Out of Pod Experience

Before rejoining EVE, I did quite a bit of looking around for a good MMO. Things I was looking for:
-Open sandbox environment and persistent world
-Group vs. group PVP
-Players can conquer portions of the map and/or have real influence on the game world
-Player-driven economy a plus

In other words, an MMO with strategy. But not a turn-based multi-player wargame. PVP that has consequences for the game world, not just PVP for PVP's sake. But not a side vs. side mass battle, where the game map resets when one side wins.

The closest things I found were Fallen Earth and Xyson. Both of which are new-ish and have some kinks to work out. In other words, still kind of primitive, if not buggy. Any MMOs out there comparable to EVE in terms of the sophistication of the game world, and the group vs. group PVP?

Haven&Hearth is suprisingly deep, the sandbox is persistant, the Villages (similar to EVE's corporations) can and do wage war on each other over territory, high quality resource nodes, prime real-estate, loot, cattle or just "because". The player economy could best be described as "bartering", villages and independant homesteads trade resources with each other as and when needed.

That said the game is very far from perfect, there's a lot of lag, once you get to metal tools, there's not many updates and you'll find a sudden lack of variety. Perhaps most damingly, usualy about once a year the server resets wiping the entire world and spawning a new procedualy generated map.

Wisdom.

Dark Age of Camelot. It was one of the 'original' MMO's before WoW become the standard formula. They have added lots of quests to it, but it remains a game where it's more about going and killing stuffs than completing quests, and it's PvP is a three way free for all instead of only two sides.



If you want you can level entirely in PvP arena areas where there are no set teams and each level range has it's own PvE grind quest where you can camp carebears, and it's own central keep which you can take control of. End game is a massive map called the frontier dotted with keeps and towers you can take control of.

It is still a surprisingly active game, but like EVE it leans hard in favor of veteran players. Fighting in PvP gives you realm ranks that give passive benefits and points to spend on more passive or active benefits.

Game play centers on committing to actions. Spell casters for example must stand still to cast, but there is no push bar like modern games. You are interrupted and casting is cancelled if you take damage with the ability to cast a single spell uninterruptedly with a skill on a 15sec timer. Melee characters set up special moves, one to execute and optionally a second key press sets another one as 'backup' if it fails (behind target, you block first, etc.).

The game is balanced entirely towards group vs group fights. Some classes will naturally seem over or under powered, but make a lot more sense if you can get it in your head early that it's a team fight game.

When I took a break from EVE, I played a little Pirates of the Burning Sea.

I quite liked this little mmo. Its not nearly as epic in scale as EVE but the ship combat is much much more advanced. (Sail Ships, not space ships :) )

Group tactics like keeping good formations to ensure everyone has a firing arc on the primary target and blocking your friends that start taking damage make for much interesting battles.

Its very limited in scale, max 6v6 combat in open sea and 24v24 for port battles.

Ship production economy is mostly player controlled apart from some basic ships.

You can attack other nation's ports and fight for them. Losing a port severely impacts the economy of players who had production in that port.

After a nation wins enough battles and gets enough points they can 'win' the map at which point the winning nation gets a bunch of cool stuff and the whole map resets to default positions.

I also found the PvE to be much harder and less of a grind, and more of a storyline arc progression. You generally only do a mission once. Many cant be done alone.

Here is a video of one of the port battles i was in. I am Vidax there as well :) My name gets called a few times

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1OOt5TBCHU

Games like Eve are are rare in the current MMO universe. As a previous poster said, companies are more than eager to design games for the lowest common idiot and cash in, rather than produce games for the intelligent and discerning gamer.

At this point, just be thankful your one of the gamers with more than two brain cells, and can actually play Eve.

Perpetuum, look for it on google. Pvp is more dinamic than Eve, the rest is just the same

While i know of a few companies that are developing MMO's that could be considered even more sandbox then EVE, most of them usually lack the design focus and manpower to achieve their grand ambitions Mortal Online is a pretty good example of that.

http://www.mortalonline.com/

Although Paradox is working on an MMO called Salem which is based in the 17th century new-world which features open PVP and permanent death alongside a player driven economy and colonisation.

http://www.paradoxplaza.com/games/salem

I'm not that interested in it mostly because of its graphics but i would be interested in seeing how they work with PVP and permanent death it would add a lot of depth and immersion to combat.

How about Wurm Online? Ok, it doesn't have spaceships, but you're pretty much on your own, you have to build everything from scratch (cut log-make spindle-make hammer-make nails-build house...) On the bad side, it's kinda empty, at least in EUTZ. It's also free, with skill limit and no pvp in the "free isle", and no avatar customization . I has an impressive wiki and corporations are called villages. There's almost no missions - it's a virtual world.
Oh and it's crossplatform because it's pure Java.

Xsyon sounds very similar. I think it will be an excellent game someday. Nice graphics, very realistic 3d world (based on topo maps of the Lake Tahoe area), pure sandbox. They released it too soon though, almost a beta stage. People flooded in, got irate about the state of development, and left. Now only a few players around. Which is sad, because the game is better now, and because its a sandbox it needs lots of players to be interesting. No players, no trade, no competition for resources, no PVP, no one to show your finely-crafted fort-camp to.