It's easy to get nearsighted when it comes to MMO's...It's often the kind of game you have to devote your gaming life to.
Since it's easy to get caught up in just one, it's nice to step back and try a few of the others now and then. Since I quit WoW after Christmas, I decided to try some new ones. I played Final Fantasy XI for 2 hours the other day, and I just downloaded Atlantica Online to give that a shot. I must say, Final Fantasy is pretty rough on beginners. I had a little graphical problem in Atlantica I'm trying to figure out, but other than that, the graphics are my favorite MMO graphics since WoW.
So thus far, these are MMO's I've tried out and my impressions of them:
World of Warcraft
Phenomenal game, beautiful to look at, addictive, and the solid fanbase assures that you'll have plenty of friends to spend the time with. Its popularity also ensures us that the game will continue to just get better and better, since the Lich King content shows that the game is only more fun than ever before.
Lord of the Rings Online
Plays like a WoW clone, with a few nifty additions. It does lack the diversity of races that WoW has, since main characters are limited to a single faction of Men, Elves, Dwarves, and Hobbits. The game looks amazing on a computer that's better than mine, but on anything not up to modern specs, it doesn't really match up to WoW.
FLYFF
Secret of the Solstice
Final Fantasy XI
I bunch these together because I think these three games have as much in common for starting players as WoW and Lord of the Rings had in common...All three of these games start you in a big city where it's easy to get lost, and each of them required me to run around for 30 minutes to 2 hours before discovering any real adventure. They all fall short of the other MMO's I've played in the graphics department. Secret of the Solstice had beautiful 2D art, which was interesting, though. The other thing I saw similar between these three was the first newbie fighting areas all seemed to be a big field with a bunch of the same 2 monsters bunched really close together. Grinding seemed to be a major focus. However, hard for me to be too harsh...I didn't give any of these much time, and they all seem to offer more to the players who devote themselves more, especially FFXI.
Atlantica Online
I'm just going to be getting into this, but I'll keep you posted. The battle system appears to be tactical based, which is a major difference. It also advertises itself to be a simulation game, where different towns actually pass hands to different guilds. Artwork is fantastic, and play is Free, you just buy Gold with 1$ to each 100Gold. That means as long as I don't mind being a flunky, I can play for free! Sweeeet.
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My first MMO was DAOC. From there I went to SWG, AO, EQ & EQ2, CoH/V, WoW, MxO, Planetside, Vanguard, PotBS, AoC, and WAR.
I have also played Auto Assault and Tabula Rasa, but only the beta.
I have a hard time remembering my first MMO. I really think it was Runescape, but I didn't really play it that much I just thought it was neat that there was this online game where a zillion people could play together on a ghetto modem.
I have "watched" Star Wars Galaxies but never played it. I thought the crafting and building a house wherever you want, plus musician professions and engineers and architects and the economy were really neat ideas. Unfortunately, the AAA MMO companies have not seen fit to adopt any of these.
I first watched and the played City of Heroes when I finally had a computer good enough to run it. City of Heroes was crazy fun but too repetitive and has a great pinpoint system for finding where you are supposed to go and getting your buddies to you is a breeze. It prolly has the lowest hurdles there. I also tried Final Fantasy Online which has tons of issues but gorgeous art and music.
And that was about the time I tried WoW and was unimpressed actually for a long time (half a year) until I tried to start a guild and then the fun really began. Once you run some of the ladder dungeons a number of times you really get into the game. I didnt think the questing system was all that amazing though, or the soloing part. There are plenty of non-MMO's I can play like Morrowind/NWN/Baldur's Gate if I wanna solo or small group forever.
I actually was excited to do the giant group raids but then I found how how elitist the difficulty level was, plus the fact that the first boss in MC is broken unless you have special add-ons (see decursive) That really turned me off to Wow's raiding paradigm. Still I loved UBRS, ran it a million times, and ZG we beat two or three bosses, and I still like raiding when its not stupid hard. (see Nintendo hard)
Now I'm playing Lotro because its free once you get a lifetime sub and they keep adding to the game at an unprecedented rate, and we ran Garth Agarwen as a kin this weekend I should prolly post about that, but anyways I have noticed that there are distinct differences between Lotro and Wow. In Lotro there is only ganking in the Ettenmoors and there you kinda expect it. The lack of gnaking means the gankers and griefers usually either hang out in the moors or seek other games. This means that the people left over are usually (80%to 90%) in a better mood than usual.
Thanks for sharing...The reason I posted about this is because I think I sometimes assume I'm the expert on games, even though I've only played a few of the ones that are out there. So I wanted to get a feel for peoples' experience.
Playing WoW for 2 years was fun, but it probably gives me a limited scope of what an MMO can be, so I'm trying a few different ones to see what else is out there.
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