Greetings, folks,
I recently stopped my subscription to World of Warcraft and I am considering to switch to another MMORPG.
Preferably one with no monthly fee.
In the past I played Dark Age of Camelot, Star Wars Galaxies and Lord of the Rings Online.
I usually prefer heroic & fantasy to sci-fi and I am more interested by roleplaying and the community than grinding, überness or the special effects.
What are your favorite MMORPGs of the moment?
I stopped 2 months ago myself after being with WoW since day 1. Ive played City of Heroes before that and a little of Rifts recently.
Im pretty much immune to MMORPGs now, but I might give SW:TOR a shot when it comes out. I just want something different than WoW, Rifts is pretty much a WoW clone atm.
For free play, id suggest waiting on Guild Wars 2, It looks decent enough.
My favorites area toss-up between Lord of the Rings Online and Champions Online.
Both of which have recently gone free to play.
I'm playing mostly Champions Online at the moment, but I still show up in Middle Earth everyso often.
RPG Superstar 2013 Top 32
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D&D Online is free to play and can be a lot of fun if you have friends to play with. Solo-play, on the other hand, is absolutely terrible.
It's not actually an MMORPG, but my current obsession is League of Legends. It's a spinoff of the Defense of the Ancients mod from Warcraft III, made by the same people, and it is free to play! You earn points (IP) to unlock new champions and runes as you level up by simply playing, whether you win or lose (though winning is worth more points).
My money may currently belong to Blizzard, but my heart will always be with the original Gravity team.
I play WoW, miss Ragnarok Online, and hold a deep grudge. However, Lime Odyssey will be getting a US release, and if RO2: Legend of the Second continue to improve...well, I may be making a trip down a renovated memory lane.
Everquest is a high that has yet to be surpassed for me.
EQ2 was fun, but not as good (in my opinion)
I enjoyed WOW, but found it too easy/lascked challenge.
Age of Conan had some great potential, but I left after six months once I hit endgame and got bored.
Lord of the Rings online I'd highly recommend.
Dungeons and Dragons Online is similarly a good game.
Warhammer:Age of Reckoning was worthwhile for a little while.
I had a few 'misses'
Star Wars:Galaxies was a bitter disappointment.
Tabula Rasa was such a wasted opportunity
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Ahh! Shifty, you hurt me so!
I'm kind of weird in that I love the idea of an MMO and end up trying pretty much all the major ones that come out and a lot of the smaller ones, I tend to bounce around a fair amount.
I would have to say that my all time favorite has been star wars: galaxies, at least for about its first year. The class(less) system was great, the crafting was amazing, there were reasons to socialize, pets and faction combat actually mattered to the overall story. Then, not long after the holocrons came out the jedi swarms began and then the dreaded combat update and then poof, complete revision to make it a WoW competitor. They lost me after the combat update, to be honest, but I came back sometime later to find it was stripped down to a standard class based game. Painful.
Honorable mentions from the past would probably go to Dark age of Camelot, in a lot of ways it had an Everquest feel(didn't have much option when it came out) but the realm vs realm play was really innovative and a lot of fun even long after the rest of the game became dated. Warhammer tried to mimic this and it was enjoyable, but part of what made it great was the three faction system which allowed for underdog alliances and a lot of diplomacy to be mixed in the combat.
Also in the honorable mentions category would be the Matrix Online. The game itself was pretty average, combat was fun but the actual building of a character and 'skills' weren't anything too flashy. However the story was great, and constantly updating based on player actions, and the community was by far the best I've seen. Web based radio shows slipped in and fit with the game, hosting parties at clubs that hundreds of people would show up to and getting everyone who could involved in the in game events. Sony murdered this one though when they decided they wanted to run the official Matrix Radio and took out the player run one. Rumor was that it was a mix of them not wanting a competitor and the fact that the player one let us organize and deal with events faster than they could handle. The game never had a -huge- playerbase to begin with, but when it was taken over that tanked as a lot of what made it fun dried up.
