Mashing buttons since 1984
Has anyone played this yet? I received a Beta Code, but having just started up EVE, I don’t know if I have time to try another MMOG or not. I’ve been interested in Auto Assault for a while, so I may still give it a try, but I wanted to hear if any of you faithful readers have given it a try.
Since I have EVE on the Lappy, I could always put AA on the main PC. Whoa. Two MMOGs playing at once. That may go way beyond nerdcore. That’s uncharted territory.
(PS – That shirt? I want that!)
Well, I’m currently in the middle of a mission in EVE and I’ve got a five-star gate jump to make, so now would be a good time to post some of my impressions of EVE Online.
That’s right. I’m blogging my impressions of EVE as I’m experiencing them. I’m hardcore like that. EVE is hands-off like that. (For now, I hope)
To be honest, I don’t know what to think about EVE yet. The game world is HUGE. I don’t think I’ve ever played in a game with so much real estate. I’m no astronaut, but if I was, I bet this is what space feels like. The game itself seems like it is very complex. The beginner tutorial took me about two hours to finish and I feel like I barely scratched the surface. The gameplay could probably be done without any graphics (TW2002!) but that would be a shame. The game is gorgeous.
Actual game play so far has been a mixed bag. Traveling has been boring, and there’s nothing you can do to make it any better (at least that I know of). You simply select your destination, hit auto-pilot, and you can walk away. I understand that when I start traveling in low security zones that I’ll have to be aware of my surroundings, but for now I simply chart my paths to be as safe as possible. Actual playing is a funny thing — other than the mission I’m currently doing, I’ve just been mining asteroids, which means I am not really doing anything. I warp to an asteroid belt, pick out a couple asteroids and I start mining. It takes me a few minutes to fill up my holds and then I go back to base, drop it off, rinse and repeat. The tutorial showed me how to do missions, but for I’ve mainly concentrated on mining and I’ve racked up a decent amount of ISK (EVE currency). I’ve already bought a new ship and am earning toward another one. It sounds boring, but I’m occupying myself with other things (blogging) while I’m mining. There’s a certain sense of accomplishment and enjoyment, but I can’t explain it. The buttonWife think it’s lame that I say I’m playing a game that I’m not really playing, but I’m liking it so far.
Leveling up is another interesting thing. You don’t gain experience for doing anything. You just pick a skill and you train it. Then after a certain period of time, you gain the next level in that skill. So right now, I’m training for level 4 mining. I started it Saturday night and I should finish training it tonight. Training goes on, even if you’re not playing. I like that idea. It’s the grind without the grindstone.
All that being said, there’s a huge amount I haven’t experienced, but of the little I have, I like it. I’ll keep playing, giving it a couple weeks worth of trying it out. The weird thing is, if my laptop died tomorrow, I wouldn’t have a problem with walking away from EVE. It hasn’t gripped me yet. I’m going to give it some time, but we’ll see.
Okay, that was weak.
I’ve decided to take the EVE Online plunge this weekend. I’m going to download the client sometime tomorrow and then give the game a whirl for the two week trial. I’ve long resisted paying a monthly fee for a game (even though I did it with Neocron), but I’ve already learned to justify it, if I decide to play past the two week freebie. If I buy a game a every couple months, that’s at least fifty bucks I’m dropping on a regular basis. If EVE is as good as I think it might be, it would only be forty bucks every three months, actually saving me money because I’m not buying other games. Yeah, that’s the ticket! EVE Online is a like a computer game coupon! The buttonWife will be so happy with all the money I’ll be saving!
I’m thinking about putting the game on the laptop, since I’ve heard there can be stretches of downtime while you’re doing certain things, so I want to free up the main PC while I’m playing. Then I can work on “The Queue” while I’m playing EVE. That blows my mind, man!
So if any of you buttonMashers have any tips/comments/suggestions (like “RUN! Don’t download this game!”) let me know. If you’re looking for someone to game with, drop me a line and I’ll look you up once I get in the game. I’m looking forward to it.
I haven’t devoted as much time to games recently as I have to finishing Resident Evil 4. Before I started playing RE4, I wasn’t playing anything with any regularity. I played some Guild Wars when I got the chance, maybe a game of Mario Kart DS or Animal Crossing Wild World, but other than that, I wasn’t too commited to anything.
Finishing up RE4 has renewed my desire to game again and now I’m not sure what’s up next. Playing through RE4 has piqued my interest in the Resident Evil universe, so I may play some of the older RE games. I started playing the REmake of the first game for the Gamecube, but never really made it that far. I know most of the older games are flawed in their controls, so that may be hard to overcome, having been spoiled with the over-the-shoulder camera and controls of RE4. Nevertheless, I’d really like to see more of these character’s pasts and get more of the back story. I still say Capcom should capitalize on the success of RE4 and repackage all the Gamecube editions of the series in one mega-pack. Throw in a couple sweet collectibles and I’d be all over it.
I’ve also got “The Queue” to work on. I really should get back to Metroid Prime 2: Echoes
It’s not going to happen, because I’m strongly considering giving EVE-Online a try. The guys over at Kill Ten Rats, one of my daily reads, are always posting excellent EVE bits and pieces and I’m very intrigued. I almost bought EVE-Online last year when I was looking for a new MMORPG to play. I ended up with Neocron instead of EVE (which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing). Neocron was fun but eventually fizzled out. It didn’t exactly put Massive in MMORPG, which always bothered me. EVE looks much deeper (maybe it’s too deep) and a lot more vibrant. From the looks of it, the crafting system is complex and confusing. Just the way I like it. A good crafting system is one of my basic needs, so this may be the clincher. I loved Neocron’s crafting system (the best I’ve experienced) and EVE’s looks much better. So there’s a good possibility I may download the client and give the 14-day free trial a go. I will still have to grapple with the monthly fee, but that’s something that can be worked out.
