Pointy ears and tights have it all wrong!

Tobold, the WOW blogger, has gone on a rant about how RMT ruins EVE Online. His thesis is that in EVE, you can buy success which breaks the game.

I think that if you are used to playing a game like WOW, LOTRO, or EQ this might seem possible. The important point that the non-EVE-playing "analyst" misses is that EVE is not just about running up to something and pushing 4 keys in a specific order while dodging/changing positions at key times that you can learn from watching You Tube Videos with no risk of losing your stuff if the group or raid wipes. While one can certainly get into a big ship by buying PLEX, one can also lose that ship VERY fast if they do not know exactly what they are doing. Even in High sec, expensive ships are ganked all the time. Just ask Helicity!

I fully support new players picking up a few PLEX to get started with EVE. It helps with skill purchases and getting going with ships early on and also helps established players play for free as they sell ISK to the new player. This RMT does not affect my gaming in any way except in moving ISK to people who are looking to spend it, which is good for my market orders. The only flow of cash is from players to CCP, avoiding the problems with supporting macro-slime or botters.

Tobold is concerned about fairness, "You being able to boost your power with money is even worse if you directly compete with other players in PVP."

At the level of low sec or 0.0 play, buying PLEX does not give one any significant advantage over the other players who are out killing each other. Any decent PVP player can fit and fly T2 to get an edge in battle when that is called for. Having deep pockets will enable you to afford to lose more ships, but it will not make you a better pilot. In WOW, purchasing expensive gear will "twink" your toon and give a tremendous advantage over players with cheap gear. Conversely, a T2 fit Taranis could easily go down to a cheap Rifter if the pilot doesn't know what they are doing.

The skill system which Tobold maligns allows a very young player to be highly useful in gang and fleet warfare with veteran players within a week or two of starting the game as a tackler or scout. I certainly don't think a 2 week player on the WOW rails would be able to interact meaningfully at all with lvl 80 WOW players in a PVP situation.

In EVE, you cannot buy your way to easy mode. Using specialized and expensive ships makes you a tremendous target. You fly ships like that for a specific purpose or role with great understanding of the risk and appropriate fleet backup. There is no uber-unstoppable ship for every situation! (Sorry Tengu pilots...)

To break it down clearly for any traditional pointy ears and tights MMO players reading this: You cannot "buy your way to power" in EVE. You can "buy your way to providing expensive loot drops for the rest of us" in EVE. In fact, I strongly encourage Tobold or any other MMO player to jump into EVE and prove me wrong by buying up some PLEX and becoming "powerful" to demonstrate this uninformed claim. Just be sure to update your clone before you leave the station!

P.S.

There is no easy mode in EVE.

H.T.F.U.

Musings and Virtual Wanderings

My hope with this blog is to capture thoughts on virtual worlds, gaming, mmos, and other forms of early 21st century entertainment. My experience with MMO's started with playing EQ (Everquest) the day it launched. After initially being blown away by a massive 3d world crawling with human personalities and drama, the shine of this proto-MMO wore off after the initial glamour was tarnished by poor game-play. I found EQ too annoying, and was unable to tolerate corpse runs, waiting for ships to travel, and the other myriad obstacles offered by SOE's first foray into 3d MMO gaming. My time in EQ was limited to several months, but I did discover a love of the potential that these parallel universes had to offer. I know that EQ fixed most of the game mechanics that I couldn't tolerate later as the game developed, but by then I had already moved into new virtual worlds.

My travels then led to Asheron's Call (AC), where I lingered for a time. The "clunky factor" of a new game once again wore me down and I eventually drifted away from MMO's for a time. Asheron's Call 2 (AC2) drew me back, and I enjoyed that game for its brief illustrious time until the server issues drove my guild (and most other players) away. I enjoyed the innovative play style in AC2, especially the Lugian tactician and the vampiric Tumerok tank. The PVE content was fun, and it seemed much more polished to me than EQ or AC had been. I had just reached a high level with my character when the game became unplayable so the complaints that there was not enough content didn't impact my experience in AC2.

Star Wars Galaxies (SWG) offered a brief and severely flawed gaming experience. I loved the amazing character models and customization, but running from alien animals shooting a blaster over my shoulder was just too much to take. The X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter action that should have been in the game was missing along with fun playstyle. Having been treated with AC2's engaging combat, SWG just couldn't represent.

I did find amazing combat in the venerable FPS MMO, Planetside (PS). This game was fun enough to engage me for several years of massive fun. The large scale battles that occasionally happened have been unrivaled to this day for me. Sadly, SOE was not up to the development task with PS and was unable to continue innovating and improving the game. PS stagnated, and I now only rarely dip into the Vanu world every year or so for old time's sake.

I tried World of Warcraft (WOW) and Lineage 2, but found them too rudimentary and "grindy." Spending months to finally get to the interesting "end game" just wasn't engaging for me. I had been spoiled by PS and AC2, which both offered engaging ways for lowbies to enjoy the ride. PS especially made it easy for anyone to contribute to the fight at any level. You just gained access to more options when you had risen in the ranks with experience in PS. Anyone could pop anyone else in the back of the head in Planetside!

This disgust with gear or level being the defining force in determining effectiveness in PVP led me to one of my all-time favorites: Guild Wars (GW). Here was a game that made it easy to cap the character, yet still provided engaging PVE with a great objective based PVP system as well as fun arena battles! GW fulfilled the MMO need (with occasional dips back into PS) through the Factions and Nightfall expansions. However, after working at getting my toons fully developed in GW, I was disappointed when Arena Net announced GW2. I had invested in awesome characters, and now they were killing the game to start again. (We saw how well that seemed to work for EQ2...)

I briefly tried Dungeons and Dragons Online (DDO) and enjoyed the game overall. However, I didn't like how they set up healing in the initial release, and this put me off the game as I often enjoy playing healing classes. DDO has phenomenal dungeon crawling, and I feel it is a highly underrated game. I still dip back into DDO from time to time, and look forward to checking out the recent addition of the Monk class at some point in the future. Turbine seems to be attentive to improving DDO, and they have worked most of the kinks out that the game shipped with.

Around this time, my brother had been beta-testing Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO), and he convinced me to check out LOTRO and pick up a lifetime subscription. I greatly enjoyed the atmosphere and lore of the game, so this seemed like a good fit. While I heard the complaints that LOTRO was a WOW rip-off, I found the players to be more mature and enjoyable on average and dove into Eriador. The bulk of my MMO time over the past 1.5 years has been with LOTRO. I love the Monster PVP (PVMP), and I feel Turbine has done very well with the Player Housing, Crafting, and frequent free expansions they have added to the game. I am excited to check out the Mines of Moria expansion expected this November.

I hope to explore my thoughts on LOTRO, gaming, and MMO's in general as this blog develops. I have been learning about EVE Online over the past 3 months, and look forward to checking out a new world soon. I hope this blog will develop into an interesting travelogue and offer some worthwhile reflections or even insights. At the least, I hope it might be entertaining!