Finally(phew): My favorite MMO currently is by far Fallen Earth. Its a post apocalypse MMO that has a pretty decent combat aspect to it(melee and ranged, can even mix the two between hands), an amazing crafting system(almost star wars galaxies level, very close), and a really great community. They are currently doing some pretty hefty updates to it, but unlike SWG they are taking the time to talk to the playerbase in open discussions and hosting ventrillo talks where they answer posted questions and talk about the feedback they have been getting so it looks like what is coming down the pipe is all good. I should also mention that this is one of the games where there are always a few active GMs in chat who are really responsive(problem? Talk to the GM no need to ticket it) and the players are very mature and helpful. There has been some discussion about it going free to play at some point in the future(one of the things the players are being asked their opinion on) so if you are nervous about spending the $20 and don't want to just go for a free trial, definitely give it a shot then.
For fantasy the king was EQ, but WoW is the successor. I don't play either anymore, but I definitely have seen a dramatic push to more casual play. I think the most important aspect of these games is community, and not making the world too easy. That is why I appreciate EQ, because it has a great sense of realism, corpse runs anyone?
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RPG Superstar 2013 Top 32
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For me, its EVE Online, absolutely. I've left and then come back to this game at least 3 times now. Even WoW couldn't hold my interest once I'd hit max level for very long. There is no max level in EVE. There is no "end game." It's the ultimate sandbox, and you can do pretty much anything you put your mind towards. It's amazing.
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Eve really is a great game, Fatespinner, though I haven't been active on it for some time now I do still have friends who are and I find myself enjoying to keep up with the news of the game. I think what makes it so neat is that they are very unapologetic for what they are, they know its not a game for everyone and didn't try and make it one. Its hard, it can be dangerous and costly if you do something foolish, people are almost encouraged to be ruthless, but all that makes it into a very vibrant universe. There is real trade and planning, the 'guilds' are legitimate corporations that seem to have just as much thought put into many of them and their various enterprises as most fortune 500 companies. Its neat to see everything from the large scale battles to people planning out caravans to move goods, to inter-corp politics and work gangs in mining camps. A very neat game.
Adding on to my far too long list above I did want to toss in Saga of Ryzom just because I think it was innovative enough that even if it never got much attention it should get some mention. Fairly straight forward as an MMO in most ways, skills spells and abilities were all completely customizable in a simple way. You'd learn different attributes you could tack together to design powers you wanted yourself and as you leveled you could add more attributes to a single ability. You would add positives and negatives until the two balanced out.
For example, if you wanted to make a fireball you would toss out fire damage(+1), make it an area affect(+3) and give it long range(+3). Then to balance that you might give it a slow casting time(-5) and say it took 30 mana(-2). As you gathered new attributes the possibilities started to feel endless. Want to drop the slow casting time or maybe have the spell linger on the enemies? Make it cost more mana, or maybe drain some health when used, or have a longer time to refresh for use again.
There was a feeling of a simplified 'Hero system' way of creating just about everything in the game that was great, add to that a robust crafting system that was easy to do but could be very deep for serious crafters(if you just want to make pants you can get cotton from 50 different plants, but each one's cotton give different stats to the pants), you ended up with a game I really wish would have gotten more known and seen success. I know it is still around(ok I didn't know that before I checked, it was dwindling last I played), but I know there have been a few massive changes to it and I almost have to cross my fingers its still the same game.
If you think EVE is awesome now, wait until Incarna hits, and for the DUST 514 launch on the PS3 after that. I'm betting that EVE will see a pretty significant subscriber boost after both of those events.
Everquest is a high that has yet to be surpassed for me.
EQ2 was fun, but not as good (in my opinion)I enjoyed WOW, but found it too easy/lascked challenge.
I had the exact same experience (except never played EQ2).
Scott, as mentioned above I am just sort of on the periphery of EVE at the moment. Isn't Incarna the update that will allow you to really interact within stations?
