The problem with saying this game is a casino is because you went into it with the wrong mental state. “I see a game that I can get real money without going to a third party, it must mean that I can make profit… wait I didn’t make profit… this is a scam??” No my friend its a game and nothing more. You pay for your gameplay experience and not to make money. If you don’t like the gameplay sure rant on that but if you expect to be making easy money go onto those pay per click sites and after a year you’ll receive your 1$ check in the mail.

I myself played the game and bought weapons in bulk from hunters and sold it back to new players for less then the auction house sold it for. After that I used my profits hunted a little and then returned to trading. For me not to have to deposit into the game I had to do a little trading which is normal but if you want to just be able to play the game and not have to worry about making money just deposit 20$ a month and you should be fine (all dependent on how rash you are with your money spending).

Last note if you’ve spent a thousand dollars on this game in 4 years or more that’s normal (1000 / 4 / 12 ~ 20 / month) if you’ve spent thousands of dollars in less then 4 years with no business plan you might have a problem (no self control) I would recommend you send an e-mail to MA asking to get yourself blocked and do the same for any poker sites you come across and all your local casinos. Please don’t let the weak minded people control entertainment for the rest of us.

Unless you get LUCKY or don’t actually play the game through one of it’s professions, eventually you will lose pretty much everything you put into it.

You could stand in town ripping people off by buying cheap and then selling it to someone else overpriced like a Dbag. “The Middle Man”.Seriously that is your profession? Or spend days sweating so you can shoot a couple of animals and get no loot then be back at sweating. Sure sounds fun.

Ya I don’t feel a sense of entitlement and don’t feel like standing in towns for hours being a dick flooding the chat with advertising…. and so in order to do anything in the game I have to spend money.. and spend it you shall.

I just did an inventory calculation to find my avatar’s value, with everything I’ve collected over the years.. It is around $80… out of several thousand! Half of that $80, I just deposited the other day, ha ha. It’s a lose lose if you PLAY the game, the professions are really just a choice of how you want to lose your money.

Understand this game is expensive, VERY expensive.

It isn’t gambling though. In gambling, you may actually have a chance to WIN from time to time. When you pay $50 to “win” $30, your not winning $30 — your losing $20. And again look around… if by some fluke you do “win” a jackpot, your account will likely be drained of the winnings!

And for all who say that paying to play this POS game is worth it cause it’s so fun… WOW. There are a WHOLE BUNCH of games in this world to play that are A LOT MORE FUN TO PLAY THAN THIS “GAME” and for only a fraction of the cost. The only reason that ANYONE plays this is because they see that big pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that isn’t there. Without the lure of money, NOBODY would play this.

The only thing that still amazes me is that more people don’t speak up about it. People get ripped off for THOUSANDS and quietly go away with their tail between their legs. I think that it’s a good rule of thumb to TAKE BACK 10 TIMES the amount that you were scammed out of. Since you can’t TAKE anything back… THEN MAKE IT COST SCAM PLANET STUDIOS 10 times the amount that you were ripped off for.

Post to as many blogs, videos and forums as you can to warn people about getting ROLLED by MIND ARK. Anyone who did any research before getting hooked into this scam would be able to see what was really going on. THEY WOULDN’T GIVE THIS COMPANY ANYTHING.

Enough small losses add up to a HUGE LOSS. I learned that by playing this stupid game, so I guess it wasn’t a total waste of time.

If Sally and Billy invest $10 each into EU and they’re the only players, can you imagine a scenario where BOTH leave the game with a profit? Lets consider that MA taxes Sally and Billy $2 each to pay for servers costs, EU development and EU future planning. This leaves both Sally and Billy with $8 each worth of in-game currency. How can they both leave with an amount greater than their initial $10 deposit?

This question has been eating me alive. I’m not an economics major. I do not yet understand how Entropia Universe works, but I don’t think everyone in it can walk away with more than they put in. I just don’t think that’s possible unless MindArk itself gives Sally and Billy extra money and thus goes bankrupt.

Positives:
.. The game has great graphics.
.. I love the music.
.. Nice atmosphere (because of the music)
.. Good movement system: click-based and key-based.
.. Lots of different skills to wonder about.
.. It uses RL money, so it has added reason to think about how to make a profit.

Negatives:
.. Hunting/Mining/Crafting remind me too much of gambling
.. Not a good introduction to the game for new players.
.. PvE seems too cut and dry; it needs more flesh and background.
.. Very few (i haven’t seen any, but a couple exist) quests and tasks to do.
.. The cities aren’t really inhabited or used, they’re just for show.

My review:
Yes, I think the biggest thing has been my disapproval of the hunting/mining/crafting aspects. I have just come from trying out Second Life. The difference between Second Life and Entropia Universe is that Second Life feels much more like a real economy. Players can make new things and add new things to the world that they just simply cannot do in EU. Entropia Universe, by comparison, feels like it’s a fake economy that masquerades as a real one so that MindArk can exploit naive players and get rich off them. Everything, seemingly, is caught up in a yarn ball. MA controls everything.

I think it does need to be regulated. Someone needs to protect the players from exploitation. The reality is that a free economy is all about exploitation. This is true in the real world and it’s true in Second Life and Entropia Universe too. The difference is that in EU (Entropia Universe) MindArk has too much influence over things. They have an unfair advantage because they have access to the code and future plans. Players do not own the economy and are not free to make new things. AS long as this is the case, they’re vulnerable to exploitation in the same way people are in a casino.

The players don’t own the economy any more than a gambler owns the slot machine.

Still, I will have EU a chance. I will play for at least another month to make use of my $10 deposit in some way. I really want to hope I am wrong. I want to hope that there’s an underlying strategy, perhaps mathematical, that will help me to find out where the profits are. I understand that if the average person could make a profit than MindArk would go bankrupt because they would be paying players too many PEDs to meet their balance sheets. The problem is that instead of making the world complicated and expansive so that players need to use real skills to understand it (and yes there will be winners and losers in this kind of scheme, like in the real world), they instead have made the world bland and based mostly on chance and formulas. So they have made a world that has winners and losers, but it’s not skill, it’s CHANCE.

First few days, sweating for free money. Rate: about 2 ped per hour.
That’s enough to buy you a gun and a bit of ammo. Early hunting loot does not repay for ammo costs.
Fourth day I spent 10 dollars and bought mining gear, a healing tool, and some very basic armor upgrades.
The next few days were lots of fun as I searched for mining spots and explored the vast world.
However, just as before, the mining “hits” eventually were returning less than the cost of the mining probes… so… after four days of 5-6hour sessions eventually the funds ran out.
I sold the healing unit, and half the specialty mining tools… got 20 ped back.
Went out mining again… all 20 mining attempts returned nothing.

Today, I spent the morning sweating for a couple ped. Mined again. Nothing.

So here’s the deal-

You will pay real money to enjoy the game the way it was intended to be played. Ignore the posts by people who said they didnt spend a dime… 2 ped an hour for sweating is the equivalent of you being paid 20 cents an hour for your efforts.

Horrible.

I figure that you will have to pay in around 40 dollars per month if you are an active player… that’s about equal to 3 to 4 hours per day…. still well below the MA target rate of a dollar an hour but…

You Will Still Have To Pay to Play.

End of line.