Entropia-Related Links


Entropia Universe Artwork Creators
Mindark Space by Carl Henricksson

First Vehicle in Entropia by Carl Henricksson

Jordan Halsey Rocktropia Artwork

Jennica Darksen Resume

Resume for Saman Mahmoudi

Tim Curry Resume

Elizabeth de la O’s Interview with Entropiaplanets

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Names and Trends Post – Mindark and Planet Partners sometimes fairly blatently ‘stealing’ trademarks and copyrights?

Entropia Universe Society Websites/Forums


Entropia Universe Related News, News Feeds, Press Releases, VU News, etc.


Entropia Universe Related Wikis


Entropia Universe Related Blogs:

Entropia Universe Related Tools and Utilities
(please be careful as Mindark cannot verify the safety in the use of tools related to EU as they are created by third parties. Please DO NOT give away your personal information such as passwords, user id, etc)


Entropia Universe Related Tutorials, Skill Charts, Maps & Guides


Q & A Sessions and Dev Notes

Dev Notes

      • Developer Notes 1

        Developer Notes #1

        This Entropia Universe Buzz article is the first in a new series of Developer Notes where the development team at MindArk will share various tips and bits of information about Entropia Universe with our participants. Some Developer Notes will address important issues that we have noticed being discussed on community forums, while others will be prompted by feedback and questions received via support cases. Our goal with the Developer Notes series is to help participants better understand MindArk’s goals for Entropia Universe, and hopefully correct several misconceptions that have arisen within the community that we feel might help participants make more informed decisions for their avatars. We hope that you find the Developer Notes articles interesting and informative.

        Independent Lootpools – One concern that we see very often on community forums, especially when a big All Time High is achieved, is that one profession is unfairly “financing” a huge loot in another profession. This misconception often results in one group of participants (i.e. hunters) becoming upset or frustrated that their activity is being used to fund the rewards given to another group of participants (i.e. miners). To hopefully dispel this misconception, we would like to inform participants that the loot pools for each main profession (hunting, mining and manufacturing) are completely independent of one another, and that a large loot in one profession has absolutely no impact on potential loots in any of the other professions.

        Resource Distribution – In order to promote interplanetary trade and to stimulate the growth of local planetary economies, the availability of various resources will be periodically adjusted on each of the different planets within Entropia Universe. The MindArk balancing team monitors resource availability and distribution among the planets very closely, and is constantly making adjustments to achieve the goals of local planetary economy growth and interplanetary trade. One exciting side effect of this process is that it creates unique opportunities for observant and industrious participants to profit from shifts in supply and demand in local planetary markets and creates opportunities for speculation. Another benefit is that the reallocation process creates a more dynamic and challenging universe for participants to enjoy and adapt to.

      • Developer Notes 2

        Developer Notes #2

        This Entropia Universe Buzz article is part of a new series of Developer Notes where the development team at MindArk will share various tips and bits of information about Entropia Universe with our participants. Some Developer Notes will address important issues that we have noticed being discussed on community forums, while others will be prompted by feedback and questions received via support cases. Our goal with the Developer Notes series is to help participants better understand MindArk’s goals for Entropia Universe, and hopefully correct several misconceptions that have arisen within the community that we feel might help participants make more informed decisions for their avatars. We hope that you find the Developer Notes article series interesting and informative.

        Efficiency Matters – One issue that we have noticed being discussed quite frequently on community forums such as PlanetCalypsoForm.com is the concept of efficiency (sometimes referred to as economy), especially with regard to hunting tools such as ranged and melee weapons. A growing number of participants seem to have adopted an approach based on the theory that “economy does not matter”, a theory apparently based on (faulty) field tests or other experiments. We would like to state here very clearly that avatar skills and efficiency on the tools used do indeed matter a great deal, and have a very significant effect on overall returns in all Entropia Universe professions. Any playtest experiments, theorycrafting or other analysis you may be presented with which indicate or suggest that efficiency does not matter are thus flawed either in their conception, data collection, data analysis or conclusions.

