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What is it about EnB that draws you to it?


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There was a discussion ingame about aspects of this subject the other day, didnt quite catch it all tho. Henceforth this topic...

Because I'm interested to hear why, after years of not playing, there seems to be so many returning to play this game.

For myself, it was a combination of the way the game was designed along with the community this game has bred. The way the classes were designed to work >with< each other for instance. Unlike most games which seem to be solo but group when you must types, EnB stands out where other games fail to impart a sense of belonging and warmth.

People have to help each other out in order to succeed, the way the classes are designed is to promote cooperation and groups. The "you kill while I mine" type of group. Or the "One can mine, Two can kill, and three will heal and repair as needed" type... Any way you look at it, EnB is a group oriented game for certain aspects of it.

Granted, it is or was solo-able in a fair amount, but I feel that is changing as the devs struggle to make the game even more cooperative than it was in the past.

In a philosophical view, this is a game that promotes helping others in need or in trouble. Ideally if a distress beacon pops up in a sector, the miners would rush over and help defend / clear the area before jumpstarting. That would of course be the ideal. In the case of the terran scout, it fills two of the three needs of those incapped. js and hull repair. but the ideal would include hull patching players as well as shield patching players coming to the dead ships aid.

This is a game that was not only intended to be fun, but also indirectly intended to give people a different sort of game that likely is one of the better definitions the term multiplayer out there. This game has built up an intensely loyal and devoted community.

Those are some of the reasons I still find myself drawn to this game even over newer games.

But those are my reasons, what about your reasons for being drawn to this game both when it first came out and again years later, presently?

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For the following reasons:

Love space based games

First MMORPG

Sci-Fi fan in general, especially space.

PvE

Race/Class setup, each race/class having advantages/disadvantages. (even better with Scout, Seeker, and Privateer)

Nice graphics

Interesting skills

Customizable Ships

Saw this game in a Circuit City, in late Dec 03 (between Christmas and New Year's), haven't found a game I like better since.

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this may sound cheesy but I love how the players of this game often helped each other when they didn't gain anything from it themselves.

like jumpstarts: unless it was a group member, explorers had nothing to gain from jumpstarting. They risked getting exp debt from jumpstarting other people but they did it anyway. Same with people who went to the incapacitated player's area and cleared it.

then there were those people who did free wormholes on occasion, and people who buffed everyone who passed. Then there were the people who followed other players around psi shielding them and recharging their shields.

There were a ton of ways to do nice things for people that hardly required players to sacrifice anything and it was a really good way to make friends in the community.

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Space. The ability to fly around and have fun out there. The community EnB always pulled in as well. Mostly like what Kenu said, the players did help each other a lot. Also, the back story behind a lot of it is just great IMO.

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It's a space game, obviously. :)

Artistic holism: not many games do a good job of creating an artistic feel that is consistent and beautiful.

Above all, story.

Though I definitely love the emulator project, I find the lack of proper attention to the latter to be extremely frustrating, but I don't see how that could be improved with the content teams structured as they are. :(

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For the following reasons:

Love space based games

First MMORPG

Sci-Fi fan in general, especially space.

PvE

Race/Class setup, each race/class having advantages/disadvantages. (even better with Scout, Seeker, and Privateer)

Nice graphics

Interesting skills

Customizable Ships

Saw this game in a Circuit City, in late Dec 03 (between Christmas and New Year's), haven't found a game I like better since.

LOL you took all my reasons!! but siad it much better then I could,,,ty

During Christmas break thae year it came out (2002) as a high lvl explorer I helped my guild lvl on trade...we ran trade runs for 20 hours straight. United Space Alliance...

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Mostly the atmosphere. E&B had a comfortable feeling. Half of the fun came from chatting with other players.

Also, having played many MMOs, I find that I much prefer sci-fi to fantasy. EVE Online has superior gameplay, but it's huge and scary - the polar opposite of E&B.

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I went through so much heck to get the trial account(s) on this game running back when it was Live. My dad and I (since I didn't have a debit card at the time) jumped through so many loops to allow me to play the game. :P The client was dead set on me NOT doing a trial account!

^^

Was my first online game. I've tried hundreds of others and none can compare with this.

-N-

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I came to play Enb because my dad used to play on the live servers that EA going . I was playing

swg and I loved JTL :P but seeing Soe has took all the starwars feel from that game i left.

My dad heard about this was looking in to it , told me to check it out and figured i would enjoy this .

Now I did used to play on his PW when i was a little one ;p just blowing up low lvl stuff lol..

But I playing now because , it seems like a good game "from what i've seen so far"

I like the mix of combat,building,mining . I can't see why ea closed this down.

