These sites have a lot of interesting information about suscribers, growth rates,...

http://www.mmogchart.com/
http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/gateway_demographics.html

Regards

Vincente, in terms of the way you describe movement and space in EVE these two are definitely important issues with the game right now. I whole-heartedly agree as an EVE player that conflicts too often take place on a GATE or a STATION, where very the mechanics of these movement-mechanics were never meant to really provide for "better" PvP but most of the time get in the way. In this sense, it is more important control these specific locations than space itself: gates, stations, etc. are more important to be controlled than the actual space itself. This definitely limits how good of a game can be.

Another argument I've made in the past in relation to this is the "over-expansiveness" of many MMORPG universes. EVE definitely suffers from overexpanded space. The point is you want to spread out your player base enough so that locations are not too crowded(such as the central trade-hub Jita), and also are given enough meaning to players so they are not too sparse (such as large swaths of 'no-sec' space).

In terms of the harshness of the death penalty, I tend to agree more with KulSeran. Even though I agree with the problems you mention, I think they are less a symptom of a harsh death penalty and more the symptom of the spatial/movement problems you mentioned. Definitely, I agree that there a whole lot to be improved with EVE's PvP system. And indeed, my trip to 0.0 showed me that blobs and gate-camping is not that fun. However, there are ways for players to get challenges for themselves and have more meaningful PvP. I, for instance, formed a solo corp and declare war on corporations and try to fight them all myself. It's all about how you creatively approach the game, and this kind of creative player approach is much more possible in EVE than in other games.

And please enlighten us on what AoC is :)

I've also seen Nick Yee's work before and its quite interesting, I think I even had a conversation with him once when I was still really into indie game dev. Is there anything recent in these kinds of studies? I know there is a lot of research being done on EVE, I will try to find some but if you guys find any please link it here.

Cheers,
-Pin

Jerky, both sites seem to be active right now and quite updated (last update of MMORPGCharts was this month and last update of The Daedalus Project was last month).

PinWang I do agree that you can use creative approaches in Eve to find interesting/challenging things to do and that Eve gameplay is much more open ended than probably any other MMORPG out there. But that kind of creative approach is quite limited in a 0.0 alliance as the game mechanics force you to blob/camp/siege/spam pos quite a lot. Not because it's fun, but because it's the most effective thing to do while living there. But it's true that there are great initiatives that make Eve much more fun, like the new "Red" and "Blue" alliances that were formed for free PvP without cover politics and other projects for newbies like Eve University.

Btw, there are also studies about Eve economics from the economicist guy CCP hired some time ago. This is one of his studies for example:

http://myeve.eve-online.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=498

They are pretty interesting to read :)

About AoC (Age of Conan), I haven't been able to join the beta, but all the information and videos released from the game sound really nice. The end game is about cities built by players who produce resources for crafting etc etc. Combat seems pretty dynamic (very action oriented, probably a matter of what you like the most),...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Conan:_Hyborian_Adventures

The Combact section mentions several nice things about AoC. Let's see if it can live to the expectations when it's released (in less than 2 months I think).

Regards

Ah, blessed EVE, my precious ...

I just canceled me EVE account due to the game's bad design. I was looking for a space based game and there are only two barely decent ones available. EVE was one of them.

After playing it for awhile, it became apparent that they did not think about the basic technology design at all. For instance, on the client side, the network handling and graphics rendering is in the same game loop. This is a basic no-no when designing games. Network should be in it's own thread at a minimum. And the graphics rendering/fps should never be locked.

You can see evidence of this when you go through a jumpgate. The stuttering of regular flying and playing shows this as well. This makes the game almost unbearable. Top that off with releasing a graphics pack that was unplayable with most of their customers.... ouch!

I think there are still growing pains, but they are, unfortunately, following Blizzard's footsteps where money is higher priority then customers. :(

Quote:Original post by Reddox
Ah, blessed EVE, my precious ...

I just canceled me EVE account due to the game's bad design. I was looking for a space based game and there are only two barely decent ones available. EVE was one of them.

After playing it for awhile, it became apparent that they did not think about the basic technology design at all. For instance, on the client side, the network handling and graphics rendering is in the same game loop. This is a basic no-no when designing games. Network should be in it's own thread at a minimum. And the graphics rendering/fps should never be locked.

You can see evidence of this when you go through a jumpgate. The stuttering of regular flying and playing shows this as well. This makes the game almost unbearable. Top that off with releasing a graphics pack that was unplayable with most of their customers.... ouch!

I think there are still growing pains, but they are, unfortunately, following Blizzard's footsteps where money is higher priority then customers. :(

Like i bolded in my original post, this is not a post about your personal preferences it's a post about MMROPG DESIGN concepts!!

Ack!! My apologies. Although most of my post is about EVE's bad game design. So I guess my post took on an anti-design feel to it :)