EVE Online

http://www.eve-online.com/

Due to EVE Online being one big sandbox, you can really accomplish whatever you set your mind to. Want to become a rich trader? That’s cool. A miner looking for that precious ore? Alright. A pirate armed to the teeth? Kickass! Whatever you want, you can be. But you’ll have to put some time and research into your first character when you’re going to create it. Of course trial and error works fine as well. But if you really want some help with it, you can best just make a character, find an outpost where you can apply to join EVE University. They help and educate new players in the world of EVE, and you will need it!

Every game has a learning curve. No matter how long you’ve been playing MMORPG’s, the first time login in a new world, you’re starting from square one, you’re a total noob. Some games, like World of Warcraft, have a much gentler learning curve, which allows players to learn in small steps. Also if you’ve played a particular style of game in the past, and the new game you’ve decided to play begins the same way, you’re already several steps ahead of the learning curve. But if you’re totally new to the whole experience, even the simplest game’s learning curve may be a struggle to understand. Now, EVE Online has a very distinct learning curve (see picture). And sadly enough that’s a reason why so many people don’t stick to it.

For exemple, PVP in EVE is not just strapping on some random guns to your ship and shoot at some other people’s ships. For those of you that are unfamiliar with the style of combat in EVE: you’re playing a game of strategic resource management. Your ship has a set CPU output and power grid that it can generate which allows for a variety of weapons, warp disruptors and more to be outfitted onto your ship. However, each of these weapons and other upgrades use a part of that CPU and power grid, which forces you to really think about what kind of equipment you’ll outfit your ship with.

Once the weapons and upgrades are fitted, you then need to fly out into the vast universe to find your next target. If you wish to be a pirate you just go into low security sectors. Though if you don’t want your security status to drop, you’re better of joining faction warfare, or go into 0.0. When I started I was in 0.0 in only a month time, I joined YouWhat. Sadly enough they lost all their space 1-2 months later to Triumvirate when they lost the war. Later on I joined IRON (Imperial Republic Of the North), and even had to pleasure of fighting in the MAX campaign-War against BoB (Band Of Brothers).

Anyway, so once you fly out the station, you find a system with potential targets. As you intercept your target, you need to first lock on to the target. Since EVE plays out in space with distances reaching kilometers apart, you don’t simply click on a target to lock on. You have to get close within range first before you can actually start to lock your target; the range will depend of the ship you’re flying. The weapons in EVE also have a range limit, and so a player’s best bet is to orbit a ship at range then unload on them with your guns. Though again you have to watch out, some weapons do better when you’re orbiting your target at their optimal range, while others are better used on their falloff range.

While that sounds simple, it is anything but. If you have more than one ship that you’re attacking, you may end up in a boat load of trouble in a hurry. Most ships only have a limited number of targets they can lock on to at the same time. Also, as your ship continue to get bigger, more badass and nastier, you’ll have a whole mess of weapons and boosters that you’ll need to keep track of. But I suggest you do that in advance as you will need to know pretty much what everything works, from how certain ship types are generally fitted to how you have to deal with them with the ship you got. Well, you don’t need to, but it’s pretty useful to know what you’re fighting, or what you can or can’t.

After 2 weeks of hiding in high sec and running normal missions, I thought I had everything well in hand to venture for the first time into low security; my rifter was loaded to the teeth, ready to fight. Damn was I in for a surprise. So, I sat there waiting for a target in a belt. Then all of a sudden an Omen (Amarr Cruiser) dropped out of hyperspace and boosted into my direction. So my first attempt of being a pirate out in the wild harsh space, turned out really bad… I was dropped to half armor, barely warped out of the area with my ship intact. I still wonder how I got out there alive because later on I flew quite often with the pilot of that Omen (Kane Rizzel was his name and one hell of a pilot).

If you enjoy role-playing and don’t think it’s possible in EVE Online, then think again by the way. I suggest you check his blog out! http://novakaneinc.blogspot.com/

Of course PVP is just one aspect of the game, but I didn’t find it interesting to talk about mining. And if I were to talk about manufacturing and stuff, it would take me too long. Anyway, for those of you who want to see some PVP or other things, you can just search a bit on YouTube, enough video’s and 101’s to find there.

