Reccomend me an MMORPG

Ok so i've got about as much out of my current MMO as i can and i'm looking for a new one. I was thinking of either World of Warcraft or Star Wars: Galaxies.

World of Warcraft

People i've talked to seem to like it but i've heard there is a lot of down time.

Star Wars: Galaxies

It's Star Wars. However i've heard the game play has recently been changed so it's crap and also SOE are idiots (banning people because some exploiters gave them fake cash).

Anyone played either of these and got some feedback? Or play another which is good?

I haven't played either, but have herd good things about World of Warcraft. If you havn't played Final Fantasy XI that looks awesome too.

Guild Wars- buy the game but play free online.
Rose Online- currently in beta form, from the makers of Ragnarok.
Ragnarok- pay but tons of private servers to paly free on.
Phantasy Star Online- still in beta from but i heard its nearing the end of the beta so probaly pay soon.
Knight Online- no so sure whether this is pay or free anymore.
Maple Story- 2d style MMORPG
Conquer Online- free
Kal Online- free
Mu Online- free
Xiah- free
Priston Tales- free till lv 39
World of Warcraft- pay

And plenty more. Out of all of these and if your willing to pay, definitely World of Warcraft, an excellent MMORPG or if you want to play something that is also good and free online i suggest Guild Wars or try any others in my list that are mostly free.

You have to pay if you want a decent MMORPG. But then, you probably knew that.

Yeah my current one is p2p (City of Heroes).

I've completely gone off WoW, its extremely repetitive, there is downtime, the support is attrocious and there is a high ratio of immature players there who'll constantly spam the general chat window. Play it for a month, maybe two but after that you'll wonder why you spent so much money on it.

Yeah, Gastrian's right about WoW. It's a great game, but there are disadvantages that really grate after a while. The actual reason I've stopped, however, is thatthe game locks up every three days and refuses to work, foring me to reinstall, which is a three-hour task. The tech support is atrocious, as well, and the in game GMs are slow as hell. I send off a complaint and two days later I get a reply saying "sorry I didn't get to you soon enough to be of help and to actually justify my pathetic paycheque", shortly before the game crashes and insists that it's better that I just pay for it without playing it.

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/starwarsgalaxiesrageofthewookiees/review.html?q=1&tag=gs_hp_flashtop_read

Gamespot just reviewed Star Wars Galaxies: Episode III Rage of the Wookiees, seems like it has improved a bit, so could give that a look in.

Is Guild Wars any good? I can't really afford/have enough time to pay monthly for an MMORPG, so it's the only game I've been interested in. If it's a bit crap, I won't bother.

Hmm i've played a few MMORPGS in my time.... and because it is not split screen multiplayer fun .. but rather an online experience with total strangers that will make you more anti-social (sound familiar? hehe)

I would say I like Star Wars Galaxies the most. Before I explain why let me tell you some of the other MMORPGs i have played and why I didn't like it..

FFXI - slow game experience at the beginning.. if you are not "1337" you can't really do anything fun..and its pretty monotonous.. pretty much get a group... slash some enemies get xp and level up.. There are some pretty cool classes though such as Summoner and all that but i heard they are nerfed for the US versions, don't ask me why I never got that far cos the game wasn't really fun for me..

Matrix Online - Sigh.. cool premise, but sadly shallow gameplay f or now.. most missions consist of destroy/deliver type missions..

EQ2 - Great graphics(though you would require a monster system to really see it shine).. average gameplay which is again pretty straight forward and it sucks early on because everybody basically has the same armor and cloaks andd equipment..(hand me downs from quest givers)

WoW - One of the better ones, graphics are not really high end but they mask it well with good colors and all that.. has some elements similar to Diablo where rewards are typically some elite loot that you get.. NUMEROUS and I mean really really tonnes of quests.. but as some has said..once u get past level 40 and save enough to get ur mount... there is not much fun after that.. there IS a super mount that costs 999g though so that could be a target for some.. I am stil playing it although its not my favourite but its a nice game to get into with all the myriad classes and professions u can get into

Finally, my favorite, Star Wars Galaxies... this game is very different then most MMORPGs in that which u do not really pick a starting profession but rather you can choose waht you want to be as you see fit..