        Personal Lootpools – Many of the theories which suggest – inaccurately – that efficiency is unimportant will often employ the concept of a “personal lootpool”, claiming that the “system” will eventually provide a sort of compensation to avatars who have been operating in an inefficient manner. Such theories are very much misguided. There is no such thing as a “personal lootpool” for individual avatars, and there is no system in place which tracks each avatar’s returns over time, or which provides compensation to individual avatars. As a result, long-term results in Entropia Universe are directly related to the choices made by each participant, and those who approach their chosen profession in an efficient manner will find more success than those who do not. Overall this is a very positive thing and an important part of the Entropia virtual universe concept, as it allows those participants who spend the time and effort to approach their activities within Entropia Universe in a smart way to improve their chances of becoming successful, just like in the real world.

      • Developer Note 3

        Developer Notes #3

        This Entropia Universe Buzz article is part of a new series of Developer Notes where the development team at MindArk will share various tips and bits of information about Entropia Universe with our participants. Some Developer Notes will address important issues that we have noticed being discussed on community forums, while others will be prompted by feedback and questions received via support cases. Our goal with the Developer Notes series is to help participants better understand MindArk’s goals for Entropia Universe, and hopefully correct several misconceptions that have arisen within the community that we feel might help participants make more informed decisions for their avatars. We hope that you find the Developer Notes article series interesting and informative.

        Hunting Efficiency Examined – The last Developer Notes article sought to stress the importance of efficiency in Entropia Universe, but did not provide a clear definition of what is meant by the term efficiency. We would like to offer a bit more insight for the benefit of the community, and in this article will focus on ways to become more efficient in Entropia Universe’s most popular profession, hunting. Efficiency tips for the mining and manufacturing professions will be covered in a future article.

        Efficiency in hunting has several components, the most vital of which is Hit Ability (sometimes abbreviated as HA). Hit Ability is a measure of how accurate you avatar is with a weapon. You can view your avatar’s Hit Ability on a weapon by right-clicking on the weapon and viewing the item’s information panel. Based on your avatar’s skills and the requirements for the particular weapon, a number between 0.0 and 10.0 will be calculated and displayed. The single most important effort a hunter can make in becoming more efficient in his or her hunting activities is to always use weapons which are “maxed” — weapons with which your avatar has 10.0 Hit Ability. The importance of this cannot be stressed strongly enough.

        A second and very important part of efficient hunting is to consider the relative cost of using a particular weapon, often referred to as weapon economy, usually measured as damage per PEC. This measures how efficiently, in terms of weapon decay and ammo consumption, a weapon produces each point of damage. An avatar will enjoy much better overall hunting results over time when using weapons with higher damage per pec. Many community websites, such as http://www.entropedia.info, offer detailed statistics on the economy of nearly all the various weapons available in Entropia Universe. The MindArk development team is also considering including more detailed economy statistics on the item information panel in an upcoming release to improve the availability of such information.

        Another important part of hunting efficiently is making sure that your avatar has achieved the full damage capability of the weapon being used. Like Hit Ability, damage capability is calculated based on the avatar’s skills and the weapon’s requirements, and is shown in the format Actual_Damage / Maximum_Damage on the item information panel. For example: 10.0-20.0 / 10.0-20.0. To be the most efficient as possible, make sure to hunt with weapons on which your avatar has reached the weapon’s maximum damage potential.

        Finally, be sure to hunt creatures within your avatar’s skill level. Creatures within Entropia Universe are designed with avatars of varying skill levels and equipment in mind, and each creature type has different attack speeds, regeneration rates, hit probabilities and damage potential. It is a good idea to avoid excessive armor decay and healing costs when trying to hunt as efficiently as possible.

