This were exactly my thoughts when Eve Online upgraded their requirements....and sadly I had to stop playing an amazing game because of it. 

Not so Universal. Valid only for North America and Europe. 

You are right, Eric, you don't really have to orbit to mine, though to keep in motion assists in making yourself a little harder to hit, always a good idea. 

BTW, I amost always play MMORPGS solo at the beggining and then later on, when I get a feel for the game, I enter in corporation/guilds. What must be remembered is that although the game is the same for all, we don't all play the same game. And this holds specially true for Eve.

 I play because communities made me realize something extremelly powerfull about mmorpgs. We all play the same game, yet everyone plays it a different way for a different purpose, in fact making it a different way, so we end up playing different games that connect between themselves. And that concept is extremelly powerfull. Of course, this shines best in sandbox styled games, but I've seen it at work in all mmorpgs I've played. 

For example, in Ragnarok Online I was part of the Save The Porings movement, just because it was fun, but it meant not hunting several creatures. This added a simple layer of  excitement to the normal game. I also loved playing a Merchant as a primary, and hunt on my own, which was quite uncommon, but I did it because I enjoyed it a lot. I even took merchadise from people and sold it with a little margin, paying them if it sold, and because people knew it was my primary, they tend to trust in my merchant in ways they didn't trust other merchants. It was a completelly different kind of game from the one played by other people. 

But of course, in my experience, nothing surpases Eve Online in this. 

Gallente as I am, Truth behind words I see.

 Indeed, as Gallente myself I can see truth behind those words.

I don't think it's a bad article, it's just a badly titled and badly focused one. While remaining informative it misses the thing it needed to explain the most.

It's like people here said, you plan your skills for the ship you have or for the ship you want to fly.

 You are right, that could be a problem, but as they are rares, by definition, very few people will have significant ammounts of the items in question, so the economy serverwide would not be as badly affected. 

 There are no mortages in Goonzu, the banks don't lend money, so I wouldn't know if that's something that could happen. I would say no, but I'm not completely sure. 

 Very good explanation, although some info is missing, I think it reflects the reality of agent business quite well.

I would add that you can train some social skills that let you gain faction/agent standing, and that doing missions for one corporations gives not only pluses for that corporation, but minuses againts other corporations involved in that mission plot or simply opposed to the corporation youjust worked for. 

 In real world physics, ships wouldn't have top speed, they would have diminishing acceleration as speed gathers up, but the top speed doens't have a maximum, it merely has a limit it tends to. In this context, most space combat is useless, as running head to head is imposible, and turning aroud, deaccelerating and accelerating again behind your foe is ridiculous, as he would be out of any tracking device you have before you finish turning around. 

  What makes Goonzu good to play is that a lot of content is user driven (not generated, driven). Economy, politics, town owning, crafting, mount raising, supply gatherings, even some things as crazy as the time of day when the bonus xp for hunting or crafting is applied is decided by a player. 

This is what really sets it appart from other games, not the cute graphics. 

Ohh, I didn't know massive ships jumped that way, taht means Upper warrior's wars can emply a whole set of different skills and make things far more interesting.

 We were never war-dec'd, but a member of the alliance was. This particular member was a mining corporation, so several fighters from another corps in the aliance transferred temporalily to their corp to help protect them. 

What we learnt was that it's best to keep lookouts in every system entrance you need to protect, to give the miners the precious seconds they needed to jump to safety.  As we were doing this scouting in full fighting ships, we had to mantain several battles for control of certain lookout areas. This is where the friend declaration of enemies came in really handy, because as we begun learning eachenemie's tactics and bigger ships, we knew how much time we could remain in battle waiting for reinforcements before having to jump out, as we knew exactly who else could join this battle on their side and the ammount of firepower he could carry. 

For  the members of our own corporation that transferred, it was a big learning experience. 

 I've played EVE, nowdays I can't because I'm under Linux with an ATI card, and that means trouble in games.  I agree with the previous two posts, there are several things left out of this, although we should note is not a guide on leveling, but on character creation. 

As such I would have expected some information on the general type of ships/specializations that define how you start playing the game, for example, caldari affinity for missiles, or even the main differences between the ships they use, as some, for example, favor shields while others favor hull.  This is the type of info seriously missing from this article, as this could help to easen the burden of choices one is presented at start. It would also help people to get a character they feel confortable playing with. 

As a general leveling guide, it has errors and omissions as pointed. Also it lacks depth. In explaining rank benefits, it says rank I of caldari frigate operation lets you pilot that ship. It doens't explain, however, how do rank II and up modify that. It also doens't explain the existance of a skill tree that makes you learn some skills to unlock others. 

Overall, a real bad done ......guide?

Well, I can understand ultracute graphics driving people away, but in no way it's embarrasing. I got half of my office hooked into it, and we are not afraid to be seen playing it (except by the boss)

I'm playing Goonzu nowdays, and I can say it runs almost on every machine. The game is fun, you can play a lot of different styles of games in it. It's one of those rare games that are simple to play, yet have enough deepth that makes them interesting to master.

Besides the player based economy there's also the social/political player driven system, with the position of Goonzu or Goonzu ministers of the game open to anyone that can have a successful run for them.

To answer one question, yes, the minigame is still there, some play it, some don't, I simply love it.

No, Dofus 2.0 is the new version of this game. Wafku comes from the same people, has similar classes but it's a different kind of beast. In wafku, for example, if you cut every tree of a kind it takes a LOT longer to grow back, it has a live ecosystem of sorts that thrives for balance instead of mass colletcion skills. Also it's not divided by maps, it's a single big map, so it requires a little more computer power to run.

Dofus it's the better game, no doubt about it. It makes a lot more sense and has a lot more depth.

We Dofus players are waiting eagerly for this release :)