My lesson learned over the past year is that new games aren’t always better than old games.
I’m such a gearhead that I gravitate towards the new and shiny. But in the MMORPG world, new and shiny typically means incomplete, buggy, unbalanced and disappointing.
Over the past year, I’ve tried the following MMORPG’s:
- Age of Conan – My favorite of the newer games and I’ll probably return one of these days.
- Warhammer Online – My biggest disappointment. Combat is just so clunky that I couldn’t stand it, even though I love PvP and RvR.
- Atlantica Online – Turned based combat is interesting, so I still have it installed on my computer to give it another try.
- Free Realms – Cutesy, but far too casual for me.
- Runes of Magic – Not bad, but not good either.
- MapleStory – I don’t understand the popularity.
- Runescape – WTF. I guess it’s good for people playing in their browser while pretending to do work?
- Pirates of the Burning Sea – Interesting change of pace, but sea combat was too slow and land combat was forgettable.
- Mabinogi – Pretty nice F2P game, but didn’t catch my attention after a few hours of play.
- The Chronicles of Spellborn – The absolute worst first impression of any MMORPG I’ve played.
- Shin Megami Tensai: Imagine Online – Just like playing a PlayStation 2 game on my computer…hopelessly outdated.
There were more, but I already forgot what they were.
After months of vainly searching for a new MMORPG home, I’ve found myself hopelessly addicted to Guild Wars again. It really is an incredible game. I can spent hours fiddling with my skills and outfitting my heroes. Since I tend to be an altaholic (I keep rolling alts), I haven’t finished all the content yet. I’m nowhere near achieving any of the crazy titles or reputation grinds, but that kind of stuff never appealed to me anyways. Once I finish through the content, I think I’ll join a serious PvP guild.
Once I’m done with Guild Wars, I’m planning to return to City of Heroes, Everquest II and maybe even World of Warcraft. I was never very hardcore about any of these games and there is so much content I haven’t played. There is no question that they provide a far better gaming experience than any of their newer competition.
I’ll still give upcoming AAA titles a chance, like Aion and Champions Online, but I’m not holding my breath. MMORPG’s need time to mature into a great game.
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what about wow
i dont like that?
Hi, Ferv!
I can never resist checking in with you as we both go through the same search for an mmo home. Used to be so easy..sigh.
When last we talked I was addicted to Lotro and thought the search was over. Don’t exactly know what happened but I’m back at good ole CoX, at least for now…lol. Been thoroughly enjoying it, but then again I always do. At least I always have that. I’d get bored with the maps sometimes, but aside from that I’m really getting bored of the same old playstyle all the other games have.
Looking forward to their new Going Rogue expansion.
Also have my eye on Earthrise, Cities XL(a departure from anything I’ve ever played but it looks fascinating!) and most of all All Points Bulletin!
I heard of APB a long time ago when they were just trying to generate interest, but I kinda forgot about it. From what I’ve seen lately it’s at top of my list.
As for Guild Wars, I only ever tried it once on a free trial but I have been thinking about looking into it more in depth. As it’s free to play I wouldn’t mind dropping some money to buy it. What one(s) would I have to purchase if I wanted it all up to date?
Guild Wars is an awesome game and I have made many alts as that game lends itself to that. Being able to level so quickly and experiment with the powers is very gratifying also. Making your way through all the campaigns at least once is worth while because the story line is very well though out, so you might want to try that for sure.
I myself really enjoy warhammer PVP because unlike WoW you don’t get one or two shot which is a very frustrating aspect of WoW PVP. The combat is not that clunky in Warhammer and if you just settle down and get used to it, you can over look some of its short comings and enjoy the longer skill based PVP battles it offers. The game also allows for many alts because getting to level 20 or so allows you enough time to enjoy a toon. Also open RVR can be quite fun and just kind of a huge brawl.
Age Of Conan is really twitch based and skill based in PVP clicking many keys rapidly just to activate one power is a draw back to me, but a unique battle for others I think you fall in the second category. I found the metamorphosing mage the HOX to be a really fun one to play.
So of the MMO’s out there GW, WoW, WH and AOC all have something good about them. I am probably really easy on these games because well when one is bad it is really really bad and these games are not bad at all.
A few console games that totally rock are FallOut 3 and Gears of War2. I am not a fan of first person shooters but these two are amazing. Gears being just really a blast in the horde mode and FallOut is not reall a first person shooter but it has the general feel of it at times during its unique combat.
Keep posting on your blog and I look forward to you settle into a game and getting down to writing some guides like you did with AOC.You have a real knack for breaking down a toon and explaining what works best and its appreciated at least by me.
