EVE Online receives regular expansions and updates, but is that enough?
In commemoration of the first manned landing on Luna, Earth's moon, this week we'll be examining three space-based MMORPGs: EVE Online, Jumpgate Evolution, and Black Prophecy. EVE is already available to play, while JGE and Black Prophecy are still in development (though nearing completion, by the looks of things).
EVE Online is the oldest of the bunch and perhaps the most cerebral. It has an extremely steep learning and leveling curve (though its staunchest fans will perhaps argue that fact) that scares off most interested new players. Skills take hours to learn and ships thousands of credits to purchase. Death is not taken lightly in-game, especially if players forget (or neglect) to keep their pilot's clone up-to-date. Oddly, though, the majority of EVE's playerbase seems to enjoy these seemingly masochistic game mechanics. It may be the amount of time that these "hardcore" players have already spent on their character that have desensitized them to the point of not understanding the needs and wants of new players. For instance, this article on Massively.com marginalizes EVE's somewhat sadistic death penalty, stating nonchalantly "if you have a million skillpoints more than your clone covers you for, death will only cause you to lose a maximum of 50,000 skillpoints. To put that into perspective, that's only a few days training time..." [Emphasis added.] While new players will probably never lose that many skillpoints (mainly because by the time they have a million SP to lose, they're no longer a newbie), why should any player have to retrain skills for days to make up for one death?
CCP Games, EVE's developer, noticed the unfriendliness of its breadwinning MMO quite some time ago and has attempted to minimize the entry barriers for fresh blood ever since. There's a largely untapped market of individuals who were raised on Wing Commander, X-Wing vs TIE-Fighter, Tachyon: The Fringe, and Descent: Freespace who are interested in a more fast-paced and fun MMO, but CCP's attempts may be too little and almost assuredly too late to catch these players.
Jumpgate's graphics supposedly scale to accommodate
older PCs, but who would willingly sacrifice these visuals?
Jumpgate Evolution, on the other hand, is ready to pick up the slack. The game has been under construction since sometime in 2006 and playable since at least 2008, when interested gamers (and Examiners) had a chance to test-drive it at Penny Arcade Expo and chat with the developers, NetDevil.
Much like EVE Online, which is set in a completely different galaxy than the Milky Way thanks to opportunistic wormhole plunging colony ships, Jumpgate Evolution follows the fate of three distinct factions "pulled" out of humanity's native galaxy and into another one far away. The exact reasons behind this teleportation of entire planets across the universe is shrouded in mystery, as is the fate of Earth. Thankfully an enterprising corporation has discovered a relatively simple way of traversing the astounding spaces between systems, allowing these three lost societies to once again interact. Thus the stage is set for interstellar drama.
Recently JGE was delayed from it's projected June launch window to sometime later in 2009, to give the development team time to assimilate strong friends and family testing feedback. Supposedly the results they received from the F&F phase provoked some serious thought, which hopefully begot new features, UI tweaks and control refinements. We'll know for sure what was changed when the game eventually releases, but in the meantime we can report that the press and general "hype" surrounding the game is mostly positive. This is normally the case, however, for unreleased MMOs.
Black Prophecy is the most visually stunning of these three MMOs.
Finally we stumble upon Black Prophecy, the dark horse of these three games. Black Prophecy is reported to have been in development by Reakktor Media since 2006, while it was still a part of 10tacle Studios (which is now defunct, but still sporting a working website). First revealed at Games Convention 2007 in Germany, Black Prophecy has since matured into a game that looks able to compete on a global scale with Jumpgate Evolution in action, and supposedly avoids competing with EVE Online directly. Unfortunately, Reakktor Media hasn't marketed the game much outside of Europe.
Black Prophecy runs on a recent version of the GameBryo graphics engine, which is an extremely malleable platform for videogame development. GameBryo has powered MMOs by Mythic (Dark Age of Camelot, Warhammer), RPGs by Bethesda (Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, Fallout 3), and countless other games. When compared to EVE Online or Jumpgate Evolution, Black Prophecy appears to have the upper hand in the graphics department. This superiority could backfire, of course, if the majority of players who want to play the game don't have a computer capable of doing so.
