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Ambitious but disappointing

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 10 / 10
Date: October 29, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I've been playing Mankind since August 2000.

MK provides an eternally-persistent Universe of thousands of star systems, each with between five and eight planets. Don't believe everything the advertising says: much that is promised is not yet implemented.

The eye-candy is superficially impressive, but the only thing "three-dimensional" about the playing space is the location of star systems relative to each other: each star system, and each planetary surface, is a flat square, except that the planet surfaces wrap around top-to-bottom and left-to-right, e.g. if you fly off the right side, you end up coming back in the left side. There is no observable "hyperspace" flight -- you jump from star system to star system.

Don't try Mankind if you have repetitive-stress injuries to your mousing hand: to do anything at all requires far more mouse-clicking than I thought possible. Worse, the Game vendor (Vibes) forbids players from building their own Game-enhancement software to reduce the volume of drudge-work.

I have never played "Red Alert" myself, but I've watched my brother play, and I've played "Empire". MK is very much like RA or Empire, only (a) much, much slower and (b) on a much larger scale. The vendor's literature seems to promise a standing conflict between Empires; that's not implemented yet, so there's just a kind of free-flowing anarchy, in which most people don't shoot each other. If you just go in shooting, as a newbie, you're quite likely to attract the attention of someone with _far_ more resources than you, get wiped out as a lesson, then get an offer of help getting started.

There are Guilds, all player-organized. Some are quite strong, others quite incoherent.

Vibes have serious server stability problems. The Game implementation assigns an area of the Galaxy to each of the half-dozen or so servers, and when a server goes down, its area becomes inaccessible. Vibes seem to have no hot-backup hardware: as of this writing (late Oct 2000), one server has just been replaced, having been down for several weeks. You can evade some of the instability, if you have spread your holdings out enough that you have stuff on several servers, but of course a brand-newbie cannot do this: his one "free" starter-ship has too short a range.

The attributes of the various ships and buildings are poorly thought out. Only a few are worth building, and the official documentation doesn't provide enough info for you to figure out which those are. Many important performance characteristics -- such as weapons range -- are not officially documented at all; you either have to experiment or learn from other players.

The good news is that players have filled many holes in the official documentation. Of course, every time Vibes change the Game, the player community have to play catch-up.

The bad news is that, to climb the tech tree, you have to "research" all the useless stuff at the lower levels before you get access to the useful higher-level stuff.

There are several online Forum systems devoted to discussing MK....

All in all, Vibes would have been better off if they'd spent more resources on stability and coherent functioning, and less on eye-candy.

I still play, but I doubt I'll renew my ... annual subscription when it expires.

Mankind

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 11 / 12
Date: November 20, 2000
Author: Amazon User

Mankind, as a concept would make for a fantastic game, it is a game where you start out in a huge galaxy, build a base, mine minerals, build factories, build fleets of ships, make friends, allys and enemys worldwide.

I however cannot say that it lives up to it's concept due to areas of game being closed as servers go down, zero customer service, much effort to build since loading minerals, ships, and more takes many mouse clicks, this is NOT a game for anyone who has symptoms of Carpel tunnel syndrom in my view, from playing it.

Presently, they have patched the game again to 1.7 and the game became unstable, they have had to totally close the game until they fix the problem, this despite "beta-testing 1.7" before patching the Game servers.

They have a record of poorly implemented patchs.

The game itself would be a five star game if it worked fully as they advertise it to be, if servers were always working, if they had any type of real customer support.

Unlimited Universe? You got to be kidding...

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 12 / 14
Date: November 18, 2000
Author: Amazon User

The rating system here at Amazon doesn't give good choices. This game is 5-Star for addictive, 3-Star for enjoying all the boring time of click,click,click to do anything useful to play, and -1-Star (that's right, a MINUS 1) for company response to any problems with the game. After spending close to a year playing this game with all the server ups and downs, living and surviving through 2 major upgrades; not without their problems,(addictivness) and even now after the fiasco(sp) that was created with the recent upgrade to the 1.7 version I still miss not being able to log in and talk to the international group of friends I have met on line.

If I knew then what I know now about how the creators of this game worked and how much(laugh) they(Vibes) care about supporting their customers, I would never have thrown the money into it. But then I would have never met these interesting people who play it, nor the informative forums (i.e. Mankind Outpost on delphi.com for English players)where everyone now knows me.

Before spending any money or time on this game, I would suggest reading both the reviews and checking out the forum discussions unless you do not worry about wasted money and effort in a game.

Mankind, more hype than game

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 9 / 11
Date: October 30, 2000
Author: Amazon User

Do not purchase this game for the following reasons:

The game is run on several servers, and they are down more than 70% of the time.

Any bugs or account errors that occure during server outages are rarely ever solved or credited back to the user.

