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achtungexplosiv) wrote2011-07-04 11:01 pm
achtungexplosiv) wrote2011-07-04 11:01 pm
My experiences with various MMOs
First off, this is about games I have tried at various points and for some reason have not stuck around in. They are in no particular order.
Secondly, it's a bit long. You have been warned...
Matrix Online
Long dead and whilst some of my friends will vehemently disagree, I can see why it ultimately didn't do well enough to keep going. It was a heavily action-oriented game with PvE and PvP content set in, surprise surprise, the Matrix universe. I didn't play it long, only a couple of weeks and whilst the combat system was fun and being able to switch skillsets was really nice, it just didn't grab me at all. It didn't give me that Neo 'whoa' moment which the hype had promised.
(Saga of) Ryzom
Very nice world with a lot of attention put into it, particularly the 'living breathing environment' aspect. Later development added tools for player-created content (the Ryzom Ring) which was an interesting idea, though as City of Heroes has shown it's a double-edged sword. The game was predominantly focused around PvE and exploration of the world and the stories within it. My experience of the game was marred by the fact that I found the mechanics and general play to be frankly boring as all hell and after a couple of weeks I never logged into it again.
RF Online
A few days was all I managed on this Korean fantasy-meets-technology setting MMO shortly after it was released. The ability to pick what amounts to a sentient living mecha as a character appealed to me and I was given a character slot on a friend's account to play about with for a while. The game has (or had at least) large-scale faction vs faction PvP battles that granted boosted stats for a time to the victorious side, in addition to the usual PvE content of any MMO. Sadly the tutorials were terrible, the controls were awful and the combat was boring. The game itself was a grindfest and ultimately not worth the bother. It's gone F2P and is still lurking about but I haven't yet checked back to see if it's improved.
City of Heroes
I played this a bit some years back and I recently picked up a free trial again to see how it's got on now that City of Villains has been fully integrated. Sadly, I have to say that it's not quite as good as I remember it being. It's called the premier Superhero MMO and focuses on team-based PvE play, with PvP being more a case of joust-like duels. Character creation is good fun with tons of options but somehow this time around playing the game feels... boring. It doesn't help the fact that the free trial won't let you do things like save and load control configurations, sticks a dirty great window in the middle of your screen asking if you want to buy the full version each and every time you zone anywhere and also places a small upgrade to paid account button on screen that cannot be removed, only moved about. That's annoyed me intensely and would have counted as a huge turn-off if I had been considering a sub. Faintly ironic given it's now gone F2P. I know most rate CoX as the top Superhero MMO but I'd have to disagree somewhat on a personal level. (CoX being the abbreviation for the game picked up when it was still seperated into two games: CoH and CoV.)
Champions Online
The Superhero game counterpoint to CoX with a much more cheesy comic-book feel, particularly in the visual style. It's a co-operative team-based PvE game that supports PvP duelling and the once-monthly Blood Moon events encourage open-world PvP. I actually found myself enjoying CO a lot more than I did CoX, though I do wish they'd swiped more of the CoX character creator textures for costumes! Even as a Silver (free) player I have plenty to do and play about with; the silver-friendly Archetypes being well-balanced. The character creator is easily the most fun of any game I have ever played, offline and online, and I have lost countless hours just mucking about with that. Brilliant for character concepts and portraits for anything and everything - roleplaying games, simulating other video game characters, etc. Whilst it's more fun with friends of course, I've found that as a Silver with a well-specced Mind archetype it's possible to progress solo through all the missions you find. I still play it now and then.
Age of Conan
Eh, the world graphics and scenery are nice and the combat system is lots of fun but it's FUncom (not a typo). That right there is enough to have made me avoid it like the plague until I was bored one saturday afternoon and had a go on the free to play starter island. PvP and PvE are equally represented with non-consentual global PvP open to all (on PvP servers) the minute you leave the starter island. The game is expanding its free to play offerings with heavy restrictions along similar lines to the Champions Online Silver account. I won't be bothering with it personally because I got bored very quickly and I'm not actually interested in the Conan IP. Plus the characters look terrible and jump like they're falling off a log backwards. I know Sirillion has done a good job of turning the game around after it's horribadly managed launch since he took over game directorship, but still. Not for me at all.
Fallen Earth
The game recently had a 30 days free trial shortly before it announced it's free-to-play future. It's everything I should enjoy: a post-apocalyptic Borderlands-esque Sci-Fi MMOFPS - what's not to like? Well, as I discovered, the entire game. It's extremely rough and unpolished, the FPS parts of the controls are truly horrible, the gameplay is boring, movement is odd, it's buggy as all hell and in general I found it to be a massive disappointment. AO does it better and AO was released 10 years ago. It says a lot when I'd rather pay £9 to play a fantasy game like Rift for a month than £0 to play FE for a month. I have no idea how PvP content works in the game, I didn't care enough to find out.
