Hope you enjoy it.  It's quite different from Eve from what I hear, so don't hesitate to ask questions.  I'll answer them here if I can... otherwise you can ask on the main boards although we have two or three well known trolls.  We love them anyway.

I like your style.  Welcome, and hope you enjoy your stay.  You will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us.

Originally posted by nyxium

Might as well dig out an old copy of Frontier or Elite. Those were the days, they should so MMO that one, but cash shop less, a euro or dollar a month sub instead, they would still make cash.

You may enjoy Vendetta Online, at least until some of the steam vents.  They say it's similar to both games you just mentioned, no micro-transactions either.

I've been playing Vendetta Online since alpha (2003), and have had a continuous subscription since it was possible to subscribe.  It's actually a lot cheaper if you buy in 2-year increments... I'd recommend trying it one month for $9.99 (free download) and then if you like it put down $160 and you're all set for two years!

As others have said, the combat is where VO truly shines, whether it's PvP or PvE.  I love the feeling of being free in space and having six axes of control.  The fights are like dances; visual, kinesthetic, based purely on skill.  I suggest getting a gamepad or a couple joysticks once you get a feel for it, it truly enhances the action.

I can't say enough good things about this game... it's a homerun walk in the park with neon billboards lighting the way.  If you give it time it will draw you in and make you feel like you are part of a vast, otherworldy universe.

Some brief reasons why I love this game:

The full writeup is here:

http://ore.lefora.com/2011/06/05/ore-completes-vos-first-player-owned-capship/#post0

For those of you who are not familiar with the story behind player owned cap ships, these have been long anticipated and eagerly awaited.  The crafting tree to make one of these is massive; one player once calculated that it would take a single individual something like a year to make one.  This is a significant achievement.

As I understand it, once you have built a cap ship if it gets destroyed you can buy it back for a "mere" 500,000 credits, which is a hiccup compared to the effort required to make one in the first place.  It will be interesting to see what the guild [ORE] does with this new force in the galaxy.

If you look at the screenshots, turrets are clearly visible on the dorsal and ventral sides.

Congratulations go out to [ORE] and to all who participated in this effort.

For those that actually get the William James reference, I'm not suggesting that playing VO is religious, just about as fun as surfing down a new wave of powder at 9,000 feet.  There are so many different types of PvP situations and combat in VO that I felt impelled to write about a few of them:

1. The Duel

Also known as 1v1, duels can happen any place at any time.  When you see another pilot staring you down at 1,000m and you know it's on, that's when a duel happens.  Duels can be official or unofficial, and the official ones will get you ranked on the main website using the same rating system as chess tournaments.  Unofficial ones can carry just as much clout, however, since the userbase is sufficiently small that you will very quickly build up a word of mouth reputation whether you like it or not.  There is an unspoken code of ettiquete that goes along with dueling; hail before you begin, never run from a fight that you started, never interrupt another duel in progress, and certain weapons are off limits.  It's like a 17th century gentleman's club, and Sedina b8 is the garden.

2. The Chance Encounter

Sometimes two ships pass in the night and they happen to be mortal enemies belonging to warring clans, or the subject of personal Vendettas, or the predator and prey in that shady buisiness of space piracy.  The only warning you get may be the sound of incoming weapons fire.  The playing field is wide open, chases can run across systems, around stations, into and away from the Strike Force protesting the clash of violence.  Trickery and deception are essential here, as most often fighting by the rules will only get you killed.

3. The Furball

Two groups of players battling for dominance in a massive killfest, the sector doesn't really matter as much as the chaotic ballet taking place and the stories that will be told about it afterwards.  Tactics are complex and varied, and having a good leader is essential.  Communication between group members can be with text or with voice, but in the best furballs it's not even necessary; you just know where you're supposed to be and count on your teammates.  These battles can stretch long into the night until one side has exhausted their supply of credits, focus, or energy.

4. The Station Conquest

Bombers primed with chaos swarms warping in at vectors precalculated to take them on an optimal trajectory toward their target.  Streaking in they hit and run, dodging the turrets and the enemy fighters.  If you are playing defense then it's a rush to keep your station's defenses healthy and pick off incoming bombers whenever you get the chance.  This form of combat is a contest of wills as much as anything else as it can go on for hours and involve morphing alliances of guilds and players.  Once the station's defenses drop there are two minutes of frenzied dogfighting outside the station before the first person to dock takes control.  Even then it's not over as the station will be in a severely weakened state and will need to be guarded while its defenses recharge.  Stations will change hands two, three, even four times before a victor is decided.  These battles are important because it's only at the conquerable stations that one can manufacture the components necessary to craft a pilotable capital ship.

