Oleg
Mutated
- Joined
- Aug 15, 2006
- Posts
- 19,406
- Location
- Leeds, UK
- Avatar Name
- Oleg Oleg McMullery
Perhaps it is fitting that an unfulfilled promise was what first brought me to Entropia Universe.
It was an exciting time for EU. The original Project Entropia had just been relaunched under its new name, there was still something of a buzz about the million PED sale of CND the previous year, and Mindark had announced plans to create a card that would allow participants to withdraw cash directly from their PED card at an ordinary ATM. BBC News picked up the cashcard story, and reading their piece was my first introduction to Entropia, Mindark, and PEDs.
The cashcard was never more than a pipe dream, of course, but it wasn’t that that particularly interested me. I’d played MUD-type text games in the 80s, and dabbled with online card and board games in the early days of the mainstream Internet, but now with reliable broadband and the enhanced gaming opportunities that created, I’d been thinking about joining an MMO. I was intrigued by the idea of a real cash economy, and decided Entropia might be the game for me. Oleg Oleg McMullery arrived in a colony ship at Port Atlantis on 16 May, 2006.
Like so many of us, I was determined to make it without depositing. I’d read that gathering sweat was the way to do it, so when I found my first creatures – Combibos and Exarosaurs on the beach south of Port Atlantis – I worked out how to do it and got started. It was slow going, with many deaths, lots of running around pulling mobs into the sea, and far too much time stood around waiting to heal naturally, but eventually I gathered enough that I thought was worth taking to the traders I’d seen buying sweat in Port Atlantis. I spent some time hanging out there, listening to the chat for tips and learning some of the lingo. That was when I started to get invitations to be a disciple or join a society, but I resisted them, preferring to find my own way before committing to anything like that. By the end of that first night, I had a gun from the trade terminal, and had managed, with difficulty, to kill a few Exarosaurs.
I spent the following days sweating on the beach and exploring on my own, finding different creatures to get killed by, including my first Araneatrox, which got me stuck for a while at the infamous outpost northwest of Fort Troy. I realised I wasn’t going to learn much like this, so I found a mentor, AidanEnos, and later met some friends on the beach, Evander Squire Myrkle and Amelia Mille Ambrosine. We became a regular team for a while, which made the sweating much easier. I foolishly decided I could mentor Millie, passing on info from AidanEnos. I was a clueless mentor, of course, but she stuck with me and has remained a good friend ever since. She’s a pretty high level player with some impressive hunting stats nowadays. Evander didn’t last too long in the game, but I’ll always remember him and those early days on the beach.
AidanEnos was a nice guy, but he wasn’t the best mentor. He had me hunting with non-SIB guns, at a time when the smart people were using an Opalo and a big amp, before the 50% over-amping rule was introduced. But he helped me get some teleporters on my map, and introduced me to the busy sweating area near Camp Phoenix, though I still preferred the quieter spots. I’ve never been keen on being anywhere with a lot of green dots. He also persuaded me, eventually, to join the society he was in, Skillin’ Villains, where I met many good friends, and eventually became the leader for a while.
I still wasn’t learning about key things like hunting for markup, or damage per pec, but I settled into a sustainable routine sweat-hunting Snablesnots at Atlas Haven. I’d started making some small deposits, with which I experimented hunting different mobs, and invested in some basic equipment, but my progress was very slow. It took me two years to reach Level 50 and unlock Combat Sense, which (though much more difficult than it is now) shouldn’t have taken more than six months. But I was finally learning to play more sensibly and efficiently, and after largely wasting those first two years, things started to change.
I’d started to camp Drones, a reliable source of markup back then. I still wasn’t enormously efficient, using BLP weapons when laser was a more eco option, and gathering small groups of mobs on me instead of trying to minimise defensive costs, mainly because I wanted to maximise my skilling rate as I worked towards my next big goal, unlocking Commando. But the PEDs were lasting much longer, and I was turning over much more than before. I was depositing more by now, but more of it was going on gear instead of ammo, as was the money from the big HoFs I started to get, including a 5k Atrax in a team event that Skillin’ Villains were competing in (one of the most exciting and fun things I’ve ever done in EU) and an 11k Drone, which helped me buy my first unlimited SIB weapon (other than the ones from the TT), a GeoTrek H41 Mina, with which I eventually got the Commando unlock in 2010. By then I was the number two all-time Drone hunter on EntropiaTracker (which later became EntropiaLife), and stayed there for several years.