Ther are too many professions for me to name here but just to name a few Commando, Bounty Hunter, Pistoleer, Carbineer, Rifleman, Combat Medic, Droid Engineer, Teras Kasi Master(thats a melee class) , Swordsman, Pikeman, Fencer, Jedi(yes! but must be unlocked) and a few crafting professions that specialize in making weapons,vehicles, armor and other stuff..

The thing about this game is that I can choose to lets say to become a Master Bouny Hunter but i could specialize in another skill such as Pistoleer or Rifleman to add to my current abilities usually granting extra damage and defense capabilities.

Another thing I like about SWG is that (although sometimes broken) the economy of the game is entirely player controlled.. you can't buy weapons from NPC vendors because there are none! Everything in-game are crafted by vendors, including houses! Basically if you choose to become a crafter u'll have to gather/buy resources and then get the best and make a schematic of an item which you will mass produce using a factory, needless to say if you are good you will make millions of credits hehe..

The reason why so many people complain about the recent upgrade to the combat system is that now characters aren't INVINCIBLE anymore.. pre-CU(combat upgrade) players with good template could basically solo an army of stuff if they are good(well their template is good and i am one of em) but after the CU combat is now more specialized where different templates will have different rroles in combat.. an example, with my current template i'm an excellent tank and damage dealer(Master Swordsman/Teras Kasi) but I probably wouldn't do well if i was surrounded by a large group.. at this point ranged attackers and healers (Medics) would be essential..

Also, don't forget the space portion of the game where combat is twitch-based(meaning where you actually have to fly well to stand a chance) You can fly the whole range of tie fighters plus some expandded universe ones, rebel fighters , the MIl Falcon, Jedi Starfighter and it is currently in development.. capital ships (though not finalized yet)

As for the path to Jedi.. well you would have to play the game to find out hehe
Here are some pics(Click for full size- should open new window) :

First we have the fast BARC Speeder

Here is the Ship of the General of the Droid Army!!(modified a bit with custom kick-ass engines)

The Jedi Starfighter with Custom Markings:

The Jedi Starfighter Cockpit: (notice the different droid head hehe i changed to a different colored R2 to match my ship)

The Multiplayer 3 man ship ARC-170 :

ARC-170 Cockpit looking at an ally's Pirate ship:

And my toon in full Clone Armor:

note that this are all in-game screenshots, i just hid the HUD to take a better picture.. also i am running the game in medium settings

Also yes some of the SOE CSRs are idiots and i've encountered quite a few but occassionally you meet a useful one (semi-rare hehe)

Ok I've talked too much about this game, ppl might think i am a fanboy heheh.. i prob am(points at sig)

< Edited by tnsai on 2005/6/9 11:46 >

< Edited by tnsai on 2005/6/9 11:49 >

< Edited by tnsai on 2005/6/9 11:51 >

Guild wars is ment to be good some say better than FF11 and its only about

I heard guild wars is free but if you want new quests or new content thats the only time when u pay, sounds like a good deal

Hmmm, i also heard Guild wars is good, and with no monthly chrages, its all good

World of Wacraft doesn't look good...especially the graphics. However Guild wars looks awsome gameplay and graphics wise and free to play online

World of Warcraft can get pretty boring at some times, but I still enjoy playing it with my friends and clan.

I have beta-tested Guild Wars and I must say its pretty good, though it doesnt beat WoW (maybe thats why you dont pay monthly for it)

Cant say anything about the other games since I havent tried them.
Though if I were you, id get Final Fantasy XI since im a FF fan. Plus I love ninjas. I dont think id pay monthly for it though.

Ok if anybody cares City of Heroes are now offering 14 day free trials to anyone with an email address. If anybody does this i play on the Justice server. LINKY

Well, i'll be the WoW supporter here.

I'm unaware of what Downtime you're all talking about, so far i've played for about 6 months on the US servers and going on 2 for the European servers and none of the servers I chose have faced any serious downtime since the first couple of months in the US where were compensated with free play time. My European server "Sunstrider" only goes down for maintenance. Blizzard continually add more content, new Instances, new class sets, battlegrounds, an honor system, rank specific items, heaps of stuff.

WoW is fun IF you have a group of friends to play with. They make the grind more fun and the quests really easy.