Tech support, unfortunatly is not kind with american users. Any problems that are sent to vibes, receive a form letter that never addresses the problem, nor take into account the seriousness of the problem

The game involves spending hours and hours of clicking a mouse buton to load/unload ships from bases, minerals from bases. I would estimate in a 4 hour play session, you will be clicking the mouse button 6000-10000 times.

And while the company touts 100,000 accounts, 80% are only demo accounts that players use as mules, non paid accounts.

A Complex Good Game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 10 / 14
Date: November 04, 2000
Author: Amazon User

Mankind is a complex game that involves building cities, bases and ships (after gathering your own elements), diplomacy, war, alliances and much more.

This game is not for those who only enjoy the "shoot them up" style of play. It IS for those looking for something that incorporates several key elements of gaming, including building a character, building your assets, strategy, AND combat.

With superior graphics, ample opportunity for role play and players from around the world, Mankind provides a chance for its players to make friends across international borders.

The game operators, Vibes, have had some problems in the past, but they have worked hard to continually improve game play, customer support and to add new features while making existing features work better.

If you are looking for a game that incorporates more than just combat, more than just role playing, more than just strategy and more than just building, but that incorporates all of those elements, Mankind is the game for you.

Lord Badger - TG

Not Worth The $$ at All

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 8 / 10
Date: November 03, 2000
Author: Amazon User

MK is a waste of time and money. The concept is good but the implementation of that concept missed the mark so badly you might think Microsoft had something to do with it. The tech support is non-existant and the "universe" is un-reliable. You will spend hours clicking and building but you will not be assured that your work will be around when you log on again. Although the user comunity is quite strong the company ignores them regularly with regards to enhancements and bug fixes.

Go spend your money elsewhere. Maybe a good book?

Only If You Have Loads of Patience

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: November 20, 2000
Author: Amazon User

At first blush this seemed like a dream come true. Persistent universe, open ended game, millions of planets to conquer, huge fleets to build, multiple cities with millions of inhabitants to control. What a great opportunity. That was then. Now? If I had known I would get kicked off several times an evening because of overloaded or poorly programmed servers or would go up to two weeks at a time without being able to play I probably would have saved my money until something better came along. One of the worst things was when the game was upgraded and hundreds of hours of play went down the tubes because a limit on buildings and ships was suddenly set. Not to mention the fact that over 300million in credits were taken away and my cities were allowed to die with no compensation for all the lost time. Currently the servers are all down again. Have been for a week now with no end in sight. So, bottom line. If you are a patient individual spend the money. If not don't waste your time and money.

Slow and Boring

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: November 18, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I was excited to see Mankind first come out because I was into space simulation types of games at the time. I was greatly dissapointed to see that you had to mine materials forever just to be able to build basic buildings. Combat on this game is a joke because everytime you get a certain # of ships in the same system the lag is unbelievable. Thats not even mentioning the endless disconnects during battle. The many remaining bugs would cause me to classify this as a BETA rather than a finished product. Vibes idea of technical support is a joke also, if you have any problems with this game, tough luck !! In whole, you should buy this game if you enjoy bad gameplay,a bug ridden environment, constant server closures, a community that always figures out how to cheat, non-existent tech support,making millions of mouse clicks per hour, or banging you head over and over into a brick wall till your brains fall out.

The Game that could have been.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: November 19, 2000
Author: Amazon User

If you want to play an online game that has unreliable service, no customer support, where the creators tell you they don't care what the players want in upcoming developements, where the servers can go down for a month at a time and the updates and pathches are months late with no projected resolution this is the game for you. Heck, I played it for two years and haven't seen new technologies yet with the exception of some new required technologies that make the game very unplayable. You can spend endless hours playing and still go nowhere. Vibes may simply loose your account info or you'll log on to find your installations and ships you need in the game to be gone. Vanished into thin air. If you play this game you will work harder trying to build your empire in a day than you would have to at your real life job in a week. All to have your efforts vanish, be made obsolete by the next upgrade, or worse. The game started out well, but lost its value when Vibes stopped caring about their customers and inventing new ingenius ways to debug the game with new bugs. The most important point is that vibes has not used their revenue to improve the game. They simply jury rig every problem and then have the nerve to ignore customer complaints

Best AND Worst united !!

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: November 20, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I've been playing MK for 14 months now. What is undeniable is this game is probably based on the better concept ever seen in persistant on-line games. You fall in love with the game BEFORE you can realize the truth : the team who is supposed to run, developp and maintain the game, Vibes, is totally incompetent. Many bugs, no support at all and servers are very often closed. The players who have invested a lot of time and energy in MK are always hoping that it will one day be better, but I'm afraid it's always the same old story : many bugs, no support at all, and servers very often closed. The MK community is in hell, believe me !

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