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Post by RavynousHunter on Nov 26, 2011 19:52:24 GMT -5
I'm fairly sure many of us here enjoy the odd MMO, online gaming is extremely popular, and there's quite a large selection of them available. Free-to-Play, Subscriptionless, Subscription-based, Instanced, Persistent...the amount of variety one can find in them is almost insane.
So, I decided to make a thread where we can discuss these games, which ones we like, dislike, how, why, styles of play, et cetera ad infinitum. Feel free to put up offers for others to join you in your game(s) of choice, schedule raids and such.
Me? My two main MMO poisons of choice are Guild Wars, and Dungeons and Dragons Online. I enjoy Guild Wars because it has a great deal of freedom as far as character builds and playstyles go; creativity is encouraged by the very nature of the game's setup. You can get to max level (20) in a relatively short amount of time, and it has some fairly good, relaxed PvP options available for those who enjoy such a thing.
DDO? It levels slower...a LOT slower, than Guild Wars, but the focus of the game is set rather firmly on the PvE and social sides. There is PvP, of course, in the form of things like tavern brawls (free-for-all) and you can even set up Team Deathmatch-style competitions, if you so choose. While you can fly solo on many quests, with or without hirelings, the game actively encourages playing with others, especially since it allows you complete quests on higher difficulties, and is absolutely essential for raids. Its skill setup is a bit more restrictive than Guild Wars, but there is a fair amount of things you can become and be effective, and there is a fair bit of freedom.
If someone happens to play DDO on the Sarlona shard and you've got a character in the level 7-12 range, give Artromeri (Sor9/Air Savant) a jingle if I'm online. Always looking for people to party up with and make that crazy bastard stronger.
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Post by erictheblue on Nov 27, 2011 12:15:54 GMT -5
My fiancee and I played Runes of Magic until about a month ago. (It's a free-to-play similar to WoW.) We really liked it when we started playing, but a new "chapter" came out in June and really screwed a lot of things up. Diamonds (the currency bought with RL money) sold for about 9-11K gold (in-game currency) each prior to the release, but shot up to 30-50K. This made it almost impossible to have enough gold to "buy diamonds." (The buyer tells the seller what item they want from the cash shop. The seller gifts that item to the buyer and the buyer sends gold.) Also, the developer added items to the cash shop that were pretty-much required to reach end-game. The end result was that the game is ftp until about level 50, but past that, you have to either pay RL money, or spend all your time grinding for gold. We held on through that, but then a glitch hit all the servers that caused people to lose items they had spend RL money on. We didn't lose much, but it was the straw that broke the camel's back for us.
I tried out RIFT, which I liked a lot. However, I only played it for the 7 day trial, so cannot speak for much past early stuff. Some friends of mine have been playing it and really like it, and they sent me a 7-day "invite-a-friend" offer, so I have 7 more days for free.
I played Warhammer Online last summer and really enjoyed it. I was going to reactivate my account once classes ended and play until classes picked back up. Then about a week before classes ended, I got an e-mail from Age of Conan (which I played for about 18 months after it came out) giving me 30 days premium access free if I came back. So I reactivated that instead last week. It is as fun as I remember, and I had planned to keep playing until the invite from RIFT came. I need to decide if I want to stick with AoC or go to RIFT for the next month.
And finally.... The gag order is lifted, so I can say this... I was invited to beta test SW:TOR this weekend. The game is AWESOME!!! (Of course, it is Bioware, so it better be good!) I've only tried 2 classes, but the stories are amazing, game-play is great, graphics are gorgeous, and voice-acting is incredible. There's still a lot of FedEx quests, but they are mixed in with better ones, and even the FedEx quests have a reason and story behind them.
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Post by Dragon Zachski on Nov 27, 2011 13:58:44 GMT -5
FedEx quests are practically the spine of MMOs.
I've been playing DFO lately. It's a weird little game that acts like a beat 'em up, but uses the more or less traditional classes you normally see in an MMO... but with some twists, especially with subclasses.
