Eve Online. The one MMO to rule them all. Death has meaning here. It's tough, uncompromising, with few rules (beyond gaming the game and actively stealing accounts) and is designed to be flexible and player-owned and run to some extent, with them making the laws. Or not. More often not, come to think of it.
Much has been written about Eve. Not least this gloriously full colour early history of the game, 'Empires of Eve'. Funny story about that actually... heard about the book from /r/eve. It wasn't sold in the UK, although the author did state that if there was enough demand, then he would do something over here. I couldn't wait for this, of course. Oh no. So me, thinking I was clever, found a friendly American to send it to, who would then send it on. I didn't specify the way he would send it, but him being kind, assumed that I would want it as soon as possible. Doom! He fed-ex'd it. Postage cost, £109, with a receipt to prove it. My book had now cost me over £130.
Of course, as you are no doubt aware if you bothered to follow the link above, it is now available in the UK. Go me.
So anyway. The first time I tried Eve, I think I lasted approximately 5 minutes, as I undocked and looked at the UI. I couldn't really be arsed. On reflection it might have been better to leave it there.
Second time around, I had become more and more interested in it - because space and general stories of skulduggery - and a colleague at my work (same company, different team) played it, had been talking about it for a while. It sounded great - but not wishing to repeat the WoW experience, I deliberately kept away.
I eventually caved, and was in 'highsec' (the so-called safe area of the game) and joined a corporation (equivalent to WoW's guilds). Didn't really get on with them so tapped up my friend. His corp lived in 'nullsec' (the really no-holds-barred deadly area of the game) so I made preparations to move down there a mere 3 weeks after starting the game. He was guiding me through, except, at the crucial point I misunderstood his instruction to not enter the stargate as to enter it. There was, sadly, a 'gatecamp', set up by a gang of space pirates to separate people from their internet spaceships with as little fuss as possible. Duly separated from all my worldly goods, my toon came back to life where I'd started. The second try was a lot more successful, and the corp replaced my losses (as in the scheme of things it cost nothing to them).
And so began another glorious chapter of computer game addiction and time wasting. (There has been some writing that takes umbrage with using the word 'addiction'. I've used it for years, but appreciate why not. Addiction destroys lives, for me it's mere compulsion. I digress.)
Eve really hit my gaming time hard. The concept of 'death' within the game was dealt with by the Eve pilots being clones, you die, you wake up where you've set your home station (minus any brain implants). That said, the ship you were in, and all it's hold contents, are lost. They can get quite expensive, and seeing how time spent in the game is how you generally earn money, losing your craft and possessions actually means something.
In a fight, there were only 3 ways it could generally end: either party could escape, you win or you lose. The fights also generally only last a few seconds, but in that time and in the pursuit or flight if you're trying to catch/evade someone, your heart is pumping like it wants to jump out of your chest, your hands are going clammy, youforgetwhichbuttontopressandohmygod...
Post fight, you have all the marks of adrenaline fade, the shakes, the pale face; if nothing else, it's that intense feeling of excitement that kept me coming back again and again (and again) to Eve. Not many games do that to me - one other that springs to mind is Company of Heroes (vCoH) - a hard fought 40 minute online 2v2 on 'Rails & Metal' when I emerged at the end of the game drenched in sweat, hurting to blink because my eyes have dried out and mild exhaustion from concentration; a nice sit down with a cup of tea is in order. Perhaps even a slice of cake. Not even sure if I won that CoH game or not, it's the memory of the match itself that sticks. That is also my abiding memory of Eve.
