Last couple of days I was able to get back to my hobby of playing video games, which was awesome. There were a couple of things preventing me from playing what I wanted, mostly other hobbies getting in the way. But this weekend, I was working on a couple of things in IRL and because those things required low input from me I had the chance to play.
I played a couple games, Perpetuum Online(Perp), EvE Online(Eve), World of Warcraft Classic(WoWC). The first two might come as a surprise, but it did happen. I think what inspired me to jump into those two, is my previous article Would you rather… I talked a little bit about the alternate games that I sometimes jump into for short bursts of time. As I was writing that article I had a sudden desire to go into those games and play them if only for a short time period.
I would also love to jump into Everquest 2, but only if Daybreak gets their stuff together or sells Everquest 2 to someone else that would like to see the game go on. My fear with Daybreak is that nothing is sacred to them, it feels like that at least. So you never know when they will shut something down. It would be terrible to jump into EQ2 and have it just shut down on you and with my luck that might be exactly what happens.
Anyways, I wanted to talk a little bit about Perpetuum Online in this article. I would also like to talk a bit about EvE Online but probably at a later point.
Sheesh that introduction got away from me… Thanks for reading that.
Before I played Perpetuum, I played Eve – the most hardcore sandbox available at the time, at least to my knowledge. But I could never last very long in Eve no matter how many times I try to get into it, I last maybe a couple months and then close my account down and move on to something less stressful.
So how did I get into Perp? I was looking to start up Eve again, and for some reason started looking around the forums for Eve and found a post about Perpetuum Online. All of this was happening during the Monocle Gate, and event in Eve’s history that probably came the closest to ending the game all together. A great write up of the events can be found here(Part 1, Part 2 by Brendan Drain). And so that forum post mentioned Perpetuum Online as an alternative game with a very similar feel to it. So naturally I went ahead and tried it.
My first impressions, were that it is very similar, the menus, the font and just the general feel of it was extremely similar. The game however was a very small game, I don’t know if you could really call it an MMORPG, but with the massive exodus of Eve players the game got a large boost in population. The developers didn’t know what to do with it all, but it was a nice boost to their income. Interestingly enough the game even though really small at the time had a subscription. I wonder if it would have fared better if it was a buy to play game instead… who knows at this point.
Eve players jumped into the game and started messing around, I was one of them. It was a lot of fun, everybody was in a similar position of not knowing anything concrete about the game, but coming from Eve, were familiar enough with the concept that pretty much everybody hit the ground running.
The way you would level up skills in Eve online is you would set them on a timer and the timer would tick away and once that was done your character would now possess the skill. Different than most MMOs where you defeating enemies got you experience to level you up, here it was purely time based. The difference with Perpetuum was that, if I remember correctly you would get a set of amount Extension Points, on regular bases(once a week) and then could apply then to any Extension or Skill to better your character. Still time based character development but a bit different.
And so I jumped into the game with the rest of the people from Eve, it was awesome. There was a corporation formed called the Eve Exiles, that’s where most Eve players migrated to. It was a lot of fun.
As I was playing Perp, I realized that I liked it more than I did Eve. So I started trying to figure out why and found that I like it more because there is actual land to explore… You are not just suspended in the air or in space like in Eve, but get to go places, see new things. Space can be a very lonely place to be. I loved the lore of the game as well, the technological theme, with electricity sparks going off in random places, added to the atmosphere as well. One other thing I thought was amazing, is the music. Not sure why, but it really helped me get into the game. The sound effects in the game were not super great, but the music was the perfect mellow techno mix that I enjoyed a ton.
But like with Eve, I would get burned out and move on, and then start up again and go through my cycle every couple of months. I eventually got to a place of comfort within the game, I had two accounts one for combat one for industry. I spent hours figuring out the industry part of the game and it was so much fun. Making the things you are going to use, or someone else might use. Thats the part I love about sandboxes. Being able to craft stuff that is useful in the game.
Eventually the player base dwindled to almost nothing, and Avatar Creations decided to shut the game down. However it wasn’t a sad shut down like most games have these days, it was an awesome one. AC realized they couldn’t keep up with the community any more, there wasn’t any money in the game for them, and they had families to feed. So they released the server code to the players. The players that complained the most, from my experience at least. The players that said they could do a better job. Those players picked the code up and created a free public server(Open Perpetuum) and are currently running the game. Those players put their money where their mouths were… so to speak I guess. And to this day the game lives and I still play it. It’s a great story for a small MMO, and who knows, it might grow into something bigger one day. It is a game worth trying.
The other day I jumped back in, because the official servers were shut down none of my stuff or money transferred over, so I had to start over. Its rough living… But slowly I am getting there again. I have my mining account building up wealth, I am running missions on my combat account. And everytime I play it, I can’t help but wonder what it would be like if there were more players. That thought always provokes another one in my head, what can I do to get more players into the game?
Maybe writing about it and talking about it would help? Have you heard of Perpetuum Online? If so have you tried it?
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