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Wow all of these new sci-fi MM games comming out (I myself am waiting for Neocron).. Too bad later on in the year 2004 or something there will be an article in PCG entitled 'They never saw BCO comming..'. However Eve does look like a force to be rekoned with..

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From what I understand, Eve will be controlled with a point and click interface for your ship. or something to that effect. i think you control your ship ala Homeworld.

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quote:


Originally posted by $iLk:

From what I understand, Eve will be controlled with a point and click interface for your ship. or something to that effect. i think you control your ship ala Homeworld.


Yep. Its another RPG set in space. Not unlike Earth & Beyond, Freelancer etc. *sigh*

I just want to see the pretty pics because I don't think Eve will have ANY innovative gameplay we haven't seen before *sigh*

...then again, I could be wrong. There is a reason Jumpgate, Darkspace, Parsec, Allegiance et al, all fell off the gaming radar. From what I've heard, E&B is looking to be another spectacular EA failure. So, outside of BCMXP, Freelancer and Eve, there isn't much out there in terms of potentially good space sims. Then again, Eve is pay-for-play.

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The pics for EVE are not better than the ones for XP1. What freedom do I have with EVE? (Ha!)

Gameplay and immersion is more important to me than pretty pictures or picking sunglasses for my in game "head".

It might be fun for a few minutes... I think the premise of the multiplayer universe is what gets most people excited.

Now that I have found Battlecruiser, it is what I am sticking with.

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quote:


Originally posted by Captain X:

The pics for EVE are not better than the ones for XP1. What freedom do I have with EVE? (Ha!)

Gameplay and immersion is more important to me than pretty pictures or picking sunglasses for my in game "head".

It might be fun for a few minutes... I think the premise of the multiplayer universe is what gets most people excited.

Now that I have found Battlecruiser, it is what I am sticking with.


Don't worry; so many have tried and failed. As for this one, I'm gonna bury it so deep at retail, their grandchildren will feel the thump.

This Fall/Christmas is going to be pretty exciting indeed.

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  • 4 weeks later...
  • 8 months later...
  • 2 weeks later...

I'm still waiting for a reply from the person who sent me this email last night, to tell me where they got this news byte from.

Is anyone here on the Eve Beta still?

quote:


WeÔÇÖve seen it all before, the required agreeing to non-disclosure agreements, pressing that "I Agree" button, and not spreading a peep of information to anyone outside the closed circle. Now thatÔÇÖs been settled, I can say that IÔÇÖm technically breaking the NDA of the EVE beta here, but at this point I suspect that it'll be a moot point in about 5 months. Simply put, the beta test of EVE: The Second Genesis is in complete and utter ruin. The testers have been told the developer IS going to make the game go gold in about a month (believe me, there's no question about that)... and the developer can barely keep the servers up. In the six months I've been in beta, all they've done is add a bunch of features that don't really work all that well. The basic server mechanics are actually WORSE now than they were when I first joined. They can't code a stable server to save their lives, and they keep saying that they've improved the server code with each build. Something doesn't seem to be working too well.

Basic gameplay still needs a lot of work - even hardcore space fans like myself are bored STUPID with how the game currently plays (which generally involves a lot of mining, followed by point-and-click fighting that, despite the dev's claims, doesn't actually seem to involve all that much skill so much as who has the phattest ships or most friends.) They promise to have a large NPC back-economy running "soon™", which will mostly amount to being able to travel across the galaxy hauling things. The "player-driven dynamic economy" the devs promised hasn't materialized, partially because they keep wiping the characters.

Frankly, this isn't surprising. EVE is young for an MMOG. Although the initial concept was formed in 1997 (and the idea of a Privateer or Elite multiplayer game has been the wet dream of many a space fanboy, myself included, for at least a decade), primary development began in 2000. Almost right on the New Year, as a matter of fact. Ergo, EVE is now three years old. The average MMOG takes at least four years to develop fully. In other words, EVE is being pushed out the door a long time before it's ready. Another year of development, especially of the server code and gameplay, is definitely required at this point.

And of course, this isn't really CCP's fault. Hell, I still have an incredible amount of respect for Solaris, Coroner, RealX, Clover, and a lot of the CCP crew. They do need to recruit outside of Iceland, though... I am convinced that the reason they're the first all-Icelandic dev team is because the overall talent pool in Iceland is still rather thin (they have no schools devoted to game programming specifically over there, and I don't think any of the current dev team attended one elsewhere.) This is, as I've said, especially evident in the server programming department.