You guys have any suggestions? Any experiences with EVE? Anything else I should try out?
Only the unbeliever could find the parallels. Observe.
As usual, sex shows us that it is more then the meaning of life, it is also a playbook for creating content.
Phat loot = babies. I totally agree.
A lot of people arrive at buttonmashing.com searching for all things Guild Wars. Many get pointed to my Guild Wars review (due to the fact that the review includes all the topics they’re searching for) but are actually looking for help on a specific topic. Because we here at buttonmashing are all about serving the gaming community, I’ve rounded up some helpful links to help you get your Guild Wars on. Hopefully this helps.
A great place to start is the Guild Wars Wiki. You can pretty much find everything that you could possibly need — locations of skill traders, mission maps (along with bonuses), crafting. It’s a one-stop-shop for your Guild War needs. There are other sites that also have strategies, skill descriptions and other helpful hints. The Guild Hall and Guild Wars Guru are both sites I frequent. I lurk in the GW Guru forums, where a lot of good info for the Guild Wars player can be found. There are a lot more sites than the two I list here. A fairly complete list can be found at the Guild Wars website.
While Guild Wars doesn’t seem to have the breadth or depth of WoW or EQ but jumping back into GW this past week has reminded that it is still a fun game. Even though it may MMORPG-lite, it’s still good fun. It’s good to be back to slaying the bad guys.
I plan on updating this post as more GW searches come in. It will be broken down in terms of search topics. For now, most of the searches coming in are for crafting, so we’ll start with some helpful crafting links. More will follow.
Crafting
This is a good discussion about Salvage Kits
Of course, once you salvage all those goodies, you’ll need a place for Armor Crafting Recipes.
Handy Salvage Guide, so you’ll know what kind of crafting material you can salvage from what items.
Builds
This link is a good resource for different strategies for different builds.
And more…
(Last Update – 12/12/2005)
I originally planned on one big article on the convergence of MMORPGs (or MMOGs in general) and sports games. After I finished the first part of the article I realized there is a lot of ground to cover. So this is the second part of my article on MMOSG. This is also submitted to the September edition of the Blogs of the Roundtable (specifically, Topic Choice 1E(xploratory): Pick a genre of games and discuss how it would benefit from adopting some of the game mechanics of another genre. If the merging of the genres would create a new genre, discuss the core gameplay and boundaries of the new genre..)
A while back I mentioned I had been playing a Golf MMORPG called Shot-Online. Since then, I’ve been back for a round here and there and my overall impression of S-O is that it’s an ambitious game that is fun to play and actually has players that are fun to be around. It got me thinking about Sports games as MMORPGs. Or at least MMOGs. Call them what you will, but I’ve seen them mostly referred to as MMOSG (Massively Multiplayer Online Sports Games). I wondered if there were other games out there trying the Massively Multiplayer genre of gaming. I also thought about where this “genre” of games could go. We already have online sports gaming that’s been relatively sucessful but I think there could be more. I don’t think role-players and sports fans are that far removed. They both pore over their players “stats” and play to their strengths while shoring up their weaknesses. The MMO “sphere” is ripe with possibilities.
This is a two-part article. The first part will be what I’ve found while I’ve looked for games that fit the MMOG mold. Part two will be some thoughts I’ve had and where I think this could go.
[Read more…] about MMORPG Sports (Part I)
From games.Slashdot, we get the head-scratching link du jour. It appears that the idea that teenagers playing video games can kill each other (digitally, not literally, although that’s happened, too) doesn’t sit well with the Chinese Government. What is this, communism?
“Minors should not be allowed to play online games that have PK content, that allow players to increase the power of their own online game characters by killing other players,” Liu Shifa, head of the MOC’s Internet Culture Division, which drafts policies governing the online gaming market, told Interfax. “Online games that have PK content usually also contain acts of violence and leads to players spending too much time trying to increase the power of their characters. They are harmful to young people.”
I’m a little confused here. What’s the “harmful” thing to young people? Being able to kill each other or having to grind hour after hour to “increase the power of their characters”? Of course both can be viewed as harmful, but let’s be honest. How bad can it really be? Let the kids play and let them beat up on each other. It’s fun!
Oh, and that sound you heard when this was announced? Thousands of Chinese gamers cheering when they realized that the days of being PK’ed by a 12 year-old who plays all day and has a character named Legola5.
I may be going out on a limb saying this, but I would imagine the majority of you readers are not playing Shot-Online, the greatest Golf MMORPG EVAR. That being said, if by some chance you are playing (or have played in the past) Shot-Online, then you’ll be pleased to know that “Season 2” has launched. The website has been redesigned and there’s a whole new client to download. I downloaded and played a round of golf but I didn’t notice too many changes.
The game is still free, but you can always throw PayPal money (it’s fake, like Monopoly money, right?) at them and buy in-game items from the store. I’m all for them trying to make their money this way, but I’d rather earn my items the old-fashioned way — grinding through hundreds of rounds of golf. Call me a glutton for cyber-punishment, but if I can’t grind, I ain’t playing.
So far I haven’t played a round of golf with other players yet. I’m still a lowly level 6 golfer with no game to speak of. It’s depressing to have my all-time longest drive be 207 yards. And that’s when it was sunny and a 10 MPH wind at my back. I figure once I get up around level 10 or so I’m going to give the whole multiplayer thing a try. But for now, I still think Shot-Online is a pretty fun game, especially the free part.