Entropia – Before And After Pictures

Posted on 6 December 2007 by FoxTwo

In Entropia, just like any other MMORPGs, you create a character, and you play him and you level him up. In a sense, he is YOU when you are in the world. Unlike other more traditional MMORPGs, you only get 1 chance to make a character. Once you click on “accept”, you are stuck with him until you quit the game for good. This is more in line with “social MMOs”, such as 2nd Life and There.

So, here’s a quick post showing you what I used to look like in 2004 and now.

Yup, that’s me in 2004. Notice the square jaws and high cheeks?

Yeah I couldn’t do much with those. It’s inherent in the character generator. The thing I liked about the old character generator was that you can pick virtually any feature you want – long hair, short hair, frizzy hair, beard, stubble etc.

In the new version, you can’t. You can only get a randomly generated head, and you need to get to an in-game body-sculptor and spend REAL money (by buying PEDs) or earning PEDs to pay for the “surgery”.

And this is me now, in 2007. Good thing the system generated a pretty decent head for me. If you doubt whether it’s the same character, look at the status bar. You’ll see “Fox” there. Yes it’s me, the same character under different game engines.

Yeah the armour is different though. Since I thought I had quit in 2004, I never bothered to keep my account alive, so the system wiped me out and liquidated all my items and put the PED value of my items into the PED cash card on my character.

So yeah, when I finally revived him yesterday, I stepped into Entropia totally NAKED, right smack in the middle of Hadeshiem, where I had left him back in 2004. A quick trip via teleporter took me back to Port Atlantis (noob city), where I bought armour and weapons again.

The wipe by Mindark on my account also included all my skills… so technically I’m now a noob all over again, zero skills in everything. The only difference between this and a real newbie is the free jumpsuit (I didn’t get it), and the amount of money I have. On this guy, I have about 250 PEDs (or US$2.50) so it’s more than enough to buy armour and weapons and a reasonable amount of ammo.

On my other new character, I have ZERO money but I do have the free jumpsuit.

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Entropia Revisited

Posted on 6 December 2007 by FoxTwo

Entropia the MMO seems to be abit more engaging this time around, even though I haven’t made any new friends yet. Currently I’m a bit of a dilemma – should I continue using my new character which I had created, but owns no money, has about 260+ bottles of Sweat, or do I play the old character I made back in 2004, with cash and now, armour and weapons? Plus, he’s explored a little, and has the teleporter points to some cities, as far flung as the far north of the continent of Eudoria?

To most people this wouldn’t even be an issue, I’d expect. The problem is, my old character has a name which I don’t like, and I have no idea what I was thinking when I made him. The new character however, is more carefully created and named.

Ah well I’ll sleep on it more later.

Anyway, here are some screenshots to compare the differences between the Entropia I knew back in 2004, and the current Entropia.

Junkyard Bar (2004)

Junkyard Bar (2007)

Junkyard Bar, jukebox corner (2004)

Junkyard Bar, jukebox corner (2007)

Hadeshiem (2004)

Hadeshiem (2007)

Doesn’t look all that much different, does it? Except for some minor adjustments, things look pretty much the same. The graphics are definitely better, although not apparent in the pictures. They are very apparent when looking at character models.

Character model (2004)

Character model (2007)

So, all in all, I guess Entropia has improved. Since I’ve started to spend more and more time in Entropia I guess this time I’ll stay around for awhile.

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Return To Entropia

Posted on 4 December 2007 by FoxTwo

If you were to really look at my sidebar under my “Previous Travels”, you’d see Project Entropia listed. That is a Science Fiction MMORPG set in the future. I was in there for about a month in 2004 (total noob, I was) and then gave up due to all the noob hunters and how hard it was to just make some in-game cash.

Fast forward 3 years.

Sometime back in July 2007, apparently the whole MMORPG underwent a major overhaul. They licensed the CryEngine by CryTek, the same engine used in the game Crysis. The CryEngine includes physics, so I guess Mindark, the makers of Entropia, decided to upgrade to the new Engine. If you’re a DX10 user (ie running Vista) you will enjoy the same (or similar) kinds of breathtaking graphics you can see on Crysis.

That was basically what drove me to re-download the whole client again, all 1.3GB of it. Back in 2004 it was just 700MB… it has doubled in size since. It took me about 4 hours or so (I forget, I was watching TV and/or playing Hellgate while it was downloading in the background) to get it all down.

The first impression – wow. Graphics definitely have improved. Since I couldn’t access my old character, I had to create a new one. My new guy doesn’t have the old Orange Jumpsuit anymore. Now, noobs get a nifty desert-camo kinda jumpsuit. Looks better.

They haven’t changed the controls much since 2004 though. The way to run, jump, aim, and use mouse cursor are basically the same as I remembered them. I also start back at the arrival terminal outside the city of Port Atlantis.

What *is* different now, is that at the arrival terminal, they now have real human players Guiding new arrivals! I happen to meet a nice and helpful guy designated as Guide 03 Simon, and he kinda helped me refresh my hazy memory of how the game worked.

The noob activity, “Sweat Gathering”, was something I never did back in 2004. I happened to bump into a couple of players back then and we “hunted” together. This time around tho, I was alone, totally alone. So, now I had the freedom to explore on my own.

And, I was rudely reminded of how dangerous the world of Entropia is. Shortly after stepping out of the city gates, I ran across a familiar animal (now with better graphics and textures!), and the first attack he did on me took out 1/4 my health bar! I had to remember how to run, in a hurry! Ok sweat gathering is gonna be trickier than I thought.

Somewhere kinda NW from Port Atlantis, there’s a place called “The Stable”. I met a kinda high-level player called Melissa, who gave me a pet for FREE. It’s cool considering that Entropia’s economy is “real”, ie people use real cash to buy virtual goods, like how they do it in 2nd Life or There. A bit further NW of that is a small outpost, and in-between the Stables and the outpost, heaps of animals where we can gather sweat.

This is probably a goldmine, and there are loads of other players in the same location gathering sweat too. The thing about working in such large numbers is, we get to see nature’s defenses at work here – Safety in numbers. The animals do not know which one of us to attack, so while it’s attack one of us the rest had our Mindforce targetted on the animal and are gathering sweat up.

It also appears to be an unwritten understanding there, that the people at the outpost will help the people out there gathering sweat. Help, as in sometimes tanking an animal, or the medics will run around and heal the gatherers. There’s no “kill-stealing” or ninja-looting since loot is locked – only available to the player(s) who killed the animal. Gathering sweat off an animal being killed is also apparently not frowned upon. It’s probably because sweat and loot are different so players don’t mind if another player is gathering sweat off an animal they’re hunting.

All in all, I’d say this time around the experience was more positive. Players are now friendlier, and I overheard someone saying that now, PvP are only allowed in PvP zones. Good riddance! I hate getting killed for no reason other than because I’m new.

I think I will probably start to spend more time in Entropia…

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