Entropia Universe

Title: Entropia Universe
Platform Played On: PC
Release Date: January 30, 2003
Date Played: April 2012
Time Played: 10 hours
Completed (Y/N): N/A
Score: 3/5


Opinion:
Someone spent 2.5 million real life, hard earn US dollars in a video game you say? How is that possible?? Why would anyone spend hard earned real life 2.5 million dollars on a virtual good? A sum very few are privileged to possess at any point in their life.

Whether a marketing scheme or a true story Entropia Universe made headlines and thus peaked my curiosity. The game is free to play, so why not try this crazy MMO Ive never heard of before?

First of I was very impressed by the graphics. Entropia Universe utilizes CryEngine2, from the creators of Crysis (one of the best looking games ever made). The landscape goes as far as the eye can see with surprising amount of detail and variability. The graphics engine actually scales pretty well and the game can be played with equally high FPS both on a 5 year old laptop and a brand new top of the line desktop. The newer the machine the better it will look.

You start Entropia with a fairly robust character creator akin to Sims 3. After a few short quests you are teleported to one of (at this time) five planets varying by theme.  Each planet is hundreds of square kilometers and without using any vehicles it will literally take you many months real time to make it across just one of them.

Another fascinating aspect of Entropia Universe is the fact that the world really does feel like a sandbox simulation of a real world. It is not limitless, but large enough to feel that way, and while most games have a skybox that will prevent you from flying too high, in Entropia Universe you keep going and going until you reach space, and there you can go to other planets. This aspect alone makes this MMO revolutionary, and I am in utter disbilief that I have not heard about EU in 11 years of its existence until this 2.5 million dollar article.

The single most important, scary and intriguing thing about Entropia Universe is the fact that the in game currency (think of it as Gold in WOW, or any other MMO) is directly correlated with US dollar. You can hook up you bank account to the game and either transfer money from the game into your bank account or the other way around at 10:1 ratio (10 PED is 1 US dollar). This is a great concept as everything you do has a monetary value. Every bullet you shoot (think arrows in WOW), every item you craft or destroy costs real life money.

General gameplay in EU cosists of professions closely resembling how they would work in real life. You can be a hunter, killing creatures and selling what they drop to other players. You can be a miner, exploring the world and collecting riches of the planet and selling them to other players. You can be a merchant buying up all of the hunter and miner's stuff and reselling it for profit, or be a crafter and craft with those raw materials and then sell the finished products. You can be a pilot, charging people for rides between places or planets. It would take a while to list all of the things you can do in EU. Overall there are 88 skills that dictate your profession. You get better at them by simply performing the tasks. So the more you mine the better you will be at mining, so your returns will be better.

In chat there are constant automated popups broadcasting record finds or crafting endeavors. Messages such as "-player so and so- crafted a gun valued at 1800PED", yup thats a 180$ gun that he or she can sell and put that 180 dollars right into their real life bank account. I read an article while researching Entropia Universe that said that Entropia Universe sees about 1.25 Million real life US dollars worth of transactions daily.

Now lets go back a bit, I mentioned a player spending 2.5 million dollars on some stuff in this game. Why would they do that. Well you see, just like in real life investments pay off in Entropia Universe. This particular purchase was for a lot of land, which can be taxed and utilized for profits. It is estimated that this player will be seeing around a 30% interest paid out to him, which amounts to about $12500 dollars a month. Sure it will take him a few years to make up the 2.5 million that he invested, but after that (assuming the game is still well and alive, and seeing that it has been for 11 years already I dont see it going anywhere) that player can safely retire and live on a $12,500 paycheck a month. Thats an amount a $150,000 job would pay, and all for doing nothing.  Pretty fascinating isnt it? This is an extreme Guiness World Record example, there are plenty of similar example of people making 10 to 20 thousand dollars a year in Entropia Universe. Pretty crazy isnt it?

The gameplay itself focuses largely around doing a job within the game and becoming better and better at it as I described above. Combat consists of shooting guns and fighting with swords (even light sabers). And what sci-fi game would be without space ships, space armor and mechs? All of these things are in Entropia Universe, and overall it feels like a fairly well flushed out world with solid mechanics that are geared towards everything being worth real life money.

Entropia Universe is certainly a unique and interesting MMO, but the truth of it is that for someone to make $20,000 someone else had to loose that money either willingly or stupidly. While I was playing I had a chance to speak to several people that have been playing for more than seven years, all of them did make profit, but not nearly as much as the newspaper articles write about, maybe several thousand dollars overall. While others constantly invest 15 to 50 dollars a month in order to have fun within the game and not worry about making money. To them it is worth it and they view it as paying a subscription. I personally did not invest any money at all, and was actually given about 100PED ($10 worth of stuff) to get me started by a mentor whom I met through the built in mentoring system.

Truth is, it is very hard (but possible) to start out and play Entropia Universe without putting in a dime. Imagine trying to make 20 dollars in real life without anything to work with. It would be pretty hard. But if you had $20 it would be much easier to make $40, because you could buy something for those $20 and resell for $40 (girl-scout cookies anyone?). There are two ways to earn money without investing anything. Roaming the world looking for fruits and precious rocks, and collecting animal sweat. Both with a return of about 20 cents (2PED) per several hours of running around doing them. Not very fun.. and that is how you fall into the trap of asking yourself.. whats a dollar? Ill put in a dollar, thats 10PED, it would take 20+ hours of grinding out sweat to earn that much. Needless to say most players recommend putting in at least $5 to start out with, from then on if you are smart (and have some luck) you can be the next person to buy a 2.5 million dollar plot of land without putting in anymore money.

All of these things make Entropia Universe a very interesting game. A lot is at stake, every shot you fire, every mining probe you use, every item you repair costs real life tangible cash. At the same time everything you sell, earn or acquire bring real life tangible cash to you. Entropia Universe receives a 3/5 from me because I feel that it is extremely hard for a brand new player as you can not really do much without putting cash into the game. Overall there is a lot of room for improvement in the tutorial system and giving resources to newcomers to be able to do more things than collect rocks, fruit and sweat. It can become a job and stop being enjoyable, and I am sure it is the single source of income for some people out there. At the same time, you can treat it as any other MMO and simply put your $15 a month into it and enjoy it, and perhaps grow a fortune.

It is as I said scary, interesting and intriguing. It is free, and you do not have to commit to anything, so I feel like there is no reason not to check it out, even if only to marvel at its beautiful graphics and absolutely ginormous world. Go download the client and give it a shot, maybe this is how you will make your first million dollars!