Best/Favorite MMORPG?

[Tobal]

i would still say ffxi combat is unique enough(basicilly if you like FF12 you be playing a similar game but without full party control) and the art/music/lore are still good(a mod called windower can improve it a bit for HD and draw distance) and it will be the last mmo of it type, after they failed with ff14 ver1.

i recently created a completely new character on a 2nd account to "dual box" content in abyssea where most of the fun is and right now its the main exp area, took me about 3months on and off to properly gear a lvl90 character(cap at the time), due to having to play mission content to open up all the world areas, break leveling caps, and get Abyssea buffs, once you've done 1 job to max the other 19 can be leveled from 37 to 99 in one day.

there's a 14 day free trial but it won't give you access to abyssea but it would be enough to solo around starter areas and get a feel for old school mmo's (i think it includes access to everywhere thats not locked by mission content on the main continent, so no far east, CoP, the past and Abyssea areas). That said the game is always on the wain, less that 250k players but most normal servers have 1400'ish on at all times as JP,EU and NA players on the servers aren't segrated(another very unique trait) meaning its never not busy.

[dataDave]

Seconding Guild Wars. I definitely preferred it to WoW, which ended up boring me to tears with fetch quests before I gave up just after level 30.

Sounds like you bored yourself to death. I can count the amount of fetch quests I've done on one hand.

[sj33]

FFXI is still a cracking game, and still has life left in it if the rumours of a Vita version are to be believed. But it's not the easiest game to get into, quite an investment in fact.

[dataDave]

I don't know why they messed with FFXI recently, probably had too much faith in FFIV to carry everyone over and went ahead with a 'closure'. I don't know what the fan reaction will be once things start to get rolled back to reality. The early game staple is more than efficient for new comers and oldies alike. I thought they had the almost perfect system in place at the time I left the game.

Following what you say about investment, Shakey, the amount of patience required is staggering if you are serious about gear and progression as both the organising and team performance are paramount if you want a shot at the limited drops. It really did push me to the brink. I never liked to level up without exploring what the current level caps offered in terms of story and gear, getting the gear really broke me. It was just one obscene patience test one after the other.

It was just one belt in fact, the Penitent's Rope.

The great thing about WoW PvP (as well as the actual game play) - you get the best gear only if you can climb to the top 10% of the rated ladders. Direct reward for performance. No random/luck bull**** anywhere. Top 0.5% grabs you a 'Gladiator' title in front of your avatar name as well as an exclusive flying mount that goes 30% faster once the season closes and the ladders are tallied. #1 team in the bracket gets you 'XXXXX Gladiator' title, XXXXX being the title of that current season.

[Decider-VT]

Sounds like you bored yourself to death. I can count the amount of fetch quests I've done on one hand.

On WoW? Really? Because it seemed like every other quest I did involved killing one to ten creatures for item drops. I just got sick of getting to a new area and being sent out to murder the local fauna for tusks, pelts or whatever the local craftsman wanted. I hear that levelling is much easier now so maybe a lot of those quests have been disposed of but it was incredibly tedious when I was playing around four years ago.

[rmoxon]

Wow does seem to be pretty much fetch quests from what I have played. Rift is very similar in that respect, it's very much like Wow, but the main difference is that the world is much more dynamic and you feel much more of a part of it than with wow, which is why I chose Rift over it.

I think I would get bored of Wow after awhile to be honest.

[Digfox]

I've played a few MMO's including WoW, Hellgate, LOTRO, Warhammer Online, DC:U, Champions Online and GW. Only played WoW beyond the opening 30-days in the box (WoW) and beyond that only GW which I occasionally log back into. I do like playing PVE MMO's casually in my own time, i.e. never got involved in RAIDs or end-game content.

Of all of them WoW is clearly the best and the one that left the biggest impact on me (a level 73 Drenai Shaman; tried and failed to get back into it after Cata). I love the style, the humour, audio work, variety in the world etc. Everything feels so right in this game. Of the others I thought the best PVP I experienced was Warhammer Online because of the easy public quests you would stumble upon in questing, the easy to access RvR and PvP matches and the tiering system. It was so innovative and friendly in this regard. I do like the story, henchmen and heavy instancing of GW (as said). I hated LOTRO though. Struck me as a very average, generic MMO with little redeeming features that wasn't good enough to survive the subscription model.

I'm currently playing a level 12 Jedi Knight Guardian through SWTOR and I have to admit it's a very competent MMO aside from the the odd bug (glitched textures etc.) and performance issues. Although it sticks very closely to the WoW-model, the story/cut-scenes and companion components are very well done. There's a chance I'll continue beyond this beyond the 30-day subscription.

Wouldn't mind trying Rift and even Eve (if I thought I wouldn't get blasted into space within 10 minutes). And at some point the new GW which is likely to be awesome.

[dataDave]

On WoW? Really? Because it seemed like every other quest I did involved killing one to ten creatures for item drops. I just got sick of getting to a new area and being sent out to murder the local fauna for tusks, pelts or whatever the local craftsman wanted. I hear that levelling is much easier now so maybe a lot of those quests have been disposed of but it was incredibly tedious when I was playing around four years ago.

I played five years ago and beyond level 9 did all my levelling up in dungeons as a group.