In 2008 I’d played a small support role in England’s winning WoF team, graduating to more significant roles in subsequent years, culminating in my captaincy for the 2014 tournament, when we reached the final. The excitement of WoF and other events inspired me to become an event promoter myself. I put on some successful free events, without any payment, including the first EUWBC boxing tournament. These convinced some LA owners to give me paid work, and for many years I was the top event promoter under the banner Entropian Events, later bringing in Thierry Rag of Grimbergen to help me out with hosting duties. In 2010 I persuaded MA to sponsor the EUWBC with some prizes, and the result was my biggest ever event, and one of the biggest player-run events ever held in EU. I’d been telling MA and others that I thought the future was in big spectator events, rather than the “pay-to-play” model we were used to. That was well before e-sports became huge, and was unfortunately another opportunity missed by MA. The EUWBC, which started off as a fun project, had turned into an awful lot of work for very little reward, and I never did anything on that scale again.
2012 was a huge year for me in EU. I’d increased my turnover even further, and was working my way up the EntropiaTracker all-time hunting lists. I think my peak was about 50, and I’d often be in the top 10 for the month. I unlocked Kill Strike that year, and had the best loot period of my EU career. I looted an unlimited ARK rifle in a Madana HoF on Arkadia, the Improved Shogun Shins from a Feffoid Elite (still unique, I believe, and one of only two Imp Shogun parts that ever dropped), and had some high TT value HoFs. Best of all, I looted the fifth and final Exceptional Robot Contraction Unit (the red banana, as it was commonly known) from an Eviscerator in a big robot event. I could exchange that, with some other more common components, for a set of Protector of the Empire armour. The set was worth about 50k PEDs at the time, but I’d been wanting a higher level armour set for a while, to help me step up to tougher mobs, so I kept it.
I’d stopped depositing by now, and was playing for profit. I’d invested some of my profits into CLDs, which helped a lot, but more importantly, as a very active and well-informed player, I was able to capitalise on new opportunities that arose. The introduction of Cyclops Depths was a big one for me. A lot of people were hunting Marcimex, which were certainly a good mob at that time, though the spawns were generally over-crowded. I focused on Mind Reavers instead, aiming to loot Radiant and Pristine Crystal Shards, which were selling for ludicrous amounts as people raced to upgrade their amps. I sold my first Pristine for 4.5k PEDs. I don’t think you can even get 10 PED for them nowadays.
By 2014 I’d reached Level 100, a massive milestone at a time when old-school non-SIB weapons were still the most eco available. I’d stopped running events by now, because I wanted to spend more time on hunting. I was still in Skillin’ Villains, but it was very quiet there, and much of the time I was the only one online. I’d stepped down as leader before then, and knew it was time for me to move on, but I wanted to get to Level 100 before I did, in the hope it might inspire my old friends and socmates. After leaving SV I had a brief spell in Agents of Entropy, where I met some good people, but which ultimately wasn’t for me, and then joined Rangers. I don’t think I knew any of the members very well at the time, but there were several I’d come across and had good chats with over the years, and my old friend Millie, who had been with them in the past, spoke very highly of them. It didn’t take long before I felt at home there. They were a like-minded bunch of smart, respectful, well-informed players, who just wanted to get on with playing EU and trying to make a success of it. Many of the finest people I’ve ever met in the game have been in Rangers, and I’ve been glad to be a member ever since.
I think things really started to change again for me in 2017, when strongboxes were introduced to EU. I’d felt for some time that the advantages long-term committed players had gained through their own hard work (and in some cases, large investments) were being eroded. A new range of limited guns with higher eco and dps had removed the advantages of Level 100, and the availability of low-level “upgraded” weapons like the Adjusted Maddox exacerbated that. Starter packs with skill pills had made low-level skilling mush easier. And now strongboxes meant depositors were getting much more for their money than I ever had when the only option available was PEDs, thanks to skill pills, neurostim buffs, and rare rings if you were lucky. I could have bought boxes myself, of course (and I did make a small deposit, my first for several years, to try them out), but for me the aim of the game had always been to work your way up to a position where you didn’t need to deposit any more, and it felt like that idea had been torn apart.