One fight that I will always remember... I was flying around in my Wolf (a moderately expensive frigate) trying alternately to find/not be found by a Succubus (a very expensive frigate). He found me and caught me. I was shitting it, locked him (a necessary game mechanic to ensure your guns can target a ship), opened fire, turned armour repairers on when needed and prepared to die. Something was wrong. I wasn't dying. I began to slowly break his tank. This is it! I'm winning! Here we go! Payday! At which point he left the field with 'gf' ('Good Fight') in local (local space chat channel). What the-- I was winning! My first 1v1 and I was winning! And he left! Well of course he did. I had forgotten to turn on my warp disrupter (Eve's method for preventing escape), as I'd been concentrating on staying alive and killing him. Shucks. Chalk it up to experience, and go for a lie down.
Eve is also so much more than fighting. CCP (the developers) designed the game as a 'sandbox', where they set up the rules of the universe, and left the players to it. There have been mercenary outfits, banks, lottery syndicates, alliances, year long wars, trading and territory empires and scams. Mostly scams and alliance fights if I'm honest.
The beauty of Eve is that the economy was run for the players by the players - and as such proved to be somewhat of a microcosm of real-world economics - CCP employed an economics professor for a good few years to oversee the economy. The base of the economy, the 'money drip' if you like, that CCP set up was mostly driven by mining, specifically moon mining. Some moons in nullsec held the rarest of minerals that naturally commanded the highest price - if you control that space, then you gain the resources. So it comes down to territorial battles driving the economy - you lose ships, you need to build more, you need to build more, you need minerals... and so on.
Internet spaceships is srsbsns. o7.
Showing posts with label MMO. Show all posts
Showing posts with label MMO. Show all posts
Monday, 17 October 2016
Sunday, 16 October 2016
Warcrack
World of Warcraft eh? WoW.
This game is one of the biggest, best known contemporary MMOs [Massively Multiplayer Online game] still running. Relationships have flowered and cracked from this particular niche hobby (although 10 million unique players at it's peak maybe isn't strictly 'niche'). There's now a movie about the game and it's lore. Not seen it, can't tell you if it's any cop.
A lot of my current (online) friends play this. I keep firmly away from it, and I shall tell you why.
Back in 2004 I started work at a new job, it was a new team within that business, so everyone was new to the new team. Newness abounded. If you pulled your shoulders back and inhaled, you could almost imagine that 'new' smell. It was that new.
One of my (new) colleagues played a bit of Warcraft, and we got on quite well. One day, he loaned me his account (not strictly allowed) so I could create a new toon whilst recovering from a hangover at his flat. WTF was this game? This was incredible! It knocks CS [Counter Strike] into a cocked hat!
Clearly this is untrue, I have much love for CS, but WoW was like the fresh and fly new kid at school, wearing box-fresh Run DMC Superstars and a VW pendant. (Not trendy? I'm older than you, it was once. Fuck you).
The term 'toon' is a (presumably, no-one really seems sure) derivative of cartoon, used to describe the character the player is currently using in the game. Some hardcore players maybe don't like it, as it implies a disconnect between the character and user, with the potential to dispel any atmosphere that the game creates. I'm just using it because I'm lazy and to provide a modicum of lexical variety.
To roll back a little, for non-aficionados, an MMO is a game where many players can take part in the same game world, they appear on each other's screens and can interact with one another. Warcraft is 'sharded' - that is, you create your toon on that server, and you are 'locked' to that server (but you can move your character for a fee). Each server has the same copy of the current patch of the game and the technique is generally done to maintain performance.
It is this interaction with one another and the content that the developers produce that provides much of the draw. You can do a quest, and if you're struggling, can ask for some help from other players. If it goes well, more quests are completed with them and from there go on to maybe join a guild (player run groups with similar aims). Quests will give you 'loot' - parlance for new weapons, armour and other items - and to gain levels to make your character more powerful. As you gain levels, the spells and weapon effects you may use become stronger and longer lasting.
Once the guild is big enough, and your toons are high enough level, you can organise to do a 'raid' - that is an event that has a specific sub-plot or story that can only be completed as a group. Raids are vary in difficulty up to extraordinarily challenging, requiring 40 people to be on top of their game and fulfilling a specific role, be it healer, damage dealer, spell caster etc.