        One of the wonderful things about Entropia Universe is its very knowledgeable and helpful community of participants. There is a wealth of information available to newcomers and veterans alike on the various Entropia Universe community websites and forums, and participants are encouraged to seek out the accumulated wisdom and tutorials available there. There are also many helpful mentors and societies that can be found in major cities on each planet, or contacted through the Mentor Register and Society Terminals.

        We hope that this article has provided some valuable tips for your future hunting expeditions.
        Happy hunting!

      • Dev Notes #4

        In this Developer Notes article, we would like to share some information to address issues raised by some of our participants regarding MindArk’s recent and upcoming marketing efforts.

        Much of this information was shared with the Entropia Universe community at the beginning of the year in the State of the Universe Address, but it appears that many participants either missed that announcement, or have forgotten about MindArk’s marketing plans for 2012.

        Online Campaign
        Several months ago, MindArk began an online ad campaign to promote Entropia Universe. In parallel, AR Universe began a campaign to promote Planet Calypso. The initial stages of the campaigns were fairly limited in scope and daily budget, in order to accumulate useful ad targeting and performance data in terms of the effectiveness of these ads in generating new accounts.

        In late July, MindArk and Planet Arkadia also launched a campaign for Planet Arkadia, orchestrated by MindArk. These campaigns are an ongoing effort, and budgets are gradually being increased as the targeting effectiveness and account conversion rate improves.

        Marketing & New Player Experience
        One major factor in MindArk’s marketing budget decision-making process has been the implementation of an improved New Player Experience (NPE). It seemed prudent to limit our marketing spending during the early part of 2012 until the improved NPE was implemented and refined. Much of our marketing efforts thus far in 2012 have had the primary goal of gathering data, measuring effectiveness and refining our marketing strategy. Now that the NPE has been implemented into Entropia Universe, we have solid plans to increase our online ad campaign budget throughout the rest of 2012 and beyond.

        Promotion Video
        MindArk has commissioned a professionally produced promotional video that is currently in production. Work on the video is progressing well, and two versions are planned – a short version that can be used as an online video advertisement, along with a longer version that gives a more detailed overview of Entropia Universe and which can be used on official EU websites and at gaming conventions. Both versions will feature a professional actress taking up the role of Sayah King (famous from the original Project Entropia promotional video). The videos will also feature footage from the new avatar system that the MindArk development team is currently hard at work completing, and which has an ETA of early November.

        Calypso Land Deed Proceeds
        Some of the feedback we have received indicates a (mistaken) belief that the entirety of the proceeds from the Calypso Land Deed sales would be used exclusively for marketing. This belief is inaccurate. What MindArk stated regarding how the CLD proceeds would be used is the following, explained in an earlier Buzz article with detailed information about Calypso Land Deeds-

        Q. How will the proceeds of the Land Lot deeds be used by MindArk?
        A. The proceeds from the Land Lot deeds will help to finance a substantial Entropia Universe marketing campaign, along with further development of Entropia Universe and Planet Calypso.

        Note that this statement also includes ‘further development of Entropia Universe and Planet Calypso’. It is also important to realize that development and marketing go hand-in-hand. As we described above, improving our New Player Experience was as much an investment in our marketing strategy as anything else.

        Affiliate Program
        MindArk is in the early stages of designing a comprehensive affiliate program that will allow existing EU participants to get rewarded for helping to expand the Entropia Universe user base. We hope to launch that program in the first quarter of 2013. More details will be shared once the initial design of the affiliate program becomes more certain.

        New Planet Calypso Website
        A brand new Planet Calypso website has been in development for several months, and is expected to be launched by the end of this month. The new website will help MindArk and Planet Calypso leverage the most value from their marketing spending, and will provide a much enhanced user experience for new visitors and existing participants alike.

        We hope that the efforts in progress and plans for future marketing efforts that we have shared in this Developer Notes article provide our paricipants with a more positive outlook for the future health and growth of Entropia Universe, and help to dispel some of the misunderstandings that have arisen of late.

        As always, we appreciate your passion for and support of Entropia Universe.

