Those with slightly obsessive personalities, consider yourselves warned -- stay away! It could swallow entire weeks, as it's currently done to my Spring Break..

Fellow BOTF citizens! Beware the compliments heaped upon it by the likes of Azhdeen and others; cover your eyes when he posts! Because it's all true.

I thought it'd require infinite amounts of free hours to enjoy, but it doesn't require them, it merely consumes them. This is likely the space-game equivalent afflicting me of what afflicted countless Everquest geeks in it's heyday.

In fact.. if the in-game web-browser weren't so lousy... I may never leave it.. I could check X-Wars, e-mail, my stocks and do homework all while lobbing missiles at pirates or traveling the (god-awfully massive) universe.

Speaking of the universe, it's god-awfully massive, if I didn't already imply that. I've never, ever, played about in realm that size. Think of Star Wars Galaxies, cubed, then cubed again, and you might be close.

And worst of all, it's stolen an unknown number of CPU cycles from what should've been propelling Winterhawk towards #5 even quicker than I already have been.

Again; you've all been warned; stay away.

But if you can't, and you join with the 2 week trial like I did, and enjoy the graphics that look great even at 1024x768 (which I accidentally played at for two hours -- I knew I was at a low res but didnt want to risk changing it a crashing during the tutorial), and you happen to see a John Agrippa n00bing around in a little frigate, please don't kill your friendly neighborhood Folding@Home contributor.

It's already pinged my GPA; I forgot I had two smallish assignments due tonight in Intermediate Microeconomics until long past their due time... but.. Well, at least I finished a 195,000 ISK mission and pimped out my Condor a little bit. :\

ROFL!

I've been taking a videogame break for a little bit. But I'm in the process of building a monster computer which should be up and running this weekend I hope (depends when my power supply gets here). The only costs I've cut, really, is by not getting a second 8800 GTX for SLI and getting only 2gb of RAM instead of 4. But... I hope to fix that by the end of 2007 when prices drop a bit.

If you plan on sticking with the game for a while, I'll help you out. And yes, you're right: EVE does not require tons of time... it simply takes them when you're not looking (at the clock.)

There's also some really interesting things in various stages of development as well. EVE life should get interesting in the near-future.

I'm glad I'm finished school. I actually have time to go out and play games when I get out of work without fear of the "Oh sheet, I didn't do that x page assignment and those y number of calculus problems!"

From experience, I have to say that that would be near to actual universe size.



yeah, when I started playing Oblivion, I played for a week straight, over 60 hours worth of pay time in 7 days. To put it simply, my GPA plummeted.

I think x3 is better.

i used to play guildwars often. I might try this trial. How does it work to get a trial version for this online game? Do you have to request login information for the trial version?

You essentially create an account without supplying a credit card. It should be noted that EVE has a monthly payment while Guild Wars simply releases forty billion expansion packs. EVE does not charge for expansions, which it releases as major content patches.

In the end, you're going to wind up paying for both games as the companies house full-time developers to keep developing. EVE just happens to be based in outer space.

At my guild's height, we were the leader of an Alliance of over 250 active members. I was the leader of my guild, and the Alliance.

At our height, my guild could take on pretty much any other one out there. Ahh, good times.

SW:G I've played too, and I stick by my comment. Unless SW:G has tripled, at least, the number of planets, made the JTL expansion in to something at least half as fun as any of the original Wing Commander games (or much less FS2), and made the planets content something more intricate than "watch out for those hills over there, there's a bunch of militant hobo's that con red even to stormtroopers", then, yeah, I stick by my comment.

Current number of systems: 5382, each with planets, moons, asteroids, many with persistent player-made stations, etc.

The two week trial.. I googled for it, links to it are all over but I pulled the link off the EVE Online wikipedia entry.

I just finished my new rig too Azh, and planned to spend this week with Supreme Commander. Left the house around 7, hit every place in Sanford, FL I could find, and they were all sold out. I'd had the EVE client sitting on my desktop for a while, decided to give it a whirl, and.. there disappeared about 48hrs.

I'll be staying with it for a while, too, just at a much slower pace -- I actually do want to graduate, after all..

Edit: Another count, off Eve's boards; "Also 5,334 systems, 5,038 stations and 55,097 asteroid belts."

Edit 2: http://myeve.eve-online.com/download/videos/
The top three are all good, and only SLIGHTLY propaganda. All real in-game footage, mostly it seems corporate wars, but don't imagine that you'll be in some of those battleships overnight is all.

Only problem with Eve i felt was, that unless you started from the beginning ie launch then it was hard to make any difference due to so many big gulids and alliances.

But who knows its been a while, and i did feel they had a good role play element, also nice to see the borders and territories of the allainces change over time

I've never played EVE, but I did hear a bout it a year or two ago when I was looking for models to add to Starfleet Command 2. I found Battleclinic.com and they have quite a heavy EVE advertising campaign. The campaign didn't work on me though, so I never bothered to follow the links.

I would NEVER pay a monthly fee to play a game though. If I have bough a game, then it's mine and that's it. I personally prefer the expansion pack system to the monthly fee system, but that's my point of view. I prefer to have the choice of playing when I want, with the expansions that I want, not to pay constantly and possibly get nothing one month, then get a load of content that I didn't want the next.

I'm in work right now, but I will check out what EVE is like when I get home. I'm not paying for it though.

A montly payment is esesntially required for MMO's. What your money is doing is paying the programmers to continue programming on the game. This is why MMO's get support for 5+ years after release including brand new content.

