a good MMOPG?

[truckingpete]

I'm looking at Star Trek online, I mean im a Trekie and Season 2 people are saying the game is getting way better then what it was when it came out, and I tried the EVE demo, it was actually decent, plus Guild Wars looks good too.

What do you guys suggest, and I dont mind paying a little monthly fee

thanks!

 

[Aramazd]

WoW, it's pretty much the best MMO, although Guild Wars it pretty fun and no monthly fees either.

 

[Till]

Lord of the Rings apparently will be free to play later this year. It offers pretty graphics, pimpy hats, and the opportunity to beat up Kan.

 

[Kan' Sharuminar]

Lord of the Rings apparently will be free to play later this year. It offers pretty graphics, pimpy hats, and the opportunity to beat up Kan.

Free-to-play essentially being you can play it for free and get a decent run of the game, but you'll have to pay to unlock certain parts of the game. I'm not entirely sure how it works, as I've already got lifetime membership and apparently will be shoved to 'VIP' status and pretty much keep my gameplay as it is. I think

The game is very fun though, especially if you already like WoW and Lord of the Rings in general. It gets the setting mostly right, and is very pretty to look at. Pretty much the only MMO I've stuck with longer than a month, anyway.

And alas Till, you wouldn't really get the opportunity to beat me up - there's little to no PvP in the game, except in a certain region. And I never go there as it doesn't interest me

 

[GoodGame]

WoW is pretty lame. I'd check out all the youtube videos I could find on any game that required purchasing a disk AND monthly fees. Most games aren't worth that.

 

[scherbchen]

I still enjoy Warhammer and a bit of City of Heroes....

Warhammer is very cheap right now (the boxed game is about 10 bucks and comes with 30 days playing time which is cheaper than a subscription for a month. alternatively you can play the unlimited trial version for free but are stuck at lvl 11ish). depending on server and online hours you can find pvp zerg-fights or 12 man pvp scenarios both organized and PUG. players are currently awaiting a "big surprise" which hopefully will reveal itself to be an expansion with a thrid faction.... pve does exist in this game but is rarely visited other than for high-end gear or prepping for high-end content. there are two dungeons, basically. for maximum enjoyment you will want a guild or, even better, a gank group.

City of Heroes is still kind of going strongish despite being ancient for a mmorpg. new expansion is just around the corner. it is surprisingly expensive (20-30 bucks for the current game iirc) for such an old gem but much more suited for semi-casual pve-players and people who like to play solo. never visited the pvp areas before but that is on my short-list but as for now I can't comment on that aspect. it is, for me, kind of reminiscent of diablo 2 as far as advancement goes: a) get loot to get better loot. b) I wonder if a different char can't do better. c) I really need a team-oriented toon. d) gosh this is a cool concept, wonder how that plays. e) can I make a defender that tanks like a tanker but nukes like a blaster? f) really want to look into pvp but I need cash! go back to a) if you check altitis in the dictionary you will find this game listed.

the first pick would be Dark Age of Camelot II but sadly there is no such thing.

WoW is fun but very demanding.

 

[Thrawn]

WoW's only demanding if you allow it to be.

 

[scherbchen]

WoW's only demanding if you allow it to be.

sure. I guess. depends on what you want in return. x-com: UFO defense wasn't a frustrating game if you did not want to min-max and enjoyed the bits where aliens shot your away-team to pieces within a minute.

warhammer high-end pve game: group required
wow high-end pve: guild required
city of heroes/villains high-end pve: PUGable or duo-able if you put in the effort.

 

[King Flevance]

City of Heroes/Villains: Best/most fun combat system I have yet to see in an mmo. IN pvp, it is a blast. The only problem is there is little incentive for pvp so those zones tend to be desolate too often.
Guild Wars: It is free monthly cost. Good PvP, Great PvE (GW2 expected to be released next year.)
Star Trek: Have heard nothing but good things about it, plus it was made by Cryptic. (COH/V) And they do good work.
LotRO: Fun moster play PvP system. Where you play as mobs.

BioWare is going to be releasing Star Wars: The Old Republic which looks pretty good next year.

WoW, its on its last leg and knows it. I suspect Cataclysm to be the last or second to last expansion for it if they are smart.

 

[PhroX]

City of Heroes/Villains: Best/most fun combat system I have yet to see in an mmo. IN pvp, it is a blast. The only problem is there is little incentive for pvp so those zones tend to be desolate too often.

CoX* PvP is a blast? Have you actually played it since I13? It used to be great fun, albeit horribly unbalanced. Then the devs redid PvP. It's now boring as hell and still horribly unbalanced. Though, ironically, there is a massive incentive to PvP now, in the form of the PvP IOs, some of which are so valuable they're not usually sold on the market due to them being worth more than the 2B Inf price cap...

