When Imperial Command released a message that Next Island could now be accessed through a teleporter, I did not need much convincing, and I hopped into a teleporter immediately. I figured that I would start with the first TP, and so I transported to "Champion Beach." I was greeted with a message stating I had arrived at "NEVERDIE Champion Beach." A quick look at my coordinates revealed two things: 1) I did not accidentally end up on ROCKtropia, but was in fact on Next Island 2) Judging by the coordinates, the Next Island planet is absolutely massive! After cycling through a few TPs and finding pretty much all of them NEVERDIE themed, I raised a question to NEVERDIE who conviniently was greeting people at the Club NEVERDIE TP. He assured me that I merely ended up on the party island, and that the actual Next Island was the island to the west. So after grabbing the coordinates for the obvious TPs, that's where I went off to. It just struck me as odd that the great majority of the Next Island teleporters listed led to the NEVERDIE area. Observation: Way too much NEVERDIE. My thoughts: Remove the great majority of the NEVERDIE LA TPs from the standard list. Add more "traditional" Next Island to the standard list. The Neophyte area seems like an obvious choice. The landscape up here looks stunning close to the TPs, though the earlier mentioned size of the landscape also brings with it its disadvantages. When one moves away from the TPs, particularly when you go into the lower-left quadrant, the landscape becomes monotonous. Almost as if the graphics guy who designed the landscape there basically just used large brush strokes. The landscape seems to be lacking details, but at the same time ensures you will visually know you are getting close to a TP. If you see things that look out of the ordinary, you're getting close to a TP. I also really like the look of the beach houses, and the almost elf-ish look of the big trees harboring the platforms with machines. Initially, the little butterflies originating from the Teleporters themselves confused me, but now I actually appreciate them. They give everything a nice serene look. Where ROCKtropia introduced scantily clad women posing as auctioneers, Next Island has monkeys. You can identify their roles by their "bling." Auctioneer Papoos wear a high hat, Repair Papoos equip a wrench, etc. It's a cute little way to identify them, though it will take getting used to. Mob-wise, the size of the continent comes into play again. The NEVERDIE island seemed to have plenty of mobs available everywhere, but the main island shows huge patches of emptiness. This seemed to get a bit better later during the evening, when discovery globals suddenly started rolling in, so maybe this is a problem that will fix itself over time. The variety of the mobs seem a bit on the low side as well though. There's several variations of the same mob (fire drake, ice drake, etc), but it does at first glance appear to be only a handful of different models. A monkey/baboon, a boar, a dragon, and a skeleton. Observation: Some content lacking Suggestion: Add the content prior to releasing NI. Add some missions for newbies and generally give people something more to do. Also, where's the time traveling? All in all, the planet looks gorgeous, but is in my opinion not ready to be released yet. It lacks content and mobs to sufficiently provide enough variation. It's huge though, so there's definitely lots of potential. I cannot wait to try out the time traveling either.
could we get some more pics of creatures there. It seems that only neverdies area on next island is open also. I wouldn't be so distressed about the neverdie branding. I really think people are making a big deal out of nothing mostly cause i think people just dont like ND for whatever reason. To me i like the guy, i think he is the most famous avatar and has done the most out of this game. Like seriously he went from rags to riches. To those that blame ND for rocktropia not being fun. A lot of that is MA's fault by not giving ND the same advantages as FPC has. MA screwed them out a lot with not giving them a crap load of things that they are finnally just doing for other planets now. Finnally we are seeing custom loot per planet and bps. Already we have a boat load of discoveries which we never got on rocktropia to start, and i think we will see missions also with the official release. I think this is just a server test to make sure everything works for the big release.
Many people have opinions of ND, I don't dislike the guy, however his professionalism mixed in with his ego is an EPIC FAIL ! Sure he made it big in Entropia, but he is on the lookout for number 1 only and always has been, his ego does not let it be any other way and thus has generated a lot of negativity over the years. Kudos to him for what he has achieved so far, but where has it left the game .... from riches in loot, fun and entertainment to almost rags now that many have left or are on the verge of doing so. People are fed up with MA and the bullshit distancing they have done to not take responsibility for their shortfallings, this is just additional to the whole piece and parcel. To lay blame with MA as you have done is worthless, it means nothing as they do not take ownership for any of their shortfailings, it totally lays with the planet partner. Maybe there is still hope, detach the ND theme park from NI completely and move it as a theme park on Rocktopia where it belongs ?
I dont have a problem with ND whatsoever. but this is bad business in my book. everyone's entitled to their own opinion ofc. a theme park does not belong on NI. ND does not belong on NI. So NDs theme park all the more does not belong on NI. I assume with no evidence and until proven wrong that NI ran out of money and turned to ND who got his theme park for waiving his bill. and also hijacked the NI premier to show off that little theme park. RT being a music themed planet I dont know if he'd be allowed to put up a themepark there, cause it doesnt fit there either. as long as MA hasnt broken any contracts, there's no reason to blame them (not for RTs problems anyway). that's the point of signing contracts: knowing when you can blame and sue. may well be that everyone knew there wouldnt be custom items till day X. maybe not. we shall never find out.
