Mmorpg
 

I think I'm looking for a new MMORPG to try out. I've been playing Star Wars Galaxies for about a year and a half - it's the only MMORPG I've ever tried, so I really don't know what all I'm missing out there.

At one point, I really loved SWG - but it seems like every time they add something to the game, it just gets worse and worse for me. I'm finally giving in and ready to try something new.

I'm looking at Everquest 2 and WarCraft - although I don't know if I would really enjoy the whole Elf/Orc/Troll type of game.

How is City of Heroes? I was just looking at the City of Villians sequel coming out, and it looks interesting.

Anything else I should consider?

The most popular ones seem to be World of Warcraft and City of Heroes. I would try one of those. I personally play Final Fantasy XI, but it's not everyone's cup of tea. And I'm at the point where I don't want to give up my character even though I don't play it much anymore.

In a completely different genre (some might argue that it's not an RPG) I can recommend Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates. They've got a free trial so you can get the hang of how things work. The game is shockingly deep with a full commodities based economy set up and tons of different things you can do. If you like yahoo puzzle games, you'll definitely dig Y!PP.

World of Warcraft comes with a 10 day trial so if you know someone that has it or is getting it you can try it out for 10 days and see if you'll like it enough to buy yourself.

WoW is/was very fun,but it only held my interest for a couple months before it got old.
I played Anarchy Online for several years before i quit due,it's a really great game.I'm currently playing SWG again right now though.
Haven't tried any of the others except DAoC and that game was absolutely pathetic.

i am currently playing WOW, it is a great MMORPG, but it is becoming obvious to me that the genre is getting pretty stale. WOW does so many things right (like the quest system), but I seem to have hit a lull in my mid 20's where I am feeling the repetitive nature. I am hoping this will all change once I start playing more PVP, since that is generally what I enjoy most in an MMORPG. I think no MMORPG can reproduce the magic and newness of your first MMORPG experience so despite knowing WOW is a better game than my previous MMORPG's it doesn't have the same effect on me.

I played two MMORPG's prior to WOW. I played DAOC for a long time, but the game didn't really start until the RVR took off. I hated the grinding in the game, but the PVP made it all worth it for me.

I played SWG for about two weeks and hated it, I really didn't like the forced interaction, such as watching entertainers to restore battle fatigue. To me it seemed to focused on forced social interaction rather than combat. I prefer the social interaction to be a secondary effect of the combat. I also hated the bland randomly generated environments (just explore a piece of WOW and you will see what a difference thoughtful placement of terrain, cities, landscape can add), and repetitive quests.

May I say, give Guild Wars a try.

Anything new coming out relatively soon? Would be cool to get in on something from the start.

I second Guild Wars, that's a great game to play with a couple of close friends, or alone to relax.

I think Dungeon & Dragons Online is supposed to come out before the end of the year. Ditto with City of Villians.

Nothing in the immediate future that I'm aware of.

Is Guild Wars an MMORPG? It looks like Diablo where almost everything is instanced for your party except for the cities and arenas.

I think in any sane definition it is. Doesn't WOW do instancing for a lot of stuff anyway?

Instancing is preferable anyway in most cases. It really takes you out of the experience when you have to line up behind 10 other people to talk to the quest npc so you can do the same quest that they are all doing. Also fighting your way through a real hard dungeon to get some rare loot and then finding 3 guilds got there before you and have it fully camped..

Some comments...

Right now, I consider World of Warcraft the best MMORPG I've played. Everything is combat oriented, so if you're coming from a SWG background and are more into the roleplaying/crafting side of things, you may not like it as much.

Guild Wars is a good game as well, but I don't really consider it a MMORPG. There's no persistant world, everything is instanced. It's more of a Diablo/Unreal Tournament hybrid, with a smattering of Magic:The Gathering.

Puzzle Pirates is really different, and really cool. It's a pirate game, and everything you do (Combat, sailing, even crafting) involves mastering a puzzle...so don't play it if you don't like Tetris and the like. There's a subsciption-based system (10 day free trial), and a system where you buy "Doubloons" as you go in order to purchase other in-game items. The nice thing about the Doubloon systems is that you can play all you want for free, if you don't mind being somewhat limited.

Everquest 2 isn't bad. They have a nice free trial you can play indefinately (you are restricted to the newbie island). I couldn't get into it myself.

