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One of the MMOs I'm most curious about, but that I freely admit I will probably never ever ever play in a thousand years, is Eve Online. This sci-fi MMO from Iceland is a fascinating social experiment that I'm content to read about instead of experience.
Enter British writer Jim Rossignol, who plays Eve so the rest of us don't have to. His latest dispatch, where he gives an overview of the political structure of the Eve Online universe, is a fascinating read. It's like the crawl before a Star Wars movie: the aftermath of the wars between the Goons and Band of Brothers, the Band's uneasy détente with RedSwarm, the fiercely independent Star Faction, and the Council of Stellar Management trying to stand apart from and above it all.
You simply can't make this stuff up. And you don't have to, because Eve players do it for you. As Rossignol notes:
This wasn't a game about banding together to defeat monster X, it was about banding together to defeat other players. And why do this? For the riches. Players plus resources, plus more players, equals conflict. That's the basic mathematics that powers EVE Online. And it's been working for over five years now.Rossignol suggests this model isn't possible in an MMO splintered across several different servers, but he's only partly right. This model isn't possible on this scale. Eve is unique for taking place entirely on a single server. Therefore, anyone who plays the game is invested in the political structure. World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, and the upcoming Warhammer Online, for instance, exist across multiple servers, as multiple parallel universes, each identical but entirely separate to accommodate their thousands upon thousands of simultaneous users. In this sense, the tiny Eve benefits from its own relative lack of popularity.
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By Union at 12:36 PM ON 09/05/08
I've played evefor a while but i found it to be fairly boring in terms of game play. Alot of the basic mechanics are automated. And those 20-25k that play are spread out over a massive system of linked zone instances. The politics are not always the best part though. There is a every complex market system in eve which i have to say is the most interesting to me.
By Brood at 2:58 AM ON 09/06/08
Hmmm yes...EvE Online...
I've been playing EvE from the start without away breaks.
Don't start playing EvE and compare it to other games. It has a soul on it own. The game is about the community, every player is in a way directly involved in what will happen and will developed in the future.
It CAN be a boring game for sure, however it's all in who you meet and how and what kind of decisions you make.
Alot of features are automated indeed, however when you step out of the box you WILL have a blast with small skirmish actions or huge fleetbattles with amazing weapons as well as state of the art toys.
This game is what you make of it. Do you play sceptical, then the game will be sceptical.
It's no game as i ever played before. One of a kind for sure.
One thing i'm curious about is the picture being displayed and caught my eye.
When or where has this been taken, because i see a miz of UI items from old and new builds as well as UI items i've never seen in the past 5 years. Enlighten me on that one please.
By Fox1 at 8:43 AM ON 09/07/08
For all its eventual (and immediate, I suppose) broken promises and piss-poor management, Shadowbane did achieve a limited but similar political landscape on multiple separate servers, especially during its initial 12-16 months.
I personally think players will naturally gravitate towards this kind of play once a game passes a certain threshold in the amount of player choice available (usually in the areas of open PvP and crafting, at least so far). Success or failure after that seems to lie in knowing when the devs should and should not interfere.