YOUR MMO "CHRONOLOGY?"

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I was over at a thread in MyAnimeList where a guy was asking for some recommendations of Anime MMORPG's, and out of nowhere I just spilled out like my whole life's experience with them since I played so many. It was late at night and the post wasn't the most thought through, but it did trigger some of these reminiscent feelings.

(Post from MyAnimeList, warning it's kinda long...)


(Nostalgia incoming, just scroll down if you just want the recommendations)
I've slowed down on MMO's but I remember being into Mabinogi (as previously mentioned) and Dream of Mirror Online (DoMO)

I think Mabinogi is the better of the two but I only played when the F2P was a lot more restrictive. There were a lot of neat little details with Mabinogi, from watching your character's weight (I remember a cutscene where you literally go to heaven from eating a food that was "too good") and the combat system I think was the one I really liked out of all the F2P MMO's I played back in the day. It had a "rock-paper-scissors" type of strategy going for it. Lots of immerse stuff like that, you can even play instruments and arrange the notes in-game. I'd also recommend it's "spiritual sequel" Vindictus (originally titled Mabinogi Heroes) but only for the gameplay, as it makes a departure from the more Anime-style cell-shaded graphics. I think the AFK / pay to win stuff's always been there but it never bothered me. There's a good enough amount of content to keep occupied even on your own.

Now DoMO I'm having some trouble remembering. I do remember it had a real vibrant visual style, and a pretty unique asia-influenced setting. I'm recalling some flying mechanics like from FlyFF, and for the most part pretty standard MMO stuff. But I think I really liked the classes in that game, I played as a "dancer" which was basically like a bard / support. It's been so long, in fact just looking it up now it came to my attention that it was actually discontinued. Haha... uh... Eh, memories. The guys usually hit on the girl characters that bought all the sexy outfits from the item shop. Memories.

I think some have mentioned Grand Chase, I found that one fun as well, I think that Elsword game is the sequel to it, never got around to playing it. :P Similarly I tried Dungeon Fighter Online, but couldn't personally get into it.

From there it was hard to find games that I appealed to me. Tried Aika, looked alright graphically but something about it just felt stale I guess. Rappelz I think I liked, but I got a similar uninterested vibe from it. Tried Lunia. Nope. I heard high praise for Ragnarok, so when RO2 was released as F2P I was interested... and then immediately disinterested.

I remember also playing Trickster Online like a billion years ago. Can't remember a thing, but the aesthetics definitely there! Neat vibrant sprites in an isometric style. I don't recall how combat and skills worked in that game, something about tokens? I dunno... Looks like they're still active, but I don't know what's changed since then.

And most recently I've tried this game called Asda 2. This game I think I really like, but will probably NOT reccomend its gameplay. I found the art-style and sort of laid back writing charming for some reason, and I like that costume system where you can stack aesthetic items on top of your armor. But lately I've heard the population's dropped so yeah...

But yeah... that's my history... Recommendations: Mabinogi: Yes. Trickster: Maybe? Asda 2: I really liked it but might not recommend.

Sorry for the long post, guess I just got too reminiscent. I used to love these games but have sort of lost all time and energy to play them... kinda miss them you know? If anything this should tell you just how well Mabinogi has aged against all the other stuff I've played throughout, lots of anime MMO's out there, but as you've seen many really tend to point to good ol' Mabi as the pinnacle.

But hey, if none of this info helps you, you can always check out Steparu for all sorts of reviews and previews of foreign MMO's.

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And now look at me, about to install and try this other anime mmo called Aura Kingdom... sigh...

In any case, I was wondering if there was anyone willing to share their own "chronologies?" What games you played throughout, what impression they made on you, why you left? Were some you played discontinued? Have you been hacked before? Did you ever lose money on one? Was there one you left you wish you could revisit? Was there one you loved but can no longer seem to stomach? A lot of mmo's can feel the same, which one stood out to you immediately as you started playing? What are your views on subscriptions vs. item malls? Any friends that you made / lost through these online games? Etc.

