This is the diary & short stories of Shalee Lianne Cerra, in the fictitious universe, New Eden, in the game of Eve Online. Come be a part of her world...

Friday, December 16, 2011

Blog Banter 31: Why EvE Wins


Blog Banter 31: EVE Online Community Review
Welcome to the thirty-first EVE Blog Banter, a community conversation between anyone and everyone with an interest in discussing EVE Online. For more information on how this works, check out this link or for details of this edition's topic, read on.

As any games journalist would probably tell you, a true and complete review of a Massively Multiplayer Online game is impossible. MMOs are vast, forever evolving entities with too much content for a single reviewer to produce a fair and accurate review. However, a collection of dedicated bloggers and EVE players (past and present) with a wide range of experience in various aspects of the game might be able to pull it off.

This special 'End of Year' Blog Banter edition aims to be a crowd-sourced game review. Using your gaming knowledge and experience, join the community in writing a fair and qualified review of EVE Online: Crucible. This can be presented in any manner of your choosing, but will ideally include some kind of scoring system. 

With each Blog Banter participant reviewing the areas of EVE Online in which they specialise, the result should be a Metacritic-esque and accurate review by the people who know best. 

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There are many reasons why EvE Online is simply the best MMO there is, and I'm sure there will be a lot of responses to this blog banter describing the most obvious things: one server, learning skills via time instead of grind, and well, it's spaceships.

But the thing that keeps me most interested is the roleplay.  

I have little experience with other games, having only really played World of Warcraft before my EvE addiction, so I'll compare the two in regards to RP.  


Who RPs?

Anyone who plays EvE is essentially an rper, whether they realize it or not.  If you log into the game, you're pretending to be a space pilot.  You choose the 'story' of your character- a pirate, scammer, industrial, etc.  That is roleplay.  

So everyone who plays an MMO is an RPer to a degree.

But, some are better than others.  It takes two things to be an online rper: 1. something to write about and 2. someone to write it.

On EvE you have more unique experiences to write about because it's a sandbox instead of game-of-grind.  What's a more interesting read?  A story about yet another elf dancing on a mailbox after a long day of picking flowers, or the one guy who spent nearly a year infiltrating a corp to steal loot worth thousands of real life dollars?

So just for that reason alone, EvE is superior to WoW.

World of War Craft: 0
EvE Online: 10 (EvE wins!)

What do you RP?

What happens in RP?  Everything that happens on EVE is rp essentially.  EvE Online is one massive, interactive story.  Every pilot I come across can affect my character's story.  That is the best part about EvE, is that one single person can change the entire game.

With WoW, your character starts off on a series of quest, and you grind and grind til you get to the top level, then grind some more for the top gear.  It's the same boring story for everyone.  "Oh he wants you to go kill ten kobolds and bring back some candles?  Hey wait...he told me to do the same thing!"  Your character isn't unique and you have no real choices for how the overall story goes.

But in EvE, the players are the story.

World of War Craft: 0
EvE Online: 10 (EvE wins!)

Where do you RP?

Roleplay on World of Warcraft was difficult to find.  They had several realms that claimed to be rp but usually those servers were just a bunch of kids who had no idea what rp even was.

On EvE, it's relatively easy to find even if you know nothing about the game.  A new player can check the EvE Online forums and find a whole section dedicated to in-character.  (The Intergalatic Summit, aka IGS and EVE Fiction)  In game, there are many channels dedicated solely to rp.

It doesn't stop there.  There are many blogs, websites, and podcasts that are dedicated to RP.

World of War Craft:0
EvE Online: 10 (EvE wins!)

When do you RP?

It happens around the clock.  With players form all over the world, there is always someone around to roleplay with usually.

On WoW, servers are sorted by countries or something, so that means there are a lot of slow times on WoW, when everyone is asleep, or off at work, yada yada.

World of War Craft: 0
EvE Online: 10 (EvE wins!)

Why do you RP?

Why should you immerse yourself into the story of your toon?  Well why not?  It adds another level to the game.  RP can give you motivation and direction.  It makes what you do that much more meaningful.  As an Amarr Militia pilot, plexing can be rather dull but I do it, not because I have nothing better to do, but because it would matter to my character to defend Amarrian territority (and hey I'm hoping to get a little pvp out of it too).

RP can open up doors.  I have met so many interesting people in the game because I am a roleplayer.

Still not convinced?  I got a free year of EvE for my RP blog and won half a billion in an EvE writing contest.

There are no benefits to rping on WoW that I know of.

World of War Craft: 0
EvE Online: 10 (EvE wins!)

How do you RP?

Just play the game.  If you're in the sandbox, you're roleplaying.

But if you want to take it deeper, if you want to explore your character's motivations and emotions, then you can always join one of the RP channels and interact with other people.  If you don't know what channels to join, check here for a full list.  Also, join the BackStage forums, because they are awesome too.

Or, you can write a story and blog it.  There are massive amounts of rp blogs out there all telling the story of New Eden.

When I was on WoW it was difficult to get started in it because there were no guilds and websites there to help you out.  (that I knew of anyhow)

World of War Craft: 0
EvE Online: 10 (EvE wins!)

So there you have it folks.  RP on EvE is far superior, so if you're playing WoW, quit and rp on EvE... (I might be a little bit biased :))

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3 comments:

  1. Love the versus format. You can hardly see the bias ;)

    And thanks for the Tech4 nod.

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  2. I will have to disagree on the 'everybody who plays EVE is essentially a roleplayer' - there are people who really see their toon and ships just as pixels with associated statistics.

    I pity them, though: people like that are still stuck in the Pong "My Score Is Bigger Than Yours!" mindset. If only they knew what they are missing.

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  3. Hey Shalee, a year has passed and we're doing another Blog Banter review of EVE Online. I know you're still active on your other blog and as you're one of the original reviewers from last year, I was wondering if you were thinking of sharing your thoughts again this year? Would be good to have you back.

    http://freebooted.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/blog-banter-42-2012-community-review-of.html

    ReplyDelete