because that is obvious. A great deal, if not ALL people will act and do things differently when given the prospect of anonymity, online of offline. However, trying to apply this notion to an environment where people are free to roleplay and "act" via a virtual avatar is short sighted. It's a very popular and easy viewpoint to say a person's in-game actions are a reflection of their true personality...personally I find Teamspeak to be a better indicator of character, and even that is inaccurate sometimes.

What I actually said before was not to compare virtual events to their real-life equivalent. People completely overreact when subjects like this are tackled...in reality, what happened? Some virtual characters got "killed" and needed to respawn. The sentiment behind their mourning didn't change, the fact that they cared about a friend that died didn't change. Those are the things that matter. 

If the mourner's feelings were hurt because of the actions of a ganksquad on a rampage, to be honest they are missing the point. They aren't mourning the loss of "XxXGandalfXxX", they are mourning for a real, flesh and blood person. Expecting a vast majority of people to hold any sort of serious respect for a virtual funeral is unrealistic, even more so when the proceeding is to be held in a PVP zone.

At the end of the day, a lot of people play MMO's so they do not have to deal with real life crap, let alone anybody else's emotional baggage. As far as I am concerned, in a virtual world, as long as people are playing their subscription fees and aren't cheating they have the right to do whatever they please. Does that mean that sometimes people get upset? Yes, undoubtedly, but I'd personally rather have it that way than play online in an overly controlled and sterile environment.

The bottom line is, don't take virtual events too seriously. Not everybody will view the game in the same light as you do and they all have the right to their own playstyles. If you put an inappropriate level of emotional attachment into something which you have no inherent control over, you are performing the virtual equivalent riding a motorbike blindfolded and expecting to get home safely.

Does any of this have anything to do with Open PvP...No, not really, but still it's a lesson that a great deal of people it seems have yet to learn.

To be blunt, this article has very little, or anything to do with Open PvP at all.

However, if anyone ever holds an in-game funeral for me (which I sincerely hope they do not), I would find it highly amusing if a group decided to steamroll over the occasion

On a final note, it is never a good idea to compare in game ethics to any kind of real life equivalent...it's pretty self explanatory why they are totally different things.