Eve Online
Jul. 20th, 2008 08:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
solipsistnationAt the urging of a bunch of people to whom I have said basically "What is there that compares to ATITD?" I am trying out Eve Online.
My first impressions aren't terribly favorable-- the tutorial missions are kind of sparse, and they seem to leave you hanging, zipping around between systems populated by basically nobody, delivering things only NPCs care about. I realize that a tutorial mission is a delicate sort of thing, but so far mostly what I've seen is that space is big, getting between systems takes a long time of mostly just watching the autopilot zip you around, and that the interface is complicated and annoying (not to mention hard to read at any reasonable resolution).
Oh, and there's some kind of giant market system, and there are corporations, and that you can buy 1,000,000 ISK for 4.99 euros. (ISK spamming is ridiculous. Embarassingly so. In the 2 or 3 hours I was on, I blocked chats from something like a dozen bots, all spamming for the same site.)
Anyway, it's neat, but so far (and I do realize that this is a pretty superficial overview) it lacks the sort of community aspect that I really like about ATITD. I haven't been pointed toward what I'd think of as mentoring guilds, and the game structure doesn't seem to encourage the sort of mentoring I enjoy in Egypt. Quite the opposite-- I spotted a ship named "IKillNoobs" zipping around one of the tutorial stations. I also spotted what looked like a couple of high-powered ship battles going on while I zapped around delivering my code notebooks and mining my noob ore and stuff. Overall, not a particularly welcoming universe. Sure, Egypt isn't ALWAYS welcoming, but by asking questions on regional, newbies can always find somebody to give them a hand with something, or at least to tell them how to find info on the wiki.
I suspect that ATITD is truly unique, and that the sort of community that has grown up around the constraints and freedoms of Egypt has not been duplicated elsewhere. I guess the biggest thing I miss from ATITD is the feeling that, although we know we're all competing, we also know that we stand to gain a lot more from even the most minimal possible cooperation than from outright cutthroat competition. My attitude toward Eve may change, but I'm not sure it will. After all, it bills itself as a universe of piracy and capitalism, and I'm not exactly the most fervant capitalist...
My first impressions aren't terribly favorable-- the tutorial missions are kind of sparse, and they seem to leave you hanging, zipping around between systems populated by basically nobody, delivering things only NPCs care about. I realize that a tutorial mission is a delicate sort of thing, but so far mostly what I've seen is that space is big, getting between systems takes a long time of mostly just watching the autopilot zip you around, and that the interface is complicated and annoying (not to mention hard to read at any reasonable resolution).
Oh, and there's some kind of giant market system, and there are corporations, and that you can buy 1,000,000 ISK for 4.99 euros. (ISK spamming is ridiculous. Embarassingly so. In the 2 or 3 hours I was on, I blocked chats from something like a dozen bots, all spamming for the same site.)
Anyway, it's neat, but so far (and I do realize that this is a pretty superficial overview) it lacks the sort of community aspect that I really like about ATITD. I haven't been pointed toward what I'd think of as mentoring guilds, and the game structure doesn't seem to encourage the sort of mentoring I enjoy in Egypt. Quite the opposite-- I spotted a ship named "IKillNoobs" zipping around one of the tutorial stations. I also spotted what looked like a couple of high-powered ship battles going on while I zapped around delivering my code notebooks and mining my noob ore and stuff. Overall, not a particularly welcoming universe. Sure, Egypt isn't ALWAYS welcoming, but by asking questions on regional, newbies can always find somebody to give them a hand with something, or at least to tell them how to find info on the wiki.
I suspect that ATITD is truly unique, and that the sort of community that has grown up around the constraints and freedoms of Egypt has not been duplicated elsewhere. I guess the biggest thing I miss from ATITD is the feeling that, although we know we're all competing, we also know that we stand to gain a lot more from even the most minimal possible cooperation than from outright cutthroat competition. My attitude toward Eve may change, but I'm not sure it will. After all, it bills itself as a universe of piracy and capitalism, and I'm not exactly the most fervant capitalist...