Bringing Mechs to the Sandbox in Perpetuum

Join Senior Staff Writer Chris "Pwyff" Tom on his first significant foray into sandbox MMORPGs as he checks out Perpetuum, an EVE Online-like MMO... but with robots!

The New Year is always a rather emotional time for me. While a brand new year is when most people decide to make big changes in their lives, it also happens to be a time when most people realize that they're just too lazy, and thus continues the circle of life. As for me, I had two big gaming resolutions coming into this year: one, to give more meaningful coverage to the deserving MMOs, and two, to stop trolling so much in my online gaming (I'm sorry if you've ever met me in League of Legends). Of course, it should come as no surprise that a day later I was forced (forced, I tell you!) to break my second resolution during a session of late-night gaming angst, so this pretty much leaves me with one solid resolution. What is surprising, however, is just how easy it is to stick with my first resolution, and so I thought I'd share my thoughts on an MMO has been hogging a fair amount of my attention over the past month or so: Perpetuum.

Developed by Avatar Creations, an MMO team based out of Hungary, Perpetuum is an open-world PvP-based sandbox MMO where players control various robots and mechs to engage in various sandbox-esque activities, like harvesting resources, establishing economies, forming corporations and blowing each other up. It's really not too far off to say that Perpetuum is quite similar to EVE Online, (but with robots!) although EVE Online does have a staggering eight years of development behind it, while Perpetuum launched about a month and a half ago.

To be quite honest, I never really played EVE Online, and I'm willing to bet that my reasons for not playing are the very same reasons shared by hundreds of thousands of other MMO gamers around the world. EVE has established itself as being a game with a near vertical learning curve, chucking players into a vast and unknown space with millions of little tooltips popping up and screaming for attention. Combine this hostile learning environment with the rumor (this is a rumor, mind you) that it takes months, or even years for a player to train up to do anything 'epic' really makes EVE quite daunting. We all automatically look for that less challenging route with more rewards and, of course, World of Warcraft has always been there with arms wide open.

Perpetuum does, fortunately or unfortunately (depending on how you look at it), model itself very closely after EVE Online, although it has enough differences to set it apart. A player's growth is statically tied to his/her time spent subscribed, which equates to something like one EP gained per minute; EP is then spent on 'extensions,' which can be roughly translated to a player's core levels and masteries. At first glance, this can be seen as a rather transparent money grab by forcing players to stay subscribed if they want to keep up with the big players, but I have to admit that this system has come in handy over the holidays. It's quite satisfying to spend an entire day with friends and family, knowing that you're gaining the same amount of experience as everyone else. Of course, this doesn't disguise the fact that new players entering Perpetuum will be unable to catch up to the older veterans, regardless of how much they play, but it is obviously not something that Perpetuum's current subscribers are concerned about.

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