Just keep in mind this is mainly for personal reflections and not really to debate what was the "best" mmo or anything. I'm wondering more about people's memories, good and bad. And no, this isn't limited to anime-mmo's, just whatever mmo you happened to play throughout.
I started with Ragnarok Online and even up to this point it is my favorite. I started playing during beta and played it 16 hours every day. When beta ended I was forced to stop.
I often went back to it later on. Always playing it for a year or so then quitting again (usually just got bored from always playing the same). Then coming back to it 2 years later.
Then they made the renewal update which in my opinion ruined the game. Also nowadays the management of the still existing servers is fairly bad. So I don't feel like coming back to it anymore now.

Aside from Ragnarok Online I played quite many MMORPGs. Over 100 to be exact, but many only for a week, just trying if they are good and realizing they are just generic garbage.
What bothered me most in other MMORPGs were two things:

A) They are quest based, so basically instead of just having great lore and do quests just for story reason as in RO, you were just giving an endless chain of quests that tell what you should do and often they are in a very linear manner too. I just don't like the system because it seems to ruin partying. While in RO you can pretty much party up with anyone you want within a +-10 level range, in quest-based MMORPGs you have to "coincidentally" have to do the same quest (or instance).

B) Local spawn locations. It seems Ragnarok Online is the only game that has random spawn locations meaning that if you kill a monster it will respawn somewhere random on the world instead of the same spot again and again. This makes playing fun for me. You actuall have to walk around and explore the world to find more monsters. In other MMORPGs you just get a quest to kill a monster, go to its spawn spot and then kill the endlessly respawning monster until you are done. This is very boring for me.

Anyway, some notable MMORPGs except RO I played were:

1) Maple Story. Really loved the idea of a sidescroller combined with RPG elements. It had tons of secret doors and also was based on exploration rather than questing. I enjoyed it, but back then it was incredibly grindy, so eventually you ran out of regions you could explore because the unexplored ones were all too hard and you had to grind on the same monsters for a month or so just to level up.

2) ROSE Online. While being fairly generic too, it was the first generic one I played. It had some cool features from RO, so it was basically RO in 3D for me (but still suffers from both problem A and B). I quit because the server was hacked and they did a full reset and the game was incredibly grindy so restarting wasn't an option.

3) A long time I didn't find any good MMORPG anymore, I went from game to game just to quit it after a week again. But then MMORPGs started with a new trend: Action MMORPGs. While most of them still suffering from problem A and B, at least the action combat made combat fun. Especially if there was gamepad support. The best action MMORPG is all was probably Dragon Nest for me just because of the great gameplay combined with it being purely instanced (and consequently having no local respawns). Eventually quit it because it felt more and more like it's designed to be played with 3 friends and I was mostly alone and then I got bored. There were a few other good action MMORPGs like Dragonica, but they all lacked polish.

4) Then I wondered about generic MMORPGs. So far I was mostly trying anime ones. Maybe I should try one that's considered high quality. I searched for an F2P western one that is said to be of high quality and found Allods Online. And man, that game really was polished to perfection. It suffered from quest chaining too and it had local spawns, but at least monsters took 5 minutes to respawn so you couldn't just stand in a spot. I really liked the game despite being generic, but eventually quit because monsters got too hard for soloing and because of problem A, it was impossible to find a party member. Should have started the game with a close friend.

5) Searching for unique MMORPGs I came across Dungeons & Dragons Online. Not being familiar with the DnD ruleset but generally knowing what it is I went it basically blind. But man, was this experience unique and fun. Basically you have to solve dungeons in the game and they have all the kinds of PnP feature. Traps, hidden doors, locked treasure chests, puzzles. A lot of things you usually don't see in an MMORPG. Very soon I realized this should be played with a group, so I got 3 friends and we played together with the perfect party setup. Oh man this was incredibly fun, I haven't had so much fun for a long time. We only played together so when we started a dungeon we all went in blind and that made it amazing as we all looked for secrets together. It broke apart when our rogue quit playing games. Playing with others ingame just didn't work because they already knew the dungeons and just rushed through them taking away all the fun we had. So we quit shortly afterwards.

