MMORPGs

Supposedly the Online Equivalent to Crack

Published on June 14, 2004 By messybuu In Misc Games

Recently, I purchased Final Fantasy XI, an MMORPG, for the PC and the Playstation 2. I enjoy it, despite having to pay thirteen dollars each month to play it. I also purchased Everquest, so now I have two MMORPGs to play and twenty-six dollars to spend to play them each month!

There are many more MMORPGs out there, and I'd like to try them all, but sadly, seeing as I have no job, I will not be enough to pay for many more MMORPGs. Still, is there an MMORPG out there that I definitely need to play? I'd like to try Star Wars Galaxies and RAGNAROK ONLINE, but I don't think I'll have enough time to play them all regularly without some severe sacrifices. I know I won't be able to play FFXI or EQ more than twenty hours each day, which isn't much, compared to the two hundred hours I could be playing them.

I'm wondering how many of you out there play them. If so, which ones do you play? And what do you all think is the best MMORPG out there?

After playing only a few hours of each game, I have to say that I prefer FFXI. Besides a superior interface, it is also much more simplistic, which I find to be a good thing, because I hate to have to manually loot monsters and I hate having to feed my characters. The characters also don't have weird faces on FFXI. Still, EQ's a fun game. Hopefully I'll be able to have a social life and an online life!

Comments (Page 2)

messybuu

on Jun 16, 2004

I was talking to my brother about the MMORPGs I was trying, and he said there should be a ninja one, kind of like Tenchu. I can't help but agree with him, especially if it was a game made by Team Ninja (with ninja babes!).

JeremyG

on Jun 16, 2004

Keep your eye out for Tabnula Rasa due out in November 2004. The best kept secret in the industry.

Richard Garriot will, once again change the face of gaming.

bakerstreet

on Jun 16, 2004

Jeremy: I've read a bit about Tabula Rasa, but it didn't seem all that different to me. Have a link to an article that points things out? The only thing the one I read said that you could travel quickly around the world,etc., which has been an aspect ot everquest since around 2001.

Would love to hear more about it though, sounds intriguing.

JeremyG

on Jun 16, 2004

Thats the thing backer street....no one knows EXACTLy what will be in the game. Thats one thing that makes it VERY different.

I read an article a while back that alluded to the fact that the game has it's own "language" which allows players from different nations to communicate effectively and not have all the 13yr old trash talk.

messybuu

on Jun 16, 2004

That's why I don't like Phantasy Star Online as an "online" game. There's too many cheaters, that there's really no point in playing the game online.
I haven't met any bad apples yet, but I don't play as often as I could. Well, there were times that a conflict was afoot in FFXI and people were being annoying, but most people seem to be into the whole RPing gig.
As for more MMORPGs, I've decided to stick with the two I already have. Most of the games seem pretty similar, and I'd like to save some of my time and money. However, that might all change when WoW, TR, and EQ2 are released.

Mr Samsa

on Jun 16, 2004

I played text muds on a local bbs back in the day when a 9600 baud modem was bleeding edge technology. I played NWN on AOL, and Shadows of Yserbius on the Sierra network. Read about UO, but never got to play it. Picked up EQ shortly after the first expansion came out. I played between 2 and 3 years, and have since played pretty much every other MMO out there. Nowadays I spend most of my time betatesting games. Personally, I still think EQ is the best of all the games I played, though that may just be because it was the first 3d MMO I'd played.

Most of the MMOs out now offer a free trial for 7 or 15 days. I would suggest trying out the trial before buying any game, as it will give you a basic feel for the game, though truthfully many are fun in the beginning only to peter out halfway.

Splateaux

on Jun 22, 2004

My wife and I play a LOT of DAoC (Dark Age of Camelot). We love it obviously

We've play most other MMORPGs out there at one point or another, but keep coming back to DAoC. We've played EQ, City of Heroes, Final Fantasy XI, Asheron's Call 2, Starwars Galaxies, and I've even playing Ultima Online.

