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Van Hemlock Episode 44
Wed, 25 Mar 2009 10:32:00 GMT [download/play]

We're back and this week we're being buried under the weight of daft news stories as well as having a nice long discussion about Eve. What is it, and what would a fantasy game have to be in order to be The Fantasy Eve?

Follow us on Twitter for the friday question at @vanhemlock and @jonshute, leave us a review over on iTunes to help our relentless obsession with being on the front page of recommendations or leave us a comment at virginworlds.com. Or just sit back and enjoy the show.

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Episode 44 Discussion Thread

'Eve faction grinding.' by MollyMillions
Submitted on 2009-03-25 16:58:48 CST
Great show as always.
You mentioned that Eve does not require grinding but I have found it does if you want to use the research and development agents or if you are a non PVP'er and wish to create a POS (player owned station) in high sec. I have been running mind numbingly boring courier missions every day for weeks to try and get my unmodified Gallente Empire standing up to 0.5 and am half way there (courier missions are the fastest way of increasing empire standings).

'Eve faction grind' by Jon

Submitted on 2009-03-25 17:44:04 CST
Ah, yes. Good point. The faction grind is indeed crushingly grindy. I stand corrected. Fixing your security status can be a big grind as well.

'Eve University....' by Sentack
Submitted on 2009-03-25 18:38:53 CST
Well thank you gents, I'm quite happy with that very informative education on the basics of Eve! That really helped put things into perspective by quite a bit. I feel like I still have this huge gap in my knowledge of what I don't even know what I don't know, but I'm content to understand that Eve really does work on a different level then most MMO's. It sounds like that it's not exactly a better game then what where used to, but it really is something that you can sort of take to a new level you don't normally get with MMO games.

I mean, when we think deep player involvement, we think of the big Raid leaders and the kind of hard core end game raids for that phat lewt that took hours in Everquest. With Eve, you don't have that. You have real player interaction and you also have real deep roles to play that don't correspond to the classic "holy trinity". I mean who ever heard of a real Diplomat character or anything along the lines of your "Miner Corporations aligning with Combat Corporations for mutual benefit" that wasn't just some hogwash about 2 small guilds helping each get through raid content in a classic fantasy MMO.

I mean this is fantastic sounding stuff. I can see why people might really get into all of this. It's sort of like a never ending strategic board game and for what it is, there might be some difficulty trying to translate this game to a Fantasy based MMO. I mean I can see how some of it might work, really the theme shouldn't matter. You can come up with all manner of excuses for some of the rules that help players not become completely gutted should they die, like the world working on credit or an 'influence' system instead of in game 'gold' cash and the like. You guys also made me curious about Shadowbane again, that game had a major reboot about a year ago this month and I'm interested in hearing how well things are going for it.

Over all, Eve really is a different beast, and it sounds like nobody caught on to the fact that it's not just a MMO with hardcore PvP ruleset turned on. Darkfall sounds like it tried to subscribe to that standpoint and I'm not sure that model will lend them to a large playerbase or anything that 'grows' like Eve has. While Eve is 100% pvp, the protections in the game help people grow and as long as you can always 'start over' and they can't 'take away your knowledge' which seems more paramount then your stuff. Then I think for a specific set of MMO players. It's going to be a real winner. And for that, I congratulate CCP and wish them continued luck.

Now maybe it's time I started that account up. Hmmm.

'EVE Faction grind' by Bremen
Submitted on 2009-03-25 18:55:34 CST
In defense of the no grind comment, you can "buy" faction standings using the Faction Data centers.

Of course, you could make the case that accumulating isk is a grind as well.

'@Bremen' by Jon

Submitted on 2009-03-25 22:54:07 CST
That's true, I'd forgotten that there were those shortcuts for standings. Which is dumb since I've used them with an alt. Van Hemlock posted about using them here [http://blogs.chimpswithkeyboards.com/vanhemlock/archive/2008/06/16/1958.aspx] but I don't know how valid that still is.

'Yep' by Bremen
Submitted on 2009-03-25 23:03:25 CST
Note the name on the first comment :)

As far as a fantasy EVE, you might look into a game called Wurm Online. Not as a serious game to play, but more as a testbed for your ideas. It has everything you suggested as necessary (except that money is dropped, but banks are readily available). However, it failed to attract much of an audience.

We talked a little about it in ATitD, as it has a similar crafting system, but also includes both PvE and PvP conflict with crafting having a direct role in those (walls have to be knocked down by players or NPCs, guard towers spawn npc guards, etc).

'Fantasy Eve - Single Shard?' by Btek
Submitted on 2009-03-27 14:07:52 CST
Gents,
one point not discussed for Fantasy Eve - does it require a single-shard universe?

My thought is that it's not *required*, but it would be an advantage. Pros are common history, better market/economy, more players & interaction, etc, etc. Cons are you can't move to a 'new' world if you get fed up with the one you start with, etc, but mostly technical constraints: single-shard is *hard*, just ask CCP.

So, if at all possible, I reckon go single-shard. Darkfall is probably a decent candidate for this, given they're restricting player numbers.

Good show as always, keep it up.

Cheers,

Btek

'9th Graders' by Riknas

Submitted on 2009-03-28 22:29:19 CST
Are typically fourteen years old.

I'm just sayin.