Toronto’s getting chilly: we had our first snowfall a few days ago, and it looks like it’s going to stay. Time for a new game to help winter pass!
I haven’t spent any time in the retail version of Aion, other than to make sure my account works. What looked more interesting was Eve Online: a MMORPG where players fly around in space blowing things (and each other) up! Here’s me in one of the beginner ships:
So far so good, other than there’s about a million things to learn before you feel like you have a handle on all that could go on. The in-game help channel has been fantastic, and the forums are full of a lot of good info as well. Other than the space theme, two of the big differences with Eve are that all the players live in the same world (unlike other games that split characters across multiple parallel universes) and that skills are time based. In most other games if you want to increase a skill, it’s usually based on experience, which is often based on the number of critters you kill. So more critters = more skill. But in Eve you choose the skills to train… and if it says a skill will take 24 hours to get to the next level… then it takes 24 hours… whether you’re online or not!
I haven’t tried any PvP yet: I’m a bit afraid of getting killed and losing my nice shiny beginner ship. That’s the other big difference with Eve: death has real consequence. If you played Eve for a month to save enough cash to buy a fancy ship… and you get in a fight and it gets blown up, it’s gone. It’s certainly making me more cautious as I learn the ropes…