      • Dev Note #5

        One area where we have received lots of feedback concerns the item upgrade system. Most of the feedback and questions received by the MindArk support department relate to the speed at which items gain new tier intervals, and the cost of raising an item to the next tier level. We hope to address those concerns in this developers note article.

        Tier Speed
        Within the current system, tier progress is taking much longer than intended, in some cases by a large factor. The MindArk dev team has been testing new parameters for this system which will increase the speed at which unlimited items gain tiers, especially at higher tier levels.

        Due to the delicate nature of the tier upgrade system, adjustments must be made carefully and tested thoroughly. Our goal is to complete such testing and implement the adjusted tier progress rates before the end of this year.

        Tier Cost
        We are also analysing the cost to increase the tier level of various items, and ensure that such costs are balanced and reasonable. Adjustments to the cost of tiering are even more delicate than those related to tier speed, and thus will require a longer period of testing before changes can be implemented.

      • Dev Note #6

        Greetings Entropians!

        We hope that all of you have had an enjoyable and relaxing summer. Despite the lovely European weather, lots of work has been going on behind the scenes here at the MindArk offices this summer.

        With this EU Buzz article, we intend to provide a quick update on what the MindArk team has been working on, along with a roadmap for the next couple of releases.

        VU 14.3 – Platform Release
        The next Version Update, also known as a platform release, is scheduled for early September and will contain many back-end infrastructure upgrades and maintenance (see below for more info). While this update will not contain any new systems or features, it will contain a large number of improvements and fixes to existing systems. Many of the more frequently reported issues have been corrected in this update, including:
        Fixed an issue with camera shaking and restricted movement when avatars revive at a revival terminal.
        Disciple progress is now updated correctly when the disciple kicks a mentor and gets a new mentor.
        The Friends List now updates correctly when adding or removing friends, without requiring a relog.
        Many issues affecting vehicles and spaceships have been corrected.
        Lots of clothing and avatar display issues have been corrected.
        The tiering cost formula for items with cooldown or upload timers (mainly MindForce chips) has been adjusted to bring the costs in balance with other types of items such as weapons and tools.
        Dozens of other issues have been corrected and bugs squashed.
        As usual, a complete list of fixed issues included in the VU will be posted in the Version Update Release Notes on the day of release.

        Planet Partner Release
        Scheduled for early October, the next Planet Partner release promises to bring lots of exciting new content to your favorite Entropia Universe planet!

        Infrastructure Upgrades
        Over the past several platform releases in the earlier part of this year, the first components of a major upgrade to the Entropia Universe infrastructure have been implemented. Much of that groundwork has taken place behind the scenes, without much immediately noticeable impact on the end-user experience. Over the summer, the MindArk dev team has been working hard on building and testing the next phase of the infrastructure upgrade project, both software and hardware. Those improvements will be implemented into Entropia Universe in the upcoming platform release, and the final stages will be deployed in the subsequent platform releases during autumn and early winter.

        The benefits of this major infrastructure upgrade are many, including:
        Greater server capacity (simultaneous users).
        Improved server stability and expandability as the Entropia Universe population grows.
        More frequent Version Updates.
        Ability to deploy small hotfixes to clients very quickly.
        Much shorter downtimes when new Version Updates are released.
        In addition, the new infrastructure will allow our developers and partners to spend much more of their time working on new features, systems and content, and improving existing systems, rather than on packaging and delivering Version Updates.

        In short, what this means for Entropians is more frequent, feature-rich, and stable updates to Entropia Universe with less downtime and faster implementation of important fixes when needed.

        We appreciate your patience and dedication to Entropia Universe over the past few months during the infrastructure upgrade process, and we look forward to completing the final stages so that you can enjoy a much improved Version Update process in the future.

