Wow, you gotta love the console wars....

I've been playing the MMORPG "Eve" for awhile now (e.g. about 5 years or so, on and off).  The latest installment, entitled "Revelations," has me getting back into the universe and rekindling my character.  In case you're curious, I play a feisty redhead named "Alexandria" where I hang out in seedy spacer bars on miner planets in the Verge Vendor region.

I won't try to explain the premise of the game too much, because the level of detail required to do this is far beyond the scope of a blog.  I will say however that the for all the fan-boy hype, its one of the most difficult and frustrating games I've ever played.  The mission system is still buggy, even after several generations of revisions.  The leveling system seems interesting at first glance given that it's time-based and not experience-based, but suffers especially at the early stages from being too restrictive to new players.

The main focus of the game seems to be oriented almost exclusively to player-vs-player competition.  So much so that the mission system seems more like an afterthought.  The in-game DED levels are quite fun, in theory.  I say that because I find it difficult to even begin to play through them as, the minute I warp into a region with a good level to explore, I get jumped by player-pirates, beaten and looted.  The moral is, no matter what you're flying, if you're doing it in low-security space, you're going to get mugged, period.  You can take that to the intergalactic bank.  [But don't take it to eBay, as they no longer allow the trading of in-game virtual goods.]

If you too are an Eve fan-person, feel free to do a fly-by sometime and take a few pot shots at whatever I'm driving.  Believe me, you wouldn't be my first.

On my way to lunch today I swung by Matt Rorie's desk and saw him playing the latest installment from the Neverwinter series.  I've been playing it too, in my spare time, and I thought I'd share some of my likes and dislikes.

First, I'm a huge fan of RPGs and of AD&D.   I've played all the multi-party computer editions over the years including Wizardry, Ultima-Underworld, The Bard's Tale, Dungeon Master, and of course Baldur's Gate.  Each one was a new level of 'cool' for me as I grew up. 

The Neverwinter series was the first one I remember being true to the original D&D rule book, as it were.  As I play it now, I'm taken back to the crumpled sheets of yellow character sheet paper I played with as a teenager back in the 80's (yes, I'm that old).  I remember the feel of pencils and oddly shaped dice, and the math that went into calculating the outcome of an 'encounter'. 

When I play the modern computer versions, it somehow reduces the experience and anticipation of the battles to cartoon-like, fast-pased imagery.  In the back of my mind I can almost see the dice rolling, but the computer, with its infinitely more sophisticated skill, does this all in real time, for the benefit of a cinematic experience.  (Of course, as if my computer were trying to show off, it does matrix transforms for geometry and texture rasterization in real-time too, and at the same time.)

Perhaps this explains why the graphics engine seems to be a modest improvement over the previous version?  Maybe the computer is having a hard time with all those simultaneous differential equations?  I know I would. 

Nevertheless, I still love the game and the series.  I really like the part where you get your own 'Keep' and have to take on the role of a Lord and make improvements.  That was an unexpected plot twist, and it made me smile, if only for a few minutes until the experience became a little tedious. 

There are still so many more adventures in the AD&D pantheon, that I can't wait until some other developer dives in and tries this sort of thing again.  I think there's much more to do here to bring this rich paper experience to life, and I hope to see it evolve as much in the next 20 years as it has in the past.