At the same time, other commitments were taking over from EU. I had accidentally fallen into life as a freelance poet and writer, as well as having a demanding day job, and my time was being increasingly consumed by working on my writing career, and in a new social life that had arrived alongside it. Within a year or two I’d gone from cycling 5k PEDs a day to less than that in a week, while the most active players, tooled up with pills, enhancers and item buffs, were turning over five or even ten times as much as I ever used to. When I got to Level 100 in eight years, it was considered relatively quick. Now it is not unusual for someone to do it in two.
I’ve tried to stay as active as I could, but as well as plummeting down all the ranking lists, keeping up with new developments became more difficult. With limited time to play, I couldn’t put the effort into exploring new areas, new systems, new planets, like I used to. With loot system changes, it felt like having a huge bankroll and cycling large amounts was more necessary than ever.
In short, it felt like EU had become a pay-to-win game. People have suggested that is the case throughout its history, but I honestly don’t think it was before. People used to be able to make a profit at any level, if they put the time and effort in, and while depositing certainly helped, it wasn’t essential.
Earlier this year I decided to deposit $500, the first time I’d put anything in since 2012 (except for the small strongbox experiment) and the biggest single deposit I’ve ever made. I spent it on ammo and skill pills, with the hope it would get me to the Scavenging and Intuition unlocks I was hoping to achieve this year. For a while, I played more actively than I have in years, but despite hunting for markup and trying to play economically, the PEDs dwindled much faster than I expected.
More importantly, however, I found myself utterly, thoroughly bored. I’d hoped having a big stash of ammo to play with might stoke my enthusiasm, but it did not.
I kept going till the summer to see what migration would bring. All it brought was more boredom, compounded with the irritation of having to run around looking for free mobs in an inadequate spawn. I gave it a couple of weeks, then switched off.
I thought I’d made a decision by then, but I wanted to take a couple of months off to reflect. Having done that, my mind is unchanged. That’s it for me. No more EU. Olexit.
It will take me some time to sell out, and being very busy with work, and having to move house this month, I’m not even going to attempt to do it right now. I don’t think I’ll sell skills, not because I think I’ll come back (though you never know) but because I don’t think it’ll be worth the effort. Even without selling skills, I don’t think I’ll be unhappy with the outcome. If I sold my CLDs and CP deeds, and TTed everything else I own, I would still be able to withdraw more than I have deposited. I don’t say that to boast, but to demonstrate what is possible, or at least used to be.
Until I return to say “selling everything @ south wall”, goodbye, and of course, good luck.
It was an exciting time for EU. The original Project Entropia had just been relaunched under its new name, there was still something of a buzz about the million PED sale of CND the previous year, and Mindark had announced plans to create a card that would allow participants to withdraw cash directly from their PED card at an ordinary ATM. BBC News picked up the cashcard story, and reading their piece was my first introduction to Entropia, Mindark, and PEDs.
The cashcard was never more than a pipe dream, of course, but it wasn’t that that particularly interested me. I’d played MUD-type text games in the 80s, and dabbled with online card and board games in the early days of the mainstream Internet, but now with reliable broadband and the enhanced gaming opportunities that created, I’d been thinking about joining an MMO. I was intrigued by the idea of a real cash economy, and decided Entropia might be the game for me. Oleg Oleg McMullery arrived in a colony ship at Port Atlantis on 16 May, 2006.
Like so many of us, I was determined to make it without depositing. I’d read that gathering sweat was the way to do it, so when I found my first creatures – Combibos and Exarosaurs on the beach south of Port Atlantis – I worked out how to do it and got started. It was slow going, with many deaths, lots of running around pulling mobs into the sea, and far too much time stood around waiting to heal naturally, but eventually I gathered enough that I thought was worth taking to the traders I’d seen buying sweat in Port Atlantis. I spent some time hanging out there, listening to the chat for tips and learning some of the lingo. That was when I started to get invitations to be a disciple or join a society, but I resisted them, preferring to find my own way before committing to anything like that. By the end of that first night, I had a gun from the trade terminal, and had managed, with difficulty, to kill a few Exarosaurs.
I spent the following days sweating on the beach and exploring on my own, finding different creatures to get killed by, including my first Araneatrox, which got me stuck for a while at the infamous outpost northwest of Fort Troy. I realised I wasn’t going to learn much like this, so I found a mentor, AidanEnos, and later met some friends on the beach, Evander Squire Myrkle and Amelia Mille Ambrosine. We became a regular team for a while, which made the sweating much easier. I foolishly decided I could mentor Millie, passing on info from AidanEnos. I was a clueless mentor, of course, but she stuck with me and has remained a good friend ever since. She’s a pretty high level player with some impressive hunting stats nowadays. Evander didn’t last too long in the game, but I’ll always remember him and those early days on the beach.