Slayer is your traditional swordsman class, but with a demonic arm that he's cursed (with awesome) with. His subclasses are:
Weapon Master (pure physical type, he actually seals the demon further away so that he can use his cursed arm normally again) Asura (By making a deal with the demon in his arm, he loses his eyesight, but gains access to wave energy in a sort of psychic sense. He's essentially a plate-mail wearing mage.) Soul Bender (He actually unseals the demon in his arm, gaining the ability to manipulate souls and summon demons that buff himself and party members) and Berserker (He lets himself get completely taken over by the demon in his arm and masters the art of bleeding viciously all over his foes.)
Next is the Fighter, a female martial artist (there is a male variant coming soon) who is your standard punch-kick character, though only two of her weapons are actually fists. (One's a glove, the other's a gauntlet, another is claws, and finally, tonfas.) Her subclasses are... Striker (A kickboxer to the extreme, she even gets boxing gloves... for whatever reason. She hits hard and hits quick.) Brawler (A martial artist who has decided to master the art of street fighting, uses poisons and cheap tricks. Essentially, a status effect master.) Nen Master (A fighter who has mastered the art of nen, which is kinda like chi, to blast her enemies with light energy, but serves primarily a defensive role, what with being able to form barriers and buff allies a minor amount) Grappler (A wrestler, both offensive and supportive because her abilities can gather mobs together and move them around the battlefield)
Priest is an interesting class, namely because he only gets a single subclass that is what one would consider a traditional priest-type class.
As for what he looks like... well, he's a big buff dude who swings around a giant weapon.
His subclasses are...
Crusader (The only class in the game to be focused almost entirely on buffs and healing, though he gets a few attacks that are worthy of note.) Exorcist (Two classes in one for this spellcaster of Asian-type magic, which you can see in my signature. This is the more or less defacto offensive class that Priest has. On one side, he's a master of giant weapons, swinging them around and banishing enemies team-rocket style. On the other side, he's a master spellcaster, sealing demons, suppressing enemies, and so forth.) Monk (Or as he's referred to in native Korea, an Infighter. Think a boxer with glowing fists, as he literally ditches his weapon somewhere in the dungeon to punch enemies to a fine paste. Still needs a weapon to drop, though, as it still affects his stats XD) Avenger (A class that's been promised forever and is finally released in Korea. It's essentially a priest that uses the dark powers that... something something... so that he can kill the enemy in the name of God anyways. He specializes in scythes, and his ultimate attack is turning into a demon.)
Gonna try to keep the next ones shorter.
Mage, a little girl spellcaster from a different dimension, who has come to become more powerful so she can save her home dimension as well as bring help there. Elementalist (Your standard nuking class, though it employs several gimmicks) Summoner (What is says on the tin, though if anyone tells you that summoners just stand there and watch their summons kill things, you are legally obligated to slap them with a whip.) Battlemage (A mage that focuses on using pole-type weapons and her magic melee-style, using magical chasers to buff herself and damage enemies simultaneously) Witch (A hybrid of all three of the other subclasses, as well as something of a gambler-type class with an alchemist theme. Will your spell epic fail? Or will it epic win?)
Gunner, now in male and female variants! What it says on the tin. Ranger (A master of both shooting and kicking enemies to death. Often at the same time.) Spitfire (A master of elemental ammo and grenades. Can buff other gunners in the party.) Mechanic (The de facto "mage" class of the gunner. It's technically a summoner-type subclass, but the summons are used in the same way you would use a spell. Like, landrunners are your basic summon that walk up and suicide-bomb an enemy. You have a robotic time bomb that, with a certain skill, can actually stand up and dive bomb, literally, where you tell it. And then there's the G-series of robots which are essentially robots that are equipped to the gunner and do various things like blast the enemy from afar, put a shield of pain in front of the gunner, or turn into floating lasers that can blast up to three enemies.) Launcher (Remember Heavy from Team Fortress 2? Heavy would be envious of this class. Specializes in all kinds of heavy weapons, can attack from off-screen even.)
Thief is a relatively young class. The only thing this thief is interested in stealing is your life. She only has two subclasses right now, though. Rogue (An aerial attack specialist, she focuses on killing the enemy in the air with quick and furious attacks.) Necromancer (An interesting class in that she focuses on two summons her entire career. Ghost-vampire-butler, Prince of Spiders Nicholas, and a powerful ghost-knight that she "equips" so she performs physical attacks with. Note that Nicholas can get summons of his own, so this is a summon class that can summons a summon that can summon summons. Meta.)
