By Jim Rossignol on August 27th, 2009 at 10:50 am.
It seems the guys behind real-money economy MMO Project Entropia have relaunched their science fiction colonist game world as Planet Calypso, this time powered by CryTek’s CryEngine 2. Of course it’s free to sign up and download, but the money you get in the game world will be largely dependent on the cash you put into it yourself. That said, there should be ways and means to make money in the world if you’re crafty enough. MindArk are once again selling it as an entrepreneurial experience, where the wheeler-dealing gamer can get along: “As always a player’s real life business skills can still translate to real money in their bank account,” said Marco Behrmann, CEO of First Planet Company. So that’s good.
So. . . it’s online gambling. With grind. Yay?
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I started downloading, then I saw the screenshots on their site and changed my mind.
Goes to show that just using the Crysis engine doesn’t guarantee good graphics.
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The first thing that sprang to my mind was scamming people, which I still find one of the most fascinating bits of MMOs.
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Yeah, this must be ripe for mega-scams.
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Was there talk of making scamming illegal in some games? I think it’s such an amazing thing. The stuff in EVE is some of the most exciting news stories the game ever generated.
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Played this game for years, and it was way better before the mega-bucks got involved.
Trust me, you’ll see the ‘free’ signs everywhere, but the cost to some people is upwards of $1k per month.
Some of the most expensive items regularly sell for upwards of $40k USD. Fun!
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I’m sorry, THAT is CryEngine2 level ? I call bullshit.
And anyway, idea of MMO on CryEngine2 is retarded and commercially unsustainable in the first place.
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Strange, i played this game a few weeks ago and it looked exactly the same as it is in cryengine. From what i played of it sucked trying to make money from collecting sweat!
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So, let me get this right, people play games to escape from real life where this stuff happens, and they are expected to play a game where the same stuff happens? Methinks someone’s business model is broken somewhere.
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“Trust me, you’ll see the ‘free’ signs everywhere, but the cost to some people is upwards of $1k per month.”
I’d roll a free, penniless, naked character just to follow those guys around and call them idiots. We’re all free to make our own meta-games.
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“I’d roll a free, penniless, naked character just to follow those guys around and call them idiots. We’re all free to make our own meta-games.”
Unfortunately, a lot of those ‘idiots’ are making quite a lot of money so you’d really be the one getting laughed at…
What I didn’t stress I guess is that there is potential for making money, lots of it, in this ‘game’… but usually it comes at the expense of those who see ‘CRY2′ and think it’s a good idea to drop $50 in the game.
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If you people think hjh123 is joking, think again. After watching my dad play the game (yes, he spends money on it) I decided to give it a try.
Your first income comes from killing animals and collecting their SWEAT. My first day playing, I pick up a rifle and ammo in the hopes of hunting fresh meat or perhaps killing a small bird, instead i stood over a dead animal as i gingerly scraped its skin for sweat.
And just to taunt you, every time someone else on the continent makes/finds/kills something valuable, it pops up on your chat box, further emasculating you.
And while there are some people who make money, the majority of people will invest a decent amount of money and give up. You know how they say every new business loses money for the first six months? So does every player in this.
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Former player. Is just an intelligent Ponzi scheme/gambling addiction/grind system.
If you didn’t start in 2003, there is no way to become a uber in this game, unless you are already wealthy in RL. This is cause by the fact that you can buy and sell your skills. This also means that there are only a handful of people which actually profit in the game, the vast majority depositing from 10-100$ per month. The game economy is controlled by the developer which is not shy to mess around whenever he feels like. However is very addictive and should be avoided at all cost. :)
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TO back up what toro says, it’s essentially a Ponzi scheme. Also …. they completely f**ked up the skill system by amending it a few years back to make it exponentially harder to get better skills at you level up. Those that already had great (“uber”) skills were “made” – no one can now every come close to the top skilled guys unless you have upwards of $250k to put into the game!
I played this game on and off for about 2 years. Put in around £100 and got it back out when I quit. I was lucky.
My recommendation: Also “avoid at all cost”.
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Seconding the last two guys, from my brief experience with it a couple years back. I mean, entropy’s right there in the name, isn’t it? Everything breaks down, and the only way to keep the system running is to keep injecting cash into it. You can buy a gun and some ammo, but the amount you’ll make hunting critters with it won’t pay for the ammo, let alone the maintenance on the gun.
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What a bunch of mindless cretins you are!!
You must all be 12 year olds who plays a stupid game for 25 hours and then starts again from the beginning, over and over again,,, now that’s retarded!
At least an on-line MMO brings new content.
I have play this for a few years, I’m not an Uber player but at least the small amount of money I have deposited I can get back,,,, unlike you bunch of cretins who buys games and play subscriptions!
idiots!
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I had comments like Monkeyboy’s when I blogged about PE a few years back. To me this means the fans are either people I don’t want to play with, or they have some good marketing droids.
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Surely by ‘good’ you mean ‘bad’ though… that sort of post puts me right off a game.