Guild Wars is trying to break that model by not requiring a monthly fee in order to play. GW is, for all intents and purposes, an MMO. However, Guild Wars is kicking out expansion packs faster than a (insert noun here) (insert verbs, adjectives, and other nouns that previous noun would do very quickly here). Personally, I don't think it is working too well for them, but I could be wrong.

As a result, the game changes. So much so that they are completely different. EVE, from what I can tell, is vastly different than when it was first launched. And to boot, you've never had to drop 50 bucks on an expansion. I downloaded the client, paid 20 bucks to activate my account, and then it's 15 a month (or less if you pay X months in advance).

Your "normal" games are, essentially, the situation that BotF and Legacy are stuck with. You bought the game for 50 bucks, and now you're stuck with what you've got and must pray to the Gaming Gods that the developer will support the game long enough to make it solid. You might get lucky on some other titles (IE: Blizzard games for example) that happen to be simply exceptional (key word there, games like that represent the "exception" in "exceptional.") MMO's, typically, don't have that problem because the games are still generating revenue.

As for having to be playing EVE since the beginning in order to "do something meaningful", that appears to be a conception that a lot of people have but doesn't appear to actually have any substience. From what I can tell, once you learn how to play EVE (the learning curve for EVE is VERY steep), you can pretty much jump right into the action ASAP. You might not be able to join an A-List alliance in your first week... but that's true for any game. But if you want to make an impact on the game, you can start within a few short weeks.

Compared to other games where you need to level-up to get to the end-game, you can simply concentrate your skill training in EVE to do what you want to do like, say, fly larger ships. Or maybe you want to do electronic warefare. Or maybe you simply want to mine rocks and make tons of $$$$. Or perhaps you'd like to craft ships, equipment, and ammo. Or you could play the market game as a margin trader or do shipping. And there's always the notorius job of being a pirate, easily one of the most interesting and unique ways of life in EVE, or any game for that matter.

It's a very interesting game with a lot of open-ended possibilities that you can do. But be warned: EVE is very unforgiving if you make mistakes. Dying has real consequences and there are many ways to get scammed out of ships, equipment, and money. EVE, contrary to other games, does not put much effort to combat scamming. You, as a player, need to know exactly what you are doing at all times. If you are not sure, don't do it unless you are willing to take risks. If you're expecting the developers to hold your hand while you buy things from the market fly through systems, then you will be very mistaken and disappointed.

The way people behave in EVE in conversation, neogotiations, and on the market place is actually very similiar to real-life. If it weren't for the fact that the primary job players take involves blowing crap up (oh, and the whole "flying spaceships" thing), then EVE would be a scary RL similiation for your computer. Keep that in mind when you play.

parts of it, parts of it..

I play X-Wars, and that's free. Ok, the only updates are done when the game is reset or when huge bugs appear, and you can pay to have enhanced features, (Which are actually pathetic from what i've heard I might add) but it is otherwise freeeeeeee.

I posted a thread about an MMO game that I randomly found on the internet a few days ago. The game is called Infinity: The Quest For Earth, but hasnt been released yet.

The screenshots from the game look absolutely amazing - and has some of the best graphics I have ever seen. I can't wait til it is released.

One thing i did find funny about Eve recently was some Player literally
"stealing" trillions and trillions of Isk (cash) by pretending to be a investment prospector and then running off with all their money

Foolish on their part...

You get what you pay for. Web-based games are more simplistic when compared to their large MMO cousins. And the quality difference is definitely noticeable. I'm not saying X-Wars sucks because I've played my fair share of browser games and found them fun when I played them, but pretending they are as good as full-featured MMO's is silly.

Free games are cool. I like free games. I'm on these forums, right? :p But, there is a very good reason why MMO's charge money each month and it's not because "they can" but more because "they have to." Otherwise, expansion of the game would cease, bug fixes would stop coming, and in general, support for the game would stop completely. At that point, what's the point of the persistent universe if the game won't be able to continue being, well, persistent?

I don't know what X-Wars long term goal is but a lot of those web-based games end up being for-pay, or adding premium services, after a period of being free to build up users. My computer here could easily host a game like X-Wars (except I'd need to get a business-class internet connection), but EVE's Tranquility server network is a server farm all upon itself, constantly having its code rejiggered to handle increasing player populations.

The two week trial doesn't require a credit card, so its not one of those deals where they sign you up and require you to remember to call and cancel. I'd give it a try.

As for new content, I know coming up sometime in the near future is a brand-new DX10 graphics engine. Heck, most games out on the market don't even make their own engines, they just play with Quake's, HL's, or Doom3's, but they've made a new one from scratch. I'm not too worried about EVE's development slowing for a while, no.

Thanks for the compliment there Capt! very nice. As far as X-Wars goes, I'l tell ya right to the point. IT sucks! bugged, and screwed up all over the place. but it is free and I got what I payed for.. (then again I cannot afford to pay for a game like that)

I would perhaps try this game but if I became addicated, well then i'm up the creek without a paddle and a 5000 foot waterfall is in front of me. (get my meaning) Besides I was teased for being online 3 days non stop while doing the fist Alpha test for Nemos game. lol

Shhh but I sppend up to 16 hours a day online with X-Wars, in between sending resumes and bathroom breaks.

So I have to pass on this game. The wife would cut our DSL line in tiny piecies and me along with it. lol


The only thing she likes about any of these games is all you guys I talk to on MSN. lol she thinks your all brilliant and funny as well as charming!

Gag, gag choke.. lol