And that's it actually. Sorry for being all wordy D:
And I also play DDO and Allods Online sometimes, but I'm kinda losing interest in both of them.
Oh, and all of these MMOs are free to play.
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Post by RavynousHunter on Nov 27, 2011 20:37:56 GMT -5
(DDO) If someone who has a Level 7-10 character on Sarlona and the Vault of Night pack would be interested in teaming up to get the first bits done, drop me a line! Got that quest, like, two weeks ago, and have only managed to get a group for Tharashk Arena.
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Post by Armand Tanzarian on Nov 28, 2011 3:46:54 GMT -5
I go through free MMOs every 2 months. If anyone's got a good suggestion hit me.
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Post by itachirumon on Nov 28, 2011 4:09:34 GMT -5
Well I always adored Maple Story but things were getting crazy there even when I "quit" back 3 years ago. I couldn't keep up with the branching missions.. right about the time they introduced the Monster Cards and the alchemy town is when I stopped being able to play. My one regret is I never got my Thief to lvl 70/Night Lord. Thieves were just FUN to play because you got the thowing stars and when you finally bought your first set of Ilbis, it was such a rush.
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Post by Yla on Nov 28, 2011 4:47:27 GMT -5
I don't play MMOs, for fear of addictivity. Single-player RPGs eat enough of my time. But I have some novel ideas for my own hypothetical MMO, if anyone wants to hear them.
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Post by RavynousHunter on Nov 28, 2011 5:59:59 GMT -5
Tis one of the things this thread is for, brother.
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Post by Yla on Nov 28, 2011 17:08:10 GMT -5
Okay, here we go:
1. No Mana bar(or heavily modified). Instead you have a certain amount of 'Concentration' or something like this. When spells are cast, they claim a certain amount (e.g. 40%, 60%) of concentration for the time they are being channeled/ built. As soon as they are released, the concentration is available again (either that, or it regenerates very fast). If there is not enough concentration, the casting time is proportionally longer. It is possible to dual-cast, though this will likely entail penalties.
2. Spells can be blocked. Since it is not reasonable to expect the player to target a spell in flight, you instead have a 'Defend'/Engage'/'Focus' ability. It costs 5% of concentration for every enemy you Defend against, but as soon as they release a spell, the character automatically casts an interception spell. This takes about 300 milliseconds, so it will only work on mid and long ranges; and since the interception costs concentration, it will delay any other spellcasting you're doing. If multiple characters engage multiple enemies, they are supposed to cooperate and split the targets between them to Defend against.
3. And this is necessary, because any hits that manage to get in will fuck you up. I dislike damage sponge characters (or sponge mobs). So lets be realistic and after at most 3-5 non-glancing hits, you're usually down, depending on how you spec your char. Hitpoints are secondary mechanic; every hit that comes through causes a Wound. A wound will 1) Cause a one-time hitpoint loss. 2) Probably put a permanent malus on your Concentration(i.e. Pain) until the wound is treated/healed. 3) May impair use of limbs, if it's heavy. 4) Bleed, i.e. cause additional hit point damage over time, until sufficiently bandaged/healed. The strength of these effects depend on the enemy's attack, weapon, your armor, and luck. The hitpoints essentially represent your blood level, if you bled out, you're dead. If the pain/shock/limb loss is too much, you may find yourself still alive, but unable to fight (or even stand&move), waiting for someone to heal you/ finish you off/ bleed out. Oh, and a critical hit will 1hitkill you outright.
4. I'm not sure yet how to do melee combat, to which degree it uses Concentration or maybe its own 'Balance' bar. What I'm sure of is that a surprise hit in the back is deadly, or so heavy that it won't make a difference. So the important thing in combat, especially mass combat, is position&formation. The melee chars make a shield wall and keep the spellcasters from close combat, while the mages cover the warriors and prevent them from being nuked by the enemy casters(while preferably managing to blow a breach in the enemy line, or overpower the enemy in another way). Also, traps and bottleneck are an elementary mechanic to prevail.
