I was going to post this in Pathfinder Online in the "wish list" thread, but I realized that it would be a very long, derailing post there. Still, I'd like this to be a place to make notes about what other MMO's did and didn't do well. I'll start with my list of MMO's I've played or heard a lot about, what I liked or didn't like, and my favorite/least favorite moments.
Warning: Titanic wall of text ahead. Just a heads-up.
1) World of Warcraft: I'll start with the hot-button, to get it out of the way. I started WoW at the tail end of vanilla, finally hit level cap in the early parts of Burning Crusade, and continued through until the end of WotLK, with a few breaks in between.
What I Like: The User Interface and Controls. Credit where credit is due, WoW has one of the most responsive interfaces out there. There's almost no delay between me thinking about what I want my character to do, and my character doing it. Plus, the fast-loading and relatively easy to understand windows, maps, stat screens, and the very smooth Dungeon Finder make questing a breeze.
What I Dislike: It's too bad there isn't any story. Blizzard's original vision was severely altered for Burning Crusade, almost completely destroyed for WotLK, and finally chucked out the window in Cataclysm. Most newer gamers don't realize this, but Warcraft actually has a decent backstory. Go play Warcraft 3 sometime, and compare it to the story in WoW today. It's just all about the grind to level cap, and then the grind for gear. No real opportunity for roleplaying or exploration anymore, since there's no consistent story anymore; it's been rewritten too many times.
Favorite Moments: For all the rote-memorization, slot-machine loot dungeons, WoW did make one jaw-dropping raid: Karazhan. Still my favorite dungeon/raid in WoW, with several of my favorite bosses. First off, it's the only instance where the monsters look like they have a reason to be there. There's a kitchen, dining hall, armory, library, living quarters, study, chapel... it's actually a livable place! Also, in a game where the Holy Trinity of Tank/DPS/Heals reigns supreme, Karazhan has a couple bosses that really mess with it. Namely, my favorite boss in WoW, the Shade of Aran. Aggro? He laughs at taunts, and all your +100% threat buffs. When he attacks, he picks a random player, regardless of aggro. Then there's Moroes, the boss in the dining hall, who is immune to taunts, vanishes and garrotes random players, and comes with four allies picked from a possible six. Not a big step from the WoW formula, but at least it looks like they tried.
2) Runescape: Allegedly free-to-play MMO made over ten years ago, it's now fallen in popularity somewhat. I've heard it's similar to, if not a ripoff of, Ultima Online; since I've never played UO, I'll leave that to someone who has.
What I Like: There are no classes, just different skills to train. You mine some rocks, you get better at mining. You cast spells, you get better at magic. And unlike Star Wars Galaxies and UO, there's no cap on total levels. You can hit max level in every single skill in the game, becoming a true jack of all trades. Plus, quests aren't just "kill 10 things over there"; each quest does add to the storyline, and when you've finished a quest, it feels like you've actually done something. Plus, their writing is good, and the tone is often hilarious. Another big point: In several quests, you aren't the hero. You're supporting the main characters by being the jack of all trades. In many quests, you're more MacGyver with a sword than Conan the Barbarian. Your main strength is the fact that you can become an expert in many different skills, then use your wide pool of knowledge to become a one-man-explorer.
Things I Dislike: It gets really, really grindtastic. Worse, grinding skill training takes just enough effort that you have to pay attention, but not enough to keep your attention. I'd love to just alt-tab back every few minutes, but the game takes more input than that. And skill grinding gets too boring to hold my attention that long. (Maybe that's just me.)
Favorite Moments: My favorite quest in the game is Monkey Madness. Your mission: A squadron of gnome gliders went missing while exploring the south seas. The gnome king asks you to find them and figure out what happened. Turns out? They crash-landed onto an island ruled by a civilization of intelligent, xenophobic monkeys, and were imprisoned! You have to negotiate an island where almost everything is trying to kill you, sneak around the monkey city without being spotted by guards, and gradually collect the items you need to make first an amulet to speak with the monkeys, and then a totem that lets you turn into a monkey when wielded. Now that you can disguise yourself as a monkey, the island is a much less dangerous place. After some deals with the arrogant Monkey King (Including rescuing some monkeys from a city zoo; the dialogue there is hilarious), you rescue the glider squadron and help them defeat the Jungle Demon sent to destroy them. As a reward, you get combat training with the gnomes (In game terms, that's a chunk of bonus exp), and the ability to buy and wield Dragon Scimitars, a very fast, very powerful one-handed melee weapon. Whew!