Global Agenda
This game was pimped to me as being a sci-fi MMO FPS in a style similar to CoX. It's recently gone free to play as well and various online friends had played it. Pity it's a buggy mess and whilst the FPS elements aren't quite as bad as Fallen Earth, I ended up losing interest after the novelty of the admittedly-fun jetpack wore off about 11 levels in. Calling it an MMO seems a little bit of a stretch as well, given it's more of a multiplayer-enabled game along the lines of Hellgate. It's not even particularly CoX-like so I'm not sure where that reputation has come from. I'd play it over Fallen Earth any day of the week but that's not really much of an achievement. I've heard it compared to Tabula Rasa, particularly in terms of its team vs team PvP, and as I never got the chance to hit up TR while it was going, I'll be forever curious about how that game played.
Aion
So I thought I'd give the free trial a shot because aerial combat has been hyped to death and maybe it'd be a laugh for a while. It's an Asian fantasy game and some research led me to the conclusion that aerial combat and open PvP schtick was rather limited in scope to the abyss in between the two player faction realms, rather than everywhere at any time. After an evening of downloading and patching a 13 gig client, I discover that my ncsoft account details don't work, even though according to NCsoft they do. I couldn't log in no matter what I tried, even resetting the password. I found absolutely no information about requiring a second Aion-specific account in order to activate it even after I went looking until a friend mentioned it some time after the trial time expired. So yeah, screw Aion. Wasted bandwith and HD space. (Take the hint NCSoft, you're rubbish and annoying and if anything making me want to avoid all games with the NCSoft tag completely.)
Perpetuum Online
Pimped to me as Eve Online with battle robots, I figured I'd give the 15day free trial a shot whilst bored one sunday afternoon. Small and quick download with easy account setup - given the recent experiences I've had with other MMOs this was a welcome relief. However once in the game it's incredibly rough and unpolished. The avatar creation is literally the worst and they ripped Eve Online's mechanics wholesale without understanding the reasons why CCP did certain things. Even the graphics aren't that good, particularly considering the hype they make of it. The tutorial is absolutely skeletal and wandering aggressive mobs where you get dumped after creating a character will lock and attack you long before your tutorial gets to the point where you can figure out how to lock and fire back, or even see your own HP etc. For some reason everything in the horrible UI is disabled by default. Coming to PO from Eve meant I had a big leg up in terms of understanding the system, and all it did was make me want to log into Eve rather than explore it. With the recent disgruntlement of a chunk of the Eve playerbase, plenty have looked to PO as an alternative and it's undergoing something of an Eve-ification and population boost. Whether this helps the game to mature into something worth playing remains to be seen. Currently it's a lot of potential sitting there in a muddle.
Forsaken Worlds
It was free; it was advertised on Steam; I was bored after work. The Chinese makers (Perfect World) have clearly put a lot of effort into the game's aesthetic and visual style, being an extremely anime-fantasy setting with all the usual tropes (dragons, steampunk, goblins, etc). The Kindred Vampires are as you would expect anime emogoth vampires to be and whilst it's very cheesy-cliché it is nicely detailed, even if females have waists as thin as their necks, and boobs as big as their heads... Sadly the controls are awkward and auto-running to the destination instead of map waypoints is a terrible gimmick (auto-routing regularly runs you into walls or over damaging bits of the environment). After the noobie area you get dumped onto the mainland and immediately you are sent on an epic(...ally dull as all hell) runaround of endless quests that involve auto-running from one side of the port city to the other - and it's a reasonably large city too - to talk to someone a few times, before running back again. Again, and again, and again... I couldn't take it any more after about level 15.
Future MMOS:
Everyone's going nuts over the upcoming WoW-a-like with the Starwars IP (Star Wars: The Old Republic). I know it's Bioware but I'm not convinced the gameplay will appeal to me, not being an obsessive over the Star Wars franchise. The Secret World could be interesting too with it's mostly-modern-day conspiracy and supernatural themes but it's FUncom. CCP Games may or may not survive to see the release of their World of Darkness MMO. If they do I'll be mildly curious about it, given that they've decided to revisit the old WoD rather than the new one, but I don't hold much hope. Dark Millennium Online (the Warhammer 40K MMO) might be interesting but I have only a passing interest in the setting so I won't be rushing out to pre-order it any time soon. Guild Wars 2, likewise.