Battlegrounds is amazing, especially Alterac. I've seen it played and it's epic. Warsong Gultch is a little different. It's basically capture the flag. You get put into level groups 21-30, 31-40, 41-50, 51-60 and fight it out to capture the enemies flag 3 times before they capture yours. Basic CTF rules apply, your flag has to be on its peadastal for you to score a point.

You can turn off the General channel also, along with the Yell chat, so that shouldn't be a deciding factor. Still Gastrian has a point, Lamers are abundant. From Ganking to thinking they know everything about Battlegrounds i've met some moronic people in my time in WoW, but having a close group of friends that you can do everything with is really great.

The graphics are specialized, they were created to mimic Warcraft 3's cartoony graphics. The graphics shouldn't be scoffed at lightly though, walking through some of the forests in the game is quite amazing. The particle effects are quite nice also.

Lamer ganking is still abundant after the inclusion of Battlegrounds and the honor system, so be carefull when choosing your server. Make SURE you know what you're getting yourself into if you still want a PvP server, cause it can completely destroy the game for you.

There is a fair bit to do, quests are everywhere, nearly every person that isn't a town guard or service provider (blacksmith, armoursmith) gives you a quest. Once you hit level 60 and are waiting for your Hero Classes (*drool*Demon Hunter*drool*) There's always battlegrounds, or collecting your High level sets which takes forever and when you finally collect it chances are Blizzard are going to release a better set for your class :-p.

They have continued the Warcraft story very well with World of Warcraft, and have left many opertunites open to continue the story, what with the manual saying that both Illidan and Arthas are alive, plotting somewhere in their respective bases.

My experience with others is quite limited to Guild Wars and some other Korean MMO's that aren't really worth playing.

First up, Guild Wars IS NOT an MMORPG, it's a normal RPG with a visual lobby where you can buy items and talk to other players, towns. When actually killing monsters and questing only your group is ported to an isolated area, away from other players, difficulty of these areas is scaled to the level of your party. This is good and bad. Good because you don't have any Ninja looters or mob stealers, bad because the chance of running into someone that can help you with quests is pretty much 0%.

Where Guild Wars excelles is it's awesome Guild Based content. Castle seiges and the like is what i'm talking about. The character class system is quite different to other MMO's. You get to choose 2 character classes, 1 primary and 1 secondary. The primary chooses your look for the class and also your stats, the secondary just gives you extra spells.

Ragnarok: Fun, but no quests at all, so this game is only a grind. That's all there is to do, unless you choose a merchant and then you can sell stuff. Character costimization is limited to head pieces. Class system is different again, you start as a Novice, then you choose your base class, then you get two options to upgrade that base class later on, they continually add more classes up the tree. You can also participate in guild wars.

Lineage II: A beauitful game, absolutely stunning, the graphics are amazing. However, the quests are quite few. They do have a guild wars system, limited to castle sieges. You have to take a castle and protect it from attacks each week, and if you're a leader of a guild you can take a quest to own a wyvern pet that can grow and fly you everwhere. It has an entertaining pet system as well. Quite a fun game. But it has open PvP so expect to get ganked. The game is ever upgrading, it progresses through different chapters of the game, they are currently at chapter 2. This changes the story, quests and purpose of playing so it stays fresh.

Still Lineage wasn't all that fun and didn't urge me to play more and more like what WoW does for me.

My 2cents, hope it helped.

Dark_Ghost wrote: Guild Wars- buy the game but play free online.
Rose Online- currently in beta form, from the makers of Ragnarok.
Ragnarok- pay but tons of private servers to paly free on.
Phantasy Star Online- still in beta from but i heard its nearing the end of the beta so probaly pay soon.
.

< Edited by evil_flame on 2005/6/19 3:30 >

So Arkyris, what do you think about Blizzard's back-tracking over the whole "English only in general chat" and "Un-official language servers" issues?

Honestly, I don't. This is the first i've ever heard about it. As I said, I was playing the US version for long before I bought the European version (on the request of a friend) and when I jumped into the Euro version it wasn't a problem, at least not in Sunstrider. I haven't seen anything about it while reading the forums either. So i'm not in the best position to comment on Blizzard's actions.

There's been a huge fuss in the European forums.

As you probably know there's three server languages. English, German and French. On anything put the private channels you are only allowed to speak that servers main language: French for the French servers, German for the german ervers and English on the standard servers.