[Tobal]

I don't know why they messed with FFXI recently, probably had too much faith in FFIV to carry everyone over and went ahead with a 'closure'. I don't know what the fan reaction will be once things start to get rolled back to reality. The early game staple is more than efficient for new comers and oldies alike. I thought they had the almost perfect system in place at the time I left the game.

Following what you say about investment, Shakey, the amount of patience required is staggering if you are serious about gear and progression as both the organising and team performance are paramount if you want a shot at the limited drops. It really did push me to the brink. I never liked to level up without exploring what the current level caps offered in terms of story and gear, getting the gear really broke me. It was just one obscene patience test one after the other.

It was just one belt in fact, the Penitent's Rope.

The game changed alot on the casual side for investment in good gear and abilities when Tanaka ****ed off to mess FF14 up, the young dev's created Abyssea which given abit of investment in grinding rep and killing certain bosses in a certain way turns God mode on, when inside the 9 Abyssea areas so you can be rocking 4k Hp, weaponskilling/nuking for 3k(basic gear on average), they even added was is effectivily a ingame points system for nearly everything inside for collecting towards top gear so you never felt like you where getting hosed and magian trails a way of making a custom weapon allows for casual play unless going for it version of a relic weapon.

but it changed recently with the lvl99 cap and SE focus on developing two FF14(improves ver1 for those that stayed and testing ideas for ver2, and ver2 engine and content for a Ps3/Pc release) at moment leaving FF11 with a skeleton crew for new content and tanaka return to insure the grind for the new top gear returns to requiring heavy investment or pure luck of the past. Luckily the viodwatch gear is barely better than stuff easily gotten in abyssea which is alright by me when we 20 jobs to level and 20 lots of gearsets to get so i got something i can do with out VW.

[rmoxon]

Still been trying these out and I think I've gone through most of the ones that are free now .

Ones of note that I have played are...

Age Of Conan. which I found to be crap, the combat is more complex than the usual but that doesn't make it any more fun.

Vindictus. now this is really great, it's basically the closest we might get to playing Monster Hunter Frontier in Europe. Really enjoyable stuff and it's unlike most things here as its more of a console type experience. The graphics are great too.

Aion. This seems decent, pretty standard stuff, the UI isn't particularly great and there doesn't seem to be any kind of waypoint system in place but overall I enjoyed what I played of it.

City Of Heroes. Outdated and rubbish, very clunky and not at all fun.

Forsaken World. Another one that doesn't stray too far from the wow template but it's really well made, especially for a free to play game. The animations during combat are great... And one of the classes lets you be a vampire which seems pretty unique to this genre.

APB. No idea about this becuase it won't accept my login details no matter how much I try, so I gave up.

Tried loads more too but they were all pretty much rubbish.

Anyway I would definitely recommend Vindictus to anyone who likes Monster Hunter, it really is a good game.

[originalbadboy]

I have played quite a few MMORPG's over the years ... Ironically one of my favourite ones was one of the first ones to appear , Earth & Beyond .. The sheer scope was great , and you really could just do what you wanted, with proper RPG elements.

I played WOW for quite a while till I realised I was wasting my life on it, and then stopped. Since then MMO's dont get much of a look in past the free 30 days. StarTrek online was the last one I played past any sort of cut off point, and is actually fairly decent, and now FTP so even better, would recommend people trying it out. LOTRO is also very nice as well , escpially if you like the setting, and again is now FTP, it is to all intents a carbon copy of WOW though.

SWTOR is definaltely a step in the right direction though, yes it is standard MMO fare, but wrapped up in a very polished experience. I do think that SWTOR will be the last great MMORPG though. I cant see where the genre can go after this, and people will start to dropping off quite quickly over the next couple of years.

I still think MMO's themselves have a future espcially MMOFPS (such as Planetside 2 - assuming Sony dont **** it up), and I am sure somebody will come up with something we haven't though of yet ... A GTA MMO for example.

But the MMORPG model is starting to show its age.

[EvilBoris]

I'm quite looking forward to the Secret World, sounds really cool and lacking the bits I don't like about MMOs

[SUMIRE]

Played em all at some point in including the latest Star Wars the Old Republic. My fave was Star Wars Galaxies, loved the crafting and the world PVP in that game plus the community was great. People used to PVP because they wanted to, not for rewards.

All that was before they changed it and ruined the game.

[briareos_kerensky]

I've only played one MMO, Ragnarok Online, on a free server a friend of a friend set up and sent me an invitation.
It was during a summer of several years ago and it was fun while it lasted...being an invitation-only server meant that there weren't too many players around, but after realising I spent two whole weeks without doing anything else I stopped playing.

[Digfox]

SWTOR is definaltely a step in the right direction though, yes it is standard MMO fare, but wrapped up in a very polished experience. I do think that SWTOR will be the last great MMORPG though. I cant see where the genre can go after this, and people will start to dropping off quite quickly over the next couple of years.

I agree with you on SWTOR. I've been spending a few more hours on it, and it's a neat MMO.

I do think Guild Wars 2 is going to come along and be a great game though. I know the first one didn't have subs, and used instances for most of the game. I think NC Soft/Arenanet will have big success with this.