6) The last special MMORPG I played and enjoyed so far was The Secret World. Oh man this was so unique. I always liked horror games next to RPGs so a horror-RPG hybrid is a great genre for me. While being an MMORPG the game is basically single player as everybody plays alone. Nobody will party up with you. Later on it gets quit hard solo, though. So I hit a wall just like in Allods Online where I thought I should have started it with a friend. Also when I reached the first group instance I just couldn't find any group at all, so at that point I quit it.

7) Now I'm not playing any MMORPG anymore. All released recently just look too generic to me to even bother trying them. But I have one I'm looking forward to: Tree of Savior. It's by the original creator of Ragnarok Online (who left the company fairly early when RO was still great) and it has so many amazing and unique features and an amazing 2D hand-painted background art style. Also the development team is great. They communicate a lot with fans, even in English language! They are posting weekly blog entries with a lot of information about the game. This is my most wanted right now and I probably won't play MMORPGs until it gets released.

So that's it from me. :-)
WoW private server. Good memories, sure. But one is enough to know you needn't bother to play another one.
The games are not what drives you, it's the people. And you can have fun with people without wasting as much time as is needed in MMOs. Since gaming really only starts when you've reached max lvl. And so on, yeah.

The memories are cool and I still have contact with a few guild members. Sometimes I feel like trying it again, but I know that I would not have any fun if I did.
Really neat stuff guys!

@RyaReisender

A.) Yeah I definitely have similar views on this point. I suppose some people might call it the "TES4: Oblivion effect" (though oblivion's actually still my fav TES...) It can be just so easy to ignore the story altogether and just depend on the big exclamation marks and quest markers. A lot of the ones I've played even go as far as automating your movement to the next objective with a click of a button. And I've always been too apprehensive to do the whole "lfg" stuff, haha I tended to just idle assuming someone else would have to make an invite sooner or later (which they do haha!)

But on the topic of party systems here's a funny story: I was recruited (well, more like randomly thrown into) a guild. They called themselves "Chicken." On day one we greeted each other, and ever since I didn't type a single word in their guild chat. It was at that point where I was wearing their guild title as a hat pretty much, they were all mid to end-game and I was at the bottom so it wasn't like we were going to cross paths anytime soon. But of course, I was going to need help sooner or later. So on a forum (I think it was a gaiaonline guild back when I still went there) I found a guy in late game who was willing to help me out. But of course... as me and this guy walk into the dungeon hub THE WHOLE GUILD is in there and sees me. I believe the next day I was kicked, and no longer had the "Chicken hat" haha.

B.) This one I totally agree with as well, that system always lead to headache's over KS'ing and spawn zone idling. And respawning field bosses always took out their thematic element for me, like I can't with a straight face say I "slayed the dangerous monster" when he comes back every 3-4 minutes. "Production line heroism" as I call it. The hardest thing with the story that many MMO's try to do: "You are the most unique grand hero that this land shall ever embrace... just like the 1400 other unique grand hero's walking about in the same outfit around you... take this to the grocery store for me okay?"

1.) Yeah I played MS back then as well (it's what introduced most of us to nexon, and what eventually lead me to Mabinogi) I can't really say what my opinion on it was, keep in mind this was when I was pretty much a kid and we saw those commercials for the game on TV. I guess you can say I wasn't quite "desensitized" to MMO's yet, the repetition was probably a bit too much for my young impatient mind. But I dunno, this was a lil' before I had a gamepad and controlling sidescrollers with space + ctrl just felt a little weird to me. But as you said, the restrictions of the time could have improved by now. (Can't remember how far back it was that I played... maybe before Pirates / Cygnus Knights came to NA? Eh, don't remember D: )

2. - 3.) From what I can remember I've only ever glimpsed at Rose online through steparu's channel. It's around this point where I realized just how hard it is to market these types of games. While many might be engrossing to play, they might not be the most interesting to watch through straight-up gameplay videos. I think the only time I ever got super-hyped was when they were releasing the early Vindictus promos under the "Mabinogi Heroes" moniker. (That's the last time I'm mentioning that franchise I promise haha!) As a fan of the original, seeing the shift from the cell-shaded graphics to the source engine was mind blowing, but more importantly seeing all the fluid visceral combat really drew me in. Like you said: the new trend. Following right after was the hype around that Blade and Soul game, and one other one about Kung-Fu I think... Aside from that though, I feel a lot of MMO marketing just gave me a lukewarm feeling. I think the only marketing in recent years that seemed "enticing" was that Wildstar stuff. In #7 you mention how you like what the dev team is doing, and I feel it revolves around one important step: balancing and emphasizing the game as both a product and a community.

