Disclaimer: I don't play massively multiplayer online games, only read about them. But isn't this precisely the selling point of EVE Online? Self-policed, no rules, no backstory, the entire universe, its rules and the emergent behavior that results is 100% in the hands of players?
A majority of the player base lives out of NPC-controlled space. Originally, this was intended as the 'safe' tutorial space, where players would quickly want to leave to go for the more lucrative but more dangerous parts of space where everything is indeed player controlled.
In the earlier years, you could easily make a week worth of 'hi-sec' grinding by spending half an hour in 'null-sec'. You would indeed risk losing that half hour of work when trying to haul it back to some market, but the pay would make it worth it many times over.
However, as the years progressed, the developer seemed to realized that the majority of the players simply did not like to leave the NPC-policed space, and started catering to those. (Another factor is that jump-capable ships made hauling things back to high-sec markets low risk, which had a huge impact on prices of null-sec-only goods.)
A large amount of content has been added to the 'hi-security' parts, giving less and less incentives for players to leave for 'null-security' space. The player-generated content in null-sec is what makes EVE appear in the news and attract new players, but the reality is that the majority is not directly involved with that part of the game.
(In fairness, the universe and markets are still unified, so both those worlds still impact each other. But for many players that impact will be limited by price changes and getting blown at 'Burn Jita'.)
It wasn't all your stuff. The bulk of your assets would be in your bank account or, if you were wealthier, in your house. The only stuff you would take out into the wilderness or into a dungeon is whatever you needed for that particular trip. So your losses would be limited to whatever you brought with you, plus whatever loot you had accrued while hunting or mining or whatever.
So yeah if you were only playing for 20 minutes a day and you were constantly dying, I understand why it would be bewildering and upsetting. But if you were actually playing for 5+ hours a day because you were 12 or whatever, it was just part of the fun.
Haha, agreed. If you are 12 it's no big deal. I wonder what's the target audience and age for current MMO games.
EVE definitely does support different play styles, I just don't think it's as many as UO.
I feel weird about games like UO. I obviously won't play it now, and for whatever reason I didn't play it in its day, and now I feel I missed an important milestone in gaming history. I'm familiar with it only by reading about it. EVE Online is different: I know it exists, I know it has some interesting emergent properties, but I don't feel I missed anything by not being a part of its community.
It was a magical time and place, but there will be more magical times and places in the future. Once VR gets good enough, we may get a similar kind of magical time and place for the first couple years there also.
Nope. UO was one of a kind. What made it special is the way it brought together people with many different play styles and allowed them to form their own communities which were self-policed.
Every multiplayer game since UO has tried to learn lessons from it by policing the players centrally, through the limitation of player interaction. The result is that all of the different play styles have gone their separate ways to games which cater specifically to them.
This phenomenon mirrors the filter bubble phenomenon that resulted from search engines and social media recommendation engines giving people more of what they want.
Edit: for examples of the games that cater to the play styles I’m referring to, look at Fortnite, League of Legends, Minecraft, Stardew Valley, Diablo 3... When I look at this list it’s rather shocking to me that one game could house all these diverse play styles. The magic of it was that it worked, for a time, until more specialized games came along and started drawing away the player base. Then EA brought in Trammel and split the player base which was the beginning of the end.