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(Not enough to prevent me from checking out a game I’m interested in though, or change my opinion of one I’ve already played — that would be silly. It just puts a bad taste in my mouth, and makes me less likely to developm an interest.)
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This sounds about as fun as diving into a pool of molten iron or deliberately sawing one’s hand off to see how it feels.
It seems like it would attract the usual type A douchebags that pepper the financial district of every city. You know, the people that think the entire world revolves around them.
Now if it let you perma-kill the person on the other side of the monitor to thin out that particular herd then I could see some sort of interest in it.
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@monkey boy
At least we play decent games rather than low rate worse than most korean F2P dross.
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I did try Project Entropia a while (read: a few years) back. Thanks to the mentor system, somebody helped me with a few $ worth of weaponry and repairs.
Sadly, I never really repaid them for that as my first few hours in the game were confusing (even by MMO standards, and I got the hang of Neocron and Fallen Earth pretty quickly) and what I did see of combat and gameplay seemed seriously dull.
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This game is a scam, never mind any scamming potential.
Pay for skills? Jesus. Whoever thought that up must be a sociopath.
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heliocentric, so what are you doing when you buy a game or paying a subscriptions? doh!
I guess you people are a little like goldfish, once you’ve played a game, you can just start right off and play it again, lol,
lets see, “scam”, so how come the swedish goverment has given this company a banking permit? yes, a real bank, people put real money in and take it out! but I guess you lot have an intelligent theory about this? oh yes “SCAM”
you need at least a grain of intelegence to play this game which I guess rules you lot out!
next time your told to “go and fetch something or kill something” on a stupid quest, just think of yourself as a well train dog! “good boy good boy” morons.
So lets see the pathetic retarded responses to this!
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I had a whole post ready about how, exactly, this game is the very definition of a scam . . . but I think this speaks for itself, honestly.
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Noc, wow, what an amazing retort!
Do you really think the words “exactly” and “definition” make you more believable!
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lol what a douche, it is a terrible mmo
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I feel monkeyboy has summed up the community of this game up. Thanks mb.
On paying for skills however you are idiotically wrong, except when you mention mmo’s and then only eve (and other skills over time games).
When you pay for an mmo you play for time to play and the associated support and updates. Unfortunately, most mmo developers turn their games into grinds to help create implied value to the account (people less likely to cancel) and makes getting the skills actually take longer (thus paying more subscriptions). I believe this inherently unethical, thus i don’t play mmo’s.
In games where you pay once these design pressures don’t exist and the developer are free to make a product. Also you can’t pay for an advantage mostly (cod5 collectors edition has accelerated xp for example.).
Pay for games can suffer pay for skills when expansions work in that way, see company of heroes and guild wars, but to be honest i find the quality of the titles and the subtlety of the advantages quite reasonable, the hypocrit that i am. But i find this game disgusting and you are not exactly winning me over with your attitude.
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Monkeyboy: don’t insult people. It isn’t tolerated here. Argue your case civilly or not at all.
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For me, Entropia was awesome at first. I ran around and visited every city, chatted with noobs, did some “monster sweating” and fruit collecting and generally soaked up the atmosphere. A bit like a sci-fi simulation of being homeless and broke (without all the hardship).
Then I put in $10. Suddenly it became incredibly boring. Once you buy a gun and kill stuff, and the gun breaks and your ammo runs out, you’re back to square one and the game expects you to pony up to continue the grind. No fun at all.
So I’d recommend it as a free MMO to fart about in, but it’s not worth paying for.
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Huge scandal unfolding now in this cash money game.
http://www.entropiaforum.com/forums/general-discussion/165220-am-i-getting-scammed-200k-help-please.html
I person who has invested $200,000 (that’s not a typo), has their account locked for over a month now. Many other players with valuable accounts have been locked as well.
It appears the reason is that through the developers incompetence, they unlcoked all banned accounts with the new update and those players traded valuable items to other peole as fast as they could. Mindark refuses as usual to tell specifically why these people’s counts are locked.
The pyramid scheme that is EU is about to crash it seems.
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. First off – I’ve spent more on this game in 2 weeks than I did in 4 years with wow (which is now too boring and recycled for me). Having said that I would like to say this to any player trying it out for the first time.
If you are the type of person who can go into a casino with a set limit to spend and stick to it and still have fun (that’s important) this game might suit you.
If you find it easy and irresistable to deposit more of your funds over and over to buy that “must have” skill, weapon, armour etc) – stop playing and wipe the game.
After a couple of weeks you will know which group you fall into. If you find that spending $50 a month to have a good blast and a bit of fun is good value – fine, But if you find your spend going up and up then quit. You will never be at the top making money – believe me the game structure will not allow it.
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I have been playing sense Sep15th 2009.
After reveiwing various warnings from this website and many others. I still tried the game. i went 3 weeks without a deposit, and in this time period there was no sweating, or any Free stuff. And to top it all off they were giving away 2x skill gains.
So While not making any deposit i managed to still play the game by hunting and some mining also. Not By begging for money or scamming people. to fund my game play, but by offering services of many types, and also making friends with people in game.
3 weeks non depositing. In that time i learned alot about the game and its mechanics.