4.) Allods I know of, I think this was around the time that there was a sort of "resurgence" with the western devs. The sort of late 2009 era I guess, people looking for potential WoW alternatives with Runes of Magic, Warhammer: Age of Reckoning, RIFT, and I guess you can say Tera (I dunno if it's entirely western but I feel the target audience was.) The only one of these I ever actually played was RoM, and not for long. I thought it was alright, I'm actually a sucker for dual-classing, but I think everyone just felt it was to susceptible to meta-builds. (I mean, why wouldn't you pick Mage / Priest?) It was before they introduced any new races, but I heard things just went downhill since then.

5.) DnD online always looked appealing to me. I don't know if you've heard of the guy but I first saw it through Ciruss Epix's "questing" show. (The guy actually got quite a following with his MMO reviews... and then this happened.) But yeah, was real interested in what they were doing for immersion, the way they had a virtual DM who narrated everything, the real-time combat and dungeon puzzles. It all looked cool, however as you may have guessed I've never been a subscription type of guy. It was around this time that a lot of companies were trying out that system and soon being forced to migrate over to f2P in the wake of... well, you know... anyway, stuff like Rift, Tera, Aion, All Points Bulletin, SWtOR (kinda), were all changing their action plan. That sort of environment was just too confusing for me at the time (I think that's when I was actually playing that aforementioned moba, but that's a different story on its own...) so I never got around to trying out DnD's free release.

6.) The Secret World is another instance where I remembered that epic cg teaser, then it fell under the radar for a long time and when it was finally released I had forgotten what it was. Not much to say here actually, never got around to it.

7.) Yeah, similar case here. Just felt too taxing to "investigate" other mmo's at the risk of being disappointing.
(Register account > Download Installer > Install Client > Update Client > Launch game > Pick server > Pick secondary pin > Create Character > Tutorial section > Play for a couple hours > Get bored > quit and uninstall > Rinse and Repeat)
I don't have any real "hype" for any mmo's. I mean, just look at the expectations for SWtOR and TES:O, I don't want to risk the grief.
Though, I guess I might be interested in Black Desert Online just so I can f*ck around with its character creator.
(Because it looks like they're trying to make the best one ever.) Other than that, I guess I'll just see how this Aura Kingdom thing goes, I don't expect to be amazed in the slightest but maybe it'll be something that can scratch the little "mmo-itch" in the back of my head haha.

Thank you so much for sharing Rya! It's always really neat to see and discuss such an expansive history!

@Kylaila

I can definitely see myself agreeing with this, as it makes sense. The only difference though between our situations was probably that WoW is generally considered the epitome of mmo's. If you played WoW, then yes in essence you have played them all. My mentality at the time was that since I couldn't pay for the WoW subscription I would have to "treasure hunt" my way to find what the WoW players were getting, thinking in only the terms of game mechanics instead of social interaction. My naivete at that point pretty much had me registering the other people playing as just more assets of the game. My favorite thing about what you said is how "it's not the games, it's the people." This really helps me reflect on what was really drawing me to these games, the fact that it was other people looking to engage in something together. Which may be why my curiosity has been sparked again, a part of me wonders if my more experienced outlook can approach MMO's differently. We'll see I guess. But yeah as you said, though it may be an extremely engaging way to have fun with others, it probably will never be the most practical.

But nonetheless, thanks for pitching in Kylaila! I'm now even more interested in what other views / experiences others may have on the matter!

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Welp, yet another wall-o-text from skaiano. If anyone else has some history they'd like to share (large or small, anything's welcome) feel free to shoot! Til' then folks!
Digimon Masters. There ends the list of MMOs I've played.
author=TheUltimateUmbreon
Digimon Masters. There ends the list of MMOs I've played.


