Out of Pod Experience

I don't think star citizen will be that big, however I hope some of the really aggro player move there and do their brainless pew pew pew... but I agree that incarna should have been pushed forward, however it was put down because some people here where afraid that they lose if the social part of the game gets more attention, looking at their social skills in the forums, a justified reason.

If CCP would not listen so much to those monkeys, EvE could already be much bigger then WoW or any other MMO out there, they would have brought girls to the game and the whole thing would be much more balanced, however girls are another thing some are afraid here, we just have seen that in an recent event.

If it works on Mac! Get all excited about a game and it usually fails before a Mac client is ever made. I have to use a PC at working, I hate it, hate it, hate it! Freezes every other click.

I'm pretty excited for Star Citizen too. I actually came to EvE from playing Freelancer Crossfire mods. I'm a little cautious though... I was excited for Black Prophecy too... but that game played like crap. It wasn't much fun at all... and then they went crazy with the micro transactions... and then they went out of business and shut the server down. Years of development and hype for a game that went **** up in under a year. I was excited for Jumpgate Evolution too... years of development and hype for a game that turned out to be vaporware and was never even released. Lotta lawsuits there... but Chris Roberts has a reputation few can hold a candle to. The concept is awesome. I have a lot of questions about how certain things are actually going to work, as it seemed like Chris was promising everything to everyone... and I'm not sure how the sharding will work, or if there will be sharding. I know people will be able to run their own servers... so I suppose it depends on a lot of things. Sharding is a HUGE drawback for me. Also, I've become so accustomed to being a dirtbag in EvE I'm not sure if I'll playing for long if it is one shard I guess we just have to wait and see. I'm looking forward to it. If it's better than EvE I'll probably smell you cats later. If not, it'll become apparent in relatively short order.

I give Chris Roberts mad props. His games have kept me entertained (quite literally) for years.

That said, I'll believe the hype when it's delivered.

SC is so far in the future it's like trying to comment on what Titan is, other than it's MMO 2.0.

It has potential of being the WoW of space games, but it won't be. There's things in it I feel are laboring, and won't hit that "wow" mark. The animations come to mind, again (so focused on the design, but forgetting what separates Disney animations from anime -- smooth flow and framerates. 9 million players are used to it, not what is looked at as "sandbox" quality. It's those little things like that, which can't be ignored either as it's so in your face, that sends players right back to WoW. Polish).

I liked what RIFT offered, especially dynamic world bosses; AoE looting and a better loot distribution system. But apart from that, the game wasn't different enough from WoW to stay on the content side. Plus, having to look at anime style animations with the flickering (READING THIS CCP), it was enough to go back to WoW. At least the flickering isn't there, the animations gamers look at for hours a night don't tire the eyes. I can play for 15hrs in WoW, my eyes don't tire to the same strobing effects that CRT monitors offered. After seeing the video of what SC offers, sure enough, it offers flickering animations. Like they directly cut and paste the animations they got from the body suits into the game. The keying is off, it's very much like anime. Fine in film/TV, horrible to the eyes and brain in a video game.

See? The little details that is overlooked for the design? Yet details that separate a labored game from one that is polished?

Starting a new game is an investment of the most precious commodity in gaming, time ("Time is money, friend"). If you already enjoy the time sinking in one game, and it's to your liking, the competing game has to offer something that is tolerable and enjoyable to players. If the little annoying things add up, it's no longer worth the time to play.

The ace EvE has is that it didn't spend it's time on the animations (until now, and now they see what can happen). On the WoW forums there's threads on the animations for years, but what they're not discussing is the real factor in why WoW is successful. The animations are smooth even on the lowest quality computers. The eyes don't get tired (or players suffer from vertigo). They can invest their time into a game for the long haul, and enjoy it.

Playing RIFT for 4hrs was all my eyes could handle. EvE without the gate animation, is like WoW, can fly and do the things I prefer without tiring. It's a long term friendly game (and you notice its one of the few 2004 games that survived? And it's not because it offered content, it's because players can play for hours upon hours without tiring...the animations don't take from gameplay).

So from the gate, SC has a problem. Graphics in itself can make or break a game. From what I saw, it's a 1 year game, again.

I suppose your message is that the 'EVE killers' list is growing, but EVE hasn't been killed off, yet?

Only WoW can Kill WoW, and only EVE can kill EVE - is what I think.

But I also think this. EVE Online is an incredibly detailed game. Listening to Chris Roberts in his presentation video, I get the sense that this game will also be incredibly detailed, including the PvP. It won't just be about click Orbit, and activate modules. See who get's the better role of the dice and win with more hits than misses - more good hits than grazing hits. Chris Roberts' PvP is gonna be about piloting skills too. How well can you maneuver your airplane and outperform your opponent? I think that will attract a lot of EVE PVP enthusiasts.

As for the SC universe being small? In EVE, exploration means finding a new Wormhole and looting what you find in it, occupying it, and doing whatever one does in EVE wormholes until you get out, and it collapses or whatever. Wormholes in EVE do not actually expand the EVE universe. However, in SC, exploration will give you all that, but it will actually expand the SC universe. The newly discovered jump-points to the newly discovered solar systems will be named after the players that find them. The galactic map will expand, and all players will be able to navigate through the newly discovered and persistent jump-point.

At least that's how I understand it.

Chris Roberts has a product that is taking shape. Vaporware is something that hasn't even been worked on yet. Vaporware only exists on paper as a proposal. Star Citizen already has millions of lines of code written.

Anyone who puts so much of his own money into starting any kind of business that he has to mortgage his house, and live off of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches doesn't know how to start or grow a big business. Even Warren Buffet doesn't go into big business ventures alone. He gets backers to go in with him. He sells shares. You get other people to go into the business venture with you, so that if things don't work out, you don't have to live out of your car. You share the wealth if things go great, and you share the losses if things do not.

Blizzard started as 2 kids in college with a dream. They ran the business in the beginning on over extended credit cards, never knowing if they could make payroll. But they lucked up and found a mentor in another business (that was aimed at kids), and learned some excellent ropes about marketing and distribution.

The rest is history.

Absolutely agree with Inokuma ^

Chris Roberts is the real deal. He really does love this **** and it shows. ...and what a track record! I still think Freelancer was probably one of the most enthralling games I played up to that time. They made a frickin' movie based on Wing Commander (which I actually thought wasn't that bad... or at least not as bad as most people think it was! ). He's put his whole reputation on the line to say that he's going to redefine a genera he essentially created himself. It's a tall order, and it's true that what actually gets delivered is a mystery to us right now, but don't discount him out of hand. Roberts is the ONLY guy with any credibility when it comes to delivering the game he proposed. I'm cautiously optimistic. I guarantee you I'll be giving the game a good run

EVE is too huge and diverse for it ever to be developed as fast as we would like. You can't just make changes to mechanic x and at the same time develop mechanic y completely seperately and asume that there won't be any problems. We know this, because it's what CCP used to do and oh god the bugs!

Thus there is a limit to the rate of change that can sensibly be applied no matter how many people you throw at the problem because of the need for testing the combined effects. (It's an NP! type problem.)

Let's say that there are eg: 20 discrete groups of features that can be worked on (eg: "Drones", "Invention", "Mining", "Lag", "Sovereignty", "COSMOS", etc , etc.), and that CCP can only reasonably work on eg: 4 in any one expansion. That means that on average, each group only gets looked at in any serious way in only one out of every 5 expansions. Everyone feels that their particular issue is horribly neglected even though things are being updated as quickly as reasonably possible.