Project Ejectropia after 300 days of inactivity
Received a curious email this afternoon from the Entropia camp:
Imagine if Second Life culled their membership by suspending inactive accounts that haven’t logged in within 300+ days? Tonight I fired up Entropia, logged in and promptly was killed trying to “sweat” out a creature. I really don’t like the Entropria navigation at all. Click with the mouse to move around and not use the arrow keys?
There was a friendly human guide that offered me a little helpful advice but I haven’t found anything enticing about Entropia yet. Maybe I was just rubbed the wrong way about the concept of invalidating accounts of people who took the time to register and download the software and was looking through anxious eyes.
If you have an Entropia account, just don’t forget to login at least once every 300 days. I wonder if they wipe out your account balance when they deactivate you? I don’t have to worry on either account as I’ve since logged in and my balance remains a shimmering goose egg.
Think I need to travel in there along with fellow VTOR author Lestat who seems to like exploring Entropia. I’ll readily admit I haven’t given it a good shake thus far. What should one start out by doing in there (besides reaching for the plastic and giving them real money)? Where should I go? Good resources, guides?
With all its scalability and reliability faults, I think stepping into Second Life is a much more friendly newbie situation.
February 26th, 2007 • 
TD Goodliffe • 
comment | February 27, 2007 at 08:39 | individual comment-link
I do agree Entropia is not very newb friendly compared to second life. Newbs need to be careful when accepting help in it too. There are some who take advantage of the situation.
Entropia does have a giant learning curve imho. Entropia is more skills based. You can’t create content like you can in SL. I’ve found it seems you love it, or hate it.
Theres a lot to do as in most MMORPG’s there’s always exploring to do. You can learn to hunt, mine, manufacture items or clothing with materials gained from mining/hunting(or buying at auction or trading), join a society (group) with similar interests.
I’ve plunked down quite a bit into Entropia, but most of is was recouped from camping in SL ;-P…
comment | February 27, 2007 at 15:48 | individual comment-link
The account is locked after 330 days. It is purged after 510 days and the items contained are automatically sold to the system and the Cash balance remains for the user to withdraw. All the info is displayed in the Entropia EULA ยง6, so nothing strange about it. Also, if you contact MindArk after the 510 days, they can restore the account if desired, but I believe there is a service charge for it (not sure though).
I’d say that Entropia is a lot more newb-friendly. MindArk has human guides present when you start your new avatar (this is new since January I think). And since the last patch of the game they have entered player created content as well. Personally I like Entropia better than SL, mainly because you have a purpose in Entropia, something to do, rather than just “being” like in SL.
comment | February 28, 2007 at 21:12 | individual comment-link
Thanks for the details, Logger. I’m not sure I agree on the “lot more newb-friendly” — do you know of any good tutorials/guides for this on the web to read? I find the whole interface kind of overwhelming and it seems when I’m chatting in there I hit keys which bring up a bunch of other windows I don’t want in my face. I need a keyboard diagram at the least.
comment | March 23, 2007 at 07:30 | individual comment-link
The best resource for newbs that I found in Entropia is a society. Not just any society, but one created by a member(Fadwa) who saw that there wasn’t much newb friendly in Entropia.
She started Entropia Brothers and Sisters. It is a society thats main purpose is to show you the ropes. They give tours of teleport points, shpw how to sweat creatures, have their own website with tutorilsa written , on mining, hunting auctions ect., and organise events, hunts, hide and seek with prises. Look them up, tell them BusyBen sent you. And tell them I’ll be back when I get my comp fixed. They had just created an second society for the basic training just before I lost access.
Hope this helps out
comment | April 20, 2007 at 06:38 | individual comment-link
It’s very easy to redefine the controls in Entropia, so if you want to use the arrow keys - no problem.
comment | April 20, 2007 at 08:43 | individual comment-link
Great Lazzaron, how is that done?
comment | March 22, 2008 at 14:04 | individual comment-link
Logger, you’re right: the interface ist quite messed up.
Especially since MindArk decided that every new requester and window should steal the keyboardfocus from the gameworld.
So it could well happen that you’re typing something in the chat, but suddenly something happens and you’re back to the hotkey interface level and activate some equipment by accident (wasting some ingame money of corse).