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The MMO Information Station: Help for Prospective Players
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He's played WoW before and is basically looking for something with the following:
I know of Guild Wars, Star Wars and Star Trek, but like me he's not really into either of the Stars and I didn't know enough about Guild Wars to be able to give him an opinion. I've directed him to this thread but any thoughts would be great.
Edit:
Also, knowing what he liked, and didn't like about WoW can help make appropriate suggestions
Although, if he wants an almost dizzying amount of options, Black Desert Online might be worth checking out. It does follow more of an old school/Everquest vibe in that questing isn't really for leveling, although it does give other resources than XP.
Does he prefer theme parks or sandboxes?
GW2 has either a free-to-play or a pay-once option (free without expansion, to get expansion you pay once). It's huge on exploration and cooperative play. It's also really easy to level and there's no pressure to "catch up" or rush to endgame. Very new player friendly and friendly in general. Would recommend for sure.
Sage Persephone
I would also recommend giving The Elder Scrolls Online a look, as it also has good cooperative play, huge zones and dungeons for exploration, Elder Scrolls style questing/lore nostalgia and relatively easy leveling at the start, as well as no longer requiring a sub fee and just being essentially buy to play. The endgame in that game is not something I am as versed in so I can't speak to it but it and GW2 certainly aren't really endgame raid grind style MMOs for the most part from my estimation.
A friend has been playing it for a while now, kept trying to get me to play it, and has now gifted it to me.
But I dont know much about it. Like, I can't even find any new news or reviews about it.
I never played ultima (never been much for MMOs for that matter) and have no connection to what Lord British was about. The game looks pretty sparse and dated visually. and they're charging $45 for an early access game?
Is this more than a crowdfunded boondoggle?
Developer: Pearl Abyss
Released: 2014 (Korea), March 2016 (NA/EU)
Cost: Free to play in Asia, Buy to play ($30) in NA/Europe
Payment Model: Cash Shop
Frequent Compliments: Very fun action combat, a big gorgeous world with day/night and weather that is fun to explore and has zero loading screens, and a strong element of sandbox play with its deep systems for things like crafting, professions, housing, horses and others. Minimal rush to endgame because many of the features that hook you are accessible before you're even halfway to level cap.
Frequent Complaints: Those gorgeous graphics are a little offset by pop-in. It's a good thing the combat's fun and the pressure to hit cap is low, because you basically only level by killing things. All of the shit to do is overwhelming when you start (and for a little while after). Sometimes the inclusion of RNG feels a bit high. The lack of fast travel can be a turnoff at first coming from other games.
The Future: Right now, the NA/EU servers are getting features slowly rolled into them that were post-launch content for Korea. The Musa/Maewha classes just launched recently and there are two more on the way (ninjas!)
PA thread here: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/203207/black-desert-online-orwen-server-ch-valencia-o1/p1
Come chat if you're curious. There's a lot I can't cover in here.
It's buy to play for us Westerners, no subscription. It has a cash shop, and while the cash shop has some boost and convenience items I wouldn't personally level the pay2win accusation (The cash shop in Asia is apparently in this camp though). Off the top of my head, the only thing I don't think you can do without hitting the cash shop is topping the leaderboards for some of the life skills (yes, there's a leaderboard to show who the most skilled farmers, fishers, and chefs are, among other things).
Wanna make a fortune selling furniture that you crafted for player houses? Absolutely!
Wanna be part of the 1% of rich fat cats on Wall Street? Rent a house in a city, decorate it so much that you top the leaderboard for that address, and poof, you have access to the investment banks in that city
Wanna tame and breed horses to make the fastest horse on the server? Go for it! Maybe you'd like to hook those horses up to a wagon that you can use to haul trade goods around the continent and build a trade empire.
Maybe you'd like to setup a few farms and grow crops to either cook or sell.
Or you can just build a boat and sail the seas, casting a line for lucrative fish and materials. I think we'll even get whaling in a future patch.
...then they realized that WoW took a very heavy initial investment, and a generation or two of MMOs failing to reach WoW's lofty profits. They were still profitable, yes, but it would take years and hardly be the money-maker investors expected. That more or less killed MMOs, or at least new ones. It's not a genre that can crop up from an indie team or small publisher: it requires a fairly hefty investment. Just look a the new 40k MMO and how they how to scale the fuck back on it to what one can argue isn't even an MMO anymore, all because Games Workshop decided to go the cheap route this time. It's why I'm skeptical of Kickstarter MMOs like Camelot.
And its right to be skeptical of kickstarter MMOs. Has there ever really been a success to come from that? The thing about MMOs is that often times companies can get one out the door, but after that it almost never lasts long and goes poof.
I know Crowfall looks like its doing really well and has a ton of ideas to get around many of the limitations and issues that come with MMOs longevity wise, but one could argue its not even really an MMO at that point much like Bobkins example. Its more of a long duration competitive match game that basically plays like an MMO has been conditioned to play.