Other than that though, I do still rate CoX as the best MMO out there. The combat system is great, the customisation is still fantastic, the community is probably the best I've ever seen in an MMO and most of all, I love the relaxed, casual feel about it. There's no need to rush to the level cap - the game is the same there as it is on the way. None of this "end game" stuff. When you hit 50, you have access to all the lower level content, and if that's not enough, you go start another character. There's no need to get "phat lewtz", as everything in the game can be done with normal shop bought stuff (the good "equipment" lets you do things beyond how they were designed. Like soloing stuff intended for full teams four levels higher than you...). 95% of the game can be soloed, thanks to a fantastic system that scales mission difficulty to the amount of players in it. All in all, while I've played nearly every major MMO since EQ, CoX is the only one I'm still subscribed to even after playing it for over 4 years (just got my 51 month vet badge )

*yes, it's a horrible acronym, but it's become the standard...

 

[King Flevance]

I disliked NCSoft gaining ownership. They are not very "into" the game itself it seems. NCSoft is a pain to deal with period at times. It is nitpicking when discussing GW, Tabula Rasa, etc. But when they gained ownership of CoX, I fell out soon after. It was a downward spiral it seemed. Last time I played was i11 right before i12 came out I believe. i12 looked both good and bad at the same time. Never got to actually play through it to test out the changes.

 

[PhroX]

I disliked NCSoft gaining ownership. They are not very "into" the game itself it seems. NCSoft is a pain to deal with period at times. It is nitpicking when discussing GW, Tabula Rasa, etc. But when they gained ownership of CoX, I fell out soon after. It was a downward spiral it seemed. Last time I played was i11 right before i12 came out I believe. i12 looked both good and bad at the same time. Never got to actually play through it to test out the changes.

Huh, most players agree that the game has become far better, with the exception of PvP, since we got rid of Cryptic and NCSoft/Paragon took over (NCSoft were always the publisher, they just bought the rights to the game and set up their own studio, made up of some ex-Cryptic people, to run the game). And as for them being "into" it, well, I'd say the complete opposite. There's been much more investment since they took direct control (staffing numbers have increase significantly for example), and as such we've got things like Power Customisation which Cryptic had been unable to do due to a lack of manpower (and possibly Jack "Statesman" Emmert being a ****).

If you need more proof, look at what Cryptic have done since. Two of the worst excuses for MMORPGs I've ever had the misfortune to play. And I played Vanguard....

 

[King Flevance]

Well, I am not among 'most players' anymore. Not that I am saying CoH is a bad game, I am just finished with it. I see CoH copying off of everything Champions did to compete. Champions has its pitfalls as well but everything positive about CoH has all came from nabbing ideas Champions was already advertising before it was released. And fromthe sounds of it, Star Trek Online is not a total bust. There are alot of trekkies out there that praise it. I haven't played it yet and I am not a trekkie. However, I have yet to see anyone deliberatley bad mouth Star Trek as a bad game. It like any other MMO on the market has its pitfalls.
STO is praised for being true to source and lore and entertaining gameplay. SOmething in the game is said to be boring (I forget if it was missions or what) but if it wasn't missions, then the missions "make up for it" or vice versa.

I think Cryptic is a pretty solid company. I think Champions fell short of where it should have, but I also suspect many complainers of not weighing the game on its own merit. As many of it's community came from CoH. And they wanted a game better than CoH out of the box. Disregarding the amount of time that had already been invested in CoH. Plus, the fact that CoH was grabbing release notes and incoorperating alot of Cryptics ideas into their game. I wouldn't recommend Champions currently but I think it will be worth a look a year from now.

Personally, I think Cryptic is a good company and with more freedom they have now, I am anxious to see where they go.

 

[PhroX]

Well, I am not among 'most players' anymore. Not that I am saying CoH is a bad game, I am just finished with it. I see CoH copying off of everything Champions did to compete. Champions has its pitfalls as well but everything positive about CoH has all came from nabbing ideas Champions was already advertising before it was released. And fromthe sounds of it, Star Trek Online is not a total bust. There are alot of trekkies out there that praise it. I haven't played it yet and I am not a trekkie. However, I have yet to see anyone deliberatley bad mouth Star Trek as a bad game. It like any other MMO on the market has its pitfalls.
STO is praised for being true to source and lore and entertaining gameplay. SOmething in the game is said to be boring (I forget if it was missions or what) but if it wasn't missions, then the missions "make up for it" or vice versa.

I think Cryptic is a pretty solid company. I think Champions fell short of where it should have, but I also suspect many complainers of not weighing the game on its own merit. As many of it's community came from CoH. And they wanted a game better than CoH out of the box. Disregarding the amount of time that had already been invested in CoH. Plus, the fact that CoH was grabbing release notes and incoorperating alot of Cryptics ideas into their game. I wouldn't recommend Champions currently but I think it will be worth a look a year from now.

Personally, I think Cryptic is a good company and with more freedom they have now, I am anxious to see where they go.