3) Star Wars Galaxies, Pre-Combat Update: Abbreviated as SWG Pre-CU, this is SWG as it existed before the Combat Update turned it into WoW In Space. Before then, as mentioned in several other posts, it was unique: A class-based system, but you weren't locked into one class.
What I Like: A crafting system that was actually complicated enough to offer a challenge beyond grinding for mats, and required character skills that most people spent on combat instead, so not everyone could craft. Not only player-owned houses, player-owned cities! Including being able to place items in your house. Not just furniture and decorations; if it could be in your inventory, it could be placed in your house. This resulted in some very creative decorations, like people making aquariums using polearms as the corners, and filling the middle with fish they had caught. (It should be mentioned that the game didn't have a physics engine, so objects could be placed in the air.) Or people placing walls of cinderblocks to build fake walls in their houses. But mainly, the allure was the class-based system: There were six base classes, only two of which were directly involved in combat. You started the game knowing the basics of one class, but you could learn all of them, and improve in any of them. However, there was a cap on how many total skills you could know, so no mastering everything. This is also a game that demonstrated that a player's class could be a status symbol, not just shiny gear and mounts: Pre-CU, the Jedi class was notoriously difficult to unlock, requiring lots of exploration, and usually mastering two or three classes, though not all at once. However, once you finally unlocked it, not only were you one of the best fighters in the game, but everyone who saw that lightsaber knew that you were a long-time player. It always felt more like how Jedi in the Star Wars universe should be: They were rare, they were formidable fighters, and everyone's heads turned when one walked into the cantina.
One last note: Mentoring. Getting skill training from NPC's got rather expensive, especially for a novice, but any other player who knew that skill could teach it to you, assuming you met the prereqs. Plus, in almost every skill, getting the capstone required you to earn Leadership experience, which you could only get by mentoring other players. So trainees got free skill training, and trainers got the experience they needed to unlock their class mastery. It was quite common to see several players hanging around a town center, advertising what skills they could teach.
What I Dislike: I never got far enough in the game to group up a lot, but I heard group play wasn't that great. Also, although you could spend your skill points however you wanted, there was the inevitable downside that some builds were flat-out better than others. Especially multiclassing; except for the Medic class, it was usually a bad idea to start training in a class and not master most of the class.
Favorite Moment: I should mention right now that the game also allowed Guild Duels; not just one-on-one duels, but entire guilds could challenge each other in a throwdown. I'll just recount one afternoon during the second week I was playing the game, when I learned about this the hard way. I was hanging out in Theed, looking at all the skill trees, when I realized that the crowd outside the starport had separated into two groups. Only half paying attention to them, I noticed that many had advanced weapons, a few had pulled out high-end combat pets, etc. Suddenly, at the drop of a hat I didn't notice, the entire town square erupted into a brawl! Since I wasn't part of the duel, I couldn't be hurt by any of the explosions, rampaging pets, or blaster fire, but that didn't stop me from flailing around in circles in the middle, trying to figure out how and why they were shooting at each other! I'm pretty sure it gave the two guilds a good laugh, and made a very memorable experience for me.
4) Guild Wars. I must admit, I haven't played this very much, but I've spent a lot of time talking with friends who have. So if I'm wildly off-target here, please forgive my ignorance, but I think I'm getting this right. Main impression I got was twofold: One: Cohorts and minions for every player, to make soloing much easier and group play feel more like a small army, and Two: Very soft trinity and loose aggro mechanics. Oh, and the level curve was short: Level capped at 20, which could be hit in a week if you were slow and a day at the fastest. Also, some of the best gear in the game could be bought just with money earned from questing; you could have a level-capped, well-equipped character inside of two weeks, easy. So what was the point? Group play, story, and crazy combat mechanics. Aggro was almost nonexistent; monsters tended to attack at random. The tank's job, in the words of my friend, were, "to slow any monsters heading for the back lines so that your monk could take time off of healing and buffing to blast them to kingdom come". Healing was important, but tanking was really more about surviving whatever came after you, rather than guaranteeing that everything was attacking one person. The minons help; each player can have three cohorts and around five minions, allowing players to fill missing roles in a party, or just provide a party if you're soloing. The fact that combat an shift so dramatically if monsters start going after the squishier players means that everyone has to stay on their toes. To paraphrase Charles Darwin, "It is not the strongest, nor the smartest who are most likely to survive, but the ones most adaptable to change".
