Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Perpetuum is to hit open beta, and that will happen on the 18th of October. Perpetuum is an extremely interesting project, for a variety of reasons. Developed by Hungary-based indie outfit Avatar Creations, it’s the first MMO I’ve seen that tries to take what Eve Online did and do something useful with it. Avatar Creations are keen to distance themselves from Eve of course, and recent iterations of the game client have, frankly, often been about making this robot-based, freeform MMO less like CCP’s game of spaceships. But no matter how different the UI ends up looking, the underlying principles are the same. And perhaps they are wrong to try and deny that connection too strongly. CCP’s game, no matter how aged and entrenched it might now seem, remains a poster-child for the army of gamers who understand the MMO doesn’t have to equate the genetic lineage of Everquest and WoW.

Let’s continue this beneath the click, shall we?
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Here and there RPS folks have been asking about Perpetuum Online, the Hungarian robo-MMO that is currently in closed beta. No doubt by now a few of you have made it onto that beta, too. I’ve been on there for a while, and I’ve been intrigued by what I’ve found: a constantly evolving sandbox MMO that is more reminiscent of Eve that anything else, and with an art-style and world design that is refreshingly atmospheric. To find out a little more I took some time to chat to Szelei Kis Gergely, from Avatar Creations, about his company’s aims for this independent MMO project. His responses, as well my time with the game itself, leave me feeling quietly excited for its prospects…
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Remember we talked about how there was an MMO that was basically Eve with robots? It’s called Perpetuum Online, and I only went and wrote about it for Eurogamer.

The biggest difference, of course, is that Perpetuum is not set in space, and has terrain. There are not spaceships, but robots. Some are a little stompy, others skittering, all armed as you see fit. The robots deploy from various techno fortresses that are scattered across the landscape.

And stuff like that.

RPS chum RoBurky spotted this the other day: Perpetuum Online, which is a robot MMO being developed by a Hungarian studio, Avatar Creations. Nothing too unusual there, except the design of the game looks rather intriguing. If you take a look at the feature list then the game seems to be far closer to Eve Online than any other MMO out there. In fact, taking a closer look, it also seems to have the same kind of fitting-screens and third-person control of the robots that Eve has for its ships. Could this, finally, be an MMO that takes its inspiration from Eve? Let’s sign up to the beta and find out. (Disclaimer: dunno how much time the beta has let, to be honest, but worth a shot.) The most recent teaser trailer for the game is posted below.
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