Yep. Incarna will take the character creation redesign they came out with in the Incursion expansion and allow you to take the character you created and walk around stations interacting with other characters.
DUST 514 is the standalone multiplayer PS3 shooter that will run on the same server structure (Tranquility) as the main EVE game does. Players in DUST 514 will fight the ground wars planetside while players of the EVE game will run logistics from space. The two games are expected to interact very heavily, and in real-time. This has the potential to be one of the coolest, most innovative designs in video game history if they can pull it off.
Incarna comes out in less than two weeks, on June 21.
DUST 514 will see official release in 2012, with a beta planned for later this year. We're just starting to see some of the first really concrete info on the game coming out of E3.
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RPG Superstar 2013 Top 32
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Oh yes, I have been stoked for Incarna/DUST since they first started talking about them over a year ago. It's going to be amazing, and I expect the EVE Universe will grow considerably. Which means those of us with established characters will have lots of fresh meat to prey on. :D
None as of right now, but I am looking forward to the Star Wars Kotor. My only problem, and it's the same one I have with all MMOGs (I refuse to tag RPG onto MMOGs as they are not RPGs) is that they become repetative and grinding, very video gamey. I've played WoW, CoH, CoV, Ultima, Runescape, DnD On-Line, and they all get boring after the 9th or 10th time I sit down to play them. I still play from time to time, but only when I need purely mindless entertainment.
I don't mean to knock anyone who enjoys MMOGs, they're just not my cup of tea. Moreso because the social interaction takes place through digital media - making it very impersonal and less immersive for me. On a side note I have long since banned digital media at my game table, for table-top games. Won't play or GM if I see iPads, laptops, iPhones, PDAs, cell phones, tablets, e-Readers. Nothing. I digress, as that a topic for any forum.
EQ was the best. No other RPG made me feel fear and big adrenaline rushes. They made it easier over time to the point where dying wasn't such a big deal anymore. I think original EQ is an experience that can't be replicated. People don't want hardcore MMORPGs anymore. And none of the others have come close to building the sense of community.
DAoC was fun but I never really got into it.
WoW is very fun but I find its too easy and gets boring. I never got involved with any end game guilds so I tended to level up to max level and then quit for a year or so before coming back and repeating the process.
I beta'd Star Wars Galaxies but thought the game was awful and never bought it.
Warhammer had the best PVP of any game I've played to date but the end game was horribly unbalanced and I quit in frustration soon after getting to max level.
I played Vanguard in Beta but my PC at the time wasn't up to spec to really be able to play it.
I tried DDO but only had one friend playing with me and we couldn't usually sync up play times. Solo the game was awful.
Rifts is fun but as others have said its a WoW clone. It has lots fun potential with its events but I have no plans to play it again.
I am looking forward to Guildwars 2 and KotOR.
(I refuse to tag RPG onto MMOGs as they are not RPGs)
This is silly. They are RPGs. They are games in which you play a role.
I never roleplayed in the classical sense with an online game, so I agree with Gendo on that point. However, I use a netbook as a player and a DM, so I make sure it isn't abused by ignoring other players, or creating distractions.
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(I refuse to tag RPG onto MMOGs as they are not RPGs)This is silly. They are RPGs. They are games in which you play a role.
What he said. I've seen *vastly* more role-playing in online games than I've ever seen at a table.
Dozens of people can spend many hours, over several days, preparing a wedding (or duel...) between two guildmates, with various participants preparing games and contests (riddle contests are fun, as are scavenger hunts, or races), others preparing special garments so that everyone who attends can wear a special shirt, and the guests of honor can have matching outfits, etc. Long-winded speeches, recounting past adventures, crafters making special foods and drinks to hand out for the occasion, people crafting or buying fireworks, or other showy items, etc. Clerics reciting homilies, etc.