On the French and German servers these rules are enforced, on the English servers they aren't so you'd have a foreign speaking minority spamming general chat purely because they knew they could get away with it. Complaints on the forums and in the game itself were ignored. A few weeks before the official release it was noted that a few fan sites had decided to make "Official" language servers, where-by they told all people speaking that language, most notably the Spanish, to all go on one particular server and basically inavde it. In these servers General chat was flooded with that language and anyone asking them to stop, even politely was met with abuse. There were quite a few arguments in the forum and the english speaking players were in the right as it was in Blizzard's own EULA, the mods going as far as to point it out but still no action was taken.

Recently Blizzard has taken action, and for the English speaking servers has now stated that what was said in the EULA was "merely a guideline" and that it won't be enforced, and the've left it at that. There are about four or five English servers which have become "official" foreign language servers yet Blizzrd won't enforce their own EULA and don't even have the decency to re-lable the servers to say which ones don't have english as a prefered language. Because of this the language issue has got worse as the majority of decent players who respected the rules and spoke English instead of their own language are now speaking their own language on servers labelled as English. English speaking players are being booted from guilds and parties because they don't speak a non-english language more often than before.

It just shows Blizzard's concern of not punishing and possibly losing paying customers over providing a good playing experience

I see a few issues here.

First up, Blizzard have the right to change their EULA at will, it's one of their rules, so they don't HAVE to follow it, so I wont hold that against them. They should probably add that to the EULA though, so people aren't given the wrong idea about their play expereience.

Personally, I think that the only speaking English rule is quite rediculous to begin with. Though, Blizzard can't do anything now, or they ostracise a group. If they enfoce the rules then the Non-English speakers will get upset, if they don't then the English speakers get upset. Both of which will have high level characters and don't want to start again on another server. To dedicate servers after people have started playing will just create more problems for Blizzard.

There are much larger things Blizzard have promised and haven't delivered. The dishonor system being one of them. This is in my opinion, a rather minor issue, that only effects the European servers. WoW has bigger issues as a whole that it has to deal with. There is a constant flow of updates that have to be delivered, server maintenance and stability have to be controlled, and they are STILL looking for GM's for the European servers.

It was a lose-lose situation for Blizzard caused by fansites.

It doesn't effect my play experience, though. So I still don't have a strong opinion about it one way or the other. Blizzard have delivered a constantly enjoyable play experience for me.

It does affect your playing experience if you were on one of these "official" servers.

Blizzard have created new servers fully knowing the problem, they had a chance to make these servers language specific, they didn't.

Blizzard gave people a chance to move to servers to reduce load, after putting in their prefered language they were being suggested to move to servers Blizzard knew were "official" servers that wouldn't support their language.

Blizzard had the option of either telling these sites that they were breaking the EULA and to take down any information regarding the creation of these "official" servers or they could've worked with them and supplied a true official server for them to go to.

This wasn't a lose-lose situation caused by fansites, it was a losing situation created by Blizzard.

Wow is the only one I recommend. I only play it once every few days so I never really get bored and I still level pretty well due to the double experience
It's kinda anoying when you join a party only to have everyone in it speaking sweedish, but that's the only down side I can think of

You could try adventure quest though i don't like it (its free but you can upgrade your account)

It does affect your playing experience if you were on one of these "official" servers.

Blizzard have created new servers fully knowing the problem, they had a chance to make these servers language specific, they didn't.

Blizzard gave people a chance to move to servers to reduce load, after putting in their prefered language they were being suggested to move to servers Blizzard knew were "official" servers that wouldn't support their language.

In the second case it could help with the situation, with a large influx of English speaking players then the non-english speaking players would be flooded with English chat and either conform or have a painful time communicating.

Blizzard had the option of either telling these sites that they were breaking the EULA and to take down any information regarding the creation of these "official" servers or they could've worked with them and supplied a true official server for them to go to.

Blizzard had no legal standing to stop these people from announcing that they would forcably take control of the General chat in the servers.

This wasn't a lose-lose situation caused by fansites, it was a losing situation created by Blizzard.

I would add that if any of the English speaking players took abuse then they should have taken screenshots and posted to Blizzard's Harrasment group, Blizzard take harrasment very seriously and these players face possible banning.