From a single player to a massively multiplayer online experience

I’m an hardcore fan of PC strategy single player games, as I grew up with them (you can check the about page of my blog to see games I’ve been playing for 20 years now). My experience using multiplayer features in this games is very limited, and my online multiplayer experience nonexistent to a few months ago. Seeing my sister, also an old school strategy gamer herself, playing World of Warcraft (a.k.a. WoW) for about 4 years straight now (and the single only game she plays these days) made me think twice about the online massively multiplayer phenomenon and so I decided to give online games a try at my own risk. I recommend you to read the article World of Warcrack and the future of MMOGs to get the feeling of how addicting WoW is and how this is impacting the gaming society in a way that will only be fully understood in some years from now.

So some months ago a friend of mine, knowing my interest in strategy games, recommended me to try out Travian: an ancient world strategy web-based MMO game. I enjoyed playing Travian immediately. First of all it is free, very simple to play (you only need an Internet connection and a web-browser) and surprisingly enough to me the game was very addicting. I did not knew by then (and frankly I’m still figuring it out now) from where was this addicting factor coming from, since the game is pretty basic. Is it the simple gameplay experience itself? Is it the social aspect of the game? Or is it both? At my own pace I started to play Travian regularly. Naturally after having a positive experience with Travian I could not stop to ask myself if there could be also some MMO space strategy games, and possibly even 4x out there. The answer is yes and a lot of them. Many are already available, many others are in the making.

Web-based space strategy MMO Boom

So if in the recent past 4x space strategy games favored so much the single player experience (as it seems to be its main characteristic)  is it feasible to think that this genre can be successful in the MMO world? And a more important question: can the new space strategy paradigm be MMO? After making a quick search I found OGame, one of the most influential space strategy web-based MMO games out there. I played OGame for a while, and I still play occasionally. It is a satisfactory enough game. You can read my review of OGame in SpaceSector.com: Ogame Review, Tips and Strategy Guide. But there are many others. And the most difficult part these days is to figure out which ones are really worth it to give it a try. You can get a comprehensive list of space MMO games at Galaxy News.

As you glimpse Galaxy News list of space MMO games you can’t help to be surprised, not to say ultimately shocked, to see how many of these games are already available, or under development. They account 145 space MMO games in their database. Some of them show great potential. I tried so far: Astro Empires (which I already made a review), Cosmic Supremacy (a very complex and promising game), Dark Orbit, Ferion and Pirate Galaxy just to name a few.

What’s your MMO experience?

I decided to write this post to share with you my experiences playing space and non-space MMO games, since the process of discovering this new type of games to the amazement of how simple but how addicting these games can be. It would be very interesting to get feedback from you guys, the space (and also the non-space) gaming community. Do you play MMO games? If so which ones do you currently play (or played), and which of these do you recommend to other gamers and why? Ultimately it would be very interesting to discuss here your opinion on if MMO games could be the new paradigm for 4x space strategy.

Astro Empires is already a well established free space strategy (the free mode has some limitations, but is fully playable) web-based game known by many players. The idea of this article is to give the reader a global overview of this game to make it easier for newcomers.

For a review I did on another Web-Based MMOG -  Ogame, please refer to my other article: Ogame Review, Tips and Strategy Guide.

First impact

When reaching Astro Empires homepage, I have to confess that I liked it. Few and synthetic information including a small text describing the game and information regarding how easy it is to install and the fact that it is free to play. It also displayed  information about the advantage of not having to download anything, which captures the player’s attention for a smooth first impact. The homepage also gives a general overview of the game dimension and global information about the number of players, planets and bases in the server.

First Login, First Impressions

To be honest, when I made the first login I was not very pleased, I got a bit lost. I didn’t get immediately what I needed to do, it felt a bit unnatural and non-intuitive. The account overview is a little bit too texty, no graphic overview of your bases, your planets, I mean your location in the map. After 10 seconds, I found the Bases and Map icons…

When you choose one of your bases the following information is presented to you:  an overview, the  structures on it, the defenses, production, research and trade options. It presents all the standard issues of a common space strategy game, but the problem is with the details. When describing, for instance, the structures, there is no detailed information about them and it’s classification is done by means of numbers from one to a maximum level. I consider this a very simplistic approach that does not transmit a sense of realism to the player (but this is not strictly an Astro Empires thing, many games, like ogame for instance, also present this kind of simpler classification). I would prefer something more meaningful like “Advanced <structure>”, “Hyper”, “Automated” kind of upgrades but maybe that’s just a thing of mine.

Another down aspect in AE is when you click on a structure  it shows the same text as it did on the list of structures (I thought the second was more like a small description in a first place) with no images and with a list of the levels that each structure can achieve… too simple. Lots of work to be done here. But there is lots of space to be filled. I guess that the developers are probably still working on this matter for sure.

Galaxy Map

The map is ok, a grid over the galaxy is displayed with all the planets in each grid square. It gives you a nice perspective of your location in the game. There are tow kinds of links in the map. When you click on the planet, you go directly to the colony information, when you click in the name of the player you see information which can be important to test your diplomatic skills…

Timescale

For me, the timescale is the best feature of the game. I´m not a fan of rush kind web browser games where everything happens too fast. I like to take my time when placing a strategy. In this game, just because I was away for two days this didn’t ruined the game for me … my planet was not burning and my credits were not at zero!… against what is usual in some other web browser games like … travian, or ogame. I think this game has done a serious effort regarding this issue, but anyway I’m only playing it for a month, so  I could be mistaken about this.

Gaming experience so far

I needed to do something relevant with the game to have enough juice for a first impression… so, after lots of research levels, I ordered the construction of two Outpost ships (odd name for a regular colony ship), it took me around 6 hours to complete them… After a 3 minutes travel (maybe a bit too fast for my taste), the colony ship reached a metallic planet in the same solar system… I clicked the button “Build Base”… and that’s all. I wanted to see more juice in the process. Building a base is not like building a small fighter, but in Astro Empires, in practical terms, is the same. At least a few extra options could be presented when starting a colony, maybe a small report, or some colonization options presented (native population present in the planet, artifacts/technologies found, decisions to be made that affect the planet quality, etc).

Future

The future of this game is promising. I felt that the game is a like a raw diamond with many aspects still to be polished. The game is quick to load and to interact with and it seems that the engine beneath is also powerful. Now, the next step is to take more advantage of this engine and allow the player to extract the maximum potential of the concept but introducing more content.

I will continue to play the game and, in the future, I hope to write a deep review. In the meantime, I’ll explore the battles concept, colony management of several colonies, diplomacy aspects and the trading mechanism. I don´t know if I got lucky not having a dangerous alliance nearby (you can also join an alliance later) which allowed me to take me time to do things. IF this is confirmed than if you want to start a game in a “non-rush” mode, Astro Empires is a valuable option for you.