I have no problem with ND whatsoever. I mostly was surprised to find myself on a new planet, which appeared to be more about ND than about the Next Island I have been reading about. I knew ND was developing/producing the planet, but I never expected his name to show up anywhere other than in the credits section. In the meantime, Agis reported that it was ND Studios' decision to prematurely open up the planet, and I cannot help but wonder why on earth they'd want to do that? If I get hired to program some application, then it's my client who decides when it will be released, and if I would release it a few days prior, and turn it into an advertising platform for myself instead, I would soon find myself out of work. While I have no idea about the agreements between NEVERDIE Studios and David Post, the whole thing with this just strikes me as odd. It seems highly unprofessional to do this, and professionalism is exactly what struck me whenever David Post gave interviews about his vision and dreams for Next Island. None of them, including the iPhone application, involved any mention of the planet containing anything NEVERDIE-ish. I'm not trashing Next Island here, nor David Post. I'm more baffled than anything, really.
damn, thought all those fire drake globals on neverdie were some new rocktropia mobs :) didn't know they released NI. Gonna have to take a walk there. In regard with ND's presence everywhere though it is annoying it's also one of the most known figures in EU i think...he should be able to attract some new people(and maybe scare some old players away)
The reason why there are no mobs on the planet - I communicated to Jon yesterday - saying is there a reason why there are no mobs on most of the mainland and he told me there are plenty of mobs - Then he checked and told me i was right - there is a problem with the sync on the servers with no mobs spawning, asked Jon again today and said we are working on the problem now, no ETA given though - I communicate problems with the servers to them and they lock my informational thread on Nextislandlife, nice way of saying thank you.
Thanks for the info Agis ... maybe they will get it sorted out before they do the second release on Friday, which is when we are told it's coming, unless something has changed.
oh dear.... well doesn't sound glowing I have to admit.... but then again I lost most of my faith (if I had any to begin with) in the planet after reading the articles about it in Entropia Times. They gave a strong impression that the people behind NI didn't seem to understand their product or their target market. I was sorely disappointed by the ipod app too. I didn't lament my 59p spent but really it could have been so much better.... Agree here that the review isn't anti ND. Just that the author wasn't expecting the brand to have a big stage presence here. We knew there would be a club but all the TPS? Seems kinda overkill... and counter productive? OK so maybe this is a preview and maybe there are more than 4 mobs and friday will improve life? I accept that MA will not have delivered all that was probably expected of them from the planet partners but when have they EVER done this? Look at David Storey's island, look at CND, look at the Banks! is anything ever ready or completed? People should learn to expect this by now surely...? I think at the end of the day this is why the planets aren't really here yet. Personally I think ND launched RT too early. I don't think MA were really ready for partners as the platform didn't even have all the old content from vu9 (and still doesn't!) Cyrene for example are 100% correct to have held off launch or even promotion for so long. While I do think EU is GETTING THERE its not ready yet. 2011 seems a more sensible time to be introducing more planets.... Well that's what I think anyhow Wistrel
http://www.entropiaplanets.com/foru...en-until-10th-january-nd-theme-park-open.html This needed linking I think.... seems to explain a few things. Why this information wasn't made available before anyone got anywhere near the place I have no idea.... Wistrel
In the upcoming interview article in the Dec issue of the EntropiaTimes he openly admits that he launched the planet too soon. Looks like history is repeating itself, even if it was just a pre-, mini-, or soft launch. Bottom line ... whatever it was, it was all about Neverdie and not the official Next Island, and as far as I'm concerned, it was really in poor taste. The magazine will be published on Sunday.
Unfortunately I think about the only thing I like the sound of so far is the Elf trees, I don't think I'd have objected to there being soem kind of ND made area if he had at least tried to be creative and go with the original ideas and concept of Next Island. I would rather have the legacy fo a person left behind than their name all over things. Kinda like how we have with things like Lord of the Rings, no one contemplated calling it Tolkien's Middle earth and Tolkien woods where the Elves came from.
So when will we be able to explore the real NI now that we bought our way there? I mean the REAL NI and not some neverdie theme park...
"Your morale is approaching minimum condition. To raise morale please go to the nearest bar." Anyways, nice little introductory into Next Island. Sucks, that they released another planet early and its not ready at all. I got all excited thinking, "NEW PLANET, NEW PLANET!!!! I wonder what kind of cool things they're going to have!!!???" and then my expectations were shot down when you only mentioned ND and lack of consistent detailed landscapes and lack of mobs. Off to a bumpy start again...