I have found that “YES THERE IS OPPERTUNITY TO MAKE MONEY” You just need to make proper investments and most of all network socialy. Like any game there is subtle ways of exploiting other people for your own gain. and they walk away with a smile. So the real truth is Are you prepared to Take your MMO Knowledge away from other games and try to make real investments, into this one?
Becouse it is totally possible to make money, you just got to know how the system works.
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Do not even visit their website!!
Entropia will foster a gambling addiction in you! Before you know it, you’ve spent more than you EVER intended to pay for ANY game and this becomes the reason you will continue to pay and pay and pay, hoping that one day, you will get it back.
But you won’t.
12 months down the road, personally, I’ve LOST 10,000 USD!
The last month has forced me to downgrade, so I am affectively back where I was 9 months ago in terms of gear and equipment, I have no money on my account to take part in any of the main professions, the value of my skills is deteriorating as the in-game economy is taking a beating.
Stay far, FAR away from Entropia Universe, for your own well being and sanity. Trust me – your money is FAR better spent elsewhere… anywhere else.
I for one am uninstalling as I type… sure, I’m giving up $10k I “invested” (hahaha investment my a$$) but it’s better to lose this 10k now and learn my lesson, than look back in another 12months and see my deficit rising past 30k (your cost to play increases relative to your skill level…. $10/month noob, $10/hour mid-level).
I wish I never downloaded this VR casino/scam/ponzi, my life is infinitely worse off because of it.
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I played for about 2 months and spent about $1000 this was about three years back, I was thinking of playing again. I am glad I read this article, playing that ‘game’ was the dumbest thing I ever did.
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My god, I just came across this thread whilst Googling, this game appears to attract retards with too much money by the bucketful!
How do the people who play this look at the credit card billing screen asking for more than a whole game costs just for a frigging skill and then not just run away screaming with existential angst about how meaningless and moronic their life has become? Cripes.
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ROFL!
Mull, I believe you’ve hit the nail right on the head!
I can understand paying to play monthly (i.e. WoW for $15/mo.), but to pay for each skill, armor, weapon, etc… that is retarded, this game and this company BLOWS!
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You can have a look to the gaming video trailer of this game with some brief specification on http://www.techarena.in/video/25790-planet-calypso-pc-game-video-trailer.htm. Have a look to it. I found it useful.
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“lePooch says: August 27, 2009 at 4:16 pmIf you people think hjh123 is joking, think again. After watching my dad play the game (yes, he spends money on it) I decided to give it a try.
Your first income comes from killing animals and collecting their SWEAT. My first day playing, I pick up a rifle and ammo in the hopes of hunting fresh meat or perhaps killing a small bird, instead i stood over a dead animal as i gingerly scraped its skin for sweat.
And just to taunt you, every time someone else on the continent makes/finds/kills something valuable, it pops up on your chat box, further emasculating you.
And while there are some people who make money, the majority of people will invest a decent amount of money and give up. You know how they say every new business loses money for the first six months? So does every player in this.”
You can’t sweat dead enemies. You can disable the messages of channels you don’t want to read, such as leveling up, hall of fame, discoveries, etc. You have to spend money to make money.
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Reading this has been very interested. In all honesty it kind of makes me want to play the game. Know that there are people that will throw $1000 to $10,000 into a game makes me think that it can’t be that hard to make money off them… I mean if your spending that money it’s going somewhere, right?
It seems that the problem here is that people that played games like WoW and other straight pathed MMO’s tried to play this game implementing the same tactics and of course that isn’t working. I’m not a player yet, so I could be terribly wrong, but this looks like the same scenario going on else where in our economy. People quitting their job and trying to open a business and when it doesn’t “work” for them they give up and say, “Business is a terrible idea! A waste of time you can’t make any money.” All the while real entrepreneurs are shaking their heads with a mild laugh.
Just a thought or two…
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First of all grow up. Servers and infrastructure are expensive. Even “free” games need a money hook or they go belly up. WoW is what $60 upfront and $15 an month and you don’t get shit back.
This game is upfront about cost and you don’t have to pay anything you don’t want to – that seems pretty fair.
Game play is ugly though and they are way too heavy handed in the nickle and diming everything. No quests. grind and mine; craft, auction or real estate. Really the last two are your best bet if you are looking for money as the others have upfront cost in getting skills.
In terms of play, pretty boring so far, much like wow only space and not as pretty and god aweful slow getting anywhere.
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U Trust any Government or Internet Info even if is swedish..World is full of thieves …and naive people.
This Game/ Scam = Perfect Example.
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I have played this game for about 1 week now.. It’s a good game, really, I like almost everything about it, and especially the community. It’s the BEST hands down I have had the pleasure of getting to know.
I have a problem (a big one) though… If you’re not a depositor (invest RL cash), you have it hard.. so hard in fact, that I personaly got to know only one person that has played over 2 years and never ever deposited.
I love the game, but I sincerely don’t know how much of “no money for ammo” I can take.
But truth be told, if you are patient (I guess not my case), you CAN play and have fun. It’s just so freaking hard!
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