Hey, like I said, all's welcome! :D I've only just now heard of that game, I see it's also with Aeria Games now, who I used to frequent a lot (in fact the game I'm trying now's under them as well) Anyway, was it any good?
Ratty524
The 524 is for 524 Stone Crabs
12986
I began with Runescape. Back in the late 1990s, I think this was kind of hip, except for the fact that it had some of the most dated graphics I've ever seen. Walking around and killing spiders n' stuff was fun for a bit, but I quickly grew tired of it.

Not long after, I discovered Graal Online. It was 2D, and played like a Zelda game (In fact, it was originally called Zelda Online before Nintendo filed a lawsuit against the devs), so I was sold. It was the first MMO I really became committed to, mostly because I just liked hanging around the player-made servers and having the ability to upload my own graphics to the game. After about 2-3 years of playing, however, it got pretty boring, and it's in a nearly dead state right now.

I can't remember when, but I think next comes FlyFF. It was the first MMO that I actually found fun to play, but I never really got far into it. I just don't have the attention span for grinding nowadays.

Maple Story came after that, and since I played it back when it was a major grind-fest, I wasn't impressed. I liked the 2D side-scrolling aspects, but the unrealistic hit-detection and the fact that I could only stay in one area for so long just got me sick of the darn thing.

Trickster Online comes next, and while I agree that the graphics are nice, it didn't really resonate enough for me to keep playing it.

Next comes Mabinogi, I think this one was a memory hog for my computer at the time, so I didn't play it for long. I do remember how unusually sociable and friendly the community was at the time I gave it a shot... Like, I could have made a friend at one point when someone asked me, but I turned him/her down, not realizing the type of community it had. It's a shame that the game is slowly dying at this point, not to mentioned reduced to a boring grind-quest-a-thon.

After becoming sick of RPGs, I found a Beat-em-up MMO called Rumble Fighter. Shit was pretty good, at least enough for me to stick around for a while. It did reveal how lousy I am with fighting games, though, since most higher-level players would wipe the floor with me... Or just edge me off a cliff. I quit only after trying to come back from a long break from the game and not being caught up with any of the updates.

Not long after discovering Rumble Fighter, I picked up LaTale. I really enjoyed playing this, because it did everything Maple Story did without making the beginning so balls boring, and the skills actually have better hit-detection. The community was a lot more likable, too, even in PVP, whereas the first guy I came up on in Maple Story was a bragging, trash-talking kid. I felt like the dungeons in that game also had good platforming elements, in addition to RPG stuff, that made it fun. After a while, however, the leveling pace started to slow down, and I may have been sucked into another game over this.

I think that game was League of Legends. Finally, a game that demands both coordination AND strategic thinking, and grinding to get to level 30 actually feels fun. It was also the first F2P MMO I've played that wasn't completely pay-to-win, which was awesome for someone who doesn't like getting pressured by the community to buy some cash-only item. I've been playing since season 2 and still going.
@Ratty524

Yeah I was big into Runescape back in the "RS2" phase, but as usual I just cleared out all the F2P quests and everything else just stopped because there really wasn't anything left to do. They introduced some other minigames like that Fist of Guthix thing and that Dungeoneering stuff, which was all pretty much uninteresting to me. You were allowed to max out what levels you can in F2P, but without access to all the other armors, skills, and locations there really wasn't any point at all.

Never actually heard of Graal before, though I've always been big into Link to the Past so who knows maybe I would've liked it back then.

FlyFF (which actually stands for "Fly For Fun" if I recall) was a popular title at the time I was playing MMO's. The flying mechanic was sort of the main attraction, and was kind of a new thing to see back then. It was later visited through other games like that DoMO game I mentioned and Perfect World Online I think. But it was actually kinda funny in DoMO, as I mentioned my class was a dancer. In the other games you had more practical means of flying, broom sticks and wings right? Well as a dancer in DoMO I had to ride a big fan like a surf board... it looked rather interesting haha.

Maplestory and Mabinogi I already talked about, however Trickster I'm still wondering about. I think I really was into the vibrant art style and pixel graphics, but I don't remember getting any further than the first hub town. I think I got lost, I think it was around the same time / age as when I was trying out Maplestory so it was probably lack of patience again that made quit on the spot.

