Best Online Anarchy Simulator - for all you ancaps.

[Horse Badorties]

EVE Online - check it out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EVE_online

High Sec space, ie, starting areas, have AI security forces that punish aggression, with extreme prejudice. There are ways around this, though.

Low Sec is most of the 'verse, no cops, anything goes. Anything. You can start a friggin' Investment Bank for players, and abscond, just like in real life.

All players are in the same server-space; no shards, or regional servers.
People wander into LoSec after a while to try to grab resources, or to pirate other players. Yarrrr! lol

But the LoSec ecology is much like that of the trout population in a Sierra lake - the young'un's stay in the shallow water near the shore and snag insects that land in the water. The elder, survivor trout, big and fat, stay mostly in the deep parts of the lake, and what they eat is mostly younger trout.

I played for a year and a half, found some friends and we made a corp, I got swindled into being CEO.We had some great times, awesome times, team playing makes the game 100x better, even if it's just one partner you can trust.

But the clear trend is toward Empires/Syndicates. LoSec is divided up among gangs, who to varying degrees guard their turf.
Try your anacap strategies there, and let me know how that works out.

[Jacob]

The storyline sounds interesting. I used to play video games all the time, I may just check this out if I get back into a MMORPG mood. (for non-nerds: MMORPG= Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game).

Here's what turns me away:
"As of October 2006, the average age of an Eve Online player was 27, and 95% of players were male. The average weekly playtime was 17 hours, or just under 2.5 hours per day."
... I predict that unless I completely submerge myself in the game for months on end, I will get my E-ass kicked by all the other nerds who have been playing for years. In the past, my patience level for MMORPG games has only allowed me to play for about a month before the repetitiveness of playing in a virtual reality gets to me. That said, I think I have a plan for total domination: create a female profile account, post up fake porn star pictures of myself, and solicit E-sex to the sexless masses online. I had a buddy in high school that did that in Star Wars: Old Republic and he was very successful, he didn't even have any porn star pictures of "her"self, he just walked around with a female name and asked for shit from random players and probably 1 out of 3 would straight up give him free shit. Ah, nerdiness...

[Horse Badorties]

Last I saw, you'd have a lot of competition pulling that scam, lol.
Thing is, you start off in hisec and many people never leave. Good space to practice skills while building up a stash, buying better ships and upgrades.
There is a perceptible learning curve though, which has caused some reviewers to call it a spreadsheet program with graphics. It's not, or not necessarily, if you're just an adventurer. Some folks get into the market system very deep and make fortunes but hardly ever fly, too each their own. But the learning curve means your average player who sticks around after the first month of free play is smarter than your average bear; kinda fun to hang out with such. By knowing what you're doing and thinking outside of the box you can come up with some interesting and very effective workarounds, like outfitting a ship with another race's tech, taking advantage of the specs to free up ship resources for unexpected secondary (non-weapon) fittings. I still miss my speed-tanking Machariel, though I've seen since that it's been nerfed.

Dumbness is selected against, though. Ship losses are real, and if you're not careful you can have your character killed as well - a clone gets revived, but with out the millions in implants you (should have) had in the original.

Hisec gets old though, or it did for me. Rewards are higher in losec, as are the risks. I remember the first time I got jumped in a nearby losec system - a ship of my class piloted by a new member of a pirate corp. He didn't expect me to put up much of a fight, boy was he surprised. 10 minutes we fought using every trick and maneuver (helps to know some physics, the game is pretty realistic that way) neither of us getting in a killing blow, then my opponent's trainer who'd been sitting nearby watching finally came in with his more advanced ship and blew me up. Worth it. Fun fight, learned a lot, and got plenty of respect from both of them - we became friends, could have joined their corp if I wasn't setting up my own.

That's another thing - one server for everyone, so all nationalities are present - one very good friend was in Russia,, another pirate corp I regularly had to get around were all Germans, etc. Nice to be exposed to people from different cultures.

[Jacob]

That's another thing - one server for everyone, so all nationalities are present - one very good friend was in Russia,, another pirate corp I regularly had to get around were all Germans, etc. Nice to be exposed to people from different cultures.

Ah, that alone has now put it on my "need to check it out" list. If I get some other things squared away in my personal life I might be checking it out around summertime, either way I'm trying to burn it into my brain to remember to try this game out when I have time.

Having a good time with people from other countries, while sitting in "our" separate countries makes the government sad. Shhh... don't tell "them" how easy it is to get along with others without the threat of government violence. Not to mention that playing games, like playing music, is a universal language.

[Ed]

Ah, you young gamers have a good time out there. I'm too old and curmudgeonly to get into the gaming thing. I do remember the first video game I ever saw. It was in '76 or thereabouts and I was a bartender in a motel cocktail lounge. The game console was built like a cocktail table with a glass top, and it had button controls for two players and a coin slot, 50 cents per game. It was called Pong, and was a table tennis game.

That one was just too fuggin high tech for me. I never got into the the later games either. Anybody for Texas Hold'em? ahaha

[Horse Badorties]

I was there, Ed, lol. Pong was better than Chicken, anyways.
10 years later, the arcades were the gateway drug. I still remember the first Mortal Kombat machine showing up.
Raiden? teleports? I got some quarters.

Poker is great, but my favorite card game has always been Hearts, just as in darts I prefer Cutthroat

PC games - the experience is difficult to describe to a complete outsider. Not talking about Win Solitaire here.
I'd link a vid, but no one here seems able to view them.

[Ed]

My daughter is into the games thing, but online gaming isn't possible with our internet connections. BTW, doesn't it take a beefy video card to view the game vids?

I've never cared for games that don't involve winning money. Pastimes have never been my thing. Time passes anyway, whether I'm being entertained or not. ;-)

[Horse Badorties]

BTW, doesn't it take a beefy video card to view the game vids?

Nope - check Youtube for any game title you like and you'll find official trailers, tutorials and walk-throughs, gameplay examples, video reviews, etc., etc.
Doesn't take any more video power than bringing up the latest episode of Kitchen Nightmares.

I've never cared for games that don't involve winning money.

Heh - exactly how I came to feel about professional sports.

[Ed]

Yeah, that's how I felt about pro sports from the jump. Playing games was OK, but watching somebody else play was always boring to me. I'll play a little poker sometimes or shoot some 9 ball, but that's the extent of my gaming.

[Horse Badorties]

The original point was that, EVE is a free market anarchy simulator, and in this game at least, a free market and absence of laws beyond those you make and enforce yourself, leads inexorably to tribes and syndicates. A hardworking, independent freeholder carving out his turf and abiding the NAP, is doomed by his neighbors forming a collective, realizing economies of scale and specialization, and looking at the neighbors as mergers & acquisitions.

That said, Ed: one of the main reasons I got into gaming was for a chance to practice The Flow, as they're calling it now, used to be In The Zone; when you're fully immersed in the moment and can't seem to make a mistake. I first fell into this in a game of ultimate frisbee, later found it while playing darts, and in several computer games. You may have found it in poker - when you just know how it's going to go down and don't need to think, like you access something better than thinking.
You get good at what you practice. Not playing PC games here anymore, I need to find a bar with a dart board.

[Horse Badorties]

OK, never mind, EVE is just an alright anarchy simulator...
But I think I've found the Ultimate AS, so far.
Just released game called "Rust."
Here's a vid of a LAN party playing it online on the day of release.

*****WARNING: NOT SAFE FOR WORK********
*****DO NOT DRINK BEVERAGES NEAR A KEYBOARD WHILE VIEWING*******
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQbN_gG2vDU