I was just wondering if anybody here plays any of the massive online games like WoW or Everquest? I tried the search engine and found nothing so if this has been brought up before you have my ever humble apology. As for myself I was introduced to Guild Wars and had quite a bit of fun on it. I have to do some upgrades on my computer before I can actually play on my own system. Perhaps the best draw to GW is the fact that it is as far as I know the only online game where you buy the game and don't have to pay to play it. You just have to buy the new chapters when they come out. I'll wait to see if anybody answers before I go further into the subject.
There have been some references in here to D&D Online (including a thread devoted to it) - not that there is anything wrong with starting a new thread But if u keep looking you'll find a few people have mentioned it in the past. Personally I never play them, no. Liv used to be an Ultima Online player, I remember her mentioning that.
Sci-Fi fans will enjoy (and get really addicted to...) Eve-Online, which is a player vs player (or even better - team vs team) oriented space RGP there is an excessively steep learning curveq for this game though, as there is a lot to take in - the tutorial will take at least 3 hours to complete and only touches the tip of the proverbial ice asteroid. :thumbsup: World of Warcraft is a single player or small team oriented RPG there is a maximum limit as to how good your character can be (some have reported being able to reach the highest possible level in two weeks), the graphics are ok, but the gameplay and general feel of the game were not to my liking. :bored: Dungeons and Dragons online is another single player or small team oriented RPG, they opted for a D&D lite version of the rules (in which my first level bard character had 26 HP and could cast cure light wounds 8 times without resting) which is never a good plan when attempting to please the D&D gaming system's fans, nice graphics, the gamplay was ok apart from the bastardised D&D rules, and my 3 year old desktop had trouble running the game smoothly at times. Voyage Century (I think that was the title) is a navy oriented free MMORPG which is based in renaisance times, you get your little boat, sail around the world visiting various port cities and tale on a great number of fed-ex missions, NPC pirates will attempt to blow you out of the water, and you can salvage goods from other ships lost at sea, and get destroyed by violent storms, the graphics were not the best, gameplay was ok, but I get the impression it was translated from some other language into English rather than a native english speaker, and none of the Pirates ahout "Arrr Matey". :sadblinky I have yet to try other MMORPGS. During the writing of this post I used the following scoring system... :thumbsup: = brilliant = good :bored: = ok. :sadblinky = bad :tombstone = rubbish
I have played quite a few MMORPG's in my time. Everquest. Everquest 2 Lineage 2 Eve online Guildwars (not really a true MMORPG) WOW. Eve online was really good, but Im not big on its time based skills system of sci fi for that matter. But if you like Sci Fi you cant go wrong here. Wow, is extremely overated. It's simple and casual friendly, but I also feel it has a boring generic class system and a horrible art style. Everquest I played for 4 years of my life. It was truely a hardcore game. It hasnt aged too well however, but its still going and probably the most in depth and immense MMORPG out there. Lineage 2. Had fun at first, until I found out the game is nothing but a boring grind, and has deeply flawed gamplay systems which encourage and reward activities like griefing PVP and Chinese currency farming. Guild wars, is really a PVP game which is RP light with a fairly boring story and I found to be generally quite tedious. You can play the whole game without ever having to interact with people if you want as the entire game is instanced. This might appeal to some but for me if defeats the purpose of what a MMORPG is supposed to be about. Now, Everquest 2, is what I feel to be the most polished and immersive MMORPG out there at this time. It got off to a shaky start, but it has a very active development team and is always being updated with new content and has a very good, mature community for a MMORPG. It's possibly got the most diverse race and class options out of any MMORPG. it also features extensive voice work for many of the npc's I still play it on and off to this day, and the forth expantion is due out in november (with all other expantions packaged in for a good price.) The major downside, is you need a fairly powerful machine to have a good experience with it.
I used to play Evercrack. Bristlebane and then Saryrn servers. Clickstick cleric was my guild main, non-epic necro was my solo main and I also had an epic shammy for when I was bored. Gave up several years ago. Still get withdrawal though
Cool, I still get withdrawls for the original EQ from time to time, but its really to late to go back now I would have no idea where to begin. By the time i finished up my main was a Dark elven female Shadowknight (lv 65) with over 300 AA's. With this character I won a free for all arena battle with about 100 people, and won a custom title from the Gm's, it is by far my most memorable gaming achievement, and probably the most amount of time I have ever stuck with a game.