I hope they get/got the quest line going my dad told me about and black alien ships hyping in on ya on live .

and has nice friedly player base , have yet had bad time dealing/talking with anyone :)

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Yeah I have to admit, the cool playerbase has always kept me coming back. The lack of 'omglulzurgearsuckz' kiddies makes this so much more enjoyable.

As stated before, there's also the buffing/JS/WH thing - somehow in E&B it just seems more natural to help eachother out that way. (I've always been a JE, I should know)

And not only that, I remembered things like the Discos they used to hold in That Space on some stations. (do you remember? of course you do...) Higher lvl players giving away free stuff for the heck of it - the fact that player-made items are actually better than NPC or loot just also makes it more interesting to have people use it, as opposed to just selling it to an NPC. (not to mention that your name is on it :P )

And I also agree on the story - while E&B probably benefited from a relatively small player base (compared to, say, the behemoth that is now WoW), it was rare to see that kind of interactivity and a constantly moving story like that in a game like this. I remember following Vrixx and writing down the morse code just to decypher it, and all the talk in the channels about what it meant or could mean.

It doesn't help that this was my first MMO after Ultima Online, and a space based one at that, that had a seriously sweet running engine. Space MMOs that are worked out this well are hard to find, I think.

Coming back to it something like 6 years later.. Yes, there are bugs and there are more limitations, and if it wasn't free, probably not much of a chance it would see me coming back as much, but as it is, this is still a Work in Progress, and once most of the bugs are worked out, I can only hope that you guys can find some time to give the Vrixx another shot... so we can. I do so miss them. :)

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Yeah, the helping out is good.. Just the other dasy I stopped on the way to gate in freya to jumpstart a young JD on my sentinel who was doing a mission at the time.. I've got total of 4 characters with jumpstart.. I like the idea of helping others out, tho half the time someone calling for a Jstart is on the other side of the galaxy... Still, it doesnt matter what character one may be on.. JD has psi shield you can give out, JE also has enviro shield as well. The scouts are invaluable due to their combo of jstart and hull repair.

And of course like others have stated, the community that really polices itself as far as weeding out the bad language users for the most part. Its a great game to be in.

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Its the only MMO that has enough sci-fi in it to pique my interest, and is fun enough to keep it.

Fantasy MMOs don't interest me at all, even if they may be fun if I bothered trying them.

EVE will probably go down in the history books as one of the best sci-fi deals ever, but its just not fun for me.

Oh, and nostalgia... can't forget nostalgia.

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Many reasons I have for loving this game through so many years:

  • Space based (biggest winner there)
  • Mining
  • Very PVE friendly (love to do my own thing at times without having to depend on others)
  • 'Work for it' experience system. (You want it? Work for it!)
  • Other players (meeting people is always fun, being able to play in a group is even better! Nothing like a group of TE and PW's watching two miners cause roid guards to spawn or simply cooperatively helping each other out)
  • Job terminals (not locked to just sitting there doing the same thing forever) *please bring these back soon! pahhweeeze!* rofl
  • Quests
  • The storyline
  • The UI was nice and clean. Very effective.
  • Faction system
  • Graphics (they still ROCK!)
  • Great races to choose from (nice touch having different professions within the races themselves)
  • Able to have multiple characters
  • Ability to customize look of ship and character
  • Being able to dock at stations to interact with others in a different setting and actually have a reason for the stations for the bazaar, terminals, npc's, etc etc.
  • Landing on planets, I mean that just rocks!
  • The mobs, even their AI was very cool.
  • Speaking of mobs, I actually loved the RD's when the would do their ambushes and pull you out of warp to charge a toll and you could either pay and go on or refuse and fight or flee.
  • That also brings up the coolness of the mobs using skills against you.
  • Trading - make money and experience for hauling goods around. Yet another thing to do.
  • Manufacturing - This was real cool, player made items having better quality than the dropped/looted stuff and certain attributes being improved upon as well. That and the maker gets their name stamped onto it.
  • The skills themselves are really cool and unique to races
  • The idea of progressive story lines..
  • New systems/sectors
  • The elusive nature of the V'rix
  • Emotes for both character and ship */me barrel rolls!*

I seriously could go on and on, pretty much the whole game rocks and keeps me drawn to it more so than almost any game out there. Never found anything I didn't like about it. Never had the complaints others had, I took the game as it was and what it was meant to be and loved playing it. Was seriously bummed when they shut it down since I had been playing since beta first opened until sunset. Games since then and even up to today don't seem to have that appeal to me like games of past. Games today seem to be geared towards 'instant gratification' making them much to easy to complete in way less time than games of past. Not to mention the 'money maker' games that are driven to make money rather than towards making the games immersion deep and enjoyable which in itself is a much better way to make it make money. I mean look at the cigarette companies, they got it right, get them addicted and KEEP them addicted so they keep making us money. Of course, this is my opinion and that's about all I've gots to say about that.

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