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Give me my last chance. (read everything please).
Before I actually get to the point, i want to get you all in my mind aspect.
Alright well, im a mmo gamer of 7+ years or so(stopped counting at 5). I have tried every free to play mmo around (the "better ones"). I recently decided to give up on being cheap and try some of those lovely ones I hear so much about.
I started with GW, then went for LOTRO because WoW gives me weird vibes and I really hate immaturity(yea you would think id be used to it by now haha). GW started alright, but after a while I started to wonder why the hell I was playing a " Massively Multiplayer Online Game" but really never did anything in a "party/group etc." the game was pretty much soloing. Oh and yes I did try to find a party several times, and even with 50 people around it was like I was talking to myself. so yea..(oh and instances are not a good reason to solo through 99% of the actual game until u get to endgame and your able to instance)
Then I went for a game with subs, LOTRO. I figured the game would rock my socks, I mean seriously. After getting to level 13, I noticed the exact same pattern of GW, I was soloing every single quest. Oh and I seriously only passed 5 or less people every 20 minutes, and that's in TOWNS. i tried 4 different servers, but I figured I would have to get further through the game to get to an area where a lot more people are..so I read a lot of reviews of the "first impressions" and stuff. only to see that people who actually made it to a decent level still were soloing 95% of things in the game.
My point is, i want a mmo rpg. If i wanted a rpg id throw my money into more classic RPG series games for Wii/PS3/DS/360/PSP/etc, that actually gave you a reason to play.
Thus, I choose to go back to asian grinders, they actually force you to party to get through the game.
//Rant over.
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So sorry about that, ive held that in for like..3 years, ever sence i got tired of the one game I loved so long ago it seems.
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Ok, for the list of games i have played..(if your still reading this, thanks dudes).
Ragnarok Online
SoF
Asda story
pi story
maple story (sdfjklsafdjklsdfjlksdf Ew)
those other maple story clones (same ew as above)
FlyFF
RF online
mega ten
(and a few dozen others)
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What I look for in a game the most.
1- Keep my mind busy (the reason for mmos)
2- Actual online people to team up with and run around having fun.(non lonely gameplay.)
3- Keep the grind to a minimum so i don't get bored.
4- Brighter more alive worlds and characters
(doesn't need to be anime style but doom and depression style isn't my thing but ill sacrifice if the games good enough)
5- Anything original, I'm downloading Ether Saga Online simply because it looks slighty entertaining with the whole pet thing.
6- I wont accept "wait for darkfall, or WoW ftw!"
7- customization is nice, but not necessary.
8- read #1 (any advanced crafting, housing, etc helps with that).
Thats all I can think of.
Thanks ahead of time. If anyone got past the rant that is.
PS~Gonna give LOTRO a last chance soon, till then please do help me.
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This is my last chance before I know im over MMO in general. So all you diehard mmo fans out there please. keep me in if you can.
Comments
I have been trying out quite a few F2P MMOs till MO comes out and I think you should give Lunia a shot. Might now be what you're looking for but it has the same type of play as Pi Story. Pick a stage , get joined up with random people and fight through together. it's the most "MMO" ive ever seen in all the MMORPGs ive played. Give it a shot, if you need help you can try PMing me (Xsjados)
Oho~! Lunia, that brings back many good and one really bad memory. Its the only game I was ever hacked in (100% my fault). I chickened out after getting hacked and loosing everything i had. Blamed ijji heh. That game just reminded me what i love ^^". ill get to downloading. ive been awake for ahella long time so it will take a while untill i actually get ingame, but ill give you a shout.
More recommendation are greatly appreciated. For now ill see if I can regain my honor on Lunia and hope it hasnt lost its playerbase.
I've picked up a new computer and graphics card sence the last time i played lunia, should be fun ^^'
To OP, we are in a dark time of MMO's, where the great ones are dying or dead and the new ones fail to deliver.
As a place to "camp out" while awaiting some new game to rescue all of us, I would suggest World of Warcrat and its Borean Tundra server in particular. You should be able to do a player search within that game and find 40 or more players of any level, including the low levels, making this the last polished game experience with an abundance of other players running about.
