Quote from: Mathra Hiede on 22 Jun 2011, 20:57
... hyper-finished every-detail-perfect level MMO it was back when I started....
When was that, exactly?
Good God, people. I, with my entry point at 2006, remember probes that scanned a disk 1 AU thick. I remember all-but-unstoppable nanophoons, utterly useless logistics ships, and bombers that were maybe useful for swatting the occasional interceptor if the ceptor was standing still!
Now, my history doesn't go all the way back to 2003[...]
Mine does, and I don't remember this mythical period where everything worked as intended or was 'hyper-finished' or ' every detail perfect'
Unless that's tongue in cheek - can you still get stuck on stations, inside other ships and fly
through planets and suns? I remember when getting 'stuck' in systems was a fairly regular occurance for me (you log in to blackness and nothing loads) and I'd have to petition with an alt for a GM to teleport me somewhere else. That sucked.
But that said, I am nostalgic for the days when it was just frigates, cruisers and battleships (and industrials, but I don't care about those) and space was all unknown and new frontier-like, not as overpopulated and anything seemed possible...
edit: while I'm being all nostalgic though, EVE was always very pretty. When I started playing I was ubruptly coming to the end of my patience with Ultima Online - where they'd basically sold out with Second Age making two worlds, a 'safe' one and an 'unsafe' one, when it had previously all been unsafe apart from guarded towns. Then they chucked Garriot, and reshuffled the crafting system to something more marketable (i.e kinda diabloeqsue) and made it 3D in Third Dawn...
ooh 3D. Except it looked vastly more horrible than the 2D sprites did originally and decreased performance exponentially. I remember trying to fight ogres with my archer, when you have to kite, and my character spending the next five minutes running on the spot. By then an ogre has obviously clubbed her head in, it's just
I didn't see it.It got to be unplayable for a variety of reasons.
EVE, however, ran just fine and was much prettier. And granted, it's environments are ultimately just backdrops so were less resource demanding, but for someone who was used to jogging on the spot in a fugly world, it was a dramatic improvement. Back then I was on a 56k connection and had no problems with lag (obv that changed later and my interwebs were upgraded
) So yes, while there was always things wrong with EVE one way or another - balance issues, stability issues, things not
quite thought through etc...EVE did
look very polished and pretty. So while 'hyper-finished every-detail-perfect' might be a somewhat laughable description currently, as a first impression of the game in 2003 compared to other MMOs at the time it's understandable.