As I started the game, I chose Horde (the bad guys) and an undead warlock. I have usually favoured spell casters in these type of games, maybe because I always liked the mysterious air that Raistlin usually cultivated. That and he was a total bastard. Roleplaying is supposed to be fun!
I enjoyed the early quests, 'Go here, kill some boars, collect their teeth and I will give you this blessed shoelace' for what they were (training), and progressed into the more deadly areas of the game.
My friend wanted his laptop back, so I went straight into town, bought a copy of the game (with it's free month of game time)... and lost the next 3 weeks. I would come home from work, go straight upstairs to my PC, boot the game and sit there until midnight. 6 hours per night, and it still wasn't enough. In quiet times at work, I'd look at item builds and skill progression, and watch the clock for home-time. Weekends, I'd play until very late, rise late and get straight on it, sit there all day. I used to get phone calls from a friend, asking me to come round for tea (dinner for non-Brits) or a beer or whatever, I'd turn her down as I was too busy. Those animated tree saplings weren't going to kill themselves you know!
I was enjoying the game, but was starting to find that the quests were all fairly similar. Go here, collect these, kill that and so on. I was continually told that the game came alive at level 60 (the top level at the time). I was 22. Why wasn't the game alive already? And yet, I couldn't stop playing. The burn to get that next level was so cleverly wrought into the game, it was irresistible. Must get that spell. Must get that item. The developers had clearly spent some time with psychologists.
Pretty soon, you need to chose a profession. In WoW, a profession allows you gain a particular skill, jewelcrafting, fishing etc. so that you can get items that will help you on your quests. I'd heard fishing was a good one, easy to do and helpful... and this was where I started to take a long hard look at myself.
Fishing in wow consisted of learning the skill from an NPC [Non-Player Character] and buying a fishing rod. Click on some water and you will cast your line, a progress bar appears and empties on the screen. If your fishing float bobs, click on it. Ta-da! You're a fisherman!
Fuck me. That was boring. Part of the aforementioned navel gazing was the realisation that I'm spending time on a game (that I'm paying for) to watch a timer bar empty to get some fish gills or whatever. What on earth are you doing.
That was it. 3 weeks in, in an unprecedented display of strong character I stiffed my upper lip and quit the game. Generally, I know what I'm like (weak-willed lily-livered decision recanter), so I changed the email address of the account to one I no longer knew the password for, then changed the password on the account to something random which I would forget. Uninstalled the game, burned the CD key and snapped the install disks. There was no way I could install that game without buying another copy.
For the next week I was depressed and moody. Cold turkey was the only way, and after a while, I was glad that I was out from under the game's shadow.
I was free. Until I found Eve Online.
This game is one of the biggest, best known contemporary MMOs [Massively Multiplayer Online game] still running. Relationships have flowered and cracked from this particular niche hobby (although 10 million unique players at it's peak maybe isn't strictly 'niche'). There's now a movie about the game and it's lore. Not seen it, can't tell you if it's any cop.
A lot of my current (online) friends play this. I keep firmly away from it, and I shall tell you why.
Back in 2004 I started work at a new job, it was a new team within that business, so everyone was new to the new team. Newness abounded. If you pulled your shoulders back and inhaled, you could almost imagine that 'new' smell. It was that new.
One of my (new) colleagues played a bit of Warcraft, and we got on quite well. One day, he loaned me his account (not strictly allowed) so I could create a new toon whilst recovering from a hangover at his flat. WTF was this game? This was incredible! It knocks CS [Counter Strike] into a cocked hat!
Clearly this is untrue, I have much love for CS, but WoW was like the fresh and fly new kid at school, wearing box-fresh Run DMC Superstars and a VW pendant. (Not trendy? I'm older than you, it was once. Fuck you).