Sure, there are lots of solo quests, but every few levels folks will get together to take on dungeon instances.
As an alternative you might like City of Heroes, that is a very sociable group encouraged game with a cracking community. Builds (other than looks) and missions can get a bit samey but it does have elements of crafting, housing and even mission building (to come).
Try doing a bit of homework before you buy a mmo game.
Look on the websites, join a guild.
When i logon to play i don't have any trouble finding a group i just ask in guild.
Even if you need 6 in a group but only can get 3 others from the guild at lest it's a start.
same here, i pretty much got bored from playing ftp mmos like maple story and PWI etc... and also i hate the fact that those are called free but have an item mall centric gameplay...
i tryied EvE online, EvE is kind of "almost" perfect mmo, too complicated to fully grasp even in 6 months, but just plain fun, the only down for it is that it requires a lot of time investment, also not everybody loves to play a spaceship instead of a character. so if you like SciFi, ready for a long term relatioship and are willing to LEARN A LOT, EvE is your game.
anyways, i loved EvE and im still playing it til today (a little over a year now). but still, i love fantasy style too, and EvE is pure SciFi !
since im not 13 anymore, WoW was not an option at all neither were its 5 years old rectangular graphics...
i tried WAR, it is a good game, but all te way PvP oriented, besides PvP there is nothing much to do, the PvE is very weak. so it simply wasnt for me, i like to PvP from time to time but not 24/7... i like exploring, crafting and taking my time doing quests at my own pace or with gildies too. so this game is for you only if you are mostly interested in hardcore PvP.
so i tried LoTRO, but i uninstalled it the next day, either i had much expectation for a LoR game or the game really sucks, i didnt like neither the gfx nor the animations and it just didnt feel like LoR lore at all, i know a lot of people will disagree here, but besides the fact that the gfx are very bad, all the other stuff is my own personal feelings about LoTRO. however, if you are a die hard fan boy of the franchise, all those things wont matter and you will like the game i guess.
i heard that Age of Conan had a lot of problems at launch and that was the reason i didnt subscibe to it since day one, but a couple of months ago, i heard a lot of voices claiming that the game got fixed and that its getting new content almost at every patch, so i decided to give it a one month try since the game looked really cool and mature. i played AoC now for a few months, and without going into details, the game is still far away from perfection, but is very stable and fun, i like the low fantasy style, the superb graphics/sound/music and the innovative gameplay. crafting/gathering/itemization are almost still broken, but i know that they will be fixed in the next AoC patch.
hope this helps
Try EQ2. While the first 15 levels or so are solo, almost all players dpend most of their times in groups after that.
Almost all MMOs have soloplaying for the first days of play, you don't start with groups before lvl 10 in as good as everyone.
DDO might be worth a look too.
To the OP,
have you tried Runes of Magic? I have been playing this for the last couple months (I am an old school gamer as well, started with "The Realm" eons ago) but this one reminds me alot of EQ1 (one of my favorites) Its down today for launch tomorrow but check it out
The problem with older MMOs (at least P2P), even if they are released only a few months ago, the starter areas and to a lesser degree the leveling areas are mostly barren.
When a game releases (or an Addon, or a new server etc), the wave of players begins a new character and levels more or less together through the content.
So people, who join an older MMO, are forced to level more or less solo or in small groups.
Lowbies areas in RoM (Runes of Magic) are ALWAYS hopping. to my exp .. now I play on the pvp server ..
This is a game where you always need certain types like for example .. you NEED your priests .. you NEED you tank types and you NEED your dps, that is why it reminds me of EQ1 .. well one of the reasons :P
and it is Free
(with CS)
If those are the only MMO's you've played, I'd ask how you even like the genre at all. That's a pretty aweful list....
Another take on DDO.
I really like the game but quit because I couldn't find groups to do the non-soloable quests in the low level areas. The whole town was like a ghost town with only a few high levels running thru now and then. If I could have gotten into groups and leveled, I'd probably still be playing now.