5. The Organized Event

Impromptu or planned events often take place, and these will pit pilots against each other in unusual circumstances and rules.  Some examples include the weekly nation war where survival tactics are key as the last team standing wins, armed tube races, "bus" wars involving the least lethal weapons and ships, capture the flag... players getting together and having fun, caring less about who wins or loses and enjoying the lighter side of combat.

edit: e.g. here's a video to show what I'm mean:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2FKRScBfpw

These are just a few scenarios I wanted to illustrate, I'm sure as you play you will find many more.

I apologize, I initially posted from my phone, the post has been edited.

I've often heard that Eve has 'Chess' like strategy to it in PvP, and I can understand the appeal in that regard.

Just saying hello from that other space game, Vendetta Online. I've been running into a lot of comparisons between the two recently, on YouTube, this site, and others. I myself have never tried Eve, but my brother played the 14 day trial. I thought I would start this thread as a diplomatic gesture between two communities of space mmos. We both enjoy drifting through and exploring space, so we have that in common.

A primary source of my enjoyment has been writing and designing missions, and then seeing others experience and discuss my work. There is something about being out in space that gives a feeling of depth, expansiveness, and freedom. I personally would have a hard time being convinced to play anything other than VO, but it is a fascinating genre and the fact that both games spawned around the same time and have survived this long is a testament to the need for such games to exist. I think I am somewhat of a unique case, however. I was an alpha tester and constant subscriber, still am.

Anyway, much respect to Eve and to CCP for creating and maintaining a work of art. It's good to see any game that sparks the imagination of people to look skyward.

Originally posted by Meowhead

MUDs, MUCKs and MUSHes have had all sorts of variant of those commands.  This seems like a particularly weird complaint to me, because using various terminology for private communication predates graphical MMORPGs.

I also got started playing MUDs and MUSHes which in my mind are pretty clearly the precursors to MMORPGs.  Interestingly enough, the term MMORPG is no more valid a descriptor than "Multi-User Shared Hallucination", it's just generally accepted.

The english language changes, different words are used to describe the same thing.  Far from being a problem I see this as a social commentary... it depends on what people value and how they choose to communicate.  We call these worlds "Massive" because never before was it possible to connect thousands of users due to the limitations of technology, now it's a matter of course so maybe it's time for a new term.

The thing about a pure sandbox is that it's nothing without the motivation of players.  Rules should be very simple, and possibilities should be based on emergent behavior.  I would like to see a world that is partially self-organizing, where cooperation among players is favored.  This would require a strong nemesis such as an expanding AI that competes with the players for space and resources.

The world should be intuitive, dream-like, stable enough to support large scale structure, with the possibility of being changed by the imagination.  Kind of like the computer simulation in Ender's Game.

The world needs to have strong supporting mythos, in the form of a detailed backstory or a set of archetypes expressed in the game world such as original language, writing, artifacts or totems.  The importance of the player should be somewhere between heroic and civilian, with the possibility of oscillating between the two over the course of play.

I think the game Vendetta Online fits some of these descriptions through its implementation of the PCC, a group of players that changes the game's interface and writes missions based on the backstory.  The process of peer review is very important, so that work remains cooperative and players don't end up canceling-out each other's efforts.

Here's a video I made hilighting some recent action at one of the conquerable stations in grey:

http://www.youtube.com/user/viperguild?blend=1&ob=5#p/a/u/0/J5TUoPZRB44

An alliance of sorts had formed between three guilds surrounding the conquerable station, and a fourth guild was trying to break in by capturing and holding it which sparked some intense and cool combat.

I've made a series of video tutorials that might give you an idea of what the opening game looks like. You can find them on youtube at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wH-Fs5pTS6s&feature=&p=3ED0EA37C49FABBB&index=0&playnext=1

Bear in mind that this is only one of many paths a new character can take.

