Intergalactic Summit

So I recently played a GalNet game called, Empyrean Online, a "Massively Multiplayer Roleplaying Game" about capsuleers. I'm not sure if anyone else has played but all I can say I was extremely disappointed with my initial playthrough. I don't know if the developers actually spoke with any real capsuleers but I can tell they must not have as soon as I logged into the, "Captain's Quarters". Really, do baseliners think capsuleers spend their time in some sort of cramped room whose interior designer was taught in the technical college of generic stereotypes? I rolled a patriotic Civire character and it seems all my station quarters involve being stuck inside a room barely adequate for a first year corporate college dormitory. Not only that, but why is there a door in the captain's quarters that won't let me open? Is this some sort of easter egg by the developers? A jab at the illusion of choice in videogames? A meta-gaming parable about doors and freedom? Maybe they were just too lazy to create a world outside the door? Is there a key to be found in order to open it, found only after the unlocking of numerous in-game secrets?

Perhaps the players have to envision the world outside the door -- they being baseliners it would be their own world -- but in a sense playing a capsuleer it's the world we're all divorced from. Maybe the developers were just strapped for funding and instead of hiring a fiction team leave it to the players to write their own stories about the world beyond the door and share it with each other - but then why play a game about capsuleers in the first place if all you want is to explore the world you already live in?

Or I'm just waxing drunk and philosophical.

Anyway aside from door related problems and the four walls it keeps intact, this game does seem like a rather fascinating combination between a spreadsheet program and spaceship simulation about capsuleers. Now if only they could conceive a better UI that doesn't involve having to open fifteen contextual menus just to do anything at all.

How ridiculous. It's like they never learned anything from the last two hundred years of Caldari and Gallentean game design and interactive entertainment, but I suppose it has its own anachronistic charms.

Altogether though:

0/10, will probably not play again (until they let me open that door and I stop getting ten or so spam mails to my Civire male character from random females asking me for ERP. What in the world is ERP? At least I hope they're female and not men playing women. How awkward a thought. Then again I'm a woman playing a man in this game.)

I found the lack of customization options for my Minmatar Sebiestor freedom fighter lacking. Seriously, where are the rank marks? Those arm tattoos they have in the game resemble more closely something a Deteis biker might have than anything a Matari would ever permit to be inked on their bodies.

And the clothing and hair options! Travesty!

Down with this sort of thing!

Tried it too while waiting for the manufacturing lines to finish up. I thought the "Captain's Quarters" that were surely modeled from the utility closet somewhere in the depths of my Prowler felt a bit off. That may just be the strange controls that kept derping with the strange communication system.

I was told though that "Real Empyreans spin ships". True enough, while at first it just sounded boring I quickly found myself compulsively sending freighters and stations into death defying dervish dances without even thinking about it.

Good thing we don't actually live like that or I'd go crazy rather quickly.

Quick question for the vets though. What's a "space lesbian"? Apparently all the female characters fall into that category, even mine. Oh, and I'm apparently male and live in a basement. Weird game. Won't last a season, I'll bet you.

I don’t like Galnet gaming.

Yes, I said it.

A medium filled to bursting with foul mouthed children, cursing all and sundry for having the audacity to beat them. The so-called adults are rarely much better. A world full of smack talk and ego. You can get that in any system in this cluster, why would anyone subject themselves to it in their leisure time?

No, not for me. That’s not multiplayer gaming, not real multiplayer gaming anyway. I want to sit down on a couch next to you and kick your ass. I want to see you squirm, hear your wails of despair or even your cries of triumph. If you’re not there, it doesn’t feel real. There’s no sense of achievement and it doesn't generate real, lasting memories like couch multiplayer.

More to the point, if you’re cussing at me, I want to be able to make you stop.

I'm personally sick of sociopaths trying to ruin my experience when I run through the games quests. I just want some down time dammit, aren't I entitled to it?!

Hey, have any of you guys looked behind that wall in your quarters? You know the one I'm talking about, right? You start counting the walls of your quarters, and you get up to three, and then after three there's another wall there.

Do you guys sometimes see things, sort of like... behind that wall?

No, no. Seriously. Decant, go into your quarters, do a precise count of the number of walls you find, and if you discover a wall with a numerical value exceeding three but not by a statistically significant number, look at it really carefully.

Don't do this if you're prone to attacks of suspicion or paranoia.

I'll stick with Age of Rouvenor. Virtual entertainment will always be superior to staring at a screen physically. Nothing beats leading a thousand player cavalry charge from ten different planets against those Morthane scumbags.

AoR, and WoV: Coalition, of course. Those two will do me.

I cannot negrep the original poster, but if I could, I would.

Don't you all have better things to do than play GalNet spaceships?

Maker.