All Posts by TeflonEddie

Sort of depends on what you're looking for in an MMO. It would help if you were to list your preferences as to how important crafting, PvP, Housing, PvE, Soloability, etc are.

Oh, ok.. well if it's just which MMO has things to do other than level, then it's probably going to be all of them, but I'll only list the ones that I have personal experience with:

DDO - For the scripted "story-like" instance missions.
DAoC - For the RvR alone.
EVE - For the crafting/PvP
EQ2 - For the crafting.
LOTRO - For the crafting, housing and RP.
PotBS - For the crafting/economy.
Second Life - Obvious reasons.
SWG - For the crafting/housing.
Tabula Rasa - For the CP control/clan wargames.
UO - For the crafting, housing and RP.
Vanguard - For the crafting, diplomacy and housing.
WoW - For the PvP battlegrounds and crafting.

Some of the above games don't do their "non levelling" parts very well, but they all at least have them.

Originally posted by Nadia

Microsoft cancelled Mythica 10 months before WOW launched
citing that they couldnt compete in the mmo market
You gotta love MicroSoft. When they get it wrong, they get it really wrong.

WOW appealed to mmo subscribers that were not thought to exist
Very true, they also appealed the EQ'ers who, after 4 years and ~7 different paid expansions were looking for a next-generation alternative and had the choice of either EQ2 or WoW, as they were released at about the same time. WoW was the more polished and innovative game, and had the extra boost from the influx of people who'd never done the MMO thing before but loved the Warcraft IP.

 

Originally posted by vipjerry

Yes if you wanna see game one more time before NC decide to turn off servers once and for all.

Not gonna happen for a while at least; TR's up to around 130k subscribers and games don't tend to shut down 'til they're under about 15k-20k subs.

I like indirect "sneaky" characters in most MMO's (like Burglar in LOTRO or Smuggler in SWG) so Rogue is my class of choice in WoW.

I dislike that WoW turns the rogue class into some sort of fragile dual-wielding uberDPS monster in end-game raids/dungeons, but in PVP and solo PVE it's still the closest thing that WoW has to the "opportunistic sneaky git" classes that I love.

Space-western, like Firefly!

EVE is cool but I miss being able to run around on planets and TR currently fails at sci fi.

Originally posted by Slasher29

was thinking about resubbing is it worth it?

Like many who're still following the game, I'm waiting for the level 50 content.

Could you clarify your parameters a bit? .. I notice that you have LOTRO and EQ2 in there but not WoW; they're all similar games except that LOTRO/EQ2 have instanced housing and WoW doesn't, whereas WoW has FFA open-world PVP support (on PVP servers) whereas LOTRO doesn't.

Are you only looking for games with housing in them, or just ones that have good support for roleplay? How important do you consider PvP/PK?

Always buy within your means; If you can afford to pay 2k a year then why not spend 6k for a machine that's going to last for 3 years with zero upgrades. It all depends on how much disposable income you have.

I just paid £4000 (that's around $8000 at current exchange rates) for my new alienware and I don't regret it in the slightest. It'll continue to play like a dream for a couple of years and I could afford to lay out the cash so I figure what's the downside?

I'd say that sequels are usually better than the originals, but in MMO's there's an added wrinkle.

People see the time that they've spent in a game building up their characters as sacrosanct. To leave one game and start afresh in a new one (in essence, to abandon their old characters/mini empires) is something that a lot of people seem unwilling/unable to do. People get invested in their characters.

I put that down as one of the primary reasons that so many people are still playing WoW despite there being so many other games out there to tempt them away.

One other thing that I forgot to mention about WoW; people play it because of the size of it's subscription base. People assume that because it has 10 million subscribers that means that they will always have way more people to play with than other MMO's, but this is of course not the case.

If we take WoW's EU subscriptions for example, they currently stand on around 2 million over around 240 servers. That's a (rough) average of about 8.3k subscriptions per server, though of course some are more populated than others.

Compare that with EVE, which is considered a "niche" game with far less players than WoW. Currently (at 9am on a Sunday morning) there are 22.4k players on the Tranquility server.

