Eve Online plans to add avatars

To date, Eve Online remains the most fascinating spaceship MMORPG I’ve played.

One of the drawbacks of the EVE universe is that you don’t have any ability to build an avatar out of world. At the recent Penny Arcade Expo here in Seattle, word emerged that Eve Online would be adding avatars:

player characters walking around the decks of their ships, characters walking around space stations, characters walking through shopping venues, et cetera. Calling it ambulation is a deliberate choice—you won’t be able to run, only walk.

Hat tip to The Wizard of Duke Street who characterized the changes as:

And like everything else, a great deal of it will be player controlled, from clothing production to shop ownership and corporate office furnishing. If they get even half of what they want in, it’s going to be absolutely fantastic.

But … no running inside a spaceship or space port? Say it isn’t so! I guess some ability to move around is better than no movement at all, but I wish they’d just open it up and let players climb out of the ship and explore planets on foot with whatever power-ups spacesuits will allow.

I’m hoping Star Trek Online will be something like this or it’s a missed opportunity. Star Wars Galaxies could have filled this niche too, but the spaceship part of the game wasn’t available to level 1 players. I’m the type of MMO gamer that doesn’t have time to work up to very high levels, so if the best parts of the game are after say level 25 or level 30, I’ll probably never see them. I wonder how many other low level MMO gamers there are?