This sort of thing happens all the time in role-playing guilds, and while I've been invited to some events run by them, and participated in some games and tournaments, I tend to prefer soloing, and have never joined a role-playing guild. Still, I've helped guildmates and friends come up with ideas for contests or events or storylines (very popular with the vampire-themed City of Villains superteam I was in, with all sorts of intrigue and stuff).
In an environment that is often free of voice-chat, and everything said must be typed out, which is often the case in RP events online (since not everyone present will be part of the same group, or have access to a ventrilo server, or be willing to invite everyone present at the event to their own personal chat server), RP flows, as there is less cross-chatter and movie quotes and rules / mechanics discussions. Unable to see the player across the table, it's also much easier to treat the character you are role-playing with as the character you are seeing in front of you, without any sort of awkwardness or distraction by the very different appearance of the player (or any personal nonsense).
I'm not a huge fan of it, but good grief, there's so much role-playing going on in games like EverQuest that some games have entire servers were you can get *reported to the moderators* for not role-playing.
Can you imagine playing in a D&D game at a con and being told you have to leave the table for breaking character, or that your character is being renamed without your consent because the name you picked isn't genre-appropriate and is breaking the suspension of disbelief for other players?
Yeah. Roleplay in online games can be serious business (and, literally that, business, since some players are paying to be on servers where they don't have to put up with non-roleplayers!).
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Stuff.
I agree completely. My first character on World of Warcraft (way back before they had auction houses in every capital) was a fire mage called Vulrathia. I think I spent the first week in the starting area just roleplaying. I had an amazing history for her, and the guild she eventually started Circle of Mages, was a very intelligent roleplaying guild. I even put up a website for it. :) Sadly, though, the game became more about quest-fulfillment, running around, and trading in the auction houses. I liked it much better when Ironforge was a place to avoid... lol. :) Stormwind had a homey feel to it. It felt isolated, as did Darnassus. That changed shortly after I started playing. :( All of a sudden, everything was connected. Before, it was rare to see an elf or a dwarf or a gnome in Stormwind. They came through on occasion, and for us roleplayers it was always something to talk about. We would usually stop them and ask them why they were so far from their homelands.
When the isolation slowly faded away, so did our racial hegemony. Stormwind was no longer a city of humans.
The one thing I thought was interesting though was the cultural and psychological differences between the Horde and Alliance.
The Horde, for example, (even the blood elves and goblins) always have common sleeping areas, while for Alliance, individual bedrooms is more prevalent except for garrisons. I believe this changed recently for the Undead, who sometimes (though not often) have individual bedrooms instead of common coffin areas. I think, that the Undead and Tauren are about to be kicked out of the Horde and become their own factions. :( Based on the current conflicts between the Horde races. The Alliance races are having their own conflicts also, but it does not seem so strong as to actually forge a new faction.
Anyway.... just some interesting stuff about roleplaying in World of Warcraft.
hmm, i'll agree with others and say that Everquest1 was incredible for its time, and still for me has memories no othergame has topped.
Everquest2 is what i play these days, but i did spend a few years with WoW also. I think eq2 has a bit more variety and fun for what i like in a game and playstyle. It also hooks me on the nostalgia trail, as i can see the shadows of the first game in the ongoing second one. When i do a quest in eq2, and it references NPC XX in the history books as doing something, i think to myself.."oh yeah, i SO remember doing that quest for that guy on my paladin..."
Scott, as mentioned above I am just sort of on the periphery of EVE at the moment. Isn't Incarna the update that will allow you to really interact within stations?Yep. Incarna will take the character creation redesign they came out with in the Incursion expansion and allow you to take the character you created and walk around stations interacting with other characters.
DUST 514 is the standalone multiplayer PS3 shooter that will run on the same server structure (Tranquility) as the main EVE game does. Players in DUST 514 will fight the ground wars planetside while players of the EVE game will run logistics from space. The two games are expected to interact very heavily, and in real-time. This has the potential to be one of the coolest, most innovative designs in video game history if they can pull it off.
Incarna comes out in less than two weeks, on June 21.