Another strong point for this game, other than it's visuals, is the soundtrack. Composed by company of musically talented individuals, Dynamedion, whose superb work can be heard on the three official trailers currently available for Black Prophecy. Too often is a game's music overlooked, except when done horribly wrong (in which case most players just mute the game) or masterfully correct, like Aion's (which most players seem content to listen to for hours). Check out this interview on fansite The Prophecy Network for more information about Black Prophecy's music and an awesome little extra: a DRM-free sample MP3! Believe me, it's 5mb of awesome and deserves a listen.
Black Prophecy's official forums went online just two months ago, in April, and a beta test is immenent. Hopefully Reakktor Media will spend a little more money on marketing the game before it gets launched so more people get the chance to try it out. Also worth reading is this interview with Simon Bachmann on VE3D, the most recent one done by a 3rd-party website as of July 21st.
For more info: check out these official websites!
http://www.blackprophecy-game.com
http://www.jumpgateevolution.com
http://www.eveonline.com
Comments
"why should any player have to retrain skills for days to make up for one death?" The author does not seem to understand the concept of DEATH. This is exactly why dieing in Eve is painful, that's why people care where they die or not. If I can re spawn and go shooty-shooty next moment with all my abilities and gear, OK fine. This is not the game that I want to play. If you like constant pew-pew there are hundreds of titles out there. Eve is a stand out from the crowd because it brings dimensions to the game play that other games can not. Because of consequences that DEATH brings. I am quite happy that the world of Eve is not filled with mindless drones that author argues should be the target customer base.
Thanks for you comment, Alex. You're the first to do so on any of my (two) articles! :)
"If you like constant pew-pew there are hundreds of titles out there."
Actually, there's not many healthy or commercially-viable space-based MMOs other than EVE Online, at least right now. JGE and BP are coming soon, but they're not "hundreds of titles."
As for your opinion that death in EVE makes the game enjoyable to you, that's absolutely a fine opinion to hold! In fact, I would agree with you if I had the time or attention span to devote to playing the game properly. However, your opinion is not one that CCP would arguably want to have. Such an attitude will not allow EVE to continue to grow and expand beyond it's current main demographic once it has a few more competitors. Right now it's pretty much the only game of it's type. ;)
Changing Eve to appeal to the X-Wing vs Tie Fighter/Wing Commander crowd would require such a huge fundamental change to the game that it wouldn't be the same game in the end.
I don't see how fast paced flight simulationesque combat and Eve's sandbox mmo model could mesh together in a coherent manner.
Jumpgate does look like it could be a lot of fun though.
"Changing Eve to appeal to the X-Wing vs Tie Fighter/Wing Commander crowd would require such a huge fundamental change to the game that it wouldn't be the same game in the end.
I don't see how fast paced flight simulationesque combat and Eve's sandbox mmo model could mesh together in a coherent manner."
I agree, it probably can't be done, or at least not done very well. Either way, JGE and BP look great and I'm extremely interested in checking those out. Aion is kinda...silly to me. I'd much rather fly a ship and shoot flak cannons than run around flinging fireballs. ;)
See I played EVE for quite a while. My character was at about 12 million skill points when I died. And I have to say, PVP in EVE was BORING. I will say that it certainly was nice to have a death system where you stand a chance of losing something. However, there are two main problems with the way pvp is set up in EVE.
#1. No one wants to fight. I found that 95% of the time, the death penalty, instead of making pvp exciting, made people avoid pvp entirely. I literally got into pvp groups for 5-6 hours at a time on many occasions, and we rarely ended up fighting anything stronger than an afker in a frigate. Even if I'd use locator agents to ambush war targets outside a station, what's the point if they can just instantly "dock" and disappear while they're still being fired upon?
#2. Fights that do happen aren't interesting. EVE has pretty much no room for tactics in combat, so fighting is about avoiding fights. If you get into a fight, one side is always vastly outgun
Dont forget Vendetta Online
vendetta-online.com
Dont forget Vendetta Onine, i cant post a url, but if you search it up, it's right there at the top :)
EvE = Wow in space if my guns and equipment is bigger than your guns and equipment and i press my auto attack buttons (high mid low slots) in the right order you loose. Very 1 dimensional combat no tactics no flight modelling. Let's not forget Jumpgate Classic is the grandfather of the space MMO, Earth and Beyond had a good run and would still be around if not for the EA factor. Vendetta is a pile of tired pixels gameplay is nothing short of horrid. Hopefully JGE and BP will save the Space Opera MMO genre as its dead utterly dead at the moment.