Horror or Post Apocalyptic (or both). Preferably not based on a heavy character-driven IP since those always disappoint.

Originally posted by Bronks

 Blizzard took the concept of Massively Multiplayer Online and turned it into Massively Single Player Online. Before WoW, most MMOs required at least some portion of your game time spent in a group. The grouping is what drew me to MMOs in the first place.

I disagree with this statement. My MMO's prior to WoW were UO and SWG, neither of which were particularly group oriented compared to WoW, whose end-game is currently very group-oriented.

Originally posted by skinnys

Element: Epic Items

I want my items to be epic yes, but i want to make them epic, i want my items to have a story along side my own story. I want to find a sword, and shape it into the orcslayer i know it can become. I want to find the old runes to inscripe into it, to make it hurt more. I want my weapon to be my weapon, not just another drop from the endboss in the instance.

Tihs is a great idea and I believe that LOTRO is doing something similar in an upcoming patch; "epic" items that level with you.

Originally posted by jakanddaxter

Both my parents dont let me download game cause they say it takes up too much space and slows down the computer. Do you have anything to comment on this?

Yes, respect your parents, forget the games and go study. Get good grades, get a good job and then buy your parents a new PC with a much larger hard-drive. Maybe then they'll let you download games.

It does have the most subscribers but not by the massive margin that most people imagine it does. nearly 6 million of it's subscribers are in Asia; their EU and US subscriptions total around 4.5 million but a lot of those are thought to be multiples (one person owning 2+ accounts); still way more than most other MMO's though.

It's success is based on a lot of things:

1. Polished gameplay, not too many game-breaking bugs in it's history.

2. Low system requirements. No problems playing it on an older PC.

3. IP. Warcraft was a very recognisable IP prior to the MMO.

4. Timing. It was released at a point in time where there really wasn't much competition for a fantasy-based game of the type; which drew it a lot of subscriptions.

5. Features + Content. It has PvE for the casual and the hardcore, as well as PvP for the casual and hardcore. It also has a lot of voluntary grinds that assuage the hardcore players by giving them something to do that doesn't really do much for them except allow them to work towards a goal with all their free time. One example is the wintersaber mount; purely a status thing, it wasn't faster than a normal epic mount, but people did the grinds because they had the time.

6. Fun. Although many people will say otherwise, WoW IS fun. The quests and humour are all entertaining, the learning curve isn't steep when getting to grips with the classes and abilities.

Mike: Hi Bob, how was your day?
Bob: $£*#.
Mike: Why, what happened?
Bob: Oh, it was $£*#ing Fred. He was lording it all day because he's got a $£*#ing ferarri.
Mike: What, Fred the drooling mailroom guy with the weird eye who hasn't had a date since the 60's?!
Bob: That's the $£*#er.
Mike: Woah, that sucks. How did he afford that?
Bob: Dunno, bet he bought the cash from the $£*# goldfarmers.
Mike: Sucks. By the way, why do you keep saying $£*#?
Bob: Profanity filter's stuck.

Originally posted by eric_w66

Player housing and player cities do not bring much bang for the buck, especially player cities.

Outside of the simplistic UO and SW:G's vast stretches of emptiness, MMO's are about content. In most games there is no room for player cities and player houses. There are thousands of players on every server and they'd each have a house.... where do you put them all? And your engine has to be able to handle houses sprining up from the terrain, and you have to worry about them being planted in places with terrain in the way (say a stream crossing the middle, or a large rock).

That's where instanced neighbourhoods such as those in LOTRO shine.

Lots and LOTS of work for a bullet point on a wish list that won't draw or keep many players. How many people keep playing a game because their house rocked while the rest of the game sucked? Not too many I suspect.

More features is better than less features and housing isn't the most innovative and challenging things to put into an MMO. Other MMO's have already blazed the trail and set the groundwork.

Blizzard has always sucked for class balance in PvP; playing as a feral druid I can tell ya that those 20% of high-ranking druids are more than likely resto for arenas so don't lose hope .. we ferals are as screwed as you are.

It's because MMORPG.com HATES World of Warcraft. And rightly so. Nothing else to see here, move along.