I also tried the free trial for Anarchy Online. The interface drove me batty.

The next big upcoming game looks to be D&D Online. It looks similar to Guild Wars in that it's ultra-instanced. Unlike GW, however, there is a monthly fee. It has my interest, we'll see how I feel when it comes out.

Another interesting upcoming game is Auto Assault. Looks similar to the old "Car Wars" board game (which was adapted in the 1980's as a video game by Origin called "Auto Duel").

City of Heroes is (finally) offering a 14 day free trial. I'm going to take a hiatus from WoW starting next week to try it out.

Thanks for all the tips...

I think I'm going to pick up CoH tonight and give it a shot...That setting and premise seems to interest me more than the others.

As I said, they're offering a free trial, so you might as well do that first to make sure you like the game:

https://secure.plaync.com/cgi-bin/coh_free_trial.pl

Also, I just noticed that Second Life is offering free basic accounts from now until July 13. A very different game, kind of cool in it's own way.

nice, i did not know that city of heros had a free trial. I've been wanting to try it for quite a long time. Thanks groucho

Kind of wondering what you think persistance brings to these types of games. Anyway, the persistance in just about every MMORPG is totally fake anyway. I would like to actually be able to impact a persistant world. So if I do a quest for an npc they should then be able to go on with their virtual lives happily ever after (or until the next drama comes their way). Instead they just sit there while the next 1000 players come their way doing the exact same quest that I just did.

Of course I understand the massive difficulty in supporting a real persistant world that players can change with their actions, and also having to provide dynamic content. So considering that limitation exists for basically every game (something like Second Life might actually be one of the few exceptions) then why not have instancing for quests etc. to avoid all the grief you get from campers and just other players generally flooding the popular quests and slowing down areas to a chug.

I haven't actually played GW but I gather you can pretty much hang out in the cities with all the other players. Also, and correct me if I'm wrong, all players are effectively present in the same world, and you can communicate, quest and pvp with any other player in the game. This is instead of all the crap where you have to try and make sure all your friends are on the same server so you can actually play together.

I realise you didn't actually say that either instancing, or not instancing was inherently bad, but just thought I'd discuss :).

Btw to get back on topic I'm also coming off a longish SWG stint (although going back a few months now). I'm thinking of giving Guild Wars a spin as the initial outlay is not too great, and you don't really commit to any ongoing payments.

A lot of my friends have played WOW, well some still are, but most have hit level 60 and are just not finding much to interest them in the game anymore. At least 3 have already cancelled their accounts and that's only about 4 months of playing. I know with SWG I kept playing a fair amount of time after I maxed out (although not jedi) with crafting and exploring other professions.

I don't really have anything against instancing. I think it's a good solution for high-end content in particular.

The way it's implemented in Guild Wars makes that game feel like a single-player game rather than a MMORPG. Everything is instanced, even the cities. It feels mechanical and artificial. The system does allow for some neat things, but I never felt like I was part of a living breaking world while playing. When there's never more than 50 people in the same place as you at a time, things just don't seem "Massively Multiplayer".

Just because you have a persistant world doesn't mean have contention for everything. For instance, World of Warcraft's quest system keeps people scattered. I might be on a quest to kill kobolds in one cave, while Joe might be on a quest to kill spiders in another. Should we find ourselves in the same area, we can team up...or not, there's usually plenty of content to go around.

There are pros and cons to everything, of course. It's really a case of personal preference.

Where is the WoW 10 day trial?
I just upgraded my old machine to make it a not so old machine and I can actually run some stuff now. My all time favorite game is Diablo (I, II and LoD). And since I have little time to game and becoming ever cheaper in my older age, I am waiting on my copy of Guild Wars to arrive, as this is free to play and suppose to be close to Diablo (some call it D3). I would like to try out WoW and CoH, a guy I work with is a huge CoH player and he gushes about it every day.


Anyone hear about this deal EA has made with Castaway Entertainment, a company formed by Diablo creators. This happened in March and they are suppose to be working on a new RPG, no idea if it is single player, online or MMORPG.

You have to get the key from somebody with a retail copy of the game.I don't know anything about that. But I know that Bill Roper (former Blizzard God, creator of both Warcraft & Diablo) has a new company called "Flagship Studios." Their first game will be Hellgate: London, which looks to be an action RPG very similar to Diablo, but in first person with full 3-d graphics. Here's a thread a started on it a while ago:

http://www.dvdtalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=416060

All I could find about them in a quick search is that Michael Scandizzo is President of Castaway, and that he worked as a programmer on Diablo II, LoD and Gladiator.

