Getting Started

And so we begin...

...After navigating my through the standard avatar creation process - Qweeg is back, and this time sporting a silver-grey crew cut - nice ;).  Then it's out into the big bad "After" World.

The first thing I am struck by - and I will return to this point several times in the next few posts - is just how similar this game feels to Entropia.  The HUD has many of the same features, movement and interaction with the game world feels the same, and within an hour I am pretty comfortable with the basics of getting about. 

AfterWorld is FTP (free to play) - however you can donate (deposit) real money in to assist with your gaming experience.  $1 = 10 AWD (AfterWorld Dollars).  Whilst there is currently no way to withdraw money from the game this is a feature that will be in the final release version.  This follows exactly the same model as Entropia.

Both games have something in the game that you can do to earn in game money at no cost, so in that respect it is perfectly possible to play for free - and actually to make a small profit.  Obviously the game creators don't want people to do this, and so these options are both time consuming and really not much fun.  In Afterworld there 3 free activities:  Mining rocks for minerals; chopping trees down for wood; and cutting plants up for medical extracts.

These are more interesting (marginally) than "Sweating" in Entropia, but are made less attractive because the free tools that are supplied to do this are very slow to use - so only small amounts of resources can be collected compared to using the faster more advanced versions of the tools that are not free.

The second restriction on playing for free is that many features in the game are not available to you until you become a citizen.  You are also restricted to the starting area (zone) of the game, and most importantly you do not gain any skills until you are a citizen.  Now it is possible to gain citizenship without depositing, but it takes time; is repetitive; and quite frankly didn't interest me at all.  It's great that the option is there to play for free, but also that I am not forced into doing something that doesn't interest me very much.

So after playing for one evening I deposited and the next day - Viola, Dave Qweeg Lister is now a citizen!