Secondly, it's a bit long. You have been warned...
Matrix Online
Long dead and whilst some of my friends will vehemently disagree, I can see why it ultimately didn't do well enough to keep going. It was a heavily action-oriented game with PvE and PvP content set in, surprise surprise, the Matrix universe. I didn't play it long, only a couple of weeks and whilst the combat system was fun and being able to switch skillsets was really nice, it just didn't grab me at all. It didn't give me that Neo 'whoa' moment which the hype had promised.
(Saga of) Ryzom
Very nice world with a lot of attention put into it, particularly the 'living breathing environment' aspect. Later development added tools for player-created content (the Ryzom Ring) which was an interesting idea, though as City of Heroes has shown it's a double-edged sword. The game was predominantly focused around PvE and exploration of the world and the stories within it. My experience of the game was marred by the fact that I found the mechanics and general play to be frankly boring as all hell and after a couple of weeks I never logged into it again.
RF Online
A few days was all I managed on this Korean fantasy-meets-technology setting MMO shortly after it was released. The ability to pick what amounts to a sentient living mecha as a character appealed to me and I was given a character slot on a friend's account to play about with for a while. The game has (or had at least) large-scale faction vs faction PvP battles that granted boosted stats for a time to the victorious side, in addition to the usual PvE content of any MMO. Sadly the tutorials were terrible, the controls were awful and the combat was boring. The game itself was a grindfest and ultimately not worth the bother. It's gone F2P and is still lurking about but I haven't yet checked back to see if it's improved.
City of Heroes
I played this a bit some years back and I recently picked up a free trial again to see how it's got on now that City of Villains has been fully integrated. Sadly, I have to say that it's not quite as good as I remember it being. It's called the premier Superhero MMO and focuses on team-based PvE play, with PvP being more a case of joust-like duels. Character creation is good fun with tons of options but somehow this time around playing the game feels... boring. It doesn't help the fact that the free trial won't let you do things like save and load control configurations, sticks a dirty great window in the middle of your screen asking if you want to buy the full version each and every time you zone anywhere and also places a small upgrade to paid account button on screen that cannot be removed, only moved about. That's annoyed me intensely and would have counted as a huge turn-off if I had been considering a sub. Faintly ironic given it's now gone F2P. I know most rate CoX as the top Superhero MMO but I'd have to disagree somewhat on a personal level. (CoX being the abbreviation for the game picked up when it was still seperated into two games: CoH and CoV.)
Champions Online
The Superhero game counterpoint to CoX with a much more cheesy comic-book feel, particularly in the visual style. It's a co-operative team-based PvE game that supports PvP duelling and the once-monthly Blood Moon events encourage open-world PvP. I actually found myself enjoying CO a lot more than I did CoX, though I do wish they'd swiped more of the CoX character creator textures for costumes! Even as a Silver (free) player I have plenty to do and play about with; the silver-friendly Archetypes being well-balanced. The character creator is easily the most fun of any game I have ever played, offline and online, and I have lost countless hours just mucking about with that. Brilliant for character concepts and portraits for anything and everything - roleplaying games, simulating other video game characters, etc. Whilst it's more fun with friends of course, I've found that as a Silver with a well-specced Mind archetype it's possible to progress solo through all the missions you find. I still play it now and then.
Age of Conan
Eh, the world graphics and scenery are nice and the combat system is lots of fun but it's FUncom (not a typo). That right there is enough to have made me avoid it like the plague until I was bored one saturday afternoon and had a go on the free to play starter island. PvP and PvE are equally represented with non-consentual global PvP open to all (on PvP servers) the minute you leave the starter island. The game is expanding its free to play offerings with heavy restrictions along similar lines to the Champions Online Silver account. I won't be bothering with it personally because I got bored very quickly and I'm not actually interested in the Conan IP. Plus the characters look terrible and jump like they're falling off a log backwards. I know Sirillion has done a good job of turning the game around after it's horribadly managed launch since he took over game directorship, but still. Not for me at all.
Fallen Earth
The game recently had a 30 days free trial shortly before it announced it's free-to-play future. It's everything I should enjoy: a post-apocalyptic Borderlands-esque Sci-Fi MMOFPS - what's not to like? Well, as I discovered, the entire game. It's extremely rough and unpolished, the FPS parts of the controls are truly horrible, the gameplay is boring, movement is odd, it's buggy as all hell and in general I found it to be a massive disappointment. AO does it better and AO was released 10 years ago. It says a lot when I'd rather pay £9 to play a fantasy game like Rift for a month than £0 to play FE for a month. I have no idea how PvP content works in the game, I didn't care enough to find out.