Another company founded by ex-Blizzard people was Arenanet, who did Guild Wars.

There was an article / interview in Edge magazine with the developers of Hellgate: London which makes it look potentially awesome.

I love the Diablo games too. They have always been some of my favorite. I also like cheap, :) so try this out. It's a free MMORPG that is so much like Diablo its funny. Its not bad to kill some time, it is fun and the graphics are good enough but it gets a little repetitive if you just hack and slash for awhile.

http://www.muonline.com

Toddsm66, i think we're in the same boat. i played swg from launch and promptly quit out of frustration and a little boredom --- i went to WoW. after levelling to 60, i got bored and quit. WoW really is a great game, but i felt like i needed more of a sci-fi mmo. So i'm currently in my first month of Matrix Online. very buggy missions and i've met quite a few rude people so i doubt i'll keep the subscription after the 30 days. I hear Eve Online is offering a 14day trial also, so i might try that or the city of heroes trial. I kinda miss swg, but after visiting sony's swg boards, i'm reminded of all the bugs and come to my senses.

I downloaded the free trial for City of Heroes last night and got to play around with it a bit. Really cool game, great concept.

I was a bit disappointed that at level five the game was already forcing me to group, however. I'd heard this game was more soloable than that.

You can get around that by not taking the missions in hazard zones. When I get the mission to talk to the policeman in The Hollows, I go talk to him but don't accept his mission. I then go back to my regular contacts in Atlas Park/Galaxy City/Kings Row.

I personally think level 5 is way too early to be venturing into hazard zones.

Now that I finally have a computer and internet at home, I've been considering playing WoW or something like that, but I'm afraid I'll turn into a shut in or something. I know I'd have a great time playing it and so on, but I'm worried I'd miss out on too much of real life.

I am about to pick up Guild Wars, I will also try CoH, but I hate the thought of paying a monthly fee again.

Thanks for the tips, shizawn. I went back to one of my old contacts and got some King's Row missions. Much more my speed!

I find it very odd that the game would put my in the The Hollows at level 5. I'm just a poor n00b, going where my contacts tell me too. I had no idea that I'd be mobbed by thugs twice my level. But my ignorance was helpful, I suppose. I got through a few missions in there before I was level 6.

It's a cool game, but I feel guilty letting thugs mug some lady because they are grey to me. :lol:

SWG just keeps getting worse and worse with each new publish. They are basically taking the game in a path where everybody has to be a Jedi - which isnt something I ever really cared to do.

I have to say, I'm really enjoying CoH right now. I created 8 different characters to play around with some of the templates just to see what I like - and I like them all.

Yeah, the amount of different builds you can do is just insane (and refreshing).

I do wish you earned your costume as you went, however. So, you'd look more "ragtag" at lower levels and could gradually get spiffier stuff as you went. Would make for a satifying "carrot on a stick."

I just enjoy leveling up on each character just to see what new powers I can do...

With SWG, you pretty much start out with a weapon - like rifles...then as you progress and gain skill boxes - you can...shoot that rifle better.

Each new level in CoH gives you something new and different to play around with. I'm anxious to get up to lvl 14 now so I can try all the travel modes.

I have a friend who wants to try, and (I think) I've looked through everything for the free trial code. Is it on a separate sheet, in the manual, or somewhere else?

No idea, since I bought the game at launch (when the free trial was only being included as part of the "Collector's Edition).

When did you buy the game? If you bought it early, you won't have a free trial included.

Bogus!

Thanks, I'll stop tearing my room apart looking for it.

Only new copies of WoW, boxes that have the gold "Game of the Year!" label on it includes the 10 day trial now.

WoW is a great game, but suffers from the fact that it doesn't have an endgame, like Everquest (now) does. The chief draw to an MMORPG for me is the class system. In that regard, I really like Everquest's and am beginning to appreciate Everquest 2's archetype system (though we really could do without this many paladins). WoW's system is good as well. EQ2 and WoW to me seem very similar. Guild Wars has its merits but seems like an MMORPG Lite. CoH I've not tried yet - but might give it a shot for a free trial.