Rob, have you ever played EVE? No tactics? Ah great. You can easily defeat larger ship with proper tricks, like ECM, Weapon disruptors, energy neutralizers, webifiers etc. Speed, range, turrets tracking, energy management, all matters here. Big fleets fight, that consist of many types of ships doesn't need any tactics too, right? Just shoot. You're just have no idea, what are you talking about...dilettante.
Why everyone avoid fights? Hmmm, that's becasue there is a price to pay for every death. You can lose ship worth milions of isk, you may die, losing implants in your body.
You can also be a trader, manufacturer etc.
But, don't think about me as an Eve fanboy or something. I can't wait to see BP in action, to actually control my ship with mouse or joystick. BUT...EVE has "something" that keeps me returning to the game. Sandbox experience etc. I'm not sure if fast combat action will be enough for me to stay with BP for long... I will probably play both games, depends on my needs.
. Skills take hours to learn and ships thousands of credits to purchase.
this sentence inclines me to think that you took quite a shallow look at Eve before putting fingers to keyboard. skills can easily take months to get and ships cost many millions to buy and outfit.
that said you are right on one front. eve isn't for the fast twitch instant gratification types. death stings in eve though if you are any good it's a mild one.
What brings people to eve is the depth and complexity. It's almost an anti-shooter. You don't even aim so much as target. Combat is all about tactics not joystick control.
I don't actually like pvp. I play eve as an explorer. On the normal side of space, there are 5000 system to explore with many finds for salvage, hacking, archaeology, and yes, even combat hide outs.
The sheer scope of the game scares people but I like the depth. I view it in complete contracts to WOW which I also play, or UT for an extreme opposite.
The death thing really has people on the outside freaked out. Consider this: Taking death seriously in an RPG makes you care about your character. That is missing in most games. You don't care because it death is irrelevant. Respaun, repair, pew pew all over again. sigh
Those wondering what Eve is really like, should take it for a 3 month ride. You will find such rich features and complexity that it becomes difficult to appreciate the dime a dozen MMOs.
"#2. Fights that do happen aren't interesting. EVE has pretty much no room for tactics in combat, so fighting is about avoiding fights. If you get into a fight, one side is always vastly outgun"
Part of the tactics in eve is actually being able to get people to aggress you when you have better/stronger/bigger force.
It seems like the author didn't do any real research, espically on EvE Online.
You only loose skills if you are completly retarded and forget to upgrade your medical clone. In the beginning, the upgrade is almost free (in the every beginning, maybe the first 2-4 weeks, its even 100% free because the basic medic clone holds 900k SP).
Additionally, it is not really hard to replace your ships.
If you are good at pvp, it's possible to finance new ships just with the loot, only if you are flying ships which you shouldn't fly because you are not experienced enough there is a chance to run into serious money problems.
Another thing that should be mentioned is that the skills complete no matter whether you are online or not, which means far less grinding then in games like WoW.
PvP - well what should i say.
In my experience there are hundreds of tactics if you don't follow the Flavor of the month, and then you will even start to have fun and win.
In the end, it's a sandbox.
You never really played EVE now did ya? If so your review would not have sounded so moronic now would it?
EVE is leagues away from games like JGE and Black Prophecy. They do not even belong in the same review.
The Twitcher can look elsewhere, EVE is for the intelligent.
You're all retarded if you think there are no tactics in eve... Try joining a pvp Corp that didn't suck; you combat heavy dos close range with fast mid-range HACs, roams in 0.0 always got me into plenty of fights, and they all required different tactics, be that opening range, reaproachimg the hate and luring the half of the enemy not engaged through, burning away and killing support, remote rep manuvering, ect ect ect...
If you were never in a true 0.0 Corp, pls dont comment on fighting in EVE. Roaming for 10 jumps in low sec blows, because low sec blows, and pvp in empire is even worse, and the 0.0 pet alliances avoid combat whenever possible because they're all industrialists. If you want to be a pvp pilot, learn the basics in missions till you hit level 4's then move to a PVP Corp... Of they're avoiding pvp then they lied about the Corp type. My corp, on gangs of 10-15, easily defeats much larger camps (ortheir stupid support that burns close to us anyways)
Let me gues, you all played Eve but never any of the new games right?
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