EVE: Trinity is one of 2007's top game innovations

by Mike Schramm on Dec 13th 2007 3:00PM

EVE Online, Bugs, Expansions, MMO industry, Opinion

Next-gen.biz has compiled their list of the top 10 game innovations of 2007, and there is only one MMO on the list: EVE Online. Next-gen decided to honor EVE for taking on the task of completely revamping their graphical engine, and showing that a well-designed MMO can be updated forever.

If I was honoring EVE, that's probably the least of the innovations I'd step up to honor them for. The realtime skill system, the open-ended gameplay, and the masterpiece of an economic system all rank higher than what the ships look like, but then again, this is a list for 2007. And hey, it's a year-end list, so it's hardly definitive anyway (apparently no one told him about Trinity's whole bootini incident).

So if we put together our list of the best MMO innovations of 2007, what would be on there? The Tier 5 token system from Burning Crusade? The "stored labor" crafting system in Pirates of the Burning Sea (or would that be on the 2008 list)? Tabula Rasa's mix of FPS, RPG, and MMO? What was the best innovation you saw in an MMO this year?

[Via Curse]

Source

Tags: innovations, mmo, next-gen, pirates-of-the-burning-sea, tabula-rasa, videogames

Reader Comments (2)

So... putting shinier graphics on an aging game is an incredible "innovation"? Seems to me they were starved of more substantial innovations to laud.

...Looking at the list, I have confirmed that hypothesis.

Also, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but the realtime skill system is not universally loved. I personally hate it, and count it as one of the major reasons I no longer play EVE Online.

Correction; to my criticism of the list. I believe their #1 innovation, to Valve for hiring the entire Narbacular Drop team (everybody!) and using them to develop Portal, is completely justified as an innovation.

Standard practice is to just hire one or two lucky members of the team and give them all the credit for the entire game. But not only is that practice totally wrongheaded and evil, it often fails outright.

Because obviously the game is NOT the product of one man or woman, the game is a TEAM effort, and you can't tell just who was it that made the game such a brilliant success.

Everyone attributed the greatness of Star Wars to George Lucas, and look what happened! George Lucas was just one member of a team, and his attempts to recapture that greatness 25 years later led to utter failure.

You need to preserve THE TEAM, because everybody makes it great, not just one man.