Also, while Vanguard is the best PvE game out now, the low level areas are pretty much void of people except in the crafting areas. So, if you don't want to solo up to the point of getting to where other people are, you should not consider it.
Ion
Sorry, but there is no "last chance" for MMORPGs. They all play in a similar fashion - the allure to get to the next level, new equipment, new skills, new dungeon, etc. I encourage you to google and study "Virtual Skinner Boxes" to understand why you "think" you enjoy MMORPGs so much. I have played tons of them since 1997 and they all play upon the same desires. Some make you grind forever, some throw stuff at you so fast you get bored quickly, but they all use the same premise.
Some posters have mentioned DDO. It is one of the few that is based more on seeing different dungeons (as opposed to just wandering areas and slaughtering everything) and having strategy since you only have so much health and spell points. The problem, however, is that today, everyone is at max level and you won't find anyone to level with. If you do, they will have done that quest 5 times already and just rush through it most likely and spoil the fun. It was exciting at the beginning like many games, but today, it is not.
I don't see the future of MMORPGs changing. They producers of them know how skinner boxes work and will continue to use them to keep people thinking they are being entertained while taking their cash. It stinks that I have to grind for days so my character can be tough enough to venture into a dungeon just to check it out. If they just let me choose, say, a warrior of decent capability, and then select the dungeon, and then a difficulty, that would be fun to me. But the company then is forced to create thousands of dungeons from scratch instead of a big field full of computer coded critters for me to smash endlessly, and they couldn't do that without hiring tons of people, and of course we wouldn't play as often or be as addicted because instead of smashing critters 90% of our time we'd be playing the meat of the game. Then once the meat of the game is conquered, we'd leave. So I understand fully why there is a grind and why all the repetetiveness, but it's just not for me.
MMORPGs are virtual skinner boxes.
http://www.nickyee.com/eqt/skinner.html
FFXI
You all pretty much summed it up. Meh.. I think for now I will try out Lunia and download a few others like RoM. I would think WoW and alot of those other ptp would work out but i just skimmed a nice amount of my money off on the last two and a graphics card. So for now ill test these two down and i will think about the others.
Keep your mind really busy: Try WoW on a PvP server.
I don't play it today but it was quite the challenge. The threat of attack was really cool. You win some and you lose some but, in later levels, everyone quests in the same area. That's also a "con" as some group quests can prove impossible in pvp worlds. Often, though, an opposite faction player would pass by me in a tense situation where both of us are battle-worn and just want to continue on our quests instead of fight.
I usually prefer games hinging on leveling up while pvping only now. I hate grinding on stupid AI monsters. No amount of programming will make that AI perform like a human player. For that very reason, I stay completely away from games with the majority of content in instances. Instances are the WORST thing to ever happen to a MMO.
If you're willing to accept a group of a few players and a few heroes rather than all players, getting a group in Guild Wars is about as easy as it gets. It's hard to get a group for a given quest because not very many people will be doing that quest at any given time. It's a lot easier to get a quest for a mission, as there are far fewer missions, and people do them more.
My own experience with Guild Wars was that I virtually never grouped for easy mode precisely because it was easy. If someone needed a group in easy mode, then he was sufficiently incompetent that I wouldn't want to group with him. In hard mode, I'd post a message in guild/alliance chat and in the LFG channel, start setting up heroes assuming I was going solo, and if no one else wanted to join before I was set, I'd go with just henchmen and heroes. I got at least one other player for my group maybe half of the time in those few minutes, and could probably do a lot better by asking more.
Actually, I take that back. It's easier to get a group in Puzzle Pirates. The reason for that is that you get however many players on a ship you get, and the game spawns enemy ships specifically to attack your particular ship. It can put more or fewer pirates on the enemy ship depending on what you have on your ship. The jobbing system means that you can go to an island notice board and see a bunch of groups already out looking for more people to join, apply to join one of their groups, and if accepted, instantly warp aboard their ship to join them. If so inclined, you can likely be in a group and at sea within 60 seconds of logging on often as not.