Rumble Fighter I've only caught glimpses of, it looked pretty neat. Top down 3d fighters always interested me, kinda like that Power Stone / Destrega type stuff. Though personally with fighters I guess I always just liked playing them in offline settings with friends. I dunno how to describe it, I guess it just feels different to me online.

LaTale I never tried, but I always heard people describe it as doing all the things Maplestory was trying to do more efficiently. I don't have much input on this outside of a funny story with the community you mentioned; I just remember an early friend on maplestory (as in online friend, not IRL) really liked the mini Grim Reaper pet I got and wanted to get one for his own. The trouble however was that he couldn't successfully convince his dad the difference between the Nexon pre-paid cards and using a Debit Card online. The poor kid kept trying and asking me for help on it. In the end I guess I just remembered the situation as "the dad who wouldn't believe" haha.

Oooh boy... LoL... I really don't like talking about it so I guess I won't go into too much detail. That game is awesome, well designed, for the most part balanced, and demonstrated the absolute perfect way to use Real-Money Transactions in a F2P. With that said, I refuse to play it ever again. Now it's not because I don't like it, but it is for my own mental stability. I played since season 2 as well, and things began to fall off for me around the mid to late season 3. The cause for my departure? The same sin that plagues many a player: Solo Queue Normals back to back. Even worse was that I mained AP support. The initial Orianna range nerf crippled me, I was forced into "infinite Morgana." Now Morg in my opinion had super viable mechanics but lackluster statistics, every time I hit that big red Play button I felt like the catch phrase from the FarCry 3 commercial... "doing the same f*cking thing over and over again expecting sh*t to change." It was absolutely sickening, and again it's not because of bad game design. A lot of people like to point fingers at the community, hell I know I want to, but it'd be to easy too do that. What I really blame is the mentality we all seemed to adopt that every single victory was life dependent. Like losing one match, missing one cs, missing one skill shot, forgetting one ping, forgetting one face check, doing one overextension was going to make some overlying comment about us as players for every other thousands of matches we were bound to play down the line.

To wrap up, League of Legends is a good game, a great game, an excellent game. But I choose to abstain from it because I've lost all willpower to even look for any fun in it any more. And again, I do not condemn the community base, despite how much flak it gets. Where there are ailments there are legitimate steps and discussions people have made to improve them as we see with people like Gbay99 and Sky Williams. LoL members never lacked the willingness to act nice, maybe just the guidance or the rationale, which they now have available to them should they need it.

But yeah, League of Legends, that's my short version. Heh.

Anyway, thanks for stopping by Ratty and sharing your experiences! See you around!
Oh yeah, LoL. I don't rage, but it can be frustrating at times. But since I usually play aram or with a team (and I only play with people who are good player both technically and humanly), it's fine. Sometimes one or two do screw up completely (champ picks are so very important in 3 3), but hey. Whatever.

Played in Season 1, took a break after Sona was nerfed to death among other. Was back with playing Arams and now 3 3, too. 5 5 just aren't fun anymore, so that does it just fine.
Should have given Ragnarok Online a number so you comment on it too. =p


LaTale is quite nice, but it has the same problem as all MMORPGs... it's very quest heavy in a fairly linear way and has local spawns.
Also the main difference in gameplay compared to Maple Story is that in LaTale movement is server-sided, meaning that you it can't be hacked like Maple Story where you can simply move yourself into a corner along with all the monsters to hit them all with each attack. Disadvantage of that is the delay. If you press an arrow key it takes a while until your character actually starts moving. The higher your latency the worse. If you're living too far away from the servers then you can't even grab ladders while running because it won't register the "up" click fast enough.
Slightly off topic, but I checked out Aura Kingdom's steam page (I don't need to go there since I just have the client) and I found this haha:



I guess I'm sold! xD
For me, it was something like...

Ragnarok Online around... 2002ish? Mildly enjoyed it.

Maple Story around the same time as Ragnarok, maybe slightly after? I forget, but the game was new at the time. It was okay for what it was.