Hello,

Phaserlight here, long time player to tell you a little about my experience with a cool feature of the Vendetta Online community called the Player Contribution Corps (PCC).  What I've done through the PCC is write a series of missions following various story threads based on the backstory which have been reviewed by the community and implemented to the actual game server.  As a creative minded individual this gives VO a sandbox feel for me, and I take a sense of ownership and greater involvement in the game world as a direct result.

Getting into the PCC is a process, requiring 25 hours of game time logged and a 500 word essay on Trust, Maturity and Involvement submitted to the dev team.  That being said, anyone can apply to the PCC regardless of programming skills or developer experience, I only happened to be one of the early players to do so.  Before you wonder if "I have to pay to develop this game?" the PCC is a purely optional feature of the community for those interested.  Most of my enjoyment comes from watching others experience my work and discuss it on the chat channels at no additional effort to them.

The kinds of tools available to mission writers are numerous and powerful.  I can spawn dozens of capital ships out of thin space, then watch them slug it out or explode one by one (of course doing so may not necessarily make a good mission).  I can give the player 100's of cubic units of the universe's most valuable ore, or send bounty hunters after them each time they dock at a station.  In fact the possibilities are so unbounded the danger becomes designing a mission that could potentially overload the game server, something I am constantly aware of after one of my missions began causing groups of vultures to hang around every major station taking pot shots at passers by.

That is why the process of community review is important.  In my opinion the only reason VO is not truly sandbox is that the changes to the game world are not instantaneous, but must go through a process of playtesting on a separate server in which they are polished and brought up to standard.  This generally lasts a couple months, and it creates a more cohesive experience for the new player.  Rather than being presented with a hundred individual options of various quality like some open web based choose-your-own adventure, they are presented with missions that actually go somewhere  and have been polished and playtested.  It's a collaborative designer's haven.

After joining the PCC, you'll likely spend your first couple of weeks learning how to use the web-based editor (which is rather intuitive to begin with) designing simple missions.  From there, you'll begin to see the true possibilities of the editor including multiple paths through the same mission, numerous completion or failure conditions, and linking series of missions in arcing story trees.  Although it was released in 2004, I see VO as being in its early phases making this an exciting time to be involved in design.  If you are a creative individual let me encourage you to check out VO and if you click with the game world join the PCC and lend your own talent to the course of this fascinating and evolving online universe.

I'm sorry to hear about your experience, Shelby13.  I think you'll find any online community has its share of trolls, Vendetta Online being no exception.  The sandbox style gameplay means that you can be killed anywhere, so new players may feel griefed the first time they are obliterated.  However, I think if you stick with the game a little while you'll find that avoiding combat is relatively simple and the community at large is generally very friendly and helpful.  I am part of a guild that specializes in protecting traders and new players.  We maintain a website, a list of active pirates, and an in-game help channel (4357).  Most of the time players will eagerly answer anyone asking a question on general chat.  There are also players who devote their time entirely to helping new players become acclimatized through the mentoring system.  The thing is, people aren't psychic, you have to ask for help.  I hope you give the community a second chance, if you do I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

The second part of your post I wanted to address was about extortion being encouraged.  From the prey's perspective it may seem as though the predator is carrying all the cards, but in fact if you are killed in monitored space and are in good standing with the local faction your attacker will be hunted by the strike force and will have lost hours and hours worth of faction points.  There are also turrets which defend nation space from intruders, so as long as you keep to nation space the advantage is yours.  Of course there is nowhere completely safe, and in lawless greyspace anything goes.  Once you reach Combat/Trade level 4 you will have access to equipment that makes getting away from an attacker virtually assured unless you are in the slowest trade ship in game.  Most of these game mechanics make things harder for the extortionist, the opposite of encouraging it.  Usually if you don't want to fight someone, you'll have no problems unless you are running your head against a wall.

As far as there being no community leaders or activities, these things just take a little time.  I'll be the first to admit there is a learning curve to this game but once you get it, you'll find that there are things happening all the time whether it's helping a friend hunt hive queens so they can build that new blaster or flying patrol with a guildmate on the lookout for pirates or (from a pirate's perspective) stalking traders through the lawless wastes of greyspace.  First impressions are varied, I hope I have given you pause to consider coming back around for a second or at least kept you from walking away with a bad taste in your mouth.

-Phaserlight [VPR] guild council

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.