Seems like if you aren't looking for a niche you have three or four choices going forward - WoW, FF14, GW2, and I guess Destiny if you consider it one. There hasn't been and likely won't be a reason to look for any other game to add to that list, at least for a long time.
It's a good example of the design and development teams fixing and improving their product after a bad launch. But the player base is still tiny compared to other MMOs.
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3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
Everquest 2 didn't keep your characters from Everquest, either.
I'd like to find an open world RPG to co-op with my fiancé but there is a lack of games to fill that right now. She hasn't played MMOs but she is fond of Skyrim and gets really into exploring, collecting ingredients, and crafting and less so the combat. I cut my teeth on Asheron's Call, Star Wars Galaxies, City of Heroes, and vanilla World of Warcraft.
Lately I've been trying to get into Elder Scrolls Online but I dislike the class system in it and can't find a character build I want to play.
What games are out there that have a large world, fun crafting, and interesting character build options? Something sandboxy would be great instead of the quest grind structure of so many.
Just wish companies would still make MMOs without feeling the need to compete with WoW. Find a niche and set your budget and goals targeting 10k-100k regular players or however much market research indicates belong in that niche instead of shooting for millions and failing.
You outed my recommendation, ESO has excellent crafting! You won't find many sandbox-styles games anymore, none that are really a blip on the radar at least. My only other recommendation would be FFXIV. VERY involved crafting system, given every single gathering and crafting skill is actually a class in of itself and goes from 1-60 like everything else. It can get addicting. The game itself is also really fun, and sort of has perfected the concept of making your standard themepark-styled MMO continue to be fun. Dungeons/big boss fights/etc are always being run as it's beneficial to go through them at max level for currency, and overall the game encourages being helpful to new players.
But something that isn't themeparky? Might not find what you're looking for in MMOs anymore.
Maybe I'm just weird. Probably that.
While much of the main story has sections that are only accessible to a single player at a time, the game is a great one to co-op, as two people working together with complimentary builds can find progression in the game a lot more enjoyable than just a single player running around by themselves (especially when you're solving the puzzles together!), and every single mission in the game is designed to tell you something about the setting in the game, even if you have to put the pieces together yourself.
And the community, although much smaller than many MMOs, is one of the best.
They offer a 10 day free trial so you and your fiance can give it a try, and they have a sale pretty often on their Complete Edition which makes years worth of their story DLC like, $25.
Gamertag: PrimusD | Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
I did enjoy SW quite a bit, it did urban fantasy in a tasty MMO package
To get into that you'd have to actually play the game, and honestly out of all the MMOs i've played..I would give my earnest urging of "dont fucking play SWTOR", its f2p is downright abusive, so much so that I would say its less subscription and more extortion if you actually sign up for monthly subscription.
If it had any other name but Star Wars, it most assuredly would have collapsed an failed long ago.
I would say go with ranlin's suggestion of lotro if you really must get your role play on.
I've tried a ton of games over the years and most sort of fall in the .. Meh.. category. Was debating giving Elder Scrolls online a go but I hear mixed on it, other one I was thinking of was the Final Fantasy MMO but I played the previous one and got annoyed as fuck with it. I dont mind some grinding, P2W games are out, and I am really having a hard to enjoying really anime styled offerings now.
Definately not a PVP player and solo friendly games are good. Anyone have anything recent or recentish that is worth checking out.
Oh and I have played everything that the OP mentions. Except the Elder Scrolls and new FF
yea I have heard good things about it from most folks, I am just sick to death of fantasy. Maybe ill look into firing Secret World back up again... last I played I was at that wall for I think Nightmare modes? Is that still a thing.. maybe ill poke the Secret World thread and see whats new.
I've kept an eye on Star Citizen, we will see how it progresses
While I haven't booted it up in months, I'll always have appreciation for WildStar for letting me live a David Ryder fantasy and make a dude made of stone named "Punch Rockgroin".
Slab Bulkhead!
Steam, Warframe: Megajoule
Her interest has waned enough that I felt wasteful keeping her subbed, and while running around on sub 20s is still fun she does sometimes miss having access to her actual main character. I might still just go back to keeping her subbed, but I'm looking into another MMO to play together.
Something F2P so I don't have to care if she spends a month only wanted to play a couple times.
And something with a fairly simple pet class. Only having to worry about a couple of attacks at a time with a couple of cooldowns to use when those go badly is still about her limit, so a lot of the games I'm familiar with won't work terribly well. Not performing at peak efficiency for only using a couple things is plenty fine, but a game sticking you with 8+ attacks with cooldowns you have to cycle through isn't going to fly.
There are other preferences, but honestly every thing else might be hit or miss as far as her interest goes. As long as she can feel accomplished with a limited skill set and some form of pet I'd at least look into it.
I just...can't actually think of anything I've tried with decent pet classes that don't bury you in buttons like say, EverQuest 2.
The attacks can get quite complex with the combo system, but for a solo player she shouldn't need that. There's always one button to spam. If there is a downside, it's that you can't outlevel zones (it'll scale you down to the zone's cap) so you can't just play her character for a few levels and let her storm through lowbie stuff.