One of the things that keeps impressing me with EVE Online is that it records everything. In the capture directory, there are logs for all of the chat channels I am on for each time I have been on. The Gamelogs directory is filled with logs of my activity in game. It has every time I have docked, every shot I have fired, every hit I have taken.
In game, I can see every market transaction I have made from my wallet. I can get a list of every mission for any given agent and see how I did with each one. (It does not show me the actual reward, but all of the monetary rewards are recorded in my wallet window.) So I can see, for example, that I have completed “Avenge a Fallen Comrade” six times now for Purkkoken Honuken.
And every time I dig a little deeper, I find more information stored away.
I have not had any actual need for any of this information, but I love that it is available. I am an information junkie and I really appreciate that CCP has chosen to make it available to me. Of course, the stuff logged to my computer doesn’t cost them anything, but the details in game, such as all of my agent missions, that eats up space in CCP’s database cluster. They could easily save themselves some money by letting that data fall by the wayside. But they chose to let the user have that information instead.
Incidentally, something I really liked about EverQuest 2 was the data they let you have access to as well. I liked knowing how many gnolls I killed, how many items I crafted, how many quests I completed, and so on. I have to imagine they have expanded that even further with the advent of PvP servers. I just did not like the fact that they charged you for the information. (Of course, I paid… I just didn’t like it.)
The Ancient Gaming Noob 