I played WoW a bit after its initial release through the first couple xpacs. Getting the MMO itch again, but I know the WoW I grew up with doesn’t really exist anymore, so now I’m pretty out of touch.
For those of you playing / recently played an MMO, which one? How’s the community? How’s the lore? Gameplay in pve/pvp/rvr?
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GW2 for the past 11 years, except for a stretch where I played ESO for a few months.
Community’s mostly great. Cooperation between players is strongly fostered by the game’s design (no kill or resource stealing, no competing for drops, etc), so players tend to get along in almost every PvE situation.
Lore is good, but not nearly as expanded upon as Warcraft’s.
Gameplay is what makes it IMO. Skill effects and some gear skins can be a bit obnoxious, especially when you’re in large groups for open world and World vs World, but it’s still enjoyable. Don’t play normal PvP, so can’t comment on that.
This fucked up pay to win one called “Life”. Shit is hard as hell and I don’t think the devs even care about balance.
Oh my god don’t even get me started on this game.
Get this, you know how over time you get fatigue points and can only get rid of them by eating food items you’ve precious gathered? Well, when doing this one day last week my character nearly fucking died because of some race condition glitch where mid-swallow they tried to breathe for some unknown reason and because the devs, in their infinite fucking wisdom, decided that while there are two completely separate and incompatible systems for food and air, they must accessed via the same hole, but clearly not at the same time!
The mind boggles, I hope someone was fired for that blunder.
Not that hard: Iddqd, idkfa and you’re set
The ones I’ve been playing on and off over the past few years are Guild Wars 2 and Lord of the Rings Online.
GW2 is a really nice game to just pick up and play without needing huge time investments. It has a fun gameplay loop and well designed zones to explore. Haven’t gotten around to playing the new expansion yet, but I hear it’s pretty good.
LOTRO is great for that traditional MMO experience. The community is very friendly and surprisingly active. It has a nice atmosphere. They are also frequently giving away the expansion packs, so you get a lot of content for free.
I started with MMOs back in the MUD days, both on dial up BBSs and (eventually) on university servers. I will always remember the sysop who walked me through signing up for his BBS MUD while I was giving responses like “y” and “go north” because I thought he was just an infocom game and not an actual person. Twelve year old me was so embarrassed that I never went back. If you’re out there, sysop, or if you’re just someone who has tried their best to support online communities despite the best intentions of absolute idiots, I salute you.
I played EverQuest since it came out, stupidly choosing a ranger and studying fletching all very badly because I didn’t know about gaming the game mechanics and had read too many fantasy novels. I played a lot, mostly by myself, and didn’t get too far. I also tried EQ2 when it came out, and when Diablo 2 released I decided to experiment with gaming the trading market.
I was an early WoW adopter. I played through the level caps two or three times. I joined a more serious raiding guild when I hit 60 (instead of my old rpg guild) and cornered the market on cotton a couple of weeks in a row here and there. I eventually fell out of it - end game content turned into feeling like a job, where you had to study and rehearse in order to get past bosses, your loot dropping was like a 1 in 20 chance, and if you screwed up a single person could cause a group wipe. Honestly, it just got boring compared to being a level 8 warlock wandering around.
What is keeping me from trying new ones is that there’s a massive disadvantage in starting an MMO that’s already been going on for years and years. You can fire up Skyrim for the very first time this afternoon, and have the exact same experience (honestly, a much improved one) as if you fired it up on launch day. I can launch Baldur or Disco or Stray and just not have to worry about getting ganked other than what was already intended by the devs. There was a time in EverQuest where another player challenged me to 1v1 and finally talked me into trying it, then proceeded to beat the living shit out of me but then bandage me right before I died. He kept on doing it until I disconnected. As funny as that was in retrospect, it’s also a problem with MMOs in general.
I would love for there to be a new WoW - something that restored the magic of the game when you could solo or group up and both explore the world and feel progress. I’m still waiting.
I’ve gone to playing Project 1999, an OG EverQuest emulator server.
It’s only up to velious and it’s as close to how the game was back then as you can get.
I don’t recommend it to people who never played EQ back in the day - games have changed far too much for this ancient game to be fun for most people who don’t have nostalgia for that era of gaming.
