EVE: The Second Genesis Preview
We take an updated look at CCP's forthcoming online game about trading, exploring, and fighting in space.
These days, nearly all online role-playing games have some features that encourage players to form a community. Though some games make only minimal effort in this regard, others have more-developed features that help encourage players to cooperate. But you might argue that no other massively multiplayer game makes player cooperation as important as EVE: The Second Genesis does. This online role-playing game is set in outer space, in a futuristic universe of more than 5,000 star systems, populated by players in spaceships--though unlike some other games, EVE will constantly encourage players to work together for their own benefit.
Developer CCP has so much faith in its player community that it expects the game's economy to eventually be driven entirely by the players (who can form in-game "corporations"), without artificial pricing interference from any computer-controlled nonplayer characters (NPCs). Considering the fact that even in its beta state--there are about 30,000 play testers currently helping to balance and tweak the game--EVE already has more than 400 player-run corporations, this ambitious idea might well become reality. The developers promise that EVE will be able to support 100,000 players in the same universe, without the need to separate chunks of the population onto separate servers as in other online role-playing games.
One of the most appealing aspects of EVE is just how many choices it offers you. Even the simple act of character creation affords so many choices as to be almost daunting. New players must first create a character by choosing from the game's four races, each of which has two bloodlines to differentiate attributes. From there, you can pick gender, lineage, the academy your character studied at, and a few primary fields of study--all these choices shape the initial skill set and attributes of your newly created character. After tweaking your appearance through another dozen or so choices, such as hair style, eye color, and skin tone, as well as morphing the shape of your character's face, chin, and eyes, you begin your life in EVE with a small frigate. From there, you'll need to run some standard beginner missions such as asteroid mining and commodities transport to earn money, but this shouldn't take too long thanks to some recent adjustments in the beta that affect the amount of resources you gain from mining, as well as the pricing of some ships. Once you've got some money and a decent ship for travel, combat, and mining, you'll have many choices ahead of you.
EVE will offer players a number of different opportunities to cooperate with each other. Many items in the game, such as weapons and ammunition, must be manufactured. Manufacturing an item requires a blueprint (which can be purchased or researched by players with scientific skills), which is essentially a recipe of different raw materials that can be refined from various types of asteroid ore. This creates a clear connection between craftsman players and miners. Freighters carrying valuable cargoes of rare refined materials make attractive targets for pirates, an example of the interdependence between cargo haulers and friendly combat fighters. But the weapons, armor, shield generators, and special devices used by military ships all need to be manufactured by tradesmen themselves.
It's easy to see why many beta testers have already set up corporations to facilitate friendly cooperation between a group of like-minded players, who, working together, can more efficiently amass wealth by manufacturing and selling commodities in demand to other players in the game. One player working alone will be hard-pressed to develop the skills necessary to manufacture different types of items, set aside the time to mine and refine raw materials from distant locations in the universe, protect himself from hostile players, and then haul the finished products to the parts of the universe where they're in demand in order to finally sell them.
Corporations that become wealthy through their commercial activities will eventually be able to earn money in even more creative ways. Given enough cash, a corporation can purchase its own space station, complete with its own defensive turrets and structures for protection. The corporation can then charge fees to any player who wants to dock at the station and do business, or charge a rental fee for the use of factory space on the station (used for manufacturing items). Excess money can be granted to scientist players in the corporation to assist them in researching new items and in creating brand-new blueprints. The corporation can then sell copies of a blueprint to make money or keep it for themselves and try to monopolize the production and sale of the new item.
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