f13.net

You probably know already that Entropia Universe has licensed CryEngine 2 for an upcoming upgrade. http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release.do?id=754668 The facelift got me thinking about the game again...

I've tried the game several times, never got past some poor attempts to "gather sweat", EU's version of lowbie hunting. Both Entropia Universe and Second Life give me a feel of being right-wing economy students' wet dream - looks exciting on paper, but not really working in reality. As I google for the game I don't find much vital information about the game, but pics of avatars dancing and pressreleases of people buying virtual property.

For someone (like me) not really interested in virtual economy, are there any fun gameplay after the "sweating"?

I had fun exploring in it, and the skill system in theory, but I like open world concepts and was seriously in need of a Sci-Fi fix at the time.  I'm not sure I would return, although I'm a little bitter over not receiving my money.  (Which may be my incompetent at-the-time roommate's fault.  I should have insisted on doing the withdrawl myself.)

I at least find SL an interesting environment with all of the creative tools given players. But Entropia always felt like a completely newbie MMO, something that in theory was complex but at face value nothing more than a PR machine of ra ra hey we're living Snow Crash too!!1/1/

Then licensing CryEngine2 is interesting and that's got a lot of metaverse-types abuzz about it. I'm very interested to see what artists they bring to buff up the world though. And still then, that doesn't solve the boring-ass-because-we-want-yer-cash gameplay system.

it doesn't matter what graphics engine they use, when your artists churn out the shit they did in the original game, nothing can save you.

Yeah, I really hate the avatars in the game. I guess giving the models a facelift would cost more than a new engine...

Also, how does this real money thing affect the community?

The CryEngine editor allows for pretty easy landscape sculpting, and that with good looks to beginwith (at least within Far Cry and its textures).

So it's going to be unfun and run like shit.

Yayyyyyyy.

Hey, I'm putting a lot of blind faith into Crysis (which obviously uses the same engine) as a justification for all the money I just spent building a new computer, please don't kill my buzz.

And costs a fortune to do anything but stand around.

CryEngine scales pretty good. If anything, their shitty code graft on top of it will make everything slow.

For that matter, what's the deal with Entropia anyway? Seems to me that it's mostly an real estate market simulator.

Real estate salesmen also cyber occasionally, you know. Only here it's with real money, so you add that exhilarating sense of risk to it.

Other than that, I got no idea what makes people "play" it.