But sounds like you might, so I thought I’d suggest it to you.
I’ve been playing Final Fantasy 14 for about 3 years now and got my partner into it a year ago, we both highly recommend it even if it’s just to experience the main story.
The community tends to be pretty active, there’s a lot of roleplay as well as end-game raiders. The lore is the biggest reason to play imo, it’s a hundreds of hours long adventure that has made me laugh, cry, and feel genuine empathy for some of the characters I’ve met. PvP exists but it’s not super competitive. PvE on the other hand is split into dungeons, trials, and raids. Dungeons are classic MMO dungeons with trash mobs and a couple bosses, trials are just a big boss, and raid tiers are 4 separate boss fights with the last one having a 2nd phase. There’s also different difficulties of content, but you do the normal version first during the main story or side quests.
This post spurred me to see if Rift were still a thing; apparently it is! I got in quite early when it was still unfinished and played it well after launch. They ended up doing a pretty big overhaul at some point and that’s roughly when I got out as I didn’t want to have to figure things out again. I may pick it back up. I have no idea what the playerbase (or the actual game these days) is like, though.
The only mmo’s I ever really spent any significant time with were FFXI (on dial up for most of the time I spent with it so my experience wasn’t great) and GW2. not mentioning eve… we dont talk about that…
There was a free MMORPG called Planeshift (I played quite a lot in 2005 or so, it’s still around and being actively worked on) that was very elder scrolls inspired, I put a lot of time into in the past too but being a small free amateur project it didn’t have a lot of players.
I just don’t have the time or motivation to give modern MMOs the attention they really need to make progress, and I was very much a solo player at the time so progress was slow and hard.
I think if I was to pick up a new one it would be FF14, it has a balance of open gameplay and story which a lot of mmos ignore, it seems like a good community but as with all mmos they really dont want you to just drop in a play a couple of hours every second weekend, they want you to get in daily and stick to a routine, which I just cant commit to these days.
FF14 is actually a lot more forgiving of that more casual gameplay style. It’s very easy to gear up after a break for anything outside of Savage and Ultimate raiding (and even then, you can buy or craft the week 1 gear if you want to get into Savage), the dungeon roulette system makes it so it’s generally always possible to find people to complete content with, even if it’s older, and unless you want to get into housing there’s not really any penalty for say subbing for one month, taking a break afterwards and then coming back when you have time to play, outside of missing out on seasonal events (and generally any exclusives you get from those events get put on the cash shop the following year).
Also, FFXI player here as well, the ability for that game to run on low speed connections was frankly impressive for the time. I remember playing it using an infrared GPRS data connection on my laptop 😂 Sure it lagged a bit in city areas but the fact that it was still playable was a feat.
All of them. If it exists I’m on there.
I usually play Guild Wars 2, but at the moment I’m trying out World of Warcraft: Classic Hardcore. It’s quite fun and challenging.
WoW: Seasons of Discovery has also peaked my interest. I hope it has potential to become WoW: Classic+.
World of Warcraft Retail … still.
Currently winning at EVE Online.
You can play Classic (Vanilla) WoW officially and you can play Wrath of the Lich King. Next will be Cataclysm. So the old WoW still exist in some way.
Check out FF14. Great free trial option. Community is overwhelmingly good (though none is perfect). PvE is pretty damn good, especially once you get to late/end game. PvP is not the best (IMO) but it is very active if you do like it. Has a couple different modes including a 5v5 push the objective mode and a 24v24v24 objective capture mode. No RvR.
Kinda boring/typical MMO at first, but really picks up. With the free trial can play the base game and first two expansions for free, plus get the jobs (classes) from those (most of the ones in the game) up to level 70. Including crafting/gathering jobs. Can easily spend 1000+ hours just on the free trial if you choose to maximize it, but the expansions and sub are worth it IMO. And unlike WOW you van access all those classes on one character and switch with the press of a few buttons.
And the next expansion is summer of next year, so you do have time to catch up if you decide you want to get into it.
It’s still in pre-alpha, but I’ve been playing a lot of Veloren.
I’d recommend watching Josh Strife Heyes videos on MMOs, but if you want an overview, the biggest ones are WoW, FFXIV, and Guild Wars 2. I’d recommend the latter.