World of Warcraft from launch to mid Cataclysm. Really loved it, but the game became less enjoyable with each new expansion. Cataclysm was absolute ass. Community had degenerated into a bunch of gear obsessed elitist pricks, too.

Champions Online off and on since launch. I enjoyed it until I hit max level. I've stuggled to go back to it since.

Rift at launch. Just felt like WoW, and my love for WoW was already gone, so... left this game after about 2-3 months.

Secret World at launch. Good game and I loved the atmosphere, but felt that the chatting, grouping and social options were terrible and was enough to make me stop playing.

Star Wars: The Old Republic at launch. Got bored with the game being little more than WoW in space, stopped playing. Someone wanted to try it with me last winter, so I went back for about another month or two.

Forsaken World on Steam. Absolutely terrible game. Just wanted to be WoW.

Marvel Heroes since launch last year. Absolutely love this game. Big action RPG fan, and big Marvel fan. Match made in heaven for me. I don't play it all the time, but I do have spurts where I'll play it every single day just because I love how the game feels. Spiritual successor to Diablo 2, totally.

Elder Scrolls Online for like two weeks at launch. Just a generic MMO with a TES coat of paint. Everyone I played it with gave up on it and that sort of killed any interest I had in it.

TERA over the winter with a friend. I didn't really care for it much at all. It had that glossy Asian MMO sheen that I don't like. Felt too much like an Asian WoW with slightly better combat. Seriously, the combat in this game was horribly overhyped even by its fanbase. The menus and UI were both absolute shit, too.

Guild Wars 2 from launch up until probably March or April this year. I just got bored with it. Outside of the hugely popular PvP that I don't like, you can really only level alts. That's only fun for so long. Overall an awesome game, but a lack of focus made it feel pretty stale in the long run.

Star Trek Online earlier this year. I really enjoyed it, but I haven't played it in weeks now. It's kind of tedious and away missions are SO BORING. Space battles are really fun though.

There are probably several others I've played, but I guess that they didn't appear to leave a lasting impression if I can't remember them at the moment. I have NEVER played Runescape or the Final Fantasy MMOs. I think that's a rarity among MMO players, isn't it?
author=UPRC
I have NEVER played Runescape or the Final Fantasy MMOs. I think that's a rarity among MMO players, isn't it?


Nah I'd say that's understandable. Those games were popular but not something one might call mandatory in your "MMO library" haha, there would be very little incentive to play either since you already playing WoW. Runescape only got real popular because it was generally free and just ran on the browser. It was something you didn't have to wait to go home for since you could just play it at school or at the local library. With the FF MMO's, the only standout was probably with FF-XI, no one really liked the initial FF-XIV and I haven't really looked into much of a consensus on Realm Reborn. To sum up: Runescape was extremely behind in all departments next to WoW because of it's technical limitations, and the only good Final Fantasy MMO at the time was growing older while WoW just gets expansion after expansion.

Thanks for sharing UPRC! Pretty neat list, I almost forgot there was a Star Trek MMO. But you also mentioned SW:tOR. This reminds of that stuff I was talking about with marketing, because I just remembered the absolute intense (and most likely misplaced) hype that those CG trailers got for the game. This is a scenario where the marketing is like "too successful," the whole biting off more hype than they could chew thing. There were a lot of people who were actually more eager to see more of the CG animations than the actual game itself.
author=RyaReisender
Should have given Ragnarok Online a number so you comment on it too. =p


Never played RO1, only heard the high praise for it. (What was the payment plan for that game again? I'm pretty sure it wasn't F2P which is probably why I didn't have access to it.) I think that Trickster Online game I mentioned was trying really hard to be Ragnarok, but I wouldn't have been able to tell. I think I mentioned earlier that out of interest from what I heard of RO1, I chose to try out RO2 when I saw it on steam and then... ugggghhhhh

I don't know exactly what turned me off so much from that game because as you guys know by now I've played a lot of stuff that Aeria chooses to publish... but I dunno... there was a uniqueness of RO1 that I kept hearing about that I was absolutely NOT getting by RO2. And the visual style really hurt my head too, I understand they were trying to recreate the color palette from RO1 but all that freaking HDR lighting on that vast amount of green was hard to look at. It was like someone put an instagram filter on my screen then turned up the gamma haha. From what I recall there was gripes I had with the interfacing too but whatever, point is I did not stay long at all with that game.