5) Warhammer Online: Best PvP MMO I have played, in my opinion.
What I Like: I'm not one for PvP, but this game makes it FUN. Easy-to-use queues for instanced battlegrounds, noninstanced objectives on the map to take and hold, and the humorous kind of violence and brutality that characterizes Warhammer. The main reason I liked this game was that there were ways players could affect the map. In each zone of this theme-park MMO, there were two keeps: One held by the forces of Order, the other by Destruction. One of the major ways to get exp and rewards is to take the enemy's keep while stopping them from taking yours. Mind you, this isn't instanced: The keeps reset in a few hours after one is captured. What results is a constant back-and-forth all over the zone; players gather together in roaming groups to capture different objectives in the zone, each one of which makes it easier to attack the enemy keep. Once you think you're ready, the group charges to the keep's doors, siege weapons at the ready. (You heard me; you don't just pound down the doors with your weapons, you can actually build a battering ram to breach the doors!) Once the outer layer is down, it's a vicious fight in the courtyard and up the battlements to secure the flag flying at the top of the keep. (Oh, and enemy players are collidable; you can't just run through them; this means you actually can have a line of player tanks blocking doors and ramps) If you succeed in tearing down the flag, the keep is yours! You then usually have to defend it from the former occupier's counterattack, unless the players get bored or all ragequit for a few hours.
What I Dislike: Like any PvP-based game, if there aren't many players on, it's not fun. So your enjoyment of the game can vary wildly from day to day; some days, there are several full warbands rampaging across the map; other days, you're lucky to get a handful of players together.
My Favorite Moments: Being able to stand on the battlements of a recently-conquered keep and realize that you actually did something that has an effect on the map. Only for a few hours, but still. Plus, there aren't many other MMO's where you can say, "Guess what we did today? While you were grinding for crafting mats in WoW, I joined a warband and stormed a g&!*#%n keep!" Oh, and in addition to enemy collision, many classes get knockback effects. There have been many times where my orc has smashed the enemy players off their own battlements to plummet to the ground, and I still grin every time it happens.
6) Lord of the Rings Online: Best PvE MMO I have played. Based off the books, not the movie, for the record.
What I Like: The crafting system and the class roles. First, crafting: Although it mainly follows the WoW pattern of "collect two logs and make a bow", there are notable exceptions. First off, you have a crit chance while making gear. If you critical on a crafting recipe, the resulting item is extra-powerful. Plus, at higher crafting tiers, you can name the item if you crit while making it. Very annoying to have that "name this item!" box pop up while you're just grinding crafting, but it's a nice touch when you crit on an item you or a friend will be using.
Then, there's class roles. Although the Holy Trinity also reigns supreme in this game, it is joined by two other roles: Buffing and Debuffing. Unlike other WoW-clones, buffing and debuffing is actually useful. As such, there's no class that is pidgeonholed into dps; every single class can, with the right traits slotted, fill a role other than just dps. This means that, no matter your class, you can be useful in a group.
Oh, and I have to mention one of the most original ideas introduced with the Moria expansion: Legendary Items. Essentially, it's a weapon that grows more powerful as you do; not like WoW's "you'll never equip anything else" heirloom items; instead, it's an item that you can upgrade as it levels up. All LI's have their own exp bar, and you get Item Exp in addition to regular Exp. When an LI levels up, you get points to put into one of its Legacies. These are class-specific, and they boost specific class abilities. For example, on LI's made for Captains, there's a legacy to reduce the cooldown on Kick, one to boost the damage-over-time on Cutting Attack, one to boost all vocal healing, and one to increase the bonus parry rating on the On Guard buff, among others. They're basically talent points on your weapon; not only does it allow even more character customization, but it allows item customization; over time, you feel like it really is your own weapon, not just "this weapon has 10.5 more dps than the one I found two days ago".
What I Dislike: The Epic Quest. For a game so focused on questing, it's not too surprising that there's one huge, long quest chain that starts just after you make the character, and continues after level cap. Problem is, almost all the quests in the chain are easily the most annoying quests you do in the game. Especially in Moria, where I found myself running back and forth between the same three quest NPC's more times than I want to count. The Epic Quest tells a great story, and it gives good rewards, but it's a heck of a hurdle to jump through. Especially since you have to do the Moria section on all your alts if you want them to have one of their three class capstones. Yikes... I don't even want to think about doing that chain more than once. I'm very glad that my alts are going to stay low-level crafters.