Someone above mentioned that DAoC is a good game if you're into Player vs. Player games, but that's only a part of it. While yes, there is a purely PvP server just like there is for most other games, DAoC did something really different for it's normal servers.... especially with the JUST released New Frontiers expansion. It'll all about your "realm" versus the other "realms". On normal servers, you don't even refer to it as PvP, it's RvR. It's all about taking keeps, forming raids to take relics (like Thor's Hammer) from the other realms, which provides a bonus to all those in your realm. Or you can, as many people do, just purely do PvE (go fight monsters) like you do in games like Everquest. The world is pretty huge now, and with the ability to play in three different and unique realms, it's like playing a whole new game when you decide to make some Hibernian characters instead of Midgardian or Albion characters. They did a great job with housing, and merchants, and overall I think Mythic has done a great job on the game.

I feel like that guy from the Hardee's commercials now... "I'm not 'officially' their spokesman"

messybuu

on Jun 22, 2004

I hear a lot of good stuff about DAoC everywhere. I think the clincher for me was the thing about cloaks (it annoys me to know that my character on FFXI has a mantle, but I can't see it). I definitely need to try it, and I see that it has a demo, but would you be so kind as to answer a few questions I have about the game before I download the demo?

It says after the seventh day, that they'll start charging. Does that mean that the game itself is free, and I only have to pay the monthly fee?

Are the expansion packs free?

How much is the monthly fee? I see $10, but I've noticed at least one one game that it the price was more than it said on many sites.

Splateaux

on Jun 23, 2004

1. I'm not sure. My wife and I have had our accounts for a long long time, and bought them straight off the shelf before there was a 'free trial'. I would venture a guess that this is the case though, that the "basic" game is free when you get one of these 'free trial' accounts.

2. Some expansions are free, and some aren't. There have been two free ones, New Frontiers (released yesterday, and is really cool!), and the housing expansion. The other larger expansions do cost money, but are big enough expansions that I think it's valid to charge for them. One was for Shrouded Isles, which was a huge expansion with tons of zones, dungeons and such added per realm (there are three realms) and 2 classes, and 1 race added per realm. The other expansion was more recent, it's called The Trials of Atlantis. It's also huge!! It added about 9 new really big zones, some dungeons, Master Levels, artifacts, another race per realm, and a whole bunch of other stuff...

3. It's basically $10 a month, but my wife and I pay 6 months at a time, which I believe drops the monthly rate below $10. I'm not sure though since I can't go to the website from here

Oh... I would recommend checking out www.camelotherald.com. Mythic has done something with this game that no other game has come close to doing even half as well. They post all kinds of stats, and useful information about your realm, characters, etc.. to their website, and have much of it available via XML so that if you want to present this data in some other way, you're free to. They also keep you VERY informed about what's being changed, when patchs are going to happen and what's going to be in them via this website. They even have a server up all the time that's deemed a 'test server'. Whenever changes are being queued up for a patch, the changes will have already been made on the test server, and you can copy you characters over to this server to check out what it's going to be like for yourself.

If you do end up deciding to play, let me know... I could help you out with a little starting equipment, money, etc...

Ferretpaint

on Jul 03, 2004

I first got started playing MUDs, which unfortunately contributed to me getting somewhere around a gpa of 1.3 in high school, after that I played DII for a while, which got very boring, despite my efforts to keep playing it. I then turned to Everquest which Is also a very addicting game, Although I dont let it take my life away like the MUDs did. I get burnt out on that one once and a while and have to do something else. I tried Earth and Beyond which was a total waste of time, (they are shutting that one down cause it didn't do well). And I play Neverwinter Nights online, and they have servers based around Lord of the rings or Dragonlance, and thats good enough for me. EQ when I like it and NWN when I dont.
From the Looks of it they are coming out with a Matrix MMORPG which could be interesting if they do it right. ie not like dialbo 2 or earth and beyond.

Welcome Guest! Please take the time to register with us.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:

Richer content, access to many features that are disabled for guests like commenting on the forums.
Access to a great community, with a massive database of many, many areas of interest.
Access to contests & subscription offers like exclusive emails.
It's simple, and FREE!