A cross between Ebay and a RPG. Project Entropia draws your real world dollars into the virtual world.
User Rating: 6.7 | Entropia Universe PC
The single thing you need to know about Project Entropia is that everyhing in it must be paid for in real money (dollars). The business model is quite unique in that you can download the client for free, but without getting out your credit card you aren't going to go very far. Each real world dollar buys you 10PEDs (Project Entropia Dollars) in game, and as a realistic estimate you need around 200PEDs or 20 dollars to get started with a basic weapon and armor and ammo. Project Entropia is very similar to other RPGs in many ways. The graphics are pretty in most places but don't have the sparkle of newer games such as EQ2 or WoW. The combat system is a cross between a RPG and first person shooter. Your first person shooter skills will come in handy in the PvP elements of the game (which are optional). Most of the weapons in the game are guns, with some melee weapons such as swords and aces. A nice touch is the ability to modify weapons with laser sights, scopes and amplifiers to increase their power. Trade is a big part of the game, or more accurately buying stuff with your newly aquired PEDs. You can literally spend as much money as you have in this game, with the rarer and more powerful items in the game selling for as much as 50,000PEDs, yes that is 5000 dollars in real money for a virtual item. The good news is that you can usually sell your items back to players again for a similar amount of money, high end items seem to hold their value well. The gameplay is a disappointment however, with the skilling system boiling down to hours of grinding hunt across the vast world, tackling increasingly bigger monsters depending on your experience. As expected you can team up with other players to tackle these monsters, and the social element is really what is likely to keep you going here. The PvP elements also have no discernable purpose, with perhaps the most exciting being an 'oil rig' that drops oil worth a few PEDs every 15 minutes that the guilds sometimes fight over. More likely however you will be instantly killed by an 'uber' or high end player who has either played the game since the start or spent a lot of real money on rare items. In summary if you have money to burn (preferably thousands of dollars), by all means play Project Entropia and it will entertain you for maybe a month or so. If you want to just pay a fixed monthly subscription or nothing at all, this isn't the game for you.
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