DUST 514 will see official release in 2012, with a beta planned for later this year. We're just starting to see some of the first really concrete info on the game coming out of E3.
Wow. That would encourage me to buy a PS3 just for that.
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Resurrecting this thread...
Well I tried Everquest II... Couldn't get into it. For some reason I don't like the graphic games that try to make people look too much like people.
I also quit Rift, for the same reasons. The graphic style just was not my favorite.
So I've gone back to WoW for the time being, although WAR is a close second, if they would just iron out some of the problems they have with that game.
Has anyone played any other MMORPGs out there that might be fun?
I've looked at pretty much everything. Tried and quit Runescape on the first day. Tried Runes of Magic (a free one) and quit that after about 3 days.
Right Now SW:TOR looks pretty good, but its a preorder. I'll wait to see what people like about it, and its from Bioware (a maker of WAR, whose graphic style I actually liked)
Played DDO for a bit, but that got boring and repetitive too fast.
And the other games from the same company (Lord of the Rings, and Asheron's Call) seem to be about the same level of graphics, which is another thing about DDO that didn't appeal to me.
Has anyone played any other MMORPGs out there that might be fun?
There's not too much on the market right now that really feels worth playing. There's too many games right now that just feel the same as the next one. I've been pretty big into MMOs since Ultima Online, but currently I'm only screwing around in City of Heroes (since it's free) and 3 different betas. Even the betas aren't really much to talk about. More of the same.
There's just nothing that's been released recently that captures the feel of the first gen MMOs. Ultima Online and Everquest had it right. I've played almost every big name MMO since then, and quite a few of the less popular ones. I've discovered over the hears that I need some form of risk to really enjoy playing a game. In the earlier years of Ultima Online, dying to monsters (or players) usually meant that you lost whatever equipment you were carrying. And there's just nothing like that anymore. Things have become stupidly easy in many games, and where's the fun in that?
You might like the game Darkfall, then. It's skill based instead of class based, and apparently the makers brought the danger back way up. The entire game is PVP, and if you die, you drop equipment.
Oh Darkfall. Waited for years for that game to come out. It was supposed to feel like UO with the equipment drop and the PvP everywhere model. But there were massive problems with the game at launch and long after. It's not worth the $15 a month.
Good to know. I tried the trial, but it wasn't for me.
Anyone played Age of Conan?
Played it. It was fun for a while, but there was nothing at endgame. The most fun I had was around level 40 or so, clowning around with a friend. We'd just sneak around and jump on people. Unless they've changed things, you grind on cannibals for 80 levels.
Anyone play Final Fantasy 11 and have an opinion on it?
I use to play it for awhile. I left before the past 75 updates though so have no opinion on them but I did like the game.
Lord Of The Rings Online.
Some Runes Of Magic last year. From time to time I think about installing it once again but there were some security issues and I don't know if my account still exists.
Now I am trying Eve Online but due to some time lost while my laptop was down I probably won't reach the point where I could earn enough in-game cash to buy PLEXes and extend the account.
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Well, after doing a bit of research, I went ahead and started playing Allodens Online. So far, I'm enjoying it terrifically, started out with an Elf Priest, and after the first day I'm already level 7 and out of the starter area. :P I would have done more but I downloaded it late in the afternoon.
I'm enjoying it and I recommend it (so far), as an alternative to WoW (although the concept of the game does seem to imitate Outlands a little bit: floating islands in an astral sea)
I've looked at the other race/classes, and while I started with the League (the "good guys", the 'traditionalists', the Alliance), the Empire has some interesting race/class combinations as well. (the "evil", the 'progressives', the Horde) There's one race that reminds me so much of Warhammer 40k Necrons, I will probably create one of those next.
If you do decide to play, and encounter difficulty upgrading to the new version, let me know. They don't have a direct download system for their updates, and its been giving them some problems. Currently, the patches have to be manually downloaded, but its not that difficult to do and I can walk you through it.
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Good to know. I tried the trial, but it wasn't for me.
