Trade, Crafting and the Economy

Having wandered around Saransk for a bit - not really knowing what to do next I decide to head back to Q1 - but on foot.  I have a healing kit, courtesy or a nice lady from a society called Shadow Corpse, and a gun that I bought at the auction.  Confident in Qweeg's survival instincts I head back towards Q1.

It quickly becomes apparent that whilst my gun might look like a Bad MF - it really doesn't work very well without any ammunition!  This makes the journey back a little scarier than originally planned, but Qweeg does eventually make it back in one piece.

It is at this point that I start to realise that AfterWorld has some quite far reaching differences to Entropia.  Whilst it seems to play the same - combat is very similar, mining from what I have read is similar albeit a little more complex in AW etc. - it is different in 2 very important ways. 

Firstly crafting, is a) much more complex in AW, and b) plays a vital role in the game.  In Entropia whilst crafters had their place in the game they were very much a poor relation to hunters and miners.  That was in part because so many items could be bought or found without the need for crafting.  In AW almost everything needs to be crafted.  And more interesting nothing lasts forever.  In Entropia items are either Limited or Unlimited - limited means when they are worn out you have to throw them away, unlimited means they can be repaired whenever they wear out.  This again negates the need for a crafter, since once you have a good item you never need to replace it.  In AW all items can only be repaired a certain number of times before they are useless - and so crafting is a much more vital profession.

The second key difference is how the economy itself works.  In Entropia everything has a TT (Trade Terminal) value and can be sold via the said terminal back to the game for that value.  Some items have a value far higher than TT if sold to another player as they may be rare or in high demand.  Other items may not be worth selling to another player so just get traded in at the terminal.  This is not possible in AW - all trading is player to player, and so the economy is one completely dictated by supply and demand of the players in the game.

These two differences alone give a completely different complexion to the game - and something it will take some time before I start to understand the full impact, and the best strategy for the game.  This is just the challenge I was looking for - the good bits of Entropia with the bad bits replaced with more good bits.  So far things are looking good!

The Big Bad World

So, Qweeg is now a citizen but what next?  Well now I have freedom to move out of the starting zone (Q1) I might as well take it.  The first time you venture out is a bit strange - essentially your mind essence is packaged up in a little flying saucer that you fly through a maze where eventually you arrive at a new zone, Saransk, where your mind is reunited with your body.  Most bizarre!

Saransk is a large town, non-pvp so you are quite safe (as is Q1 incidentally) with lots buildings containing terminals that you can interact with.  Many of these were also in Q1 but only a few of them actually work.

So how does the game hang together?  Well every action potentially grants you either Skill advancement Units (SAU) or level gains in a certain skill.  There are many skills in the game and they relate to the different actions you perform.  So for example chopping down trees may give you gains in the "Nature" skill, whereas using a healing a kit may give you a gain in the "Restore" skill.  There are plenty of crossovers as many skills relate to many different professions.  Once you level in s skill reaches 100 (%) then you can unblock the next level.  This is what the SAU is used for.  So for example my Strength skill reaches 100% (I am at stage 1).  I then won't get any more strength skills until I use some SAU to unblock stage 2.  I will then be at 0% on stage 2 and I will be able to receive strength skill gains again.

The better the stage you are at in a skill the better you are able to perform related actions.  One other thing - you can intentionally block gains in certain skills so as to focus your gains in other areas.  For example if you wanted to skill up Nature but not Strength but both skills could be gained from chopping down trees you could block Strength.  Then you would only gain Nature skills until Strength was unblocked again.

Overall this is a similar concept to Entropia although slightly more sophisticated.  That is assuming I have understood how it works correctly, and there is no guarantee of that.

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!

Qweeg arrives in AfterWorld

The date - Monday 4th July 2011; the event - Dave "Qweeg" Lister arrives in AfterWorld.

To give some background I played a game called Entropia for around 4 years, until the cost of playing became too prohibitive.  At that point the Entropia incarnation of Qweeg was retired and at the time I thought confined to the gaming scrap heap for good.  But a year on and he is back knocking on my door with a gaming thirst that not even a gallon of Stella will quench!

And so I reluctantly open the door to the gaming world once more, after first checking that the path back down the dark-side towards Entropia is forever blocked: oh no we are not heading down that route again my friend.

Several game trials later I come, somewhat reluctantly, to the conclusion that whilst Entropia is no longer for me, the concept of a game with a real cash economy very much is.  And I know that in that case there is only really one alternative - AfterWorld.  Still in Alpha/Beta stage, although now close to general release, it seems stable enough for me to dip my toes in without the risk of drowning.

And so Dave Qweeg Lister is reborn, to start out again as a gaming newbie and hopefully to share his experiences here along the way.