@robert You’d need to get the GW Trilogy ($50) and the Eye of the North Expansion pack ($25) to be up to date. If you get the individual campaigns, it’s about $20 each..so $60.
Seriously, this game is just amazing though. It is one of my favorite games of all time…it’s that good.
It is definitely worth playing through the early Prophecies campaign (the original), but I’d start with Nightfall (the 3rd campaign) because it introduces heroes. They add so much to the game because you get a bunch of NPC’s that you control and configure. As you go through the campaign, you recruit more heroes. Then you can go back and finish off the Prophecies and Faction campaigns.
CoX is another great game and I go back to it every so often, but I get bored and frustrated quickly because of the endless repetitive maps. Every mission, I invariably end up running back and forth for a LONG time trying to finish the objectives. I am curious about the player-made content, though.
APB does sound really promising, primarily because it’s not the usual fantasy game and I loved Crackdown on the 360 (made by the developers of APB). I’m also looking forward to the Agency because it seems quite different from the usual.
@Meths
Recently, I’ve logged a ton of hours playing GW and I’ve barely progressed in the storyline because I spend so much time fiddling with my alts, trying out new builds and outfitting my heroes. I am utterly incapable of picking a main character and progressing. My character slots are full and I play them all.
As for WAR, I do think that I will go back to that game and try it again. I feel like I am really missing out because I didn’t experience much of the RvR, especially the higher level content.
I’m hopeful that I’ll find a new MMORPG home one of these days and maybe start writing guides again. It was actually a lot of fun writing them and it’s nice to know that my effort was appreciated. The guides actually get quite a lot of hits, even now, so someone out there has been using them. I am tempted to go back to AoC and update the guides because there have been quite a lot of changes since I wrote them.
Well, write some GuildWars guides character specs etc. I see that the net has a lack of decent GW guides and the ones I see are really old.
You know the ole 55hp monk builds or SS necromancers so many good things in that game. I love rolling and alt and farming for some greens and respeccing over and over too.
I can only hope that GW2 does not jump the shark.
They just need to of course improve and over haul the thing. Maybe get the game off of rails as it is now. I am not sure if that would ruin the spirit of it or not.
@Meths
Guild Wars actually has so much information out on the nets that it’s amazing.
wiki.guildwars.com – Extremely comprehensive wiki
pvx.wikia.com – Tons and tons of builds, both for your characters, heroes and teams, PvE, PvP, farming…everything.
guildwarsguru.com is where many of the hardcore players discuss strategies and the good information is then added to the wikis.
I’m a complete novice compared to these guys. Many of them have been playing GW nonstop since it came out years ago.
I’m definitely looking forward to GW2, but it’s going to be a long time before it comes out. It’s going to be hard to outshine GW1. ArenaNet isn’t going to release it until it’s perfect. NCSoft has enough faith in them to give them as much time as it needs.
Thanks for the info. I’m going to pick it up as soon as my bills are paid..lol.
I have to say in the last year or so tried some of those MMORPG’s.
I’ve played WoW til I got bored of the grind and fed up with the kiddies. So I got AoC on it’s release but gave up and switched to WAR. But I got fed up with the class balancing which seemed to cause imbalanced sides. So I quit and returned to Guild Wars. Aion looks interesting but I think if I were to buy a subscription MMO in the near future it would be Biowares forthcoming SW:TOR.
GW2 in my opinion won’t be appearing until late 2010 at the earliest, but I think we’ll hear more on GW2 once Aion is out in USA and Europe.
In the UK we can get a ‘Guild Wars – Complete Edition’ which you get the 3 campaigns and EotN. Is that not available in the USA?
I haven’t seen the complete edition available stateside yet, but I’m sure it’ll make it over here sometime soon.
NCSoft is definitely pushing Aion really hard with the marketing and it will only get more crazy in the coming months. I fully expect that it will do quite well…at least in the beginning.
Aion will be out in a few months. I expect I’ll get at least a fun month or so out of Aion and Champions Online.
I’m fairly certain we won’t be seeing SW:TOR until 2010. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if we don’t see it until 2011 if Bioware isn’t happy with it. Bioware would never, ever rush the release of this game. Their reputation is at stake here.
It is fast becoming one of the most hyped games of all time. It’s going to be a miracle if Bioware actually meets expectations. Personally, I’m already getting myself ready to face disappointment.
Hey, I just got an email from Funcom giving me a free 14 day re-evaluation thing. I would do that in a second but I am traveling to much and stuck with a slow laptop.
Check to see if you can get on for a few hours for free if you want and see whats happening in Hyboria. I would be interested to know whats changed.
I got the email too. I’m still wildly addicted to GW at the moment, but I’m planning to check out AoC in a couple days.