I wasn't really trying to imply that the whole game could be reduced to pointing-and-clicking, though I guess it came out that way. And in fact, it's that very level of complexity that is probably my biggest turn-off to the game as a whole, not the fact that you can't fly around using your joystick. I generally view games as a form of escapism, as a way of putting aside my normal daily routine for a few hours in the interest of doing something enjoyable and different. In that vein, an entire system of gameplay mechanics that seems from the outside as horrifically complex and mind-numbing as the physics texts I was forced to read during college counteracts what I view as the purpose of gaming. It honestly seems more like, well,
work than anything else. Hell, I'm having a hard enough time as-is keeping the mechanics of Kingdom Hearts straight while helping my younger brother play through it, and I get the feeling that that's a staggeringly simple title on the entire RPG scale. I know there are tons of people out there who lap this sort of thing up, but I just feel like I have a fundamental incompatibility with the level of immersion it requires, one that precludes me from any desire to even give the free trial a shot. I can't really blame EVE for doing what it does well, but I can say that I'm better off sticking to Descent as the extent of my multiplayer forays.
(But I'll still say that EVE or any MMORPG has no set ending [other than the day the servers are closed], because there's no universally-established final goal you're trying to bring your character to. My rather OCD completionist side couldn't cope very well with that.
)
A.K.A. Mongoose, for you HLP denizens