OK, now I'm getting scared...

It does make you wonder. Hard to believe it could actually get quieter than usual.
Lately I've seen some people selling out I believed would never leave EU. I've also heard rumors of some very well known ubers quietly selling out through other ava's.
I don't want it to go down either, but nothing would surprise me. Truthfully it would make some recent odd decisions actually make sense.

I share your concern.

Steve

 

bah, speculations always come and go... compets will come and save the day, (lol, yeah right...)

 

To be fair I think MA did say this year they were going to focus on fixing bugs and broken stuff more and less new content ...but they still seem to mostly break more than they fix, while fixing things...And I haven't been overwhelmed by fixes to be honest. The other issue is not a peep from the powers that be.

I'm all for bug fixing over new content at this point to be honest. If that's what's going on, fine with me. But would be nice to hear from Kim, or David, or Jan, hell i'd take a post from the janitor at this point. Someone just take 5 or 10 minutes to let us know what's going on. MA is the most xenophobic game company I've ever seen.

If there's lots of players running around Wistrel, that sounds good...lets hope some are depositors.

 

Someone needs to pull the emergency brake.
It is indeed scary to SEE what happened over the last 11 years inside of this game.
To MindArk and to the players.

The same crying, anger and shittalking. Again and again and again and again.
The only difference, its becoming more and more aggressive. A lot more aggressive !
And people tend to forget about the ever repeating mistakes MA are doing. Again and again and again.
They come back to the forum, enlist all of the mistakes again...and return back to their game.
And even if most of the users dont have a forum account...this is what "new and old" avatars get to read.
And MA couldnt care less. (I know they can, only MA is capable of that) ;D

Which leads me to the...

"Political System" It got announced a long time ago !
Result ?
Pay 1000$, to maybe become the president of Virtual Reality. Weighted votes...final MA decision...blah.
Holy fuck...it better has the most awesome social interaction terminals and menus EVAH ! *lol*

_______________________________________________________________________________


Or what about ?


Did I miss recent news on the LandPlot system ? Is it put "on hold" ?
Or is it complete ? You bought land and can place items there ? xD
Jesus....the announcement felt like it would have cropping, gardening, fruit selling, awesome...upgrades

_______________________________________________________________________________________

And how can people seriously believe compet "will rock the mobile app market" ?
It is not even a mobile app...its a html5 web game. With an Atrox inside.
2 years of "development" already, EU development suffering from it...because of an Atrox
inside a SNES world...

Gawd, MA has missed the CandyCrushTrain too many times already.
Any idea of how many of such "battle games" are out there ? With MA doing 0,1% advertising ?
What could be the possible result, except for some kiddies that got lost on compets.com by accident ?
MAN!
________________________________________________________________________________________
I dont even want to mention the Casino "partner", which is in no way related to EU. (ofc not) ;p
Or the 3 new IRL partners "Planet Employability", "HUB Culture" and "Human Flourishing Universe"...I mean..what...the...actual...fuck...were they thinking ?
Once again this already feels like a stillbirth...

In the end, MA even failed to fullfill their original "dream" of their 3D-Internet-Platform.
The "China incident" (RIP Chi Tau RobertLai) probably was the final stab.

Since then...what are we drifting towards ? What is this former sci-fi based MMORPG turning into ?
Noone cares anymore, things just happen now. (But our president will change all that!) xD

I hope I can add the stuff above to my blog soon and make it become what MindArk is best at...making history...omghowsadisthat...
These topics already feel like poo in my mouth when I talk about them. But as noone else SEEs a reason to write about it...

And these are just 5 examples, of severeal ten thousands...if Id put it in the owrds of MA ;D

On top of that, I found the most harrassing and emotional topics on PCF ever over the last years.
And again, even if most of the users dont have a forum account...this is what you read, regardless of noob or uber.

The annual so called "events" are the only ever returning, working things, that drag people back to the game.
and it is just "hunting/grinding" in the end...paying some upper classs people.

Together with the same old fanboys, that cheer about any MA "news", no matter the content, this "game" became so disturbing and development so slow, I already feel sorry for newly created accounts, that hope for a vast world to explore, dozens of professions to try and money to be made...just to enter the same blablabla again and again and again...MA, you are doing it wrong, but you are doing it totally right.

 

I think this is the main point. Once they were up to set international standards. But they degenerated to a poor and bad maintained grinding game. What a bummer.

 

The weapon reload animations / sound (too fast / too slow) are so annoying³...it creates a strange feeling when hunting. Disturbing.

While other online games test such things, or fix it within some days or even hours...we are doomed to live with it...or at least tolerate it for weeks or even months.
While MA throws in more incomplete stuff, canceleing other things. Really, this is very had to get used to or accept it as their daily business. xD

Just accept solutions of the fanbase...ah boys...."Just play without sound, its not that dramatic. I do it since years, becasue the sound sucks."

Just play with your screen switched off AND disable sound !


The new TP sound...the new "beeing dead" sound...it doesnt really fit...at all...

 

Taming put on hold once again...we are 2 years late...2 years...once again !





Even the landplot system is put on hold...

Mayhem points bugged. Reload animations not yet fixed. Dieing pets animation not fixed. But they add Etheral "armor" and a president to this mess.
Hooray !

 

It's pretty clear they have problems with delays and delivering according to the plans. They are a small company with limited resources (money), it's not easy for them to hire more people even if they feel the need to do it. It's a tricky situation for them. A new investor, like a bigger gaming company or an other company, that have a bit of capital to inject in to MA would be great. Because they absolutely must get a boost in the player-base to be able to improve and sustain the development of the game.

 

Even if all of the former 60 employees would still be with MA...Entropia will never ever be able to handle 1 mio. concurrent users.

MA never ever did the right (mass) advertising, because the DONT want 1 mio. concurrent users.

They dont have problems...they are the problem.

They have/had investors. Benny Iggland, Bridge Investment etc.

Its also scary to SEE how fast Toulan was crying for investor help...or Cyrene shrinking development...having Creative Kingdom operating in the background...open your eyes...

 

Well, nothing will get better just complaining on MA or complaining on things in the history. Yes, they can improve things, but I also understand their problem. But we probably both agree some new owners (money) and management could help.

 

Money wont help, when creativity is not wanted (anymore).

Timkrans / Simmonds will be the management, until Entropia will be shut down one day.

 

No.
It is still the old main problem. Once Project Entropia was a blast. Even with 20 folks as staff at Gothenburg. No one in game complained about low polygon models and shitty textures. It simply didn't matter. They WERE up to set standards and offer new experiances. Well, they missed the chance, they shot to their own knee.

From my point of view they have to compete against Elder Scrolls Online nowadays. And they will lose. Too sad.
We have a lot of grinding games. No need for an Entropia grinding game. New investors and fresh money wouldn't help.

My wife (my sister Kristin, 61 years old like me) bought the cheap 22 Euro TESO lately and spent more than 50 Euro meanwhile for clothes, pets and other useless stuff. She was once an extraordinary colonist at Entropia. That was the time when social aspects were an important part of the game. Radio shows, dancing, party, clothes, makeup, crosstalk, special apartments, cars, pictures at the wall (~7k $) and no skills. LOL!

MA failed to develop the original idea. I wish them luck with all this grinding options.

 

Well, problem is that this kind of games, especially with a RCE component, often end up in "grinding", it's hard to avoid. You can't only blame MA either, because most people playing this game probably are the "I want to earn money" type of players and don't care much about other things than the loot and chance to profit. They don't care much about nice social functions. At least that it was I think. And the game is still at lot better today than it was 10 years ago, but that don't necessary every player still enjoying as much as the did 10 years ago. Because after a couple of years with the same game it's not strange you get a bit bored with it.

MA have done some strategic mistakes or misjudgments and have some problems in my opinion:

• The CLD probably was a bad thing, the pay-out cost a bit too much in my opinion. But they probably thought a bigger share of the players would be on other planets than Calypso today.
  
• The planet-partner system is an interesting and I think a good concept, but it have not worked out very well yet. Arkadia is okey, but the rest have not been that so great. A lot of talk but few of the partners deliver a good product. Maybe MA and EU would have benefited if they had kept it all under their own development a longer time to build up the player-base before adding external planet-partners.
  
• Marketing. Still feels they lack in promoting the game, but that is probably because they lack the money to spend on it. I think they need to ramp up this do get a boost in the number of players. But that is also a shared responsibility with their planet-partners.
  
• The lack of capital and revenue have forced them to cut down on their costs, probably slowing down the development. Slower progress, more bugs, unhappy players.

You can also look at different smaller issues with the game-design and the development of the game the last couple of years, but that is something that is a bit harder to say what is bad and what is good, because different players want different things from the game. But I believe that a lot of the problems with the game are caused by the "strategic" problems above.

Some problems with the game-concept that I see.

• The lack of demand and market of a lot of things in the game. I think the game need more decay and limited items. If we want a more healthy ingame economy, cloth, vehicles and other items should decay more, and/or have some-kind of time limit of use. The need to replace items creates demand and that is good for all of us. I know more decay is not what the players want, but I think that is what the games needs. (not more decays on weapons and tools, but on low decay items).
• Hunting and crafting is too expansive for a lot of the players. It's much better to lose 20 peds on 10 hunting trips than loosing 150 peds on one trip. Today you burn the peds too fast. Probably connected to MAs lack of profit and the other connected problems above.
  
• Too many in-game features and systems that they don't continue to develop and improve. Things like the vehicle systems could be improved to make it even more fun and interesting, but it's pretty much the same since they first come out with the vehicle system. I still think new system and features is good and important, but they also need to improve and refreash older systems. This is also a problem probably caused by the lack of resources MA have.
  
  

 

Lack of ressources = all creative people fired.

They have enough money and investors, else they would have shut down long ago.

The player base will never ever reach 1 mio. concurrent users. Their servers wouldnt be able to handle it anyway.
They could afford new servers, but they dont do it...just like they dont do mass advertising...since 2003.
They dont want it !

Stop thinking MA are poor bastards that dont have enough money and ressources. They just stopped caring and communicating, fired everyone and try to sell
"10 diamonds" for 39,99 Dollar now...just like every fucking cheap ass candy crush game out there. Thats the sad part.


All your "I wish they would" or "They should focus on" are things that Im steady reading since 2004.
MA ignores 95%+.

Then MA throws in something "new", to distract you once again from the other things...just to abandon the "new" stuff as well.
Its a trap.

And no, not all (online) worlds become boring after 10 years, just because its getting repetitive.
There is more behind it, then just beeing a game.
I still love this world and keep writing about it and I truly have better things to do IRL then fully focusing on Entropia...yet Im still here. :)

Sure, every so called MMO has it problems now and then, but never, in other MMOs, I have seen outrage on forums so often (because MA has failed). Another reason why MindArk never did mass advertising.

Never forget how small our community really is...since 2003.