AidanEnos was a nice guy, but he wasn’t the best mentor. He had me hunting with non-SIB guns, at a time when the smart people were using an Opalo and a big amp, before the 50% over-amping rule was introduced. But he helped me get some teleporters on my map, and introduced me to the busy sweating area near Camp Phoenix, though I still preferred the quieter spots. I’ve never been keen on being anywhere with a lot of green dots. He also persuaded me, eventually, to join the society he was in, Skillin’ Villains, where I met many good friends, and eventually became the leader for a while.
I still wasn’t learning about key things like hunting for markup, or damage per pec, but I settled into a sustainable routine sweat-hunting Snablesnots at Atlas Haven. I’d started making some small deposits, with which I experimented hunting different mobs, and invested in some basic equipment, but my progress was very slow. It took me two years to reach Level 50 and unlock Combat Sense, which (though much more difficult than it is now) shouldn’t have taken more than six months. But I was finally learning to play more sensibly and efficiently, and after largely wasting those first two years, things started to change.
I’d started to camp Drones, a reliable source of markup back then. I still wasn’t enormously efficient, using BLP weapons when laser was a more eco option, and gathering small groups of mobs on me instead of trying to minimise defensive costs, mainly because I wanted to maximise my skilling rate as I worked towards my next big goal, unlocking Commando. But the PEDs were lasting much longer, and I was turning over much more than before. I was depositing more by now, but more of it was going on gear instead of ammo, as was the money from the big HoFs I started to get, including a 5k Atrax in a team event that Skillin’ Villains were competing in (one of the most exciting and fun things I’ve ever done in EU) and an 11k Drone, which helped me buy my first unlimited SIB weapon (other than the ones from the TT), a GeoTrek H41 Mina, with which I eventually got the Commando unlock in 2010. By then I was the number two all-time Drone hunter on EntropiaTracker (which later became EntropiaLife), and stayed there for several years.
In 2008 I’d played a small support role in England’s winning WoF team, graduating to more significant roles in subsequent years, culminating in my captaincy for the 2014 tournament, when we reached the final. The excitement of WoF and other events inspired me to become an event promoter myself. I put on some successful free events, without any payment, including the first EUWBC boxing tournament. These convinced some LA owners to give me paid work, and for many years I was the top event promoter under the banner Entropian Events, later bringing in Thierry Rag of Grimbergen to help me out with hosting duties. In 2010 I persuaded MA to sponsor the EUWBC with some prizes, and the result was my biggest ever event, and one of the biggest player-run events ever held in EU. I’d been telling MA and others that I thought the future was in big spectator events, rather than the “pay-to-play” model we were used to. That was well before e-sports became huge, and was unfortunately another opportunity missed by MA. The EUWBC, which started off as a fun project, had turned into an awful lot of work for very little reward, and I never did anything on that scale again.
2012 was a huge year for me in EU. I’d increased my turnover even further, and was working my way up the EntropiaTracker all-time hunting lists. I think my peak was about 50, and I’d often be in the top 10 for the month. I unlocked Kill Strike that year, and had the best loot period of my EU career. I looted an unlimited ARK rifle in a Madana HoF on Arkadia, the Improved Shogun Shins from a Feffoid Elite (still unique, I believe, and one of only two Imp Shogun parts that ever dropped), and had some high TT value HoFs. Best of all, I looted the fifth and final Exceptional Robot Contraction Unit (the red banana, as it was commonly known) from an Eviscerator in a big robot event. I could exchange that, with some other more common components, for a set of Protector of the Empire armour. The set was worth about 50k PEDs at the time, but I’d been wanting a higher level armour set for a while, to help me step up to tougher mobs, so I kept it.
I’d stopped depositing by now, and was playing for profit. I’d invested some of my profits into CLDs, which helped a lot, but more importantly, as a very active and well-informed player, I was able to capitalise on new opportunities that arose. The introduction of Cyclops Depths was a big one for me. A lot of people were hunting Marcimex, which were certainly a good mob at that time, though the spawns were generally over-crowded. I focused on Mind Reavers instead, aiming to loot Radiant and Pristine Crystal Shards, which were selling for ludicrous amounts as people raced to upgrade their amps. I sold my first Pristine for 4.5k PEDs. I don’t think you can even get 10 PED for them nowadays.
