OT: What other games are people playing??

[Aku]

I wish a mmorpg like that actually came out but comon I bet years will pass before one like that comes out.

Arryn said:
That's one of my big gripes against them. Do any of them have any sort of real persistent universe in which a player's (or guild's) actions actually matter? Where there's a real, threaded storyline whose flow you can actually affect, instead of the typical scripted "events" developers occasionally throw in, which the game companies have confused with the concept of "content"?

EVE-Online?

It's early days with EVE for me, and I can't devote as much time to it as the fanatics, but I have a clear impression that the game has a player-driven politics and a player-driven economy. For example, there seems to be a major war (or series of wars) between player-run alliances going on at the moment. The result is that ship and equipment prices have been rising for everyone over the Last month because demand is increasing (all those players needing to replace blown-up ships), while supply of raw materials for ship-building is decreasing (because miners are finding it too unsafe to get much mining done in the war zones).

Or, as another example, I've just been reading a series of Posts amongst arguing factions within a particular alliance, complaining that they're close to civil war. The military are saying that they're unable to fund their operations properly unless the miners pay some kind of tax on all their workings; the extremists amongst them are demanding that all the miners be kicked out of alliance space. The miners are complaining that the military aren't providing decent protection against pirates (player pirates, that is) or opposing alliances; and that it's not worth their while paying more tax until the military service improves.

The only problem really is that a lot of this isn't very well documented, so you mostly don't get to read about it in nicely packaged, polished story form. But there are attempts at both a player-run news service, and player produced propoganda videos, which are often a lot of fun.

The game developers also drop in a lot of their own story content, but it just feels artificial when overlaid on top of the rest of it.

Mark

[Cainehill]

Arryn said:

That's one of my big gripes against them. Do any of them have any sort of real persistent universe in which a player's (or guild's) actions actually matter? Where there's a real, threaded storyline whose flow you can actually affect, instead of the typical scripted "events" developers occasionally throw in, which the game companies have confused with the concept of "content"?

Well, there was one called Legends of Future Past - it was text only, similar to a MUD or to Gemstone III, but it was _awesome_. Wonderful game world, with critters that worshipped evil gods (they'd say nasty things to you, their grunts would guard their shamans), different kinds of magic, psionics, crafting long before it became popular, different realms and dimensions....

And guilds that mattered - one was the wardens / lawkeepers, there was a rangers guild, there was several evil orders whose members were exiled from the main towns, players could work and become vampires / werewolves (who were anathema to the wolfling race).

Great ongoing and short term quests; the world felt like it had an ongoing history, and the quest / story related battles and events you were in did in fact matter.

*sigh* It went down sometime between 95 and 99, a damn shame. I spent half a year trying to track down at least the source code / databases, thinking maybe I could purchase and run the game, but no joy.

[Gandalf Parker]

Arryn said:

That's one of my big gripes against them. Do any of them have any sort of real persistent universe in which a player's (or guild's) actions actually matter? Where there's a real, threaded storyline whose flow you can actually affect, instead of the typical scripted "events" developers occasionally throw in, which the game companies have confused with the concept of "content"?

I think that SWG (Star Wars Galaxies) is the closest Ive seen to making that work. Im definetly interested in seeing what the next effort along those lines brings up.

[Stormbinder]

Aikamun said:
Like these threads every once in a while. Have decided to leave MMORPG's behind. They have a community but minimal gameplay. Returning to strategy games. My Favorites are:

Dominions 2
Space Empires 4

Downloaded Titans of Steel, Anacreon 2, and the Chaos League Demo. Believe it or not, I am an old Blood Bowl fan. Threw out complete sets of Advanced Squad Leader, Starfleet Battles, and Car Wars but kept all of my Blood Bowl stuff. Shocked to see this game returning to computer.

I will weed these five games down to three so as to receive more enjoyment from the best.

Thanks again for the thread and info,
Aikamun

I think you can only download old "Titans of Steel" the freeware Version, wich lacks tons of new pathes/improvements/weapons and most of all lacks compaigns. You need to get "Titans of Steel: Warring Suns " (which is commercial sequel) to get the full enjoyment of this game. (unless of course you meant that you got the comercial Version from the warez site )