Global Agenda
This game was pimped to me as being a sci-fi MMO FPS in a style similar to CoX. It's recently gone free to play as well and various online friends had played it. Pity it's a buggy mess and whilst the FPS elements aren't quite as bad as Fallen Earth, I ended up losing interest after the novelty of the admittedly-fun jetpack wore off about 11 levels in. Calling it an MMO seems a little bit of a stretch as well, given it's more of a multiplayer-enabled game along the lines of Hellgate. It's not even particularly CoX-like so I'm not sure where that reputation has come from. I'd play it over Fallen Earth any day of the week but that's not really much of an achievement. I've heard it compared to Tabula Rasa, particularly in terms of its team vs team PvP, and as I never got the chance to hit up TR while it was going, I'll be forever curious about how that game played.
Aion
So I thought I'd give the free trial a shot because aerial combat has been hyped to death and maybe it'd be a laugh for a while. It's an Asian fantasy game and some research led me to the conclusion that aerial combat and open PvP schtick was rather limited in scope to the abyss in between the two player faction realms, rather than everywhere at any time. After an evening of downloading and patching a 13 gig client, I discover that my ncsoft account details don't work, even though according to NCsoft they do. I couldn't log in no matter what I tried, even resetting the password. I found absolutely no information about requiring a second Aion-specific account in order to activate it even after I went looking until a friend mentioned it some time after the trial time expired. So yeah, screw Aion. Wasted bandwith and HD space. (Take the hint NCSoft, you're rubbish and annoying and if anything making me want to avoid all games with the NCSoft tag completely.)
Perpetuum Online
Pimped to me as Eve Online with battle robots, I figured I'd give the 15day free trial a shot whilst bored one sunday afternoon. Small and quick download with easy account setup - given the recent experiences I've had with other MMOs this was a welcome relief. However once in the game it's incredibly rough and unpolished. The avatar creation is literally the worst and they ripped Eve Online's mechanics wholesale without understanding the reasons why CCP did certain things. Even the graphics aren't that good, particularly considering the hype they make of it. The tutorial is absolutely skeletal and wandering aggressive mobs where you get dumped after creating a character will lock and attack you long before your tutorial gets to the point where you can figure out how to lock and fire back, or even see your own HP etc. For some reason everything in the horrible UI is disabled by default. Coming to PO from Eve meant I had a big leg up in terms of understanding the system, and all it did was make me want to log into Eve rather than explore it. With the recent disgruntlement of a chunk of the Eve playerbase, plenty have looked to PO as an alternative and it's undergoing something of an Eve-ification and population boost. Whether this helps the game to mature into something worth playing remains to be seen. Currently it's a lot of potential sitting there in a muddle.
Forsaken Worlds
It was free; it was advertised on Steam; I was bored after work. The Chinese makers (Perfect World) have clearly put a lot of effort into the game's aesthetic and visual style, being an extremely anime-fantasy setting with all the usual tropes (dragons, steampunk, goblins, etc). The Kindred Vampires are as you would expect anime emogoth vampires to be and whilst it's very cheesy-cliché it is nicely detailed, even if females have waists as thin as their necks, and boobs as big as their heads... Sadly the controls are awkward and auto-running to the destination instead of map waypoints is a terrible gimmick (auto-routing regularly runs you into walls or over damaging bits of the environment). After the noobie area you get dumped onto the mainland and immediately you are sent on an epic(...ally dull as all hell) runaround of endless quests that involve auto-running from one side of the port city to the other - and it's a reasonably large city too - to talk to someone a few times, before running back again. Again, and again, and again... I couldn't take it any more after about level 15.
Future MMOS:
Everyone's going nuts over the upcoming WoW-a-like with the Starwars IP (Star Wars: The Old Republic). I know it's Bioware but I'm not convinced the gameplay will appeal to me, not being an obsessive over the Star Wars franchise. The Secret World could be interesting too with it's mostly-modern-day conspiracy and supernatural themes but it's FUncom. CCP Games may or may not survive to see the release of their World of Darkness MMO. If they do I'll be mildly curious about it, given that they've decided to revisit the old WoD rather than the new one, but I don't hold much hope. Dark Millennium Online (the Warhammer 40K MMO) might be interesting but I have only a passing interest in the setting so I won't be rushing out to pre-order it any time soon. Guild Wars 2, likewise.
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Tabula Rasa
Too bad the game went under, would like to give it another go now.