Who knows? I could be wrong, if anyone has some more informed thoughts on RO2 please free to share, it was just that the first impression I got from it was a *severe* turn-off.
The only MMOs I've played are:

Guild Wars
Played for about 20 mins before the grind got to me. I had no interest in PvP and little interest in joining up with other people.

Star Wars: The Old Republic
holbert bought this for me so that he'd have another Dad to play with right around the launch of v1.2. This is the first MMO I really played, and I have sunk a lot of hours in it. In a lot of ways it is less fun and more restrictive than KOTOR 1 and 2 (which I LOVE), but in other ways it is more enjoyable (like combat). The game tells me I've sunk over 336 hours into it. I only have 2 lvl 55 chars. I haven't tried the PvP yet (like I said, PvP is not my bag), and I haven't done an operation/raid yet (impossible to schedule these with 2 kids and wife), so most of the time I level alts. Which is great because the storylines and voice acting for the 8 classes is the best part of the game. I have sunk probably over $200 into this game over the years, too. You guys should come join us (holbert, Deckiller and I) on the Shadowlands server. Deckiller is all hardcore and PVP and whatever, but holbert and I are laid back and casual. It's a game you can effectively play with 1 hand while your other hand cradles a babby to sleep. (this is a big contributing factor as to why I've logged so many hours)

Diablo 3
This game just wasn't fun. Oh wait, this isn't officially an MMO? Fooled me!

I've got WoW on my shelf for my birthday about 7 years ago, but still haven't installed it. I tried Guild Wars 2 but the lack of voice acting was really jarring after playing SWTOR for so long, and the systems confused me.



And that's the extent of my MMO experience.
@kentona

Though I wouldn't call it an MMO I do remember lots of talk that Diablo 3 was in a real sticky situation. Even past all that DRM nonsense, the gameplay wasn't compelling and with that auction house it was like why was gameplay even necessary? I've heard the Reaper of Souls thing was trying to address some of that stuff, but I haven't looked into it. There were good alternatives though, Torchlight 2 scratches that ARPG itch pretty well coming from the former Blizzard North guys who made the original Diablo titles. And I heard that Path of Exile game (which is an mmo) was getting some pretty darn good reception. The former was $20 and the latter was free, in terms of features and pricing the alternatives could easily be more appealing (and probably are).
Diablo II was incredibly good. Diablo III I test-played, but it's just ... not that good. No real catch. Nothing.
RO2 is a horrible game. Except for the name it has nothing to do with RO1, y'know. The game designer left the company a long time ago and made Granado Espada and is now working on Tree of Savior. And the development team left Gravity after RO2-1 (there are actually two Ragnarok Online 2, the first one was really unique but didn't attract enough players, so Gravity cancelled it and instead made a super generic game RO2-2 aka Legend of the Second; the development team didn't really agree with making a generic MMORPG to make money so they left the company) to make Lime Odyssey (which was amazing but also died before even getting to beta).

It's unfortunate but I think you can't experience the great RO1 anymore. You could go for the classic server on iRO but it's 90% bots on there.
@Kylaila
Yeah, Diablo 2 is what every ARPG to this day wishes it was. Will it ever be "surpassed?" Who knows? xD
@RyaReisender (I was actually gonna stop doing this "@" stuff but you posted at the exacted same time I did haha)

To be fair, my disappointment with RO2 wasn't really based entirely on RO1's praise. As I've mentioned, it was more from a mixture of the game having a name of an acclaimed title, and the trust I had developed with the Aeria guys for publishing stuff I was into. (And also RO2 went full F2P which was another factor that drew me I think.)

Speaking of which, Lime Odyssey I actually knew of and was actually hyped for, had no idea the RO1 team was involved. It was allegedly gonna go into western CBT... but I guess it broke down overseas before that happened... which is bizarre because you can still sign up for western CBT... it's like they're doing the "cannot confirm nor deny" fiasco, all their network stuff is still active just silent...
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