I quit EQ when the level cap was still 60. Got a fair few 'special abilities' just from farming XP after they introduced the expansion with the cat moon. Didn't stay for much longer. Got to confess SKs were great fun on guild raids - multiple HT on the Luclin snakes was most amusing! Most GM events were on US time on Saryrn and I played on European/Japanese peaktime. The only one I can remember attending was a free-for all fight outside Freeport. No-one could hit my cleric nevermind kill me! :blink:
I never quite got myself convinced to mmorpgs... I played Lineage II, which was fun for the first few months, but I realized that it was just mindless grinding. It was fun only when I was roleplaying with my friends... Then I played Guld Wars for a while but didn't like it at all... I also played WoW for two months... even subscribed one month ahead but stopped playing really quickly. I wanted to play on a RP server but my friends insisted on PvP, and RP servers were quite shitty with all the bots and idiots who didn't even know what RP is... -_- I had fun playing BGII with my bro, too bad he got sucked into WoW at that time... who knows maybe we'd be finishing the campaign by now?
I played EQ back in '99. It was fun when it was all fresh and new to everyone. But when I got to level 30, I didn't like the attitudes I saw, so I stopped playing. I came back 4 years later and everyone was just weird ("okies sawry hun" BLECH!). I tried out WoW (not having to kill rats at level 1 was a plus). But it took me a year to figure out that it's just a big grind. I played Eve for a year and a half, mastering missions and trying out new ships. I didn't get into the PvP aspect much at all, so my goals ran out. Now I'm playing Lord of the Rings Online. It's WoW lite, mostly. Very quest driven but without all the little counter cultural winks that Blizzards saturates all their post-Starcraft games with.
Well at least I have somethign new to add: I started with Ultima Online, but the novelty wore off with all the bugs when my reputation would be damaged because people attacked me, not the other way around. I then moved to, and here's the new info, Asheron's Call, Turbine's platform that opened the window for all their current projects. I played through the Beta and for about two years, then I found myself without a computer or internet connection. So, years later, after I rediscovered my computer and internet connection, I tried WoW, and though I actually liked the weird graphics, the game didn't hold much interest for me. Kind-of soulless. Just recently, back in January, I picked Asheron's Call up again. Now I play probably 3 or 5 hours a week. At first it was nostalgic, my brother's guild was still intact and many of the members were the same guys I had played with back in 1999 and 2000. Also, my brother, who played for 5 years then quit, had recently started playing again. IMO, Asheron's call is a great balance of gameplay/pvp/questing/community. It runs the gamut: I realize most of the community comes from a game thats almost 10 years old, but it's still there. The graphics, of course, can't compete with anything new, though there has been a graphics upgrade from the original. The questing is all over the place: solo quests, to sequential quests, to massive group quests, quests for items, quests for xp, quests for titles, quests for other quests, etc. There is, of course, item crafting. The option for 'PKlite' has been introduced, enabling you to go PK for enough time to duel someone, then you can go back to NPK. Dungeons and other areas also exist if you are just into grinding out xp. Now that much content has been added to the game over the years, the option of switching your characters skills and attributes is available through a repeatable quest, i.e. if you realize half-way in that you'd rather specialize in sword over spear or that you'd rather have those 20 points in Coordination instead of Endurance, it's easy to switch. I think they have a free-trial going on right now, so if you were interested in where Turbine came from you could give it a shot. If you play, I'm on the Morningthaw server, character name ditto to forum name. My guild is the Knights of Fortune (www.fortunesway.com), we are based in a town called Rithwic, and anyone in the guild would be more than happy to show you the ropes. As far as the horizon is concerned: I just saw a copy of DnD online for 20 bucks with 30 days for free. I'll probably give it a shot just to see what it is like, and I'll most likely do the same with LoTRO when the buying price drops a bit. I'm not the kind of gamer that has to have a game when it is released. I think the biggest thing that gets in the way of MMORPGs is the people that play them. Almost all games have a direct ratio of time played proportionate to character advancement. It's really a necessity. But that means that high school and junior high kids, or anyone else without a job and/or life, advances much more quickly than those of us who like to take our time, read the lore, jot things down for some personal stories, and concern ourselves with community and gameplay. And there is the dichotomy. That type of Player versus Player (Grinding versus Gameplay) is the biggest problem for me. Anyway, there's my two cents...which, as I look back, seems more like 50 cents. I apologize for the essay. Madcat