But even then I'm willing to give them some leeway... they are attempting something on a scale that has never been done before. They are about where they should be with a three year old MMOG - they're getting all the guts of the game in place, and now they need to spend a good deal of time polishing the product to a brilliant shine. Instead, Simon & Schuster Interactive is pushing the game out the door either because they don't want to bother putting enough money into it to develop it right, or they want to squeeze as much cash out of it as they can now and then run like 3DO did with Jumpgate.

Yep. SSI are the ones who picked up the rights to publish EVE worldwide. This is the same company who brought us such blazing pieces of shit as Outlaw Golf, Deer Avenger 4, Real War: Rouge States, and Star Trek Starship Creator. I can't think of a single game they've put out that hasn't been anything above "mediocre." And the reason is well-known: they like pushing games out the door before they're finished so they can cash in.

Of course, they're part of Viacom, so this approach is ridiculous when applied to a game like EVE. Hell, their marketing director, who sometimes visits the forums and chatrooms, has himself stated that EVE is a cash cow waiting to happen, especially since Viacom owns it, of all people. They've vaguely talked about movie rights, models, Zippo lighters, etc. And all this is true - they could make PILES of money on this game/franchise. The concept is that good. The only problem is that they need to invest the time/money into a really solid beta test and make sure they release a well-developed MMOG (gee, there's an idea.) As it stands, they're even getting ready to cut out features if they need to if it means they make the March deadline. It's pathetic.

Of course, they've also run one of the most disorganized and poorly-structured betas in gaming history. Conventional wisdom says that you get all of your features in and make sure the servers run flawlessly with a few people, then let the masses in. Star Wars: Galaxies has supposedly done this. Not so with EVE. Here, they just made sure the absolute bare minimum of the game worked (which didn't include the servers, obviously), at which point they opened the floodgates. The result has been sheer unbridled chaos. Most beta testers have quit in disgust at this point. I'm one of them. I keep hoping that they'll miraculously fix things with one patch, but it never works. At this point, SSI and CCP need to scale back the number of testers they have, focus on getting the rest of their content and gameplay in, and indefinitely delay the game until it's ready to be launched, probably a year from now. Otherwise, EVE will join the ranks of World War II Online and Anarchy Online as cool concepts that were released FAR too early and thus became disasters.

The best thing about all this (from a bitter point of view, anyway) is how I even came to KNOW of Fatbabies. A good while ago, the aforementioned SSI marketing suit mentioned that Earth & Beyond was getting lambasted on the site (8/26/02, "Westwood's Earth and Beyond".) In that post, he said that they'd have a much better game than Earth & Beyond would ever be. Well, at least E&B has stable servers.

Ah, what a wonderful thing irony is.


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Sounds like a typical money grubbin publisher, but I won't make any unfair judgements until I get a look at it. I hope they don't cop that let's start grabbing some money and we'll fix it later attitude

Self inflicted Foot wounds usually leave one with a very bad limp.

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  • 1 month later...
  • 2 weeks later...

Please don't compare Eve with E&B, that's like comparing BCM to Orbiter. Eve is in beta... and it's got a little farther to go before it's retail ready, but it's like playing a massively multiplayer Independence War 2. The universe is 3D... as opposed to Freelancer's 2D universe... we're talking vertigo-instigating 3D. It's refreshing that the developers are paying careful attention to making the game brutally realistic/believable. Got it pre-ordered and payed off... imho, it may not be BCOnline, but it's a damn fine space MMOG.

Can't wait to see the theoretical thousand-ship melees in retail =)

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quote:

Originally posted by Wolferz:

As of today, I am officially in the Eve beta. dowloaded the client, fired it up and wonder of all wonders The server is down. ROTFLMAO. Not a good sign IMHO.

I can't wait to see BCG and BCO bury this title

LMAO!

talk about dumb luck. and keeping the servers up only at specific times? if your going to do that then just keep it as a normal sp/mp game!

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Guest JuanFermin

I've been playing EVE for a little over a week now and havn't had significant issues with the servers staying up, recent patches have made the lag much, much better. Actually, I'm not sure if it was the patch or the fact that I now have a huge cache file located in the program group Can't really say much more, except for the fact that it's a Beta and the guy that emailed SC with all that bitter ranting, well what can I say... It's a Beta, they make mistakes, fix it and move on. You didn't expect to play a totally stable game and coast through with no problems did you?

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I'm with you, on this one Fermin. The only server downtime so far has only been the daily scheduled maintenance. Whoever wrote that rant to the SC, was a player not a beta tester. As far asI can tell the test is coming along nicely. I like the game because it is supremely challenging. It has some boring parts, but then again, what mmorpg doesn't have? Next time you're on, Fermin, look for Sneebles. that will be me.

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