Written by Darryn Lowe | 15 January 2010
Posted in Games

What do you get when you cross World Of Warcraft with spaceships? Well as luck would have it Eve Online is the answer.

I have to admit that when it comes to MMPORG games I'm A): a novice B): not really interested. It all boils down to the fact that most MMPORGs are based around warriors and elves and wizards and personally that gets real old real quick for me. I had seen the ads for Eve Online for some time and even created an account only to find out their Mac support was bollocks and non-existent despite the ads saying they do. Well finally they released the Mac version and I've got to say it is pretty sweet.

Essentially your character is that of a pilot of a spaceship. You have to choose your race and your lineage but thankfully you don't have to go through all that boring strength, magic, stamina rot of the other MMPORG games. It's pretty much jump right in which is very appealing to me.

Like World Of Warcraft you have to complete quests and missions. Each completion awards you with stuff. Sometimes it's only money while other times it's ship upgrades or even new ships.

More often than not you'll be given an upgrade that you can't immediately install because you don't have the necessary skill level. Skills are attained by way of training and this is where a nice feature comes in. Say you kick off training that is going to take 10 hours to do (and it is real time people), the nice thing is that training still carries on even if you've quit the game. This makes things a whole lot easier to skill yourself up because you can sit your ship in the docking bay and then exit the game and train up overnight.

When docked, you can go to the Market and purchase upgrades, skills, weapons etc then add them to your ship if you are able to. You can also empty your cargo hold filled with the spoils of battle and sell off stuff you can't use. You can also repair your ship and even get minerals you've mined reprocessed into refined materials.

This leads me to another aspect of this game. Mining is a great way to make a bit of money. You fly over to an asteroid and, assuming you've got a mining laser which all ships get at the start, you target the asteroid and start your lasers. I personally have two ships, one for my battles and another for my mining which has twin lasers making mining faster. You then dock back at the station and process the raw materials into different refined materials each with differing value. I love this aspect and when I can't be bothered moving onto the next mission for a while I go out and do some mining.

The interface is very well laid out but it is possible to have so many windows open that seeing the game play is next to impossible. Some windows can be closed while others can only be shrunk. I don't like that because there's a window I'd like closed but it will only let me shrink it but it's one I never use. Meanwhile ones I want to keep open keep disappearing on me. That being said all windows are transparent so even if a window is opening it still allows you to see what's going on… in part.

Control is point and click which is a shame because the open source game Vegastrike is similar (except the MMPORG style) but you can fly that directly. That being said though the point and click nature works really really well so while it can be limiting it makes up for it by being easy to use whereas sometimes it can be very frustrating flying the ships directly especially when in the heat of battle.

Battle is pretty much the same as mining, lock on to a target and then activate the guns. I've found the most effective method is to select the ship from the side menu, right click on it and choose Orbit 500m then lock on and load the guns. This way your ship revolves around the enemy ship making you a moving target while you shoot at them. This lessens you being shot but actually increases your ability to hit them.

The biggest drawback to this game is the cost. It's $15(US) per month to play this game. Its only saving grace is that unlike World of Warcraft the game itself is free so you only pay the monthly fee. I don't think however that there is enough here to warrant $15(US) per month. It's huge, don't get me wrong, but when Vegastrike is free through and through it just doesn't make sense. That being said though the amount of traffic that this game generates I guess is why the cost is so large. Playing this game for a couple of hours a day will generate roughly 1GB a month.

All in all, I kind of like this game a lot. It's more accessible than most MMPORG games while also being more fun than most. It can get somewhat tedious at times but when you're in the heat of battle and you've got 10 guys onto your one and you've only got 200mm Gatling guns and they've got missiles, it can be such a relief to finally take them out and so there's actually a feeling of achievement that you don't get in a lot of games coming out today. If you like MMPORG games and you don't mind shelling out what is about $25(NZ) per month then I recommend this game.