Thanks Lava, for taking the time to give your perspective. You certainly gave us a great deal to think about for sure. I can appreciate (and respect) how long development can take, and that sometimes things don't effectively work out as planned, but I'm a little confused about something now.
That is ... when
PE was initially launched, and for a time after, the concept was based on unique storylines that were leading us somewhere. Substance if you will, with exciting game play that we became accustomed to, and looked forward to with anticipation as to where it was going to take us next. These storylines have fallen by the wayside, and it appears that
EU is now being taken into a direction of e-commerce where we will have an opportunity to browse shops or other planets that will offer us real world items, and seemingly more business entities pushing their products as they have been doing for quite a while now on our ingame ad screens.
My question is ... will
EU ever be that exciting space exploration with storylines again that engage us as a community to protect our planet from invasions, and other such adrenaline-pumping activities, or are we gravitating toward a business-based virtual universe where these types of things become secondary? I'm fully aware of the
Space Pirates theme that
ND has published, and it all sounds quite interesting, but as it stands right now, we have very little information as to what's on the table with regard to any of this stuff other than what the two gentlemen from Creative Kingdom have shared (total respect and appreciation to them for that), so there's very little for us to wrap our minds around, other than past experience.
I think perhaps, that once we get something more concrete, and after CE2 is implemented with hopefully an array of features that will excite us all, the community might take on a different perspective and understand more the value of just what this development stuff is all about. All we have right now is what has transpired, and while concept and content has been exciting (along with future intentions), people's perspectives are based on experience, and perhaps why they are less forgiving than those who either work in development, or understand it more than most.
Epic, from Delta Forces, has written a tremendously informative, and incredibly interesting historical
PE/
EU background at the
EU Blog site (Entropia Gateway).
I offer the following if anyone is interested:
Entropia Universe Timeline Phase 1
Entropia Universe Timeline Phase 2: Calypso Discovered
Entropia Universe Timeline Phase 3: War Escalates, Battle Over Calypso
Entropia Universe Timeline Phase 4: The Present
Entropia Universe Timeline: Epilogue
For the most part, the community understands advancement, but it seems now that we're headed into
big business if you will, rather than on course with our
sci-fi based content that drew many into this universe. Is game play going to become secondary to business now?
Just to make it clear, I'm not knocking anything, or bashing
MA, because I can appreciate how difficult it can be with what they have to work with. I'm just asking what I feel are valid questions so that we can at least have a solid understanding with regard to what's happening with our originally-intended sci-fi universe and exciting storylines. We can only formulate our opinions based on what's presented to us, or by what hasn't been happening any more, and for some, it has become rather challenging to be all that excited about the future of
EU when we have very little to go on with regards to the game play aspect of what future intentions are.
Also, no disrespect meant to what you have presented, and it's fully understood ... speaking for myself ... I have always loved
PE/
EU, and the unlimited potential for making it personal with regard to how we engage ourselves in this virtual universe. However, I also appreciated the foundational basis of this endeavor, and the excitement of the storylines, and where we were headed with them. Now, it seems like tomorrow is based on associations with countries and companies with full intent on selling RL products, rather than adventures in space. Sure, we might need to travel in space to get to these other planets, but what will we find, other than the intimated prospect of browsing product lines.
The main question is ... has
MA foresaken the "
entertainment arena" as you have termed it, for big business?
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