Q&A Sessions


Interviews, Articles & Magazines and Quotes

Entropia Times

The Eudorian Times

GSA Magazine

ESBN Ezine:

The Gate:

Über mag:

Entropia Exposed:

The Calypso Independence:

Odyssey Times:

Entropia Insider:

The Golden Ingots

The Calypso Post:


Entropia Universe History/Storyline


Music


Scandals


State of the Universe links:


Mindark related links:

Mindark Press Releases

http://www.mindark.com/investor-relations/financial-reports/


Entropia Universe Related Forums & Community Oriented Sites:
For individual Planet Parter Forums see the Entropia Universe Related Planet Partner Websites Section.

  • http://mindstarmedia.com/ – Mindstar Media News site. This site is run by Mindstar Nine. MS9 has been a bit of a reporter for many years in Entropia Universe. She recently worked with Planet Cyrene to help develop Cyrene’s storyline, so like Skam, she is an individual that has been ‘on the inside’ with a Developer, and now is back to being a “normal participant” of Entropia Universe.I’ve asked her in a few different posts on EF and PCF to give some insight on that aspect of being involved with Entropia, what the rules and regulations are, etc, but so far I haven’t seen any news articles on the site that explore this. That’s understandable if she’s under some type of gag order due to an NDA I suppose. In the mean time I’m still waiting on a few questions about this type of thing to be answered by Mindark which Kim indicated that he’d try to find answers to and post those answers back in July, 2011!…. To date the answers still are not posted over there on ef, and in the mean time more and more planet partners keep cropping up, some of which have openly admitted to having employees that actively use personal avatars even though the Planet Partners have some inside info on the loot tables as the Planet Partners set up the tables that tell Mindark what items will loot from which mobs when they make requests for Mindark for updates to the planets they run…

    When Mindstar Media first started MS9 got a little bit of flack from the community since her ‘insider’ connections with Traction PR, Mindark’s hired public relations agent, allowed her to gain access to News Releases about an hour before the rest of the world, giving her a possible little bit more ‘insider info’ than the rest of the community. Because of the flack from that she’s kindly asked Mindark and/or Traction PR to not give her this special ‘one hour early’ special treatment. She claims to not have used the ‘insider info’ from the time she was getting those early news releases for any scrupulous activities.

  • http://www.entropiaplanets.com – Forum dedicated to All of the Planets. The private company of one of the 4 people involved in EP is currently administrating http://www.CyreneForum.com for Planet Cyrene and http://www.NextIslandForum.com
  • http://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/– Planetcalypsoforum is currently THE website to find out info about Entropia because the guy running the place has a bit of an insider connection with Mindark so he’s talked Mindark developers in to posting here regularly. The fact that they post here and not in places like entropiaplanets is a cause of much frustration for some folks like the ones running entropiaplanets since there appears to be a bit of favoritism going on. At one point in time See Digital Studio had plans to purchase this forum when See Digital Studios was running Planet Calypso, the original Planet for Entropia Universe. At that time the guy running the place was going to sell the entire database from entropiaforum to See Digital Studios and/or Mindark in some sort of an agreement. The deal between See Digital Studio and Mindark fell through resulting in the old forum database at entropiaforum.com being moved to Planetcalypsoforum.com and a new forum database being created at entropiaforum.com. Although developers post at pcf quite often MINDARK DOES NOT OFFICIALLY own the forum. Jason Peterson, aka 711, aka Neomaven, aka Divine Vixen Incarnate, a participant in the virtual community who is in one of the top skilled societies in game, a society which some believe Mindark shows much favoritism to at time vs other participants, does. PlanetCalypsoforum is currently privately owned and appears to exist for purely commercial purposes. 711/Jason Peterson appears to have bought the site to make money and not to help “the community” but PCF has some interesting content on it because of the community which rallies around it due to the Planet Calypso Developers presence on the site.711 attempted to sell the community created content in the entropiaforum database to First Planet Company(FPC)/See Digital Studio (SDS) and then all of the data in EF’s database was to be moved to PCF, all of which was done behind the scenes without any public announcement to the community until days before the database was moved. However that deal fell through when SDS failed to make full payments to Mindark for the Calypso deal, even though that deal which was never fully completed earned SDS a place in the Guiness World Records. (I guess that just goes to show that Guiness doesn’t mind publishing things that have not been proven completely?)