5. No Experience points. Yes, you've heard that right. Level advancement by progress through the story (either a main story, or independent story arcs).
6. Story-wise, resurrecting is explained as the PC's souls being chained to so-called Soul Mills. These eldritch conctraptions collect the escaping soul of the dead char and forcefully incarnate it in a new body (not sure how you justify getting the equipment, though). Maybe the main story, if existent, will revolve around these Mills and how to free yourself from them - but until then you enjoy the benefits. Battlefield rezzing is possible - you have to wait for about 1 minute after the death before your soul completely leaves the body and is taken by the Mill, and a friendly healer can rez you in that time (but he should heal your wounds and replenish your hitpoints first, or that was a useless exercise). A char can learn to delay and/or speed up the process.
7. Character names consist of a first and a last name. The last name is specific to an account and common to all characters on there (it's essentially a family). This ensures that names for new characters will always be available, as every 'family' has its own namespace. No longer is there a need for xX...Xx style character names because the one you wanted was taken. There will also be non-combat characters, which instead have other utilities, like merchant functions and a greater inventory/storage capacities. Banking twinks are a so common phenomenon that I might as well institutionalize it.
8. Offline occupations for PCs (i.e. you give them an order and switch to another char in the meantime), like travelling places, standing guard at the guild house or the city gate, time-intensive crafting, manning the siege weapons in a battle. They're run by an AI in that time and can receive orders from their active PC superior. Have the PCs do the boring tasks, too, but don't make them boring for the player.
A few other things about NPC merchants, PC trading, Guild territory owning..
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Post by RavynousHunter on Nov 28, 2011 20:47:13 GMT -5
Hmm, I have an alternate take on #7, taken from Ultima Online. Instead of having characters related in the database by their name (like Guild Wars), have their records retrievable by their own unique IDs. That's how RunUO does it, each character has their own hex serial that the game data associates them with, which is unique for every character. That way, you can take whatever name you want; its purely for aesthetic and in-game identification purposes. To help with this in terms of friends lists, you could take Guild Wars' approach and have each friend entry linked to their account, as opposed to the individual character.
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Post by Dragon Zachski on Nov 28, 2011 22:38:23 GMT -5
Okay, here we go: 1. No Mana bar(or heavily modified). Instead you have a certain amount of 'Concentration' or something like this. When spells are cast, they claim a certain amount (e.g. 40%, 60%) of concentration for the time they are being channeled/ built. As soon as they are released, the concentration is available again (either that, or it regenerates very fast). If there is not enough concentration, the casting time is proportionally longer. It is possible to dual-cast, though this will likely entail penalties. That's actually really interesting (just quoting this because it's easier than quoting the entire thing, and I want to address it) Actually, there's this other MMO called Istaria. It's technically got an F2P option, but you're limited to one human character. (Thankfully, you can be ALL the classes. Except the dragon class, but you're not a dragon.) Anyways, there is no MP in that game. Everything is cast times and cooldowns. It actually works kinda well.
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Post by syaoranvee on Nov 29, 2011 5:09:02 GMT -5
My main picks as of late have been RIFT, Spiral Knights, Second Life, and Digimon Masters Online. Pretty much my games shift out every couple of months. I literally have favorite folder of bookmarks for MMOs that goes beyond 50 if not 100 bookmarks.
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Post by Yla on Nov 29, 2011 7:11:44 GMT -5
Hmm, I have an alternate take on #7, taken from Ultima Online. Instead of having characters related in the database by their name (like Guild Wars), have their records retrievable by their own unique IDs. That's how RunUO does it, each character has their own hex serial that the game data associates them with, which is unique for every character. That way, you can take whatever name you want; its purely for aesthetic and in-game identification purposes. To help with this in terms of friends lists, you could take Guild Wars' approach and have each friend entry linked to their account, as opposed to the individual character. It amounts to the same thing. You can identify the human by the account-specific family name. On the backend, it ends up as an ID anyway. The difference is that with my method, the character name in its entirety is still unique, and it's probably also more immersive.
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Post by mechtaur on Nov 30, 2011 10:19:59 GMT -5
I'm usually playing City of Heroes when I get a big MMO craving, but I tend to cycle rather quickly otherwise.
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