But the prospect of investing MONTHS of playtime before I can start to have “Fun” basically kills that urge. The thing is, yeah, even if I happened to know just the right model to choose and how to build a character to last me a lifetime, it would be weeks or months before I would even know if it’s the kind of game that I want to play. There’s no ‘zero level’ that will allow you to learn the basics while having fun too.

WoW is a superior game because, no matter what class you pick, you’ll be enjoying the quests in the noob area within 10 minutes of logging on for the first time. You’ll be facing interesting challenges and overcoming them immediately, even if they’re tiny and weak compared to an endgame player’s everyday play schedule. And, as you grow in power, you discover a broad world of lore and character that adds depth to the world that you adventure through.

I would LOVE to play EVE Online, judging from the recent conflict. But I invested six hours into it on a trial basis… and during that entire time, I never once had fun. The game is badly designed for “Fun”. It’s too bad, really. I hope something like it will come along someday that knows how to deliver it. I would love to play.

PS, you logged in, picked a side, hit a terminal for your gear and were immediately inthe thick of it. You get tired, you log out, and forget it. Fast, quick, fun.

AC, you logged in… spend some time just on picking out what you look like, what proffession you wanna be, race, name, etc. Once in, your grind begins immediately, and you’re faced with a multitude of skills you can train on, some (like specializing in Jump) will hurt you later as it draws needed points away from more useful skills. You get tired, you find a place to log out, and spend the next 4 hrs researching what X quest is, or Y skill, or Z weapon… Slower, but fun once you understand how things work.

One aspect however that I noticed (speaking for me only) is that games that keep me longer, are games that tend to have me learning new things.

I got into the game again, this time with learning plans already worked out. I looked at the time it would take to get me into various ships, and opted for mining, first. I knew I could be inside a retriever in a week and a half. A covetor (the best mining barge) would take a whole month, but that would make me (to use a WoW comparison) a 60 Miner. Everything after that’s just raid gear and epic mounts.

On the other hand, I think the choices can be a little daunting. It’s too tempting to train a little of everything, and then you’ll never get anywhere. Part of what compounds this is the ability to train skills on only one character at a time, per account. If you’ve built the character well, your main will train such things just as quickly (or much faster if they’ve already got the learning skills), and a secondary will spend so much time retraining the core skills that everyone needs that you won’t see too much of a difference. The steady pace of advance is the most constraining aspect of the game.

That’s unfortunately very true. For my part, the quintessence of your and Ethics essay is that both games (or game paradigms, read “sandbox” vs. “guided content”) appeals to (mostly) different kinds of people.

Anyway, me fires up the EVE client :D

WoW is all based an achiever gameplay. In order for that to work they need goals that are achievable every time a player logs in. It’s a safe bet that players will always like this type of gameplay.

EVE is open ended with little hand holding to get you where you want to go. CCP realizes this is one of the main things holding the game back for new players. I would guess that people come to EVE and quit within a week. Then they take a few weeks reading up on how to play EVE, how to make a better character, what skills to train, and probably get themselves a corp. After that they come back and can enjoy the game, but it takes a lot of initial research to get going… all of which is outside the game and confusing at times.

EVE isn’t a bad game, but it just has rough edges that CCP needs to smooth down. Kali should hopefully be a big part of it :)