Oh yes, this I forgot to say. EVE has this great Alliance Tournament on EVE TV. Even though I am not playing EVE anymore, I still watch the AT. So, big shout out to all there! :D And then I give you a video of last AT7: Semi Final - Pandemic Legion Vs. Manifest Destiny, to show you how fast things can go, and how tactics play a big role in PVP in EVE Online. If you don't want to watch it all, you can just go to minute 6:00 to 6:10 where you’ll get a nice quick reply of the match (rofl). Have fun watching!

That all said, good luck if you decide to try this game out. It’s really worth it!

RuneScape

http://www.runescape.com

One of the biggest strengths RuneScape (RS) has is that basically anyone can play it. You just need the latest version of Java and a decent internet connection and you’re good to go. On top of that a part of the game is free-to-play (F2P) so you can just try it out without having to pay money.

Of course Jagex has to get their money somewhere so there’s a pay-to-play (P2P) version of the game as well; this offers more items, more skills, more quests, more of everything actually.
Another strong point is that there’s plenty to do. Doing quests, training skills, playing mini-games, killing monsters (or eachother), earning gold or just hanging out; you’ll always find something to do.

Skills

A large part of the game will be training the various skills (24 in total). These can roughly be divided in a few categories: gathering resources, processing them and combat (of course there are some exceptions). At first you’ll be gaining levels every few minutes but after a while this becomes hours or, at the higher levels, even days. This makes training rather repetitive, but while talking to other people it’s not too bad.
Most skills don’t have any new things you can do past around level 80 (of 99), however, Jagex has been releasing more high-level content lately.
There will probably be a new skill later this year (Jagex tries to release them on a yearly basis), but there hasn’t been an official announcement regarding to which skill this will become.

Combat

RuneScape doesn’t have any classes, meaning you can use a single character to use all combat styles (melee, ranged and magic) . All you need to do is get the right equipment for a style and train the skills you’ll need for it. You also have more supportive skills that can be used regardless of your combat style; these skills are prayer (to boost your damage and/or defense for a limited time) and summoning (to create a familiar who aids in combat or carries extra food for you).

You’ll most likely be training on fairly weak monsters or using the slayer skill, but there are bigger things out there as well in the form of bosses. There are some bosses that have been around for years, such as the Kalphite Queen, but the most popular (and profitable) farming area in the game as it is today, would be the God Wars Dungeon. In this dungeon there are 4 bosses that drop some of the strongest weapons (Godswords: the name says it all I guess) and armor (Bandos for melee, Armadyl for ranged) in the game. Obviously, I won’t have to tell you that these items are worth quite some gold. There is a new dungeon in development, but again there hasn’t been an official announcement or any hints about new high-level items.

PvP

Personally I’ve never went pking (playerkilling, mostly done in an area called “The Wilderness”) in P2P so I’ll just say that it’s unbalanced (due to overpowered weapons that can kill players in a few hits without them being able to do anything about it) and move on to the F2P aspect.
In F2P you can’t use the higher-level gear P2P has, so you’ll never have to run away or maybe even die only because the other guy can afford better gear. Most of the RS pking is done in clans and over the years a solid clan community was created. As a result of having no classes, most clans will request that you bring more than one combat style (generally melee-ranged for damage or melee-magic to immobilize your target using the bind spell).
Pking isn’t the only PvP in the game, there also are competitive mini-games. My all-time favourite here is Castle-Wars, which offers team-based capture the flag action.

To view some pk videos please visit the (recently created) YouTube channel of The RuneScape Warhunger Federation (TRWF):
http://www.youtube.com/user/TRWFWarhungers

Trading

Trading has gone a long way in RS; from flooding the chat (with all sorts of text colors and effects) on the nearly-always-full servers 1 and 2 to the smooth system there is today with the Grand Exchange (GE). The GE is located in the capital of the F2P-area, so everyone can use it. It pretty much works like an auction house in any other game; you place your offers and continue doing whatever you were doing or log off. The GE also introduced an item database which gives you all the prices of any item you search on it, and in addition you also get a graph showing the price evolution of the last 6 months. This became a valuable tool for merchants, who buy and sell items at the right time to make profit.

Watch the official RuneScape trailer here:



Have you played RS as well or have any comments? Don’t hesitate to share your opinion with us!