eve online

A player-driven persistant-world MMORPG, developed by CCP Games. EVE contains "the world's largest game universe", spanning thousands of solar systems, each with their own planets, stations, asteroid belts and moons. Players advance through the game based on the learning of skills (which advance in real-time, even when the player is not connected to the game), attributes (which can be increased through the training of learning skills, or the usage of implants) and the acquisition of wealth and items (modules, ships, materials, etc can all be sold and bought for the in-game currency, ISK). Unlike most MMORPGs (e.g. World of Warcraft, Runescape, etc), the EVE server is not split up into shards - i.e. there is a single server which all players connect to. The EVE universe is persistant, so if a player leaves the game, the universe will continue to exist and be changed by the actions of NPCs and other players. Many of CCP's staff have EVE-related blogs, discussing what they are working on and problems they may have encountered. Unlike a lot of game developers, CCP are very open with players and explain how the game works internally. For example, CCP have released that the EVE Server program is written in Stackless Python, along with many algorithms and equations for learning time and other in-game statistics. EVE costs $14.95/€14.95 a month (correct at time of writing). The servers have a daily downtime period, between 11:00 and 12:00 GMT to allow for a server reboot and minor server-side patches and fixes to be applied. At current, the game is available only to Microsoft Windows users, although support for Vista is incomplete. It may be possible to play the game on Linux using either Wine or Cedega.