Also, I know that it's a theme-park MMO, but the static world is especially glaring with all the quests you do. You'd think that killing the leader of an entire tribe of orcs, and then killing HIS leader, would drive some of the orcs off. Going back to the Moria Epic Quest: My biggest problem with that part is, when you start out, Moria is a network of old, dank tunnels, infested with all kinds of beasties. Most of the quest chain is just going from one NPC to another, having to carve a path through the mines in the process. But even after doing a huge chunk of the quest, including helping the dwarves secure the Twenty-First Hall and surrounding area, my reward is... it's still a network of beastie-infested tunnels I have to carve my way through if I want to get anywhere. Gee, it's like I didn't do anything at all...
My Favorite Moments: Playing the Skirmishes. Skirmishes are like instanced dungeons, but they can be played solo or with a group, and instead of just clearing your way to the loot-filled boss, it feels more like you're doing something: Retaking Bree from brigands. Defending the dwarf town of Gondamon from a goblin invasion. Helping one of the rangers defend Weathertop from an undead attack. The scaling difficulty based on party size is a huge plus. Skirmishes can be: Soloed, 2-manned, 3-manned, or 6-manned. Also, there are three tiers of difficulty, with higher tiers being harder for a group of the right size, but will also give better rewards. All that adds up to a very customizable instance experience.
7) EvE Online: Best sandbox MMO I have played, but not my favorite PvP one; I'll explain below. There's been a lot said about EvE already, so I'll keep this brief.
What I Like: This is one of the only games that can truly claim to be a sandbox MMO: There really are almost no restrictions on what you can and can't do. As a fun note, the Terms of Service include: It is legal to scam ingame items and money from other players, but surviving an attack by Concord (the NPC riot squad/police force) will get your account permanently banned.
What I Dislike: This is personal opinion, but I just can't get into the "real" gameplay of EvE Online: PvP. Even if you don't want to PvP, you can't escape it; although Concord will destroy an attacker's ship if they attack you in highsec (the "safe zones" in EvE), Concord takes six or seven seconds to arrive; this delay has spawned a whole school of griefing/sport known as "suicide ganking": Figuring out a ship and equipment setup that can blow up any given ship in six seconds, while still being inexpensive enough that you can easily buy another one when Concord blows yours up. This means that, even if you're in highsec, there is the remote chance that someone will suicide gank you: either to claim whatever was in your cargohold, or just to cackle at your smoldering wreck of a ship. And in lowsec systems, Concord doesn't exist, so it's truly open PvP. As a shameless carebear wuss, I try to stay out of lowsec, even though that's where all the fun stuff happens in EvE.
My Favorite Moment: Unfortunately, this isn't a positive one, but it summarizes both my likes and dislikes of EvE Online: The player-made holiday known as Hulkageddon. Most of the materials in the game come from mining asteroid belts; several ships are specialized at mining, the best one being the Hulk. For one week out of the year, many players get together to suicide gank as many Hulks as they can find, as well as any other ship they catch mining the asteroid belts. There are prizes for whoever can kill the most Hulks, as well as other prizes, all awarded by players, to players. On the plus side: The players do all this themselves. They set up the holiday, they made up the rules, they stick to the rules, they make their own fun. That's the kind of creativity that should be encouraged if you're going to make a successful sandbox. On the minus side: This creativity is being funneled towards destroying EvE's economy for a week, by cutting off supplies, and forming rampaging hordes of ships out to kill anything and everything that isn't a combat ship they find in the asteroid belts. In Warhammer, I don't mind this roaming PvP so much, since there's no loss if you die, other than time. But in EvE, when your ship is blown up, it's gone. If you're lucky, you can salvage some of the equipment, but otherwise, there's nothing to do but buy a new ship and try not to get it blown up this time. My main problem with the open PvP in EvE is that you always have to watch your back. Any time you're out mining or exploring, you have to constantly check your sensors to make sure that nobody's trying to kill you. The only time you're safe is docked in a station, where you can't do much that's useful. I sure don't like that. Maybe it's just me.
I know this turned into a huge wall of text, but if you actually read the whole thing, thanks for reading.
How about everyone else? What is it that you like/dislike/remember about the MMO's you play?