Continuing my wanderings through the great halls of Gen Con, I found my way to the Entropia Universe booth.  Here’s an MMO that takes a rather unique stance on a subject that most multiplayer games frown upon: farming virtual stuff for real money.  In fact, Entropia Universe embraces this “pay for playing” mechanic enough that players can (theoretically, at least) never spend a single real-world cent to while away countless hours in the game world, and they may even come out ahead in real-world dollars.  I have to admit, it sounds intriguing.

So how do they do it?  First, there’s no fee at all for playing.  Players can download the client and jump right in, joining forces with others to colonize the fictional frontier planet.  Second, the idea of “free” is a bit of a misnomer.  Sure, players don’t absolutely have to spend real-world money (which is converted to in-game currency at a 1 to 10 exchange), but if they want the coolest toys, they’ll most likely want to make some sort of investment.  Now, that investment can be real-world cash, or lots and lots of game time.  Entropia Universe is a game about farming stuff—either hunting the local fauna for valuable prizes, mining for minerals, or just running odd jobs for other players for a bit of in-game cash. 

Part of what seems intriguing about Entropia Universe is the thought of these economies springing up in game.  I saw instances where players would team up to gather resources—PC miners would hire PC bodyguards to fend off the local wildlife while they gathered valuable goodies from the ground.  One of the guys at the demo decided he wanted to be in in-game barber, so he kitted himself out with the virtual tools necessary to coif his customers.  After a while, he became bored with this, and he sold his barber’s tools for a tidy little real-world sum.

Entropia Universe has an active in-game clearing house, where players can sell their virtual goods for virtual or real-world cash.  There is also a very active auction/market in place, where players can expect to get much better deals for all their labors.  In addition, should players finally wish to leave the game, they can actually sell off their personal character skill increases (something called “chipping out”, I believe).  I don’t really understand all the particulars needed to maintain liquid real-world assets or all the legal hoops that need to be jumped in order to carry these transactions out, but Entropia Universe has been going for a little while now and there seems to be a fairly solid player base, and subsequently an interesting study on economics.

As for the game itself, it looked and played much like a run-of-the-mill MMO.  There was talk that the game would soon be receiving a face lift and adopting the Crysis II engine, so players will have a bit more to ogle as they go about their virtual-world jobs.

Honestly, this all smacks of a bit too much work for my play time, but I know there are folks out there that are thrilled to enter these virtual economies and set themselves up as merchant princes, mercenary hunters, or daring prospectors.  And you really can’t beat the price. 

Check out www.entropiauniverse.com for more details. 

Who knew that The Lord of the Rings Online propagated Barack Obama’s campaign of Hope?

Because it would be in a dismal Blackwold Camp in LOTRO that Sayer of Gondor would encounter a creature that would force him to utterly abandon all hope.  And it would be the first time that I would witness Hope and Dread serving as prominent gameplay mechanics in an MMO. 

Sure, by the numbers, diminishing or bolstering Hope and Dread is nothing more than “crowd control.”  It’s “buffing” and “debuffing” with a high-concept metaphor driving it.  The winter-crackled trees, man-sized cages, and various torture devices scattered around Blackwold Camp could conjure enough Dread on their own without the added benefit of having one of the Nazgul -- a Black Rider -- showing up in the prison camp’s courtyard.  Sayer, my freshly-minted Lore-master, whose greatest feat of “spellcasting” involved lighting pinecones on fire and hurling them Nolan Ryan-style at onrushing attackers, was tousled into this mess through a fit of misfortune.

Nevertheless, I’m not a whiner about what got me in here, since a hooded Ranger by the name of Amdir is breaking me out.  Tonight.  Now.  But not before he tasks me with freeing two other prisoners also in the camp:  Both are Hobbits, and one of them has the further misfortune (in this case) of having “Baggins” in his last name.  And that’s what drew the Black Rider to the Blackwold Camp.  He was promised a Baggins.

Before Sayer even saw the Black Rider, he felt its presence.  The lidless Eye of Sauron flashed almost-subliminally across the screen.  A pulse.  An uncertainty.  And then he rounded the corner and saw the Nazgul, mounted and fearsome, preparing to strike down Amdir, the Ranger that had sprung my escape.

The edges of Sayer’s vision were scraped with the fiery iris of Mordor.  The screen pulsed again, vision blurred, and the colors around Sayer began to drain into muddy, monochromatic grays.  It was looking like Lord of the Gears of War.  My mini-map in the upper right-hand corner was now completely replaced by the burning eyeball.  My Hope/Dread Indicator readings were dropping fast.  My Dread was pumped up to level eight, which I’m guessing is somewhere around DEFCON 1 as far as emergency alarms going off are concerned.  The indicator also read “Terror has seized you.  The fear of defeat seizes your heart often, causing you to cower.”  To further drive the point home, a thumbnail icon was flashing under my health bar indicating “Dread -- Your heart is heavy in the face of such evil.”

And indeed my hero, Lore-master Sayer of Gondor, was no paragon of heroism at that point.  He was ducking to the side, crumpled, holding his hands over his face, wanting nothing more than to run.

So I made him run.

Back the way he came and towards the far, roundabout side of the Blackwold Camp.  The Nazgul maybe 100 yards back now, out of sight, but not yet out of mind.  Still, Sayer’s maximum morale slowly raised from the 80% cap that Dread placed on him.  His ‘effective heals,’ which had been reduced to 84% (a bad thing), crept back towards 100%.  And the increased ‘damage received’ percentage (another bad thing) came back down from their elevated 112% levels.  It was like Sayer’s systolic and diastolic blood pressure was crawling back to within acceptable measurements.

And then, eventually, Hope and Dread had found their zen-sand-garden balance once more.

Conversely to the above scenario, being around benevolent NPCs, like Gandalf the Grey, will make Hope rise, diminishing Dread.  So when an NPC like Barack Obama comes around touting the “Yes we can!” of his hope campaign, I have to ask from a completely neutral standpoint:  Is he borrowing gameplay mechanics from developer Turbine’s Lord of the Rings Online? 

 [Having been away since beta, Randy is playing through a 14-day free trial of The Lord of the Rings Online.  Barack Obama did not approve this uninspired message of hope.]