    Planet Calypso AB is the only Planet Partner that seems to have failed to have it’s own company owned forum, either administrated by themselves or another professional company they hired. At the time of this writing, Mindark appears to have failed to recognize the status of Planet Partner forums by regularly posting EU relevant info on their sites and lazily continuing to use Planetcalypsoforum and Entropiaforum, both of which are owned by Peterson, as their own personal sites to post content to which they are not administrating, allowing moderators at PCF to filter/censor communications at PCF on various levels.

    This personal ownership of PCF by a single participant in Entropia Universe allows the folks running PCF to censor certain things posted on PCF extremely heavily.

  • http://entropiaforum.com/ – this is the ‘new’ entropiaforum that was created after the old huge database of the forum here was moved to planetcalypsoforum. This ‘new’ ef is supposedly a place to discuss all things entropia. Since the developers of Entropia Universe’s Calypso team post on pcf, ef has never gotten the level of popularity it once had when it was THE FORUM to go to. Some developers from Mindark do post in EF’s ‘ASK MINDARK’ section to answer some questions related to Entropia from time to time. However, they ignore many, many, many threads there all together and are very picky about what they comment on or answers questions about. This lack of transparency is one thing that I personally believe is actually a pretty bad thing for Mindark to do. Maybe someday they will hire a PR guy that realizes that transparency is a good thing and answering questions directed at the company and how it runs things can actually help increase the game’s popularity a hell of a lot more than the current method of ignoring a huge portion of the community’s questions and concern is doing for Mindark and Entropia.
  • http://www.entropiastar.com/
  • http://questbomb.com/ – Neverdie’s new blog/site which pays participants peds for reviews of Rocktropia
    Narfi’s EP thread on Quest Bomb
  • Captain’s list – list of Mothership Captains
  • Don’t make lists! – Thread about a ‘blacklist’ that was created by a society. Black Lists/Red Lists/etc. are bad in my opinion since it creates enemies and drama… it almost borders on bullying/bigotted hatred/racism, etc. in some extreme cases… The Patriot’s list mentioned in this thread was originally a list created by The NBK society that someone in the NBK shared with The Patriots. At the time that I was a part of the NBK this ‘list’ is one of the things that I found that I highly disliked about the organization of the NBK as it prompted certain individuals in the NBK upper management to create society hatred towards individuals, etc. for very little or no reason at all… just by adding or removing names from a list certain society leaders could cause masses of players in the NBK (which at the time was one of the, if not the largest society in game population-wise) to show discrimination towards individuals in who they traded with, who they added to Kill on Site (KOS) lists for pvp zones, etc. Lists of this nature lead to biased accusations and outright lies that prompt hatred and discrimination and they are created based on pride, ego, and other mental/social problems, where one side usually has not taken the time to look at things from the other party’s angle. These lists are almost like lists created by the Nazis that Hitler wanted exterminated. The whole idea of list use in the NBK originated, I believe, from the time that Hardwrath was the society’s leader... He was known to kick people of of several of the societies that his alt avatars used on a whim, and sometimes added them to lists just for the hell of it. It’s sad that lists of this nature created in temporary times of anger by leaders using extremely poor management tactics can cause masses in some of the largest societies in game to rally together in hatred to castigate, discriminate, and even kill as a group hive mind like brutal savages…
  • PCF Thread about optimism
  • PCF Thread that contains an apology to the community by a hired hitman who previously worked for Calypto
  • PCF thread about giving credit where it is due!
  • Famous Entropians Thread on PCF


Entropia Universe Related Videos, Youtube Channels, Playlists & Users:

TWITTER:

Facebook:

 


Entropia Universe Related Planet Partner Websites:

 


Other FREE-TO-PLAY MMOs besides Entropia Universe

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