By 2014 I’d reached Level 100, a massive milestone at a time when old-school non-SIB weapons were still the most eco available. I’d stopped running events by now, because I wanted to spend more time on hunting. I was still in Skillin’ Villains, but it was very quiet there, and much of the time I was the only one online. I’d stepped down as leader before then, and knew it was time for me to move on, but I wanted to get to Level 100 before I did, in the hope it might inspire my old friends and socmates. After leaving SV I had a brief spell in Agents of Entropy, where I met some good people, but which ultimately wasn’t for me, and then joined Rangers. I don’t think I knew any of the members very well at the time, but there were several I’d come across and had good chats with over the years, and my old friend Millie, who had been with them in the past, spoke very highly of them. It didn’t take long before I felt at home there. They were a like-minded bunch of smart, respectful, well-informed players, who just wanted to get on with playing EU and trying to make a success of it. Many of the finest people I’ve ever met in the game have been in Rangers, and I’ve been glad to be a member ever since.
I think things really started to change again for me in 2017, when strongboxes were introduced to EU. I’d felt for some time that the advantages long-term committed players had gained through their own hard work (and in some cases, large investments) were being eroded. A new range of limited guns with higher eco and dps had removed the advantages of Level 100, and the availability of low-level “upgraded” weapons like the Adjusted Maddox exacerbated that. Starter packs with skill pills had made low-level skilling mush easier. And now strongboxes meant depositors were getting much more for their money than I ever had when the only option available was PEDs, thanks to skill pills, neurostim buffs, and rare rings if you were lucky. I could have bought boxes myself, of course (and I did make a small deposit, my first for several years, to try them out), but for me the aim of the game had always been to work your way up to a position where you didn’t need to deposit any more, and it felt like that idea had been torn apart.
At the same time, other commitments were taking over from EU. I had accidentally fallen into life as a freelance poet and writer, as well as having a demanding day job, and my time was being increasingly consumed by working on my writing career, and in a new social life that had arrived alongside it. Within a year or two I’d gone from cycling 5k PEDs a day to less than that in a week, while the most active players, tooled up with pills, enhancers and item buffs, were turning over five or even ten times as much as I ever used to. When I got to Level 100 in eight years, it was considered relatively quick. Now it is not unusual for someone to do it in two.
I’ve tried to stay as active as I could, but as well as plummeting down all the ranking lists, keeping up with new developments became more difficult. With limited time to play, I couldn’t put the effort into exploring new areas, new systems, new planets, like I used to. With loot system changes, it felt like having a huge bankroll and cycling large amounts was more necessary than ever.
In short, it felt like EU had become a pay-to-win game. People have suggested that is the case throughout its history, but I honestly don’t think it was before. People used to be able to make a profit at any level, if they put the time and effort in, and while depositing certainly helped, it wasn’t essential.
Earlier this year I decided to deposit $500, the first time I’d put anything in since 2012 (except for the small strongbox experiment) and the biggest single deposit I’ve ever made. I spent it on ammo and skill pills, with the hope it would get me to the Scavenging and Intuition unlocks I was hoping to achieve this year. For a while, I played more actively than I have in years, but despite hunting for markup and trying to play economically, the PEDs dwindled much faster than I expected.
More importantly, however, I found myself utterly, thoroughly bored. I’d hoped having a big stash of ammo to play with might stoke my enthusiasm, but it did not.
I kept going till the summer to see what migration would bring. All it brought was more boredom, compounded with the irritation of having to run around looking for free mobs in an inadequate spawn. I gave it a couple of weeks, then switched off.
I thought I’d made a decision by then, but I wanted to take a couple of months off to reflect. Having done that, my mind is unchanged. That’s it for me. No more EU. Olexit.
It will take me some time to sell out, and being very busy with work, and having to move house this month, I’m not even going to attempt to do it right now. I don’t think I’ll sell skills, not because I think I’ll come back (though you never know) but because I don’t think it’ll be worth the effort. Even without selling skills, I don’t think I’ll be unhappy with the outcome. If I sold my CLDs and CP deeds, and TTed everything else I own, I would still be able to withdraw more than I have deposited. I don’t say that to boast, but to demonstrate what is possible, or at least used to be.
Until I return to say “selling everything @ south wall”, goodbye, and of course, good luck.
Last edited: