So I have a soc mate who keeps telling me about EVE. Her recent message though made me stop. EVE has now (or is close to) releasing a very impressively looking character creation system (youtube eve incursion or incarna). At the moment this is just to create in effect a profile pic for trading but the plan is that come summer, players who have for years role played large hunks of metal floating around in space will finally get to disembark and walk around space stations. So... the question is, will EVE become Entropia sooner than we think? At the moment it exists as an incredibly complex space trading game but what of the future? Will all those resources eventually mean something and be used by avatars to play a "walk about" game like we have in EU? To be honest I've always seen EU and EVE as two entities gradually colliding. EU took some great steps last year with flying vehicles and the gradual increase in planetary destinations but will it be able to keep up with EVE? Admittedly fancy new avatars and the ability to walk about in a room is one thing, creating a whole new dimension to your game as feature rich (? ;) ) as we have in Entropia is another. I'm starting to feel Entropia may fall behind now though in the race to space. From Marco's statement, towards the end of 2010, it sounds like space is once again hitting the back burner (pun not intended) and even hangars will be nothng more than a building and unlimited vehicle for the considerable future. Where as EVE is stepping forever closer to Entropia it seems Entropia wants to keep both feet firmly on solid ground. I just wonder where both platforms will be in a few years. I can well imagine, CCP have rolled out their own planets and are well on the way to allowing avatars to do all the things we can do currently in EU and MA might have finally implemented another "You are in Space" message ;) The End ;) Wistrel
Well EU also has a new avatar system in the pipeline. We just don't know much about it or when it will be released but my guess is this summer because Cyrene is supposed to launch then and I'm pretty sdure it's goign to need this new avatar system for launch. Having said that the actual planet release date and new avatar system may be later, we all know about MA dates... Also EU is going to have space travel. When that finally arrives it'll be even more similar to EVE. Having said that I played EVE to try it out as I used to like Elite (eve is based on elite). I got soo bored with it I left :)
There are striking similarities between EU and EVE also when you think about the skilling system... but then again EU is RCE and EVE isn't so that ends the discussion quickly. As soon as a major company releases a RCE MMO with proper gameplay Entropia will be fucked anyway. So no need to get scared about EVE... but even less need now in fact since the Blue Mars PC platform development has been stopped. Thus they can not develop the proper gameplay and therfore Entropia has some more time to exist. I can't think of any other MMO created by a major company atm which has RCE. However that is most likely going to change in the next few years and once it happens I do not see a future for EU unless we see some very good VUs. The latest ones are not precisely encouraging though.
Hmm some interesting points. Yes EVE is Elite for the 21st century but then again for me I doubt I could be interested in EVE till I can be a person rather than a spaceship. That said, their demos of the space station stuff was in 2008 and only now do they have the creation system on their (beta test?) servers. The walk about release is not till the summer if it isn't delayed more that is.... As for MA's new avatars yes I too believe they are working on that. I think there's a lot to be done though and as we can see, the state of the art keeps moving on... I've always thought EU has had good avatar creation systems (ok I liked the original) that allow a lot of flexibility. I sure miss the funny avatars we had in the past where you could recognise someone in a moment. These days people look very similar. Whatever they come up with also has to work with the setup at PA. ie the ability to have many avatars in one place without instancing. All very well having the tip top tech but if everyones graphics cards run out of memory this is no good to anyone. Games like crysis etc can get away with amazing character design cause appearances are reused and there are never that many characters in any one area at any one time additionally everything is predictable. The carbon system EVE has looks great in tech demos, all that cloth and hair physics etc but does it scale up to Twin Peaks level of population? Probably not I suspect. MA are going to need to pull something clever out of the bag to optimise a detailed avatar system for use in EU. A new system may come out this year, but I'd not be surprised if it didn't drop over till next year. As for Cyrene well really I can't see them showing up till 2012 or later really. I'm fully expecting Arkadia to delay too. EU just isn't ready for serious planet partners yet and I can't see the next 5 months changing that significantly. I didn't know about Blue Mars shutting up shop! :O Heck thats a blow but really can't help feeling they deserved it. They pulled everyone in to a tight huddle with that initial concept trailer and then shat all over their dreams with a ropey outdated second life style thing that bore bugger all resemblance to their initial trailer. Harsh I know but honestly I never heared of a single person who wasn't massively disappointed by blue mars. As for other RCE games, well I guess currently nothing touches Entropia. Its worth saying here also that for the first time in my life I have two friends who want to get Entropia cause they have seen it running on my computer and were amazed by the graphics. They wouldn't be planning on getting it "just to wander round" if they had to pay though. So, +2 to MA win on that one. Now EU is worth looking at, I expect a lot of people would be more up for giving it a try. The vast non instanced worlds are bound to be a good draw too. Amazing to say but EU are really on fairly solid ground now. They just need to flog the hell out of the game (I mean promote) and of course keep development at the levels we saw last year. Wistrel