Anyone played Age of Conan?
The first 20 levels of Age of Conan kind of rock. It's a great storyline. Many of the classes are wicked fun to play, and have only gotten more fun with tweaks to the system. The blood-splatter combos are a bit silly, but, playing a caster, it's terribly wrong, and terribly fun, to get a spell critical and watch an enemy go through a death animation (electrocution, running around on fire, being picked up by a beam of holy light and having one's soul pulled out, etc.).
Even the mundane combat goes a step beyond just hammering your abilities as they come up, as each opponent has three areas from which you can attack it (straight ahead, from the left, from the right) and will focus it's defense to adapt, so that you sort of have to pay attention and try to attack from the angle they aren't covering as strongly, so that you end up mixing up different angles of attack as they keep trying to adjust their defenses to cover that area, so that attacks from the area they are concentrating their defense on will end up doing less damage to them.
I played a Tempest of Set to 40 (who, me, dive straight for the first class with 'Set' in the name?), and a Demonologist, Priest of Mitra, Conquerer, Ranger and Necromancer to 20. The Priest of Mitra, Ranger, Necromancer and Tempest were my favorites, and each class has some variation, depending on where you put your points. I particularly liked the Necromancer as a third-tier sort of healer, able to summon eight or so ghoulish creatures called Mutilators that draw life as they claw at foes, and share that life with each other, the Necromancer and teammates, so that as long as you have foes for them to attack, you get a constant low-level stream of healing.
While other classes seem to have gotten more fun to play (Necromancers could only have a few pets out until higher levels when I started, now they can have a mob out at lower levels, but the pets are appropriately weaker), I suspect the Tempest of Set has been downgraded a lot. There was a bug when I played that allowed them to plant down lightning-calling storm totems pretty much at will, and it was a cheap but effective tactic to just plant eight of them and then call an enemy over to get electrocuted by your 'minefield.' (Making it somewhat like the Dark Ages of Camelot Animist class, or playing a Romulan Minesweeper in Star Fleet Battles.)
After 20th level, unfortunately, the game's rich backstory sort of faded away. The first 'epic' questline lasts from 1st through 20th level, and is all kinds of awesome. The second chapter of the 'epic' questline is at 30th level, and you go into a cave and kill some guys, which takes about 30 minutes. It's like a novel with an incredible first chapter, and then chapters 2 through 10 are 'And then some other stuff happened.'
So, I guess it makes sense that I have six characters that stopped at level 20. :)
Well, after doing a bit of research, I went ahead and started playing Allodens Online. So far, I'm enjoying it terrifically, started out with an Elf Priest, and after the first day I'm already level 7 and out of the starter area. :P I would have done more but I downloaded it late in the afternoon.
The little psychically linked muskrat dudes are probably the funniest PC race I've seenin an MMO. Watching the three of them work together to fire a bow is hilarious.
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The Gibberling (muskrats) Trickster (archer class) is indeed humorous. I created one and showed it to my mother, who laughed hilariously. They are very cute.
My Arisen Sorcerer (Necron) is definitely not cute. But it is intimidating. I'm beginning to notice that the good races are all generally cute, and the evil races are more intimidating. The good capital is a small city surrounded by forests and plains, and the evil capital is a massive city with more technology. I'm not sure if you'd call it steam-punk or not, but it has that feeling to it. It seems to be a magic vs. technology type of conflict.
WoW was an unbelievable MMO and I'm not sure anything is going to compare to it.
I'm going to give SW:TOR a shot because it's perhaps the most expensive MMO to ever be developed. There has to be something to offer for at least a few months. Plus, the game is supposed to be story and roleplay driven, which is what I like.
I have 4 friends in the open beta, and I think it's really unfair to compare SW:TOR (at this moment) to WoW in it's current incarnation. With SW:TOR, I'm sure they're just trying to get the basic content working, I'm sure there is a lot of content in the pipeline over the next year, especially if they're spending $135 million developing the game.