The term 'toon' is a (presumably, no-one really seems sure) derivative of cartoon, used to describe the character the player is currently using in the game. Some hardcore players maybe don't like it, as it implies a disconnect between the character and user, with the potential to dispel any atmosphere that the game creates. I'm just using it because I'm lazy and to provide a modicum of lexical variety.
To roll back a little, for non-aficionados, an MMO is a game where many players can take part in the same game world, they appear on each other's screens and can interact with one another. Warcraft is 'sharded' - that is, you create your toon on that server, and you are 'locked' to that server (but you can move your character for a fee). Each server has the same copy of the current patch of the game and the technique is generally done to maintain performance.
It is this interaction with one another and the content that the developers produce that provides much of the draw. You can do a quest, and if you're struggling, can ask for some help from other players. If it goes well, more quests are completed with them and from there go on to maybe join a guild (player run groups with similar aims). Quests will give you 'loot' - parlance for new weapons, armour and other items - and to gain levels to make your character more powerful. As you gain levels, the spells and weapon effects you may use become stronger and longer lasting.
Once the guild is big enough, and your toons are high enough level, you can organise to do a 'raid' - that is an event that has a specific sub-plot or story that can only be completed as a group. Raids are vary in difficulty up to extraordinarily challenging, requiring 40 people to be on top of their game and fulfilling a specific role, be it healer, damage dealer, spell caster etc.
As I started the game, I chose Horde (the bad guys) and an undead warlock. I have usually favoured spell casters in these type of games, maybe because I always liked the mysterious air that Raistlin usually cultivated. That and he was a total bastard. Roleplaying is supposed to be fun!
I enjoyed the early quests, 'Go here, kill some boars, collect their teeth and I will give you this blessed shoelace' for what they were (training), and progressed into the more deadly areas of the game.
My friend wanted his laptop back, so I went straight into town, bought a copy of the game (with it's free month of game time)... and lost the next 3 weeks. I would come home from work, go straight upstairs to my PC, boot the game and sit there until midnight. 6 hours per night, and it still wasn't enough. In quiet times at work, I'd look at item builds and skill progression, and watch the clock for home-time. Weekends, I'd play until very late, rise late and get straight on it, sit there all day. I used to get phone calls from a friend, asking me to come round for tea (dinner for non-Brits) or a beer or whatever, I'd turn her down as I was too busy. Those animated tree saplings weren't going to kill themselves you know!
I was enjoying the game, but was starting to find that the quests were all fairly similar. Go here, collect these, kill that and so on. I was continually told that the game came alive at level 60 (the top level at the time). I was 22. Why wasn't the game alive already? And yet, I couldn't stop playing. The burn to get that next level was so cleverly wrought into the game, it was irresistible. Must get that spell. Must get that item. The developers had clearly spent some time with psychologists.
Pretty soon, you need to chose a profession. In WoW, a profession allows you gain a particular skill, jewelcrafting, fishing etc. so that you can get items that will help you on your quests. I'd heard fishing was a good one, easy to do and helpful... and this was where I started to take a long hard look at myself.
Fishing in wow consisted of learning the skill from an NPC [Non-Player Character] and buying a fishing rod. Click on some water and you will cast your line, a progress bar appears and empties on the screen. If your fishing float bobs, click on it. Ta-da! You're a fisherman!
Fuck me. That was boring. Part of the aforementioned navel gazing was the realisation that I'm spending time on a game (that I'm paying for) to watch a timer bar empty to get some fish gills or whatever. What on earth are you doing.
That was it. 3 weeks in, in an unprecedented display of strong character I stiffed my upper lip and quit the game. Generally, I know what I'm like (weak-willed lily-livered decision recanter), so I changed the email address of the account to one I no longer knew the password for, then changed the password on the account to something random which I would forget. Uninstalled the game, burned the CD key and snapped the install disks. There was no way I could install that game without buying another copy.
For the next week I was depressed and moody. Cold turkey was the only way, and after a while, I was glad that I was out from under the game's shadow.
I was free. Until I found Eve Online.
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