I've been playing this game for over six years, so I feel that I can share some perspective on it.  The server population tends to be a steady 20-40 players on at any given time, although this is lower than it has been in the past the game doesn't feel small partly due to the global chat.  The upside of this is that it's easy to make a name for yourself in whatever way you choose to play.  There's half a dozen active guilds and several new ones trying to get on their feet, each supporting a different cause which leads to the expected role-play / drama.  I'm part of the oldest guild in game (Vipers), and we have several enemy guilds so there's lots of targets to choose from.  After you subscribe joining a guild is probably the best way to keep things interesting.

The initial game is a bit of a grind, myself and others have successfully submitted missions to help with this.  If you play a mission called "Research Vessel Defense", "Party Errand", or "Water Distiller Needed" then you've played one of mine.  People are writing and creating stuff for this game all the time, which is part of what makes it great.  It started out with a couple guys getting together to code in one of their mom's basements, so the whole game has kind of a 'garage' feel to it.  There's still polish to it, but why don't you try it and see for yourself.  The devs are a creative and dedicated group, you'll see a lot of things in VO that you won't find elsewhere.

What's really kept me all these years is that it's just fun to play.  Like any classic game, there are these 30 seconds of intense action that get repeated and permutated so that it comes down to a few simple techniques in infinite combination.  If you want to contact me in game I go by 'Phaserlight' there also.

I think being a fatal hero is the most rewarding.  I want my kills to matter, and the risk of death should mean something.

To me Vendetta Online is a great sandbox game.  Genre: sci-fi, Play style: twitch, Era: future, Play Area: the known galaxy.  As a subscribed player I've written 46 missions to date, had them peer reviewed, and implemented to the game server.  If that's not sandbox I don't know what is.

It's easy, capital class ships have shields, fighters don't.

Player owned stations are coming once some things like the faction system, economy, and dynamic warfare get treated.

Vendetta Online.  I still have the box from when I purchased it in 2004.

Vendetta Online

http://www.vendetta-online.com

Yeah, it's an entirely different beast from Eve, but it's in space and has unrestricted PvP (with RP consequences of course).

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Originally posted by logangregor

1 less star but wait

 

only 2000 freaking more posts  (in my best kelso voice) "BURN!!"

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...never cried about a video game, [i]but[/i]

Oddly enough, I felt emotionally invested in the characters of Chrono Trigger my first time playing through...

...and raiding the Andrano Ancestral tomb (Morrowind) on my X-box alone in my apartment at 1 AM I started getting seriously creeped out.

In the same update, and almost as exciting to me, are the dynamically created combat missions based on Hive (the bad guys) growth and expansion.  Of course they still need a little ironing out, but it's very cool to see the direction VO is taking.  The Hive competes with players to mine ore from asteroids, using it to build new bots, sending them to take over new sectors, which generates new missions to clear them out...

Devs, you rock

EV: Escape Velocity, that little top-down space trader/combat RPG by Ambrosia SW.

Not sure if you're into the whole space genre but like myko said Vendetta Online is for mac, windows and linux, it's free to download and after the 8 hour trial it's 10$ a month. If you liked Escape Velocity, this is definitely worth a try: it's like EV-3D-Online, twitch combat and all.

Planeshift looks really interesting... I'm having problems downloading the installer though, hmm, "could not recognize file"...

edit: nm, working now

Hurray for postwhoring!

6'0"

158 lbs

24 year old male

Seriously, give Vendetta online a try. It's a twitch-based space combat/trader sim. There are experience points and license levels and more expensive ships, but pilot skill is the most important thing. It's kinda like Escape Velocity 3D online. There are also multiplayer cap ships! Check out this player made video

http://a1k0n.net/vendetta/TribalWarQT.mov

and this:

http://angelic.tk/degobar/vendetta.avi

The 8 hour free trial is definitely worth it.

Vendetta Online

Vendetta Online

World of Warcraft

Everquest I

Matrix Online

...in order of fun-ness

If you like the space genre... give Eve online or Vendetta online a try.

http://thehawks.free.fr/Vendetta_movie.mov

I'll prolly get flamed for saying this, but the Vendetta Online community is by far the most mature, active, helpful community I've found in any MMORPG, ever.  This includes devs and players.

Quoth X-play: "The Vendetta Online community, though small, is fantastically helpful and supportive. The VO forums are not filled with whiners. The game is not filled with jerks. "

Must be something about that whole space-genre-attracting-mature-players.  The community is honestly the only reason I still play the game.

Space MMOs definitely seem to require a more patient audience.

I like them tho... a nice break from the usual orcs, elves, magic swords and such.

Those battle scenes all featured 20+ players in the same sector with no noticable slowdown... network stability has always been one of Vendetta's plusses.

There's a brief turret POV scene in the second movie (third action shot with the larger crossharis)... it's basically the same HUD as the other ships with a few minor differences, and you can aim in any direction within your field of fire pretty much instantly.

Sound FX are exactly where they were five months ago, unfortunately... so, yeah, it sounds a little like a game from the 80's heh.  I nag about it once in a while but it seems to be pretty low on the dev's priority list.

Right now it seems their #1 priority is creating more PvE content.  They want to make the Hive dynamic so that it can invade human space, take over stations, and high level players will have to go on something like an epic raid to get them back.

The main draw for me right now are the race tracks (featured in video #2).  They record the top five times, and believe me, it comes down to milleseconds.  Kinda reminds me of that arcade game 'Cyber Sled' where you're racing down a tube, blowing up the competition ;).

Otherwise I'm not on all that much as the average number of players online seems to be anywhere from 20-80 on any given day.  It would be nice to see the (three) devs pull this off, but I'm pretty skeptical myself.  When you do have 80 people online tho, at least 40 of them are all fighting in cap ships in Sedina.  It's worth a look-see at least.

edit: oh, in case there was any confusion, I didn't make that first video, a player named "Starfisher" did

...oh my god.

I've been waiting for a game like this forever.

This looks awesome if they do it right... I really hope they can pull it off.