The only thing I can remember CoX doing after Champions was power customisation, and even that was always something the devs had said "we'd love to do but it's just take too much time". When they got the staff they did it. Besides, even if they did take other stuff, they'd hardly be the first company to do so. WoW, for example, was pretty much just EQ with new graphics.

STO gets the lore right, but as a game, it fails majorly IMO. The space combat is OK, but everything else is bad, and this is hardly just my opinion. I've seen plenty of reviews that panned it. Get rid of the license and who would play it? Very few I suspect.

As for Champions, well, it seemed to me as if Cryptic went through all the things that didn't work in CoX, and tried to do them again, with exactly the same results. And, yes, I damn well did expect it to be better than CoX. If it wasn't better why would I want to play it? There's no point in saying something like "It's better than CoX was at release", when it's not competing with CoX at release. It's competing with it now.

I'm not "anti-Cryptic". I can't be, they created what I regard to be the greatest MMO ever. But the stuff they've done since has been, IMO, dire.

 

[Mise]

Star Trek Online is a disappointing game. It could have been soooooo much better, but there is simply no depth to the game. It's barely any deeper than a FPS, and you don't have to pay monthly for that. My advice is to ignore it completely, but if you must play it, treat it as a game you play for 3-4 months and then quit -- 3-4 months will be more than enough to experience all the content and get bored of it

 

[MobBoss]

WoW, its on its last leg and knows it. I suspect Cataclysm to be the last or second to last expansion for it if they are smart.

WoW is still the number 1 MMO out there and nothing has come close to killing it yet.

Its no where near on its last leg, and in fact, since I just came back to it after leaving STO, its made some significant changes that make it more appealing than ever.

Blizzard is dedicated to keeping its main money maker updated with interesting new improvements to come.

About the only thing I see that could detrone it is if Blizzard ever got around to making a World of Starcraft. Other than that, other MMOs dont seem to last long against it.

 

[Rub'Rum]

Yeah MobBoss I was gonna say...

Plus, King Flevance, you say the game is on its last leg, then predict it'll have at most two more expansions? Well that's a lot of expansions, I mean, there's only been two up to now.

 

[King Flevance]

Cataclysm is one of those expansions. If is it not the last expansion, I predict it to be second to last. I suspect a sequel or something to be announced after that. Plus, with as many good innovations in the MMO scene, if WoW refuses to "out the old for the new" it will die out. The system in play is old with WoW for one. It is the simplistic grindfest/boring missions that games used in the late 90s.

With the games that are coming out... and some that already are out, I suspect WoW to begin to dwindle just due to better games being out there. Top this off with the amount of people I am seeing leaving WoW for good due to account hacks and hacks in general and I suspect the community to disapate into other games soon. Have Cataclysm get old, and have them leave WoW by the wayside as they always do and then venture to see what is out there again. I think the next time around the track is going to be different myself. Cash wells do eventually run dry.
More than likely WoW won't insta-die, as all MMOs have their clingy fans. I particularly find it funny when people say they will quit if they make a sequel and don't let people port charactors. There are better games out there now depending on what you are looking for. (PvE, PvP, RP, Exploration, etc.)

Phrox, I had a response earlier to the Cryptic stuff but my window closed before I posted and I don't feel like typing it all again. I'll just restate I think they are a good company.

 

[Thrawn]

I actually had a big post typed up, but I've seen this argument before and it's just gonna go around in circles so I deleted it.

To be brief, WoW is not in decline, several MMOs have already been touted as WoW killers and failed, people getting hacked is their own stupid fault, Cataclysm is giving the game a major revamp(and not in a bad way, from what I've heard out of the beta I'm excited and can't wait), there won't be a sequel, and blizzard is probably the only company that can kill WoW.

Edit: Just saw something on another forum that reminded me. Blizzard have actually stated that Cataclysm is shifting the level cap from 80-85, instead of 80-90 (like the previous two have increased it by 10), in order to leave some room available for more expansions. Apparently the plan on capping out at level 100 and stopping there or something.

 

[PhroX]

I actually had a big post typed up, but I've seen this argument before and it's just gonna go around in circles so I deleted it.

To be brief, WoW is not in decline, several MMOs have already been touted as WoW killers and failed, people getting hacked is their own stupid fault, Cataclysm is giving the game a major revamp(and not in a bad way, from what I've heard out of the beta I'm excited and can't wait), there won't be a sequel, and blizzard is probably the only company that can kill WoW.

Yeah, WoW isn't on the decline at all. They could lose 3/4 of their subscribers and still not be anywhere near failing. The whole idea of "WoW killers" is stupid. It's a singular one-off phenomenon. I can't even see another Blizzard MMO achieving anywhere near the success.

Edit: Just saw something on another forum that reminded me. Blizzard have actually stated that Cataclysm is shifting the level cap from 80-85, instead of 80-90 (like the previous two have increased it by 10), in order to leave some room available for more expansions. Apparently the plan on capping out at level 100 and stopping there or something.

Why do they keep increasing it at all? IMO, it's really bad game design.